The Goast

Kent u de figuur in het plaatje van vandaag?

Nee?

Dachtikwel.

Ik leg uit:

Ooit was hij iemand die zich voordeed als monetair econoom (een binnenkort uit Van Dale's Woordenboek der Nederlandse Taal te verwijderen begrip, dat in het grootste deel der 20ste eeuw betekenis had, maar inmiddels al zo'n 36 jaar een historisch artefact is, waaraan echt niemand waarde hecht).

Nou dan weetuhetwel, iemand die niet bijtijds geloefd, gereefd, overstag is gegaan etcetera...

Tegenwoordig slijt hij zijn leven als miskend genie (zijn woorden), is hij directeur van een stichting die onder zijn beheer werd leeggeroofd (was dus als bestuurder nogal incapabel, maar werd uiteraard gesteund in zijn 'gedoe' door een College van Bestuurders dat net als Robin Linschoten en nog zo wat marktsukkels geen idee had waarover te moeten beslissen en 'het' dus maar overliet aan Plaatje's mening), wordt hij eens per honderd interviews weleens door RTL uitgenodigd om zijn zegje te doen (als alle andere coryfeeën b.b.h.h...), heeft hij bijgedragen aan de afbraak van wetenschappelijk onderwijs door af te dwingen dat cursussen van ca 8 weken voldoende diepgang bieden en de argeloze student verder (weg) brengen tot/van zijn ideaal, te weten: hoe wordt ik snel een bonusvanger, zonder daarvoor intellect te hebben meegebracht voor mijn nietsvermoedende baas. Want wetenschap gaat immers om ON-DER-ZOEK en dan mag het on-der-wijs wel een vachtje veren laten....

Zo iemand dus, maar dan erger.

Kort geleden werden de Nobelprijzen Economie (nooit door Alfred Nobel ingesteld, maar gefinancierd door een bank toch werkelijkheid geworden...) toegekend aan twee mensen (M/V) die tijdens hun carriëre getracht hebben IETS in te brengen naast het door de figuur in het plaatje voorgesteld, als alomoverheersend, overvloedig rationeel duidelijk, maar tegenwoordig amechtig naar adem happend, economisch systeem: het marktdenken, inclusief de daarbij behorende zegeningen. Alle gekheid op een teakhouten balk:

NIEMAND in het 'Nederlandse' heeft de moed genomen om iets ten faveure van Ostrom/Williamson (V/M) te zeggen, waar zij in vorige jaren maar al te graag werden geinterviewd en geciteerd om de zegeningen van MarktDenken-Economen te verheerlijken. Bij Ostrom/Williamson kijken ze wel uit, die 'old school' 'DESKUNDIGEN', want:

• a) ze weten niets van de kwaliteiten van die winnaars,
• b) ze hebben hun artikelen immers altijd als onzin in de open haard gedonderd
• b) als ze al iets weten zijn ze het er dus niet mee eens,
• c) want diep, maar ook ondiep, in hun hart geloven ze dat wat deze winnaars zeggen totale flauwekul is (en daarom zijn ze dus ook te typeren als 'old school')

en daarom dienen dit type klungeleconomen dus met wortel en tak te worden uitgeroeid.

Zo ook de plaatjes mens.

RARA wie bedoel ik met mijn welgemeende tirade.... (volgende alinea niet lezen, tenzij je het onderwerp van mijn dagblog bent...)

BTW: als je kijkt en leest, ontslagbeul, ik bedoel jou natuurlijk, maar daar was je zonder deze hint natuurlijk nooit op gekomen. Je bent en blijft immers een nietszeggende sukkel die zijn wetenschappelijke status ontleent aan (inmiddels als zodanig erkende) onzin, maar zal tot je 67ste (jou gun ik het als eerste, maar ik beklaag je publiek dat nog twee-extra-jarenlang zal moeten worstelen met de onzin die je preekt, met de kletspraat die je als 'deskundig' verkoopt op RTL [wat schokt dat trouwens, en zou jij ook niet graag bestuurslid/commissaris van DSB zijn geweest, gezien je illustere (???) voorgangers?]) moeten doorpijgeren, is goed voor je, dan leer je wat werken is, ook al doe je er niet veel voor.

OK, zo kandiewelweerevenjan...

Maar serieus, denken jullie nu echt dat het 'model' dat economenprofessorini dagelijks de wetenschappelijke onderwijswereld inslingeren ook maar ENIG realiteitsgehalte heeft?

Nou dan.

What a Day

Yesterday minus 20 years I had my 60 minutes of fame: I received my doctorate.

Thnx Roger, Guy, Jaap, Frans, and a few others for granting me my final university diploma. One question posed at this exam (by Guy) will always be on my mind. He asked: 'all the attention for performance measurement, does that not evoke massive hysteria among finance professionals to do better (= to be more greedy) than their competitors, and does that not lead to a financial community that is not servicing money transactions only, but tries to live luxuriously on the proceeds of their risky ventures?' (In short they receive bonuses and do not care about risk).

Uhhmmm, what Could I Say in response. Something like: I do not believe finance people are That greedy, but if they are, they share a common goal: be/act/trade efficiently.... 20 years later I know better. Indeed finance professionals as well as professors (the first 7 letters of both words are the same, but please do not let yourselves be confused, they both Think the same.

I got my doctorate, I had a party that same evening/night that (at the time) had all the characteristics of a marriage, with the exception of a bride... But I enjoyed it. Hope you did too.

Yesterday minus 0 years marked the end of the DSB (Dirk Scheringa Bank), a small bank that was presided over by its founder, Dirk Scheringa, who ruthlessly forced non-finance-educated people into contracts beyond their potential, capital wise that is. He sold his clients mortgages and demanded that these same clients bought capital insurance with provisions as high as 85% of the insured sum. He sold loans with the compulsary added extra of high penalty cost whenever the client would opt out and refinance elsewhere. In short, he sold financial products to financially illiterate people that believed in their saviour Dirk S who was a former assistant accountant and a policeman before becoming a self-made banker .

Today the DSB filed for bankruptcy, forced to do so by its regulators. These regulators (the dutch central bank and the 'Authority on Financial Markets' or AFM) showed to be incompetent during the last 5 years, yes FIVE years, by not acting against near criminal intent, against outlawed double sales (meaning: you cannot have ONE of our product UNLESS you also buy another), against practically everything a bank should NOT do. The dutch central bank's president is Nout Wellink, migraine victim as I am, who will step down from his position in one of the coming months, because of negligence shown in his decision making actions.

Pieter Lakeman is MY hero. Back in the 70s (former millennium) I had the pleasure of working with him on a number of cases (mostly power-related law suits on the effectiveness and strenghts of worker's counsel legitimacy regarding reorganisations as well as mergers and acquisitions). He (Pieter) is 67 now, I am his junior with only 60 to my name/age. Pieter is the financial Don Quijote that I always wanted to be. October 1st 2009 he participated in a TV news item on the DSB case and told DSB-clients to get their money out as soon as possible, which in fact induced a bank run that ultimately resulted in DSB's filing for bankruptcy. The bank run ran to about 600 million euros until yesterday early morning. After that the curators stepped in and froze every single transaction to or fro DSB.

Pieter and Arnoud Boot, a finance professor from Amsterdam appeared on THE dutch talk show, and Pieter easily won as Arnoud unmistakingly lost the debate. Arnoud, one of the OLD SCHOOL economists with no academic future whatsoever, babbled about generics, while Pieter had an easy job talking about specifics, finishing Arnoud as a non-informed amateur. Great job or should I say: GREAT performance.

All is well that ends well. An active DSB is more dangerous than a dead one.

Reading Glasses

There comes a time in a (wo)man's life when it is OK to say 'I can't read those silly little letters in the newspaper anymore dear' and then being sent to the optometrist to get your eyesight (re)measured. Same answer from them to all of us passed the age of 40-50: YOU are in NEED of reading glasses...

Same thing happened to me. I am a MINUS-type as far as spectacles are concerned. I see nothing far away but very much nearby. This is beautiful and guarantees perfect eyesight the longer you live. One handicap though: it won't happen overnight and it is very discriminatory as lengths of vision are concerned. Close reading (in dutch we say 'dichten', joke) is the first sign of progress, while the horizon view stays behind in terms of performance. In short: I fell for the optometrist's suggestion and went home with socalled Varilux glasses that offer the best of both worlds, i.e. read the newspaper: look through the lower part of the glasses, read road signs far ahead: look through the upper part of the glasses. Only problem, as I experienced, was computer screens. Not far away, but instead of horizontal a computer screen reads vertical on the table, which meant that the only way to read the screen is to tilt your head backwards in order to read (closeby means lower part of glasses, get it?).

A few years ago I concluded this solution made me (and my neck) unhappy. So I went back to the optometrist and asked for a set of computer glasses, where down (closeby) was to be up and up (faraway) was to be down istead of the normal (reversed) set. Stupid as they are the optometrist first says NO, because he does not understand. After long and painful discussions it finally became clear to the person involved that what I wanted was actually possible. So I ordered my reversed set of glasses. And upon delivery I was very happy, reading my screen as if I was still 20...

But times pass and after a few years (we are at the 'now' BTW) I noticed that I did not wear my computer glasses any longer. In short I went back to glasses I could use when 'faraway' was the needed view and looked 'over' my glasses whenever 'close reading' was required.

Now what.

New idea: After a tennis excercise with a friend who wore clip-on sunglasses, I came to realise that clip-on reading glasses was my thing. Back to the optometrist asking how soon he could deliver. Never, was his dull answer, what you are asking I cannot sell you.

Google is your friend so in 30 minutes (OK, slow, sure...) I found what I wanted: clip-on reading glasses perfectly fitting my eyesight handicap. 19 US$, or 13 € (ex shipping) from a US company (so there IS hope for the good old US of A). This is how they look:

Simple uh? Right! But then comes the difficult part: dutch service potential. Again, back to the optometrist: 'Hello, here I am again, and I got a surprise for you. What you could not deliver, I ordered on the internet and lo and behold.... a clip-on set of reading glasses....'

'But they are much larger than the glasses you wear now', the man said. 'Sure', I answered, 'that's why I came back to you because, of course, you can fit the clip-on to the size of my glasses'.

'Alas', the man said. 'Your clip-on is made out of polycarbonate and that will splinter if I try to saw it...' And he was adamant, I can tell you. No history of being a client for 30+ years could change his mind. No offer from me that it would be my risk and my risk alone if he would only try, could persuade him. I was sent away, into the rain (not his fault I must stress)...

But I have my tools I thought. I can do what he refuses to do. I use my Dremel miniature drill/saw/polish/grind/whatever-thing and I will fix this. You'll here about my ventures at this later... (I tell this story beforehand, because if splinters will make me blind you would not have known the cause and the story behind it, because I cannot type blind(folded)).

Devaluation

The time is right, or at least almost right. We're going in the right direction, but we're not there YET...

• Last week headlines told us that China is cautiously starting to sell off their US$-currency stock,
• It gets clearer by the day that the US-government debt (too big a number to pronounce) the US-government deficit (33%, compare that with the so much criticised dutch deficit around 5%), the US-trade deficit (nearly 31 bln US$ per october 2009), unemployment (the US says 9.5%, I say 15-20% counting 6-10% of people constantly on the road, moving from one job/place to another)

Much more figures could be given but this is sufficient: The US is headed in the direction of a (much) lower creditworthiness. And what happens when that happens? Right, one starts to think about devaluation... Beware, we're talking double digit devaluation here. I would expect something in the range 20%-40%!

As world trade and the US$ are so intertwined that disentangling the resulting knot would require the number crunching potential of all existing computers globally (let alone the programming and data part of this problem) that noone can tell what the consequences of such an act might be. Sure, the US$ would lose part of its value, sure, US-debts can be repayed easier and also: sure, every foreign investment in the US must be capitalized at a much lower value than before (e.g. in Euros).

Is this the most probable scenario? It would be like a massive Marshall plan in reverse at the expense of US-foreign millions of savers and investors. Therefore: I don't think so (and, planners and decision makers beware: there will be instant civil/global war against you if you decide not to act).

What will happen of course is the instant devaluation of Euro, Yen, British Pound and Yuan, exactly equal to the devaluation of the US$. In this way (practically) nobody will be worse off, everything stays the same (financially) and the US still has to think of a better way to deal with the fact that they overconsumed, overspent, undertaxed etcetera for the last 50 years. It would be pathetic if their answer would be: Yes, we can...

The long and winding road

It is time,

to get the show on the road. To go where no man has ever gone before.

In short: I'm starting my own public consultancy endeavour. Anyone wants to join? Email or message me, it's as simple as that. Starting January 2nd 2010 (because of the January 1st holiday) I'm starting my own vigilante consultancy regarding financial economics. I'm done with the commercial financial advisory firms that put their clients into more trouble than they had before entering the premises. I'm done with (extra specially paid) finance wizards that find the 'best' financial product available that will solve their clients' problems where in fact they only burden their clients with unnecessary loans, cost and whatever.

Instead I go for facts:

• You do NOT understand financial gibberish: ask me and you will be enlightened
• You want another type of (cheaper) mortgage: I will show you the way
• You want to save/invest but you're scared: I'll explain and (re-)direct you
• Your pension is too low: I'll show you a way to increase it
• and more...

I'm cheap (not sheep!!), at least cheaper than all the rest. I will do without the fancy marblestone offices including fancy (black+white) dressed receptionists. You will find me in a bar (where else). No strings attached. You will buy me a drink when I so desire. You will show me your problems and I will help you to the best of my ability (internet included).

I present my credentials:

• 35 years of financial experience (academic as well as 'down-to-earth')
• No commercial ties that may hinder objective conclusions and solutions
• No bonus (except for free drinks)
• Clear and comprehensive advice

The firm (to be established) will be named: DoctorJohn Inc. Further info will be posted here.

I'll see ye...

Sadness

It is sad.

Banking in general has committed numerous crimes against humanity. First of all by showing their own incompetence and -within the bank- the incompetence of wizz-kids that invented their 'own' high risk newly invented financial products, based on the ideas their econometrically inclined professorini (measured by their brain potential: small professors) bestowed upon them. These professorini are too stupid to dance in the presence of demi-gods like Markowitz, Black (R.I.P.), Scholes and Rubinstein to name a few. They (the professorini) are like collegues of yet unconvicted criminals like Julio P. or Demjanjuk, or Maxima Z. or Willem-A of O-N and others who await their judges for charges of crimes against humanity. Banking is collectively guilty of fraud, riskfull actions that lead to the (near) death of their employers financial institutions and more.

It is sad.

Governments all over Europe and beyond have seen the light (or the lack of it) and are massively promoting the end of workers' rights. In the UK, in France, in Germany, in the Netherlands and elsewhere public Pay-as-you-Go pensions are restricted to those that have been working till ages between 66 and 70. These plans do not result in future budgets governments can spend on yet a series of other useless endeavours, but -by mere stupidity- will result in losses (a too long story to tell now) and higher state deficits. But in the media these government plans receive much applause -sadly- because of the fact that it 'shows' their plans on how to correct (=inhibit) socially accepted minimum security arrangements.

It is sad.

To see that stupid actions by a few result in even more stupid actions that will impoverish millions. A few Democratic members of US Congress stand in the way of health insurance for ALL Americans where nowadays 40 million of them live (and die) without such insurance. In the Netherlands the government in power presents plans to restrict state pensions to those that worked untill 67 instead of 65, based on the fact that harsh conditions (a recession) demand harsh measures....

It is sad.

That this happens in a political system that most of us define as democracy, where I define it as democracy for the few and at the same time dictatorship for the masses. As long as governments present plans to rob millions of their rights, fascism is nearer than god.