Microcredit

There has been of late a fascinating outbreak of discussion of microfinance at Marginal Revolution.

The first time I wrote of microcredit in this blog, in December 2010, I noted that Muhammad Yunus was generally considered its father, Grameen Bank was the DNA, and Bangladesh was the cradle.

I reported in that and a following entry on a controversy over a particular transfer of funds from Grameen Bank to Grameen Kalyan, a sister organization.

Half a year later I returned to the subject and referenced efforts to extend the basic model to the US.

A lot of newsy water has passed under the bridge since then. The significance of the discussion at Marginal Revolution, though, is that it takes our attention away from Yunis, away even from the 20^th and 21^st centuries, and asks us to think of microfinance/microcredit with a much longer life.  Jonathan Swift gently rocked its cradle in 18^th century Ireland.

That discussion will in turn direct you to this book.

Happy reading.

A Guide to Dorothy Sayers IV

I've been conducting a review of the allusions that Dorothy Sayer introduced in her plan for a hypothetical poem. These are references drawn largely, though not entirely, from British history of the late 19th and early 20th century.  I'm not going to finish this up this week, but let's see how far we can get.

the Tolpuddle Martyrs, a group of farm workers who were convicted in 1834 for swearing an oath of solidarity to one another. The prosecution was part of the broader anti-union backlash of the day, and the convicts were transported to Australia.

Brown and Kennedy, Both of these names are of course quite common, and it isn't obvious who Sayers meant. My first suspicion was an American one -- she was linking the two men who separately defeated Richard Nixon's political aspirations in the early 1960s!  But Says seems to have completed this introduction by 1949. My present suspicion, since this item comes right after the Tolpuddle Martyrs, is that the reference is to James Brown (1862-1939), the head of the National Union of Scottish Mineworkers from 1917 to1936. Perhaps Sayers is coupling Brown with an American counterpart,  Thomas Kennedy (1887- 1963), an important figure in the United Mine Workers (in the US) from at least 1925 until his death. If anybody has a better idea for what this pairing means in this context, please let me know.

the Dean of St Patrick's, this is an allusion to Anglo-Irish novelist Jonathan Swift (1667-1745).  The St Patrick's in question is the Cathedral in Dublin.

the Dean of St Paul's, John Donne (1572 - 1631), the paradigmatic figure of what is nowadays called "metaphysical poetry." The author of the famous Meditation XVII, "And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee."

Dean Farrar, Frederic William Farrar (1831-1903), an advocate of "Christian universalism," the idea that all human souls will in the fullness of time be reconciled with God -- i.e. that there is no everlasting damnation of the sort Dante vividly imagined.

Fred Archer,  Frederic Archer (1838-1901) An organist and composer whose career began in England but continued after 1880 in the United States, where he became conductor of the Orotorio Society in Boston, Mass.

Mrs Dyer, Louise Berta Mosson Hanson-Dyer (1884 - 1962) -- Sayers helpfully groups two of her musical referents together here.  Mrs Dyer was an Australian born woman, who founded a music publishing operation, Éditions de l'Oiseau-Lyre, in 1932.

Lord George Sanger (1825-1911), an English analog to P.T. Barnum.  Sanger ran a variety of shows and circuses and founded an association to lobby for the intrerests of such businesses, the Van Dwellers Protection Association.

Lord George Gordon, (1751-1793), a Scottish nobleman who converted to Judaism in 1787, at 36 years of age. Charles Dickens makes a favorable allusion to George Gordon in the novel Barnaby Rudge.

General Gordon,  Major-General Charles George Gordon (1833-1885), best known for his determined defense of the Imperial position at Khartoum, in the face of the Mahdi rebellion, (Islamism, one might say) and his death in that defense in January 1885.

Ouida, The pen name of the novelist Maria Louise Ramé (1839-1908). Her works, considered racy at the time, were quite successful, but she did not manager her money wisely and died in poverty. Jack London cited her as an important influence on his own writing.

William Joyce, (1906-1946), known as Lord Haw-Haw, he was born in New York, but his family returned to his parents' home country, Ireland, while he was a child. They were Unionists in the Irish context, and they moved to England soon after Ireland received its independence. Joyce would found the British Union of Fascists and would broadcast radio propaganda for Hitler during the war. Hence his execution for treason in January 1946.

James Joyce, (1882-1941), one of the defining figures of literary modernism, perhaps best known fo Ulysses (1922).

A Guide to Dorothy Sayers I

You may remember that last week I quoted a passage from Dorothy Sayer's introduction to her translation of Dante's Divine Comedy. Click here  to refresh your recollection. She listed some of the references drawn largely from British history of the late 19th and early 20th century that a British poet in the middle of the 20th century might use in creating an analog.  Her point was that these references will become obscure over time, just as the various references of medival Italy now seem quite obscure to us.

The passage of time has proven her right in this.  I've decided to see if I can say something about every one of her references, just as if these were for the annotations of a real poet.

Let's begin:

Chamberlain (him of the orchid) – Joseph Chamberlain (1836 – 1914), who wore an orchid as a personal signature, was a prominent political figure of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, and though never prime minister his name was associated with a hawkish policy against the Boers in South Africa.  He was also the father of the next figure on our list.

Chamberlain (him of the umbrella) – Neville Chamberlain (1869-1940, prime minister 1937-1940)  -- widely reviled in the post war years including the period in which Sayers was writing – he has found some scholarly defenders since. He often carried an umbrella in public, was always portrayed with one in cartoons, and  is remembered for his part in the Munich Accords, conceding Germany’s sovereignty over the Sudetenland in what had been Czechoslovakia.

[Stewart Houston] Chamberlain (1855-1927), a British-born author of books on race, he became a German citizen in 1916 and produced anti-Brit propaganda for the remainder of that war.  It doesn’t appear that there was any relation to the above Chamberlains.

“Brides-in-the-Bath” Smith – George Joseph Smith (1872 – 1915), a serial killer convicted in the Old Bailey in 1915 of drowning each of his three wives.

 “Galloper” Smith – F.E. Smith, who became known as “Galloper” when that term was used in much the way we use the term “gofer.” A Galloper was someone who did errands for someone more famous.  F.E. Smith was an associate/galloper of Sir Edward Carson  in support of giving Ireland Home Rule. Later, he became Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain.

Horatio Bottomsley (1860-1933) – the publisher of a patriotic journal of opinion, John Bull, during the first world war.  Argued for the confiscation of the property of German nationals living in Britain, and a requirement that they be required to wear distinctive clothing.   I hope Dorothy Sayers was thinking of him as a plausible occupant of one of the rings of hell. 

Horatio Lord Nelson (1758-1805)  this one requires no explanation.  Victor at Trafalgar.

Fox [Charles or George] .  George Fox (1624-1691) was the founder of the Society of Friends (Quakers).

Charles Fox (1749-1806) was the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs for about three months in 1782, as the Brits sought to cut their losses in America. That was just an incident within a long parliamentary career, in which he was perhaps the most prominent advocate of the abolition of slavery within the Empire.

Man who picked up the bomb in Jermyn Street – this apparently refers to Al Bowlly (1898-1941), a jazz crooner who made a thousand recordings in the late 1920s and through the 1930s, in both the UK and US, and whose life was brought to an end during the Blitz in London in the manner to which this phrase makes reference.

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) this one doesn’t yet require explanation.  

Oscar Slater (1872 – 1948), the victim of a once-notorious case of mistaken identity in the murder of Marion Gilchrist in 1908.  The case has often been cited as showing the imperfect nature of witness identifications/line-ups etc. The identification evidence in this case was the result of coaching of the witnesses and more subtle means of slanting their decision.

Oscar Browning (1837-1923), a figure of some repute at Cambridge University in the late 19^th century.  Mentioned quite unfavorably by Virginia Woolf in “A Room of One’s Own” in connection with his prejudice against the education of women.  

That's a good start.  More tomorrow.

Top Financial Stories 2010

I generally ask myself at this time of year what were the biggest stories of the past twelve months, in business/financial news.

By "stories," I don't mean themes, such as "China Rising" or "EU unraveling." I mean stories, such as one might have seen in a particular newspaper on some specific day. Of course, I choose the ones I do largely because they illustrate an important theme. But the theme itself isn't the story.

Further, I don't rank them, as in a top ten list. I generally assign one top story to each of the twelve months.

All that said, here is this year's list.

January. Google announcement. Google said that it was no longer willing to censor its searches in the People's Republic of China in accord with the desires of the authorities there. This was part of an escalating dispute that would lead to Google pulling out of China altogether in March.

February. Two competing biotech companies in Denmark claimed a break through in the production of commercially viable cellulosic ethanol.

March. U.S. health care reform bill finally passed -- though the actual changes are to be phased in over a period of years. Judicial challenges to the new law are an ongoing story as the year ends.

April. Greek bonds. The S&P rating for these bonds was lowered to junk level. The unfortunate acronym "PIIGS" for the 'periphery' countries of the EU receives some currency. (For the record, that's Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain.)

May. The EU Finance Ministers. The Finance Ministers over-rode the strong objections of both the outgoing and the incoming UK government, approving the Alternative Investment Fund Manager (AIFM) Directive.

June. The Gulf of Mexico oil spill. This spill had begun with an explosion on the Deep Horizon platform in April, but it grew as a story week after week, and only this month did it attain totemic full-sh!t-storm significance, even at the level of diplomacy between US and UK.

July. The Dodd-Frank bill reforming the way the financial services industry in the U.S. is regulated, passed. Obama signed it. Much of it kicks the can forward, authorizing reports and possible new regs by a variety of agencies. Some obvious reforms, like the consolidation of CFTC with SEC, go still unmade.

August. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority. The HKMA announced the tightening of its rules on mortgage lending. This reflected its concerns about a developing real estate bubble in the Special Administrative Region.

September. Muncipal bonds in the U.S. Meredith Whitney put out a 600 page report predicting big trouble ahead for the municipal bond market in the US. By serendipity, she released this just as Harrisburg, PA was getting into big fiscal trouble.

October. Sarkozy, President of France. This month, the President pushed pension reforms through the French legislature despite crippling nationwide strikes. (And since we're talking about France, this was also the month that Kerviel was sentenced.)

November. Midterm elections in the US. The most remarkable development here, from the point of view of this list, was the defeat of a proposition designed to suspend AB32, in California, and the election of a Governor committed to enforcing same. AB32 is California's cap-and-trade bill regarding carbon emissions. This development has kept cap-and-trade alive, despite its political failure at the federal level.

December. Ireland. In crisis, and after cutting a deeply unpopular deal with the IMF, Ireland enacts legislation that readies a sweeping re-organization of the banking sector there. Memories of the "Celtic tiger" are just that.

A quick perusal of this list shows that it is much less of a US-centric compilation than most of its precursors in this blog. I have a hometown bias. In this case, though, only five of the stores that strike me as the biggest in their respective months are US-oriented. Five are European, and the other two are Chinese. What does that mean? Nothing much, I suppose.

Happy new year everyone.

Top Financial Stories 2009

I generally ask myself at this time of year what were the biggest stories of the past twelve months, in business/financial news.

By "stories," I don't mean themes, such as "Doubts about efficacy of SEC regulation" or "US/EU relations." I mean stories, such as one might have seen in a particular newspaper on some specific day. Of course, I choose the ones I do largely because they illustrate an important theme. But the theme itself isn't the story.

Further, I don't rank them, as in a top ten list. For the first couple of years that I did this I simply gave one "top" story from each of the twelve months of the year now ending. Last year was so wild, especially in its second half that I couldn't stick to the one-a-month presentation. I ended up with a list of 18 big stories, two per month starting with July.

This year, for the sake of balance I suppose, I have produced another list of 18 stories, twice a month this time for the first six months, then just one a month from July.

All that understood: Here we go! The list is dominated this year by a meta-theme. We might call it: the triumph of experience over hope.

January. (a) The inauguration of a new President of the United States, and Barack Obama's choice of Timothy Geithner to head Treasury. Geithner's presence in the new administration is not a sign of change, but one of continuity. During most of the Bush years, Geithner was the very visible President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

(b) Financial crisis in Iceland brings street protests, shake-up in government there. Iceland, on the one hand, has long been a free market economy, with taxes lower than those of most other OECD countries. On the other hand, it has maintained a Nordic welfare system, including universal health care and post-secondary education. Whatever may be true of Las Vegas: what happens in Iceland, is widely watched elsewhere.

February. (a) Obama signs the stimulus act, a/k/a the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). The full title seems better to convey the almost cartoonish Keynesianism involved: "An act making supplemental appropriations for job preservation and creation, infrastructure investment, energy efficiency and science, assistance to the unemployed, and State and local fiscal stabilization, for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2009, and for other purposes."

(b) Zimbabwe asks African states for $2 billion in aid -- Mugabe vows to continue brilliant policies. I'll simply offer a link here.

March. (a) Bernie Madoff pleads guilty without a plea deal, claims to have acted alone. Of course, he did not act alone, but by taking the fall and keeping mum on confederates, he appears to have earned some necessary prison cred.

(b) UK Financial Services Authority adopts new rules on derivatives. In London as in Washington, complicated and insufficiently regulated derivatives are widely blamed for the crisis of 2008. That diagnosis is jejune, but is to be expected. The particular derivatives that draw fire in the UK are known as "contracts for difference."

April. (a) Dow Chemical finally closes on its Rohm & Haas deal. The idea of this merger was to craete a "leading specialty chemicals and advanced materials company." Its logic would have been more powerful, and the deal would have gone through smoothly, had the timing been a bit better.

(b) Chrysler files for bankruptcy This is the first of three headline events on our list of 18 that may stand in for a single momentous theme -- the frog-marched restructuring of the US automotive industry in general. And we won't bother listing separately that GM too passed through a bankruptcy court proceeding.

May. (a) China-Brazil oil/loan deal The Brazilian oil company Petrobras finalized a deal with the People's Republic of China. Petrobras got a (US)$10 billion loan and PRC got a long-term supply of 'black gold.' This is a straw in a lot of different winds -- the rise of China to global prominence on the back of its huge dollar reserves is one of them.

(b) Obama announces new CAFE/ emissions standards. This is our second auto industry headline of the year. The program is projected to reduce oil consumption over the period from the 2012 to the 2016 model years by approximately 1.8 billion barrels. (As you probably would expect, dear reader, I think such projections warrant skepticism.)

June. (a)US Supreme Court decides Traveler's Indemnity v. Bailey. Asbestos is one of the big "mass tort" issues that have rocked our civil legal system in recent decades. Travelers thought it had a deal that limited its exposure via a settlement trust established by order of the federal district court in Manhattan back in 1986. Unfortunately for them, state law claims and "collateral attacks" made that trickier than they had expected.

(b) Elections to Euro parliament strengthen the center-right parties. For purposes of the italicized statement, anyway, we may understand the term "right" to mean the group of parties or factions that are suspicious about the role of the Parliament they are joining, either on behalf of separate sovereign nationalisms or on behalf of EU-regulated global commercial concerns or both. The "left," which lost this round, consists of those that see a need for a more activist EU.

From here on we are presenting just one headline per month.

July. Cash-for-clunkers program in the US. This is our final US-auto-industry headline. There was always an ambiguity to the plan. Was it designed chiefly to stimulate the auto industry, or to improve fuel efficiency? The goals aren't obviously in harmony. Still, any critique of its efficacy in one respect could be deflected by pointing to the other.

August. Settlement of US/Swiss Dispute over UBS Confidential Client Information. The relationship between Switzerland and the US seems to have grown closer in a number of respects over the last year.

September. Target Corp. declassifies its board Reform has come to the field of corporate governance, though what over-all impact such reforms may end up having it is hard to say.

October. Ireland votes in favor of Lisbon Treaty, effectively secures the new continent-wide government It is difficult to tell where Europe is headed. The Lisbon Treaty would certainly seem to be a step toward closer political integration. But the European Parliamentary elections, as noted above, were won by parties skeptical thereof, and there are a lot of centrifugal forces at work.

November. What is patentable? SCOTUS hears arguments. My own expectation is as follows: (a) the Justices will uphold the court below in its finding that Bilski's 'process' is really an abstract idea and thus not patentable; and (b) they will work harder than the court did below in order to define what is or isn't an abstract idea.

December. Two crucial bills advance through the Houses of the US Congress -- the health care reforms and the financial-regulatory system overhaul.
It seems very likely that something will be enacted into law in both of these areas sometime early next year. But I could be wrong even about that.

Top Financial Stories 2008

I generally ask myself at this time of year what were the biggest stories of the past twelve months, in business/financial news.

By "stories," I don't mean themes, such as "Bear market in bank stocks" or "volatile crude oil prices." I mean stories, such as one might have seen in a particular newspaper on some specific day.

Of course, I choose the ones I do largely because they illustrate an important theme. But the theme itself isn't the story.

Further, I don't rank them, as in a top ten list. Usually, on this blog last year at this time and at my blog-city home for two years before that, I've simply given one "top" story from each of the twelve months of the year now ending.

This year has been so wild, though, especially its second half, that I haven't been able to stick to the one-a-month presentation. I've ended up with a list of 18 big stories, two per month starting with July.

All that understood, here we go!

January. Frenchman Jerome Kerviel loses 4.9 billion euros for Societe Generale. $7 billion. The story started off the year with a bang. Kerviel leap-frogged past Nick Leeson as the all-time most rogue-ish "rogue trader."

February. A jury in Hartford, Conn. convicts a former AIG exec of skullduggery.

The executive in question was Christian Milton, once AIG's vice-president for re-insurance. He was convicted of an effort to inflate AIG's loss reserve numbers.

March. The Federal Reserve backs a JPMorgan takeover of Bear Stearns. At one point, [i.e. the morning of March 17] the price was actually $2 a share for Bear's stock, although less than a week prior -- at the close of trading Monday afternoon, March 10, the market valuation had been $70.08 a share. It was hard not to think JP Morgan was making off with ill-gotten gains somnehow. In fact, the purchase price didn't stay down at $2. To resolve some problem in the documentation, it was eventually raised to $10. Bully. Still, the value-evaporation was breaktaking.

April. Food price increases cause riots, political crises, worldwide.

There would be a lot to discuss under this heading, were that my goal in this entry. Instead, I'll just ask about the use of foodstuffs as a surrogate for gasoline: what impact did that have in triggering the price increases or the result?

May. Yahoo successful in warding off acquisition attempt by MS.

A victory for Jerry Yang, the founder of Yahoo!, who remains its guiding spirit and has preserved its independence.

June. Voters in Ireland reject the Lisbon treaty, thus slowing Euro unity..

The world continues to wrestle with the whole idea of "sovereignty," in terms of nation-states or of broader or smaller units.

Hereafter we award two biggest-story prizes per month.

July. (a) Israel, of Bayou and Bear Mountain infamy, turns himself in.

The whole Bayou funds meltdown had more than a touch of the bizaare to it. Israel's effort to simulate a suicide on the Bear Mountain Bridge, the failure of authorities to discover a body in the Hudson, and his re-appearance and surrender just added the garnish to that meal of oddities.

(b) Crude oil prices peak near $150 barrel, head down.

Why did it get that high? Why has each barrel lost close to three quarters of that value in the months since? Which one is the anamoly, prices above $140 or around $40? which one will be the norm going forward? Reviewing this year just leaves me full of questions.

August. (a) Second circuit court hears arguments in CSX/TCI dispute.

This is fascinating litigation about proxy votes and the working of the equity swaps market. These aren't issues that will go away anytime soon.

(b) CME, Nymex agree to consolidation -- part of the much broader trend of the consolidation of exchanges worldwide.

September. (a) Bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, all heck breaks loose re: bank stocks or, for that mnatter, US equities generally.
(b) SEC emergency order bans any short selling of bank stocks .

These two points rather adequately explain themselves. I'll only add that the ban later expired unlamented. Various restrictions of short-selling remain, but a simple ban on it is akin to a ban on pessimism. It is idiotic.

October. (a) Bush and 'leadership' put a TARP over troubles.
The acronym "TARP" stood for the "Troubled Assets Relief Plan," the keystone of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, which became law on OPctober 3, after a turtuous legislative process that re-defined the Presidential campaign to Senator McCain's disadvantage. That isn't all it has redefined.

(b) Waxman hearings excoriate the credit rating agencies I'll just leave a link to my contemporaneous explanation of this hearing and its bovine idiom.

November. (a) Geithner an early cabinet choice of President Elect.
The Republicans during the campaign had sought to tag Sen. Obama a "socialist" (while a President and Treasury Secy of their party were nationalizing industries -- how odd!) Anyway, the Prez-elect's choice of Timothy Geithner as his own Treasuiry Secretary should have re-assured anyone who needed re-assurance on this front.
(b) Paulson completes the bait-and-switch with the TARP.
The outgoing Treasury boss has advertised the TARP as a fund for purchasing troubled assets. Hence, the name. Those purchases were meant to stabilize, without taking over, the banking system. But by one month out, Paulson was acknowledging that the real use of the money would be to make "equity infusions." In other words, takeovers.

December. (a) Bernard Madoff is arrested Dec. 11, one day after his sons had apparently revealed his pyramid scheme to the authorities.

You can't really call Madoff a "rogue trader" in the manner of Kerviel, the rogue with whom the year began. A rogue is a trader who gets a firm in trouble by going behind the back of his bosses there. Madoff was the guy with his name on the door. Call him a "rogue principal" if you like. Still, his fall gives a nice sense of symmetry to the year.

(b) Dec. 16, Federal Reserve lowers federal funds rate to a range between 0% and 0.25%, record territory. Three days later, the Bank of Japan followed suit, lowering its benchmark rate to 0.10%.

Wow. Funds rates are dropping like crude oil prices.

Whew. I'm sooo happy this year is over.

Seventy years ago today

It was on July 17, 1938 that aviator Doug Corrigan flew out of Bennett Field in New York.

He was supposed to be heading for California. He actually ended up in Dublin, Ireland, 28 hours later.

Hence the nickname he bore for the rest of his life, Wrong Way Corrigan.

No one believes that this was an accident. Corrigan had repeatedly applied for permission to fly to Ireland and been turned down, and presumably thought it would be neat to put one over on the bureaucrats.

Corrigan, who lived until 1995, never once acknowledged having flown eastward on purpose. I imagine that once he created the cover story he figured he might as well keep the bluff going.

Every one of the early trans-Atlantic solo flights was an act of bravery, and this was still very true in Corrigan's day, eleven years after Lindbergh's flight. That it was in his case a combination of bravery with trickery wrote him into pop-culture immediately.

Soon thereafter the three stooges cried "Hey, we're doing a corrigan" in one of their shorts -- they were cast as firemen, and realized that they had been going in the opposite direction from the fire.

And, decades later, the obviously Corrigan-inspired character "Wrong Way Feldman" appeared on Gilligan's island.

Ah, fame.

The Irish Vote "No"

In a referendum held yesterday, voters in Ireland rejected the so-called Lisbon treaty, i.e. a package of proposed amendments to the institutions of the European Union.

Eureaucrats have been touting this treaty as the key to a "more democratic and effective" continent. It seems intended chiefly to make the EU a single player on the world stage, with a unified foreign policy. This is part of the slow movement of sovereignty out of the national capitals such as Dublin and London. [Anarchist though I am, I'm thinking within-the-box this morning, so I'll use words like 'sovereignty' without quarrel.]

So: what happens now? Do the changes require unanimity? And if so: is the Lisbon treaty dead?

The answers seem to be, "a lot, yes, and no."

The Eureaucrats are saying that they'll continue to press the "ratification process," the results of which now stand at 18 to 1, with 8 member countries not yet accounted for. Evidently, the treaty enthusiasts want to rack up as many "yes" votes as they can, so that they can go back tot he Irish and say, "it came out 26 to 1, you contrary slugs" or words to that effect, in hopes of getting a second vote there. Where better than Ireland for a "mulligan"?

Lisbon will likely be dead if there's a second "no" vote somewhere. One country standing alone against aspirations for One Europe has a problem. Two countries standing together mean those aspirations have become the problem.

Ireland, in compliance with its own constitution, is the only country in the EU that scheduled a ratification referendum at all. In the other countrues, ratification is by legislative act, although in the UK, the Tories are demanding a referendum, though prime minister Brown and his Labour government apparently plan to ratify via Parliament.

Anyway: why the "no" vote? Were the Irish rebelling against the loss of national sovereignty? Was it just the extremely complex character of the treaty ... and their sensible unwillingness to support something they couldn't understand?

Ireland's PM, Brian Cowen, who supported the treaty, now it appears supports the result of the vote, opposing a do-over. He'll meet with EU honchos next week and discuss where things go from here.

[Here I go outside the box again] The whole idea of sovereignty, at ANY level, national or continental, is perhaps unravelling. We can hope.

Anarcho-capitalism. Catch the fever!

Christopher Hitchens

I shared an elevator ride with someone famous during my Dublin sojourn. That's generally a good sign I was staying at an over-pricey hotel.

Christopher Hitchens, the pundit/polemicist, is on a book tour promoting "God is not great." http://www.amazon.com/God-Not-Great-Religion-Everything/dp/0446579807

Anyway, the morning after Bloomsday, June 17, I went to the elevator down the hall from my fourth floor room. Floors, by the way, are numbered at the Morrison in what I gather is typical European fashion. You can't safely walk onto the street from the "first floor," because it is what Americans call the second floor. So the fourth is the fifth.

Anyway, there was someone waiting by the 'vator. I walked in, and this somebody asked my not to press any button. So I gathered he was holding it for somebody else, and I shrugged.

The wait wasn't long. The fellow I sort-of-recognized as Christopher Hitchens walked in, and his 'vator-holding flunky walked in behind him. The latter fellow presses the button for the ground floor, and we're off.

Now I'm in a quandry. I don't want to say: "You look a lot like Christopher Hitchens" to this fellow. If he isn't, he replies, "oh, I get that a lot" with a tired voice, and I feel unnecessarily stupid.

If he replies, "Yes, that's who I am," then I suppose I'd have to say something like: "I've never read any of your books, but those columns you write for Slate are certainly spirited." But I'd again have to anticipate some tired/withering sequel. I could imagine him turning to his flunky to say, "You see? I can't even get away from them for a brief holiday!"

So I said nothing, and my brief story's three characters descended to the ground floor in nearly complete silence. Flunky said something about "when we're supposed to be there," and famous person grunted.

Twenty-four hours later, while I was waiting for a cab to take me to the airport, I glanced at a newspaper and saw that, yes, Christopher Hitchens had been in Dublin over the weekend to promote his book and take part in a debate with a theologian associated with Trinity College.

So, Chris, if you happen to read this:
1) the fellow in the lift with you that day wasn't really a mute
2) it's good to see a fellow "Christopher" make a mark in the world
3) i've never read any of your books, but those columns you write for Slate are certainly spirited.

When I Travel

When I travel, it is my habit to try to get a handle on the news of the place I'm visiting. I buy the local papers, and look for locality-specific stories.

Of course, nowadays, you can read almost anything anywhere. You can read the Irish Examiner, for example, here: http://www.irishexaminer.com

Still, I generally wouldn't think to read the Irish Examiner without the impetus of a trip to the place. And when I have that impetus, I try to make good use of it.

So this is what I learned. There's been a general election in Ireland recently, and the dust having settled, Fianna Fail has become the dominant political party within a ruling coalition. What does the Gaelic term "Fianna Fail" mean in English? "Soldiers of Ireland," literally, although party members seem to prefer "Soldiers of Destiny." Anyway, the coalition is of a center-left sort, and will include the Green Party, apparently for the first time.

There's much ink spilt on the challenges that the health-sector, and the ministry with responsibility for the same, will face in the months and years ahead. Mary Harney, a Progressive Democrat, will remain the Minister of Health, although the Prog. Dems lost seats in last month's voting. Her own position in the cabinet is stronger than it was, apparently because a nurses' strike during the election collapsed. Nurses, as one journalist with a gift for feline cliche put it, are "licking their wounds."

On a lighter note, nudist groups are said to be stepping up their campaign to secure designated beaches in Ireland for the exercise of their preferred ... um ... means of total-tan-acquisition.

And I ended up reading about Tullow Oil. Tullow, founded in Ireland in 1985, has since moved its headquarters to London, UK, but is still listed on the ISE as well as the LSE. The newspapers tell me that it's just reported positive results from exploratory drilling in Uganda. They also mention rumors, which the company denies, that some of those positive results come on the other side of a border, in Kenya.

The stock price rose on this combination of confirmed and denied reports. After a long period of hovering around 5.5 euros, it increased its value by more than a third in days, to 7.5.

So, unless you're Irish, you probably now know much more than you need to about what'sbeen in their newspapers of late.

I won't speak of the sports pages here, but I did notice that on television the counting is up rather than down. A rugby match lasts 80 minutes. When I ducked into a pub for "a pint of plain" and saw that a match was in progress (South Africa versus Australia) the television showed the time as 78:00, then 78:01 etc. The viewer was expected to be able to figure out what that meant in terms of time left, unless the announcers were expected to remind him/her constantly -- and (since this was a close match) the latter is what happened.

South Africa, by the way, won the match. Twenty-two to eighteen.

Dublin

Dublin is not a city of skyscrapers. This isn't a matter of spontaneous equilibrium, either. The city's Site Planning Committee is vigilant on the point. It's a city of four or five story buildings for long stretches.

So when something does stand out of this low-level pattern, the site line extends a long distance. This is true of the two fine Gothic Cathedrals -- St. Patrick's and Christ's Church -- it is true of two beery corporate buildings -- Heineken's and Guinness -- it is true of "the spire," a 120 meter high needle-shaped hunk of concrete in the center of the shopping district.

Nobody to whom I spoke quite knew what, if anything, the spire is supposed to symbolize. A cabbie sardonically suggested that, given the drug activity on O'Connell Street at nights, it might symbolize a syringe. More serious suggestions made it out to be a matter of civic pride. "We're an important town and we can have a high needle if we want to."

The aesthetics of the needle didn't appeal to me. But there is much in Dublin to delight the eye. The two cathedrals I've mentioned above are examples. The eighteenth century neo-classical architecture of Trinity College is another.

On my tour through Trinity my group had as a leader a first year student of economics there who knew that he was attending a fine old college with a distinguished history but seemed vague on the particulars. He was telling us that a certain building -- which once housed a printing press -- is ("now that the college doesn't print its own books anymore") devoted to music and the recording arts. Another student, who just happened to be walking by, said, "Excuse me, that's electrical engineering." Our guide immediately accepted the correction and apologized.

The Trinity Library is known as "Berkeley Library," after the subjectivist philosopher George Berkeley, who was a fellow here early in the college's history. Our guide, of course, pronounced his name in the original old-world way, Barkley. (It has been Americanized in the name of the city in California and its university, though they too owe their names to the philosopher.)

Our guide didn't know the famous limerick illustrating Berkeley's philosophy with a tree in the quad, even though he had just led us through that very quad and any number of trees. Not to worry, reader, I informed him of the limerick.

As his last duty, our guide led us to a building where Trinity keeps some of its medieval treasures under glass. There I saw half of the Book of Kells. The book appears to have been chopped into four parts in the 1950s, the better to display it. Two of the quarters were put in one building, two in another. In each of the displays, one of the portions of the book is open to a page chiefly of text, the other is open to a page dominated by an illustration/illumination. Both are convincing demonstrations of early-medieval Celtic piety -- the force that pulled the west of Europe through the darkest of the dark ages.