The worst films of 2008

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Given the lack of interesting policy news this time of year, I'm going to use the holidays to indulge another interest on this blog. Specifically: movies. Having been to the cinema more than 50 times this year (I know, misspent youth...), I feel I can do the subject some justice. So in the run up to the New Year, I'm going to be counting down my top ten films of the year, starting on December 21 and concluding on New Year's Eve. But before we get to that, here's a round up of the three worst films I've sat through in 2008:

#3: RocknRolla is Guy Ritchie's third stinker in a row (after Swept Away and Revolver). It was so bad I almost walked out more than once. Incoherent and populated by deeply annoying characters, RocknRolla is a far cry from Ritchie's Brit-gangster classic, Snatch. Shame too, because you can tell he's really trying.

#2: Zack and Miri make a Porno is every bit as bad as the title suggests. It's too long, too crude, and not remotely funny – a pretty serious flaw for a supposed comedy.

#1: Righteous Kill should have been great. Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro in the same film? How can you go wrong? Well, a woefully bad script is a good start, and a complete lack of suspense (this is meant to be a thriller) coupled with a monumentally stupid plot twist seals the deal. Just watch Heat again instead.

Blog Review 813

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On the stupidity of the new law on "extreme pornography".

Car sales are down, yes, but might this simply be because consumers are poorer than they used to be?

Yet more on Madoff. If it was anything other than a Ponzi scheme then he would have, alone, been trading more options than there are options....

Good grief! Al Gore actually gets something right!

On why we actually get the Nanny State in the first place.

This GCSE question is an excellent piece of public choice economics. Unfortunately it's a science paper.

And finally, what is meant by "undivided attention".

Blog Review 812

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It might be that we are all acting like Keynesians now but are we wise to be doing so?

Creating green jobs is indeed a cost: for environmental policy can change the mix of jobs but not the overall number.

Bjorn Lomborg on what we ought to be doing about green jobs.

Introducing an entirely new concept. Charity porn.

Plausibility calculations or, don't you know enough to see that that answer is obviously wrong?

Half a millenium of European history in only 15 years.

And finally, the best of five years of Iowahawk.

Blog Review 811

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Worth pointing out (worth pointing it out repeatedly in fact). That Greenspan was wrong does not make Keynes correct. In fact, that any specific economist or regulator was wrong does not make Keynes correct.

A peek into the economics of newspapers. The news has always been free, it's the delivery mechanism that wasn't.

It would appear that the BBC is following the government in paying those who would seek to influence it.

Depressing news: those government efficiency drives seem to spend more money than they save.

The aristocracy of pull is always there, Governor Blagojevich was just a little more open about it it.

This probably isn't the biggest problem that we face. Species that was expanding its range no longer is.

And finally, European Commissioner limericks!

Blog Review 810

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A reasonable argument (finally, a reasonable one!) against quants and markets driven by them. It's impossible to include every variation of human behaviour into such models.

Once again that important point: you can only conclude that Europeans work shorter hours than Americans if you exclude the hours spent in home production.

Using the Prisoner's Dilemma as an anti-cartel weapon.

Heh, yes, "profitable until deemed illegal".

"Would be science journalist doesn't think much of current science journalists" shocker. But he's right all the same.

You might say that 2,215 page contracts have something to do with the Big Three's current woes.

And finally, Buffett's cornered the market again.

Blog Review 809

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If they're going to lie to us about knife crime statistics, can we believe anything else they tell us?

No would seem to be an appropriate answer to that question.

Even if they weren't lying in this specific case the actual statistics they collect aren't worth very much anyway.

L'affaire Madoff will bring calls for hedge funds to be regulated. Thus it is important to point out that Madoff wasn't in fact running a hedge fund.

There are of course others out there just waiting to get caught. Due diligence folks, it's all about due diligence.

While in theory it's possible (when all human wants are satisfied) to have overcapacity in all industries, we're most certainly not there yet.

And finally, uncovering the real British journalist.

Cap and trade or carbon taxes?

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In the debate over what to do about carbon emissions (and for today, let's start from the position that we are indeed going to do something) the general view has been that cap and trade is better than carbon taxation. Precisely because we can trade we can make the least cost reductions and thus solve the problem at that least cost.

I've always disagreed here and have always been in favour of carbon taxes: there's a number of reasons but George Monbiot (of all people!) highlights one here.

The EU promised that by 2020 all emissions permits would be sold at auction to the polluting industries. Now the heads of government have broken that promise: in 2020, big industrial polluters will have to pay for only 70% of the harm they do. Worse, companies will receive all their allowances for nothing if they can show that they're threatened by competition from firms outside the EU.

Cap and trade and carbon taxes should produce the same result at the same cost, but only if the politicians don't hand out pork to their favoured clients. And as George points out, and as even a passing knowledge of public choice theory would suggest, there's no way that politicians will not hand out pork to their favoured clients. Thus cap and trade is decidedly sub-optimal simply because politicians will do what politicians always do, buy support from certain groups and sectors by, well, being politicians. A carbon tax would be a decidedly better solution.

However, we do have one rather large problem here:  how do we get it across to the politicians that they are the problem, not the solution?

Quote of the week

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"Where Liberty dwells, there is my country."

Benjamin Franklin

(Wordsmith wonders where liberty dwells now)

Blog Review 808

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There are things you should get concerned over people selling and things you probably shouldn't.

Looking at that other Senate seat up for grabs. It's almost more edifying to see them being sold to the highest bidder.

There are still those denying the existence of a credit crisis. Not all of them are mad.

Can we please, please, remember that capitalism and free markets are not the same thing? Indeed, that the interest of the former is often in closing down the latter?

Five Labout Governments and five runs on the pound. Is this enough to be considered as evidence?

Might this be what ails the education system these days?

And finally, a suggestion for an animal charity if that's what you'd like to support in this season of goodwill.

Trade Camilla, it's called trade

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Camilla Cavendish employs the following arguments urging that we really should do something to start building our own renewable energy systems.

Take wind power, a huge growth area. We don't make a single wind turbine in Britain. We import from Spain, Germany and Denmark, which got the wind in their sails long ago and now have 90 per cent of all the industry jobs. Or nuclear. We have only one postgraduate nuclear engineering course - at Manchester University. Our nuclear engineers are as few and ageing as our nuclear plants. The consensus seems to be that any new plants will be built mostly with French and American components, and French labour.

Even solar energy is dominated by Germany, where nearly half a million houses have solar roofs because its Government pays above-market rates for individuals selling power back to the grid.

The sad thing is that these aren't arguments for us to start subsidising our own renewables industry. They're actually arguments that we should do nothing so damn foolish.

We are in a situation where Johnny Foreigner has gone and done all the research (an expensive thing to do), developed an industry in scale (more expensive) and ladled out squillions in subsidies to do so (extraordinarily expensive). Now that they've got these industries producing items that we want at prices we're happy to pay our correct course of action is to go and buy some of them. The very last thing we want to do is pay out the same eye watering sums to replicate what they already have.

Sure, we'll have to produce something that someone else wants to buy off us to pay for them but that's fine. It doesn't matter whether that something is in the green energy field, insurance, ballet performances or pork products. We specialise, just as they have, and we swap the resulting production.

We really don't have to go and build these machines ourselves when others are already better than us at doing so. There's this process called trade out there which will get them for us. Might be worth looking into it, don't you think?