2012: The end of the world as we know it?
Our panel discussion of what the next year has in store for us was surprisingly philosophical: Jamie Whyte discussed the redistributionism built in to democracy and Brendan O'Neill gave a rallying cry against "middle class miserablism". More concretely, Alex Massie discussed the US presidential election (it'll get bad, and then worse) and Douglas Carswell gave a short-term pessimistic, long-term optimistic vision of things to come in British politics. His economic outlook was remarkably Austrian too — reason enough to be optimistic, if you ask me.
Bond seller’s blues
Friday night in a north London pub and the downstairs room has a bunch of old blues musicians wailing about hard luck, bad women and hittin’ the road again. All those train whistles, pawn shops and late-night soup kitchens, however, seem a bit out of date and out of place in Crouch End, especially with a perfectly decent tapas bar next door. Still, it’s always been the lot of the hard-working right to see the best poets and musicians flock to the unemployed left.
Surely, though, there must be someone out there prepared to take up the struggle of beleaguered bankers charged with offloading truckloads of gilts, German bunds, US Treasurys and all manner of bonds from the foothills of Mount Fuji to the lush green of Killarney.
This is brutal work for untold thousands of bond salesmen, chained to desks from dawn to dusk in soulless dealing rooms, sweating to find buyers for the stacks of paper that nobody believes will ever be repaid in full value. Fail to meet your basket quota and you’re chucked out on the street. Sell too many and the taxman cuts you off at the knees. Outside, you’re burned in effigy by an angry mob while nations’ leaders vilify your efforts, even as another truckload of paper hits the loading bay. Few survive the ordeal to a ripe age – forty year-olds are called gramps.
It’s time for the blues to move on from Mississippi cotton fields in the Depression and into the modern world of flogging debt in high-security skyscrapers. With apologies to Willie Dixon, here’s something in need of a strong voice and a funky guitar:
I Just Want To Sell Bonds For You
I don’t want you rated less than A
I don’t want you not to pay
I don’t want you without accrues
I just want to sell bonds for you
I don’t want you to cut my spread
I don’t want you to need the Fed
I don’t want you to dream EU
I just want to sell bonds for you
Well I can see by the way that you tax and spend
And I can tell by the way that your debts extend
And I know by the way that you seek your vote
You gonna come round soon and take my boat
I don’t want you to cook your books
I don’t want you to call us crooks
I don’t want you to say we’re through
I just want to sell bonds for you
From the sublime to the ridiculous
That Ron Paul advert the other day was a smash, but today his rival Rick Perry has released a truly insane one. If you're the kind of person who slows down to see car crashes on the motorway, you'll enjoy it.
It reminded me of this classic parody of the genre:
Ron Paul, big dog
I wouldn't usually post a political ad on the blog, but this one was too good to miss. Ron Paul's not doing too badly in the GOP primaries either — he's polling second in Iowa and may do rather well in New Hampshire too. It's probably far too optimistic to think he might win, but a good showing would still give libertarians around the world a much-needed shot in the arm.
Welcome to the new old.adamsmith.org
If you are a regular visitor, you will probably have noticed by now that we have a new website. So welcome to the new, improved old.adamsmith.org! We were the first UK think tank on the web back in 1998, and were the first to launch a blog a few years later. The internet was then and remains now a key part of our strategy for promoting liberty, and I hope the new site reflects the central importance we place on our online presence.
The most obvious changes from the old website are cosmetic. And I hope you'll agree with me that our designers / developers at Deeson have done a wonderful job in making the site look, well, rather gorgeous. I should also say that they've been a pleasure to work with, and that I'd have no hesitation in recommending them for other projects.
But there are functional changes too - the new front page has been designed to work much better as an aggregator of our work, as well as to more effectively flag up the highlights of our online (and offline) activity.
Moreover, the search function here represents a giant leap forward from our previous websites. There's still work to be done tagging a lot of our old content - and we hope to take this as an opportunity to digitise and upload far more of our publications archive than has previously been possible. But as this work progresses, I hope that old.adamsmith.org will become a better and better resource for people trying to find out more about libertarian and free market ideas and policies.
Sam has already mentioned the changes we've made to the research section of the site, so I won't rehash that here. Suffice it to say that I'm confident that the new prominence given to our articles / think pieces - which fill the gap between the up-to-the-minute commentary on our blog and the more technical analysis of our reports - will prove a great success.
Needless to say, this new site is just one of a whole host of exciting developments currently in the pipeline at the Adam Smith Institute. This isn't the place to lay out our plans for 2012, but I can say that the next 12 months will see us both publishing an array of big, new ideas and focusing more tightly on a series of core campaigns where we believe we can make a tangible difference to the public debate.
Finally, it is inevitable that various bugs and broken links will come to light over the next few days. If you spot anything amiss, please let us know by emailing sam@old.adamsmith.org.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Thanksgiving is a US festival, and the ASI is a think tank based in the UK. Nevertheless, we have always celebrated Thanksgiving. Since it was founded in 1977, the Institute has marked Thanksgiving as a special occasion. The directors cook a meal for the staff. It is traditional stuff, with New England clam chowder, followed by roast turkey with chestnut stuffing and sweet potatoes, and a homemade pumpkin pie finishes the meal.
We celebrate, as the early settlers did, our deliverance from tyranny and persecution. Britain was in a bad way in 1977, with a largely state-owned and state-controlled economy under the thumb of union bully-boys. Under the leadership of Margaret Thatcher, and inspired by her determination, it took only a few years to turn things around.
The UK and the world face difficult times once more, and there are threats to freedom no less real and no less imminent. But we have much to be thankful for, and what was done before can be done again, provided the same insights and the same qualities of character are brought to bear.
We celebrate Thanksgiving, and we wish a happy celebration to our US friends on their special day. To those travelling, we wish a safe journey and may you all enjoy happy times with family and friends.
Ron Swanson on taxes and government
This is from the American sitcom Parks & Recreation, from the makers of the US Office. As far as I know, it hasn't hit UK TV yet, but it is excellent. Ron Swanson, featured in this clip, may be the first overtly-libertarian character in sitcom history. He's portrayed surprisingly sympathetically too.
The messiness of freedom
Virginia Postrel, The Future and Its Enemies.