Pictures by http://www.annalaska.com
Freitag, Oktober 31, 2008
Mittwoch, Oktober 29, 2008
Speicherkraftwerke auf Rädern Steckdosen-Hybridautos schaffen Synergien zwischen Verkehr und Stromversorgung
NZZ-Online
Speicherkraftwerke auf Rädern
Steckdosen-Hybridautos schaffen Synergien zwischen Verkehr und Stromversorgung
Noch sind Verkehr und Stromversorgung strikt getrennt.
Verkehr und Stromversorgung sind heute zwei strikt getrennte Bereiche. Mit dem gegenwärtigen Trend zu Hybridautos ergeben sich jedoch interessante Überschneidungen. So wird untersucht, ob Hybridautos mit Netzanschluss jene Energiereserven bereitstellen könnten, die die Stromversorger zur Regulierung des Stromnetzes benötigen.
29. Oktober 2008, Neue Zürcher Zeitung
NZZ-Online
Speicherkraftwerke auf Rädern
Steckdosen-Hybridautos schaffen Synergien zwischen Verkehr und Stromversorgung
Noch sind Verkehr und Stromversorgung strikt getrennt.
Verkehr und Stromversorgung sind heute zwei strikt getrennte Bereiche. Mit dem gegenwärtigen Trend zu Hybridautos ergeben sich jedoch interessante Überschneidungen. So wird untersucht, ob Hybridautos mit Netzanschluss jene Energiereserven bereitstellen könnten, die die Stromversorger zur Regulierung des Stromnetzes benötigen.
Christian Speicher
Vor einem Jahr war in der «New York Times» Folgendes zu lesen. Ein Autofahrer hatte während eines Stromausfalls in Florida sein Hybridfahrzeug (einen entsprechend umgerüsteten Toyota Prius) an die Stromversorgung seines Hauses angeschlossen und den Motor angeworfen. Vom Verbrennungsmotor immer wieder aufgeladen, versorgte die Batterie des Hybridautos den Haushalt mit Strom. So konnten alle elektrischen Geräte ausser der Klimaanlage über längere Zeit am Laufen gehalten werden. Auch wenn ein Notstromgenerator in diesem Fall vielleicht die bessere Lösung gewesen wäre, zeigt dieses Beispiel doch, dass die zunehmende Elektrifizierung des Individualverkehrs zu grösseren Veränderungen in der Elektrizitätswirtschaft führen könnte. Die nächste Generation von Hybridautos wird nämlich nicht nur an der Steckdose tanken können. Mit geringen Modifikationen wird sie den Strom auch ins Netz zurückspeisen können. Damit werden Hybridfahrzeuge gewissermassen zu rollenden Speicherkraftwerken, auf die die Energieversorger bei Bedarf zurückgreifen könnten.
Die Steckdose als Tankstelle
Dass sich im Individualverkehr grössere Veränderungen anbahnen, lässt sich inzwischen kaum mehr übersehen. Toyota hat mit über einer Million verkauften Exemplaren des Modells Prius bewiesen, dass es trotz dem Aufpreis einen Markt für Autos gibt, die durch das intelligente Zusammenspiel von Benzin- und Elektromotor fast 30 Prozent weniger Sprit verbrauchen (und entsprechend weniger Kohlendioxid emittieren). Inzwischen haben auch andere Fahrzeughersteller die Hybridtechnologie für sich entdeckt und treiben die Elektrifizierung des Autos weiter voran. Der Trend geht zu sogenannten Plug-in-Hybriden. Diese Fahrzeuge besitzen eine deutlich leistungsfähigere Batterie, die sich zudem direkt an der Steckdose aufladen lässt. Anders als der Toyota Prius, dessen Batterie laufend vom Benzinmotor aufgeladen wird, soll die nächste Generation von Hybridfahrzeugen 30 bis 50 Kilometer rein elektrisch fahren können. Der Benzinmotor kommt erst auf längeren Strecken oder bei höheren Leistungen zum Zuge.
Bis jetzt gibt es noch keine Plug-in-Hybriden von der Stange zu kaufen. Mit ihrer Markteinführung wird ab 2010 gerechnet. Dass die Hybridtechnologie eine reine Modeerscheinung ist, glaubt Konstantinos Boulouchos vom Institut für Energietechnik der ETH Zürich nicht. Er ist überzeugt, dass mindestens die nächsten 30 Jahre von einer Koexistenz von Elektro- und Verbrennungsmotoren geprägt sein werden. Die Vorteile von Hybridfahrzeugen kann Boulouchos mit Zahlen belegen. Zusammen mit seinem Doktoranden Fabrizio Noembrini hat er die Kohlendioxid-Emissionen eines Plug-in-Hybriden mit jenen eines vergleichbaren Benziners verglichen. Naturgemäss hängt der Nutzen für die Umwelt stark davon ab, wie der Strom produziert wird. Stammt dieser aus einem Kohlekraftwerk, schneiden Plug-in-Hybriden schlechter ab als Fahrzeuge mit Benzinmotor. Mit dem im europäischen Netzverbund üblichen Strommix reduzieren sich die CO 2 -Emissionen jedoch um 26 Prozent, mit dem Strommix in der Schweiz sogar um 53 Prozent. Noch bessere Werte ergeben sich, wenn der Strom mit Wasser- oder Windkraftwerken erzeugt wird. Diese Zahlen beruhen auf der Annahme, dass die Plug-in-Hybriden die Hälfte der gefahrenen Kilometer rein elektrisch zurücklegen. Von den Plug-in-Hybriden könnte nicht nur die Umwelt profitieren. Auch die Automobilhersteller dürfen sich grosse Marktchancen erhoffen, wenn sie auf die wachsende Nachfrage nach sparsamen und damit umweltfreundlicheren Autos reagieren. Wie aber steht es mit den Energieversorgern, die den zusätzlich benötigten Strom zur Verfügung stellen müssen? Ohne ihre Mitwirkung dürfte es die Hybridtechnologie schwer haben, sich auf breiter Front durchzusetzen. Einer der Ersten, die darauf hinwiesen, dass die Elektrifizierung des Individualverkehrs auch für die Energieversorger reizvoll sein könnte, ist Willett Kempton von der University of Delaware in Newark. Schon in den 1990er Jahren entwickelte er mit seinen Mitarbeitern das sogenannte «Vehicle to grid»-Konzept. Diesem liegt die Idee zugrunde, dass der Strom nicht nur vom Netz zum Auto, sondern auch wieder zurück fliessen kann.
Regeldienste für das Stromnetz
Autos stehen im Durchschnitt über 23 Stunden am Tag still. Während dieser Zeit, so Kempton, könnte man die in den Batterien gespeicherte Energie anderweitig nutzen. Kempton dachte dabei vor allem an die sogenannte Netzregulierung. Um die Frequenz in einem Stromnetz stabil zu halten, muss der Stromversorger rasch reagieren, wenn das Stromangebot oder die Stromnachfrage im Netz schwankt. Er tut das, indem er automatisch die Leistung von gewissen Generatoren anpasst und bei Bedarf schnell regulierbare Kraftwerke (etwa Pumpspeicher- oder Gasturbinenkraftwerke) hoch- oder herunterfährt. Mit der Bereitstellung dieser Regelenergie lässt sich viel Geld verdienen – die Schweiz mit ihren Pumpspeicherkraftwerken weiss das bestens. Kempton überlegte nun, ob die benötigte Regelenergie nicht durch die Plug-in-Hybriden bereitgestellt werden könnte. Schliesslich sind die Batterien dieser Fahrzeuge dafür ausgelegt, ihre Leistung rasch dem jeweiligen Bedarf anzupassen. Für die Energieversorgungsunternehmen hätte das den Vorteil, dass sie auf den Bau von teuren Reservekraftwerken verzichten könnten. Und die Autofahrer hätten die Möglichkeit, die Mehrkosten für ihr Hybridauto teilweise durch den Verkauf von Regelenergie zu amortisieren.
Wie Kempton am Beispiel von Kalifornien vorrechnete, liesse sich die benötigte Regelenergie bereitstellen, wenn 3 Prozent der gesamten Fahrzeugflotte Plug-in-Hybriden wären. Zu ähnlichen Ergebnissen kommt auch eine kürzlich veröffentlichte Vorstudie, die die Enco Energie-Consulting AG im Auftrag des Bundesamtes für Energie erstellt hat. Die Vorstudie widerlegt zudem Befürchtungen, dass die Einführung von Plug-in-Hybriden zu einer Überlastung des Schweizer Stromnetzes führen würde. Inzwischen wurde in der Schweiz eine Trendwatching Group «Smart Grid / Plug-in-Fahrzeuge» gegründet, der Vertreter der Forschung der Energiewirtschaft der Autobranche und Nichtregierungsorganisationen angehören. Deren Aufgabe sei es, die Marktentwicklung auf diesem Gebiet zu unterstützen und dem Bundesamt für Energie bei der Festlegung von Rahmenbedingungen zu helfen, so Pierre Strub, der Leiter der Gruppe.
Um Plug-in-Hybriden fit für die «Vehicle to grid»-Technologie zu machen, sind auf der Fahrzeugseite nur geringfügige Veränderungen nötig. Auf der Netzseite müsste man dafür sorgen, dass die Autos nicht nur zu Hause und am Arbeitsplatz, sondern auch in Parkhäusern oder auf öffentlichen Parkplätzen ans Stromnetz angeschlossen werden können. Vor allem aber müsste das Stromnetz um moderne Kommunikationssysteme und neue Messzähler für den Energieverbrauch erweitert und dadurch «intelligenter» gemacht werden. Denn nur wenn der Energieversorger jederzeit über den Zustand der ans Netz angeschlossenen Batterien informiert ist, kann er sie zur Netzregulierung einsetzen.
Von der Simulation zur Realität
Über das wirtschaftliche Potenzial des «Vehicle to grid»-Konzepts liegen bis jetzt erst grobe Schätzungen vor. Der Teufel stecke jedoch im Detail, sagt Göran Andersson vom Institut für elektrische Energieübertragung und Hochspannungstechnik der ETH Zürich. Jeder Autofahrer sei ein Individualist. Während der eine seine Batterie unbedingt voll haben wolle, wenn er ins Auto steige, sei der andere möglicherweise gewillt, gegen ein entsprechendes Entgelt eine teilweise Entladung seiner Batterie in Kauf zu nehmen. Solche Unwägbarkeiten in den Griff zu bekommen und ein wirtschaftliches Abrechnungsmodell für das «Vehicle to grid»-Konzept zu entwickeln, ist eines der Ziele eines Gemeinschaftsprojekts an der ETH Zürich, an dem sich neben Andersson und Boulouchos auch Kay Axhausen vom Institut für Verkehrsplanung und Transportsysteme beteiligt. Mit einem Simulationsmodell, das die Verkehrsflüsse in der Agglomeration Zürich mit hoher räumlicher und zeitlicher Auflösung nachbildet, wollen die drei Arbeitsgruppen herausfinden, wie sich die Systeme Elektrizität und Mobilität besser aufeinander abstimmen lassen. Von dem auf drei Jahre angelegten Projekt, an das sich ein realer Test mit einem Demonstrationsfahrzeug anschliessen soll, erhoffen sich die Forscher konkrete Hinweise, wie die Zukunft des urbanen Individualverkehrs aussehen könnte.
Anderenorts hat die Erprobungsphase bereits begonnen. So haben Google und die Pacific Gas and Electric Company schon letztes Jahr in Kalifornien einen Versuch mit einer Flotte von Plug-in-Hybriden gestartet, die über eine zweigleisige Verbindung zum Stromnetz verfügen. Der Strom zum Laden der Batterien stammt vornehmlich aus einer auf dem Firmensitz von Google installierten Photovoltaikanlage, die eine Spitzenleistung von 1,6 Megawatt besitzt. Auch in Deutschland sind inzwischen die ersten Flottenversuche angelaufen. So haben Daimler und der Stromkonzern RWE in Berlin ein Gemeinschaftsprojekt mit 100 (reinen) Elektrofahrzeugen und einem flächendeckenden Versorgungsnetz von 500 Ladestationen lanciert.
In einem anderen Projekt kooperieren VW, der Energieversorger E.On und weitere Partner. Das Projekt wird vom deutschen Bundesumweltministerium gefördert und soll Wege aufzeigen, wie sich erneuerbare Energien effizient für den Verkehr nutzen lassen. VW und E.On wollen im Rahmen des Flottenversuchs bis zu 20 Plug-in-Hybriden des Modells «Golf Twin Drive» einsetzen, die mit vier verschiedenen Typen von Lithium-Ionen-Batterien ausgerüstet sind. Für den Autohersteller geht es nach Aussagen von Wolfgang Steiger, dem Chef der Antriebsforschung bei VW, in erster Linie darum, die Batterien und das Energiemanagement unter realen Bedingungen zu testen.
E.On möchte Techniken zur Laststeuerung und zur Kommunikation mit den Fahrzeugen erproben. Vor allem will der Energieversorger herausfinden, unter welchen Voraussetzungen Plug-in-Hybriden und Elektrofahrzeuge dazu beitragen könnten, den Anteil von erneuerbaren Energien im Individualverkehr zu erhöhen. Schon heute ist die Elektrizitätswirtschaft gezwungen, zusätzliche Regelenergie bereitzuhalten, um das schwankende Angebot von Sonnen- oder Windenergie auszugleichen. Mit dem Vormarsch der regenerativen Energien dürfte sich dieses Problem noch verschärfen. Theoretisch könnte hier eine hinreichend grosse Flotte von Plug-in-Hybriden Abhilfe schaffen. Der Energieversorger würde überschüssigen Wind- oder Solarstrom in den Autobatterien zwischenspeichern und ihn zurückspeisen, wenn gerade Energiemangel herrscht.
Ob das praktikabel (und vor allem auch rentabel) ist, wird ein Flottenversuch mit 20 Fahrzeugen kaum abschliessend beantworten können. Ein ermutigendes Zeichen ist aber, dass Automobilhersteller und Energieversorger gewillt scheinen, die anstehenden Probleme gemeinsam anzupacken. Das sollte die Automobilindustrie davor bewahren, Geld in die Entwicklung von Fahrzeugen zu stecken, für die es derzeit noch keine Infrastruktur gibt (Wasserstoffautos). Und die Elektrizitätswirtschaft erhält wertvolle Hinweise, welche Infrastrukturmassnahmen sie in Zukunft ergreifen muss, um von der Elektrifizierung des Individualverkehrs profitieren zu können.
Speicherkraftwerke auf Rädern
Steckdosen-Hybridautos schaffen Synergien zwischen Verkehr und Stromversorgung
Noch sind Verkehr und Stromversorgung strikt getrennt.
Verkehr und Stromversorgung sind heute zwei strikt getrennte Bereiche. Mit dem gegenwärtigen Trend zu Hybridautos ergeben sich jedoch interessante Überschneidungen. So wird untersucht, ob Hybridautos mit Netzanschluss jene Energiereserven bereitstellen könnten, die die Stromversorger zur Regulierung des Stromnetzes benötigen.
29. Oktober 2008, Neue Zürcher Zeitung
NZZ-Online
Speicherkraftwerke auf Rädern
Steckdosen-Hybridautos schaffen Synergien zwischen Verkehr und Stromversorgung
Noch sind Verkehr und Stromversorgung strikt getrennt.
Verkehr und Stromversorgung sind heute zwei strikt getrennte Bereiche. Mit dem gegenwärtigen Trend zu Hybridautos ergeben sich jedoch interessante Überschneidungen. So wird untersucht, ob Hybridautos mit Netzanschluss jene Energiereserven bereitstellen könnten, die die Stromversorger zur Regulierung des Stromnetzes benötigen.
Christian Speicher
Vor einem Jahr war in der «New York Times» Folgendes zu lesen. Ein Autofahrer hatte während eines Stromausfalls in Florida sein Hybridfahrzeug (einen entsprechend umgerüsteten Toyota Prius) an die Stromversorgung seines Hauses angeschlossen und den Motor angeworfen. Vom Verbrennungsmotor immer wieder aufgeladen, versorgte die Batterie des Hybridautos den Haushalt mit Strom. So konnten alle elektrischen Geräte ausser der Klimaanlage über längere Zeit am Laufen gehalten werden. Auch wenn ein Notstromgenerator in diesem Fall vielleicht die bessere Lösung gewesen wäre, zeigt dieses Beispiel doch, dass die zunehmende Elektrifizierung des Individualverkehrs zu grösseren Veränderungen in der Elektrizitätswirtschaft führen könnte. Die nächste Generation von Hybridautos wird nämlich nicht nur an der Steckdose tanken können. Mit geringen Modifikationen wird sie den Strom auch ins Netz zurückspeisen können. Damit werden Hybridfahrzeuge gewissermassen zu rollenden Speicherkraftwerken, auf die die Energieversorger bei Bedarf zurückgreifen könnten.
Die Steckdose als Tankstelle
Dass sich im Individualverkehr grössere Veränderungen anbahnen, lässt sich inzwischen kaum mehr übersehen. Toyota hat mit über einer Million verkauften Exemplaren des Modells Prius bewiesen, dass es trotz dem Aufpreis einen Markt für Autos gibt, die durch das intelligente Zusammenspiel von Benzin- und Elektromotor fast 30 Prozent weniger Sprit verbrauchen (und entsprechend weniger Kohlendioxid emittieren). Inzwischen haben auch andere Fahrzeughersteller die Hybridtechnologie für sich entdeckt und treiben die Elektrifizierung des Autos weiter voran. Der Trend geht zu sogenannten Plug-in-Hybriden. Diese Fahrzeuge besitzen eine deutlich leistungsfähigere Batterie, die sich zudem direkt an der Steckdose aufladen lässt. Anders als der Toyota Prius, dessen Batterie laufend vom Benzinmotor aufgeladen wird, soll die nächste Generation von Hybridfahrzeugen 30 bis 50 Kilometer rein elektrisch fahren können. Der Benzinmotor kommt erst auf längeren Strecken oder bei höheren Leistungen zum Zuge.
Bis jetzt gibt es noch keine Plug-in-Hybriden von der Stange zu kaufen. Mit ihrer Markteinführung wird ab 2010 gerechnet. Dass die Hybridtechnologie eine reine Modeerscheinung ist, glaubt Konstantinos Boulouchos vom Institut für Energietechnik der ETH Zürich nicht. Er ist überzeugt, dass mindestens die nächsten 30 Jahre von einer Koexistenz von Elektro- und Verbrennungsmotoren geprägt sein werden. Die Vorteile von Hybridfahrzeugen kann Boulouchos mit Zahlen belegen. Zusammen mit seinem Doktoranden Fabrizio Noembrini hat er die Kohlendioxid-Emissionen eines Plug-in-Hybriden mit jenen eines vergleichbaren Benziners verglichen. Naturgemäss hängt der Nutzen für die Umwelt stark davon ab, wie der Strom produziert wird. Stammt dieser aus einem Kohlekraftwerk, schneiden Plug-in-Hybriden schlechter ab als Fahrzeuge mit Benzinmotor. Mit dem im europäischen Netzverbund üblichen Strommix reduzieren sich die CO 2 -Emissionen jedoch um 26 Prozent, mit dem Strommix in der Schweiz sogar um 53 Prozent. Noch bessere Werte ergeben sich, wenn der Strom mit Wasser- oder Windkraftwerken erzeugt wird. Diese Zahlen beruhen auf der Annahme, dass die Plug-in-Hybriden die Hälfte der gefahrenen Kilometer rein elektrisch zurücklegen. Von den Plug-in-Hybriden könnte nicht nur die Umwelt profitieren. Auch die Automobilhersteller dürfen sich grosse Marktchancen erhoffen, wenn sie auf die wachsende Nachfrage nach sparsamen und damit umweltfreundlicheren Autos reagieren. Wie aber steht es mit den Energieversorgern, die den zusätzlich benötigten Strom zur Verfügung stellen müssen? Ohne ihre Mitwirkung dürfte es die Hybridtechnologie schwer haben, sich auf breiter Front durchzusetzen. Einer der Ersten, die darauf hinwiesen, dass die Elektrifizierung des Individualverkehrs auch für die Energieversorger reizvoll sein könnte, ist Willett Kempton von der University of Delaware in Newark. Schon in den 1990er Jahren entwickelte er mit seinen Mitarbeitern das sogenannte «Vehicle to grid»-Konzept. Diesem liegt die Idee zugrunde, dass der Strom nicht nur vom Netz zum Auto, sondern auch wieder zurück fliessen kann.
Regeldienste für das Stromnetz
Autos stehen im Durchschnitt über 23 Stunden am Tag still. Während dieser Zeit, so Kempton, könnte man die in den Batterien gespeicherte Energie anderweitig nutzen. Kempton dachte dabei vor allem an die sogenannte Netzregulierung. Um die Frequenz in einem Stromnetz stabil zu halten, muss der Stromversorger rasch reagieren, wenn das Stromangebot oder die Stromnachfrage im Netz schwankt. Er tut das, indem er automatisch die Leistung von gewissen Generatoren anpasst und bei Bedarf schnell regulierbare Kraftwerke (etwa Pumpspeicher- oder Gasturbinenkraftwerke) hoch- oder herunterfährt. Mit der Bereitstellung dieser Regelenergie lässt sich viel Geld verdienen – die Schweiz mit ihren Pumpspeicherkraftwerken weiss das bestens. Kempton überlegte nun, ob die benötigte Regelenergie nicht durch die Plug-in-Hybriden bereitgestellt werden könnte. Schliesslich sind die Batterien dieser Fahrzeuge dafür ausgelegt, ihre Leistung rasch dem jeweiligen Bedarf anzupassen. Für die Energieversorgungsunternehmen hätte das den Vorteil, dass sie auf den Bau von teuren Reservekraftwerken verzichten könnten. Und die Autofahrer hätten die Möglichkeit, die Mehrkosten für ihr Hybridauto teilweise durch den Verkauf von Regelenergie zu amortisieren.
Wie Kempton am Beispiel von Kalifornien vorrechnete, liesse sich die benötigte Regelenergie bereitstellen, wenn 3 Prozent der gesamten Fahrzeugflotte Plug-in-Hybriden wären. Zu ähnlichen Ergebnissen kommt auch eine kürzlich veröffentlichte Vorstudie, die die Enco Energie-Consulting AG im Auftrag des Bundesamtes für Energie erstellt hat. Die Vorstudie widerlegt zudem Befürchtungen, dass die Einführung von Plug-in-Hybriden zu einer Überlastung des Schweizer Stromnetzes führen würde. Inzwischen wurde in der Schweiz eine Trendwatching Group «Smart Grid / Plug-in-Fahrzeuge» gegründet, der Vertreter der Forschung der Energiewirtschaft der Autobranche und Nichtregierungsorganisationen angehören. Deren Aufgabe sei es, die Marktentwicklung auf diesem Gebiet zu unterstützen und dem Bundesamt für Energie bei der Festlegung von Rahmenbedingungen zu helfen, so Pierre Strub, der Leiter der Gruppe.
Um Plug-in-Hybriden fit für die «Vehicle to grid»-Technologie zu machen, sind auf der Fahrzeugseite nur geringfügige Veränderungen nötig. Auf der Netzseite müsste man dafür sorgen, dass die Autos nicht nur zu Hause und am Arbeitsplatz, sondern auch in Parkhäusern oder auf öffentlichen Parkplätzen ans Stromnetz angeschlossen werden können. Vor allem aber müsste das Stromnetz um moderne Kommunikationssysteme und neue Messzähler für den Energieverbrauch erweitert und dadurch «intelligenter» gemacht werden. Denn nur wenn der Energieversorger jederzeit über den Zustand der ans Netz angeschlossenen Batterien informiert ist, kann er sie zur Netzregulierung einsetzen.
Von der Simulation zur Realität
Über das wirtschaftliche Potenzial des «Vehicle to grid»-Konzepts liegen bis jetzt erst grobe Schätzungen vor. Der Teufel stecke jedoch im Detail, sagt Göran Andersson vom Institut für elektrische Energieübertragung und Hochspannungstechnik der ETH Zürich. Jeder Autofahrer sei ein Individualist. Während der eine seine Batterie unbedingt voll haben wolle, wenn er ins Auto steige, sei der andere möglicherweise gewillt, gegen ein entsprechendes Entgelt eine teilweise Entladung seiner Batterie in Kauf zu nehmen. Solche Unwägbarkeiten in den Griff zu bekommen und ein wirtschaftliches Abrechnungsmodell für das «Vehicle to grid»-Konzept zu entwickeln, ist eines der Ziele eines Gemeinschaftsprojekts an der ETH Zürich, an dem sich neben Andersson und Boulouchos auch Kay Axhausen vom Institut für Verkehrsplanung und Transportsysteme beteiligt. Mit einem Simulationsmodell, das die Verkehrsflüsse in der Agglomeration Zürich mit hoher räumlicher und zeitlicher Auflösung nachbildet, wollen die drei Arbeitsgruppen herausfinden, wie sich die Systeme Elektrizität und Mobilität besser aufeinander abstimmen lassen. Von dem auf drei Jahre angelegten Projekt, an das sich ein realer Test mit einem Demonstrationsfahrzeug anschliessen soll, erhoffen sich die Forscher konkrete Hinweise, wie die Zukunft des urbanen Individualverkehrs aussehen könnte.
Anderenorts hat die Erprobungsphase bereits begonnen. So haben Google und die Pacific Gas and Electric Company schon letztes Jahr in Kalifornien einen Versuch mit einer Flotte von Plug-in-Hybriden gestartet, die über eine zweigleisige Verbindung zum Stromnetz verfügen. Der Strom zum Laden der Batterien stammt vornehmlich aus einer auf dem Firmensitz von Google installierten Photovoltaikanlage, die eine Spitzenleistung von 1,6 Megawatt besitzt. Auch in Deutschland sind inzwischen die ersten Flottenversuche angelaufen. So haben Daimler und der Stromkonzern RWE in Berlin ein Gemeinschaftsprojekt mit 100 (reinen) Elektrofahrzeugen und einem flächendeckenden Versorgungsnetz von 500 Ladestationen lanciert.
In einem anderen Projekt kooperieren VW, der Energieversorger E.On und weitere Partner. Das Projekt wird vom deutschen Bundesumweltministerium gefördert und soll Wege aufzeigen, wie sich erneuerbare Energien effizient für den Verkehr nutzen lassen. VW und E.On wollen im Rahmen des Flottenversuchs bis zu 20 Plug-in-Hybriden des Modells «Golf Twin Drive» einsetzen, die mit vier verschiedenen Typen von Lithium-Ionen-Batterien ausgerüstet sind. Für den Autohersteller geht es nach Aussagen von Wolfgang Steiger, dem Chef der Antriebsforschung bei VW, in erster Linie darum, die Batterien und das Energiemanagement unter realen Bedingungen zu testen.
E.On möchte Techniken zur Laststeuerung und zur Kommunikation mit den Fahrzeugen erproben. Vor allem will der Energieversorger herausfinden, unter welchen Voraussetzungen Plug-in-Hybriden und Elektrofahrzeuge dazu beitragen könnten, den Anteil von erneuerbaren Energien im Individualverkehr zu erhöhen. Schon heute ist die Elektrizitätswirtschaft gezwungen, zusätzliche Regelenergie bereitzuhalten, um das schwankende Angebot von Sonnen- oder Windenergie auszugleichen. Mit dem Vormarsch der regenerativen Energien dürfte sich dieses Problem noch verschärfen. Theoretisch könnte hier eine hinreichend grosse Flotte von Plug-in-Hybriden Abhilfe schaffen. Der Energieversorger würde überschüssigen Wind- oder Solarstrom in den Autobatterien zwischenspeichern und ihn zurückspeisen, wenn gerade Energiemangel herrscht.
Ob das praktikabel (und vor allem auch rentabel) ist, wird ein Flottenversuch mit 20 Fahrzeugen kaum abschliessend beantworten können. Ein ermutigendes Zeichen ist aber, dass Automobilhersteller und Energieversorger gewillt scheinen, die anstehenden Probleme gemeinsam anzupacken. Das sollte die Automobilindustrie davor bewahren, Geld in die Entwicklung von Fahrzeugen zu stecken, für die es derzeit noch keine Infrastruktur gibt (Wasserstoffautos). Und die Elektrizitätswirtschaft erhält wertvolle Hinweise, welche Infrastrukturmassnahmen sie in Zukunft ergreifen muss, um von der Elektrifizierung des Individualverkehrs profitieren zu können.
Montag, Oktober 27, 2008
NYT Paul Krugmann: The Widening Gyre
The New York Times
October 27, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
The Widening Gyre
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Economic data rarely inspire poetic thoughts. But as I was contemplating the latest set of numbers, I realized that I had William Butler Yeats running through my head: “Turning and turning in the widening gyre / The falcon cannot hear the falconer; / Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.”
The widening gyre, in this case, would be the feedback loops (so much for poetry) causing the financial crisis to spin ever further out of control. The hapless falconer would, I guess, be Henry Paulson, the Treasury secretary.
The New York Times
October 27, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
The Widening Gyre
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Economic data rarely inspire poetic thoughts. But as I was contemplating the latest set of numbers, I realized that I had William Butler Yeats running through my head: “Turning and turning in the widening gyre / The falcon cannot hear the falconer; / Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.”
The widening gyre, in this case, would be the feedback loops (so much for poetry) causing the financial crisis to spin ever further out of control. The hapless falconer would, I guess, be Henry Paulson, the Treasury secretary.
And the gyre continues to widen in new and scary ways. Even as Mr. Paulson and his counterparts in other countries moved to rescue the banks, fresh disasters mounted on other fronts.
Some of these disasters were more or less anticipated. Economists have wondered for some time why hedge funds weren’t suffering more amid the financial carnage. They need wonder no longer: investors are pulling their money out of these funds, forcing fund managers to raise cash with fire sales of stocks and other assets.
The really shocking thing, however, is the way the crisis is spreading to emerging markets — countries like Russia, Korea and Brazil.
These countries were at the core of the last global financial crisis, in the late 1990s (which seemed like a big deal at the time, but was a day at the beach compared with what we’re going through now). They responded to that experience by building up huge war chests of dollars and euros, which were supposed to protect them in the event of any future emergency. And not long ago everyone was talking about “decoupling,” the supposed ability of emerging market economies to keep growing even if the United States fell into recession. “Decoupling is no myth,” The Economist assured its readers back in March. “Indeed, it may yet save the world economy.”
That was then. Now the emerging markets are in big trouble. In fact, says Stephen Jen, the chief currency economist at Morgan Stanley, the “hard landing” in emerging markets may become the “second epicenter” of the global crisis. (U.S. financial markets were the first.)
What happened? In the 1990s, emerging market governments were vulnerable because they had made a habit of borrowing abroad; when the inflow of dollars dried up, they were pushed to the brink. Since then they have been careful to borrow mainly in domestic markets, while building up lots of dollar reserves. But all their caution was undone by the private sector’s obliviousness to risk.
In Russia, for example, banks and corporations rushed to borrow abroad, because dollar interest rates were lower than ruble rates. So while the Russian government was accumulating an impressive hoard of foreign exchange, Russian corporations and banks were running up equally impressive foreign debts. Now their credit lines have been cut off, and they’re in desperate straits.
Needless to say, the existing troubles in the banking system, plus the new troubles at hedge funds and in emerging markets, are all mutually reinforcing. Bad news begets bad news, and the circle of pain just keeps getting wider.
Meanwhile, U.S. policy makers are still balking when it comes to doing what’s necessary to contain the crisis.
It was good news when Mr. Paulson finally agreed to funnel capital into the banking system in return for partial ownership. But last week Joe Nocera of The Times pointed out a key weakness in the U.S. Treasury’s bank rescue plan: it contains no safeguards against the possibility that banks will simply sit on the money. “Unlike the British government, which is mandating lending requirements in return for capital injections, our government seems afraid to do anything except plead.” And sure enough, the banks seem to be hoarding the cash.
There’s also bizarre stuff going on with regard to the mortgage market. I thought that the whole point of the federal takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the lending agencies, was to remove fears about their solvency and thereby lower mortgage rates. But top officials have made a point of denying that Fannie and Freddie debt is backed by the “full faith and credit” of the U.S. government — and as a result, markets are still treating the agencies’ debt as a risky asset, driving mortgage rates up at a time when they should be going down.
What’s happening, I suspect, is that the Bush administration’s anti-government ideology still stands in the way of effective action. Events have forced Mr. Paulson into a partial nationalization of the financial system — but he refuses to use the power that comes with ownership.
Whatever the reasons for the continuing weakness of policy, the situation is manifestly not coming under control. Things continue to fall apart.
October 27, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
The Widening Gyre
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Economic data rarely inspire poetic thoughts. But as I was contemplating the latest set of numbers, I realized that I had William Butler Yeats running through my head: “Turning and turning in the widening gyre / The falcon cannot hear the falconer; / Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.”
The widening gyre, in this case, would be the feedback loops (so much for poetry) causing the financial crisis to spin ever further out of control. The hapless falconer would, I guess, be Henry Paulson, the Treasury secretary.
The New York Times
October 27, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
The Widening Gyre
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Economic data rarely inspire poetic thoughts. But as I was contemplating the latest set of numbers, I realized that I had William Butler Yeats running through my head: “Turning and turning in the widening gyre / The falcon cannot hear the falconer; / Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.”
The widening gyre, in this case, would be the feedback loops (so much for poetry) causing the financial crisis to spin ever further out of control. The hapless falconer would, I guess, be Henry Paulson, the Treasury secretary.
And the gyre continues to widen in new and scary ways. Even as Mr. Paulson and his counterparts in other countries moved to rescue the banks, fresh disasters mounted on other fronts.
Some of these disasters were more or less anticipated. Economists have wondered for some time why hedge funds weren’t suffering more amid the financial carnage. They need wonder no longer: investors are pulling their money out of these funds, forcing fund managers to raise cash with fire sales of stocks and other assets.
The really shocking thing, however, is the way the crisis is spreading to emerging markets — countries like Russia, Korea and Brazil.
These countries were at the core of the last global financial crisis, in the late 1990s (which seemed like a big deal at the time, but was a day at the beach compared with what we’re going through now). They responded to that experience by building up huge war chests of dollars and euros, which were supposed to protect them in the event of any future emergency. And not long ago everyone was talking about “decoupling,” the supposed ability of emerging market economies to keep growing even if the United States fell into recession. “Decoupling is no myth,” The Economist assured its readers back in March. “Indeed, it may yet save the world economy.”
That was then. Now the emerging markets are in big trouble. In fact, says Stephen Jen, the chief currency economist at Morgan Stanley, the “hard landing” in emerging markets may become the “second epicenter” of the global crisis. (U.S. financial markets were the first.)
What happened? In the 1990s, emerging market governments were vulnerable because they had made a habit of borrowing abroad; when the inflow of dollars dried up, they were pushed to the brink. Since then they have been careful to borrow mainly in domestic markets, while building up lots of dollar reserves. But all their caution was undone by the private sector’s obliviousness to risk.
In Russia, for example, banks and corporations rushed to borrow abroad, because dollar interest rates were lower than ruble rates. So while the Russian government was accumulating an impressive hoard of foreign exchange, Russian corporations and banks were running up equally impressive foreign debts. Now their credit lines have been cut off, and they’re in desperate straits.
Needless to say, the existing troubles in the banking system, plus the new troubles at hedge funds and in emerging markets, are all mutually reinforcing. Bad news begets bad news, and the circle of pain just keeps getting wider.
Meanwhile, U.S. policy makers are still balking when it comes to doing what’s necessary to contain the crisis.
It was good news when Mr. Paulson finally agreed to funnel capital into the banking system in return for partial ownership. But last week Joe Nocera of The Times pointed out a key weakness in the U.S. Treasury’s bank rescue plan: it contains no safeguards against the possibility that banks will simply sit on the money. “Unlike the British government, which is mandating lending requirements in return for capital injections, our government seems afraid to do anything except plead.” And sure enough, the banks seem to be hoarding the cash.
There’s also bizarre stuff going on with regard to the mortgage market. I thought that the whole point of the federal takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the lending agencies, was to remove fears about their solvency and thereby lower mortgage rates. But top officials have made a point of denying that Fannie and Freddie debt is backed by the “full faith and credit” of the U.S. government — and as a result, markets are still treating the agencies’ debt as a risky asset, driving mortgage rates up at a time when they should be going down.
What’s happening, I suspect, is that the Bush administration’s anti-government ideology still stands in the way of effective action. Events have forced Mr. Paulson into a partial nationalization of the financial system — but he refuses to use the power that comes with ownership.
Whatever the reasons for the continuing weakness of policy, the situation is manifestly not coming under control. Things continue to fall apart.
Samstag, Oktober 25, 2008
Russia's Demographic Problems
The New York Times
October 25, 2008
Op-Ed Contributor
Rising Ambitions, Sinking Population
By NICHOLAS EBERSTADT
Washington
RUSSIA is a rising power today, and will be doing a lot more rising in the decades ahead. At least this is what we hear nowadays from pundits, Western intelligence services, presidential candidates and, of course, Russian officials themselves. The Kremlin’s own supreme confidence in this vision of the Russian future was captured nicely by its announcement last year that it expects to be the world’s fifth largest economy in 2020, along with China, India, Japan and the United States. Despite the current global economic crisis, Russian officials are still predicting continuing rapid growth for their nation; Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is even talking of a robust 5.5 percent growth rate for Russia for the coming year.
To international audiences transfixed by Moscow’s military swaggering in Georgia or dazzled by the newfound oil wealth of the Russian petro-state and its billionaires, this notion of an unstoppable Russian ascent may seem plausible, even compelling. To anyone who pays attention to population trends, however, it is absurd.
The New York Times
October 25, 2008
Op-Ed Contributor
Rising Ambitions, Sinking Population
By NICHOLAS EBERSTADT
Washington
RUSSIA is a rising power today, and will be doing a lot more rising in the decades ahead. At least this is what we hear nowadays from pundits, Western intelligence services, presidential candidates and, of course, Russian officials themselves. The Kremlin’s own supreme confidence in this vision of the Russian future was captured nicely by its announcement last year that it expects to be the world’s fifth largest economy in 2020, along with China, India, Japan and the United States. Despite the current global economic crisis, Russian officials are still predicting continuing rapid growth for their nation; Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is even talking of a robust 5.5 percent growth rate for Russia for the coming year.
To international audiences transfixed by Moscow’s military swaggering in Georgia or dazzled by the newfound oil wealth of the Russian petro-state and its billionaires, this notion of an unstoppable Russian ascent may seem plausible, even compelling. To anyone who pays attention to population trends, however, it is absurd.
Russia is in the midst of a genuine demographic disaster from which its rulers have no obvious exit strategy. Although the Russia’s fortunes (and the Kremlin’s ambitions) have waxed on a decade of windfall profits from oil and gas, the human foundations of the Russian nation — the ultimate sources of the country’s wealth and power — are in increasingly parlous straits.
Despite net immigration since the end of Communism, the Russian Federation’s population is nearly seven million people smaller today than at the start of 1992. In the post-Soviet era, Russia has seen three deaths for every two births. Despite a “baby bonus” scheme unveiled by the Kremlin two years ago and a small rise in the birth rate, deaths outnumbered births in Russia by over 250,000 in the first half of 2008.
Russia’s health situation today is a disaster — substantially worse than during the Mikhail Gorbachev years or even the Leonid Brezhnev era. In 2006, overall life expectancy in Russia, at fewer than 67 years, was actually lower than it had been at the end of the 1950s, nearly half a century earlier. For a literate, urbanized society during peacetime, such a monumental public health failure is an extraordinary historical anomaly. Russian life expectancy nowadays is about the same as India’s, and life expectancy for Russian men, today barely over 60 years, is lower than for their counterparts in Pakistan.
Russia’s great leap backwards in health is most severe for the country’s working-age population. From 1965 to 2005, the death rate (that is, the number dying per 1,000 of population) for Russian men between the ages of 15 and 64 jumped by an average of more than 50 percent. Perhaps even more shocking, rates for working-age women in Russia rose by more than 30 percent during those same years.
Meanwhile, of course, workers in the rest of Europe (and for that matter in virtually all the rest of the modern world) were becoming progressively healthier and more robust. Nowadays, according to the independent Human Mortality Database, a man from the Netherlands does not face the same risk of death as a 30-year-old man in Russia until that Dutchman is almost 60.
In and of themselves, these crippling health trends augur ill for Russia’s productivity prospects or economic outlook: it is unrealistic to expect Irish standards of living or rates of economic growth from a population facing Indian mortality schedules. But the economic implications of these trends may be even worse than they appear at first glance. Under current patterns, a 20-year-old man in Russia today stands less than even odds of making it to a notional retirement at age 65. (By contrast, five out of six similar American men can expect to reach their 65th birthday, and the chances are even better in Japan and most of Western Europe.)
With such a brutally high burden of premature mortality and such a radical foreshortening of working life, the cost-benefit calculus for higher education or additional training tilts against investments in knowledge and skills for the work force. Yet in the modern world economy, investments in “human capital” are one of the main engines for stimulating sustained economic growth and eliciting the general spread of national prosperity.
Because Russia’s health crisis looks so utterly abnormal for an industrialized society, one might assume the problem could be quickly remedied through the usual methods: better living standards and more sensible medical policies from the Kremlin. But resolving the Russian health crisis will not be that easy. Russia’s per capita income level has already risen by about 80 percent over the past decade (thanks largely to the oil and gas boom), yet this has hardly budged high mortality rates. The trouble is that in the pathological tangle that frames health conditions in modern Russia, the abnormal has become the new norm.
Russia’s great killers today are not infectious diseases that might be cured with a pill or prevented through an injection. Instead, they are chronic and non-communicable afflictions. According to the World Health Organization, Russia’s death rates from cardiovascular diseases (mainly heart attacks and strokes) are roughly four times as high as in the European Union. Mortality from “external causes” (homicide, suicide, injury) is more than five times as high.
Even a highly effective medical policy cannot hope to control those sorts of epidemics swiftly. After all, heart disease reflects a lifetime’s accumulation of insults on the victim’s system. And those appalling human losses through injury stem from behavioral habits, including the country’s long and deadly romance with the vodka bottle.
Given the “negative momentum” in Russian health trends today, gains over the coming generation may be grudging at best. Simply re-attaining their parents’ survival prospects would count as a significant health advance for today’s middle-aged Russians. But if Russian men “succeeded” in that quest, their life expectancy would still be barely 62 years — lower than the current estimated level in impoverished Bangladesh.
If projections by the United Nations Population Division come to pass, Russia’s population will fall by 10 million more from now to 2020. Those same projections envision Russian life expectancy lagging ever further behind global averages by 2020 to 2025, in this view, overall life expectancy in Russia would actually be a year lower than average for the world’s less-developed countries — with the men’s expectancy nearly five years below the third world mean.
Demography may not be destiny, of course. But this is not a portrait of a successfully and rapidly developing economy — much less an emerging economic superpower.
Nicholas Eberstadt is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a senior adviser to the National Bureau of Asian Research.
October 25, 2008
Op-Ed Contributor
Rising Ambitions, Sinking Population
By NICHOLAS EBERSTADT
Washington
RUSSIA is a rising power today, and will be doing a lot more rising in the decades ahead. At least this is what we hear nowadays from pundits, Western intelligence services, presidential candidates and, of course, Russian officials themselves. The Kremlin’s own supreme confidence in this vision of the Russian future was captured nicely by its announcement last year that it expects to be the world’s fifth largest economy in 2020, along with China, India, Japan and the United States. Despite the current global economic crisis, Russian officials are still predicting continuing rapid growth for their nation; Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is even talking of a robust 5.5 percent growth rate for Russia for the coming year.
To international audiences transfixed by Moscow’s military swaggering in Georgia or dazzled by the newfound oil wealth of the Russian petro-state and its billionaires, this notion of an unstoppable Russian ascent may seem plausible, even compelling. To anyone who pays attention to population trends, however, it is absurd.
The New York Times
October 25, 2008
Op-Ed Contributor
Rising Ambitions, Sinking Population
By NICHOLAS EBERSTADT
Washington
RUSSIA is a rising power today, and will be doing a lot more rising in the decades ahead. At least this is what we hear nowadays from pundits, Western intelligence services, presidential candidates and, of course, Russian officials themselves. The Kremlin’s own supreme confidence in this vision of the Russian future was captured nicely by its announcement last year that it expects to be the world’s fifth largest economy in 2020, along with China, India, Japan and the United States. Despite the current global economic crisis, Russian officials are still predicting continuing rapid growth for their nation; Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is even talking of a robust 5.5 percent growth rate for Russia for the coming year.
To international audiences transfixed by Moscow’s military swaggering in Georgia or dazzled by the newfound oil wealth of the Russian petro-state and its billionaires, this notion of an unstoppable Russian ascent may seem plausible, even compelling. To anyone who pays attention to population trends, however, it is absurd.
Russia is in the midst of a genuine demographic disaster from which its rulers have no obvious exit strategy. Although the Russia’s fortunes (and the Kremlin’s ambitions) have waxed on a decade of windfall profits from oil and gas, the human foundations of the Russian nation — the ultimate sources of the country’s wealth and power — are in increasingly parlous straits.
Despite net immigration since the end of Communism, the Russian Federation’s population is nearly seven million people smaller today than at the start of 1992. In the post-Soviet era, Russia has seen three deaths for every two births. Despite a “baby bonus” scheme unveiled by the Kremlin two years ago and a small rise in the birth rate, deaths outnumbered births in Russia by over 250,000 in the first half of 2008.
Russia’s health situation today is a disaster — substantially worse than during the Mikhail Gorbachev years or even the Leonid Brezhnev era. In 2006, overall life expectancy in Russia, at fewer than 67 years, was actually lower than it had been at the end of the 1950s, nearly half a century earlier. For a literate, urbanized society during peacetime, such a monumental public health failure is an extraordinary historical anomaly. Russian life expectancy nowadays is about the same as India’s, and life expectancy for Russian men, today barely over 60 years, is lower than for their counterparts in Pakistan.
Russia’s great leap backwards in health is most severe for the country’s working-age population. From 1965 to 2005, the death rate (that is, the number dying per 1,000 of population) for Russian men between the ages of 15 and 64 jumped by an average of more than 50 percent. Perhaps even more shocking, rates for working-age women in Russia rose by more than 30 percent during those same years.
Meanwhile, of course, workers in the rest of Europe (and for that matter in virtually all the rest of the modern world) were becoming progressively healthier and more robust. Nowadays, according to the independent Human Mortality Database, a man from the Netherlands does not face the same risk of death as a 30-year-old man in Russia until that Dutchman is almost 60.
In and of themselves, these crippling health trends augur ill for Russia’s productivity prospects or economic outlook: it is unrealistic to expect Irish standards of living or rates of economic growth from a population facing Indian mortality schedules. But the economic implications of these trends may be even worse than they appear at first glance. Under current patterns, a 20-year-old man in Russia today stands less than even odds of making it to a notional retirement at age 65. (By contrast, five out of six similar American men can expect to reach their 65th birthday, and the chances are even better in Japan and most of Western Europe.)
With such a brutally high burden of premature mortality and such a radical foreshortening of working life, the cost-benefit calculus for higher education or additional training tilts against investments in knowledge and skills for the work force. Yet in the modern world economy, investments in “human capital” are one of the main engines for stimulating sustained economic growth and eliciting the general spread of national prosperity.
Because Russia’s health crisis looks so utterly abnormal for an industrialized society, one might assume the problem could be quickly remedied through the usual methods: better living standards and more sensible medical policies from the Kremlin. But resolving the Russian health crisis will not be that easy. Russia’s per capita income level has already risen by about 80 percent over the past decade (thanks largely to the oil and gas boom), yet this has hardly budged high mortality rates. The trouble is that in the pathological tangle that frames health conditions in modern Russia, the abnormal has become the new norm.
Russia’s great killers today are not infectious diseases that might be cured with a pill or prevented through an injection. Instead, they are chronic and non-communicable afflictions. According to the World Health Organization, Russia’s death rates from cardiovascular diseases (mainly heart attacks and strokes) are roughly four times as high as in the European Union. Mortality from “external causes” (homicide, suicide, injury) is more than five times as high.
Even a highly effective medical policy cannot hope to control those sorts of epidemics swiftly. After all, heart disease reflects a lifetime’s accumulation of insults on the victim’s system. And those appalling human losses through injury stem from behavioral habits, including the country’s long and deadly romance with the vodka bottle.
Given the “negative momentum” in Russian health trends today, gains over the coming generation may be grudging at best. Simply re-attaining their parents’ survival prospects would count as a significant health advance for today’s middle-aged Russians. But if Russian men “succeeded” in that quest, their life expectancy would still be barely 62 years — lower than the current estimated level in impoverished Bangladesh.
If projections by the United Nations Population Division come to pass, Russia’s population will fall by 10 million more from now to 2020. Those same projections envision Russian life expectancy lagging ever further behind global averages by 2020 to 2025, in this view, overall life expectancy in Russia would actually be a year lower than average for the world’s less-developed countries — with the men’s expectancy nearly five years below the third world mean.
Demography may not be destiny, of course. But this is not a portrait of a successfully and rapidly developing economy — much less an emerging economic superpower.
Nicholas Eberstadt is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a senior adviser to the National Bureau of Asian Research.
Donnerstag, Oktober 23, 2008
Montag, Oktober 20, 2008
NYT Paul Krugmann: The Real Plumbers of Ohio
The New York Times
October 20, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
The Real Plumbers of Ohio
By Paul Krugman
Forty years ago, Richard Nixon made a remarkable marketing discovery. By exploiting America’s divisions — divisions over Vietnam, divisions over cultural change and, above all, racial divisions — he was able to reinvent the Republican brand. The party of plutocrats was repackaged as the party of the “silent majority,” the regular guys — white guys, it went without saying — who didn’t like the social changes taking place.
The New York Times
October 20, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
The Real Plumbers of Ohio
By Paul Krugman
Forty years ago, Richard Nixon made a remarkable marketing discovery. By exploiting America’s divisions — divisions over Vietnam, divisions over cultural change and, above all, racial divisions — he was able to reinvent the Republican brand. The party of plutocrats was repackaged as the party of the “silent majority,” the regular guys — white guys, it went without saying — who didn’t like the social changes taking place.
It was a winning formula. And the great thing was that the new packaging didn’t require any change in the product’s actual contents — in fact, the G.O.P. was able to keep winning elections even as its actual policies became more pro-plutocrat, and less favorable to working Americans, than ever.
John McCain’s strategy, in this final stretch, is based on the belief that the old formula still has life in it.
Thus we have Sarah Palin expressing her joy at visiting the “pro-America” parts of the country — yep, we’re all traitors here in central New Jersey. Meanwhile we’ve got Mr. McCain making Samuel J. Wurzelbacher, a k a Joe the Plumber — who had confronted Barack Obama on the campaign trail, alleging that the Democratic candidate would raise his taxes — the centerpiece of his attack on Mr. Obama’s economic proposals.
And when it turned out that the right’s new icon had a few issues, like not being licensed and comparing Mr. Obama to Sammy Davis Jr., conservatives played victim: see how much those snooty elitists hate the common man?
But what’s really happening to the plumbers of Ohio, and to working Americans in general?
First of all, they aren’t making a lot of money. You may recall that in one of the early Democratic debates Charles Gibson of ABC suggested that $200,000 a year was a middle-class income. Tell that to Ohio plumbers: according to the May 2007 occupational earnings report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average annual income of “plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters” in Ohio was $47,930.
Second, their real incomes have stagnated or fallen, even in supposedly good years. The Bush administration assured us that the economy was booming in 2007 — but the average Ohio plumber’s income in that 2007 report was only 15.5 percent higher than in the 2000 report, not enough to keep up with the 17.7 percent rise in consumer prices in the Midwest. As Ohio plumbers went, so went the nation: median household income, adjusted for inflation, was lower in 2007 than it had been in 2000.
Third, Ohio plumbers have been having growing trouble getting health insurance, especially if, like many craftsmen, they work for small firms. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, in 2007 only 45 percent of companies with fewer than 10 employees offered health benefits, down from 57 percent in 2000.
And bear in mind that all these data pertain to 2007 — which was as good as it got in recent years. Now that the “Bush boom,” such as it was, is over, we can see that it achieved a dismal distinction: for the first time on record, an economic expansion failed to raise most Americans’ incomes above their previous peak.
Since then, of course, things have gone rapidly downhill, as millions of working Americans have lost their jobs and their homes. And all indicators suggest that things will get much worse in the months and years ahead.
So what does all this say about the candidates? Who’s really standing up for Ohio’s plumbers?
Mr. McCain claims that Mr. Obama’s policies would lead to economic disaster. But President Bush’s policies have already led to disaster — and whatever he may say, Mr. McCain proposes continuing Mr. Bush’s policies in all essential respects, and he shares Mr. Bush’s anti-government, anti-regulation philosophy.
What about the claim, based on Joe the Plumber’s complaint, that ordinary working Americans would face higher taxes under Mr. Obama? Well, Mr. Obama proposes raising rates on only the top two income tax brackets — and the second-highest bracket for a head of household starts at an income, after deductions, of $182,400 a year.
Maybe there are plumbers out there who earn that much, or who would end up suffering from Mr. Obama’s proposed modest increases in taxes on dividends and capital gains — America is a big country, and there’s probably a high-income plumber with a huge stock market portfolio out there somewhere. But the typical plumber would pay lower, not higher, taxes under an Obama administration, and would have a much better chance of getting health insurance.
I don’t want to suggest that everyone would be better off under the Obama tax plan. Joe the plumber would almost certainly be better off, but Richie the hedge fund manager would take a serious hit.
But that’s the point. Whatever today’s G.O.P. is, it isn’t the party of working Americans.
October 20, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
The Real Plumbers of Ohio
By Paul Krugman
Forty years ago, Richard Nixon made a remarkable marketing discovery. By exploiting America’s divisions — divisions over Vietnam, divisions over cultural change and, above all, racial divisions — he was able to reinvent the Republican brand. The party of plutocrats was repackaged as the party of the “silent majority,” the regular guys — white guys, it went without saying — who didn’t like the social changes taking place.
The New York Times
October 20, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
The Real Plumbers of Ohio
By Paul Krugman
Forty years ago, Richard Nixon made a remarkable marketing discovery. By exploiting America’s divisions — divisions over Vietnam, divisions over cultural change and, above all, racial divisions — he was able to reinvent the Republican brand. The party of plutocrats was repackaged as the party of the “silent majority,” the regular guys — white guys, it went without saying — who didn’t like the social changes taking place.
It was a winning formula. And the great thing was that the new packaging didn’t require any change in the product’s actual contents — in fact, the G.O.P. was able to keep winning elections even as its actual policies became more pro-plutocrat, and less favorable to working Americans, than ever.
John McCain’s strategy, in this final stretch, is based on the belief that the old formula still has life in it.
Thus we have Sarah Palin expressing her joy at visiting the “pro-America” parts of the country — yep, we’re all traitors here in central New Jersey. Meanwhile we’ve got Mr. McCain making Samuel J. Wurzelbacher, a k a Joe the Plumber — who had confronted Barack Obama on the campaign trail, alleging that the Democratic candidate would raise his taxes — the centerpiece of his attack on Mr. Obama’s economic proposals.
And when it turned out that the right’s new icon had a few issues, like not being licensed and comparing Mr. Obama to Sammy Davis Jr., conservatives played victim: see how much those snooty elitists hate the common man?
But what’s really happening to the plumbers of Ohio, and to working Americans in general?
First of all, they aren’t making a lot of money. You may recall that in one of the early Democratic debates Charles Gibson of ABC suggested that $200,000 a year was a middle-class income. Tell that to Ohio plumbers: according to the May 2007 occupational earnings report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average annual income of “plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters” in Ohio was $47,930.
Second, their real incomes have stagnated or fallen, even in supposedly good years. The Bush administration assured us that the economy was booming in 2007 — but the average Ohio plumber’s income in that 2007 report was only 15.5 percent higher than in the 2000 report, not enough to keep up with the 17.7 percent rise in consumer prices in the Midwest. As Ohio plumbers went, so went the nation: median household income, adjusted for inflation, was lower in 2007 than it had been in 2000.
Third, Ohio plumbers have been having growing trouble getting health insurance, especially if, like many craftsmen, they work for small firms. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, in 2007 only 45 percent of companies with fewer than 10 employees offered health benefits, down from 57 percent in 2000.
And bear in mind that all these data pertain to 2007 — which was as good as it got in recent years. Now that the “Bush boom,” such as it was, is over, we can see that it achieved a dismal distinction: for the first time on record, an economic expansion failed to raise most Americans’ incomes above their previous peak.
Since then, of course, things have gone rapidly downhill, as millions of working Americans have lost their jobs and their homes. And all indicators suggest that things will get much worse in the months and years ahead.
So what does all this say about the candidates? Who’s really standing up for Ohio’s plumbers?
Mr. McCain claims that Mr. Obama’s policies would lead to economic disaster. But President Bush’s policies have already led to disaster — and whatever he may say, Mr. McCain proposes continuing Mr. Bush’s policies in all essential respects, and he shares Mr. Bush’s anti-government, anti-regulation philosophy.
What about the claim, based on Joe the Plumber’s complaint, that ordinary working Americans would face higher taxes under Mr. Obama? Well, Mr. Obama proposes raising rates on only the top two income tax brackets — and the second-highest bracket for a head of household starts at an income, after deductions, of $182,400 a year.
Maybe there are plumbers out there who earn that much, or who would end up suffering from Mr. Obama’s proposed modest increases in taxes on dividends and capital gains — America is a big country, and there’s probably a high-income plumber with a huge stock market portfolio out there somewhere. But the typical plumber would pay lower, not higher, taxes under an Obama administration, and would have a much better chance of getting health insurance.
I don’t want to suggest that everyone would be better off under the Obama tax plan. Joe the plumber would almost certainly be better off, but Richie the hedge fund manager would take a serious hit.
But that’s the point. Whatever today’s G.O.P. is, it isn’t the party of working Americans.
Sonntag, Oktober 19, 2008
NYT Paul Krugmann: Let's get Fiscal
The New York Times
October 17, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Let’s Get Fiscal
By PAUL KRUGMAN
The Dow is surging! No, it’s plunging! No, it’s surging! No, it’s ...
Nevermind. While the manic-depressive stock market is dominating the headlines, the more important story is the grim news coming in about the real economy. It’s now clear that rescuing the banks is just the beginning: the nonfinancial economy is also in desperate need of help.
The New York Times
October 17, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Let’s Get Fiscal
By PAUL KRUGMAN
The Dow is surging! No, it’s plunging! No, it’s surging! No, it’s ...
Nevermind. While the manic-depressive stock market is dominating the headlines, the more important story is the grim news coming in about the real economy. It’s now clear that rescuing the banks is just the beginning: the nonfinancial economy is also in desperate need of help.
And to provide that help, we’re going to have to put some prejudices aside. It’s politically fashionable to rant against government spending and demand fiscal responsibility. But right now, increased government spending is just what the doctor ordered, and concerns about the budget deficit should be put on hold.
Before I get there, let’s talk about the economic situation.
Just this week, we learned that retail sales have fallen off a cliff, and so has industrial production. Unemployment claims are at steep-recession levels, and the Philadelphia Fed’s manufacturing index is falling at the fastest pace in almost 20 years. All signs point to an economic slump that will be nasty, brutish — and long.
How nasty? The unemployment rate is already above 6 percent (and broader measures of underemployment are in double digits). It’s now virtually certain that the unemployment rate will go above 7 percent, and quite possibly above 8 percent, making this the worst recession in a quarter-century.
And how long? It could be very long indeed.
Think about what happened in the last recession, which followed the bursting of the late-1990s technology bubble. On the surface, the policy response to that recession looks like a success story. Although there were widespread fears that the United States would experience a Japanese-style “lost decade,” that didn’t happen: the Federal Reserve was able to engineer a recovery from that recession by cutting interest rates.
But the truth is that we were looking Japanese for quite a while: the Fed had a hard time getting traction. Despite repeated interest rate cuts, which eventually brought the federal funds rate down to just 1 percent, the unemployment rate just kept on rising; it was more than two years before the job picture started to improve. And when a convincing recovery finally did come, it was only because Alan Greenspan had managed to replace the technology bubble with a housing bubble.
Now the housing bubble has burst in turn, leaving the financial landscape strewn with wreckage. Even if the ongoing efforts to rescue the banking system and unfreeze the credit markets work — and while it’s early days yet, the initial results have been disappointing — it’s hard to see housing making a comeback any time soon. And if there’s another bubble waiting to happen, it’s not obvious. So the Fed will find it even harder to get traction this time.
In other words, there’s not much Ben Bernanke can do for the economy. He can and should cut interest rates even more — but nobody expects this to do more than provide a slight economic boost.
On the other hand, there’s a lot the federal government can do for the economy. It can provide extended benefits to the unemployed, which will both help distressed families cope and put money in the hands of people likely to spend it. It can provide emergency aid to state and local governments, so that they aren’t forced into steep spending cuts that both degrade public services and destroy jobs. It can buy up mortgages (but not at face value, as John McCain has proposed) and restructure the terms to help families stay in their homes.
And this is also a good time to engage in some serious infrastructure spending, which the country badly needs in any case. The usual argument against public works as economic stimulus is that they take too long: by the time you get around to repairing that bridge and upgrading that rail line, the slump is over and the stimulus isn’t needed. Well, that argument has no force now, since the chances that this slump will be over anytime soon are virtually nil. So let’s get those projects rolling.
Will the next administration do what’s needed to deal with the economic slump? Not if Mr. McCain pulls off an upset. What we need right now is more government spending — but when Mr. McCain was asked in one of the debates how he would deal with the economic crisis, he answered: “Well, the first thing we have to do is get spending under control.”
If Barack Obama becomes president, he won’t have the same knee-jerk opposition to spending. But he will face a chorus of inside-the-Beltway types telling him that he has to be responsible, that the big deficits the government will run next year if it does the right thing are unacceptable.
He should ignore that chorus. The responsible thing, right now, is to give the economy the help it needs. Now is not the time to worry about the deficit.
October 17, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Let’s Get Fiscal
By PAUL KRUGMAN
The Dow is surging! No, it’s plunging! No, it’s surging! No, it’s ...
Nevermind. While the manic-depressive stock market is dominating the headlines, the more important story is the grim news coming in about the real economy. It’s now clear that rescuing the banks is just the beginning: the nonfinancial economy is also in desperate need of help.
The New York Times
October 17, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Let’s Get Fiscal
By PAUL KRUGMAN
The Dow is surging! No, it’s plunging! No, it’s surging! No, it’s ...
Nevermind. While the manic-depressive stock market is dominating the headlines, the more important story is the grim news coming in about the real economy. It’s now clear that rescuing the banks is just the beginning: the nonfinancial economy is also in desperate need of help.
And to provide that help, we’re going to have to put some prejudices aside. It’s politically fashionable to rant against government spending and demand fiscal responsibility. But right now, increased government spending is just what the doctor ordered, and concerns about the budget deficit should be put on hold.
Before I get there, let’s talk about the economic situation.
Just this week, we learned that retail sales have fallen off a cliff, and so has industrial production. Unemployment claims are at steep-recession levels, and the Philadelphia Fed’s manufacturing index is falling at the fastest pace in almost 20 years. All signs point to an economic slump that will be nasty, brutish — and long.
How nasty? The unemployment rate is already above 6 percent (and broader measures of underemployment are in double digits). It’s now virtually certain that the unemployment rate will go above 7 percent, and quite possibly above 8 percent, making this the worst recession in a quarter-century.
And how long? It could be very long indeed.
Think about what happened in the last recession, which followed the bursting of the late-1990s technology bubble. On the surface, the policy response to that recession looks like a success story. Although there were widespread fears that the United States would experience a Japanese-style “lost decade,” that didn’t happen: the Federal Reserve was able to engineer a recovery from that recession by cutting interest rates.
But the truth is that we were looking Japanese for quite a while: the Fed had a hard time getting traction. Despite repeated interest rate cuts, which eventually brought the federal funds rate down to just 1 percent, the unemployment rate just kept on rising; it was more than two years before the job picture started to improve. And when a convincing recovery finally did come, it was only because Alan Greenspan had managed to replace the technology bubble with a housing bubble.
Now the housing bubble has burst in turn, leaving the financial landscape strewn with wreckage. Even if the ongoing efforts to rescue the banking system and unfreeze the credit markets work — and while it’s early days yet, the initial results have been disappointing — it’s hard to see housing making a comeback any time soon. And if there’s another bubble waiting to happen, it’s not obvious. So the Fed will find it even harder to get traction this time.
In other words, there’s not much Ben Bernanke can do for the economy. He can and should cut interest rates even more — but nobody expects this to do more than provide a slight economic boost.
On the other hand, there’s a lot the federal government can do for the economy. It can provide extended benefits to the unemployed, which will both help distressed families cope and put money in the hands of people likely to spend it. It can provide emergency aid to state and local governments, so that they aren’t forced into steep spending cuts that both degrade public services and destroy jobs. It can buy up mortgages (but not at face value, as John McCain has proposed) and restructure the terms to help families stay in their homes.
And this is also a good time to engage in some serious infrastructure spending, which the country badly needs in any case. The usual argument against public works as economic stimulus is that they take too long: by the time you get around to repairing that bridge and upgrading that rail line, the slump is over and the stimulus isn’t needed. Well, that argument has no force now, since the chances that this slump will be over anytime soon are virtually nil. So let’s get those projects rolling.
Will the next administration do what’s needed to deal with the economic slump? Not if Mr. McCain pulls off an upset. What we need right now is more government spending — but when Mr. McCain was asked in one of the debates how he would deal with the economic crisis, he answered: “Well, the first thing we have to do is get spending under control.”
If Barack Obama becomes president, he won’t have the same knee-jerk opposition to spending. But he will face a chorus of inside-the-Beltway types telling him that he has to be responsible, that the big deficits the government will run next year if it does the right thing are unacceptable.
He should ignore that chorus. The responsible thing, right now, is to give the economy the help it needs. Now is not the time to worry about the deficit.
Warren Buffett On Derivatives
Warren Buffett
On Derivatives
Following are edited excerpts from the Berkshire Hathaway annual report for 2002.
I view derivatives as time bombs, both for the parties that deal in them and the economic system. Basically these instruments call for money to change hands at some future date, with the amount to be determined by one or more reference items, such as interest rates, stock prices, or currency values. For example, if you are either long or short an S&P 500 futures contract, you are a party to a very simple derivatives transaction, with your gain or loss derived from movements in the index. Derivatives contracts are of varying duration, running sometimes to 20 or more years, and their value is often tied to several variable....
Warren Buffett
On Derivatives
Following are edited excerpts from the Berkshire Hathaway annual report for 2002.
I view derivatives as time bombs, both for the parties that deal in them and the economic system. Basically these instruments call for money to change hands at some future date, with the amount to be determined by one or more reference items, such as interest rates, stock prices, or currency values. For example, if you are either long or short an S&P 500 futures contract, you are a party to a very simple derivatives transaction, with your gain or loss derived from movements in the index. Derivatives contracts are of varying duration, running sometimes to 20 or more years, and their value is often tied to several variables.
Unless derivatives contracts are collateralized or guaranteed, their ultimate value also depends on the creditworthiness of the counter-parties to them. But before a contract is settled, the counter-parties record profits and losses – often huge in amount – in their current earnings statements without so much as a penny changing hands. Reported earnings on derivatives are often wildly overstated. That’s because today’s earnings are in a significant way based on estimates whose inaccuracy may not be exposed for many years.
The errors usually reflect the human tendency to take an optimistic view of one’s commitments. But the parties to derivatives also have enormous incentives to cheat in accounting for them. Those who trade derivatives are usually paid, in whole or part, on “earnings” calculated by mark-to-market accounting. But often there is no real market, and “mark-to-model” is utilized. This substitution can bring on large-scale mischief. As a general rule, contracts involving multiple reference items and distant settlement dates increase the opportunities for counter-parties to use fanciful assumptions. The two parties to the contract might well use differing models allowing both to show substantial profits for many years. In extreme cases, mark-to-model degenerates into what I would call mark-to-myth.
I can assure you that the marking errors in the derivatives business have not been symmetrical. Almost invariably, they have favored either the trader who was eyeing a multi-million dollar bonus or the CEO who wanted to report impressive “earnings” (or both). The bonuses were paid, and the CEO profited from his options. Only much later did shareholders learn that the reported earnings were a sham.
Another problem about derivatives is that they can exacerbate trouble that a corporation has run into for completely unrelated reasons. This pile-on effect occurs because many derivatives contracts require that a company suffering a credit downgrade immediately supply collateral to counter-parties. Imagine then that a company is downgraded because of general adversity and that its derivatives instantly kick in with their requirement, imposing an unexpected and enormous demand for cash collateral on the company. The need to meet this demand can then throw the company into a liquidity crisis that may, in some cases, trigger still more downgrades. It all becomes a spiral that can lead to a corporate meltdown.
Derivatives also create a daisy-chain risk that is akin to the risk run by insurers or reinsurers that lay off much of their business with others. In both cases, huge receivables from many counter-parties tend to build up over time. A participant may see himself as prudent, believing his large credit exposures to be diversified and therefore not dangerous. However under certain circumstances, an exogenous event that causes the receivable from Company A to go bad will also affect those from Companies B through Z.
In banking, the recognition of a “linkage” problem was one of the reasons for the formation of the Federal Reserve System. Before the Fed was established, the failure of weak banks would sometimes put sudden and unanticipated liquidity demands on previously-strong banks, causing them to fail in turn. The Fed now insulates the strong from the troubles of the weak. But there is no central bank assigned to the job of preventing the dominoes toppling in insurance or derivatives. In these industries, firms that are fundamentally solid can become troubled simply because of the travails of other firms further down the chain.
Many people argue that derivatives reduce systemic problems, in that participants who can’t bear certain risks are able to transfer them to stronger hands. These people believe that derivatives act to stabilize the economy, facilitate trade, and eliminate bumps for individual participants.
On a micro level, what they say is often true. I believe, however, that the macro picture is dangerous and getting more so. Large amounts of risk, particularly credit risk, have become concentrated in the hands of relatively few derivatives dealers, who in addition trade extensively with one other. The troubles of one could quickly infect the others.
On top of that, these dealers are owed huge amounts by non-dealer counter-parties. Some of these counter-parties, are linked in ways that could cause them to run into a problem because of a single event, such as the implosion of the telecom industry. Linkage, when it suddenly surfaces, can trigger serious systemic problems.
Indeed, in 1998, the leveraged and derivatives-heavy activities of a single hedge fund, Long-Term Capital Management, caused the Federal Reserve anxieties so severe that it hastily orchestrated a rescue effort. In later Congressional testimony, Fed officials acknowledged that, had they not intervened, the outstanding trades of LTCM – a firm unknown to the general public and employing only a few hundred people – could well have posed a serious threat to the stability of American markets. In other words, the Fed acted because its leaders were fearful of what might have happened to other financial institutions had the LTCM domino toppled. And this affair, though it paralyzed many parts of the fixed-income market for weeks, was far from a worst-case scenario.
One of the derivatives instruments that LTCM used was total-return swaps, contracts that facilitate 100% leverage in various markets, including stocks. For example, Party A to a contract, usually a bank, puts up all of the money for the purchase of a stock while Party B, without putting up any capital, agrees that at a future date it will receive any gain or pay any loss that the bank realizes.
Total-return swaps of this type make a joke of margin requirements. Beyond that, other types of derivatives severely curtail the ability of regulators to curb leverage and generally get their arms around the risk profiles of banks, insurers and other financial institutions. Similarly, even experienced investors and analysts encounter major problems in analyzing the financial condition of firms that are heavily involved with derivatives contracts.
The derivatives genie is now well out of the bottle, and these instruments will almost certainly multiply in variety and number until some event makes their toxicity clear. Central banks and governments have so far found no effective way to control, or even monitor, the risks posed by these contracts. In my view, derivatives are financial weapons of mass destruction, carrying dangers that, while now latent, are potentially lethal.
On Derivatives
Following are edited excerpts from the Berkshire Hathaway annual report for 2002.
I view derivatives as time bombs, both for the parties that deal in them and the economic system. Basically these instruments call for money to change hands at some future date, with the amount to be determined by one or more reference items, such as interest rates, stock prices, or currency values. For example, if you are either long or short an S&P 500 futures contract, you are a party to a very simple derivatives transaction, with your gain or loss derived from movements in the index. Derivatives contracts are of varying duration, running sometimes to 20 or more years, and their value is often tied to several variable....
Warren Buffett
On Derivatives
Following are edited excerpts from the Berkshire Hathaway annual report for 2002.
I view derivatives as time bombs, both for the parties that deal in them and the economic system. Basically these instruments call for money to change hands at some future date, with the amount to be determined by one or more reference items, such as interest rates, stock prices, or currency values. For example, if you are either long or short an S&P 500 futures contract, you are a party to a very simple derivatives transaction, with your gain or loss derived from movements in the index. Derivatives contracts are of varying duration, running sometimes to 20 or more years, and their value is often tied to several variables.
Unless derivatives contracts are collateralized or guaranteed, their ultimate value also depends on the creditworthiness of the counter-parties to them. But before a contract is settled, the counter-parties record profits and losses – often huge in amount – in their current earnings statements without so much as a penny changing hands. Reported earnings on derivatives are often wildly overstated. That’s because today’s earnings are in a significant way based on estimates whose inaccuracy may not be exposed for many years.
The errors usually reflect the human tendency to take an optimistic view of one’s commitments. But the parties to derivatives also have enormous incentives to cheat in accounting for them. Those who trade derivatives are usually paid, in whole or part, on “earnings” calculated by mark-to-market accounting. But often there is no real market, and “mark-to-model” is utilized. This substitution can bring on large-scale mischief. As a general rule, contracts involving multiple reference items and distant settlement dates increase the opportunities for counter-parties to use fanciful assumptions. The two parties to the contract might well use differing models allowing both to show substantial profits for many years. In extreme cases, mark-to-model degenerates into what I would call mark-to-myth.
I can assure you that the marking errors in the derivatives business have not been symmetrical. Almost invariably, they have favored either the trader who was eyeing a multi-million dollar bonus or the CEO who wanted to report impressive “earnings” (or both). The bonuses were paid, and the CEO profited from his options. Only much later did shareholders learn that the reported earnings were a sham.
Another problem about derivatives is that they can exacerbate trouble that a corporation has run into for completely unrelated reasons. This pile-on effect occurs because many derivatives contracts require that a company suffering a credit downgrade immediately supply collateral to counter-parties. Imagine then that a company is downgraded because of general adversity and that its derivatives instantly kick in with their requirement, imposing an unexpected and enormous demand for cash collateral on the company. The need to meet this demand can then throw the company into a liquidity crisis that may, in some cases, trigger still more downgrades. It all becomes a spiral that can lead to a corporate meltdown.
Derivatives also create a daisy-chain risk that is akin to the risk run by insurers or reinsurers that lay off much of their business with others. In both cases, huge receivables from many counter-parties tend to build up over time. A participant may see himself as prudent, believing his large credit exposures to be diversified and therefore not dangerous. However under certain circumstances, an exogenous event that causes the receivable from Company A to go bad will also affect those from Companies B through Z.
In banking, the recognition of a “linkage” problem was one of the reasons for the formation of the Federal Reserve System. Before the Fed was established, the failure of weak banks would sometimes put sudden and unanticipated liquidity demands on previously-strong banks, causing them to fail in turn. The Fed now insulates the strong from the troubles of the weak. But there is no central bank assigned to the job of preventing the dominoes toppling in insurance or derivatives. In these industries, firms that are fundamentally solid can become troubled simply because of the travails of other firms further down the chain.
Many people argue that derivatives reduce systemic problems, in that participants who can’t bear certain risks are able to transfer them to stronger hands. These people believe that derivatives act to stabilize the economy, facilitate trade, and eliminate bumps for individual participants.
On a micro level, what they say is often true. I believe, however, that the macro picture is dangerous and getting more so. Large amounts of risk, particularly credit risk, have become concentrated in the hands of relatively few derivatives dealers, who in addition trade extensively with one other. The troubles of one could quickly infect the others.
On top of that, these dealers are owed huge amounts by non-dealer counter-parties. Some of these counter-parties, are linked in ways that could cause them to run into a problem because of a single event, such as the implosion of the telecom industry. Linkage, when it suddenly surfaces, can trigger serious systemic problems.
Indeed, in 1998, the leveraged and derivatives-heavy activities of a single hedge fund, Long-Term Capital Management, caused the Federal Reserve anxieties so severe that it hastily orchestrated a rescue effort. In later Congressional testimony, Fed officials acknowledged that, had they not intervened, the outstanding trades of LTCM – a firm unknown to the general public and employing only a few hundred people – could well have posed a serious threat to the stability of American markets. In other words, the Fed acted because its leaders were fearful of what might have happened to other financial institutions had the LTCM domino toppled. And this affair, though it paralyzed many parts of the fixed-income market for weeks, was far from a worst-case scenario.
One of the derivatives instruments that LTCM used was total-return swaps, contracts that facilitate 100% leverage in various markets, including stocks. For example, Party A to a contract, usually a bank, puts up all of the money for the purchase of a stock while Party B, without putting up any capital, agrees that at a future date it will receive any gain or pay any loss that the bank realizes.
Total-return swaps of this type make a joke of margin requirements. Beyond that, other types of derivatives severely curtail the ability of regulators to curb leverage and generally get their arms around the risk profiles of banks, insurers and other financial institutions. Similarly, even experienced investors and analysts encounter major problems in analyzing the financial condition of firms that are heavily involved with derivatives contracts.
The derivatives genie is now well out of the bottle, and these instruments will almost certainly multiply in variety and number until some event makes their toxicity clear. Central banks and governments have so far found no effective way to control, or even monitor, the risks posed by these contracts. In my view, derivatives are financial weapons of mass destruction, carrying dangers that, while now latent, are potentially lethal.
Mittwoch, Oktober 15, 2008
Tages-Anzeiger: Die Welt erlebt den Einbruch des Realen in das Virtuelle
Tages-Anzeiger 14.10.2008
Die Welt erlebt den Einbruch des Realen in das Virtuelle
Von Philipp Sarasin.
Die Bankenkrise erschüttert auch postmoderne Kulturtheorien, sagt der Zürcher Historiker Philipp Sarasin. Wirklichkeit ist kein Phantasma mehr.
Philipp Sarasin
Philipp Sarasin ist Ordinarius am Historischen Seminar der Universität Zürich. Im kommenden Januar erscheint von ihm im Suhrkamp Verlag das Buch «Darwin und Foucault. Genealogie und Geschichte im Zeitalter der Biologie». (TA)
Tages-Anzeiger 14.10.2008
Die Welt erlebt den Einbruch des Realen in das Virtuelle
Von Philipp Sarasin.
Die Bankenkrise erschüttert auch postmoderne Kulturtheorien, sagt der Zürcher Historiker Philipp Sarasin. Wirklichkeit ist kein Phantasma mehr.
Philipp Sarasin
Philipp Sarasin ist Ordinarius am Historischen Seminar der Universität Zürich. Im kommenden Januar erscheint von ihm im Suhrkamp Verlag das Buch «Darwin und Foucault. Genealogie und Geschichte im Zeitalter der Biologie». (TA)
In den «Tagesthemen» der ARD konnte man am vergangenen Donnerstag Bilder einer Zeltstadt im US-Bundesstaat Nevada sehen: Hunderte von privaten Zelten, angeordnet in langen Reihen wie auf einem monströsen, ungemütlichen Campingplatz. In diesem Katastrophen-Lager leben Opfer der Hypothekarkrise, ältere Menschen, Alleinerziehende und Familien, deren Häuser zwangsversteigert wurden und die mit ihren letzten Habseligkeiten in der brütenden Sonne weinend, verbittert oder fassungslos in die Kamera des Reporters blicken.
Am selben Abend sendete CNN die Bemerkung eines amerikanischen Ökonomen, dass diejenigen, die «bei einem Honorar von 10'000 Dollar in der Stunde für 5 Prozent Zins fremdes Geld ausliehen, um es für 7 Prozent weiter zu verleihen, halt doch zu wenig clever gewesen sind». Viel weniger schlau jedenfalls, als sie zu sein glaubten und uns alle glauben liessen, dass sie es wären.
Doch woher stammt eigentlich dieser Glaube? Woher das Vertrauen darauf, dass das Jonglieren mit Zahlungsversprechen und mit der Erwartung auf künftige Gewinne endlos Geld zu vermehren vermag? Woher der Glaube, dass der Handel mit Papieren zur Absicherung des Ausfallrisikos von Krediten (Credit Default Swaps und ähnliche, in ihrer mathematischen Komplexität von kaum jemandem mehr durchschaubare barocke Finanz-Instrumente) genauso «wirkliche» Werte schaffen würde wie geförderte Rohstoffe, neu produzierte Autos, innovative Maschinen oder selbst noch die Gadgets der Unterhaltungselektronik, die immerhin von realen Menschen gekauft werden?
Wir haben gelernt, dass all diese spekulativen derivativen Instrumente doch einen realen Kern hatten: dass sie durch Schuldverschreibungen im amerikanischen Liegenschaftsmarkt «abgesichert» wurden. Wir erleben seit einigen Monaten, dass diese «Absicherung» im Hypothekarwert von Häusern auf die Finanzwirtschaft zurückschlägt, weil die Wirtschafts- und Steuerpolitik von George W. Bush versagt hat. Wir haben auch gelernt, dass der langjährige Notenbank-Chef Allan Greenspan dem Finanzsektor immer mehr Liquidität zur Verfügung stellte, um sich mit diesen durch keine realwirtschaftlichen Werte mehr gedeckten Mittel Gewinnmöglichkeiten in der Vergabe von Hypotheken an Menschen zu erschliessen, die weder über Vermögen noch entsprechende Einkommen verfügten.
Der amerikanische Traum Hypothek
Die Ursache dieser jetzt geplatzten 1,4-Billionen-Dollar-Blase von Erwartungen über Erwartungen war aber nicht nur die gerne gegeisselte «Gier» von Börsianern und Investmentbankern nach schrankenlosem Gewinn-Sex; die Blase entstand gleichzeitig durch den nicht selten blauäugigen Glauben der unteren Mittelschicht, das Geld für die Zinsen dann schon irgendwie aufbringen zu können. Aber auch blaue Augen fallen nicht vom Himmel.
War es nicht die unter dem zweiten Bush hegemonial gewordene neoliberale Interpretation des amerikanischen Traums, die, im Verbund mit betont christlichen Werten und dem beschleunigten Zerfall der Innenstädte, diesen Menschen kaum eine andere Wahl liess, als sich um jeden Preis die Last eines Eigenheims auf ihre schmalen Schultern zu laden? Wiederum ungedeckte Erwartungen auf künftigen Wohlstand also. Es gab die Hoffnung aufs «Heruntersickern», auf den sogenannten Trickledown-Effekt: Gewinne und Steuerersparnisse für die Reichsten sollten als tröpfchenweise weitergegebener Wohlstand den Mittelstand erreichen. Das Gegenteil ist eingetreten.
Der Staat ist zurück
Man soll dennoch nicht behaupten, die Erwartungen und Hoffnungen der jetzt verarmten Hausbesitzer seien grundsätzlich naiv gewesen. Denn die Alternative zum Glauben ans Wachstum im freien Markt wäre die Planwirtschaft und die staatliche Festsetzung von Preisen. Das ist erwiesenermassen kein praktikabler Ausweg. Selbst ein teilweise verstaatlichter Bankensektor muss sich auf Märkten bewegen, wo Preise nicht von staatlichen Akteuren festgelegt werden und globale Konkurrenz herrscht.
Doch Märkte und Konkurrenz als solche waren gar nicht die Ursache der Krise. Ihre Ursache war der neoliberale Marktfetischismus: der Glaube, dass der Markt sich vollständig selbst reguliert. Das ist jetzt vorbei, der Staat ist zurück.
Die staatliche Regulation von Märkten und Marktteilnehmern erweist sich als nötig. Es braucht staatlich festgelegte Spielregeln fürs Verhalten auf Märkten ebenso wie soziale Auffangnetze für Verlierer – falls man nicht der Meinung ist, man könne diese auf Campingplätzen und in Trailerparks entsorgen. Der Staat als Regelungsinstanz ist zurück in einer Weise, wie liberale Theoretiker wie F. A. von Hayek oder die Freiburger Ordoliberalen (Eucken, Röpke und andere) nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg sich seine die Wirtschaft «einrahmende» Rolle gedacht haben: als jenes System, das dann «soziale Marktwirtschaft» heissen sollte.
Das Problem ist nicht, dass «der» Mensch zu «gierig» und daher «der» Kapitalismus menschenverachtend wäre. Das Problem ist, wie sich heute zeigt, dass jeder Kleinsparer «gierig» wird, wenn man ihm schöne Renditen in Aussicht stellt, und jeder Jungbanker über alle Massen unvorsichtig, wenn man ihn mit fetten Boni überschüttet. «Der» Mensch mag sein, wie er will, das spielt keine Rolle. Menschen verhalten sich auch nicht alle gleich. Klar ist jetzt, dass ein Markt ohne staatliche Kontrolle dazu neigt, sich selbst aufzufressen und dysfunktionale Einkommensunterschiede zu produzieren.
Daher ist dies der historische Moment Obamas, der mit Bezugnahme auf Roosevelts New Deal in den 1930er- Jahren heute staatliche Regulation zurückfordert. Und vielleicht ist dies auch das Ende jener Kultur, die man seit Lyotard (1979) die Postmoderne nennt. Postmodern war nicht der neoliberale Marktfetischismus, denn diese Spielart von Fundamentalismus war schon immer eine drohende Möglichkeit kapitalistischer Gesellschaften. Aber muss man nicht die seit den 1990er- Jahren weltumspannend gewordene Finanzindustrie mit ihrer Technik, Erwartungen über Erwartungen zu häufen und darauf Optionen und Derivate zu konstruieren, im Wortsinne als postmodern bezeichnen? War das nicht eine Form von bloss noch semiotischem Kapitalismus mit Zeicheneffekten, welche die Realität nicht mehr irgendwie «abbilden» (was die Börse eigentlich tun sollte), sondern in neuer Gestalt erzeugen (und dann Panik vor den eigenen Schimären bekommt)?
Die Postmoderne hatte mit Baudrillard die Irrelevanz, ja die «Agonie des Realen» behauptet und das Zeitalter der Simulation ausgerufen. Sie beharrte mit Derrida auf der faktischen Unerreichbarkeit des Realen hinter dem Schleier der Sprache und der Zeichen, in dem unsere Versuche, mit der Welt zu tun zu haben, sich unweigerlich verfangen. Ihre theoretischen Modelle legen nahe, dass unsere Wahrnehmung der Welt nicht vom Realen, sondern einzig von den Zeichenspielen im Raum der Medien, Signifikanten und Bilder geprägt werde. Die Wirklichkeit spielte für diesen semiotischen Konstruktivismus eine ähnliche Rolle wie in besseren Zeiten die Einfamilienhäuser im Mittleren Westen der USA für die derivativen Produkte der globalen Finanzindustrie. Obwohl wir mit Lacan immer tapfer (wenn auch etwas rhetorisch) proklamierten, dass das Reale in die Welt der Bilder und Zeichen «einbrechen» könne, musste man sich um solche Dinge nicht wirklich kümmern.
Abschied vom Spiel der Zeichen
Damit ist es jetzt offenbar vorbei. Es ist daher wohl kein Zufall, wenn sich im Reflexionsraum kulturtheoretischer Diskurse gegenwärtig der Abschied von jenen Signifikantenspielen abzuzeichnen beginnt und verschiedene Autoren nun wieder die «Präsenz» (Gumbrecht) oder die «Evidenz» (Lethen) aufrufen und einfordern: die Präsenz oder Evidenz des Wirklichen und des sinnlich Erfahrbaren in philosophischen, kulturanalytischen und historischen Beschreibungen der Welt. Es ist schon wahr: Wir waren kaum mehr fähig, das Gewicht der Welt zu ermessen, wie sie zusammenbrechen kann, wenn Löhne sinken und Hypothekarzinsen steigen. Was also geschieht jetzt?
Ein einfaches Zurück zur Unmittelbarkeit der Erfahrung des Realen kann es nicht geben; dafür wissen wir zu viel über die Vermitteltheit und Konstruiertheit der Wirklichkeit im Medium von Sprachen, Bildern und Diskursen. Aber wir können nicht mehr so tun, als hätte das Netz der Sprache nicht gleichsam Kanäle und/oder Bänder zurück zu jener Wirklichkeit, wie sie sich in Zeltstädten in Nevada zeigt. Und wir können nicht länger vorgeben, als sei dieses Netz dicht genug gewoben, um uns gegen den handfesten Einbruch des Realen zu schützen. Eine Epoche geht zu Ende. Wir müssen uns im Feld der Kulturtheorien daher die Frage stellen, wie sich unser Sprechen und Theoretisieren wieder auf die Welt da draussen beziehen lässt. Entsetzt über die wirklichkeitsvergessenen Zahlenspiele der Finanzindustrie den Kopf zu schütteln, nur um in Ruhe unsere eigenen Zeichenspiele weiter treiben zu können, wäre unzeitgemäss – wenn nicht schlimmer.
(Tages-Anzeiger)
Erstellt: 14.10.2008, 19:35 Uhr
Die Welt erlebt den Einbruch des Realen in das Virtuelle
Von Philipp Sarasin.
Die Bankenkrise erschüttert auch postmoderne Kulturtheorien, sagt der Zürcher Historiker Philipp Sarasin. Wirklichkeit ist kein Phantasma mehr.
Philipp Sarasin
Philipp Sarasin ist Ordinarius am Historischen Seminar der Universität Zürich. Im kommenden Januar erscheint von ihm im Suhrkamp Verlag das Buch «Darwin und Foucault. Genealogie und Geschichte im Zeitalter der Biologie». (TA)
Tages-Anzeiger 14.10.2008
Die Welt erlebt den Einbruch des Realen in das Virtuelle
Von Philipp Sarasin.
Die Bankenkrise erschüttert auch postmoderne Kulturtheorien, sagt der Zürcher Historiker Philipp Sarasin. Wirklichkeit ist kein Phantasma mehr.
Philipp Sarasin
Philipp Sarasin ist Ordinarius am Historischen Seminar der Universität Zürich. Im kommenden Januar erscheint von ihm im Suhrkamp Verlag das Buch «Darwin und Foucault. Genealogie und Geschichte im Zeitalter der Biologie». (TA)
In den «Tagesthemen» der ARD konnte man am vergangenen Donnerstag Bilder einer Zeltstadt im US-Bundesstaat Nevada sehen: Hunderte von privaten Zelten, angeordnet in langen Reihen wie auf einem monströsen, ungemütlichen Campingplatz. In diesem Katastrophen-Lager leben Opfer der Hypothekarkrise, ältere Menschen, Alleinerziehende und Familien, deren Häuser zwangsversteigert wurden und die mit ihren letzten Habseligkeiten in der brütenden Sonne weinend, verbittert oder fassungslos in die Kamera des Reporters blicken.
Am selben Abend sendete CNN die Bemerkung eines amerikanischen Ökonomen, dass diejenigen, die «bei einem Honorar von 10'000 Dollar in der Stunde für 5 Prozent Zins fremdes Geld ausliehen, um es für 7 Prozent weiter zu verleihen, halt doch zu wenig clever gewesen sind». Viel weniger schlau jedenfalls, als sie zu sein glaubten und uns alle glauben liessen, dass sie es wären.
Doch woher stammt eigentlich dieser Glaube? Woher das Vertrauen darauf, dass das Jonglieren mit Zahlungsversprechen und mit der Erwartung auf künftige Gewinne endlos Geld zu vermehren vermag? Woher der Glaube, dass der Handel mit Papieren zur Absicherung des Ausfallrisikos von Krediten (Credit Default Swaps und ähnliche, in ihrer mathematischen Komplexität von kaum jemandem mehr durchschaubare barocke Finanz-Instrumente) genauso «wirkliche» Werte schaffen würde wie geförderte Rohstoffe, neu produzierte Autos, innovative Maschinen oder selbst noch die Gadgets der Unterhaltungselektronik, die immerhin von realen Menschen gekauft werden?
Wir haben gelernt, dass all diese spekulativen derivativen Instrumente doch einen realen Kern hatten: dass sie durch Schuldverschreibungen im amerikanischen Liegenschaftsmarkt «abgesichert» wurden. Wir erleben seit einigen Monaten, dass diese «Absicherung» im Hypothekarwert von Häusern auf die Finanzwirtschaft zurückschlägt, weil die Wirtschafts- und Steuerpolitik von George W. Bush versagt hat. Wir haben auch gelernt, dass der langjährige Notenbank-Chef Allan Greenspan dem Finanzsektor immer mehr Liquidität zur Verfügung stellte, um sich mit diesen durch keine realwirtschaftlichen Werte mehr gedeckten Mittel Gewinnmöglichkeiten in der Vergabe von Hypotheken an Menschen zu erschliessen, die weder über Vermögen noch entsprechende Einkommen verfügten.
Der amerikanische Traum Hypothek
Die Ursache dieser jetzt geplatzten 1,4-Billionen-Dollar-Blase von Erwartungen über Erwartungen war aber nicht nur die gerne gegeisselte «Gier» von Börsianern und Investmentbankern nach schrankenlosem Gewinn-Sex; die Blase entstand gleichzeitig durch den nicht selten blauäugigen Glauben der unteren Mittelschicht, das Geld für die Zinsen dann schon irgendwie aufbringen zu können. Aber auch blaue Augen fallen nicht vom Himmel.
War es nicht die unter dem zweiten Bush hegemonial gewordene neoliberale Interpretation des amerikanischen Traums, die, im Verbund mit betont christlichen Werten und dem beschleunigten Zerfall der Innenstädte, diesen Menschen kaum eine andere Wahl liess, als sich um jeden Preis die Last eines Eigenheims auf ihre schmalen Schultern zu laden? Wiederum ungedeckte Erwartungen auf künftigen Wohlstand also. Es gab die Hoffnung aufs «Heruntersickern», auf den sogenannten Trickledown-Effekt: Gewinne und Steuerersparnisse für die Reichsten sollten als tröpfchenweise weitergegebener Wohlstand den Mittelstand erreichen. Das Gegenteil ist eingetreten.
Der Staat ist zurück
Man soll dennoch nicht behaupten, die Erwartungen und Hoffnungen der jetzt verarmten Hausbesitzer seien grundsätzlich naiv gewesen. Denn die Alternative zum Glauben ans Wachstum im freien Markt wäre die Planwirtschaft und die staatliche Festsetzung von Preisen. Das ist erwiesenermassen kein praktikabler Ausweg. Selbst ein teilweise verstaatlichter Bankensektor muss sich auf Märkten bewegen, wo Preise nicht von staatlichen Akteuren festgelegt werden und globale Konkurrenz herrscht.
Doch Märkte und Konkurrenz als solche waren gar nicht die Ursache der Krise. Ihre Ursache war der neoliberale Marktfetischismus: der Glaube, dass der Markt sich vollständig selbst reguliert. Das ist jetzt vorbei, der Staat ist zurück.
Die staatliche Regulation von Märkten und Marktteilnehmern erweist sich als nötig. Es braucht staatlich festgelegte Spielregeln fürs Verhalten auf Märkten ebenso wie soziale Auffangnetze für Verlierer – falls man nicht der Meinung ist, man könne diese auf Campingplätzen und in Trailerparks entsorgen. Der Staat als Regelungsinstanz ist zurück in einer Weise, wie liberale Theoretiker wie F. A. von Hayek oder die Freiburger Ordoliberalen (Eucken, Röpke und andere) nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg sich seine die Wirtschaft «einrahmende» Rolle gedacht haben: als jenes System, das dann «soziale Marktwirtschaft» heissen sollte.
Das Problem ist nicht, dass «der» Mensch zu «gierig» und daher «der» Kapitalismus menschenverachtend wäre. Das Problem ist, wie sich heute zeigt, dass jeder Kleinsparer «gierig» wird, wenn man ihm schöne Renditen in Aussicht stellt, und jeder Jungbanker über alle Massen unvorsichtig, wenn man ihn mit fetten Boni überschüttet. «Der» Mensch mag sein, wie er will, das spielt keine Rolle. Menschen verhalten sich auch nicht alle gleich. Klar ist jetzt, dass ein Markt ohne staatliche Kontrolle dazu neigt, sich selbst aufzufressen und dysfunktionale Einkommensunterschiede zu produzieren.
Daher ist dies der historische Moment Obamas, der mit Bezugnahme auf Roosevelts New Deal in den 1930er- Jahren heute staatliche Regulation zurückfordert. Und vielleicht ist dies auch das Ende jener Kultur, die man seit Lyotard (1979) die Postmoderne nennt. Postmodern war nicht der neoliberale Marktfetischismus, denn diese Spielart von Fundamentalismus war schon immer eine drohende Möglichkeit kapitalistischer Gesellschaften. Aber muss man nicht die seit den 1990er- Jahren weltumspannend gewordene Finanzindustrie mit ihrer Technik, Erwartungen über Erwartungen zu häufen und darauf Optionen und Derivate zu konstruieren, im Wortsinne als postmodern bezeichnen? War das nicht eine Form von bloss noch semiotischem Kapitalismus mit Zeicheneffekten, welche die Realität nicht mehr irgendwie «abbilden» (was die Börse eigentlich tun sollte), sondern in neuer Gestalt erzeugen (und dann Panik vor den eigenen Schimären bekommt)?
Die Postmoderne hatte mit Baudrillard die Irrelevanz, ja die «Agonie des Realen» behauptet und das Zeitalter der Simulation ausgerufen. Sie beharrte mit Derrida auf der faktischen Unerreichbarkeit des Realen hinter dem Schleier der Sprache und der Zeichen, in dem unsere Versuche, mit der Welt zu tun zu haben, sich unweigerlich verfangen. Ihre theoretischen Modelle legen nahe, dass unsere Wahrnehmung der Welt nicht vom Realen, sondern einzig von den Zeichenspielen im Raum der Medien, Signifikanten und Bilder geprägt werde. Die Wirklichkeit spielte für diesen semiotischen Konstruktivismus eine ähnliche Rolle wie in besseren Zeiten die Einfamilienhäuser im Mittleren Westen der USA für die derivativen Produkte der globalen Finanzindustrie. Obwohl wir mit Lacan immer tapfer (wenn auch etwas rhetorisch) proklamierten, dass das Reale in die Welt der Bilder und Zeichen «einbrechen» könne, musste man sich um solche Dinge nicht wirklich kümmern.
Abschied vom Spiel der Zeichen
Damit ist es jetzt offenbar vorbei. Es ist daher wohl kein Zufall, wenn sich im Reflexionsraum kulturtheoretischer Diskurse gegenwärtig der Abschied von jenen Signifikantenspielen abzuzeichnen beginnt und verschiedene Autoren nun wieder die «Präsenz» (Gumbrecht) oder die «Evidenz» (Lethen) aufrufen und einfordern: die Präsenz oder Evidenz des Wirklichen und des sinnlich Erfahrbaren in philosophischen, kulturanalytischen und historischen Beschreibungen der Welt. Es ist schon wahr: Wir waren kaum mehr fähig, das Gewicht der Welt zu ermessen, wie sie zusammenbrechen kann, wenn Löhne sinken und Hypothekarzinsen steigen. Was also geschieht jetzt?
Ein einfaches Zurück zur Unmittelbarkeit der Erfahrung des Realen kann es nicht geben; dafür wissen wir zu viel über die Vermitteltheit und Konstruiertheit der Wirklichkeit im Medium von Sprachen, Bildern und Diskursen. Aber wir können nicht mehr so tun, als hätte das Netz der Sprache nicht gleichsam Kanäle und/oder Bänder zurück zu jener Wirklichkeit, wie sie sich in Zeltstädten in Nevada zeigt. Und wir können nicht länger vorgeben, als sei dieses Netz dicht genug gewoben, um uns gegen den handfesten Einbruch des Realen zu schützen. Eine Epoche geht zu Ende. Wir müssen uns im Feld der Kulturtheorien daher die Frage stellen, wie sich unser Sprechen und Theoretisieren wieder auf die Welt da draussen beziehen lässt. Entsetzt über die wirklichkeitsvergessenen Zahlenspiele der Finanzindustrie den Kopf zu schütteln, nur um in Ruhe unsere eigenen Zeichenspiele weiter treiben zu können, wäre unzeitgemäss – wenn nicht schlimmer.
(Tages-Anzeiger)
Erstellt: 14.10.2008, 19:35 Uhr
Sonntag, Oktober 12, 2008
Frank Rich New York Times: The Terrorist Barrak Obama
The New York Times
October 12, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
The Terrorist Barack Hussein Obama
By FRANK RICH
IF you think way back to the start of this marathon campaign, back when it seemed preposterous that any black man could be a serious presidential contender, then you remember the biggest fear about Barack Obama: a crazy person might take a shot at him.
Some voters told reporters that they didn’t want Obama to run, let alone win, should his very presence unleash the demons who have stalked America from Lincoln to King. After consultation with Congress, Michael Chertoff, the homeland security secretary, gave Obama a Secret Service detail earlier than any presidential candidate in our history — in May 2007, some eight months before the first Democratic primaries.
The New York Times
October 12, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
The Terrorist Barack Hussein Obama
By FRANK RICH
IF you think way back to the start of this marathon campaign, back when it seemed preposterous that any black man could be a serious presidential contender, then you remember the biggest fear about Barack Obama: a crazy person might take a shot at him.
Some voters told reporters that they didn’t want Obama to run, let alone win, should his very presence unleash the demons who have stalked America from Lincoln to King. After consultation with Congress, Michael Chertoff, the homeland security secretary, gave Obama a Secret Service detail earlier than any presidential candidate in our history — in May 2007, some eight months before the first Democratic primaries.
“I’ve got the best protection in the world, so stop worrying,” Obama reassured his supporters. Eventually the country got conditioned to his appearing in large arenas without incident (though I confess that the first loud burst of fireworks at the end of his convention stadium speech gave me a start). In America, nothing does succeed like success. The fear receded.
Until now. At McCain-Palin rallies, the raucous and insistent cries of “Treason!” and “Terrorist!” and “Kill him!” and “Off with his head!” as well as the uninhibited slinging of racial epithets, are actually something new in a campaign that has seen almost every conceivable twist. They are alarms. Doing nothing is not an option.
All’s fair in politics. John McCain and Sarah Palin have every right to bring up William Ayers, even if his connection to Obama is minor, even if Ayers’s Weather Underground history dates back to Obama’s childhood, even if establishment Republicans and Democrats alike have collaborated with the present-day Ayers in educational reform. But it’s not just the old Joe McCarthyesque guilt-by-association game, however spurious, that’s going on here. Don’t for an instant believe the many mindlessly “even-handed” journalists who keep saying that the McCain campaign’s use of Ayers is the moral or political equivalent of the Obama campaign’s hammering on Charles Keating.
What makes them different, and what has pumped up the Weimar-like rage at McCain-Palin rallies, is the violent escalation in rhetoric, especially (though not exclusively) by Palin. Obama “launched his political career in the living room of a domestic terrorist.” He is “palling around with terrorists” (note the plural noun). Obama is “not a man who sees America the way you and I see America.” Wielding a wildly out-of-context Obama quote, Palin slurs him as an enemy of American troops.
By the time McCain asks the crowd “Who is the real Barack Obama?” it’s no surprise that someone cries out “Terrorist!” The rhetorical conflation of Obama with terrorism is complete. It is stoked further by the repeated invocation of Obama’s middle name by surrogates introducing McCain and Palin at these rallies. This sleight of hand at once synchronizes with the poisonous Obama-is-a-Muslim e-mail blasts and shifts the brand of terrorism from Ayers’s Vietnam-era variety to the radical Islamic threats of today.
That’s a far cry from simply accusing Obama of being a guilty-by-association radical leftist. Obama is being branded as a potential killer and an accessory to past attempts at murder. “Barack Obama’s friend tried to kill my family” was how a McCain press release last week packaged the remembrance of a Weather Underground incident from 1970 — when Obama was 8.
We all know what punishment fits the crime of murder, or even potential murder, if the security of post-9/11 America is at stake. We all know how self-appointed “patriotic” martyrs always justify taking the law into their own hands.
Obama can hardly be held accountable for Ayers’s behavior 40 years ago, but at least McCain and Palin can try to take some responsibility for the behavior of their own supporters in 2008. What’s troubling here is not only the candidates’ loose inflammatory talk but also their refusal to step in promptly and strongly when someone responds to it with bloodthirsty threats in a crowded arena. Joe Biden had it exactly right when he expressed concern last week that “a leading American politician who might be vice president of the United States would not just stop midsentence and turn and condemn that.” To stay silent is to pour gas on the fires.
It wasn’t always thus with McCain. In February he loudly disassociated himself from a speaker who brayed “Barack Hussein Obama” when introducing him at a rally in Ohio. Now McCain either backpedals with tardy, pro forma expressions of respect for his opponent or lets second-tier campaign underlings release boilerplate disavowals after ugly incidents like the chilling Jim Crow-era flashback last week when a Florida sheriff ranted about “Barack Hussein Obama” at a Palin rally while in full uniform.
From the start, there have always been two separate but equal questions about race in this election. Is there still enough racism in America to prevent a black man from being elected president no matter what? And, will Republicans play the race card? The jury is out on the first question until Nov. 4. But we now have the unambiguous answer to the second: Yes.
McCain, who is no racist, turned to this desperate strategy only as Obama started to pull ahead. The tone was set at the Republican convention, with Rudy Giuliani’s mocking dismissal of Obama as an “only in America” affirmative-action baby. We also learned then that the McCain campaign had recruited as a Palin handler none other than Tucker Eskew, the South Carolina consultant who had worked for George W. Bush in the notorious 2000 G.O.P. primary battle where the McCains and their adopted Bangladeshi daughter were slimed by vicious racist rumors.
No less disconcerting was a still-unexplained passage of Palin’s convention speech: Her use of an unattributed quote praising small-town America (as opposed to, say, Chicago and its community organizers) from Westbrook Pegler, the mid-century Hearst columnist famous for his anti-Semitism, racism and violent rhetorical excess. After an assassin tried to kill F.D.R. at a Florida rally and murdered Chicago’s mayor instead in 1933, Pegler wrote that it was “regrettable that Giuseppe Zangara shot the wrong man.” In the ’60s, Pegler had a wish for Bobby Kennedy: “Some white patriot of the Southern tier will spatter his spoonful of brains in public premises before the snow falls.”
This is the writer who found his way into a speech by a potential vice president at a national political convention. It’s astonishing there’s been no demand for a public accounting from the McCain campaign. Imagine if Obama had quoted a Black Panther or Louis Farrakhan — or William Ayers — in Denver.
The operatives who would have Palin quote Pegler have been at it ever since. A key indicator came two weeks after the convention, when the McCain campaign ran its first ad tying Obama to the mortgage giant Fannie Mae. Rather than make its case by using a legitimate link between Fannie and Obama (or other Democratic leaders), the McCain forces chose a former Fannie executive who had no real tie to Obama or his campaign but did have a black face that could dominate the ad’s visuals.
There are no black faces high in the McCain hierarchy to object to these tactics. There hasn’t been a single black Republican governor, senator or House member in six years. This is a campaign where Palin can repeatedly declare that Alaska is “a microcosm of America” without anyone even wondering how that might be so for a state whose tiny black and Hispanic populations are each roughly one-third the national average. There are indeed so few people of color at McCain events that a black senior writer from The Tallahassee Democrat was mistakenly ejected by the Secret Service from a campaign rally in Panama City in August, even though he was standing with other reporters and showed his credentials. His only apparent infraction was to look glaringly out of place.
Could the old racial politics still be determinative? I’ve long been skeptical of the incessant press prognostications (and liberal panic) that this election will be decided by racist white men in the Rust Belt. Now even the dimmest bloviators have figured out that Americans are riveted by the color green, not black — as in money, not energy. Voters are looking for a leader who might help rescue them, not a reckless gambler whose lurching responses to the economic meltdown (a campaign “suspension,” a mortgage-buyout stunt that changes daily) are as unhinged as his wanderings around the debate stage.
To see how fast the tide is moving, just look at North Carolina. On July 4 this year — the day that the godfather of modern G.O.P. racial politics, Jesse Helms, died — The Charlotte Observer reported that strategists of both parties agreed Obama’s chances to win the state fell “between slim and none.” Today, as Charlotte reels from the implosion of Wachovia, the McCain-Obama race is a dead heat in North Carolina and Helms’s Republican successor in the Senate, Elizabeth Dole, is looking like a goner.
But we’re not at Election Day yet, and if voters are to have their final say, both America and Obama have to get there safely. The McCain campaign has crossed the line between tough negative campaigning and inciting vigilantism, and each day the mob howls louder. The onus is on the man who says he puts his country first to call off the dogs, pit bulls and otherwise.
October 12, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
The Terrorist Barack Hussein Obama
By FRANK RICH
IF you think way back to the start of this marathon campaign, back when it seemed preposterous that any black man could be a serious presidential contender, then you remember the biggest fear about Barack Obama: a crazy person might take a shot at him.
Some voters told reporters that they didn’t want Obama to run, let alone win, should his very presence unleash the demons who have stalked America from Lincoln to King. After consultation with Congress, Michael Chertoff, the homeland security secretary, gave Obama a Secret Service detail earlier than any presidential candidate in our history — in May 2007, some eight months before the first Democratic primaries.
The New York Times
October 12, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
The Terrorist Barack Hussein Obama
By FRANK RICH
IF you think way back to the start of this marathon campaign, back when it seemed preposterous that any black man could be a serious presidential contender, then you remember the biggest fear about Barack Obama: a crazy person might take a shot at him.
Some voters told reporters that they didn’t want Obama to run, let alone win, should his very presence unleash the demons who have stalked America from Lincoln to King. After consultation with Congress, Michael Chertoff, the homeland security secretary, gave Obama a Secret Service detail earlier than any presidential candidate in our history — in May 2007, some eight months before the first Democratic primaries.
“I’ve got the best protection in the world, so stop worrying,” Obama reassured his supporters. Eventually the country got conditioned to his appearing in large arenas without incident (though I confess that the first loud burst of fireworks at the end of his convention stadium speech gave me a start). In America, nothing does succeed like success. The fear receded.
Until now. At McCain-Palin rallies, the raucous and insistent cries of “Treason!” and “Terrorist!” and “Kill him!” and “Off with his head!” as well as the uninhibited slinging of racial epithets, are actually something new in a campaign that has seen almost every conceivable twist. They are alarms. Doing nothing is not an option.
All’s fair in politics. John McCain and Sarah Palin have every right to bring up William Ayers, even if his connection to Obama is minor, even if Ayers’s Weather Underground history dates back to Obama’s childhood, even if establishment Republicans and Democrats alike have collaborated with the present-day Ayers in educational reform. But it’s not just the old Joe McCarthyesque guilt-by-association game, however spurious, that’s going on here. Don’t for an instant believe the many mindlessly “even-handed” journalists who keep saying that the McCain campaign’s use of Ayers is the moral or political equivalent of the Obama campaign’s hammering on Charles Keating.
What makes them different, and what has pumped up the Weimar-like rage at McCain-Palin rallies, is the violent escalation in rhetoric, especially (though not exclusively) by Palin. Obama “launched his political career in the living room of a domestic terrorist.” He is “palling around with terrorists” (note the plural noun). Obama is “not a man who sees America the way you and I see America.” Wielding a wildly out-of-context Obama quote, Palin slurs him as an enemy of American troops.
By the time McCain asks the crowd “Who is the real Barack Obama?” it’s no surprise that someone cries out “Terrorist!” The rhetorical conflation of Obama with terrorism is complete. It is stoked further by the repeated invocation of Obama’s middle name by surrogates introducing McCain and Palin at these rallies. This sleight of hand at once synchronizes with the poisonous Obama-is-a-Muslim e-mail blasts and shifts the brand of terrorism from Ayers’s Vietnam-era variety to the radical Islamic threats of today.
That’s a far cry from simply accusing Obama of being a guilty-by-association radical leftist. Obama is being branded as a potential killer and an accessory to past attempts at murder. “Barack Obama’s friend tried to kill my family” was how a McCain press release last week packaged the remembrance of a Weather Underground incident from 1970 — when Obama was 8.
We all know what punishment fits the crime of murder, or even potential murder, if the security of post-9/11 America is at stake. We all know how self-appointed “patriotic” martyrs always justify taking the law into their own hands.
Obama can hardly be held accountable for Ayers’s behavior 40 years ago, but at least McCain and Palin can try to take some responsibility for the behavior of their own supporters in 2008. What’s troubling here is not only the candidates’ loose inflammatory talk but also their refusal to step in promptly and strongly when someone responds to it with bloodthirsty threats in a crowded arena. Joe Biden had it exactly right when he expressed concern last week that “a leading American politician who might be vice president of the United States would not just stop midsentence and turn and condemn that.” To stay silent is to pour gas on the fires.
It wasn’t always thus with McCain. In February he loudly disassociated himself from a speaker who brayed “Barack Hussein Obama” when introducing him at a rally in Ohio. Now McCain either backpedals with tardy, pro forma expressions of respect for his opponent or lets second-tier campaign underlings release boilerplate disavowals after ugly incidents like the chilling Jim Crow-era flashback last week when a Florida sheriff ranted about “Barack Hussein Obama” at a Palin rally while in full uniform.
From the start, there have always been two separate but equal questions about race in this election. Is there still enough racism in America to prevent a black man from being elected president no matter what? And, will Republicans play the race card? The jury is out on the first question until Nov. 4. But we now have the unambiguous answer to the second: Yes.
McCain, who is no racist, turned to this desperate strategy only as Obama started to pull ahead. The tone was set at the Republican convention, with Rudy Giuliani’s mocking dismissal of Obama as an “only in America” affirmative-action baby. We also learned then that the McCain campaign had recruited as a Palin handler none other than Tucker Eskew, the South Carolina consultant who had worked for George W. Bush in the notorious 2000 G.O.P. primary battle where the McCains and their adopted Bangladeshi daughter were slimed by vicious racist rumors.
No less disconcerting was a still-unexplained passage of Palin’s convention speech: Her use of an unattributed quote praising small-town America (as opposed to, say, Chicago and its community organizers) from Westbrook Pegler, the mid-century Hearst columnist famous for his anti-Semitism, racism and violent rhetorical excess. After an assassin tried to kill F.D.R. at a Florida rally and murdered Chicago’s mayor instead in 1933, Pegler wrote that it was “regrettable that Giuseppe Zangara shot the wrong man.” In the ’60s, Pegler had a wish for Bobby Kennedy: “Some white patriot of the Southern tier will spatter his spoonful of brains in public premises before the snow falls.”
This is the writer who found his way into a speech by a potential vice president at a national political convention. It’s astonishing there’s been no demand for a public accounting from the McCain campaign. Imagine if Obama had quoted a Black Panther or Louis Farrakhan — or William Ayers — in Denver.
The operatives who would have Palin quote Pegler have been at it ever since. A key indicator came two weeks after the convention, when the McCain campaign ran its first ad tying Obama to the mortgage giant Fannie Mae. Rather than make its case by using a legitimate link between Fannie and Obama (or other Democratic leaders), the McCain forces chose a former Fannie executive who had no real tie to Obama or his campaign but did have a black face that could dominate the ad’s visuals.
There are no black faces high in the McCain hierarchy to object to these tactics. There hasn’t been a single black Republican governor, senator or House member in six years. This is a campaign where Palin can repeatedly declare that Alaska is “a microcosm of America” without anyone even wondering how that might be so for a state whose tiny black and Hispanic populations are each roughly one-third the national average. There are indeed so few people of color at McCain events that a black senior writer from The Tallahassee Democrat was mistakenly ejected by the Secret Service from a campaign rally in Panama City in August, even though he was standing with other reporters and showed his credentials. His only apparent infraction was to look glaringly out of place.
Could the old racial politics still be determinative? I’ve long been skeptical of the incessant press prognostications (and liberal panic) that this election will be decided by racist white men in the Rust Belt. Now even the dimmest bloviators have figured out that Americans are riveted by the color green, not black — as in money, not energy. Voters are looking for a leader who might help rescue them, not a reckless gambler whose lurching responses to the economic meltdown (a campaign “suspension,” a mortgage-buyout stunt that changes daily) are as unhinged as his wanderings around the debate stage.
To see how fast the tide is moving, just look at North Carolina. On July 4 this year — the day that the godfather of modern G.O.P. racial politics, Jesse Helms, died — The Charlotte Observer reported that strategists of both parties agreed Obama’s chances to win the state fell “between slim and none.” Today, as Charlotte reels from the implosion of Wachovia, the McCain-Obama race is a dead heat in North Carolina and Helms’s Republican successor in the Senate, Elizabeth Dole, is looking like a goner.
But we’re not at Election Day yet, and if voters are to have their final say, both America and Obama have to get there safely. The McCain campaign has crossed the line between tough negative campaigning and inciting vigilantism, and each day the mob howls louder. The onus is on the man who says he puts his country first to call off the dogs, pit bulls and otherwise.
Freitag, Oktober 10, 2008
Nonsense........... A bit of Fry and Laurie, Jeff Bonham & Peanuts
Privatization of the Police force:
Marjories Fall:
Achmed the dead Terrorist:
Drugs....In the strip club and "The Gayman"
Marjories Fall:
Achmed the dead Terrorist:
Drugs....In the strip club and "The Gayman"
Donnerstag, Oktober 09, 2008
Mittwoch, Oktober 08, 2008
New York Times: Thomas L. Friedmann on Paying Taxes
The New York Times
Op-Ed Columnist
Palin’s Kind of Patriotism
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: October 7, 2008
Criticizing Sarah Palin is truly shooting fish in a barrel. But given the huge attention she is getting, you can’t just ignore what she has to say. And there was one thing she said in the debate with Joe Biden that really sticks in my craw. It was when she turned to Biden and declared: “You said recently that higher taxes or asking for higher taxes or paying higher taxes is patriotic. In the middle class of America, which is where Todd and I have been all of our lives, that’s not patriotic.”
The New York Times
Op-Ed Columnist
Palin’s Kind of Patriotism
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: October 7, 2008
Criticizing Sarah Palin is truly shooting fish in a barrel. But given the huge attention she is getting, you can’t just ignore what she has to say. And there was one thing she said in the debate with Joe Biden that really sticks in my craw. It was when she turned to Biden and declared: “You said recently that higher taxes or asking for higher taxes or paying higher taxes is patriotic. In the middle class of America, which is where Todd and I have been all of our lives, that’s not patriotic.”
What an awful statement. Palin defended the government’s $700 billion rescue plan. She defended the surge in Iraq, where her own son is now serving. She defended sending more troops to Afghanistan. And yet, at the same time, she declared that Americans who pay their fair share of taxes to support all those government-led endeavors should not be considered patriotic.
I only wish she had been asked: “Governor Palin, if paying taxes is not considered patriotic in your neighborhood, who is going to pay for the body armor that will protect your son in Iraq? Who is going to pay for the bailout you endorsed? If it isn’t from tax revenues, there are only two ways to pay for those big projects — printing more money or borrowing more money. Do you think borrowing money from China is more patriotic than raising it in taxes from Americans?” That is not putting America first. That is selling America first.
Sorry, I grew up in a very middle-class family in a very middle-class suburb of Minneapolis, and my parents taught me that paying taxes, while certainly no fun, was how we paid for the police and the Army, our public universities and local schools, scientific research and Medicare for the elderly. No one said it better than Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes: “I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization.”
I can understand someone saying that the government has no business bailing out the financial system, but I can’t understand someone arguing that we should do that but not pay for it with taxes. I can understand someone saying we have no business in Iraq, but I can’t understand someone who advocates staying in Iraq until “victory” declaring that paying taxes to fund that is not patriotic.
How in the world can conservative commentators write with a straight face that this woman should be vice president of the United States? Do these people understand what serious trouble our country is in right now?
We are in the middle of an economic perfect storm, and we don’t know how much worse it’s going to get. People all over the world are hoarding cash, and no bank feels that it can fully trust anyone it is doing business with anywhere in the world. Did you notice that the government of Iceland just seized the country’s second-largest bank and today is begging Russia for a $5 billion loan to stave off “national bankruptcy.” What does that say? It tells you that financial globalization has gone so much farther and faster than regulatory institutions could govern it. Our crisis could bankrupt Iceland! Who knew?
And we have not yet even felt the full economic brunt here. I fear we may be at that moment just before the tsunami hits — when the birds take flight and the insects stop chirping because their acute senses can feel what is coming before humans can. At this moment, only good governance can save us. I am not sure that this crisis will end without every government in every major economy guaranteeing the creditworthiness of every financial institution it regulates. That may be the only way to get lending going again. Organizing something that big and complex will take some really smart governance and seasoned leadership.
Whether or not I agree with John McCain, he is of presidential timber. But putting the country in the position where a total novice like Sarah Palin could be asked to steer us through possibly the most serious economic crisis of our lives is flat out reckless. It is the opposite of conservative.
And please don’t tell me she will hire smart advisers. What happens when her two smartest advisers disagree?
And please also don’t tell me she is an “energy expert.” She is an energy expert exactly the same way the king of Saudi Arabia is an energy expert — by accident of residence. Palin happens to be governor of the Saudi Arabia of America — Alaska — and the only energy expertise she has is the same as the king of Saudi Arabia’s. It’s about how the windfall profits from the oil in their respective kingdoms should be divided between the oil companies and the people.
At least the king of Saudi Arabia, in advocating “drill baby drill,” is serving his country’s interests — by prolonging America’s dependence on oil. My problem with Palin is that she is also serving his country’s interests — by prolonging America’s dependence on oil. That’s not patriotic. Patriotic is offering a plan to build our economy — not by tax cuts or punching more holes in the ground, but by empowering more Americans to work in productive and innovative jobs. If Palin has that kind of a plan, I haven’t heard it.
Op-Ed Columnist
Palin’s Kind of Patriotism
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: October 7, 2008
Criticizing Sarah Palin is truly shooting fish in a barrel. But given the huge attention she is getting, you can’t just ignore what she has to say. And there was one thing she said in the debate with Joe Biden that really sticks in my craw. It was when she turned to Biden and declared: “You said recently that higher taxes or asking for higher taxes or paying higher taxes is patriotic. In the middle class of America, which is where Todd and I have been all of our lives, that’s not patriotic.”
The New York Times
Op-Ed Columnist
Palin’s Kind of Patriotism
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: October 7, 2008
Criticizing Sarah Palin is truly shooting fish in a barrel. But given the huge attention she is getting, you can’t just ignore what she has to say. And there was one thing she said in the debate with Joe Biden that really sticks in my craw. It was when she turned to Biden and declared: “You said recently that higher taxes or asking for higher taxes or paying higher taxes is patriotic. In the middle class of America, which is where Todd and I have been all of our lives, that’s not patriotic.”
What an awful statement. Palin defended the government’s $700 billion rescue plan. She defended the surge in Iraq, where her own son is now serving. She defended sending more troops to Afghanistan. And yet, at the same time, she declared that Americans who pay their fair share of taxes to support all those government-led endeavors should not be considered patriotic.
I only wish she had been asked: “Governor Palin, if paying taxes is not considered patriotic in your neighborhood, who is going to pay for the body armor that will protect your son in Iraq? Who is going to pay for the bailout you endorsed? If it isn’t from tax revenues, there are only two ways to pay for those big projects — printing more money or borrowing more money. Do you think borrowing money from China is more patriotic than raising it in taxes from Americans?” That is not putting America first. That is selling America first.
Sorry, I grew up in a very middle-class family in a very middle-class suburb of Minneapolis, and my parents taught me that paying taxes, while certainly no fun, was how we paid for the police and the Army, our public universities and local schools, scientific research and Medicare for the elderly. No one said it better than Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes: “I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization.”
I can understand someone saying that the government has no business bailing out the financial system, but I can’t understand someone arguing that we should do that but not pay for it with taxes. I can understand someone saying we have no business in Iraq, but I can’t understand someone who advocates staying in Iraq until “victory” declaring that paying taxes to fund that is not patriotic.
How in the world can conservative commentators write with a straight face that this woman should be vice president of the United States? Do these people understand what serious trouble our country is in right now?
We are in the middle of an economic perfect storm, and we don’t know how much worse it’s going to get. People all over the world are hoarding cash, and no bank feels that it can fully trust anyone it is doing business with anywhere in the world. Did you notice that the government of Iceland just seized the country’s second-largest bank and today is begging Russia for a $5 billion loan to stave off “national bankruptcy.” What does that say? It tells you that financial globalization has gone so much farther and faster than regulatory institutions could govern it. Our crisis could bankrupt Iceland! Who knew?
And we have not yet even felt the full economic brunt here. I fear we may be at that moment just before the tsunami hits — when the birds take flight and the insects stop chirping because their acute senses can feel what is coming before humans can. At this moment, only good governance can save us. I am not sure that this crisis will end without every government in every major economy guaranteeing the creditworthiness of every financial institution it regulates. That may be the only way to get lending going again. Organizing something that big and complex will take some really smart governance and seasoned leadership.
Whether or not I agree with John McCain, he is of presidential timber. But putting the country in the position where a total novice like Sarah Palin could be asked to steer us through possibly the most serious economic crisis of our lives is flat out reckless. It is the opposite of conservative.
And please don’t tell me she will hire smart advisers. What happens when her two smartest advisers disagree?
And please also don’t tell me she is an “energy expert.” She is an energy expert exactly the same way the king of Saudi Arabia is an energy expert — by accident of residence. Palin happens to be governor of the Saudi Arabia of America — Alaska — and the only energy expertise she has is the same as the king of Saudi Arabia’s. It’s about how the windfall profits from the oil in their respective kingdoms should be divided between the oil companies and the people.
At least the king of Saudi Arabia, in advocating “drill baby drill,” is serving his country’s interests — by prolonging America’s dependence on oil. My problem with Palin is that she is also serving his country’s interests — by prolonging America’s dependence on oil. That’s not patriotic. Patriotic is offering a plan to build our economy — not by tax cuts or punching more holes in the ground, but by empowering more Americans to work in productive and innovative jobs. If Palin has that kind of a plan, I haven’t heard it.
Montag, Oktober 06, 2008
Jon Stewart on the US election and Bill Maher on his movie "Religulous"
Jon Steward and The Daily Show! Real News!
The Daily Show from Sept. 30th 2008
enjoy!
:-)
(ignore the ads, and click on "Verweigern" when you are asked to give the flash player more memory.)
The Daily Show from Sept. 30th 2008
enjoy!
:-)
(ignore the ads, and click on "Verweigern" when you are asked to give the flash player more memory.)
Paul Krugmann in the NYT on health care
The New York Times
October 6, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Health Care Destruction
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Sarah Palin ended her debate performance last Thursday with a slightly garbled quote from Ronald Reagan about how, if we aren’t vigilant, we’ll end up “telling our children and our children’s children” about the days when America was free. It was a revealing choice.
The New York Times
October 6, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Health Care Destruction
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Sarah Palin ended her debate performance last Thursday with a slightly garbled quote from Ronald Reagan about how, if we aren’t vigilant, we’ll end up “telling our children and our children’s children” about the days when America was free. It was a revealing choice.
You see, when Reagan said this he wasn’t warning about Soviet aggression. He was warning against legislation that would guarantee health care for older Americans — the program now known as Medicare.
Conservative Republicans still hate Medicare, and would kill it if they could — in fact, they tried to gut it during the Clinton years (that’s what the 1995 shutdown of the government was all about). But so far they haven’t been able to pull that off.
So John McCain wants to destroy the health insurance of nonelderly Americans instead.
Most Americans under 65 currently get health insurance through their employers. That’s largely because the tax code favors such insurance: your employer’s contribution to insurance premiums isn’t considered taxable income, as long as the employer’s health plan follows certain rules. In particular, the same plan has to be available to all employees, regardless of the size of their paycheck or the state of their health.
This system does a fairly effective job of protecting those it reaches, but it leaves many Americans out in the cold. Workers whose employers don’t offer coverage are forced to seek individual health insurance, often in vain. For one thing, insurance companies offering “nongroup” coverage generally refuse to cover anyone with a pre-existing medical condition. And individual insurance is very expensive, because insurers spend large sums weeding out “high-risk” applicants — that is, anyone who seems likely to actually need the insurance.
So what should be done? Barack Obama offers incremental reform: regulation of insurers to prevent discrimination against the less healthy, subsidies to help lower-income families buy insurance, and public insurance plans that compete with the private sector. His plan falls short of universal coverage, but it would sharply reduce the number of uninsured.
Mr. McCain, on the other hand, wants to blow up the current system, by eliminating the tax break for employer-provided insurance. And he doesn’t offer a workable alternative.
Without the tax break, many employers would drop their current health plans. Several recent nonpartisan studies estimate that under the McCain plan around 20 million Americans currently covered by their employers would lose their health insurance.
As compensation, the McCain plan would give people a tax credit — $2,500 for an individual, $5,000 for a family — that could be used to buy health insurance in the individual market. At the same time, Mr. McCain would deregulate insurance, leaving insurance companies free to deny coverage to those with health problems — and his proposal for a “high-risk pool” for hard cases would provide little help.
So what would happen?
The good news, such as it is, is that more people would buy individual insurance. Indeed, the total number of uninsured Americans might decline marginally under the McCain plan — although many more Americans would be without insurance than under the Obama plan.
But the people gaining insurance would be those who need it least: relatively healthy Americans with high incomes. Why? Because insurance companies want to cover only healthy people, and even among the healthy only those able to pay a lot in addition to their tax credit would be able to afford coverage (remember, it’s a $5,000 credit, but the average family policy actually costs more than $12,000).
Meanwhile, the people losing insurance would be those who need it most: lower-income workers who wouldn’t be able to afford individual insurance even with the tax credit, and Americans with health problems whom insurance companies won’t cover.
And in the process of comforting the comfortable while afflicting the afflicted, the McCain plan would also lead to a huge, expensive increase in bureaucracy: insurers selling individual health plans spend 29 percent of the premiums they receive on administration, largely because they employ so many people to screen applicants. This compares with costs of 12 percent for group plans and just 3 percent for Medicare.
In short, the McCain plan makes no sense at all, unless you have faith that the magic of the marketplace can solve all problems. And Mr. McCain does: a much-quoted article published under his name declares that “Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.”
I agree: the McCain plan would do for health care what deregulation has done for banking. And I’m terrified.
October 6, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Health Care Destruction
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Sarah Palin ended her debate performance last Thursday with a slightly garbled quote from Ronald Reagan about how, if we aren’t vigilant, we’ll end up “telling our children and our children’s children” about the days when America was free. It was a revealing choice.
The New York Times
October 6, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Health Care Destruction
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Sarah Palin ended her debate performance last Thursday with a slightly garbled quote from Ronald Reagan about how, if we aren’t vigilant, we’ll end up “telling our children and our children’s children” about the days when America was free. It was a revealing choice.
You see, when Reagan said this he wasn’t warning about Soviet aggression. He was warning against legislation that would guarantee health care for older Americans — the program now known as Medicare.
Conservative Republicans still hate Medicare, and would kill it if they could — in fact, they tried to gut it during the Clinton years (that’s what the 1995 shutdown of the government was all about). But so far they haven’t been able to pull that off.
So John McCain wants to destroy the health insurance of nonelderly Americans instead.
Most Americans under 65 currently get health insurance through their employers. That’s largely because the tax code favors such insurance: your employer’s contribution to insurance premiums isn’t considered taxable income, as long as the employer’s health plan follows certain rules. In particular, the same plan has to be available to all employees, regardless of the size of their paycheck or the state of their health.
This system does a fairly effective job of protecting those it reaches, but it leaves many Americans out in the cold. Workers whose employers don’t offer coverage are forced to seek individual health insurance, often in vain. For one thing, insurance companies offering “nongroup” coverage generally refuse to cover anyone with a pre-existing medical condition. And individual insurance is very expensive, because insurers spend large sums weeding out “high-risk” applicants — that is, anyone who seems likely to actually need the insurance.
So what should be done? Barack Obama offers incremental reform: regulation of insurers to prevent discrimination against the less healthy, subsidies to help lower-income families buy insurance, and public insurance plans that compete with the private sector. His plan falls short of universal coverage, but it would sharply reduce the number of uninsured.
Mr. McCain, on the other hand, wants to blow up the current system, by eliminating the tax break for employer-provided insurance. And he doesn’t offer a workable alternative.
Without the tax break, many employers would drop their current health plans. Several recent nonpartisan studies estimate that under the McCain plan around 20 million Americans currently covered by their employers would lose their health insurance.
As compensation, the McCain plan would give people a tax credit — $2,500 for an individual, $5,000 for a family — that could be used to buy health insurance in the individual market. At the same time, Mr. McCain would deregulate insurance, leaving insurance companies free to deny coverage to those with health problems — and his proposal for a “high-risk pool” for hard cases would provide little help.
So what would happen?
The good news, such as it is, is that more people would buy individual insurance. Indeed, the total number of uninsured Americans might decline marginally under the McCain plan — although many more Americans would be without insurance than under the Obama plan.
But the people gaining insurance would be those who need it least: relatively healthy Americans with high incomes. Why? Because insurance companies want to cover only healthy people, and even among the healthy only those able to pay a lot in addition to their tax credit would be able to afford coverage (remember, it’s a $5,000 credit, but the average family policy actually costs more than $12,000).
Meanwhile, the people losing insurance would be those who need it most: lower-income workers who wouldn’t be able to afford individual insurance even with the tax credit, and Americans with health problems whom insurance companies won’t cover.
And in the process of comforting the comfortable while afflicting the afflicted, the McCain plan would also lead to a huge, expensive increase in bureaucracy: insurers selling individual health plans spend 29 percent of the premiums they receive on administration, largely because they employ so many people to screen applicants. This compares with costs of 12 percent for group plans and just 3 percent for Medicare.
In short, the McCain plan makes no sense at all, unless you have faith that the magic of the marketplace can solve all problems. And Mr. McCain does: a much-quoted article published under his name declares that “Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.”
I agree: the McCain plan would do for health care what deregulation has done for banking. And I’m terrified.
Abonnieren
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