Have We Seen That Apprentice Somewhere Before?

I am a big fan of The Apprentice, it is a great programme that allows us to laugh and despair at those people who consider themselves high flyers in the world of business - but who, for the most part, actually need a bit of help tying their own shoelaces.

It's often a triumph of self belief and business jargon over any sort of ability or sense of business judgement, and it seems that this series is no different.

And thank goodness for that.

If you missed it then you can visit the website here and watch the highlights - the boardroom argument between Raef, Alex and Nicholas is in particular a wonder to behold.

One episode in and already we are talking about "class". Every series we have a situation where those who went to private school and have a priviliged upbringing snootily look down on those hardworking commoners who they do not see as being born to lead like them. It is quite an achievement that one week into this series a massive split has already been engineered and a row has ensued.

Nicholas de Lacy-Brown sneered at the hardworking Alex for being a "salesman", as if that was some sort of insult when their task most weeks is to be able to sell a product. "You are a salesman", said de Lacy-Brown, before Alex ticked him off saying he was a "Area Manager".

"OK, you're a manager of salespeople", de Lacy-Brown smirked, feeling he had really rammed home his point - forgetting perhaps for a moment that Sir Alan Sugar had worked his way up to multi-million pound entrepreneur from being a working class salesman.

Nicholas blamed the split on the group between the "educated" and "uneducated" people. Or rather those who were brought up to talk properly, and those who weren't. It was rather amusing that the person he directed his attack at for being uneducated was someone called Alexander Wotherspoon, a university graduate with a broad Yorkshire accent, who defended himself to the hilt saying "I went to private school, what do you mean uneducated".

And that is the joy of The Apprentice, even the "heroes" are idiot villains. And the "villains" are super-idiot villains.

Take Raef Bjayou, the man of the incredible fop quiff and self styled "entrepreneur", who said of the class debate (after whipping up the debate in the first place):

"I'm just finding this conversation just incredibly boring... I get on with Prince or pauper."

No prizes for guessing who he thought was the prince and who was the pauper in the class debate, and whilst Nicholas may like to talk about class, I have to wonder how much true class he possesses after attacking last year's super-idiot villain-in-chief Katie Hopkins, by saying:

"Err, has she looked in the mirror? I think she should look in the mirror, although if she does, she should be aware that it might crack, which might give her seven years' worse luck than she has had already."

Admittedly, she had said of him that he had the "most punchable face in the UK", but by this point I was already rather struck by how much Nicholas resembled Tory leader David Cameron.

The vacant, privately educated poseur who had absolutely nothing worthwhile to say whatsoever. Can you still not see the resemblance?

Although, of course, David Cameron would never have been voted off the show first - I am sure he at the very least knows the price of a lobster.
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(Photo Source: Dantadd, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Davidcameron.jpg)

Unintended Lesson (by Russell Roberts)

Last night, Hillary Clinton was on the Tonight Show and she gave a phenomenal example of the power of economics. Unfortunately, she did not appear to understand the example. At the 3:23 mark of this video, she tells a story (HT: Jim Colburn):

I was in Indianapolis the other day and I was shaking hands after I spoke. And there was this young boy about eleven years old and he's trying to tell me something—you know the crowd was yelling—so I leaned over and he said, "You know, my mom makes minimum wage and even though it went up, her hours were cut. So we're not making any more money. Can you help her?" You know,  when somebody says something like that to you, it really does kind of energize me.  I think, yeah, I can, I'm going to really try to help you, because this is wrong. And everywhere I go I hear stories like that about veterans who don't get health care, about people, who are, you know,  losing their jobs, and I think we can do so much better. So for me it's just get up every day and  fight on because this country's worth fighting for.

She then launched into a litany of economic disaster ("we're borrowing money from the Chinese to pay for oil from the Saudis") and finished up talking about the "deteriorating middle class."

I don't believe the story. What eleven year-old boy whispers into the ear of a big shot the details of his mother's wage/hours mix? And I like how she had to lean over--no one--not even Bill Richardson or Sinbad--can contradict her.

But let's give Hillary the benefit of the doubt. Suppose the story really did happen. She clearly thinks the story is emblematic of something important that needs to get fixed. What is it? Just when you help someone by passing a minimum wage, greedy employers ruin everything by lowering the hours. Well, we need to "fight" and fix that, too.

I wish Jay Leno had pointed out that the cut in hours was the result of passing the minimum wage--that it was as inevitable as gravity. I wish he'd said that the story showed how the minimum wage is a false promise of prosperity. I wish he'd pointed out that fighting isn't enough, caring isn't enough, that prosperity can't be legislated any more than self-interest can be made illegal. I wish Jay Leno had said that when you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is to stop digging.

And if that little boy really exists, I'd like to tell him that a Senator fighting for you is a losing proposition. You have to fight for yourself. If your Mom wants more money, she needs to go back to school or work a second job. And as for you, stay in school. It's the best way to avoid earning the minimum wage.

Baby Sleep, Childhood Obesity Tied

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KOAA.com

World’s largest swimming pool

 World’s largest swimming poolCool! Posted by BraunistLand to uploaded on Mon Apr 07 2008 at 04:25 UTC | info | related

Useful and Interesting Health IT Links from the Last Week – 23/03/2008

Again, in the last week, I have come across a few reports and news items which are worth passing on. These include first: AHRQ Awards $5 Million To Help Integrate Clinical Decision Support Technologies into Health Care Delivery Press Release Date: March 13, 2008 The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS') Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has awarded $5 million for two new health information technology contracts that will focus on the development, adoption, implementation and evaluation of best practices using clinical decision support. Clinical decision support helps health professionals make informed patient care decisions. The Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston and Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, CT, have been selected to incorporate clinical decision support into widely used health IT products, demonstrate cross-platform utility, and establish lessons learned for clinical decision support implementation across the health IT...

This is the initial part of the post - read more by clicking on the title of the article. David.

The 7 Best Foods We Never Eat - Pantry staples - Revolution Health

 The 7 Best Foods We Never Eat - Pantry staples - Revolution Healthwww.revolutionhealth.comCool health site... Posted by BraunistLand and 1 other to uploaded on Mon Apr 07 2008 at 04:25 UTC | info | related

New York Social Diary - Raoul Wallenberg Award

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PerspTut

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Los Angeles Discoveries

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Doubt is Their Product - Early Reviews are In

My book Doubt is Their Product: How Industry's Assault on Science Threatens Your Health (Oxford University Press, 2008) will be officially released May 1st (though it's available now through Amazon and Powell's), and I’ll be writing and speaking more about it over the next several weeks. The book reports on the way scientists working for “product defense” consulting firms manufacture uncertainty in order to help polluters and producers of dangerous products avoid or delay public health and environmental regulation.

I'm fortunate that Doubt is Their Product has already been reviewed by two journalists who do an excellent job describing the problems that decades of manufactured uncertainty have created for today's health and environmental advocates. The reviews by Chris Mooney at The American Prospect and Arthur Allen at The Washington Independent are both worth reading, whether or not you're seeking book-purchasing guidance.

In Doubt, I recount how the strategy of manufacturing uncertainty was pioneered by the tobacco industry. Clearly successful, it has been adopted by the asbestos, beryllium, chromium, and pesticide industries, among others, and it is the strategy used by global warming deniers. There are few industries that haven’t tried it - Andrew Dressler at Grist has a new piece on how the Indoor Tanning Association is trying to convince the public that “there is actually no evidence linking sun exposure with cancer.” (I talk about that in my book, too.)

Challenging the science behind any proposed environmental regulations has become standard operating procedure. Doubt is Their Product describes how polluters have not only delayed action on specific hazards, but, with the help of the Bush Administration, they have constructed barriers to make it harder for lawmakers, government agencies, and courts to respond to future threats.

In his review, Chris Mooney explains how product defense firms' exploitation of science leads to larger problems:

All of science is subject to such exploitation because all of science is fundamentally characterized by uncertainty. No study is perfect; each one is subject to criticism both illegitimate and legitimate — and so if you wish, you can make any scientific stance, even the most strongly established, appear weak and dubious. All you have to do is selectively highlight uncertainty, selectively attack the existing studies one by one, and ignore the weight of the evidence. Although Michaels focuses largely on the attempts to whitewash the risks that various chemicals pose to the workplace and public health, the same methods are also used to attack the scientific understanding of evolution and global warming.

And it happens virtually every time the government even dreams of regulating a substance. People know what’s going on, but they respond as if they’re simply shocked, shocked, to find science being tortured. And so the outgunned federal agencies that must consult science to take action — the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Environmental Protection Agency, and Food and Drug Administration, among others — repeatedly capitulate to corporations that effectively purchase science on demand.

We used to have a regulatory system — that was the dream, anyway, of the 1960s and 1970s. But in significant part due to the manufacturing-uncertainty strategy, we now have the bureaucratic equivalent of clotted arteries. And mercenary science hasn’t just blinded federal agencies. It has also blinded the courts, where the same tactics apply. Indeed, recent changes to the role of science in the federal regulatory system and the courts have worsened the situation by making corporate sabotage of scientific research easier than ever.

The 1998 Data Access Act (or “Shelby Amendment”) and the 2001 Data Quality Act, both originally a glint in Big Tobacco’s eye, enable companies to get the data behind publicly funded studies and help them challenge research that might serve as the basis for regulatory action. Meanwhile, the 1993 Supreme Court decision in the little-known Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals case further facilitates the strategy, unwisely empowering trial court judges to determine what is and what isn’t good science in civil cases. Under Daubert, judges have repeatedly spiked legitimate expert witnesses who were otherwise set to testify about the dangers demonstrated by epidemiological research. Often juries don’t even hear the science any more because the defense can get it thrown out pre-trial.

Arthur Allen, meanwhile, focuses on beryllium, a lightweight metal used in manufacturing nuclear weapons and other products. The Atomic Energy Commission started limiting workers' beryllium exposure in 1949, after many had already developed crippling lung disease; when it turned out that limit wasn't protective enough, both OSHA and the Department of Energy began the process of lowering the beryllium exposure limit. Brush Wellman, the largest U.S. manufacturer of beryllium, responded by hiring scientists to critique government studies and raising doubts about proposed new limits – and so far, OSHA still hasn't updated its inadequate beryllium exposure limit. Allen emphasizes the human toll that beryllium exposure can take:

From 1958 to 1993, Gary Renwand Sr. worked as a machinist at the Brush Wellman plant southeast of Toledo, Ohio, shaping parts for space capsule reentry shields, electrical switches and brake pads. "There was a lot of powder in the air," he told me. "We were never even told to wear masks until the last few years."

Toward the end of his work years, Renwand's mornings began with a coughing fit. Ultimately, he was diagnosed with chronic beryllium disease. He now heads a support group in Ohio for 200 other sick beryllium workers. Fifteen have died in the last few years.

In beryllium disease, which strikes as many as 15 percent of people exposed to the metal, the immune system goes into overdrive to try to rid the lungs of the invader. Renwand has been on a daily regimen of steroids for 15 years to counter his immune response. The steroids cause him to put on weight, and he now suffers from diabetes, heart disease and osteoporosis, in addition to breathing difficulties.

Renwand's oldest son, 51-year-old Gary Jr., has beryllium disease, too. And the elder Renwand worries about his youngest son, who is still working in the plant. "If I had known what I know now, I never would have let them go to work there. But there aren't a lot of decent-paying jobs around here."

It doesn’t have to be this way. There are ways to address these problems within our regulatory system and the court. I’ll be writing more about them in the weeks to come — and, of course, you can always learn about them from Doubt is Their Product itself.

Capital requirements smackdown watch

Eric Falkenstein writes:

How much capital for derivatives? Good question. Should it be weighted by risk? If so, how does one measure risk? Considering that risk is a function of the collateral, which comes in many different flavors (traded debt, pools of mortgages, pools of bank lines), and then are structured very differently, with differing levels of subordination, differing rules for the waterfalls of cashflows depending on various metrics of collateral quality. It's a mess.

...You may think this is no different than regular lending, but you would be wrong. For example, lets say you have two swaps, but they both offset each other almost exactly for interest rate risk, but as they have different counterparties, they have differing credit risk. How about swaps from the same counterparty, but differing interest rate exposures, partially netted. How much should capital be netted? And if the US banks have capital requirements greater than economically necessary, how many seconds before all swaps would move offshore?

I take him to be saying that financial institutions can never be transparent in their risk-taking, or at least not in the sense that can be made accountable to a regulator.  Read the whole thing.  Read also Doug Colkitt's comment here.  Note by the way that Bear Stearns, at the time of its collapse, had met Basel capital requirements.

Mark Thoma writes:

I'd argue that even though Basel was not perfect it was much better than having no regulation at all...If the regulations under Basel caused banks to move assets off the books, then without regulation they wouldn't have needed to move them, but the assets still could have been used in the same way, financial institutions could have taken the same risks and would have had the same or more incentive to do so without regulatory oversight, and they could have caused the same troubles. I don't see how the regulations themselves caused the risk taking. Regulation caused evasion of regulation, and Basel II is trying to deal with that problem, but the regulations did not cause the risk-taking itself.

Currently my view is closer to Thoma's.  The case against regulation requires that derivatives risk is observable (by the bank itself, and of course if it is not observable to anyone run the other way!) but not verifiable to an outside regulator (otherwise it could be controlled by regulation).  Even in that case, however, more informal systems of regulation should work, albeit imperfectly.  Yes banks will sometimes lie and trick the regulators but at least another layer of protection is in place.

There's lot of talk about the government buying up mortagages.  Even if you favor that plan, it's a one-off measure, not a long-term solution to stop a future crisis.  There is in fact a paucity of good regulatory proposals on the table.  There are plenty of ideas for how to stop what went wrong "last time" but fewer good ideas for how to stop the next version of a financial crisis.

Making Americans Poorer (by Don Boudreaux)

"Clinton Proposes Plan to Make Firms Inefficient" would have been a more accurate headline to this report at Newsweek.com.  I sent this letter in response:

Courting blue-collar votes, Hillary Clinton promises to use "tax incentives to persuade companies to 'insource' jobs in the United States" ("Clinton proposes plan to keep jobs in US," April 2).  Because firms 'outsource' jobs only when doing so lowers firms' costs of production, Mrs. Clinton's proposal amounts to bribing American firms not to lower production costs whenever possible.  She wants to encourage American firms to produce inefficiently, which is to say wastefully.  In short, she wants us to be poorer than we would otherwise be.

Mrs. Clinton's proposal is further evidence that good politics typically is bad economics.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux

More on Bartels

I'm a little surprised that the Bartels result is receiving so much attention because the result, in slightly different form, has long been known to political economists under the rubric of partisan business cycle theory.  In a nutshell, the theory of partisan business cycles says that Democrats care more about reducing unemployment, Republicans care more about reducing inflation.  Wage growth is set according to expected inflation in advance of an election.  Since which party will win the election is unknown wages growth is set according to a mean of the Democrat (high) and Republican (low) expected inflation rates.  If Democrats are elected they inflate and real wages fall creating a boom.  If Republicans are elected they reduce inflation and real wages rise creating a bust.  Notice that in PBC theory neither party creates a boom or bust it's uncertainty which drives the result - if the winning party were known there would be neither boom nor bust.

Ok, there's plenty to question about the theory but let's look at the data.

Notice that in the second year of just about every Democratic Presidency there is a boom.  Interestingly, the boom is biggest for Truman whose reelection was highly uncertain (remember Dewey wins!) thus expected inflation would have been low and the boom big.  Similarly the boom is smallest (relative to the surrounding years) for Clinton II a relatively certain reelection.

Now look at Republicans in just about every second year of a Republican Presidency there is a bust.  The one major exception being Reagan II where uncertainty about the outcome was low.

It's pretty clear that this result can explain Bartels's result which is exactly Tyler's point in his post.   It's equally clear that when we consider Presidents there aren't many data points.  (PBC does appear to hold somewhat in other countries).

Notice that the reason for the result, according to PBC, is sticky wages and the business cycle and not some nefarious story about taxes, oligarchies and political conspiracies.

Beyonce's Sister Mum On Wedding Reports

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More info on Zelda manga heading to NA

Viz isn’t talking about what Zelda manga is coming to the states, but they have confirmed a release date. We can look forward to October 7th as the first day where we can get our hands on a localized copy. While Viz wouldn’t confirm what manga they were bringing over, they did summarize the two volumes.

Volume 1

In the mystical land of Hyrule, three spiritual stones hold the key to the Triforce, and whoever holds them will control the world. A boy named Link sets out on a quest to deliver the Emerald, the spiritual stone of the forest, to Zelda, Princess of the land of Hyrule. The journey will be long and perilous, and Link will need all his skill and courage to defeat evil. The battle for Hyrule and the Sacred Realm has begun!

Volume 2
After completing his training Link begins his journey to seek the remaining Sages. Meanwhile, Ganondorf continues looking for Princess Zelda and plotting to capture Link with the aid of the witches known as Twinrova. At the urging of the mysterious Sheik, Link enters the Haunted Wasteland to find Zelda. The journey will be dangerous but Link is determined to overcome the Twinrova’s traps and survive to face Ganondorf in an epic final battle!

Link