Thank you to Owen McCaffrey for this new political party for NZ focused on money and land reform. Recently born, it focuses on bringing in a land tax and money reform, issues that have been discussed widely on this blog.

Added to that is a citizens income, disestablishment of welfare, better infrastructure and importantly a compulsory health insurance.

It will be interesting to discuss these issues further. I may invite Owen to expand on them here. The name is a bit of a mouthful but that can be worked on.

It’s a very good start though.

Obesity, alcohol and smoking are 3 serious health issues that many countries are struggling with. A rather interesting and challenging proposal has been put forward by Julian Le Grand, a former Blair advisor, which has been dubbed as “libertarian paternalism”.

It’s kind of kooky but has some merits once you wade through the initial reactions. The idea of getting a permit to smoke is not likely to win much support but what it does is create an extra layer in the choice process. If we assume that people are not rational actors (opposite to received economic theory) then asking them to consider the choice before they make it may have some merit.

This is a similar approach that I have often thought might work with drugs, namely that you have to apply for a permit to gain access to the required drug from a doctor. Implicitly this means rocking up and saying yes i’m an addict and a need a prescription. You then get your drug for example heroin, which would be pure and therefore less harmful, from the medical authorities.

We know what a healthy and balanced lifestyle looks like but for many that is a pipe dream. Could this proposal help or is it just another bad idea with good intentions?

Bjorn Lomborg is back with a new book and lots of publicity. Called “Cool It” it looks more closely at the benefits as well as the costs of a warming climate. What separates Lomborg from the climate change sceptics is that he readily agrees on the problem but not the solutions.

His main focus is always to step back from the hysteria and hype and look more pragmatically at the problem. I would say this is a sensible approach though it’s hard to ever get sensible debate when it comes to the environment.

Nothing else quite allows people to represent themselves as good or worthy and label others as bad or dirty.

Lomborg is not into saving the planet. He’s into calm reasoning and tries to stay within the remits of his expertise as a statistician. Interestingly enough Al Gore has been getting a judicial working over in the UK over his alarmist portrayal of the situation.

The moral of this story is that we need to make reasoned policy based on what we know and can observe. That a warmer climate presents severe challenges is not without doubt but let’s keep a clear head whilst working out what, if anything, we can do about it.

Letting issues like this develop into a battle between good and bad just leads to reactive approaches. Lomborg falls somewhere in between and is worth listening too even if just to disagree with.

Thanks for Celsias for this post on the updating of the Montreal Protocol. It seems obvious that this successful treaty should be the starting point for any treaty on greenhouse gases but many of the lessons derived from those intense negotiations haven’t fully be absorbed into the Kyoto process.

It’s not too late to have another look. Many Kyoto advocates have told me there is too much time and money invested in it to change tack now. Well that’s not good enough. If Kyoto is not going to work then it should be set aside. It doesn’t mean a step back but a step forward.

So i’m dusting off my proposal based around Montreal. I think it’s time to realise that major reductions can only come from the supply side.

See Climate Control and also have a look at Oliver Tickell’s proposal Kyoto 2.

For those who haven’t read it yet here is link to the complete report on the future of search. It’s an eye opening read and hopefully will give rise to new ideas, new research and even new businesses.

For me it is the democratic nature of the web that excites me. For now i’ve just focused on the delivery of the architecture that will make us form the web around us rather than having to shop through designated ports.

I think that is well on the way to happening.

I’m also thinking about the impact on governance. By this i mean the way we allow ourselves to be governed: our electoral processes, our engagement and involvement in political systems and how we make ourselves heard.

The coming versions of the web will not just make business more efficient, or general life but our political systems, our governments who eat up 30-50% of our GDP depending where you live.

The ultimate political feedback and citizen engagement system is going to rise up from the web. The powers that be are not likely to embrace this as many of them will be out of a job.

E-government is a web 1.0 framework. Imagine what it could look like in future versions. Maybe we can set up a  dream team for that?

The credit inspired boom of the last 15 years is now over. Markets are in severe dislocation and whilst underlying economies are very sound there is a serious problem in global banking liquidity.

On the good side we have record low unemployment and company profits are in good shape. But the driver of that has been consumption driven by an expanding money supply which has driven up asset prices and created a wave of paper wealth.

Interest rates have been hiked up to halt this boom. It’s too late. The record low rates in the US over the last 5 years created easy money that was too good to refuse. As rates were jacked up people realised they hadn’t done their sums properly.

Wave after wave of derivative offers, capital guaranteed notes and other “too good to be true” offers have come pouring forth. There is nothing so easy as making money out of money.

But mathematics will always intervene. Compound interest takes no prisoners in its tsunami like advance across personal and corporate balance sheets.

The central banks now have no option but to step in and sort this mess out. The risk of systemic crash is clearly a possibility now, not just in stock markets but banking systems.

Whether markets can recover from here is a moot point. They always do eventually whether its months or years.

If the consumer goes to sleep expect a recession plain and simple. It wont matter where you are or what you do.

The important point is that our financial systems need a serious revamp. The gross expansion of the global money supply, condoned by the global central banks, needs a full inquiry.

Nothing less will do.