The end of the ash?

Native English ash trees could be facing a similar fate to the elm. Ash dieback (chalara fraxinea), an airborne fungal disease which is fatal to the tree and has caused the death of most ashes in some continental countries, has now been identified for the first time in the wild here. It was found in plant nursery saplings at the beginning of the year but has now been found in native woodland in a Site of Special Scientific Interest in East Anglia owned by the Norfolk Wildlife Trust and another site in Suffolk owned by the Woodland Trust. The only effective remedial action is removing the trees, followed by burning or deep burial. The disease is so classified that the Forestry Commission has the power to issue a Statutory Plant Health Notice requiring the owner of the site to take action but as yet this has not been done, I imagine because effective action is seen as impracticable.

Although the disease was first discovered in nurseries in this country at the beginning of this year, given that it was found in several nurseries widely spread geographically, that the progress, and severe consequences, of it on the continent must have been known about for years (it is thought to have been a problem in Poland for the past twenty years), and the fact that ash tress naturally regenerate prolifically and grow like weeds in England, it is difficult to understand why the import of saplings was not banned long ago. The government is only now consulting on such a measure that could be introduced next month, but it appears almost certain to be too late. The natural regeneration of ash tress and their commonness in woodland and hedgerows makes the spread of the disease more likely, and with the onset of winter it will probably spread unnoticed by its clearest symptom, the withering and death of the leaves.

Yet we are told we have a government of countrymen. Elm, ash, oak ...

The ash is not only a valued and conspicuous (in many parts a dominant) feature of our landscape, it is a valuable timber tree - and the mainstay of green woodworking.

See also the report here.

Death and taxes?

Now, it seems, it's just death, at least for international corporations.

We have to remember that the tax base for a company is always based on the profits it reports. And the reported profit in each and every case is that of each individual company within a group, and not for the group as a whole. There is no such thing (at present) as group tax accounting. Whilst it's not quite true we ignore groups for tax we do start from an assumption that they don't exist and then tweak the system to allow for them. Accounting, on the other hand, fundamentally works the other way round: the group accounts are more important than the individual accounts.


See here.

What shall we spend it on?



Public expenditure as proportion of GDP



Where is the money to come from?

2012 UK budget

Where next for the banking 'crisis'?

China's shadow banking sector has become a potential source of systemic financial risk over the next few years. Particularly worrisome is the quality and transparency of WMPs. Many assets underlying the products are dependent on some empty real estate property or long-term infrastructure, and are sometimes even linked to high-risk projects, which may find it impossible to generate sufficient cash flow to meet repayment obligations.

Moreover, many WMPs are not even linked to any specific asset, rather, just to a pool of assets, whose cash inflows may often not match the timing of scheduled WMP repayments.

China's shadow banking is contributing to a growing liquidity risk in the financial markets. Most WMPs carry tenures of less than a year, with many being as short as weeks or even days. Thus in some cases short-term financing has been invested in long-term projects, and in such situations there is a possibility of a liquidity crisis being triggered if the markets were to be abruptly squeezed.

In fact, when faced with a liquidity problem, a simple way to avoid the problem could be through using new issuance of WMPs to repay maturing products. To some extent, this is fundamentally a Ponzi scheme. Under certain conditions, the music may stop when investors lose confidence and reduce their buying or withdraw from WMPs. The rollover of a large share of WMPs could weigh heavily on formal banks' reputations, because many investors firmly believe that banks won't close down and they can always get their money back.

The article quoted is written by Mr Gang and appeared in China Daily, a state controlled publication and the country's largest English language paper. The financial activity that concern Mr Gang would of course show up in the statistics as part of China's current economic growth.

I am indebted to Golem XIV for this reference and more comment on the article and the situation in China can be found on his blog.

Regulation

In our country and others in the west citizens worry that the perpetrators of white collar crime and financial fraud are almost never prosecuted.

In China they do things differently.

China is believed to execute about 4,000 people a year, according to human rights organization Dui Hua. And a number of those executed are white collar criminals.

Everyone from CEO's of mining companies, small business owners, and political figures have been given a death sentence after being found guilty of fraud, corruption, or illegal fund raising.

Recently netizens have protested the death sentence and got a few overturned. China's legal system is widely criticized because those with political clout are said to get off with lighter sentences.

What follows are some of the most notorious cases in which white collar criminals were given a death sentence or were executed. In some cases, the guilty were given a two-year reprieve i.e. if they committed no more crimes for two years and were on their best behavior their sentence would be amended to life in prison.

Note: Figures on the death penalty are a state secret. The number of executions have declined since 2007 because of a reform that required death penalties to be reviewed by the Supreme People's Court (SPC).

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/china-white-collar-criminals-death-sentence-2012-10?op=1#ixzz29ohDntC2   Quoted from http://www.businessinsider.com/china-white-collar-criminals-death-sentence-2012-10   If one opens the link to individual cases one is struck by how many of the cases concern either private individuals in seemingly relatively low-key positions fraudently raising tens of millions of dollars or regional government officials acting corruptly.

Silicon informality



Larry Page

 Just look at those creases. Not many lights in Africa.