Instead of addressing the economic crisis of the pandemic, monetary stimulus made it worse. It has contributed to a global affordability crisis in housing, a private insolvency crisis for tens of millions of people, provided the weathiest people in society with amounts ranging from hundreds of billions to trillions to buy more property and companies, all while increasing worker layoffs.
It created the economic distortions and crisis that our countries are all living through, pouring trillions of money into driving up the price of existing assets while nothing is going into productive activities. Trillions of dollars that could have gone to modern infrastructure, new power plants, housing, research and development or building everything from chip factories to battery plants to electric vehicle factores was squandered.
What is just as frustrating is that while central bankers seem oblivious, elected governments keep getting the blame for economic disruptions caused entirely by bad monetary policy and tsunami of debt it has unleashed. This is equally true across the political spectrum: debates centre entirely on government taxing, government spending, but not on reforming the policies of central banks who, in addition to the trillions of dollars they created for quantitative easing, also helped create over USD $25-trillion in credit with nothing to show for it.
Instead of recognizing that the housing affordability crisis, our productivity crises, and our personal debt crises were caused by this mind-boggling misallocation of investment, the blame has fallen on people, especially immigrants and refugees, for the fact that people in developed countries cannot get jobs that pay enough to afford a roof over their heads. It’s blamed on immigration, or Indigenous people, or whichever usual suspect is on the list, including by respected economists, who fail to recognize that we have a money problem that needs to be solved with money.
Wealth inequality, long identified as the biggest threat to the stability of democracies, has increased since the pandemic in entirely predictable ways.
The people I work with are now mostly facing years of austerity and at least a decade or more of catching up to underfunded services, infrastructure, and social needs, stagnant pay, and over inflated prices for essentials. Young people are having their future earnings extorted for an underfunded and over-valued post-secondary education and housing prices that are kept high to insure that middle class retirements don’t need to be funded by the state.
When governments praise economic growth as the way out of this mess, it’s important to remember that the gains of that growth largely go to the same people who benefit from low interest rates, which means that the people in the higher tranches of Lamott’s tables will continue to reap the benefits. Money that can be borrowed at 3% to make a 10% profit is a tasty proposition if you can afford it. Borrow cheap money, but “growth” equities and return the money. Awesome. If you have the capital to do it. And to get a few more percentage points of profit out of your equities, lower the operational costs of the company by replacing salaries with automation, or making the whole thing “efficient.” Which means throwing thousands of people out of work. All the while you aren’t taxed in that wealth because it isn’t year realized capital gains. In fact you can now borrow even more cheap money using your equities as collateral.
When governments start making noise about taxing that wealth, you can raise a stink about how inefficient and expensive public services are and how that puts a drag on investment, even though “investment” isn’t producing tangible and material development, just more vaporous equity.
And anyway, Lamont says that’s not even the right conversation to have. Wealth inequality is enabled by darker constraints and I appreciate that he brings a bit of light to what these are. We have no governments that are willing to address this situation meaningfully. Collapse is likely the only way out.
We live in an era of austerity during which there is more “money” in the world than there has ever been.
Above Calanque Port-Pin looking back to the Cap Canaille near Cassis.
I’m in the south of France on the first leg of a holiday that combines a few days in Cassis, a seven day walk through the villages of Provence and then some travelling and visiting of places like Arles, Avignon and elsewhere in the region. While we are in Cassis we have been hiking on the sea cliffs, which is my very favourite form of walking. Around here the cliffs are limestone escarpments that rise up out of the Mediterranean to heights of almost 400 meters. The Cap Canaille that I’m looking at now is considered the highest sea cliff on the French coast.
Last year we visited the west coast of Italy and although I have been to the Mediterranean several times, each time I visit I am more struck and more taken with the history of these waters. Of course its all around you, in the architecture, the most notable of which is the defence constructions because this place has long been the sight of conflict, war, invasion and piracy, and those things last.
But especially here in The Calanques, a set of limestone inlets that serrate the coast east of Marseille, the more ancient history is at play. Geologically, the Mediterranean is interesting becasue it has experienced cataclymisc floods and events for millions of years. There were times it was cut off from the Atlantic, giving rise to what is know as the Messinian salinity crisis . This was followed by the Zanclean deluge when the Atlantic Ocean rushed in and filled the basin in a mega flooding event that are almost unimaginable at scale.
And there were ice ages that lowered the sea level by hundreds of meters.
Now the coolest thing I thing I have learned on this trip so far has to do with the rising and falling sea levels induced by the ice ages and the nature of the limestone all around. Limestone of course is porus and highly soluble, and when water drips through it from the surface it can carve out vast cave complexes. All over this region are caves which have been used as hermitages, wine cellars, protection and food storage up to the present day. Some of these caves were formed when the sea level was much lower, and now that it has risen again, these underwater caves are incredible grottos for divers to explore.
There is a cave not too far from here that was discovered 37 meters below the surface of the sea, at the base of a cliff by a diving guide called Henri Cosquer. He discovered the cave which now bears his name through a series of solo dives. The cave has a small opening and is big and long, and extends for 175 meters, slightly upward until you come to the surface of the water, which forms a small lake inside a cavernous hall. Cosquer spent many years following the cave to this lake, nearly dying a few times. Mostly he did this solo and kept the location a secret. When he finally found the chamber he was amazed by the limestone formations inside. There were the usual stalictites and stalagmites that one associates with limestone caves. There were mushroom shaped rocks and all kinds of interesting features. Cosquer and his friends kept exploring the cave and enjoying these sights privately.
One day in 1991, accompanied by his niece and two members of the local diving club, he was exploring the cave when they found a stencilled hand print on the cave wall. This moment, when they realized that they were not the first people to have been here must have been absolutely hair raising. Here is a cave millions of years old, submerged beneath 37 meters of water on a rough part of the coast, requiring a treacherous and technical swim into the dry gallery and here was evidence that a person had been here already. I keep thinking about what the feeling must have been like. Words cannot describe it.
It turns out that the handprint they found was not singular. This cave was ornately and liberally decorated with hundreds of prehistoric drawings dating back to between 19,000 and 27,000 years ago. There are 65 hand stencils, and 177 animal drawings all made when the sea level was lower and access to the cave was easily made one dry land. There are remnants of fires built for illumination and warmth and there are tools sitting where they were placed by the artists that carved and drew on the wall. Cosquer reported the find to the government and from that point on it was protected, studied and recognized as an archeological marvel.
All of this is captured in a museum in Marseille we visited that offers a kind of kitschy amusement park ride through a simulation of the cave. The story of Cosquer’s rediscovery of the cave though is incredibly compelling and I simply can’t shake the feeling that he must have had upon seeing that first hand print in the dark. Terror, awe, confusion, reverence…all of it probably. There is something about connecting beyond massive epochs and moments of history and geology that, as these most intimate scales, seems so profoundly deep.
TSS Rovers Men 0 – 1 Langley United Men
TSS Rovers Women 1 – 2 Langley United Women
Our BC Premier League season continues to rocket out of the gate with our fourth matches of 14, and the first ones at our iconic home, Swangard Stadium. This was always set to be a spicy battle, because the Langley men’s team pipped us to the title last year on the last kick of the season, a 90+5′ penalty against the Whitecaps Academy that saw them claim three points in the final game, beating us by one. As a club, our men’s teams have had a few last minute heartbreaks over the years, including losing on penalties to Pacific FC after a last minute goal tied the quarter final of the 2023 Canadian Championship, losing the title to Highlanders on the last kick of the 2023 season and last year’s debacle. We’ve alos won a trophy on penalties so, well, karma has its way with us I suppose.
But the Langley men’s team is no mere rival. They dressed six of our former players, including Niko Papakyiakopolous, Ivan Meija, Tristan Otoumagie, Kyle Jones, Dominic Di Paola and former captain and club legend Connor MacMillian. Their head coach is our former assistant coach Azad Palani. This made for a weird vibe, and very few of us were not happy with the jumping of the ship that happened by our former players, even though the dazzled us several times. Thankfully none of them scored.
Langley have started the season strongly with nine goals and two clean sheets against the two worst teams in the league. So while we are finding our feet with a very new squad of players harvested from try outs and loans and our academy, they were starting strong and getting ready for a game against Vancouver FC in the Voyageurs Cup. We knew we were better than Nanaimo and Kamloops, and indeed we held them for 90 minutes to a 0-0 deadlock, thanks in part to some great saves from Cal Weir, three hit goal posts and no thanks to some squandered chances from our strikers.
But the twist was in the tail. After a hard fought game, Rovers were called for a penalty in added time and at 90+2, we fell yet again to this side that we are developing a serious dislike towards.
Our motto at Rovers is “we never want to see you again” which is about helping our players move on to professional careers. We don;t mean “join a rival and come back home and win on a late penalty.” Arg.
The women’s game was a different affair, even though our former women’s head coach is Chelsey Hannesson who is now in her second year coaching Langley. She hates to lose. And she hates to lose to us.
A couple of defensive gaffs from our women sealed this one for Langley. We ended up on the wrong end of a 2-1 result, but Langley will certainly feel like they stole a couple of points. A chipped goal from our striker Sophia Kramer cut the lead, but we couldn’t find more. However, we were brilliant on the ball. Our women’s teams plays an incredibly well drilled possession game, passing to explore and find openings, moving into invisible channels and really controlling the game. Our midfield consists of Sofia Faremo and Katie Bishop, two veterans who read each other’s minds and both of whom are capable of long distance strikes. Our backline is anchored by Sophie Campbell who I will not be surprised if she turns professional. She is calm, cool and collected at the back. We didn’t get the result, but it was a joy to watch, and a pleasure to be back home at Swangard Stadium, on the best pitch in the province.
The photo above is an astonishing reflection of the triple arch of the Milky Way and our solar system.
I LOVE LOVE LOVE Hank Green’s gentle awe as he reflects on the photos returned from the Artemis crew. Enjoy this video.
Remembering Norma Bailey’s floating store at Hot Springs Cove in Clayoquot Sound. I visited that place in 1989, the first time I ever came to this coast.
Animals share signals across space.
Just a few beautiful things from this little planet that is doing its best despite us letting it down.
The World Bank now thinks that nations should be setting industrial policy instead of just opening up their markets to whatever predatory investment comes along. Sorry about the last 50 years, I guess.
The description on the video says “Here is an extremely rare shellac master “test pressing” of the unissued (on 78) take 2 of “Cross Road Blues” (a.k.a. “Crossroad Blues”) by delta blues singer and guitarist Robert Johnson, recorded in 1936.” The sound has to be heard to be believed.
There is something delightful in witnessing an incredibly well thought through and technical takedown of an incredibly poor set of design choices. This year’s contender for the best has to be tonsky’s savage, evisceration of Apple’s, seemingly random icon choices for menus in its new Mac operating system