Christine Lagarde's view of the future ... and mine

Here's an example of me posting something because it gets it into play, and removes a piece of paper from my pending tray, even though I haven't achieved a complete analysis.

I watched Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the IMF, give the annual BBC Richard Dimbleby Lecture on 4 Feb 14.  Her title was A New Multilateralism for the 21st Century
- the text is on the IMF site.

Here are the notes I made as I watched:

• digital revolution
• hyper-connectivity
• tweet and the Arab Spring
• we can eradicate poverty
• we could have more frequent financial crises
• the UN recognises almost 4,000 non-government organisations
• with more connection we have less consensus
• three big challenge areas:

1. demography & migration
2. environment:  water, food, energy - climate change - pay for the damage caused
3. income inequality - economists see importance now - inclusive growth

• global interest before self-interest
• rekindle the Bretton Woods spirit

Yes, that's it, that's my notes.  The speech reached across the world and way out into the future.  It's worth reading the whole text via the link above.

My difficulty is that even the IMF still seems to see growth, ok, inclusive growth, as the answer to all things with the implication that it is a sustainable model into the medium term (many decades) future.  

I simply don't agree.  It seems to me that the emerging economies are being guided, beguiled, suckered or forced into repeating the same mistakes the developed economies have made in their financial management.  The program on China by Robert Peston this week only reinforces that view.

We need a business model for the world that is 'beyond growth'.  I say 'beyond' because clearly we need some more growth to climb out of the current mess, if that is even possible (and Moneyweek says for the UK it's not - we will apparently collapse like Greece).  However we should be thinking now about the multi-decade strategy that creates stability and prosperity (and equality) without relying solely on continued growth for ever.

Watch this space (blog) for further thinking.

Joined up Journalism

I recently rediscovered Adam Curtis, the investigative journalist and documentary film-maker.  I can't imagine what made me lose him in the first place - he's a man to follow.

I read his blog of Dec 2013 subtitled "The point at which journalism fails and modern power begins", and it gave me considerable pause for thought.

For some time I have been thinking that our global society is so complex that it's impossible to really validate any particular analysis or explanation that is offered by expert observers or the experts themselves.  To be technologically topical, the trouble with Big Data is that you can choose to slice and dice it in a way that proves the point you want to make for your own nefarious purposes.

Going back to the Curtis blog, he talks about McClure's Magazine which at the beginning of the 1900s did the first big exposé of bad practice in big business and politics.  But could the readers validate what McClure was saying?  I bet the targets of his three articles had some strong denials and counter explanations.  Or was the Magazine simply publishing on a wider scale what the readers already knew to be true?  So do we believe McClure?  How do we validate that?  Actually the answer is partly in the work at that time, because they did produce hard evidence, and partly in the lens of historical perspective, which shows the same picture from multiple sources.

Curtis says "The new journalism that McClure began spread like wildfire - and politicians took notice. They were led by the new President, Theodore Roosevelt, who decided to use the law to break the monopolies - or what he called "The Octopus" that was strangling democracy."  But Curtis makes a very simple link there, that Roosevelt took notice of McClure's journalism; that's not proved, although they apparently knew each other - Roosevelt already had a record as Police Commissioner of New York City and then Governor of New York of cleaning up the systems and removing corruption and fraud.  So do we believe Curtis?  How do we validate that? Perhaps I could if I did research beyond a quick google (which proved nothing), but is the public going to do that?  In principle I believe Curtis, or at least I believe his intentions, because of his body of work.  But it was complicated then, in 1906 - how many more times the power of ten is it complicated now?

Curtis ends with "Maybe today we are being farmed by the new system of power. But we can't see quite how it is happening - and we need a new journalism to explain what is really going on."  Yet are we not doing the investigative, exposure journalism all over the place now - wouldn't McClure be proud?  Is the problem simply that it is not joined up? And is that cock-up ... or conspiracy?  

Maybe we can't or won't join up the dots to see the biggest of pictures because the landscape is just too damned big.  And maybe because people, journalists included, have to specialise or focus on specific areas because they can't cover everything, and then they want to keep within that area in order to increase their seniority, to become an expert.

So perhaps we need a new breed of meta-journalists, who will analyse and investigate journalism and work in a very horizontal manner and try to join up the problems we see in banking, in taxation, in corporate structures, in food quality, in political management, in environmental management, in arms sales, and so on and so on.  Quite a challenge.

The Gagging Law - still confused

So 38degrees asked me to fill in a survey, having lost the campaign to stop the component of the Lobbying Bill that will stop organisations like 38degrees campaigning on 'political' issues during the 12 months before an election.  (The vague wording here reflects my uncertainty on the detail, hence the suggestions below.)

Here's some of their questions and my answers:

What other ideas do you have for how we should handle the law?
There are a lot of simple statements, accusations and government-bashing going around.  It would be helpful to have a simple factual summary of precisely how the law restricts the normal 38degrees' activity

How would you describe to another 38 Degrees member why it’s worth carrying on campaigning?
The vote in the Lords was in effect a tie.  Therefore in principle nothing was decided, so nothing should change until it is re-examined.

Any other comments?
Presumably a number of Liberal Democrats voted for this, and yet by all accounts it is neither liberal nor democratic - could we get a LibDem MP and a Lord to explain to us precisely why they voted for it.  If we understand the other view we can spot and exploit weaknesses.