Frank Vincent Zappa

Frank Vincent Zappa
Originally uploaded by Aquafilia

A surprising lesson in career fulfillment from Hollywood

I have just been to see State of Play, a decidedly good film with Russell Crowe and Ben Affleck. The most striking thing for me was how much I believed Crowe's character to absolutely, positively love what he did (being an investigative journalist). Not in the pretentious, self-righteous kind of way, which would remind me of Dustin Hoffman's character in All the President's Men, but simply the love of a job or a project that is so personally engrossing that you're willing and eager, for at least some period of time, to let it take up most, if not all, of your life. I've worked too hard, and life's too short, to settle for less than that.

What city would I retire to if money were no object?

If I have to spend my golden years in a single city, they won't be that golden.

Greed & Fear : The Economist and The Golden Age of Finance

'The golden age of finance collapsed under its own contradictions', says The Economist. Exactly - the same contradictions those arrogant twats have defended tooth and nail for years. 

Any reader of The Economist who has already forgotten the free-market, laisez-faire ideology this periodical has championed unreservedly, is as stupid and naive as the morons who are now swinging towards the Tories again. 

If the bankers were formally the 'Masters of the Universe', then The Economist was one of their slimy little propaganda machines, as riddled with duplicity as its masters, and equally complicit in the economic farce.

Jeffrey Sachs - putting $5 billion in the proper context

An extract from 

http://www.action.org/index.php/globalfund/conference_call/

Jeffrey Sachs: The Global Fund was established in 2001 and it was established on a very specific promise of the richest countries and of the poorest people and the promise was that if the Global Fund delivered, all valid programs would be funded. And this was repeated by world leaders every year. We were not to turn down approved programs. They have violated this pledge. They are in bad faith right now and it’s a very deep crisis. The promise is that malaria will be comprehensibly controlled with a comprehensive coverage of bed nets by the end of 2010 and essentially reducing deaths from malaria to near zero by 2012.

The world is supposed to be implementing a global Stop TB effort, which the scientific community and national policy makers have elaborated. The world is supposed to be guaranteeing universal access to antiretroviral medicines by the year 2010. These are three explicit, repeated commitments of the international community.

The Global Fund is the main vehicle for implementation. It is by far the most successful public health initiative in recent history. It has done exactly what it said it would do, which was to fund valid programs, track the results, and scale up.

Now, the countries have responded with scaling up. They’ve responded to the pledges for comprehensive control of AIDS, TB and malaria. They submitted plans in Round 8. And the Global Fund did not fully fund the approved plans. It already cut by 10 percent the budgets for the approved plans and it’s warned that it would have to cut by 25 percent the second half of those plans. It also postponed Round 9 for several months, which puts at risk the malaria control effort.

This is absolutely in violation of the life-and-death pledge that the rich world has made. Now, we’re talking about a few billion dollars and millions of lives. Can we find that money in an economic crisis? Well, look at the New York Times front page today, reporting the Wall Street bonuses for this Christmas in the middle of this catastrophe of $18.4 billion. That’s $18.4 billion bonuses in an industry which lost $35 billion this year. Those bonuses are in no small way being paid out of the TARP bailout fund. Is the money there? Yes, the money’s there. If we would open our eyes to the reality of broken promises and unbelievably egregious practices, we could easily channel money that is now going into these enterprises and right into private pockets into the mouths and therefore the lifesaving interventions for millions of people.

There is no shortage of funds at a moment when in three months the rich world has found about $3 trillion of funding for bank bailouts and in which there have been $18 billion of Christmas bonuses for Wall Street supported by bailout legislation. I hope that nobody could think that these could for one moment balance the lives that are stake.

AIM and Plus Markets

This evening I was invited to a couple of talks at a fairly major law firm in London about the current state of AIM and PLUS capital markets.

There was an interesting mix of businessmen, accountants, lawyers, chief executives, chairmen, and brokers. The fear in the room was palpable. I wasn't in the mood to network, but this gave me the opportunity to pick up snippets of conversations here and there. 

I found it funny how about one in ten of the group still spoke and walked around with the usual arrogance of men soaked in the London financial world of the past ten years, whilst the other nine seemed like gibbering wrecks.

It was one of those evenings when the falseness of the whole system was especially visable. Somebody asked "How can you be sure that the value at which the IPO is estimated really reflects the true value of your company?" These days, I'd recommend a ouija board.

Prospect Magazine focus group

This evening I participated in a focus group for Prospect magazine.

Eight guys, ranging from my age to about 50/55 I think. All either professionals of one kind or another, or in academia. There was a professor of literature as well as a surgeon who is also a lecturer in something or other medical at Oxford. It was very intimidating.

The discussion was great. It was really interesting listening to other people's opinions and ideas about the magazine (which I love). In general everybody was hugely positive about it, even protective and possessive in some ways. 

The nicest part was that the people in the room seemed to reflect the style and content of the magazine. They were people who I would very much have enjoyed a few pints with. How is it possible to meet and build up acquaintences with these sorts of people in a way that is not artificial and contrived?