Month: April 2008

China Markets

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In recent years foreign equity markets have trounced US equity markets. While the US equity markets have stayed effectively flat since 2000, many foreign markets, such as China, scored robust gains.

To many people, myself included, any time stocks rise at this rate without “fundamental” positive changes to the environment, it smells of a bubble. Remember prior to 2000 when the dot-com stocks were going to remain at a “permanently high level”, or that the economic cycle had been tamed? These thoughts were shattered when the NASDAQ swooned 78% from peak to trough during its brutal fall.

I run some individual stocks for my nieces and nephews at this site and let them select from a list of stocks; in recent years there has been a strong emphasis on these well performing overseas issues. One stock that had a meteoric rise was China Mobile – the largest wireless firm in China (and the world) – whose stock went from under $40 / share to over $100 / share in about a year – remember this stock had an enormous market capitalization to begin with and anytime a large company has this type of stock performance it is extremely abnormal. We took our winnings and left; the stock has subsequently dropped significantly.

This chart from the WSJ article “China Stocks, Once Frothy, Fall by Half in Six Months” shows clearly the runup in the China index from 2006 (near 1000) to almost 6000 in late 2007, down to near 3000 today (April 2008).

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Quote of the Day

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Tom Smith sees art plain:

And now for some deep thoughts about Art. I think the heart of the problem is not that artists take themselves too seriously, but that everybody else takes them too seriously. People forget that art is fundamentally interior decoration. And occasionally outdoor decoration. The job of art is to produce stuff that rich people want to buy and put on their walls or in their gardens because it is nice to look at, or use, if you are talking about, for example, pots. Rich people here includes rich institutions, such as the Catholic Church. That is, contrary to what Ms. Something or Other of Yale says, art is a commodity. Well, maybe not a commodity. In justice, I suppose frequently it qualifies as a unique good for purposes of commercial law. But just a good. This notion that markets make bad art, is just the opposite of true. Institutions supporting art for non-market reasons produces bad art — political art, ideological art, art about issues, and so on. Dreadful stuff. Art produced for markets produces stuff you can imagine wanting to buy if you had the money.
 
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I think a good rule of thumb is that if a piece of art has to be explained to you before you can see why anybody would bother to make it or look at it, you are wasting your time looking at it. One useful thing about repellent performance art, such as videos of abortions, is that it disabuses people of their earnest middle class sentiment that art will somehow improve or elevate them, if only by opening their minds. It can do that, but it has to start with something else, and it has to have something to improve you and elevate you with, which is not going to be art itself. I suspect that governments giving money to artists has done a lot to promote bad art. Finally, there is a lot of shockingly dreadful Marxist theory of art stuff out there, which I advise you to avoid.

A tangentially related post is here.

A sing along with the Democratic candidates

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For some reason, Obama’s remark about bitter small-town people clinging to their guns and their religion made me think about this song:

She said fine and in thirty seconds time she said, I want to live like common people
I want to do whatever common people do, I want to sleep with common people
I want to sleep with common people like you.

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Sing along with the common people, sing along and it might just get you thru’
Laugh along with the common people
Laugh along even though they’re laughing at you and the stupid things that you do.

Oh, and I also have one for Hillary:

Didn’t take too long fore I found out
What people mean by down and out.
Spent my money, took my car,
Started tellin her friends she wants to be a star.
I dont know but I been told
A big legged woman ain’t got no soul.

Lex’s Favorite War Movies VII: The Dam Busters

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The Dam Busters is one of those classics I never got around to seeing. I finally saw it today, and it immediately gets classed as a favorite.

I was familiar with the story, from reading David Jablonski’s two volume Air War; when I was, I am guessing, twelve years old. I have sitting on my shelf Paul Brickhill’s book, entitled the Dam Busters. I have not read it yet, but back in my teen years I read his excellent books, The Great Escape, which the movie was based on, and his Reach for the Sky, the story of the legless Spitfire pilot, Douglas Bader.

There is a good synopsis of the movie on Wikipedia. The essence of the story is this. It is during the dark hours of World War II. that British inventor Barnes Wallis has figured out a way to destroy certain dams in Germany that provide water and hydroelectric power to the Ruhr, by “skipping” bombs off the water like you skip stones across a pond.. Wallis has to convince the government to let him do it. Then, a squadron has to be assembled, the men gathered and trained, the specially modified aircraft supplied. Then, the raid has to be carried out, successfully but at great cost. The squadron commander Guy Gibson was played by Richard Todd. Todd was a good actor, who according to the Wikipedia article, was Ian Fleming’s first pick to play James Bond. Michael Redgrave gave a solid, understated performance as Barnes Wallis.

The whole thing is done in a very straightforward style, without a lot of unnecessary emoting. This is pre-Diana Britain, thank Heavens.

The actual attack was damaging to the Germans, but not as devastating as hoped, which is almost the entire Allied bomber offensive in a nutshell.

The theme music became an instant classic, and can be heard on this clip.

(Links to earlier war movies posts here.)

P J O’Rourke Visits an Aircraft Carrier

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…and is inspired to some thoughts about conservatism and John McCain.

I’m surprised that neither O’Rourke nor the highly literate editors of the Weekly Standard thought of including this 1851 quote from John Ruskin:

For one thing this century will in after ages be considered to have done in a superb manner and one thing I think only. . . it will always be said of us, with unabated reverence, “They built ships of the line” . . . the ship of the line is [man’s] first work. Into that he has put as much of his human patience, common sense, forethought, experimental philosophy, self control, habits of order and obedience, thoroughly wrought handwork, defiance of brute elements, careless courage, careful patriotism, and calm expectation of the judgement of God, as can well be put into a space of 300 feet long by 80 broad. And I am thankful to have lived in an age when I could see this thing so done.