Expensive G20 meeting in Toronto for Candas taxpayers. 10-times more than the one in Pittsburgh 2009. Stephen Harper defends expenses by saying; Canada has to represent itself to the world. 

Forgets one thing; only results and execution count, not the effort alone.

Emphasis mine (via Telegraph)

Despite the relative calm, Europe’s debt crisis remained the central focus. The euro, which came off fresh four-year lows around $1.21 on Wednesday after a massive €9.5bn intervention by the Swiss central bank, edged lower.

The currency was around $1.2324 by mid morning. It had spiked above $1.24 earler on speculation of a possible intervention from the Federal Reserve, European Central Bank and Bank of England, and talk that Greece may be about to leave the eurozone.

“The day will be a roller coaster, no doubt,” said David Keeble, an analyst at Credit Agricole. “The German short ban has emphasised that Europe is not unified and this is at a juncture when it really, really needs to be.”

Ms Merkel, in a wide-ranging speech on financial regulation, stressed the importance of tightening the fiscal rules governing the euro area, the breech of which has contributed to the current crisis.

“If you have a currency like the euro … then you need stricter rules than other governments that just decide for their own currency,” she said.

“We need to tighten up the Stability and Growth Pact,” she insisted, ahead of a meeting of EU finance ministers and the EU president Herman van Rompuy to discuss the pact Friday in Brussels.

On an global bank levy, she quipped: “This is something that won’t find agreement at our first dinner … but I do not think it would ruin markets if we had international taxation.”

She also called for a European version of the rating agencies which have been accused of exacerbating the crisis.

“I would be in favour of introducing a European rating agency which would act as a competitor to other rating agencies on a level playing field,” she said.

1. Greece out of the EMU is already a done deal, not going forward with that would be ruinous for EMU/Euro/Europe/Greece
2. The Maastricht Treaty was always watered down since its inception by Germany, France and other finance ministers. EMU has substantial short-comings - visible when the Makeup came off. The same EMU finance ministers who went over the pact, decided what penalties to enact. Conflict of interest again.
3. You don’t solve rating-agency-problem with more EU rating agencies and more competition. You don’t solve the legitimate conflict of interest between rating agencies and banks. Period. And in case you think to introduce an EU Commission operated rating agency (aka gov run) - then you have another conflict of interest.

» Welcome to Bailout Nation «

“The big picture is of a world which (a) can’t afford to make more mistakes, and (b) is certain to make more mistakes, thanks in part to the increasingly important role of politics in national economies. The world seems to be converging on a model of “state capitalism”, but no one really knows what that model looks like, and with national and international politics becoming increasingly fractious, tail risks are increasing even as the base-case outlook remains underwhelming.

We seem to be leaving the era of independent central banks behind us, as they are now the only institutions capable of taking on the debt which moved during the most recent crisis from banks to now-overburdened sovereigns. The last major holdout, Jean-Claude Trichet, threw in the towel last weekend, and we’re now in a world where the only real guarantee of central bank independence is a small government debt. (Think Australia, which, alongside Canada, is one of the few relatively bright spots in the non-EM Pimco universe.) El-Erian is not happy about this development.” (via)

Shouldn’t we be happy being bailed out? No? That may be because you weren’t bailout out! Am I right?

Hand up who was not bailed out! 

I recently noted after the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster; 

Our world is addicted, dependent on oil. A complex problem. And what are we doing? We make it even more complex.

Here is the support I found (came across) via greenresearch.com in my hypothesis of ‘complexity disaster’ - that by solving a complex problem with complex approaches and not solving the problem itself in its entirety. We don’t get rid of this complex problem plain speaking, delaying the breaking point. We merely make it several orders of magnitude more vulnerable to human error.

Humans are prone to err. Changing only at the precipice of the problem.

“The current news cycle links continuing coverage of the disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, whose cause remains uncertain and whose solution so far elusive, with puzzlement about the cause of a recent 1,000-point plunge  in the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

It may appear that these two traumas have nothing in common. Indeed, the havoc in the stock market will prove ephemeral, while the devastation of the Gulf oil spill could be with us for a generation or more. But they are linked by the role technology played in each of them.

As the New York Times noted, the oil drilling platform that exploded and sank in the gulf “was described before the accident as one of the most technologically advanced drilling platforms in the world.” Drilling for oil miles below the earth’s crust and a mile below the sea was once inconceivable. But now it’s a proud triumph of technological advancement. In the case of the stock market plunge, suspicions center on the role of computer-driven flash trading, the esoteric and technologically sophisticated mechanism for making profits by deploying more computing power than one’s competitors in the market.

The common thread joining these two stories is the ability of technology to elude the understanding of its creators, and its power to wreak havoc beyond our control.

It was over two years ago that the $7.2 billion dollar loss inflicted on Societe Generale by a rogue trader evoked for me the Exxon Valdez and the principal that technological sophistication brings power that tends to outpace our ability to understand it and leaves us unprepared for the consequences of its misuse.

It would be a good thing if our technophilic society learned humility from these episodes.”