tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1248503935075362425.post8442576928502591430..comments2024-03-26T07:58:59.761+00:00Comments on I'll think of something later: An independent IcelanderDavidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14506881804082382739noreply@blogger.comBlogger15125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1248503935075362425.post-28789572140617511822011-11-18T14:12:35.952+00:002011-11-18T14:12:35.952+00:00Apologies: I did not mean to pigeonhole you but ra...Apologies: I did not mean to pigeonhole you but rather forewarn - it can be challenging stuff, and with improv it's a fine line between sublimity and banality...<br /><br />Tonight looks good at The Warehouse in Waterloo with a Ligeti piano recital plus more prepared piano and electronics, followed by MESSIAEN “L’Abime des Oiseaux”, <br />STOCKHAUSEN “Spiral”, <br />XENAKIS “Charisma”, then more electronics...<br /><br />I can't get to the Sunday concert because I'm double booked at the RFH.Howard Lanenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1248503935075362425.post-61997642138297057112011-11-17T23:26:51.561+00:002011-11-17T23:26:51.561+00:00I can be left-field sometimes, Howard; how you lab...I can be left-field sometimes, Howard; how you label me! But I do find P J Harvey rather hard going.<br /><br />Anyway, I'll check out the details of that concert. Ripliad (good way of putting it) is kind of dark-light, no? And I'm not sure Laxness is uplifting; his views on The Poor are a little blacker than, say, Fallada, whose Little Man, What Now? has oddly warmed the cockles of my heart.<br /><br />Prof Batty, I'll take a look at that site when I have a moment's leisure. Next Laxness stop: World Light, with two Berlin interludes before it.Davidhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14506881804082382739noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1248503935075362425.post-41328596174223898152011-11-16T21:13:33.331+00:002011-11-16T21:13:33.331+00:00Some of us Laxness fans have put together a site d...Some of us Laxness fans have put together a site devoted to Laxness' work, with reviews, commentaries and appreciations:<br /><br />http://laxnessintranslation.blogspot.com/<br /><br />Most of his novels have been translated into English, although some are quite rare.Professor Battyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09802171986501104683noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1248503935075362425.post-42912842634687219012011-11-16T13:38:28.271+00:002011-11-16T13:38:28.271+00:00Shame on me to be unaware of a nobel prize winning...Shame on me to be unaware of a nobel prize winning novelist, even from a small and (to most people) obscure country like Iceland. Iceland always brings to mind Bjork and I'm sorry you missed her performance during your visit. And Bjork I strongly associate with P J Harvey whose Let England Shake album is a more fitting war memorial/protest than any other I can think of for 11/11/11.<br /><br />Her RAH gig was stunning despite the usual acoustic soup of amplified music there. Not a preferred rock venue, and Danielle was annoyed at having to sit in a box when she would rather have been moshing in the arena. Thankfully she didn't as we would have been thrown out. In fact she prefers the rawness of the earlier songs which goes to show how much Polly Jean's work has matured. I didn't feel out of place as a fifty-something at a rock gig, and in fact was sitting next to Jeremy Hardy.<br /><br />I am 2/5 of the way through Patricia Highsmith's Ripliad after Crime and Punishment and now have Karamazov lined up. Dark waters all, so something more uplifting such as Laxness could go next on the list.<br /><br />There is an interesting performance at LSO St Lukes of Dumitrescu's Hyperion Ensemble this Sunday, http://lso.co.uk/page/3102/SPECTRUM-XXI-Spectral-Festival/394. I saw them last night and was impressed.<br /><br />Too left field and short notice for you I suspect but you may know someone who would like to review it.Howard Lanenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1248503935075362425.post-15534858117794556362011-11-15T14:54:55.616+00:002011-11-15T14:54:55.616+00:00An emphatic yes to your last question: picked up ...An emphatic yes to your last question: picked up Independent People yesterday. But first, having finally finished "Is There a Fish in Your Ear?" (about the art of translating), I must read Germania. Can't wait!Susan Scheidhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09250142489341777926noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1248503935075362425.post-72120160777642299202011-11-15T08:32:27.461+00:002011-11-15T08:32:27.461+00:00Fair enough. Now, anyone for Laxness?Fair enough. Now, anyone for Laxness?Davidhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14506881804082382739noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1248503935075362425.post-74380865246658698102011-11-15T08:27:45.974+00:002011-11-15T08:27:45.974+00:00My central point is that the crisis was NOT caused...My central point is that the crisis was NOT caused by the bankers but by the failure of the authorities to impose the regulatory tools which are in existance. The mixing up of that question with the size of executive pay works against the right solution to the problem of avoiding the same problems in future. <br /><br />I suggest that the solution to executive pay is a matter for coorporate governance and not just putting up taxes. How to approach that is a matter for difficult discussion.<br /><br />And NO ONE knows how to deal with unemploymemt whether of bright graduates or others. Throwing money at it as in the 60s and 70s clearly doesn't work. Of course one can see some limited initiatives but those do not get us very far.<br /><br />I appreciate that ministers cannot say that they (like everyone else )do not know how to deal with macro-economic problems, but that would be the right start point.David Damantnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1248503935075362425.post-64858925533587127292011-11-15T00:42:39.943+00:002011-11-15T00:42:39.943+00:00Indeed, Susan, thanks for that eloquent quotation....Indeed, Susan, thanks for that eloquent quotation. Put even more simply, the other solution that I don't think is in DD's picture boils down to four words: tax the rich more (or at least more proportionately).<br /><br />That won't happen in the States; there might just be some change in that direction here, though not if Cameron has anything to do with it.<br /><br />Of course I realise that, my mind not running clearly along economic lines, anything I write is going to look naive. But I'm trying to understand, and some things do look obvious as first principles.Davidhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14506881804082382739noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1248503935075362425.post-44249165111739946322011-11-14T22:44:29.060+00:002011-11-14T22:44:29.060+00:00An interesting dialogue going on here, once again,...An interesting dialogue going on here, once again, which led me to see what economist Paul Krugman, who is a guide of mine on how to think about this, has been saying. I hope you will forgive the large quote, from his October 16, 2011, column in the New York Times, but I thought his perspective quite useful and on-point:<br /><br />For the financialization of America wasn’t dictated by the invisible hand of the market. What caused the financial industry to grow much faster than the rest of the economy starting around 1980 was a series of deliberate policy choices, in particular a process of deregulation that continued right up to the eve of the 2008 crisis.<br /><br />Not coincidentally, the era of an ever-growing financial industry was also an era of ever-growing inequality of income and wealth. Wall Street made a large direct contribution to economic polarization, because soaring incomes in finance accounted for a significant fraction of the rising share of the top 1 percent (and the top 0.1 percent, which accounts for most of the top 1 percent’s gains) in the nation’s income. More broadly, the same political forces that promoted financial deregulation fostered overall inequality in a variety of ways, undermining organized labor, doing away with the “outrage constraint” that used to limit executive paychecks, and more.<br /><br />Oh, and taxes on the wealthy were, of course, sharply reduced.<br /><br />All of this was supposed to be justified by results: the paychecks of the wizards of Wall Street were appropriate, we were told, because of the wonderful things they did. Somehow, however, that wonderfulness failed to trickle down to the rest of the nation — and that was true even before the crisis. Median family income, adjusted for inflation, grew only about a fifth as much between 1980 and 2007 as it did in the generation following World War II, even though the postwar economy was marked both by strict financial regulation and by much higher tax rates on the wealthy than anything currently under political discussion.<br /><br />Then came the crisis, which proved that all those claims about how modern finance had reduced risk and made the system more stable were utter nonsense. Government bailouts were all that saved us from a financial meltdown as bad as or worse than the one that caused the Great Depression.Susan Scheidhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09250142489341777926noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1248503935075362425.post-27800790069794681892011-11-14T18:14:08.744+00:002011-11-14T18:14:08.744+00:00The question of bonuses is part of the quite separ...The question of bonuses is part of the quite separate problem of executive pay - starting in the USA and affecting the largest companies is this country, not just the bankers. This question does indeed need addressing. If the authorities had done as I suggest and restricted the money supply the profits of banks and their scope for bonuses would have been reduced, but I do not think that that would have assisted much in addressing the problem you quite rightly delineate. <br /><br />You assume that I believe that capitalism produces inequality in incomes and indeed it does - to eliminate that inequality leads to inequality in power and in freedom over everyone's own life. But I do NOT believe that those income inequalities should not be regulated - indeed like every other aspect of the free market one has to look for places where it needs controlling <br /><br />Nevertheless I STRONGLY suggest that your point is separated from "who caused the crisis", as otherwise we shall never get to a solution.David Damantnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1248503935075362425.post-57757367177437831202011-11-14T15:24:39.876+00:002011-11-14T15:24:39.876+00:00You still, I think, completely miss the (in)human ...You still, I think, completely miss the (in)human aspect - the fact that bonuses still being paid out at last while educated youth couldn't get a job came to seem unequal beyond even the (you would say necessarily) unequal world of capitalism. And that, it seems, WILL be redressed, but only if people group together and shout loud enough. It's taken too long.Davidhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14506881804082382739noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1248503935075362425.post-34004185763961846532011-11-14T15:17:17.686+00:002011-11-14T15:17:17.686+00:00" We don't know how to make it function a..." We don't know how to make it function any more". This ("any more ") is a delusion. We NEVER knew how to make it function...macro-economics needs fifty years and another Keynes. If we knew, governments would make it happen<br /><br />We have some ideas by trial and error. Free markets work best but not perfectly (we have no reason to suppose that any system will work perfectly) So in a free market environment we need to control the money supply ( put up interest rates and make mortgages more expensive ) Get the financial institutions to get their balance sheets in order( further restricting mortgages) Stop increasing government spending ( on NHS and social benfits) etc etc<br /><br />In other words stop doing what everyone would like. The governments one cannot forgive but one can understand ( they have public pressure on them) but the independant central banks and financial regulators should have said "STOP". Maybe in 2002 or 3<br /><br />Would that have pleased those now protesting? That is how Mrs Thatcher turned the UK economy from the worst to the best in Europe - what an achievement . But she is still being criticised<br /><br />However if the authorities as above do the right thing in future the system will be shown to be properly structured - as far as we can see.David Damantnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1248503935075362425.post-79396473929841438652011-11-14T00:02:27.635+00:002011-11-14T00:02:27.635+00:00Thanks for this. I'm going to see if I can ge...Thanks for this. I'm going to see if I can get hold of Independent People while down in the city next week. With end of year vacation coming up, the timing may be right.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1248503935075362425.post-61669351106449271682011-11-13T20:29:28.924+00:002011-11-13T20:29:28.924+00:00As this is only my second, I'm not qualified t...As this is only my second, I'm not qualified to say: one 'Halldor' who sometimes visits might know better. He's a great fan of The Fish Can Sing, which I'd read next if I hadn't already bought World Light. <br /><br />If you're in the mood for an epic which can hold its head up in the company of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, I'd say Independent People. If you want something slighter and unique, Under the Glacier would do. Both encourage me to read everything this man has written that's been translated.Davidhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14506881804082382739noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1248503935075362425.post-74386722849310679992011-11-13T20:20:21.453+00:002011-11-13T20:20:21.453+00:00If you were to choose the Laxness to start with, w...If you were to choose the Laxness to start with, what would you say? (I have The Fish Can Sing on my shelves somewhere; don't know why exactly I never got to it.)<br /><br />As for the parallels to today, I do hope something positive can come out of the protests, though it's hard, at least for me, to see the path to success as yet.Susan Scheidhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09250142489341777926noreply@blogger.com