ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ

the media lefties like to say capitalism is dead yada yada. All it means is that sound business practices is what works. Mathematics still works. You are either on the right side of the maths or not.

the 480 trillion of derivatives happened because people were allowed to get away with bad maths. ie taking on debts multi times their assets.

so say 6 guys in a rented room with rented desks and computers with nothing more in assets than a credit line to a bank could take on risks of billions and then insure those risks with someone else. As long as the premiums the received was bigger than the premiums they paid out for insurance cover they were making money. Lots of money.

And as long as the big bucks kept coming then no political questions were asked.

Then someone realised there was 480 trillion based on that model [10 times worlds gdp] which means in reality no one was covered and there there was not enough short term credit available to cover the insurance payments.

It was a pyramid selling scheme like something one might encounter in 1 st year university.

So when the media lefties use the current example to say capitalism doesn't work what they should say is pyramid selling doesn't work.

WHAT PROFIT A MAN?
(With proper respect to Robert Service)

When money goes bad and the world goes mad
And you're stuck with Gordon Brown;
The Conference near and the Campbell sneer
Has once again hit town.
When you know that doom has booked a room
At the Not-OK Coral
Then with wisdom's demise it is no surprise
That the watchword is: 'banal'.
There was once a time ere slick turned to slime
Each party had dogma and creed
But with Thatcher and Blair came a miasmic air
And an all pervading greed.
Soon Margaret and Mark through the armaments lark
Became rich and quite over-fed
While tobacco topped up Margaret’s overfull cup
And added a few to the dead.
Tony Blair with much style and a Hollywood smile
Talked grand charismatic tosh
And Old Labour’s creed that bolstered a breed
He beat down with a gleaming New cosh.
Then false money piled high as he waved truth goodbye
And Gordon flogged off all our gold;
By the time it was known - the illusion was blown
Poor old Blighty had caught the world’s cold.
For the money that they, thought could let them make hay
Was nothing but straws in the wind.
Pious Gordon, when asked, in morality basked;
Said: 'Forgive them Lord, for THEY have sinned.'
Then up spake young Dave, he said: 'Pavement’s I’ll pave
With the gold I shall conjure from air!'
Tory stock rose so high it made stock-brokers cry;
Once more: value with no substance there!
Then Clegg towered aloft and while everyone scoffed
He said: 'I've got the answer: it’s thrift'
But his rating stayed '2' with his head up his flue
And the media gave him short shrift.
The Lutine’s old bell rang a terrible knell
As Reason was hung on its rope;
Weird alchemy reigned in the largely no-brained
And despair was transmuted to hope.
Now governments throw more imaginary dough
In that debt-hole, so much to be feared
And the miracle is it has calmed all the tizz
And the hole has filled up - disappeared!
Then Gordon, when asked, quite aggressively tasked
To say how he's funding the cash
Said: 'Have I not shown, we could stand yet more loan?
Rest assured OUR economy won’t crash!”
How the loan will be met as it just means more debt
Is a puzzle beyond angels' ken
So just cast it aside, let it leave on the tide
Remember that WE are mere men.
And now as it's said Gordon’s reign might be dead
They’re beginning to ask what he knows!
And to understand risk we are going to whisk
Brown’s successor off to - casinos.
The truth is quite plain, all the world is insane
And money: no token of worth.
It exists of itself to destroy us by stealth;
Slipped Hob's pocket when he fell to Earth.
Now the land is beset with a welter of debt
And a dearth of the trust we once had
While the Bible sells top in the local book shop
For it warns of when money goes bad.

i suppose the simple story is

the housing market [cdo] created a credit problem that exposed the practices in the insurance market [cds].

the fed is trying to deal with the housing debt to free up the credit market. The insurance problem dwarfs the housing problem but the strategy at the moment is to hope we can hang on till those insurance credit default swaps mature in 2-5 years.

the other fall out from the credit market is companies like GM desperate for money. So if there is another 'shoe' to drop that could be it.

Assuming the chinese [biggest holder of western debt] keep the west going and keep buying it.

I wonder if sometime in the last week China became the biggest empire in human history?

Great stuff again, Mr Mason.

I was shocked that the Glass - Steagall Act had been repealed - It didn't seem to get a huge amount of coverage over here. I wonder why..

One speculates that there are elements in the Republican party who would have been happy for Sarbanes-Oxley legislation to have been quietly dropped in the way Glass-Steagal was.

One wonders whether that legislation is still 'safe' or whether the business world would like an easier life, even if it risks another 'Enron', 'WorldCom' or 'GlobalCrossing' ?

Answers on a postcard...

THE NEW DEAL: GOLDMAN-MORGAN SCRAMBLE TO THE TROUGH

"My guess is it was demanded by the Chinese government as a condition for taking over Morgan Stanley, and that someone on Capitol Hill is also arguing that the two banks be excluded from the $700bn bailout unless they do this."

"..as outdated as the Leninist doctrine of democratic centralism."

I suggest Richard Wachman's analysis isn't all that thoughful given the Chinese Contitution's after all, even Lenin's USSR had an in the 1920s.

So, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs are desperate to get their snouts into the Fed's/tax-payers' trough and that's OK, as most tax payers won't object to the principle that risk is good for the economy so long as it's with other people's money as after all, it IS other people's... but it's OUR economy.

eh... but it just

Ask yourself: how DOES you increase a nation's 'skills' when 80% of it is genetic, one has higher fertility in the underclass and a birth dearth at the other pole, but all the policies are just making matters worse not better? Education is not the answer (it makes matters worse as I have said elsewhere ad nauseam) because it's err, well, as I said, essentially genetic, and a function of the differential birth rate. What did say about that? Who and who effectively bans it throughout the EU via the Lisbon Treaty's Fundamental Charter of Human Rights ?

Democratic-Centralism or Trotskyism/anarcho-capitalism. Do you decide?

solvency certainly explains why last week's crisis moved so quickly and why we were lucky to have someone as deft as paulson to intervene and calm things down. clearly, if you borrow short-term to fund long-term investments (like mbs or equities), then the moment liquidity dries up even temporarily, your busines model collapses like a house of cards.

but solvency does not explain the roots of the crisis. this crisis, like most financial crises, is really about systemic leverage, as bhd @ 1 implies. i.e. how much people use borrowed money (short-term or long-term) instead of their own equity in order to fund their activities.

the conundrum is that, on the one hand, too much leverage makes your financial system more prone to stupid lending in an upmarket and to collapse in a downmarket, whereas on the other hand, too little leverage means that your economy becomes sluggish and does not exploit the opportunities available to it.

deposit-taking banks' leverage is limited by the basel rules. however, investment banks' and hedge funds' leverage is not regulated - hence the credit bubble. by opting into regulated banking, gs and ms are recognising that regulatory limits on their leverage are coming anyway, so why not go ahead and get that solvency guarantee from the fed right now?

personally, i don't see why you cannot just have a highly leveraged financial sector, and accept that the authorities will need to intervene as and when it occasionally breaks down because the economy is taking a different turn to the one that everyone was betting on. sure, dodgy lending needs to be clamped down on. but if a bit of deft intervention by hank paulson actually gets us through the crisis in one piece, doesn't that mean that maybe the credit bubble wasn't such a bad thing after all? i mean, it did get a lot of poor americans into their own homes (homes which i doubt the us treasury is about to kick them out of).

some say the intervention is bad because the taxpayer is being forced to pick up the tab and bail out overpaid bankers. well, that is wrong in many ways. it is the banks (not the bankers) that are being bailed out. the bankers that made mistakes should be fired without golden parachutes. but the banks (when they are collectively in trouble) must be saved, because the banks' assets ultimately belong to the public (as depositors and shareholders), not to the bankers. and if the whole banking system comes down, the economy cannot function and we are all losers.

it is also untrue that the intervention is bad for taxpayers. to draw an analogy, the government is taking out a mortgage here, not running up credit card debt. what i mean is that it is borrowing usd 1tn to buy assets, not to blow it all on current expenditure. these assets (ultimately household mortgages) generate income (mortgage interest payments) for the us government that should more than cover the interest the government has to pay on its new debts. and these assets do not lose their value like a tv set or a new car, which means they can ultimately be sold and the proceeds used to repay the government's new debts. in fact, if the intervention restores confidence and averts an economic meltdown, the assets can actually increase in value, making a profit for the taxpayer.

coming back to the issue of leverage, for me the big irony is that left on its own the financial system would massively DE-leverage. and it is the consequences of this deleverage for the economy (not just the related prospect of widespread insolvency) that got markets so spooked. what happens when nobody can roll over their debts anymore (not even perfectly sensibly run blue chip corporates) because banks have simply stopped lending? the answer is economic meltdown.

so what the government intervention does is to clean up banks' balance sheets so they can continue lending (though more conservatively and within new regulatory limits no doubt), while the "toxic" debts are moved to a national bank whose equity is ultimately as deep as the taxpayers' pockets. but the very guarantee of the taxpayer is what will (hopefully) prevent their money ever having to be drawn on. so what's so wrong with that?


btw, i think richard wachman has been reading my posts. i'm not complaining :-)

jj @ 5

why do you assume the "underclass" has worse genes? seems to me that if their fertility rate is higher, then the opposite must be true. maybe you should spend less time blogging and more time procreating yourself?

FERTILE AREA FOR DEBATE? (#7)

How jaded are those genes Jean? Watch out for the blogdog whenyou reply!

benagyerek (#7) "why do you assume the "underclass" has worse genes? seems to me that if their fertility rate is higher, then the opposite must be true."

'Worse' is a loaded word there, it depends on your perspective on group competition WITHIN the species here. What I have said regarding the underclass isn't assumption (though be careful with your own), it's been standard population genetics and psychometrics for decades (see Fisher, Cattell, Lynn and many 'infamous' others, e.g. Jim Watson recently) and there's ample empirical evidence (see ETS and Leitch links, and TFR figures I've provided). It's true that a high birth-rate (TFR) is normally a sign of a species' biological fitness, but since the demographic-transition we've interfered with hundreds of thousands of years of selective pressures which selected our genes (and their expression as behaviour). One of those ancient contingencies/pressures drove sexual dimorphism (i.e sex-differences in both physical e.g. height, muscle mass, as well as mean 'cognitive' ability (5 point differences in mean 'g' means exponential divergence in the sexes from +1SD above the mean upwards) as well as an inverse verbal-spatial tilt between the sexes. One might ask why so much of this has been censored/obfuscated by so-called political correctness in recent times (as has the ethnic dimension). To what end one should ask? This was all well documented long before Herrnstein and Murray's (no friend fo the Welfare State) 'The Bell Curve (1994). That IQ is highly heritable (up to 80% with the other 20% probably being down to physical damage), there being a very high (~ 0.8) correlation between national TFRs and mean IQs, and encouraging able women to go to work and to be independent has driven Liberal-Democratic TFRs well below replacement level, tilted differential fertility and led to a flood of compensatory low-skilled immigrants, who, as do we all, practice assortive mating, which is a gene (flow) barrier. Expect more crime, and instability as in Pakistan, Africa etc (which have mean IQs about 1 or 2 SDs below the EUs).

In a nutshell, this spells either a) insidious social/national dysenesis (which democratic-centralist China tries to manage - see their constitution), or b) the breeding of gullible consumers essentially for group/self-interested non-dom 'financial masters of the universe' (aka capitalist predators) see the current crisis.

Take your pick.

THERE'S A HOLE IN YOUR THESIS DEAR JJ

Never a Schnorbitz when you want one! The members of the Miliband Comedy Duo don't seem to fit the genetic intelligence picture JJ.

Miliband D declared that Limited Ed had said: "Let's take our language back". Now, in view of the fact that D is a keen exponent of the 'Blair Glottal', thereby consummately mangling the English tongue for some imagined gain; if Limited Ed were a little brighter, he would not be raising language around his ill-spoken brother. And if D had the brains he should have been born with (check with JJ) he would not go repeating such self-defeating rhetoric!
What's more: if they had a Schnorbitz, they could leave all the talking to the dog! And if Scooby Doo is available to run the country - we are saved!

It's not the Kennel Club we should be regulating . . .

jj @ 9

this is wonderfully off-topic. i will reply before all of our comments are deleted.

iqs (i.e. test results) are to a large part acquisitive. that is why people coach for sats.

a lot of social science "research" is bunkem. it tries to simplify something that cannot be. it creates artificial controlled conditions that generate artificial behaviour in the subject. it infers causality from correlation. a lot of it is also quite corrupt - including most studies that claim to be based on mass surveys. i don't intend to quote any sources to back up these opinions, as i consider them largely self-evident.

i don't think iq is a very good measure of "fitness" or a major determinant of social cohesion. but as the hungarians say "everyone starts from themselves".

i do think the freedom of sexual selection is much more beneficial for the gene pool than the other factors you mention are pernicious. long live the 60s.

now a question for you. why are psychologists obsessed with analysing other people? i would like a psychological explanation - the adverse selection is clear.

SO IT MUST BE TRUE

Gordon says he was working hard, for years, to get global financial controls agreed. (He never said a word to me.) Does this not amount to shooting himself in the third foot?
If he had THAT much finger on the pulse, he must have known about sub-prime loans and dodgy bundles (other than the Prescott variety). So why did Prudence let Britian rip in a variety of debt areas?
But then this is the bloke who did the 10p thing. Perhaps he's just another un-smart fantasist, like his predecessor?

Why do we suffer the Westminster swamp, where these ill-formed, needy aliens bubble to the surface?

Oh my. It was all just a matter of time before the whole banking industry took a reality check. Whilst the announcements from Goldman and Morgan might mark a painful retrenchment in modern banking and a critical turning point in international finance history and regulation, banking will always inherently be a fragile business.

But does it spell the beginning of the end of an investing culture plagued by short-termism, recklessness, lack of oversight and complacency?

I can't help but think not.

THE NEW LEFT AND THE THIRD WAY: VOTE FOR US, WE'LL DO LESS AND MAKE MORE MESS

Barrie (#10) So you don't think they misread their job descriptions as tasking them with ruining the nation instead of running the nation?

It's worth reading what comes up when one enters Miliband Trotsky into Google, especially what one of Putin's advisors had to say recently. The Milibands are rather too keen on grass-roots democracy just as Thatcher was, which as I've said before, is great for financiers etc as it means less regulation/more anarchism/less government.

benagyerek (#11) OK, so you've told us what you don't know, now, if you don't mind letting some empirical facts influence your thinking, perhaps a look through and the links might help? Believe it or not, is very much on topic (although some would probably like it not to be so they can ignore its implications for what they do). As to why some people analyse other people's behaviour, well, I guess that's just what some people/scientists do. It's even been referred to as by some.

PEOPLE COACH FOR SATS (#11)

But no coach wastes their time on a white sprinter for Olympic gold.
The brain sits on top and the legs are down there - as above, so below? (I understand it has long been known that de toe-bone's connected to de earhole.) It is certainly known to 25% (so far) of our footballers.

"i don't intend to quote any sources to back up these opinions, as i consider them largely self-evident."

"THESE TORIES ARE BEATABLE!"

So Blaired Miliband D. What an indictment!
I would have preferred: "The country is governable!" (Implying that Labour actually know how.)

How much time, effort and money, as a percentage of total, does a political party expend, simply on combating other parties?
How little is left over for government?

SPOIL PARTY GAMES

jj @ 15 / bs @ 16

ok, i admit the para in my last post junking social science was otp.

however, i do think that, despite my ignorance of the empirical work, i have a number of valid points. maybe you could summarise the main empirical findings for me? i note that some of these points are echoed in the wiki article you linked.

- i strongly suspect that nutrition has a large part to play in the difference of iq between groups, particularly between rich and poor countries. i suspect that the variation in iq within poor countries also is much more to do with nutrition (and also education) than genetics. i am open to the idea that if people enjoy a minimum basic level of nutrition and access to decent primary education (as tends to be the case in western societies), then genetics trumps other explanations.

- i also suspect that nutrition plays a particularly important part in the fetal development of the brain, and this has a long-term impact on cognitive ability. for this reason, i don't think that evidence of "hereditability" is evidence for a genetic link.

- i would like to know what is the variance within the iqs of the various socio-economic and ethnic groups studied in richer countries, and how this compares with the difference in mean between them. i suspect that variance is high enough to make generalisations about these groupings problematic, to say the least.

- i would like to know how much the variance in iq of non-identical children of the same parents compares with variance in iq of the wider population in richer societies (when solving for environmental factors, if this is possible), and therefore how many generations it would take before random genetic variation would make your offspring practically indistinguishable from the population (all other things being equal)

- would you agree with me that iq is a very narrow measure of "fitness"? the true measure of "fitness" is surely decided by sexual selection in western society (given how low mortality rates are). i believe that sexual selection is as much influenced by physical and social attributes (such as "niceness") as it is iq. i suspect people with a high iq tend to overrate this attribute. if iq were all that mattered, we would live in a society of hannibal lectors.

- i do not think people with average or high iq lack "gullibility". i have worked in an investment bank, and am very aware that highly intelligent people are often far from being good decision makers (such as whether to buy toxic junk or not)

- i also do not think people with low iq are more likely to be violent or criminal (pardon me if i incorrectly infer this assertion in your postings). any empirical evidence regarding this and the previous point that goes beyond showing a simple correlation would be interesting

my gratitude to the bbc moderators for allowing us to continue this discussion

Bush's Corporate Nazi's are performing true to form. A virtual Welfare State for the banks etc whilst the poor are left without adequate health provision and no long term social security. Why are the US population in general so apparently stupid ?

THE UK/US TWILIGHT ZONES: THE DYSGENIC PLACES WHERE NOBODY COMPREHENDS ANYMORE?
Brossen99 "Why are the US population in general so apparently stupid ?"
because....

OVERCONFIDENCE AND IGORANCE

benagyerek (#18) "i also do not think people with low iq are more likely to be violent or criminal (pardon me if i incorrectly infer this assertion in your postings)."

You're just telling us what you don't know again and not appreciating that this is all that you're doing. This arrogant overconfidence is endemic today. Imagine lots of people boldly going around stating that the don't believe that the earth goes around the sun or confidently stating that they don't think 2+2=4.

Ask yourself where your ideas on all this came from, how much effort went into establishing their credit-worthiness, and whether you have passed them on to others. Then look at the overconfidence in the investment banking sector. Do you see a pattern?

I you look some of and then dump your toxic preconceptions. Whatever you do, don't pass them on.

Before you do that, try asking yourself, whose interests they and why you didn't invest more time checking their credit-worthiness?

We agree on the point about bright people and gullibility/impulsivity, but just because people have assets doesn't mean they always use them wisely. Just remember that a beautiful woman can choose to be a model (or not), an ugly duckling can't.

Sadly, most comprising the underclass just don't have the assets in the first place (not that that mattered to brokers acting on behalf of investment banks). Do you get my drift? Ignorance can be very convenient.

jj @ 21

thanks for the response. the second link was particularly interesting. i was already familiar with the bell curve and its broader findings, but the info on the flynn effect, etc was very useful.

so to revisit the points i made earlier:

- the role of nutrition (and education / enriched environment) in cross-national differences seems to be borne out by the "flynn effect" which is new to me but not surprising. i don't think the findings about white-black differences in the usa necessarily tell us much about differences between africa and the rest of the world. american blacks came from a limited part of africa and underwent a rather extreme selection process. africa also has very high genetic diversity, i believe. i would be interested to know if there are more sources on cross-national differences and how much these can be explained as reflecting different points on the flynn curve

- nutrition / fetal development / hereditability - still interested to read more about this, if such work exists

- variance of the iqs within groups - the link reflects my earlier limited understanding of the "bell curve" findings, i.e. that group differences exist, but talking in group terms (especially racial groups) is not very helpful insofar as the groups overlap so much. group labels are only important because people make them so - i.e. they are highly visible and people incorrectly use them as a crude tool to discriminate between individuals. "we are all born individuals"

- variance of iq over generations - i would be interested to know more about this, and the reason why the assumptions underpinning the "dysgenic fallacy" argument are supposedly weak according to wiki. it occurs to me that iq is an important part of sexual selection, and we don't always know who the father is. so we should not assume endogamic breeding is as common as it may appear.

- iq as a narrow measure of "fitness" - this i guess is a more philosophical discussion, though i am glad that you also disavowed the assumption that many make that high iq = "better". of course it is more desirable, but it is not the be-all and end-all

- iq vs gullibility - we seem to be in agreement

- iq and violence / criminality - you accused me of displaying ignorance, yet this is the one area about which i missed any empirical work in the links you gave. pls provide more info

btw, as far as "arrogance" goes, it takes one to know one. i am happy to admit when i am wrong and when i am ignorant (as i thought i did in my previous post). and the fact that i worked in banking does not mean i sold toxic waste for a living, far from it in fact.

benagyerek (#22) The Flynn Effect is, possibly just an interesting artifact. There's better evidence for dysgenesis through the demographic/political processes which I've covered.

See especially the startling ETS link and the link to Look up our OECD PISA performance.

Offender population means are shifted 8-10 points to the left. In the , half the prison population is Black (half the general population is not Black). Parliament is well aware of the problem here, . Frattini is planning to move 20 million into the EU from Africa and S. Asia to compensate for below replacement level fertility. Immigration is good for the sub-prime business/economy. Over 99% of London's population growth in the next 3 decades will be in BME groups.

The crime rate has been rising since WWII.

The USA Black mean is one SD above sub-Saharan Africa, reflecting admixture in the former probably. By mid century, WASP/Cs will comprise under half the USA population, (the underclass is swelling there too).

Finally, look up the link I've provided elsewhere to the demographics of NYC. Then think sub-prime, hyperbolic discounting, IQ andits relation to memory span, and group competition/predation.

was created because dysgenesis has to be actively managed. Those who practice endogamy know this. Those who peddle political correctness, Human Rights, and grass roots democracy for others either don't know what they're doing, or if they do, are subversive wolves in sheeps clothing. Is ignorance ever an excuse?

Thanks for your clear posts on the current financial crisis.

The startling Perfect Storm link. ETS have since taken down their own video. They did a survey, the general public just don't get it.

jj, if you are still reading

why is there a correlation between fertility and iq? how widespread is this correlation? what is the evidence for it?

it seems illogical to me that there should be a correlation, although it does conform to certain stereotypes we have all witnessed in society.

the idea that high iq people are intelligent enough to choose to have fewer children (for budgetary reasons) seems a bit fatuous to me. high iq people are higher achievers, earn more income and have better financial ability to procreate. even when you take "subsidies for the poor to have children" into account, it does not explain why richer / higher iq people have fewer children, if this is indeed the case.

and surely the propensity to have children is something that would be very genetically determined. is there evidence for or against this proposition? if so, why would there be a correlation between this gene and the high "g" gene? i can see environmental reasons (if you are low iq and therefore poor, in the past you would tend to have more children because of lower survival prospects). but surely all that needs to happen is that the gene pool adapts to the new environment - i.e. producing people who combine high iq with high propensity to have children. only problem is then we will have another population explosion.


regarding the various racial discussions you linked. i find discussions about racial groups very problematic for two reasons:

(i) i simply do not think it is valid to focus on race unless a very high correlation (low group standard deviation) is observed. are there differences in average iq between people with red hair or blond hair? or between tall and short people? they are all valid questions, but it is not helpful to couch the discussion in terms of specific groups unless it is clear that there is a discontinuity between those groups. from what i have seen, the overlap in the white and (american) black bell curves is large enough to make the racial distinctions in the debate an oversimplification.

(ii) race is a charged issue (obviously). there is a reason for that - the strongest indicators of racial grouping are visual signals, most obviously skin colour. we all subconsciously simplify the world by means of association with visual cues. if we build up strong stereotypical characterisations of a racial group in our heads, then we run the risk of alienating that group. it means the large percentage of individuals in that group that do not fit the stereotype are nonetheless forced by society into the same box. it also means that you encourage endogamic breeding, which i believe you consider a bad thing.

the only role public policy should have on the racial debate is in suppressing this tendency to sterotype racial groups. any policies that discriminate racially (including "positive" discrimination) simply reinforce this problem of racial alienation. instead government policy on race should seek an outcome where people are judged strictly as individuals, not as representatives of a supposedly monoglot grouping. and to do this you have to take account of people's irrationality, which means that it is right that the discussion should be, if not taboo, then at all times very heavily caveated.

HIGH VERBAL, SHORT STATURE

benagyerek (#25) "why is there a correlation between fertility and iq? how widespread is this correlation? what is the evidence for it?"

The first thing to take on board is that the TFR-IQ and race-IQ and race-TFR relations are empirical. Singapore tried to deal with their birth-dearth problem amongst their more educated between the 60s and 90s, failed, and gave up. Here you will find that up to . There's been lots of research on this, going back many decades (see Herrnstein and Murray (1994) ch. 15, most people miss this), it's why eugenics came about (and why I provided the Fisher link). The most persuasive explanation for differential fertility is perhaps that child birth (and rearing) hurts/costs both physically and economically and that lower IQ people find it harder to both defer gratification (hence the sub-prime debacle) i.e. plan for longer term consequences. They are more impulsive like children (which is another way of thinking about IQ and race-IQ).

But the problem has been made worse over the last 4 decades by female contraception and espcially female liberation, in that with more educable females going into higher education (and the workplace), they delay motherhood longer and thereby shorten their fertilty period (TFR is based on 16-46 usually). Hence less progny. This is why 'education, education, education' is not, my view, what it promises to be at all. It is in fact a major contributor to dysgenesis (but few will se this as they don't think statistically or at the population, level, they just think locally).

Crime. drug addiction, family problems, debt, you name it, it is all statistically more frequent amongst lower IQ people. Hence my frequent referral to hyperbolic discounting (which has its roots in delay of reinforcement operant work) and to predatory sub-prime and other ways in which (essentially childlike) people who can't help themselves are indebted whilst politicans egregiously ingratiate themselves by preaching equality to make them part with their money more readily.

Racial/group differences in IQ are probably best seen as a function of gene barriers (in the distant past these were physical barriers like oceans, mountain ranges etc) and assortive mating. You do not get random gene flow so long as like breeds with like, and despite all the fear driven politically correct talk about egalitarianism, like does go for like. There is more genetic diversity in Africa because we migrated out of Africa tens of thousands of years ago.

Some groups are more endogamous than othes and there are costs (genetic disorders) and benefits (extended family nepotism?) to this in terms of mutations (see Jewish and Pakistani/Bangladeshi group).

That fact that differential fertility and dysgenesis are not what one might expect is what makes it all so worrying, especially when exacerbated by anarchistic policies such as 'education, education, education' and equalities legislation. It just swells the underclass and undermines society if this analysis is correct. Because of the critically low TFRs of Liberal-Democracies and the much higher tan replacement level TFRs of Third World countries, dysgenics is a global problem, but people like Jefrey Sachs, who talk of 'us' as 'burstng at the seams' either don't know what they're talking or are in fact actively contributing to making the problem much worse for some of us. No doubt he has a high VERBAL IQ.....

ON BEING HIGH VERBAL, BUT SHORTER STATURE

benagyerek (#25) "why is there a correlation between fertility and iq? how widespread is this correlation? what is the evidence for it?"

It's universal, it certainly shows up in USA and UK statistics.

The first thing to take on board, as I'm sure you have, is that the highly negative TFR-IQ correlation, the race-IQ group differences and the race-IQ-TFR relations are empirical relationships at the population levels. But that that's the level that economics and politics operates. Singapore tried to deal with their birth-dearth problem amongst their more educated between the 60s and 90s, failed, and gave up. Here you will find that up to . There's been lots of research on this, going back many decades (see Herrnstein and Murray (1994) ch. 15, most people miss this), it's why eugenics came about (and why I provided the Fisher link). The most persuasive explanation for differential fertility is perhaps that child birth (and rearing) hurts/costs both physically and economically and that lower IQ people find it harder to both defer gratification (hence the sub-prime debacle) i.e. plan for longer term consequences. They are more impulsive like children (which is another way of thinking about IQ and race-IQ).

But the problem has been made worse over the last 4 decades by female contraception and especially female liberation, in that with more educable females going into higher education (and the workplace), they delay motherhood longer and thereby shorten their fertility period (TFR is based on 16-46 usually). Hence less progeny. This is why 'education, education, education' is not, my view, what it promises to be at all. It is in fact a major contributor to dysgenesis (but few will see this as they don't think statistically or at the population, level, they just think locally).

Crime. drug addiction, family problems, debt, you name it, it is all statistically more frequent amongst lower IQ people. Hence my frequent referral to hyperbolic discounting (which has its roots in delay of reinforcement operant work) and to predatory sub-prime and other ways in which (essentially childlike) people who can't help themselves are indebted whilst politicians egregiously ingratiate themselves by preaching equality to make them part with their money more readily.

Racial/group differences in IQ are probably best seen as a function of gene barriers (in the distant past these were physical barriers like oceans, mountain ranges etc) and assortive mating. You do not get random gene flow so long as like breeds with like, and despite all the fear driven politically correct talk about egalitarianism, like does go for like. There is more genetic diversity in Africa because we migrated out of Africa tens of thousands of years ago.

Some groups are more endogamous than others and there are costs (genetic disorders whichshow up in the Special Education Needs data) and benefits (perhaps extended-family nepotism?) to this in terms of mutations (see Jewish and Muslim Pakistani/Bangladeshi groups).

That fact that differential fertility and dysgenesis are not what one might expect is what makes it all so worrying, especially when exacerbated by anarchistic policies such as 'education, education, education' and equalities legislation. It just swells the underclass and undermines society if this analysis is correct. Because of the critically low TFRs of Liberal-Democracies and the much higher tan replacement level TFRs of Third World countries, dysgenics is a global problem, but people like Jeffrey Sachs, who talk of 'us' as 'bursting at the seams' either don't know what they're talking about in detail, or is actively contributing to making the problem worse for some of us.

No doubt he has a high VERBAL IQ. We live in an ever more feminised culture in the Liberal-Democracies. Is that a good thing?

PROPAGANDA

1) How much of the bad-debt was attibutable to irresponsible sales in the sub-prime mortgage market, and how much of it was incurred elsewhere with the sub-prime mortgage market being used politically to hide what was really going on via corrupt AAA ratings and ultimately to secure taxpayer bail-out?

2) Condoleezza Rice's remarks made little sense. There are and the ratio of males:females goes exponential above that. This is just an innate feature of sexual-dimorphism (like height). Clearly the sexes can't therefore be 'equally' represented as a consequence (especially not in high power jobs requiring high logical/spatial cognitive ability). Asserting that one thinks or would wish otherwise, or that one does not see why it should be so, is . Is it really any wonder the USA is going down the pan so fast?

3) That Condoleezza Rice can not think of a system which works as well as democratic capitalism (under the circumstances) when Stalinist holds so much of the USA's debt, again, with all due respect, is clearly just factual nonsense. One of the main reasons the USSR collapsed was because they were (in the PRC's view) 'revisionist' (they nearly went to war over this) and because they let Friedmanite economists like Jeffrey Sachs sell off their publicly owned industries to the oligarchs.