The graph below relates the liabilities of banks to the GDP of the home country. It shows how outdated the way is we have organized the control and regulation of the financial sector. The business is worldwide, the liabilities are in the end local.
Human value: January 2009 Archives
Germany has a reputation to lose: solidity en quality is expected. Therefore the latest revelation of Der Spiegel is sobering.
All the country's top commercial banks and the publicly owned regional banks known as Landesbanken took part in a survey which revealed that the banks hold so-called "toxic" securities totalling just under €300 billion of which only a quarter has been written off.
The Finance Ministry in Berlin estimates that the entire German banking sector is still holding risky securities totalling up to €1 trillion.
The value in their books is imaginary, nobody has any idea what the real worth is.
To put this in perspective: the debt of the German federal government is approx.€1 trillion.
Shocking.
We depend more and more on sophisticated technology in our society. The complexity is rising quickly: large information technology (IT) projects have a worse track record than infrastructure projects when measured to "completed-on-time-and-within-budget" . Climate and energy issues require a lot of knowledge of physics , of complex modelling, of research and development, of innovation.
A daunting task for our politicians. One should hope that at least some of them have had an education and preferable some work experience in "hard" environments : where hard science is required, solid engineering is important, professional management of big complex projects or products is vital to survival. They would have much more feeling for the daily reality of these challenges, understand what the effects would be of policy changes and laws written.
So lets look at their backgrounds in this respect. Over here (20090116 Overzicht Beta achtergrond TK-leden 2007-2011.xls) you can find a spreadsheet with our members of parliament, over here (2008 Overzicht Beta achtergrond ministers en staatsecretarissen.xls) with the members of our cabinet.
An interesting overview. You can draw your own conclusions. Approx. 20 % of parliament has had a "beta" education (including health care and MBA), approx. 10 % has some work experience in this arena. In the cabinet things are not really different.
So next time you question yourself why large technology projects and IT projects which are run by our goverment seem to be not-so-well-run, or why our policies regarding technology and innovation seem to be lacking in effectiveness, or why the high-tech manufacturing industries seem to be left out in the cold, look again at these spreadsheets.
Do we get enough people in office who "get it" and have more than a theoretical understanding of the issues?
Gunnar Heinsohn (see this earlier post) specializes in the relationship between "youth bulges" and war/terrorism.
His latest publication in the online version of the WSJ drills deeply into the hidden and ugly facts behind the conflict in the Gaza strip. And points his finger at the West: our aid is fueling the war machine.
"Gazan teenagers have no future other than war. [..] Some 230,000 Gazan males, aged 15 to 29, who are available for the battlefield now, will be succeeded by 360,000 boys under 15 (45% of all Gazan males) who could be taking up arms within the coming 15 years."
" The reason for Gaza's endless youth bulge is that a large majority of its population does not have to provide for its offspring. Most babies are fed, clothed, vaccinated and educated by UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. Unlike the U.N. High Commission for Refugees, which deals with the rest of the world's refugees and aims to settle them in their respective host countries, UNRWA perpetuates the Palestinian problem by classifying as refugees not only those who originally fled their homes, but all of their descendents as well."
" Thanks to the West's largesse, nearly the entire population of Gaza lives in a kind of lowly but regularly paid dependence. One result of this unlimited welfare is an endless population boom. Between 1950 and 2008, Gaza's population has grown from 240,000 to 1.5 million."
