"Luckily his fall was partially intervened by a utility pole..."

From The Daily Mail:

A seven-year-old boy from China has survived after intimating [sic] a cartoon character and leaping out from a 10th-storey window with an umbrella...

Luckily his fall was partially intervened [sic] by an [sic] utility pole which the boy hit before landing on the cement ground next to a hair salon. This has apparently saved his life.

Bloody hell...

A similar incident happened last month in China's Urumqi city in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

A five-year-old girl reportedly jumped out of a window on the 11th floor after watching a popular Chinese cartoon named 'Boonie Bears'.

She jumped from the window wearing a backpack and carrying an umbrella. The little girl suffered severe injuries after landing on a cement platform on the fourth floor.

Are Chinese children made of rubber?

Beyond satire.

Exhibit One:

Tony Blair has said it would be a “very dangerous experiment” if Jeremy Corbyn or a populist politician like him were to form a government.

In an interview with the BBC, the former Labour prime minister said populist politicians, whether on the left like Corbyn or on the right, were worrying and he spent a lot of time thinking about how people in the centre should respond.

Blair famously said last summer that anyone thinking of voting for Corbyn as Labour leader because it was what their heart told them to do should “get a transplant”, but his latest comment may be his harshest yet.

Exhibit Two

An unfortunate mobile phone salesman was tied up and beaten by an angry crowd in Cixi City, China, after he was mistaken for a baby snatcher.

Exhibit Three

Channel 4 comedy Raised By Wolves is being adapted for American TV by Diablo Cody, the writer of Juno...

Now The Guardian has reported that Moran and Cody have been in contact about reworking the action from Wolverhampton to the US…

The remake is being made by Berlanti Productions, whose credits include the less down-to-earth shows Supergirl and Legends of Tomorrow.

Exhibit Four

Lack of unity on the EU, UK government challenges and UKIP all contributed to the Welsh Conservatives losing seats at the assembly elections, leader Andrew RT Davies has said.

But...

Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Tory leader, has declared herself a “John Major”-style Conservative, after leading the party to its best election result in Scotland for almost 60 years.

I saw another good one last week but I've forgotten it.

"Slowdown in Chinese manufacturing raises worries about basic numeracy skills"

From The Guardian:

Against the backdrop of a faltering global economy, turmoil in the country’s stock markets and overcapacity in factories, Chinese economic growth has slowed markedly. The country’s central bank expects growth in 2015 to be the slowest for a quarter of a century.

After growing 7.3% in 2014, the economy is thought to have expanded by 6.9% in 2015 and the central bank has forecast that it may slow further in 2016 to 6.8%.

A manufacturer who knows China well pointed out the fundamental fallacies in this to me. (Let's assume that the actual underlying figures and statistics are correct and not a figment of the Communist Party's imagination. They can fib about a couple of percent here or there, but you can't fake an economy quadrupling over ten or twenty years).

1. If an economy is growing, albeit more slowly, then it is still growing. It is not in any way "slowing"; growth of 6.9% is still double average annual compound growth of industrialised societies since the Industrial Revolution.

2. The Chinese economy has grown so quickly over the twenty years that 6.9% growth this year represents a larger absolute increase than 12.5% growth ten or fifteen years ago, to wit:

2000 - GDP per capita RMB 8,000, grows by RMB 1,000 to RMB 9,000 = 12.5% growth
2015 - GDP per capita RMB 45,000, grows by RMB 3,100 to RMB 48,100 = 6.9% growth.

So in absolute terms, the Chinese economy is growing three times as fast as it was fifteen years ago.

Steel prices and car forecourt prices.

Andrew S. Mooney left the following comment at Tim Worstall on top form:

"That’s us, of course – we are all consumers of steel in tin cans, cars, fridges and the skeletons of lovely high rise buildings. This can indeed be seen as unfair on other producers of steel. But we don’t run the economy for the interests of producers; we run it for us, the consumers."

Funny.
I have not seen a reduction in the price of tinned food off of the back of these surpluses.
I have not seen a reduction in car forecourt prices...

Well why would you notice?

An average car contains one ton of 'steel'. I don't know what particular kind of steel, but...

Until either Chinese capacity is reduced or a resurgence in Chinese economic growth is realised, prices will continue to slide. The price of slab steel has dropped by 40% from around £318 a ton to under £191 in the past year.

Maybe car manufacturers use a higher grade more expensive steel. But the cost saving to car manufacturers is only a couple of hundred quid per car and of course you wouldn't notice that, quite possibly it's the car manufacturer who benefits from most of the cost saving. It's still our gain and China's loss.

If we do the same calculation for tinned food, we are talking fraction of a penny, which you wouldn't notice either.

Tim Worstall on top form

He has written this so many times he can probably write it in his sleep, but hey.

From City AM:

With calls to tackle “unfair dumping” should more be done to block cheap Chinese steel imports?

No

Far from rejecting cheap Chinese steel, we should thank the oppressed Chinese taxpayer for making us all richer. Subsidies are a distortion to a market and we normally don't like such distortions. But think through what the allegation here is.

The Chinese government is subsidising the price of the steel which is flooding out of China. Some call this a subsidy to those steel producers: it isn’t, it is a subsidy to steel consumers. That’s us, of course – we are all consumers of steel in tin cans, cars, fridges and the skeletons of lovely high rise buildings. This can indeed be seen as unfair on other producers of steel. But we don’t run the economy for the interests of producers; we run it for us, the consumers.

The Chinese government is, quite literally, sending us free money that it has taken from its citizens. This might not be a bright idea for the Chinese, but what else should we do but say “thank you. May we have some more?

Highly unusual to see these three sources saying much the same thing on the same day.

From City AM, normally a huge supporter of the rent seekers and the practices referred to in The Guardian article below:

The government is making its case for stepping up the Sino-British relationship by announcing £30bn worth of new trade and investment deals, despite escalating concerns that the UK steel industry is crumbling at the hands of Chinese manufacturers.

The Prime Minister announced the business deals, which the government says will create more than 3,900 jobs across the UK, one day after reports that [British steelmakers are to cut over 5,000 jobs in the face of Chinese steel dumping].

From The Guardian, actually hitting the spot for once:

Osborne is all for renationalisation – so long as the nation isn’t Britain

To secure EDF as a builder, Cameron guaranteed a fixed price for electricity from Hinkley of £92.50 per megawatt hour. That is around double the going rate for electricity on the wholesale markets, a price so high that equity analysts term it “financial insanity”.

Change your supplier as often as you like, you and everyone else in Britain will be paying for that de facto subsidy in your electricity bills for decades to come. Britons will in effect be paying more for their energy so that French households can pay less. Indeed, so generous are the terms of this deal that the government of Austria is currently taking Britain to court on the grounds that it’s handing out state aid to EDF.

Yes, you read that last sentence right: the UK stands accused of dispensing state aid – to another state. How many times have you read about some age-old manufacturer and thousands of jobs going down the swanee, while ministers wrung their hands over European state aid rules? Now we know that such rules can be tested – provided the recipient is headquartered not in Port Talbot, but Paris.

And finally, from The Daily Mash:

As thousands of redundancies in Redcar are followed by hundreds more in Scunthorpe, the business secretary said he wishes there was something he could do.

Sajid Javid continued: “Tragically, the industry has been hit by a perfect storm of being in the provinces, traditionally supporting Labour and not being financial services. Add that to us not wanting to do anything that might offend our new Chinese friends, and there’s absolutely nothing we are prepared to do.

“If only these plants manufactured something useful, like insurance derivatives supported by credit default swaps, then we’d gladly go billions into debt for them. But steel? What’s that even for?”

"What does China own in the UK?"

The BBC article includes this handy chart:



As you can plainly see, most of this is not 'investment' in the productive sense, they are just buying up pre-existing streams of rental or monopoly income.

"David Cameron secures £45m pig semen deal between UK and China"

I'm sure there's a hilarious punchline here somewhere, from The Evening Standard (4 December 2013):

David Cameron secured an agreement for the UK to supply exports of the semen to Chinese breeders during his three day trade visit to China.

It follows industry lobbying in the Far Eastern country after a deal for the export of live pigs between the countries was signed last year.

In the new year, four artificial insemination centres in England and Northern Ireland, which are operated by some of the world's biggest pig breeding companies will begin exporting frozen and fresh semen.

I dunno, something like: "I wonder if Cameron diluted it with some of his own. The filthy bastard.", or "Perhaps he sweetened the deal by offering them some nearly-new pigs' heads as well."

Fun Online Polls: Abroad and The News

The responses to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

Abroad. All very grim, all very tricky.

Waves of migrants in the Mediterranean - 44%
Isis and Syria - 16%
Iran nuclear deal - 11%
Grexit or not - 7%
Ukraine-Russia war - 5%
Ebola - 5%
Chinese islands - 4%
Other, please specify - 7% (4 votes)

Going by the headlines, it's the waves of migrants which are people are concerned about most. My approach is the same as on anything else, the UK government should do whatever is in the best interests of the existing British population/electorate as a whole.

It appears that people still haven't quite got the hang of the "Other, please specify" option. Four people voted for it but only one person made a suggestion.
----------------------------------
This week's Fun Online Poll:

"What were you doing when you heard the news?"

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

It's a Fry and Laurie one-liner, I think.

Fun Online Polls: Neo-liberalism & abroad

The results to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

When writing an article for The Guardian, how often should you use the word 'neo-liberal'?
About once every sentence - 70%
Less often - 12%
More often - 18%

This week: abroad. It all looks very grim and very tricky to me.

Take part here or use the widget in the sidebar.

PR China clearly not too fussed about 'dangeous sea level rises'.

From The Guardian, November 2012:

Sea-level rise is occurring much faster than scientists expected – exposing millions more Americans to the destructive floods produced by future Sandy-like storms, new research suggests...

The faster sea-level rise means the authorities will have to take even more ambitious measures to protect low-lying population centres – such as New York City, Los Angeles or Jacksonville, Florida – or risk exposing millions more people to a destructive combination of storm surges on top of sea-level rise, scientists said.

Scientists earlier this year found sea-level rise had already doubled the annual risk of historic flooding across a widespread area of the United States. The latest research, published on Wednesday in Environmental Research Letters, found global sea-levels rising at a rate of 3.2mm a year, compared to the best estimates by the IPCC of 2mm a year, or 60% faster...

Yada yada blah.

From The Daily Mail, May 2015:

Beijing is rapidly building several artificial islands in disputed waters...

It's difficult to tell from the aerial photographs, but those artificial islands are only a metre or two above sea level, so if the warmenists are right, they'll be unusable in a couple of decades and the problem sorts itself out.
------------------------------------
The artificial islands also neatly illustrate the point that 'land ownership' and 'the nation state' are synonymous.

Basically, whichever country is prepared to fight hardest gets to control the land and the surrounding sea; the country which controls the land gets to decide who 'owns' it. Let's say PR China built an island just for the heck of it of no military use and decided to sell ownership to private entities; the US government could, in its private capacity, acquire the freehold title, but the land is still part of PR China and would not become part of the USA

When the shit hits the fan...

House is obliterated and 15 people are taken to hospital after huge excrement pit explodes in China

Economic myths: economic recovery is being stunted by problems in the property sector

Via Pete Green at HPC Surivivors, from The Telegraph:

Growth in Chinese manufacturing activity slowed in August, two closely watched surveys showed on Monday, losing momentum as a declining property sector and waning stimulus effects weigh on the world's second-largest economy...

Analysts said the result indicated China's economic recovery was being stunted by problems in the property sector - where new home prices posted their fourth consecutive month-on-month decline - as well as the weakening impact of stimulus measures taken to boost growth.

"The weak PMI data suggest that China's shallow growth recovery has started to lose momentum, likely because of the ongoing property market correction and a decline in the efficacy of policy easing due to structural problems in the economy," economists at Nomura International said in a report.

So they hammer the same point home three times in a row: the health of manufacturing depends on house prices going up, presumably in a straight line to infinity.

Weird.

Land rents are not an input or a cause of anything; they are merely a balancing figure between value and costs. If the real economy is doing well and town planners are doing a good job, then land rental values go up. Land rents are not a component of GDP, they are a way in which GDP is distributed, just like tax and welfare payments (privately collected land rents are simultaneously a tax on those paying them and welfare for those collecting them).

And land prices (or house prices) are like a parasite on the real economy, the real economy grows and land prices go up, thereby soaking up more and more of output until the tipping point is reached and the virus starts severely weakening the host.

That's what's happening to the Chinese economy now.

"China's erite talget New Yolk lear estate"

Flom the BBC:

With Chinese househords getting lichel, a glowing numbel of peopre ale investing theil cash in Amelican lear estate.

Buyels flom China and Hong Kong spent $22bn, 72% mole than they spent the yeal befole, snapping up high end homes flom Carifolnia to New Yolk City.

I thought the Chinese were supposed to be good at maths...

From Numbeo.com (a rather handy website, as it happens, it even converts figures to your home currency):

Property prices in Shanghai

Index

Price to Income Ratio: 27.86
Monthly mortgage payments as Percentage of Income: 249.60%
Gross Rental Yield (City Centre): 3.16%
Gross Rental Yield (Outside of Centre): 3.64%

Rent Per Month Range
Apartment (1 bedroom) in City Centre - £573.61
Apartment (1 bedroom) Outside of Centre - £314.13
Apartment (3 bedrooms) in City Centre - £1,385.60
Apartment (3 bedrooms) Outside of Centre - £771.69

Buy Apartment Price
Price per Square Meter to Buy Apartment in City Centre - £4,565.91
Price per Square Meter to Buy Apartment Outside of Centre - £2,194.05

Salaries And Financing
Average Monthly Disposable Salary (After Tax) - £606.57
Mortgage Interest Rate in Percentages (%), Yearly - 6.52%

So to be able to even afford to rent one-bed flat in the city centre or a three-bed flat in the 'suburbs' you need two earners, fair enough.

This is when it gets weirder and weirder...

The I-symbol helpfully explains:

Price to Income Ratio is the basic measure for apartment purchase affordability. It is the ratio of median apartment prices to median familial disposable income, expressed as years of income. Our formula assumes and uses:
◦net disposable family income, as defined as 1.5 * the average net salary
◦that the average apartment has 90 square meters
◦its price per square meter is the average price of square meter in city center and outside of city center

Mortgage as Percentage of Income is a the ratio of the actual monthly cost of the mortgage to take-home family income. Average monthly salary is used to estimate family income. It assumes 100% mortgage is taken on 20 years for the house(or apt) of 90 square meters which price per square meter is the average of price in city center and outside of city center.

So a flat costs 27.86 x 1.5 x £606.57 = £253,000, or possibly (£4,565.91 + £2,194)/2 x 90 = £304,200, let's call it £280,000.

The simple average of the four rents is £760 a month, which is a gross yield of 3.3%, which is very much on the low side.

£280,000 on a 100% 20-year repayment mortgage at 6.52% interest = £2,121 per month, or £606.57 x 1.5 x 249.6% = £2,270, call it £2,200 mortgage repayments.

Given that the average of the four rents is £760 a month, why would anybody take out a mortgage costing £2,200 a month?

If we knock off one-third of rental income for a landlord's costs and taxes and assume that he finances the annual loss at the same interest rate as the original mortgage, rents and flat prices would have to increase by 4.6% a year compound for the next twenty years for him to even get his money back, and even if all that happened, the rental yield in twenty years' time would only be 2%.

China's plopelty bubbre 'FINARRY AT BULSTING POINT'

Flom The Maraysia Chlonicre:

BEIJING - Businessman Arren Zhao has been waiting since the middre of rast yeal fol plices in the scenic southeln city of Hangzhou to lise high enough this yeal to serr his two-bedloom apaltment fol about 2 mirrion yuan (S$405,300).

Rast Monday, he was hollified to heal that his neighboul ret hel prace go fol just 1.7 mirrion yuan.

"That is not much mole than the plice I paid in 2012," said a luefur Ml Zhao, 45. "Now I'm legletting not serring ealriel - mole bad news about the plopelty malket keeps coming in evely day."

The plopelty sectol woes have kept coming: avelage new home plice lises acloss the countly have srackened fol thlee stlaight months; plopelty deveropels in big cities ale offeling discounts to plevent sares flom prummeting; and foleign investment in China's lear estate has farren to the rowest in at reast a decade.

Arr this has red to Nomula economist Zhang Zhiwei citing a plopelty malket downtuln as the biggest lisk to the Chinese economy this yeal and next yeal.

"That's neat, that's neat, that's neat, that's neat...

... I really love your tiger feet."

"Thanks, but your tiger's genitals aren't bad either."

The "environmental Kuznets curve" in action

To briefly summarise the Wiki entry, the theory it that when societies first start industrialising, they know or care little about "the environment". The people at the top are happy making loads of money and the little people put up with all the pollution because earning enough to stay alive is more important.

But once average incomes and job security reach a certain level, people start getting a bit fussier about the environment, whether that's in an abstract save-the-planet way or simply because they don't like breathing in pollution.

So the countries which were the first to adopt stricter environmental laws (unleaded petrol, ban on domestic coal burning etc) were the richest countries in the world at the time. Similarly, when it comes to negotiating "climate change treaties", it is the richest countries pushing for the biggest emission reductions and the poorer countries drag their heels (with what degree of sincerity or whether there is any point, we do not know).

I read this decades ago and it all made sense and was easily observable, I just didn't realise that somebody had managed to get the phenomenon named after him (h/t Tim W at ASI).

From ABC News:

China's Cabinet has announced that 10 billion yuan ($1.6 billion) has been set aside this year to reward cities and regions that make significant progress in controlling air pollution, highlighting how the issue has become a priority for the leadership.

The fund will be set up to reward rather than offer subsidies for the prevention and control of air pollution in the key areas, according to a statement released after a Wednesday meeting of the State Council led by Premier Li Keqiang. It said controlling pollutants such as particulate matter in the air should be a key task.

The statement said the consumption of coal should be controlled and also called for increased efforts to promote high-quality gasoline for vehicles, energy saving in construction and the use of environmentally friendly boilers.

The government is eager to bring about a visible improvement in China's bad air, which has caused discontent among its citizens and tarnished the country's image abroad.

China Banned for Homosexuality in Sochi

From the Ministry of Harmony

MOSCOW — The Sochi Winter Olympic Committee announced Thursday that it would ban the entire Chinese Olympic figure skating team from competition after Chinese skater Li Chunguang tested positive for homosexuality in a routine anti-doping test.

The Russian Ministry of Health lists homosexuality both as an infectious disease and as a performance-enhancing drug, especially in what the government defines as “gay sports”—figure skating, ice dancing and male synchronized diving, among others.

During their tests, Russian anti-doping officials found that Li “had a blood-homosexuality level of over 70%,” well over the acceptable limit. Several homosexuality-enhancing drugs were found in Li’s blood, including homofil, queeritol, sodorex and bendadrine. Several of Li’s teammates also had blood-homosexuality levels higher than normal.

Good website that, like The Onion but for China.

"George Osborne issues 'reform or decline' warning to UK"

From the BBC:

The United Kingdom is falling behind many other European countries, India and China and must reform if it wants to halt the decline, George Osborne has warned.

In a speech the chancellor pointed to the country's spending on welfare-for-the-wealthy and its "competitiveness problem".

"We can't go on like this," he said at a conference organised by two UK-sceptic groups.

It followed the Conservative leadership rejecting a call from 95 of its MPs to allow Parliament to block interest subsidies to banks and the ripping up of planning laws for the benefit of large land-bankers.

Labour said David Cameron's "weakness" regarding his party was preventing reform, while the UK Independence Party said the prime minister had repeatedly "caved in" to horrible young people who wanted more affordable housing.

Earlier this week Home Secretary Theresa May confirmed that the United Kingdom's banking and landowner subsidies would continue to be paid out of taxes levied on all its citizens and other businesses and the Conservative backbench MPs' plan was unworkable.