I have just been talking to a hacker about this and he says it's all in the spirit of fun and these guys are getting together to break into things just to show the manufacturers where their weaknesses are. He himself was a victim at the conference a couple of years ago - he turned on his computer to find all the settings had been changed but the hacker had left instructions on how to change them back and some advice on laptop security!

So basically for the next few days Vegas turns into a hackers paradise. Last year this apparently culminated in a bit of jolly japery that brought down the satellite TV system across Nevada.

Libertarian paternalism, government "nudging", is increasingly beginning to seem like a modernised version of old fashioned authoritarian conservativism.

Quite. However popular the book "Nudge" is, libertarian paternalism is still something of an oxymoron. Sure, nudging people towards doing good things sounds wonderful, but it still requires that someone, somewhere, decide what "good things" are for other people.  Which rather misses the essence of libertarianism: that, absent protecting the rights of others to do as they wish, we cannot decide for other people what is a good thing for them. Only the individual can decide that for themselves.

I would probably (as is my wont) go further than Guido. This love in for the book, indeed the whole libertarian paternalism thing, isn't just in danger of morphing into good old fashioned authoritarian conservatism. It's actually a cover for it, which is why those who tend to such authoritarianism love the idea]]> 2008-08-07T17:25:50+01:00 http://www.spectator.co.uk/business/trading-floor/883436/but-what-are-spies-for.thtml One of these really mind boggling ideas turns up in the newspapers today.
MI5 and MI6 could be forced to share their intelligence with the rest of Europe under new proposals from the EU.

The piece goes on to explain at least some of the reasons why this might not be all that wise. We already share a lot with the Yanks, who would be less than pleased to see what they collect being shared with certain other EU states. There have also been times when material collected has been shared with people we really don't want it to be as a result of (say, for example, French) political and diplomatic manouvres.

But the real objection perhaps can't be revealed in a family newspaper (while we sophisticates can discuss it). A large amount of our varied spying efforts go on trying to work out what the other EU countries are doing. Just because we share a political structure with them doesn't mean that anyone is naive enough to think that all of our interests are aligned all of the time.

Sharing the information you've got with the people you're actually spying on really doesn't sound all that]]> 2008-08-07T17:16:19+01:00 http://www.spectator.co.uk/business/trading-floor/882676/rates-held-at-5.thtml No surprise but the Bank of England’s MPC has kept UK interest rates at 5 per cent.   

It seems like yesterday institutions could hardly print money fast enough to satisfy the urge to lend Blackstone millions for its mega-leveraged deals. But those days are gone. The firm has announced it lost $400 million in the first six months of this year, compared with $1.9 billion profit in the first six months of last year.Where are the headlines now; the Chinese investors and their bottomless wallets?

Where are the trade union demands that something be done to starve the fat cats? Where are the calls to strangle Blackstone with the very tax loopoles through which it seeked to climb? It all sounds a little Rupert Brooke…or Rupert Broke, I suppose, given the times we live in.

So, seeing the following signing a letter to The Guardian today did not fill me with hope for the validity of the idea they were supporting:

Neal Lawson Compass, Gavin Hayes Compass, Ed Matthew Friends of the Earth, Tony Juniper, Kate Green Child Poverty Action Group, Roy Hattersley, Chuka Umunna, Nicky Gavron, Cllr Jon Collins, Richard Burden MP, Karen Buck MP, Roger Berry MP, Prof Ruth Lister, Tony Robinson, Dave Prentis Unison, Keith Norman Aslef, Guy Palmer New Policy Institute, Helena Kennedy QC, Tony Woodley Unite, Andrew Simms New Economics Foundation, Wes Streeting President, NUS

As far as I can tell there's only one economist there and that's Andrew Simms, he]]> 2008-08-06T11:16:40+01:00 http://www.spectator.co.uk/business/trading-floor/879761/the-problem-with-stamp-duty.thtml Or rather, the problem with talking about suspending it.

Following on from yesterday's few stories this is now all over the newspapers:

Stamp duty on properties worth up to £250,000 could be suspended as part of an aid package for the housing market that will be central to Gordon Brown's attempt to relaunch his premiership this autumn.

The basic idea isn't bad at all. Stamp duty is a tax upon transactions and whenever you tax something you get less of it. So, if you want to increase the number of transactions (otherwise known as "kickstarting the housing market") then removing that transaction tax would and could be a good way of doing it.

Just as there are those who argue that such transaction taxes should be imposed upon international flows of money (the so called "Tobin Tax") in order to reduce speculative flows. I don't think that latter is a good idea but it is indeed the flip side of the same coin.

However, there's something about the way they're doing this relief from Stamp Duty which is simply idiotic. It was immediately spotted by the CityUnslickers and the commentators to Michael's piece yesterday.

We've just introduced]]> 2008-08-06T08:52:27+01:00 http://www.spectator.co.uk/business/trading-floor/879246/meredith-whitney-and-the-hierarchy-of-payments.thtml It used to be that if you were having difficulty making your mortgage payment, you'd end up, one way or another, putting it on your credit card -- if only by being unable to pay off much of your credit card bill that month.

Today, says Meredith Whitney in a Fortune profile, it's the other way around, and if you're having trouble making your credit-card payment this month, you'll end up using your mortgage money to keep current on the plastic.

Any borrower who's upside down in his mortgage - i.e., the size of his mortgage is bigger than the value of his home - is likely to make car and credit card payments before paying his home loan. "The hierarchy of payments has totally shifted," Whitney now says.

I'm having difficulty believing this, although it might well be true. My problem is this: if you're not upside down on your mortgage, then you quite obviously and sensibly will put your mortgage payments first. But are do people really have such a good idea of exactly how much equity they have in their house that they're able to turn that hierarchy of payments]]> 2008-08-05T19:28:20+01:00