#americans are as disposable to their government and the english are to theirs

[cleonard-ricsummerinenglandblog]

Warwick Castle - A wonderland of medieval merriment on the outside, and a monument of empire on the inside

I think for many, the UK is synonymous with colonization and imperialism. Britain conquered ¼ of the planet, and dominated global politics during the 19th century. To this day, English/British culture is seen as standard in various nations across the planet (the three piece suit, the English language, handshakes as greetings). The ascendance of the United States, a former British settler colony has certainly aided in the continued influence of “British culture” over the world. 

But empires and Great Britain have a history stretching back to Antiquity. When the vast Roman Empire invaded and subjected the Britons, forming the province of Britannia. And again when the Norse came, and settling the Danelaw or making England part of their empires (most notably the “North Sea Empire” under Cnut the Great), then the Normans and their conquest of the Kingdom, and subsequent French kings of England, and the so-called Angevin Empire. England’s conquests of Wales and Ireland, and finally the formation of the UK out of the personal union between England and Scotland. It’s been a long list of empires that rule in England, or Britain. And that history, especially the later parts of it, are not fun things to talk about, and can ignite harsh feelings in people…

When we visited Warwick Castle, it was easy to forget all the horrors. The place if lively, beautiful, and filled with things to to, from the hedge maze, climbing the towers (three cheers for Dr. Holl for finally getting to the top of the main tower after years of attempts), seeing the beautiful peacocks, visiting the food stalls, and little merchandise and toy shops, the joust event, the archery range (which had the hottest, most adorable man running it (Christopher if you see this, marry me :3c jk, unless…)) There’s just a lot to do and see and have fun with.

But as they day went on, I decided to go inside the main house. And there, I saw a different part of the castle. The outside is so fun, it’s like a theme park. The inside is more like a museum, and walking through its two halves, I was struck by a thought. I saw the gold portraits, and the fine silks and tapestries, and the dresses, and suits of armor, and the wax models lounging on sofas and I had a thought.

One of the models was a young Winston Churchill, whose tenure as PM saw a devastating famine in Bengal that killed millions.

What power, what wealth, these people must have had, to live here. How many have died because of them? How many lives have the owners of this castle throughout the centuries sent to their deaths? And for what?

The Wars of the Roses is a dramatic part of history, and the writings of William Shakespeare have helped turn it into such a story. But that story centers upon the feuding kings and dukes. And the things they fight about are just accepted as the way of things. England and her people were ruined, slaughtered by people squabbling over the question of who gets to own them. All of that happened right after the Hundred Years War, which saw England’s French kings fight for their supposed right to own France, because one Kingdom wasn’t enough for their greedy hearts. All these combatants were themselves descended from William of Normandy, who conquered England, toppled its native institutions, relegated English to a peasant language, and when people got agitated, who committed genocide to consolidate his rule. All because he thought he had a right to England and its people, as though they were an object to be owned. 

Warwick Castle got its start with Æthelflæd of Mercia, as an Anglo-Saxon burh to defend against viking attacks, when England was still a fledgling nation, but the Normans came and made it a fortress, to ‘defend’ their rule. Just like the Kingdom of England would later do in Wales, and Ireland, just like the United Kingdom would do in America and India… follow the fortresses if you wanna follow the tide of Empire. 

The way I see it, the Norman conquest turned England into an engine of empire, greased with the blood of the English people, and those it conquered alongside them. And that engine became the United Kingdom, and made an empire that spanned the globe. But the only real beneficiaries have been the same ones who caused the Wars of the Roses, the Hundred Years War, the Harrying of the North… the same kind of people that drafted Americans into the Vietnam War, who pushed Native Americans into pitiful reservations that they’ve starved of resources, who enslaved Africans for the profit of the cotton and tobacco trades. The rich and powerful and wealthy. Those who rule us. How cruel of a world it is, that we are ruled by people who see us as disposable because in their warped little heads, we are. 

Fun fact about England's medieval standard, it's a quartering of France and England's CoAs, and France, in quadrants 1 and 4, was given the place of higher importance, because England's kings considered themselves French, and that France was more important.

[mst3kproject]

909: Gorgo

 I was surprised that Crow and Servo behaved as if Reptilicus was their first non-Japanese giant rubber monster movie… but then, it had been about twenty years and the bots didn’t spend it re-watching the old episodes like I did, so I guess I can forgive them.  You’d think they’d remember all that Dorkin’, though.

A volcano emerges from the ocean, damaging a salvage vessel crewed by identical English guys.  They put in for repairs at the unfriendly Irish island of Nara, where something shady seems to be afoot.  Something shady is, but it doesn’t really matter because the subplot comes to a sudden and premature end with the appearance of a giant finny-eared sea monster! Our heroes – a guy named Sam, played by William Sylvester, and another guy whose name is not Sam, played by a guy who looks exactly like William Sylvester – decide that the obvious thing to do is to capture this beast and take it to a major city.  It’s not like anything could go wrong with that.

I’m not sure why this movie needed the aborted subplot about the Viking treasure, because nobody comes out of that looking good.  Finding treasure in the UK is like finding a body – you have a legal duty to inform the local coroner.  Somebody from the government will then come and assess what you’ve found, and offer right of first purchase to any interested museums.  If the museums can’t afford it (which is very likely), it will be returned to you to dispose of as you please.  The law is intended to protect items whose historical value may be greater than their monetary value (like the tray-jurr chest in The Thing that Couldn’t Die).

Having done this research throws a slightly different light over the whole to-do with the treasure.  If Sam and Not-Sam had threatened to report the treasure to the authorities themselves, they’d still have been bullies but they’d have been doing their citizenly duty.  Instead they decide to steal from the criminals, knowing that the latter can’t complain about it without exposing their own wrongdoing.  Well done, movie, there’s some likable heroes right there!

Besides British treasure laws from the 60’s, the other thing I looked up for this review was Lemon Hart, which is seen in a big background advertisement in the Piccadilly Circus scenes.  Apparently it’s a type of rum.  I wish I’d known that before I watched the movie, and I’m disappointed it’s not an ingredient in @colleenrants ’s Gorgo.

Before I did that research, my first reaction to Gorgo is that this is another movie that looks terrible.  Maybe it’s just the decaying film stock but the whole thing is dark and washed-out to the point where the only noticeable colour besides a dull blue is the pink of flabby British faces that haven’t seen the sun in six months.  The bluescreen work is dreadful and so are the miniatures, and where black and white stock footage is inserted they didn’t even bother to tint it… which makes me suspect that the film stock was awful to begin with.

My second reaction was that for all Leonard Maltin calls this “kind of a British take on Godzilla”, this movie is not Godzilla.  This movie is King Kong.  The main characters put in at an island inhabited by unfriendly people, where they find a giant monster.  A victim is offered up as bait to lure the creature in and capture it, and it is then taken to a big city, where it causes mayhem among major landmarks as the army tries ineffectually to stop it.  This is exactly the plot of King Kong, with William Sylvester in his little diving bell as Fay Wray!

When you look at it this way, there are a few layers of interest in the movie using an Irish island.  The islanders in King Kong were stock savages. The ones in Gorgo are isolated fishermen… but for the last couple of thousand years, ‘unwashed barbarians’ is exactly how the English have perceived not only the Irish but the Scots and the Welsh as well.  These peoples have been treated in the same way as the English treated conquered Africans and Americans, forced to learn English and with their own languages and cultures outlawed (notice how the characters in Gorgo take the speaking of Gaeilge as a sort of insult).  Naturally this has led to large parts of the British Isles being troubled areas full of angry people, but we don’t really notice this in the Americas because we consider them all Brits.

So here’s Nara island thinking they’ve hit the jackpot with their Viking treasure, and then in come our mighty English heroes to do exactly what the English always do – steal what the Irish believe to be rightfully theirs.  It’s even worse than that, though, because these intruders are indirectly responsible for the destruction of the entire community! They take baby Gorgo away, and a few days later the angry Mama shows up to look for her offspring.  As usual, the arrival of Englishmen in boats is bad news for everybody they meet, both people and wildlife.

Having destroyed Nara Island, however, Mama Gorgo then turns her attention to London.  The entire British military cannot stop her and she just marches right in to take back what is hers.  When I was looking for this week’s bonus material, I happened across a post by @redmenaceofficial  suggesting that the movie is an Irish revenge fantasy.  That actually works pretty well, as we see Mama Gorgo destroy several icons of the British empire, including Big Ben and the Tower Bridge. In terms of psychological impact on the English people, this would be like tearing down the Statue of Liberty (which a giant monster did do in Cloverfield, but we didn’t get to watch).

Another level on which this works is the ending, which is actually a pretty surprising one for a monster movie.  Taking their cue from the endings of The Indestructible Man, Night of the Lepus, Killdozer, and heaven knows how many other films, the military decides to electrocute Mama Gorgo… and it doesn’t work.  She walks right through it, breaks Baby Gorgo out of his pen, and takes him back home to the ocean!  Maybe this is just meant to be sequel bait, but maybe it’s also a statement: the entire might of what was once the most powerful nation in the world cannot stand up against this creature.  Mama Gorgo has conquered the conquerors and taught them humility.

The third interesting thing about this ending is that it completes an evolution that’s been going on since Baby Gorgo was captured: although in his first attack on Nara Island, Baby Gorgo is treated as a monster, by the time the end credits roll he has become a suffering victim.  This happens somewhat to King Kong as well, but that’s a product of hindsight, in an age when we’ve come to think of gorillas as gentle forest-dwelling creatures instead of savage hairy beasts.  In Gorgo it’s intentional, as voiced through the character of Shaun, the little boy who wants to see Baby Gorgo returned to the sea.

While we may find an ape an inherently sympathetic creature due to its resemblance to a human, a dinosaur is much harder to anthropomorphize – especially a fire-breathing, city-smashing dinosaur!  When we first see Baby Gorgo attacking Nara Island, where he is driven away by fire, our sympathies are with the frightened Islanders. Likewise when the much more powerful Mama Gorgo comes to destroy the place.  By the time Baby Gorgo gets to Battersea Park, however, where he’s held back by flamethrowers as he’s put into his pen, we have come to see him as an abused and caged animal, something that deserves to be free.  The movie manages this shift without giving the creatures anthropomorphic faces or body language, which is quite an accomplishment.

It’s definitely more convincing than Sam’s character arc, in which he comes to realize that he has treated Baby Gorgo badly and gets drunk and tries to let the creature out!  I’d respect him more if he realized he’d treated the Nara Islanders badly, but nobody seems to care about them.  They’re just Irish, right?

I have remarked before that Asian monster movies seem to have a lower standard of believability than western ones.  This is true even of very recent entries: compare Legendary Pictures’ 2014 Godzilla movie to Toho’s 2016 Shin Gojira.  It is certainly true of Gorgo. While Japanese kaiju eiga of the 60’s were cartoony and colourful and didn’t care too much about scientific plausibility, Gorgo is staid and reserved and gray-blue.  Even the scenes of panicking Londoners seem weirdly low-key, perhaps because they’re narrated by a somber newscaster who spends so much effort coming up with poetic descriptions of what he’s seeing.

At the end, Mama and Baby Gorgo wander off into the ocean to look for Tokyo, London is in ruins, and I think Sam and Not-Sam get married and adopt Shaun.  Maybe it’s the fact that there’s only two women with lines in the whole movie and they only get one each… maybe it’s the fact that Sam and Not-Sam spend the whole movie side-by-side and later take joint charge of young Shaun, much like the two guys raising the kid together in Godzilla vs Megalon.  I don’t think I’m making it up this time.  The movie really is pretty gay.

[clubofinfo]

Expert: Ah, the “Sorrows of Empire.” Its lies these days so easily exposed. Yet, too often ignored. Saturday morning, April 14, 2018, the world released a collective sigh of relief after a week of anguished hand-wringing at the too-likely possibility of our own utter annihilation. US President, Donald J. Trump, a man of massive ego, reportedly small hands and apparently insignificant phallus, had failed, despite direct attempts by the Big Bad Wolf of American military madness, to blow down the retaining walls protecting human conscience… and reality. Or fatally damage Syria. Having witnessed this failed attempt to blow the world to pieces via the winds of war, we, the remaining civilized world, were instead treated to worldwide giddy, heel kicking and side-splitting laughter at the ultimate tepid US military inspired results. Yes, despite a week of US hegemonic huffing and puffing — and tweeting — many of us were amazed to actually wake up once again. This past Saturday, we all discovered that the latest triumvirate of self-serving, sadistic and socially-challenged world leaders (US/UK/ FR)  had suffered a storied defeat…one caused by two little pigs — guinea pigs really — and one black cat. Thanks to these three demur little mammals, who spoke not a word of English, but were likely – if the UK media folly is to believed-  secretly taking Russian language lessons, these three accurately summed up current Western foreign policy: “You can fool some of the people some of the time. You can fool some of the people all of the time, but… You can’t fool all of the people all the time.” This sage advice, of course, was not within the full understanding of Messrs. Trump and Macron, nor Ms. May who instead preferred to believe in their own weakening hearts and minds the much older capitalist mantra: Never give a sucker an even break! Having seen their laundry list of previous cunning political connivinces go almost unchallenged by their own populace in routine acquiescence, their lies became ever bolder. And inexplicable. This lulled them into a false sense of overconfidence that believed they could provide all manner of utter nonsense as long as it was alleged to be attached to the never passe “Soviet Union” better known as “Russia.” So, it was natural for these three myopic world leaders to assume their latest plot would pass easily within the shadows of their own dark souls. Instead, theirs was a comedy show that suddenly snapped the world to the realization: We no longer believe a fucking thing you say! This ultimate and fundamental realization was spawned weeks before this past Saturday’s illegal attack. In the quaint UK town of Salisbury,  former double agent and recent MI-6 participant, Sergei Skripal, had relocated to go out to pasture, retire and die. Little did he know that his long-term goals would turn out to be somewhat premature. Well, almost. UK Prime Minister, Theresa May was, and is, a desperate woman. So desperate is she — after her own recent David Cameron moment of parliamentary disaster — to retain power within the posh digs at No. 10 that she quite willingly proved correct all criticisms of her Conservative Party: She joined forces with the Irish Nazi party, better known as the DUP… and gave them a 1 Billion British pound mortita for their trouble. That’s desperate! Strangely, Ms. May could not understand why, after all this, she was still reviled by all the UK parliamentary parties and most of the British people. Having done her best to achieve Neville Chamberlain style unpopularity, she needed a distraction… no matter how amateurish the production. For she had long ago concluded, as have so many foreign leaders, that her public was just as easily controlled as watering a potted plant in the window of her number 10. Over arrogant, Ms. May sent in her Keystone Cops — MI-6 — to do what had worked so often before in times of political need. So easy. Indeed! As the plot unfurled on a park bench in Salisbury on March 4, 2018, the press dutifully expanded daily on the one proffered set of lies. Nice and smoothly… Russia did it! Who, but a treasonous Brit would possibly argue with such a complete lack of prima face evidence? Yes, all was going so well for Ms. May and her conspirators until their hired media minions made their first fatal and undeniable mistake. Enter the true hero of our story, our savior, Nash Van Drake. Cat. Black cat. Likely Russian agent and the only live witness; one who knew all too well the other fundamental slogan of political cover-up…”Dead men ( and cats) tell no tales”. The two Guinea pigs were already toast, which, of course, fit the UK narrative that the Russian sounding Novichok — quickly renamed that week from its original name, “Foliant” —  had ultimately (after the Government story changed multiple times) originated in… or on… or around the Skripal house, hence the two little Guinea pigs’ timely demise and convenient incineration. However… You see, Van Drake was a black cat: Persian of Arabic descent. In the UK being black and/or Arab is increasingly great cause for caution. After years of living safely curled up on the living room settee watching the daily BBC propaganda reel or evenings on former spy Mr. Skripal’s lap forever watching James Bond reruns on ITV — over and over and over again — when the strange alien-looking men in yellow suits, plastic masks, and oxygen tanks picked the lock on the Skripal’s front door, astutely Van Drake took to these years of imposed TV training and knew just what to do. Run! The poor caged Guinea pigs didn’t have a chance. Once upon a time, the secret services of the dominant world had at least the courtesy to respect the world’s intelligence quotient even when discounting their country’s own. In that era, evil political intentions did attempt to carefully cover the footprints leading to their too many false flag operations. Professional surreptitious skullduggery, however, has now given way to plots of conquest that are really ham-fisted affronts to simple mental logic followed by a near total media cover-up in favor of same. This has so far been all too effective, and with the similarly agendized publishers in the US and UK having control of over 90% of these “media choices,” a media black-out of inconvenient facts has been the de rigueur method of cover-up. This new methodology of political deceit relies on one single, all-important premise, one that evil minds similar to those of Trump, Macron, and May believe to their soulless core: We control the story and …You… are too stupid and willfully ignorant to find the truth. While quantitatively and historically accurate in their belief to date, unfortunately for MI-6 and their resulting worldwide television theatrical performance, Brits are also animal lovers. One might well, then, imagine the look on the faces of the conspirators when, after already disposing of the evidence of the two conveniently dead rodents and thus certifying their claim that the Skripals were poisoned at their home, they were suddenly shocked by the very first serious media question, one for which the co-conspirators collectively had only one confused, nervous, sideways looking answer… “What Cat?!” Like Jack Ruby seeking out Oswald, the cops were off again to fix this glaring omission. Poor Van Drake, still hiding in the dark of his own Palestine under the couch, and now revealed, never had a chance. As the yellow suited masked men dragged him kicking and screaming off to certain chemical weapons death at Briton’s own self-proclaimed Auschwitz, the secret chemical weapons facility known instead as Porton Down, the poor kitty had no way of knowing that his cremation would make him the hero of this hilarious and almost fatal — for us — tragedy. For it was Van Drake, his being alive and next dead, that snapped the world to the proper realization that: one: the highly lethal military grade Novichok/Foliant in question was approximately as deadly as Van Drake’s own flea collar, and better: Ms. May, the Cons, and the vaunted UK press were completely lying out their ass! Finally, it seemed the counter-intelligence services of first world hegemony had actually managed to underestimate the true intelligence of the average Briton and, apparently, the military intelligence services of most of the other nations on earth. It’s one thing to shoot Palestinians for target practice, inflict the world’s biggest cholera epidemic on Yemen while bombing its hospitals and doctors, or terrorize a few hundred thousand Rohingya into abandoning their homes for the pleasure of capitalist pursuits: all these so easily ignored by a deliberate media sedated, flag-wrapped public. But, this time they had gone too far. They had killed… a cat! What a fuck-up! Fast forward to the land — the epicenter — of nationwide mind fabrication. Just as strangely as barely-prime minister, Ms. May, the new White House presidential marionette in orange, despite having been repeatedly for a year bitch slapped into submission by his adversaries on all sides of the aisle, was still having problems with those pesky Democrats and their Justice Department, their attorneys, and this past week, their cops. Worse, to a President who craves personal approval like an American male does Opioids, his popularity ratings were down. What to do? To a man with a golf ball sized IQ, there was only one thing he could do. A choice that would make him popular from the boardrooms of Halliburton to the gun-toting, Jack Daniels-swilling taverns, and barrooms of Tennessee. From the dark shadowy dampness of the Israeli Knesset to the gold lined palaces of the newly anointed Saudi prophet, MBS in Riyadh: A nice “new, shiny, smart” war. Perfect!! But how to start a new war. That chemical weapons false flag rubbish had failed, one, two three… six times in the past. Oh, and that Salisbury debacle — where the Skripal’s were doing just fine all of a sudden — now makes seven failures. But, to hell with a smart guy like Einstein, why not give it another shot. Besides Trump had a specially prepared US media tool awaiting: Those ever handy and timely White Helmets; the ones who always seem better with a video camera than at performing first aid. Fresh off being handed a shiny 2017 Oscar for their star acting role in their own Hollywood propaganda film of justification, surely they could finally get it right this time? Thus we, the civilized world, were treated to another round of intelligence insulting western inspired theatrics. And it might have worked. Almost did. Because, hey, these are the guys who wore the White helmets. White ones. Who could argue with that? Needing a coalition of the willing for his new war, the logical first choice for Trump was to invite his equally flawed counterpart in London to jump into bed with him.  Apparently the salacious allegations of the Steele dossier — which the UK press failed to show as connected to Skripal senior — may be true since Trump showed a continued passion for the kinky in next going French, and inviting another similarly descending political hack to his menage a trois of war. Macron, whose popularity echoes his two concubines in being approximately that of Napoleon bringing the troops home from Russia, was down to his skivvies in seconds. Reduced to attacking farmers and peaceful protesters in his stated effort to bring all things capitalist to bare in traditionally socialist France, he had obviously failed to yet master the emasculation of his own media. Thus the irony of all this, applied to French Napoleonic law, was that in the eyes of his countrymen Macron was at the very least, “guilty until proven innocent.” And, good luck with that. So, when Washington called, followed by a short follow-up ring from Tel Aviv, Macron also knew just what to do. And, off to war it was. For two weeks these three frolicked in a pre-war orgy of selling the exact same pack of lies to their own nation’s public via their own controlled media; lies that continued to include the connection to the Soviet Union Russia via the Skripal chemical weapons attack in Salisbury. Of course, this Syrian attack in Ghouta was real this time. Right? However, in this mad three-nation ramp-up to new war many persons of rational mind and a penchant for self-preservation, persons that included world leaders still in possession of their facilities, continued to wonder about the massive logical and factual problems with the Skripal incident and “the cat.” This was shown in the universal lack of willingness of other countries to enter the fray. When Angela Merkel doesn’t willingly join an American rush to war, you know there’s a big problem. However, many leaders did save face with Israel and half-heartedly attested to the full package of lies being true by abstaining in their UN votes to stop the pending attack. So, our three continued to cavort in pre-war bliss despite the constant interruptions made by John Bolton and Mike Pompeo, scratching and whining at the bedroom door while trying to get in. But, their orgy did continue, the glee of upcoming death and destruction being spawned from their own loins an aphrodisiac far too strong to be controlled. Sadly, despite the inquiries and outrage of the few sharp minds — and cat lovers — worldwide, these three Israeli concubines did finally manage to achieve coitus this past Saturday, April 14, 2018, with the Donald next indiscriminately ejaculating cruise missiles all over Syria. These missiles, having an unusually high mortality rate of their own (71/103), did almost nothing to Syria or Syrians who that new morning danced in streets afterward. But this charade did allow an embattled US president to temporarily forget his troubles, put his golf balls back in his sack and feel much better after having finally relieved himself. Not quite done, it was time for the final act: for the three to prove that, when it comes to congressional or parliamentary oversight for more war: 1) it is far easier to beg forgiveness, than to ask permission and 2) these same legislative checks on war powers are in reality as effective a deterrent as that of a Las Vegas boxing commissioner. A few more calls from Tel Aviv, soon to be Jerusalem, and the little fish in the US congress and the two parliaments were again nicely ketteled into the proper way of retroactive thinking and approving…more war. Well, the moral of this ages-old recurring fable of overconfident governmental, covert operations should be obvious. It should not take one dead cat and a couple of Guineas to shock us all to the proper realization: When it comes to the Governments of our world…it’s all a pack of lies. So, we the intelligent world salute you Nash Van Drake and your tiny brethren. May you all rest in peace in the service of us all. May we together pray: pray that the world quickly awakens to the terminal realizations of poor Van Drake, reluctant hero, as the steel doors of the gas chamber called Porton Down creaked open before him and he swallowed forever his last breath… Not a one of us has nine lives, and our governments are pretty sure that we are all… dumber than a god damn cat! http://clubof.info/

[jeroldlockettus]

Not Your Grandmother’s I.M.F.

Christine Lagarde, Managing Director, IMF, speaks during the Plenary session of the 2017 IMF/World Bank Annual Meetings on Friday, October 13 in Washington, D.C. Ryan Rayburn/IMF Photo

Our latest Freakonomics Radio episode is called “Not Your Grandmother’s I.M.F.” (You can subscribe to the podcast at Apple Podcasts or elsewhere, get the RSS feed, or listen via the media player above.)

The International Monetary Fund has long been the “lender of last resort” for economies in crisis. Christine Lagarde, who runs the institution, would like to prevent those crises from ever happening. She tells us her plans.

Below is a transcript of the episode, modified for your reading pleasure. For more information on the people and ideas in the episode, see the links at the bottom of this post.

*      *      *

As head of an institution with 189 member countries and about $1 trillion at its disposal, Christine Lagarde has a pretty busy schedule. So you can’t be too surprised, or upset, when she shows up a half-hour late for an interview.

Christine LAGARDE: I would like to apologize to you because I know we’ve been delaying and postponing.

LAGARDE: And I offer total apologies. It’s my fault.

Since 2011, Lagarde has been running the International Monetary Fund. It’s been an eventful era, to say the least. The aftermath of a crippling recession; a European debt crisis and a global productivity slowdown; populist uprisings that are based, ostensibly at least, on economic distress. So we were pleased that she agreed to squeeze us in last Thursday for a 45-minute interview.

LAGARDE: Can we say 40 rather than 45?

LAGARDE: Because I’m due to spend time with the World Bank, with their board, and I don’t want to offend them too much.

DUBNER: Eh, they’re not so important. C’mon.

LAGARDE: (Laughs).

DUBNER: Who would you rather spend time talking to: Freakonomics Radio or the World Bank? Let’s be honest here.

LAGARDE: (Laughs)

Today on Freakonomics Radio, we’ll hear how Lagarde treats I.M.F. members who don’t follow the rules:

LAGARDE: We warn the authorities that this is not acceptable and that expedited measures must be taken to keep the bus on the road.

We’ll talk about economic policy making and gender.

LAGARDE: If Lehman Brothers had been Lehman Sisters it would be a different story.

And: it takes a lot to impress, or surprise, Christine Lagarde. But it happens:

LAGARDE: You know what, there is one thing that totally blew my mind.

That’s coming up, right after this:

*      *      *

DUBNER: All right. Let’s begin — if you, would please state your name and what you do.

LAGARDE: Okay. My name is Christine Lagarde and I am currently the managing director of the International Monetary Fund.

DUBNER: Mhmmm Can you describe what you actually do in a given or typical day?

LAGARDE: Okay. I spend about 50 percent of my time at headquarters here in Washington, and 50 percent of my time traveling to member countries. Because the IMF, the International Monetary Fund, has 189 members, that are countries, that occasionally will request my presence and I have to attend those G-20, G-7, and various meetings around the world. So any given day in Washington I would typically get up very early, at about 5:00ish in the morning. I do exercise on a daily basis when I’m in Washington.

DUBNER: What do you do for exercise?

LAGARDE: What do I do? Well, I combine, you know, I’m multitasking, as so many women do. And I read some material that has been given to me the day before and I do stationary bicycle for about 40 minutes and then I do a little bit of other exercises. Details of which I will spare you. I finish with a bit of breathing and a couple of yoga postures that I like particularly. Then after that, shower, breakfast, things like that and I walk to the office when it’s not raining.

My day at the office can be anywhere between typically eight o’clock until about eight o’clock or sometimes a bit later. And I will, you know, allocate my time between meetings with teams or with heads of department or with the board. I do a bit of reading of materials. And I spend quite a bit of time as well on the telephone talking to either ministers of finance from different countries around the world or leaders of countries where we are trying to help and provide services.

DUBNER: You were born in Paris to two professors. Your mother taught French, Latin, and ancient Greek. Your father, English literature. I also understand you were a talented synchronized swimmer and were on the French national team. So how did that person, the daughter of those professors and the synchronized swimmer, turn into the managing director of the International Monetary Fund?

LAGARDE: (Laughs). Well, unfortunately none of my parents is actually here to see it.

DUBNER: Oh, sorry to hear about that.

LAGARDE: I’m sure they’d be both pleased about that. But you know, I owe it to them and to many other people along the way. But it’s certainly the love and confidence that they have given me, as well as the appetite for reading, exploring, being open to other countries and other languages. That was certainly through my father. And that you know, I am where I am — It’s a lot of hard work, a lot of determination, a lot of reading over the course of my life. And certainly the confidence to sometimes take the lead, to sometimes say yes, to sometimes say no, and try to carry the team with you along that I think is predominantly generated by the love that I’ve received.

The I.M.F.’s “founding fathers,” as Lagarde has called them, were the British economist John Maynard Keynes and the American Treasury official Harry Dexter White. They wanted an institution that would promote a stable international monetary system and help create an economic network that would incentivize peace.

LAGARDE: It was just after the Second World War and everybody at the time thought that it would be much better to have a multilateral dialogue rather than go to war.

DUBNER: And this goes back to Bretton Woods, yes?

LAGARDE: Yes, Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, 1944.

NEWSREEL: At Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, delegates from 44 Allied and associate countries arrived for the opening of the United Nations Monetary and Financial conference.

LAGARDE: Forty-four countries deciding that talking, sharing, opening up was better than closing down and entering into war.

DUBNER: Now, most people who think about the I.M.F., which is probably not that many people on a daily basis …

LAGARDE: Granted.

DUBNER: … But when we do we usually think about you in moments of fiscal crisis in some country that we probably don’t really know that much about, maybe not even know where it is, but obviously the I.M.F. does a lot more than that. You are the so-called lender of last resort; but also you monitor the economies of nation-states around the world; and you engage in what you call “capacity development.” Can you talk for just a moment about toggling between the crisis management and the kind of growth development that the I.M.F. also does.

LAGARDE: Yeah. So the mission is about improving financial stability and prosperity. As a result of that, we are engaged in three lines of business. The one that you mentioned first – which is the one that we are best known for, because it’s more visible – is the lending of last resort, when those countries cannot finance or refinance themselves on the markets because the situation is very bad. And in that case we lend international community money in consideration for commitment on the part of that country that receives the loan to actually fix its public finances, take some necessary measures to restore its financial stability, and be able to yet again access markets.

So we enter into those agreements on a short-term basis with sometimes difficult measures that have to be taken rapidly, which is often called austerity. But in my view it’s more like discipline that should have been observed in the years before and that we have to help the government in place administer and implement so that the country can again become independent financially and economically.

DUBNER: There is complaining of course, in retrospect, a lot of countries where the I.M.F. intervenes as a lender of last resort , often they end up being resentful of the terms that are imposed on them. As you noted, you know, you’re prescribing medicine that they should have been taking for years and they weren’t and that’s why it’s come to that. Can you talk about that tension of you, as an agency that is the backstop for countries like that, but also trying to build better practices?

LAGARDE: Yes. You know, first observation is that for a program to succeed, so for that discipline to be restored, it takes ownership and support by the authorities. And in many instances where that support is available and the program is endorsed and implemented by the authorities — because it’s theirs and in the interest of their population — it very often works, and it certainly works better in all circumstances.

Second point there is a bit of a pattern, where shortly after the program has been completed and the situation has improved and the growth comes back and the country can go back to markets, there is a time period during which there is resentment against the, sort of, the emergency doctor that came in and said, “You really need to operate here and there and do this and that.” And then it’s followed by a realization that actually that was needed. And that resentment gradually phases out.

I have seen that on the ground in Latin American countries, most of them, not all of them. I’ve seen it more and more in Asia Pacific and hopefully I will see it during my lifetime — hopefully as a managing director, who knows? — with Europe.

DUBNER: But let me ask you this. Sometimes there’s, you know, bad policy or just an unwillingness to take the medicine all along, or bad practices, which may be unintentional. But a lot of the malfeasance is — well, it’s malfeasance. So let’s talk for a moment about bribery and corruption and how much that is a root cause of the problems that you eventually are called in to mop up. So you recently put the annual global cost of bribery at roughly $2 trillion, about two percent of global GDP, and those are just the hard costs, not counting knock-on effects.

But additionally, as we speak, just today, you publicly announced that you’re delaying a $17.5 billion bailout package to Ukraine for failing to fight political corruption. So talk about how much of what you are addressing is kind of after-the-fact disaster created not by people who don’t quite know how to run a central bank or run an economy, and more created by a handful of really bad actors.

LAGARDE: Well, there are — there are unfortunately several instances where, surprise surprise!, we find out that such-and-such loan agreement had not been disclosed or such-and-such operation that should have involved public finance has been operated on the side in a special-purpose vehicle that has remained undisclosed.

When that happens, clearly there has been either deliberate misrepresentation or convenient omittance; in that case we just suspend the program. And we say no more disbursement will be available until these issues have been cleared, until there is complete transparency and until there is a real dialogue and explanation provided to the international community through us.

That happens, and I think that we as an institution committing international money, we have to be extremely firm and uncompromising about it. That’s point number one. Point number two: there are programs, and you’ve just mentioned Ukraine, where one of the key commitments was to set up an institution and to set up a court and to organize a process by which corruption would be identified, would be investigated in accordance with the rule of law and with due process, so that it could be sanctioned eventually if proven and measures been taken.

When we see that these commitments are slow in the making, that there is delay that is affecting the delivery of the commitments, same thing. We warn the authorities that this is not acceptable and that expedited measures must be taken to keep the bus on the road. Absent which disbursements are no longer available. And I’m pleased to see that apparently the president of Ukraine is today taking the steps to keep the bus on the road, and we will be very vigilant.

Now the third point is we have, as an institution, always cared about these corruption issues because they are a cancer that actually cripples economies and discourage people from joining forces, contributing value, and doing the right things. And we think that this is just hurting both the financial stability and the prosperity that are our mission. And we have in particular provided a lot of technical assistance on anti-money laundering and on countering the financing of terrorism. And we have specific services, technical assistance, training made available and a very close collaboration with FATF, which is the international institution in charge of fighting that.

We are going to be stronger and deeper into these issues because I’m personally — and I think the board is now supporting this — very frustrated with the fact that we engage, we enter into dialogue, we commit resources, our people work on the ground, and if it is to discover that there are undisclosed loans, that there is fiddling with the accounts, then it’s really not fair on the international community and not fair for the population and not in compliance with our mission.

The I.M.F. over the decades has plenty of critics, even just among economists. Milton Friedman wanted to abolish it; he argued the I.M.F. had outlived its original mission of supporting the global monetary system. “It became,” he said in 1991, “a relief agency for backward countries, and proceeded to dig deeper into the pockets of its sponsors to finance its new activities.” And that, he said, was the mission of the World Bank, the I.M.F.’s sister institution, which was also founded in 1944 at Bretton Woods.

Here’s what Friedman said: “Now you have two agencies to promote development, both of them, in my opinion doing far more harm than good.” Friedman’s point was that government was, generally, more of an impediment to free markets than a help. But institutions like the I.M.F. and World Bank also create what economists call “moral hazard”: that is, you’re more likely to engage in risky or reckless behavior when you know someone is there to rescue you. Meanwhile, economists on the other end of the spectrum — Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman, for instance — they argued that the I.M.F. promoted an agenda that wasn’t interventionist enough. The I.M.F. was criticized for pushing what was called the “Washington Consensus,” a one-size-fits-all reform model promoting free trade and capital flows, deficit reduction, privatization, and the slashing of subsidies.

More recently, the I.M.F.’s most controversial bailout was the Greek tragedy. It began before Christine Lagarde’s arrival but has continued to haunt the agency — and her — with the I.M.F. accused of everything from complacency and poor due diligence to demanding measures of compliance that are hopelessly unrealistic.

So you can see why the I.M.F. might be eager to reposition itself as something more than the “lender of last resort,” which can feel like a lose-lose proposition. Indeed, in a 2014 speech to Latin American leaders, Lagarde declared that this is “not your grandmother’s I.M.F.!” She has stressed the importance of policy issues like climate change, inequality, and helping out the losers in the free-trade game. This means, theoretically, less bailout work and more preventive work — the I.M.F.’s second line of business, which it calls surveillance.

LAGARDE: And countries commit to to each other through us to be audited, if you will, and receive recommendations that they typically should observe if they want to improve their situation. So that’s the surveillance line of business, and we do that with 189 countries. The third line of business is the one that has most recently developed and developed the fastest. And that is what is called “capacity development,” which is a bit of an obscure word, to actually describe the technical assistance or the training that we provide at the request of countries to help them manage their debt, reorganize their exchange-rate mechanisms, restore sanity in their public finance in general, collect taxation better, set up supervisory authorities that can operate on their financial and banking markets. All sorts of things that have to do with or put in place a good macroeconomic framework, have good indicators on their fiscal policy, on their monetary policy, and on the structural reforms that are helpful for them.

And that is something that — it’s a bit of the hidden successful story of the I.M.F. in a way. Because I’ve been doing this job for seven years and I’ve never heard any country complain about that technical assistance or training and they always want or need more. And the beauty of it is that very often it’s financed by the rich countries to the benefit of some of the poorest countries.

Coming up after the break: why women are, at least on one dimension, plainly preferable to men:

LAGARDE: I believe that women tend to be more attentive to multiple consequences and developments surrounding particular issues.

That’s coming up next, on Freakonomics Radio.

*      *      *

We’re speaking today with the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde.

LAGARDE: Okay. d’accord

In 2016, she was appointed to a second five-year term. It got off to a shaky start, with the resolution of a legal issue dating back to her time in French government, during the Sarkozy administration. Lagarde was accused of giving preferential treatment to a politically connected French businessman in a case that ended up leaving taxpayers on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars. Finally, she went on trial — taking leave from the I.M.F. — and was found negligent by the court. But she wasn’t fined or given jail time. Nor was there any accusation that Lagarde had gained any personal benefit. She went back to work at the I.M.F. with the full support of the board, as well as world leaders. A few months later, her name was even floated as potential prime minister of France after Emmanuel Macron’s election as president.

It is hard to imagine any kind of top-tier short list, anywhere in the world, where Lagarde’s name would not appear. She is considered fiercely intelligent; principled but pragmatic; a serious-minded person with an impish sense of humor and an ability to make firm demands without bullying. This balance has served her institution well; the world has nearly forgotten that the I.M.F.’s previous managing director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, resigned after being charged with the sexual assault of a housekeeper in a New York City hotel.

When Lagarde replaced him, in 2011, she became the first woman to lead the I.M.F. Before that, she was the French finance minister and, before that, chairperson of what was then the world’s largest law firm, Baker & McKenzie. Lagarde was the first woman in those jobs as well.

DUBNER: I’m guessing it gets tiring being asked questions about being the first something rather than questions about being the something itself. But a question regarding that: how do you believe that economic policymaking over the past century or so might have been different had there been a lot more women involved in posts at that level?

LAGARDE: I happen to think that it would have been a lot different. I said once that if Lehman Brothers had been Lehman Sisters, it would be a different story. Because I believe that — and I think it’s, well certainly from my encounters of many women around the world, and I think it’s more and more demonstrated by studies and by and by analytical work — I believe that women tend to be less risk takers, more attentive to multiple consequences and developments surrounding particular issues. I think by nature, they care about the future because I guess they themselves deliver the future by way of giving birth to the next generation.

And I’m not saying that women who have had children are any better than others, but I think it’s probably engraved somehow, and I disagree with those of my French favorite authors, who say that you are not a mother, but you become a mother. So I also believe that diversity brings a critical component to the decision-making process and helps check conventional wisdom. You know, when you have a room full of single gender people, there is an element of group thinking that can be hopefully challenged by having diversity in the room.

So two things: one, I believe that women bring about something in and of themselves that is more precautionary maybe and more thoughtful about the future and more concerned about the next generation and what we leave behind. And I also believe that diversity procures that element of second-guessing, thinking through, debating a bit more, which is propitious to better decision-making.

DUBNER: Those are interesting factors. One that you haven’t even brought up is men are responsible for the vast majority of violence in most societies around the world. And you could argue that’s a proxy for war making. So theoretically if war-making is one of the most economically costly activities we’ve done, presumably there might have been a lot less of that over the past century as well?

LAGARDE: Possibly, although I used I used to think exactly along the lines of what you said. Until eventually I heard and read about those first female terrorists and female-only terrorists, which was a big let down to that to that theory that women are not attracted to violence.

DUBNER: Well, no one said it was exclusively male.

LAGARDE: No. You’re right. You’re right.

DUBNER: I mean even if you look at kings versus queens throughout history, it does seem that we, men, are a little bit more inclined — somewhere between a little and a lot more inclined to violence. That’s all.

LAGARDE: There are quite a few places where actually queens were hardly allowed, except as wife of the king.

DUBNER: Right. Yeah.

LAGARDE: So that would reduce the pool from which you—

DUBNER: And it’s possible that the kind of queens who were allowed may have been necessarily warmongering queens, too.

LAGARDE: Interesting.

DUBNER: Let’s talk for a moment about the relationship between the I.M.F., which is based in D.C., and the U.S. federal government. So a few years ago you complained — or stated, I should say — that the U.S. had not contributed to the IMF’s fund-raising, although that’s since been rectified, I understand.

But additionally the I.M.F.’s positions on trade and climate change, many other issues, are almost diametrically opposed to many of President Trump’s positions. You’ve said, for instance, that — I’ll quote you to yourself — “Restricting trade is a clear case of economic malpractice.” So I’d love you to describe for me the interactions or conversations you’ve had with President Trump or his administration about any of these issues.

LAGARDE: You know, what I say is very strongly based and rooted in analysis of facts, of numbers, of growth, improvement of economic circumstances, productivity, innovation and so on so forth. And we all agree that we want more growth. We all agree that productivity is too low and needs to be improved. We all agree that innovation is necessary. And when you bring that all together and you determine how much trade is or not contributing to that, you very soon realize that trade has actually been a significant factor into innovation, improved productivity, and certainly growth. And that it has combined, managed to increase income in many corners of the world, lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty — I’m sure you’ve heard that a million times — and has reduced basic costs, particularly for low-income consumers. There have been multiple studies on that front.

So all of that are benefits that I don’t think many people would argue are actually costs and downside. It’s good that there are fewer people who are starving. It’s good that we are more productive. It’s good that we are more innovative and it’s good if you can buy a refrigerator or a television set for a much lower price than you had to pay some, I don’t know, 20 years ago, everything being equal.

Having said that and considering that trade is a major contributor to that, we are also saying that trade has to be conducted with two components in mind. One is: is it going to benefit everybody? Or is it only going to benefit 80 percent of the population and hurt, and possibly hurt badly, 20 percent of the population? Or even 10 percent of the population? Or even 5 percent of the population? Because their factory is closing, because the supply chain is reorganized, because innovation is dislocating the way in which business was conducted.

Well, those 5, 10, or 20 percent, they have to be helped. They have to be looked after and they have to be ultimately beneficiary of also that innovation, that productivity, and that increased growth. Probably through different channels than what we have had, with different education, with different adjustment principles, with support, with the ability to be mobile geographically and to move to where possibly business is being generated. Because you have as much destruction of jobs as you have creation of jobs.

The gap between the two is often geography, is often skill set, and is often the ability to actually learn those new things — so that’s number one: we have to pay a much more granular attention to where the benefits fall and where the losses are suffered and focus on where the losses are suffered.

The second point, which is also a must, is that trade has to be conducted in a loyal and fair way and that is the commitment that countries make to the multilateral system. If they start using unfair trade practices — I’m not talking about competition. The market is such that there is competition, but competition has to be fair. And I think that’s also something where we have probably lost a little bit sight of what constitutes fair competition? Is subsidizing electricity, oil, gas and access to finance, is that a fair way to compete or not? Depending on where you are positioned on the ladder of development.

DUBNER: Yeah. but it’s interesting, is it not, that whether the share of people who are disenfranchised, whether it’s 5 percent or 20 percent as you were just ball-parking there, it’s well below the numbers that have turned out to vote against globalization in elections — or least to some degree against globalization, or the form of globalization we’ve ended up with in the U.S. and, of course, in Brexit.

So let me ask: you made the point that U.K. voters chose Brexit over the nearly unanimous recommendations of economic and policy experts. You also argued that Brexit was a really bad idea, and the implication then being that its supporters are uninformed, perhaps willfully so, if all the experts say it’s a bad idea. And yet given the long and very poor record of macroeconomic forecasting, including a lot of very poor predictions from the I.M.F., along with everyone else, does it perhaps make sense for the median worker or the median voter to distrust such predictions, as Brexit supporters seemed to, and look at them instead as less of an empirical forecast and more of a kind of wish-list for the economic and policy elite? “This is the way we think the world should run,” but there doesn’t seem to be necessarily a great track record of A) predictive history or B) managing-the-disenfranchised history. I realize that was more of a screed than a question but I think you detect a question in there. I apologize.

LAGARDE: Well, I’ll try to address your question and then I’ll of course I’ll defend the institution and its forecasting attempts, like everybody else’s attempts, which is: forecasting is not a mathematics science and is more an art than then something else, although there is a huge effort on the part of our teams here to improve and refine. But there are totally unpredictable events and there are things that we simply do not understand, which are related to human nature, with behavior, as the Nobel jury has recently acknowledged by celebrating and acknowledging the contribution of behavioral economists.

But back to your question, which I think is a really interesting one, and where I really want to comment as myself and not as representing the I.M.F. I am not sure that those economic issues actually mattered that much. And I’m not inventing anything or I’m not being particularly innovative because I’ve tried to understand and I’ve read a lot about what was happening in the U.K. or possibly the U.S. votes, but more the U.K. I think what was more at the root of some of the votes was the issue of the foreigners, the immigrants, the guys who are coming from somewhere else who are not “us.” And there were towns where people said, “I want Brexit because I don’t want foreigners and I don’t want those immigrants to actually take over or be here or take services that are available.” So there was certainly that perception that the culture, the language, the history, the roots, that sort of heritage that people care so much about, and we all do, wherever we are and wherever we live or travel, was sort of vanishing because of the coming in of different nationalities, different languages, different religion maybe. And that fear of the other I think had a lot to do with the way in which the vote was taken.

So, yes, the economic circumstances also mattered. But I think it’s a multifaceted explanation. And frankly I do not see a dichotomy or a disconnect between opening borders and letting goods and services and capital move under fair circumstances and and on the level playing field, on the one hand, and being attached and cultivating language, civilization, heritage, history, as is part of our identity.

DUBNER: . I realize we’re just about out of time. This is a short one. What’s something that you believed to be true for a long time until you found out that you were wrong, or if you don’t like that dichotomy of right versus wrong, what’s something significant that you really changed your mind about over time?

LAGARDE: That’s a difficult one.

DUBNER: As it was intended.

LAGARDE: You know what? No, there is one thing that totally blew my mind. No, seriously. And I’ll go back to women and to gender. I could not believe a study that was produced by our department based on the legal systems of about 150 of our member states. A very thorough study of a constitutional and legal system, where the result of it was that 90 percent, nine zero, of those 150 member countries had actually embedded in either their Constitution or their legal system, discrimination against women. And not the teeny-tiny, totally irrelevant, or trivial discrimination, which even as such would be unacceptable, but major discrimination. I just couldn’t believe it.

DUBNER: And you as a lawyer — trained as a lawyer, not as an economist — you’re saying you never would have predicted that, had you not known?

LAGARDE: No, no. I would never have thought that it was actually. If you look at it 140 countries around the world have discrimination against women embedded in either their Constitution or the legal system in a significant way that actually causes women to be either deprived of land, of title, of heritage, of bank account, of being able to collateralize something and be actual economic contributor and satisfied human beings, if they want to contribute economically.

DUBNER: And at what rate are those restrictions being revoked or overturned?

LAGARDE: Laboriously! But I make the point as much and as often as I can. So I’m glad to finish with that.

DUBNER: Yeah. Madame Lagarde , it was an honor to speak with you and I thank you for the time.

LAGARDE: Thank you so much.

Coming up next time on Freakonomics Radio: the story of a market where supply and demand have a really hard time meeting.

Ruthanne LEISHMAN: You can’t buy a kidney. You can’t pay for somebody’s college education to get a kidney.

But there is a way to help find a kidney for people who need one. It’s such a clever solution that its inventor won a Nobel Prize. “Make Me a Match” — that’s next time, on Freakonomics Radio.

CREDITS: FREAKONOMICS RADIO is produced by W-N-Y-C Studios and Dubner Productions. This episode was produced by Greg Rosalsky. Our staff also includes Alison Hockenberry, Merritt Jacob, Stephanie Tam, Harry Huggins, and Brian Gutierrez; we also had help this week from Dan Dzula. The music you hear throughout the episode was composed by Luis Guerra. You can subscribe to Freakonomics Radio on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. You should also check out our archive, at Freakonomics.com, where you can stream or download every episode we’ve ever made – or read the transcripts, and find links to the underlying research. You can also find us on Twitter, Facebook, or via email at radio@freakonomics.com.

Here’s where you can learn more about the people and ideas in this episode:

SOURCES

Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund

RESOURCES

“Fads and Fashion in Economic Reforms: Washington Consensus or Washington Confusion?” Moises Naim Foreign Policy Magazine (1999)

International Monetary Fund

“’No’ to More Money for the IMF,” Milton Friedman Newsweek, (1983)

EXTRA

Did Lobbying Contribute to the Financial Crisis?

DSK Collateral Damage

The post Not Your Grandmother’s I.M.F. appeared first on Freakonomics.

from Dental Care Tips http://freakonomics.com/podcast/not-grandmothers-m-f/