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Archive for October, 2008

Renewable corruption

By: psr, 2008-10-26

The October 24, 2008 edition of Spanish financial newspaper “Expansión” reports that the Ministry of Industry is investigating fraudulent practices in renewable energy subsidies.

What a surprise. How naive can the Ministry be?

The desire to promote renewable energy at all cost, almost obsessively, has drawn governments to offer juicy subsidies on any attempt to research or produce energy from new sources. It is all framed, of course, in the human-caused climate change dogma, which ought to make humans change our habits.

How to implement such change? By pouring loads of public money in subsidies for private companies, to make new businesses with energy sources (wind, solar, bio-fuels) which will supposedly help the planet.

There are two basic problems with such policy:

It is nonsense to think that those energy sources can …

2008-10-26 | Economy - Spain | Trackback | 1 Comment »

Back to GMT+1, waiting for GMT+0

By: psr, 2008-10-26

Tonight (Oct 25 to Oct 26) is the end of DST (Daylight Savings Time), which has kept central Europe artificially in GMT+2, commonly known as CEST (Central European Summer Time), and we’ll go back to the usual timezone, called “CET”, or Central European Time, or GMT+1.

Along with central europe goes Spain, which however is geographically far from “central” europe, and thus we ought to be using a different timezone. GMT+1 is not right for Spain. At 7am there is sunlight coming through your window in Rome or in Zurich, while in Spain it’s pitch dark. At that time, it ought to be 6am in Spain, or GMT+0, the same time as in Portugal or the United Kingdom, our meridian neighbours.

I encourage all readers to advocate …

2008-10-26 | Europe - General - Spain | Trackback | 4 Comments »

Third U.S. Presidential debate in Madrid

By: psr, 2008-10-18

In Madrid today took place the public screening of the third U.S. presidential debate. It was originally scheduled for last Thursday, October 16, to be followed by a local debate between Madrid-based democrats and republicans. The screening was later moved to October 18 (today).

When I got there I noticed fewer people than at the first screening. Then Ms. Deborah Luhrman, of Democrats Abroad, made an announcement before the screening begun: there would be no republican representatives present for the after-screening local debate. She explained that this resulted from the change of date, which made it impossible for the republican Representatives (she didn’t name who) to participate in a debate today. She complained that the republicans could not find or appoint another …

2008-10-18 | General - Spain - World | Trackback | 1 Comment »

Let it all fall down

By: psr, 2008-10-14

Governments around the world are trying out different formulae to tackle the financial crisis. They claim they are trying to reactivate the financial sector, to encourage banks to offer loans to small businesses and people, and to other banks. Other cases of government intervention are focused on preventing banks from going bankrupt.

This is all wrong. If the financial sector is in a financial crisis, let the financial sector sweat out its own illness. Any part of it that cannot survive the crisis should simply be left to die, because its demise means that it has no value. The crisis must be allowed to work as it should, promoting consolidation, discarding some old players and creating opportunities for new players to enter.

Government intervention is absolutely wrong. …