TEARS ARE ROUND, THE SEA IS DEEP. Yesterday, when I posted on Auden, I remembered that I quoted Auden earlier when he said, “No man ever said with satisfaction, ‘I almost married the girl I love’ or a nation, ‘We almost won the war’” (THE DYER’S HAND, page 431). I should balance that quote with this one: “Tears are round, the sea is deep: Roll them overboard and sleep.” The lines should be taken in context. They are part of THE SEA AND THE MIRROR, Auden’s poetic commentary on THE TEMPEST, and they are part of a song by the Master and Boatswain, so the characters saying the poem are part of the poem. Nevertheless, there was a period in my life of great heartache, about forty years ago, when those lines gave me great comfort. Auden was to me, and is now, a man of great wisdom.
Archive for February, 2007
TEARS ARE ROUND, THE SEA IS DEEP.
Thursday, February 22nd, 2007W.H. AUDEN AT 100.
Wednesday, February 21st, 2007W.H. AUDEN AT 100. Today is the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of W.H. Auden. He was living in New York City when we lived there, and he was listed in the phone book with his address on East Tenth Street. He said that he had always in his youth been the youngest child in any group so that even as he got into his fifties, he still thought of himself as the youngest person in the room. I have now had the same experience.
Other sayings of Auden that are worth recalling: “Work first; wash later,” and the observation that a person who has finished writing a poem is no longer a poet, but simply a person who once wrote a poem
WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE POEM?
Tuesday, February 20th, 2007WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE POEM? Here are some answers at Asymmetrical Information. Mentions here of some of my favorite poets: Hopkins, Auden, Keats, Yeats, Stevens, Catullus. I have always found that the Anthony Hecht poem (at the end or almost) enhances the Matthew Arnold poem (The Dover Bitch and Dover Beach, respectively.) I would still say The Eve of Saint Agnes and Mary Jane would say “When you are old and gray and full of sleep…..” by Yeats. She just called out that she loves Ozymandias, which gets two votes on the link. My father recited Ozymandias a number of times at the dinner table.
CAPITAL FLOWING INTO EMERGING ECONOMIES.
Tuesday, February 20th, 2007CAPITAL FLOWING INTO EMERGING ECONOMIES. The article in The Economist that I cited yesterday rejected a theory advanced by Michael Dooley, David Folkerts-Landau and Peter Garber, which argues that, in The Economist’s words, “Emerging economies with poorly developed financial markets are not good at allocating capital, so they buy Treasury bonds and let American firms do the domestic investment for them.” As I suggested yesterday, I think that it is just as rational for an investor to buy United States Treasury bonds for its portfolio as it is for an American company or institution to devote part of its portfolio to Treasury bonds. In effect, much investment in emerging countries comes via financial intermediaries. Joanna Slater and Serena Ng had an article in the Wall Street Journal for February 13, 2007 entitled “A Boom in ‘Emerging’ Bonds” that reflects some of this complicated pattern of capital flows. It contained this paragraph: “Last year, companies from emerging markets sold about $110 billion in fresh foreign-currency bonds, mainly denominated in dollars or euros. That is a 20% jump from the previous year and more than double the amount of foreign-currency debt issued by governments in those countries.”
CAPITAL FLOWING INTO RICH COUNTRIES.
Monday, February 19th, 2007CAPITAL FLOWING INTO RICH COUNTRIES. I often see comments that there is something unnatural about capital flows from emerging economies to developed countries. For example, the following is from The Economist of September 14, 2006 (from a file I used to maintain of things I would blog about if I had a blog). “The flow of capital from poor countries to the richest economy in the world is exactly the opposite of what economic theory would predict. According to the textbooks, capital should flow from rich countries with abundant capital, such as America, to poorer ones, such as China, where capital is relatively scarce, so returns are higher…… It seems perverse that poor countries today prefer to buy low-yielding American government bonds when they could earn higher returns by investing in their own economies.” I think this view does not take into account the position of an investor in an emerging economy. For such an investor, stocks and bonds of developed countries must seem very attractive, if only for diversification. Investments in emerging countries tend to be high risk and a local investor is probably already exposed to country risk. Investors outside the country are better positioned to bear that risk.
ADUJSTED NBA STANDINGS REVISITED.
Sunday, February 18th, 2007ADJUSTED NBA STANDINGS REVISITED. Today is the NBA All Star Game. On January 1, I posted adjusted standings which corrected for the fact that some teams had played a lot more home games than road games. I planned to revisit the standings at the All Star break. The main conclusion is that there isn’t much value to adjusted standings at this point in the season. Most teams have now played roughly the same number of home and road games so that the regular standings are now a good guide to how well they have done. The exceptions would be Milwaukee with nine fewer home games than road games, San Antonio and Philadelphia with five fewer home games, and Denver with five more home games than road games, The only team this matters for is Denver, which would be two games behind Minnesota rather than one and a half games ahead if adjusted standings were used. On January 1, the adjusted standings showed Toronto with a big lead in its division. Toronto’s division now shows up clearly.
THE FUTURE OF MONEY.
Sunday, February 18th, 2007THE FUTURE OF MONEY. There are always new kinds of money….. (link via realclearpolitics)
THERE IS NO SHORTAGE OF FOOD IN VENEZUELA.
Saturday, February 17th, 2007THERE IS NO SHORTAGE OF FOOD IN VENEZUELA. This article describes how Hugo Chavez is trying to control inflation in Venezuela by price controls. Shortages of food items have developed. “But in recent weeks, the scarcity of items like meat and chicken has led to a panicked reaction by federal authorities as they try to understand how such shortages could develop in a seemingly flourishing economy.” Of course, as pointed out here, shortages and price controls are two sides of the same coin.
VULGAR, BUT COMPETENT.
Saturday, February 17th, 2007VULGAR, BUT COMPETENT. Kids, when I was your age I had no idea of how much some people looked down on the middle class. This review of a book on de Tocqueville (who was a genuine aristocrat) quotes the following passage from de Tocqueville’s notebooks: “One thing is incontrovertibly demonstrated by America which I had doubted until now: it is, that the middle classes can govern a State. I do not know if they could emerge with honour from really difficult political situations. But they are equal to the everyday business of society. In spite of their petty passions, their incomplete education, their vulgarity, they can demonstrably supply practical intelligence, and that is enough.” Note the use of the words “honour” and “vulgarity.”
ARCHITECTURE AT NORTHWESTERN.
Friday, February 16th, 2007ARCHITECTURE AT NORTHWESTERN. My New York friends have remarked that my friends visiting from Chicago care about architecture, that they often ask who designed various buildings. There are displays along Dearborn in Chicago identifying the architecturally significant buildings (almost every building has architectural significance). I could say that I am posting this article because it shows that Northwestern students care about architecture, but I am really posting it because the author likes Deering Library at Northwestern and I remember watching an interview with Frank Lloyd Wright in which he compared Deering Library to a “pig on its back.” (Link courtesy of Katatonic on the Northwestern football message board at Purple Reign.) There has been some debate on the football message board over which Northwestern building looks like a pig on its back, and they seem to have agreed that it is Deering, which has short chimneys at each corner of the roof. I suppose it is noteworthy that there is more than one building on campus that could be compared to a pig on its back.
