The Ultimate Beatnik - TIMEIn A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess has written what looks like a nasty little shocker but is really that rare thing in English letters—a philosophical novel. The point may be overlooked because the hero, a teen-age monster, tells all about everything in nadsat, a weird argot that seems to be all his own. Nadsat is neither gibberish nor a Joycean exercise. It serves to put Alex where he belongs—half in and half out of the human race.
While Pee & Em Are Away. It is a nightmare world Alex lives in, and readers of Constantine FitzGibbon and George Orwell will place the time roughly between When the Kissing Had to Stop and this side of 1984. Only the lewdies (the old) read any more and "newspapers not being read much neither." There is universal social security. The millicents (police) are everywhere. Russia is the dominant influence (the pop singers are Berti Laski and Johnny Zhivago), and it is suggested that Alex and his dreadful droogs (gangmates) get their Russian-based special vocabulary by subliminal propaganda. Life for Alex is real horrorshow (just fine—from the Russian kho-rosho?). Alex wears skin-tight black tights, padded pletchoes (shoulders) and real horrorshow boots for kicking. He likes to go to milk bars for the old moloko (milk) or milk-plus, a teen tipple laced with what seems to be mescaline. Thus hyped up, Alex and his hyped-up droogs prowl the town and kick in the keeshkas (tripes) of a lewdie, nearly murder an old shopkeeper for a few polly (pounds) and cancers (cigarettes). They invade the country house of a writer, like Burgess himself, the author of a novel called A Clockwork Orange, and force him to look on while they rape his wife. Alex's sole link with humanity seems to be his love for "Ludwig van," especially the Choral Ninth. While his pee and em (parents) are at work, he perversely violates two small girls (Alex himself is only 15) while Beethoven gives out with the Ninth on the record player.
Gulliver Unravels. At this point it may be suspected that Burgess is merely putting on a Grand Guignol and that he shares Alex's taste for the existentialist's "gratuitous act" or pointless crime. He is not. Alex's later story is "like tragic" and expounds a bitter moral theorem. He is jailed and selected by the state authorities for Reclamation Treatment. Under drugs and with his eyelids clipped open, he is forced to watch an endless succession of films showing Japanese and Nazi tortures while Beethoven supplies the sound track. Then, conditioned like Pavlov's dog, Alex is released on society, guaranteed to vomit at the sight of violence or the sound of Beethoven. As one of his brainwashing group observes, "He ceases to be a wrongdoer. He ceases also to be a creature capable of moral choice." The experiment fails when Alex goes into a frenzy after hearing some Mozart, leaps from a window and knocks all the grafted goodness out of his gulliver (head).
Kompas.Com - Bunga.dipangkas.lagi.ori.bakal.cerahJAKARTA, JUMAT — Pemangkasan suku bunga acuan di Indonesia, BI rate, merupakan kabar baik bagi investor yang bertanam duit di Obligasi Negara Ritel (ORI). Seperti yang kita tahu, harga obligasi memang berbanding terbalik dengan suku bunga. Jika bunga naik, harga obligasi turun, dan sebaliknya.
Nah, langkah BI memangkas BI rate pada 4 Desember lalu jelas membawa angin segar bagi pasar ORI. Pada 12 Desember, sudah ada satu ORI yang harganya melebihi nilai par-nya yakni 101.
Trimegah Securities, Agus Salim, percaya bank sentral masih bakal memangkas BI rate. "Tekanan inflasi di Indonesia pada 2009 sudah menurun," tukas Agus.
Jika benar BI akan terus memangkas suku bunga pada 2009, tentu saja harga ORI seri-seri lainnya juga berpotensi naik. Selain itu, tahun depan, para investor juga akan memiliki pilihan ORI baru. Kalau tak ada aral melintang, pemerintah bakal menjajakan dua ORI baru tahun 2009.
Pada Februari, pemerintah bakal menerbitkan obligasi ritel syariah (sukuk ritel). Ini adalah ORI syariah perdana keluaran pemerintah. Lalu, pada September 2009 pemerintah bakal mulai menawarkan seri ORI 006. "Beauty contest agen penjualnya mungkin Juni atau Juli 2009," cetus Rahmat Waluyanto, Direktur Jenderal Pengelolaan Utang Departemen Keuangan.
Going green must involve going nuclear | theage.com.auPeter Costello
Something has to give if we are serious about reducing emissions.
POLLING before the US presidential election showed that Australians supported Barack Obama over John McCain by a margin of about five to one. The support was even stronger among environmental and green groups.
Obama was the green candidate who strongly supported carbon reduction and an emissions trading scheme (ETS). Perhaps it is timely to see where the Obama Administration is going on this issue.
In a televised address to a bipartisan meeting of US governors organised by Arnold Schwarzenegger last November, Obama pledged "a new chapter in America's leadership on climate change". He pledged to introduce a federal cap and trade scheme (an ETS) with annual targets to "reduce emissions to their 1990 levels by 2020". That is one way of putting it. Another way of explaining that target is to say that by 2020 the US aims to make no reduction in the levels of emission measured against 1990.
Australia is pledging to cut 5 to 15 per cent depending on what happens in the rest of the world. Europe on the other hand is pledging a 20 per cent cut from 1990 levels.
Have you ever wondered why 1990 is the base year for measuring emission reductions? It sounds unlikely, but that's the year communism collapsed. When communism collapsed, all those state-owned steel mills and other inefficient heavy manufacturing plants that were never economical were closed down in the former communist states of eastern Europe.
As a result, Europe cut its emission levels — not for greenhouse reasons — but as part of privatisation. By choosing 1990 as the base year, Europe counts the emission reduction from closing all those factories. The fall of communism delivered an enormous environmental yield.
Britain gets a great benefit from that base year too. In the mid-1980s, Margaret Thatcher fought a pitched battle with the coalminers' union to close uneconomic coal pits. I was reminded of this recently when I saw the musical Billy Elliott, which tells us what a terrible, heartless person Thatcher was. But those closures led to a dramatic fall in British carbon emissions. These days Margaret Thatcher would be lionised as a greenhouse hero. Although it opposed her, British Labour can now use her efforts to boast about how much it reduced greenhouse gases against 1990 levels.
Under an emissions trading system, our electricity — largely produced from coal-fired power stations — will become more expensive, which means that countries that stay out of such systems will get a comparative advantage by having cheaper energy than Australia — countries such as China.
Last week there was great community concern that Pacific Brands had decided to relocate to China. We should expect many more of these relocations in the lead-up to the Government's ETS. You can be for coalmining jobs and manufacturing based on cheap energy or you can be for ambitious reduction targets under an emissions trading scheme. You can't be for both.
Senator Kim Carr can rail all he likes about the importance of manufacturing, but if he is determined to make energy more expensive his actions will drown out his words.
The Government's favourite employer association, the Australian Industry Group, seems to have figured this out. Back in 2007, the group was lauding the Government's "effective action on climate change". Last week it said that starting a scheme in 2010 was "neither necessary or realistic".
Which brings me back to Obama. He is focused squarely on his own country's national interest. He has long-term goals for emissions reduction by 2050 but we all know reaching these targets will depend entirely on technological breakthrough. This still represents the best hope for long-term emissions reduction. In the shorter term — in the period that he will really influence — Obama has a target reduction of zero.
There was one other part of Obama's address to the US governors' meeting that really caught my eye. Just after promising to invest in solar, wind and biofuel he said: "We'll tap nuclear power, while making sure it is safe."
This, I thought, shows he really is serious, serious enough to embrace the obvious proven alternative to baseload coal-fired power — nuclear energy. When Australia's environmental movement allows itself to admit this is an option we will know that they are really serious about reducing greenhouse emissions. It can be done on today's technology. France is doing it, and Japan and Britain and the US. Our activists will not find it easy to change a lifetime of loathing for nuclear energy. Perhaps they will be more persuaded if this suggestion does not come for me, the Liberal Party, John McCain or the Republicans. This is President Obama speaking.
Peter Costello is the federal member for Higgins.
Up to 50,000 skilled workers jobless by 2010
Colin Brinsden
March 2, 2009 - 11:34AM
As many as 50,000 skilled workers could be looking for work by 2010 across most industries, a new survey says.
Demand for skilled workers looks to have peaked in the final three months of 2008, with chefs the number one occupation still being sought after, the Clarius Skills Index shows.
The research, conducted by KPMG Econtech for specialist employment services group Clarius, shows the gap between positions available and candidates available shrank by 10,000 in the December quarter.
The Clarius Skills Index was 103.1 in the December quarter, down from 103.5 in the September quarter.
Based on its forecast of an unemployment rate of 6.1 per cent by mid-2010, it expects there will be an oversupply of skilled workers of between 35,000 and 50,000 next year.
The federal government is expecting a 7.0 per cent jobless rate by June 2010, compared with a jobless rate of 4.8 per cent in February 2009.
Clarius Group executive chairman Geoff Moles said the predicted oversupply of labour would represent a massive change in the employment landscape but its effects would be far from uniform.
"While economic pressures are changing the national employment landscape rapidly, the skilled labour market easing does not reflect the reality in every industry sector, with extreme shortages persisting in a few professions," he said.
He said there were still 39,000 unfilled skilled positions across professional occupations - building and engineering, accounting and auditing, healthcare and computing - in the December quarter.
There were also 60,000 tradespersons such as construction, automotive trades and metalworkers.
He said the terrible tragedies and massive community impacts of both the Victorian bushfires and the Queensland floods may increase demand in sectors where shortages persist, such as building and engineering and trades industries.
Demand for accountants and auditors also peaked in the December quarter as redundancy programs at the country's big four accountancy firms were undertaken.
"As the economy tightens further, discretionary expenditure is expected to further impact social activities and particularly the restaurant industry, thereby softening demand for chefs, currently top of the skills shortage list," the report said.
Interest rate cut | rates set for all-time lowMarch 2, 2009 - 12:25PM
The Reserve Bank of Australia is tipped to cut interest rates to a record-low level in March, as the effects of the global downturn threaten to really hit the domestic economy.
Thirteen of 16 economists surveyed by AAP expect the Reserve Bank of Australia to cut the cash rate when it holds its monthly board meeting tomorrow.
The median forecast was for a 50-basis point rate cut, which would take the cash interest rates to a record low of 2.75% when the RBA announces its decision at 2.30pm tomorrow.
The RBA has already slashed interest rates by 400 basis points - or four percentage points - since September.
Interest rates fell to a 45-year low of 3.25% in February following a 100-basis-point rate cut.
A 50-basis-point cut this week will send the cash rate under the all-time low monthly average rate of 2.89% seen in January 1960.
While domestic business data is still strong, many economists say deteriorating conditions among Australia's key trading partners will weigh on the domestic economy in future months.
More optimistic analysts say the recent run of rate cuts and $52 billion in Federal Government stimulus programs will support local demand.
RBC Capital Markets senior economist Su-Lin Ong said a 50-basis-point rate cut in March was a close call, with the RBA near the end of its easing cycle.
"It's going to be a close decision," she said.
"It's pretty clear from the RBA that they are very reluctant to cut any more, but the reason we think a move is justified is the global downturn has worsened since the last board meeting."
Forecast strategist Mike Katz said the RBA would cut by 50 basis points in March before unemployment levels rose sharply.
"The labour market has held up so far," he said.
"The RBA will want to get rates as stimulatory as possible before that pessimistic data starts to be released."
UBS senior economist George Tharenou said the prospect of a technical recession - measured by two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth - in the first half of 2009 justified the need for a 50-basis-point cut this week.
"We expect the RBA to lean against the deteriorating global backdrop and try to support domestic growth and limit the extent of the downturn," he said.
However, ANZ economist Riki Polygenis said the economy was yet to feel the full effects of the large RBA rate cuts since September and that reinforced the case for a smaller, 25-basis-point rate cut in March.
"We think now the RBA clearly has rates at an expansionary setting," Ms Polygenis said.
"It's a good idea for them to keep some in reserve in case the economy deteriorates more sharply later in the year."
Australian Bureau of Statistics data released last week showed capital expenditure by business surged 6% in the December quarter, a much better result than market forecasts for a 3% decline.
AMP Capital Investors chief economist Shane Oliver, who is also tipping a 25-basis-point cut in March, said while the Australian economy was holding up well, a slowdown in the economies of the nation's key trading partners would prompt the RBA to keep cutting rates.
"On the one hand, domestic demand is stronger than expected ... but the global case has been unrelentingly bad and far worse than the Reserve Bank have been factoring in for their figures, particularly countries we trade with like Japan, South Korea and China," Dr Oliver said.
Japan, one of Australia's biggest trading partners, is experiencing its worst recession in three decades, with a slowdown in the global economy causing its exports to fall by 46% in the year to January.
The Australian government has already announced two fiscal stimulus programs, worth a combined $52 billion, to shield the economy from the effects of a possible recession.
From April, farmers, students and low to middle-income earners are due to receive $900 cheques as part of a $12 billion fiscal allocation from the Rudd government's second $42 billion stimulus package.
RBA governor Glenn Stevens told a parliamentary hearing in Canberra earlier in February that big rate cuts, fiscal stimulus programs and a weaker Australian dollar would help support domestic demand in 2009.
Citigroup managing director of economics Paul Brennan said the remarks indicated rates would be left on hold in March.
"They probably want to keep their powder dry for the bad news in the local economy over the next six months," Mr Brennan said.
Commonwealth Bank chief economist Michael Blythe, who also expects rates to stay on hold in March, said the large rate cuts at the end of 2008 were already working to stimulate consumer spending and the housing market.
"Recent RBA commentary seems to imply they have a desire to take a step back and allow time for what they've done to flow through," he said.
ICAP senior economist Adam Carr said while the RBA was likely to cut rates by 50 basis points in March, there was a good chance rates would be raised again by the end of 2009.
"There's very little justification to hold the cash rate that low for so long," he said.
