In a world without a reserve currency, Gold is King

It is June 2025, and the world has learned that it no longer has a reserve currency, a role hitherto held by the US Dollar. The chain of events which began with the election of Donald Trump by a disputed majority in the Electoral College (readers will recall he lost the popular vote) have now reached their logical conclusion. You will also remember how attempts to enforce the result by the US Supreme Court could not be accepted by some States who alleged, with some justification, that the Court was no longer an objective and unbiased institution, Their de facto secession, pending a recount, undermined the integrity of both the US Treasury and Federal Reserve. Meanwhile, attempts by the Provisional Trump Administration to impose import tariffs (20% on all comers, 60% on China) have only led to a retaliatory fire sale of Treasury Bonds and other US assets, which led to this morning’s news of the suspension of dollar convertibility. The United States of America (or rather the three new nations into which it seems to be splitting) is no longer at the centre of the world’s financial system.

But, as of this summer of 2025, do we still have a world financial system? Attempts by the BRICS nations to set up their own reserve must end in failure. The lack of transparency in their systems(one or two are more or less open kleptocracies) mean that no one dare trust them to hold their money . The Euro area is too small and fragmented to possibly bear such a role, and their can be other candidates. How can world trade now be anything more than a slightly sophisticated form of barter?

Yet there is one measure by which value is judged. And always has been. Gold has been prized as the ultimate yardstick of worth by humans, and has been by for millennia. It is transportable, it is tradeable, and its price is known at once by everyone in the market. History suggests that world trade works best when most reserves are held by a single, hegemonic power(think Britain before 1914 or the US before 1971) But even if the world’s gold is diffused across the vaults of many competing nations and empires, it can still provide a standard against which everyone can measure the value of their trades. Expect its price to rise now for the rest of 2025, and perhaps even more next year.

#US dollar #world trade #BRICS #reserve currency #gold

Intriguing new discovery sheds light on how we learn languages

We have a confession. After more than thirty years studying Spanish, we still struggle, sometimes badly. Not so much when reading! There’s nothing like a Kindle and its dictionaries to help with all those tricky words. Or even when listening to things like the news and weather on the TV. No, it’s when a group of them are talking excitedly, perhaps in the studio during a football match. That’s when it comes out like: YélbalónestáconhaveeuupasuhdelanterocouthojMadreepotpourrismamporrerodeharrikane chichinaboakadebandamenaosmalmalgooooooooooooooooaol! And that’s on a good day.

Now an article from the multi-learned Nicola Davis[1] of the Guardian suggests what may be going wrong. Up to know, we have always assumed to that one listens to individual words and then assembles them into a meaningful pattern. But according to Professor Liina Pylkkanen of New York University, something different may be happening. It seems humans recognise groups of words, sometimes very fast indeed. And this happens when they are in the grammatical pattern of the listeners native language. In English this is Subject-Verb-Object. And the Professor even seems to have found a region of the brain where this may be occurring.

Of course, none of this is to say that one cannot acquire a really fluent understanding of another language. We know this, because we’ve met people who are much, much better at it than we are. But it does shed light on what to do if you want to get better at your listening skills, Yes, books are a fantastic way to begin to build a vocabulary, word by word. But there will come a time when we have to tackle those words in groups, unbroken by the gaps which you find in a text. The trick is to pick out recurring groups of words. Thank you Nicola. Thank you Professor Pylkkannen.

//www.theguardian.com/science/2024/oct/23/human-brain-can-process-certain-sentences-in-blink-of-an-eye-says-study

#neurology #linguistics #language learning #nicola davis #spanish

Stress: the biggest brake on economic progress

Photo by SevenStorm JUHASZIMRUS on Pexels.com

Why do we keep shedding so many teachers from the profession? It’s the same for Police Officers, Doctors, lawyers, you name them. So many professionals, of so many different sorts, are quitting from seemingly well-remunerated, interesting jobs after only a few years. And after all that expensive training, too! Of course, there are going to be many factors to which zealous undergraduates of some of the more flinty economic schools may point. But for us, the elephant in the room is, and always has been, stress. The endless piling of conflicting new demands, regulations and priorities on people already working at the limits of their time and energy. The overwhelming flow of data compliances, complaints and inspections, and the need to be available 24 hours every day, for the whole 365 days of the year.

The article we present today, written by JD Murphy for the Guardian, is admittedly an extreme example. The writer was a former Fire Services Commander, dealing with some of the most harrowing circumstances with which an empathetic mind must confront. Yet the central ,lurid, fact (they rang him while on holiday for stress, demanding more work) is central to the experience of millions. [1]

The endless demand for results-short term, pressing, urgent-has led to a colossal erosion of human capital. More than that, it distorts and poisons the whole quality of life. It has led to the massive misallocation of resources and time. And has produced an economic model which is now destroying the planet. The time has come to explore new ways of running the economy and new ways of measuring fulfilment. We shall be looking at some in weeks to come’

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/oct/21/fire-brigade-commander-stress-ptsd-grenfell-tower

#stress #PTSD #illness #health #churn

Round Up: New Brains for old, Fungal resistance, do we need growth?

Could CRISPR Cas-9 Rebuild your brain? As the brain ages, cells and circuits die off. Hence the unprecedented rise of neurodegenerative diseases in our ageing populations. Hope that this could one day be treated comes from several sources. None more so than this new development in CRISPR Cas 9 gene editing, a much touted favourite on these pages, we admit. Here’s the inimitable Nature Briefings:

Reducing the activity of one particular gene in ageing mice rejuvenates brain stem cells, allowing them to proliferate and provide a supply of fresh neurons. Researchers used CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing to systematically disrupt 23,000 genes and test the effects on neural stem cells. Messing with one such gene, Slc2a4, reduced stem cells’ glucose intake and increased their power to proliferate in old animals, but didn’t affect the cells in young mice. The results provide crucial information for the design of cell therapies that might one day treat neurodegenerative conditions, says neuroscientist Saul Villeda.Nature | 5 min read
Reference: Nature paper

Fungal resistance: a growing problem. Regular readers of these illustrious pages could be forgiven for thinking we spend too much time on antibacterial resistance among bacteria, and not enough on fungi. We hope this very prescient article from The Conversation may go some way to correcting this imbalance

https://theconversation.com/antifungal-resistance-is-not-getting-nearly-as-much-attention-as-antibiotic-resistance-yet-the-risks-to-global-health-are-just-as-serious-239677?utm

Good Growth/Bad Growth The difference in utility between having a small family car, such as a Vauxhall Corsa, and no car at all, is very great indeed. The differences between having that same Corsa and a Rolls Royce are, we humbly submit, rather marginal. Unless you count the awe-inspiring status statement which the latter brings. Growth is good for raising people out of poverty. Yet for centuries it has been based on the production and consumption of status goods rather than useful ones. The complexities of this issue are so fiendish, that we have never known where to begin to understand it. But Larry Elliott of the Guardian makes a brave first try at untying the Gordian knot:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/oct/20/degrowth-image-problem-solve-planet-climate

#veblen #growth #status #antimicrobial resistance #CRISPR Cas 9 #alzheimers #medicine #health

Round up: Stem Cells, Venezuela, allergies, goodbye to Old King Coal, and the second-most-famous Austrian of all time

stories that caught our eye

Adios, Venezuela, Stage Left : It has always been a conceit on the Left that somehow, whatever bad things we do, we are still somehow the exclusive guardians of the flame of human progress. Whereas the Right, poor dears, are steeped in superstition and ignorance. But Left-wing Governments, at least extreme ones, can do just as much damage to the scientific culture of their country as any Right-wing theocracy, as this piece form Nature Briefings makes clear

Some researchers in Venezuela fear that science in the country is “going down the drain”. The country’s economy has been in crisis and national science funding is proportionally smaller than in comparable countries, leaving research institutions and universities struggling to stay open. Young scientists have left in droves seeking out high-quality education or stable career prospects. And an ‘anti-NGO’ law now requires non-governmental organizations to share information about their funding with the Venezuelan government. Researchers, who sometimes look to NGOs for support, worry that this gives the government discretion to prosecute anyone whose motives it does not agree with.Nature | 6 min read

Every Breath you take: We hear a lot about microplastics in water and food. Now it seems we are breathing them in from the very air itself. And what’s really scary is that the risks of this are quite, quite uncharted, a bit like tobacco in 1924. Here’s Michael Richardson and Meiru Wang for The Conversation:

https://theconversation.com/breathing-may-introduce-microplastics-to-the-brain-new-study-239347?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest%20from%20The%20C

Stem Cells give hope for diabetics About twenty or so years ago, we had the privilege of a few words with one of the greatest scientific entrepreneurs of this generation. And he told us that Stem Cells were going to be in the in thing for the future. Proof of this foresight comes in this second piece from Nature Briefings

A woman with type 1 diabetes started producing her own insulin less than three months after a transplant of reprogrammed stem cells. This case represents the first successful treatment for the disease using stem cells from the recipient’s own body, which could avoid the need for immunosuppressants. She was injected with the equivalent of 1.5 million stem-cell-derived islets in June 2023. While promising, the woman’s cells must continue to produce insulin for up to five years before considering her ‘cured’, cautions endocrinologist Jay Skyler.Nature | 6 min read
Reference: Cell paper

Allergies Rising? One of the few good things about the Covid-19 pandemic was the rise to prominence of Professor Devi Sridhar, that most clear-sighted of thinkers. So when she says: “allergies are really on the rise, this is not just a sampling error”, we sit up and take notice. So should you, via her article for The Guardian.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/sep/30/food-allergies-children-england

Goodbye Coal and steel No one gloats at the loss of great workplaces and the terrible social changes their workers must now endure. And no one more than us, blissed-out children of the Enlightenment/Industrial Revolution can deny that coal and steel were really big steps forward in their day. But their comes a time both for individuals and societies when they really must move on, because it’s the future where reality lies. So Britain closes its last coal power station and blast furnaces. It is a brave step, and one day it will pay off.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckgn4gg5y2yo

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8vdq6y56v0o

Mozart Rise and Fall of a genius few years ago we saw a rather nifty series called Rise of the Nazis. It was one of those drama documentaries where they mix a narrator over pictures of actors depicting real people, including such luminaries as Heinrich Himmler, Herman Goering and a certain Mr A. Hitler. It looks like the producers must have sat down and asked themselves; “Who’s the next most famous Austrian everyone’s heard of we can do?” No it wasn’t Arnold Schwarzenegger: instead they came up with this excellent series on Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. We have always put him right up there in the top five or so musicians of All Time. So we loved it, and hope you will too Here’s a link which we hope works to the BBC i Player. Hasta la vista, baby!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/m0021zdr/mozart-rise-of-a-genius#:~:text=Mozart:%20Rise%20of%20a%20Genius.%20Child%20prodigy,%20flawed

#allergies #microplastics #mozart #president maduro #venezuela #climate change #fossil fuels #stem cells #diabetes #medicine #health

A big thank you-and your tasks for the future

What have the Peoples’ Republic of China, The United States of America and Trinidad and Tobago got in common? Along with many countries in between, all have provided members of that select band of the intellectual top 0.01% of the population who read Learning, Science and Society. The elite section of the population who, as Gore Vidal once observed, have existed in every society since the dawn of civilisation, and will carry its benefits through, despite the savagery which surround us on all sides. Who would have thought a small newsblog valiantly managed from a run down office block near East Croydon Station would have had such reach and influence? (No it was not a rat in reception this morning, just a very large field vole)

You’ll notice the pictures at the far left and far right on this post. One depicts the Renaissance, the other, The Enlightenment. Let these two advancing periods of humanity be your watchword dearest readers. For, although it is forgotten now, both ages were filled with cruel and selfish tyrants at the Top, and ignorant, violent rabbles at the Bottom. Yet we plucky Middles came up with all the arts and sciences that made life worth living-and thereby gave the others somewhere to go on holiday. (Actually, we’d prefer it if they stuck to skiing and Benidorm, and left the art galleries to us.) So here, gentle readers is the task before you. Nurture and preserve the spirit of human progress if you can. But above all keep reading. And send us your comments

THE EDITORIAL BOARD

#Peoples Republic of China #United States of America #Trinidad and Tobago #Enlightenment #Renaissance

Switzerland: an economy is never expensive if you live there

A sometime correspondent* and contributor to these pages has sent us the following report, which we have transcribed somewhat into a language fit for a lettered readership:

“Recently, my wife and I travelled through the republic of Switzerland, which was notable for many things. The cleanliness and order of all we saw, especially the city of Zurich. The split second precision of the trains and other means of transport. And the eye-wateringly expensive nature of food and drink. We were offered a bottle of the house red for £54, and it went up from there. Food was similarly exorbitant. Yet as soon as we crossed the border into Italy, the change in tone was remarkable. Trains were suddenly, and reassuringly, late at all times. But we could afford to eat once more” (they shared a delicious pizza-ed)

So what is going on? There are several lessons for us students of economics here. Firstly, you can run a high price, high paid economy rather well. Which renders all this talk about austerity and cuts rather irrelevant. Because an economy will not feel expensive to those who live in it , provided they use its currency. It will feel different to visitors from poorer countries, because their currencies will not fit with the prices on offer in the high wage economy. Secondly, if you want great services, they are perfectly possible- if you are prepared to pay for them. That these may be both a source of national pride and economic efficiency becomes a quod erat demonstrandum. Thirdly, that a cult of paying starvation wages is both inefficient and self-defeating. And finally-if you want a really good pizza, you still have to go to Italy.

We wish we could afford even that!

#switzerland #italy #price #income #keynes #friedman #economics

*_{for both legal and security reasons. we have been requested to keep the identity our correspondent anonymous}

There is nothing like a Dame……Sally Davies on Antibiotic Resistance

Way back in the last decade, when most of us were just waking up to the threat of microbial resistance to antibiotics, one person had been campaigning indefatigably for years. She was, and is Dame Sally Davies, former Chief Medical Officer of the UK, and a formidable intellect. Together with Professor Colin Garner , she was one of the moving spirits in promoting awareness, bringing in the great and the good, and generally getting us all moving.

So it is with unbridled honour and humility that we reproduce her latest article, for the Guardian news site, on the eve of the UN conference on the subject in New York. It’s a great state-of-play, this-is where-we-are now summary from some one who really does know. And it’s a quick easy read, which is more than you can say for some of the publications we hyperlink on these pages!

Yes, the situation is far from resolved. But without Dame Sally and the early pioneers, there probably wouldn’t have been such a conference at all. Or any of the other progress we have made in this last ten years or so. Thank you, great woman. Many people will one day owe their lives to you.

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2024/sep/24/the-world-is-facing-an-antibiotic-emergency-a-data-led-plan-of-action-is-needed-now

[2]https://www.gov.uk/government/people/sally-davies

#amr #antibitic resistance #dame sally davies #health #medicine #microbiology

UK Riots: is Capitalism eating itself by the tail?

The jury’s been out on the UK summer riots. But now it’s back. And the verdict is grim. The causes are clear, and demonstrable. Most of the rioters were not outside agitators. They were locals. And the places local to them are rotten with deprivation, bad health and unemployment. The findings are laid out for all to see in this pooled report from Guardian writers. [1] Their findings make grim reading for everyone, of whatever political persuasion. But sackcloth and ashes most of all are reserved for those who believe the antique slogans about untrammelled free markets, economic liberalisation, risk takers and free movement of goods and people being best for society.

Because what they forgot to tell us was that there are far more losers than winners in such a set-up. That whole communities would whither away into stagnation and despair. In such circumstances people do not make rational, considered judgements. They just get angry and resentful. Is it so surprising some of them riot? A free market purist would argue that nothing is more capitalist than immigration. Who takes more risks than an immigrant, by tearing up their roots and starting again in a new country? But clearly the natives don’t take such an objective view. Their riots are a sign of something much deeper.

Across the world, a massive reaction to the free movement of people has begun. Naturally, it extends to goods and services, as trade tariffs rise again, and local sourcing is everywhere preferred. Powerful demographic forces are making sure that free movement, markets and migration are coming to an end. The very forces unleashed by liberalism have ensured their own demise.

We at LSS do not believe that communism or faith-based economics are the answer. This is a Whig website, not a socialist one. We think the answer lies in a different model of Capitalism, In the next blog or two we will make suggestions as to what these may look like. These suggestions will be tentative, and humble. But unless we learn to think in different ways, and soon, even the educated will end up joining the others in final despair.

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/sep/25/local-left-behind-prey-to-populist-politics-data-2024-uk-rioters

#economics #politics #racism #milton friedman #jm keynes #uk riots #populism

Progress on antimicrobial resistance-it’s not all about new drugs

We’ve been in the habit of making clarion calls for new research on anti-microbial drugs here for donkey’s years now. Even reported, where we could, on promising new results. Progress has been slow, we admit. But if you lift your head up and look at the bigger picture, there’s quite a lot of stuff we could be doing to ward off the fateful day when every bacterium becomes resistant. And once again, it’s that excellent website Nature Briefings which suggests some simple, common sense steps people can take now to keep them safe. Particularly in poorer countries, where the stupidities of the world economic order have combined to make cash a little tight. They’ve put up two blocks today, with links, and they’re well worth a read.

HOW TO SAVE MILLIONS OF LIVES Last week, we learnt that more than 39 million people could die from antibiotic-resistant infections by 2050. But it doesn’t have to be that way, argues epidemiologist Ramanan Laxminarayan — if we make sure that people in low- and middle-income countries get the appropriate antibiotics they need. “Even a fairly modest global investment — in the range of hundreds of millions of US dollars — to help prevent bacterial infections and improve access to relatively inexpensive antibiotics could avert millions of deaths,” he writes.Nature | 5 min read
Reference: The Lancet report

STRAIGHTFORWARD SOLUTIONS TO AMR Better sanitation, improved infection control practices at health-care facilities and increased vaccination are among the solutions proposed by four specialists — from Bangladesh, Brazil, Nigeria and the Middle East — who spoke to Nature ahead of a United Nations meeting on antimicrobial resistance (AMR). For example, microbiologist Iruka Okeke says that access to clean water and toilets in Nigeria could reduce gastric infections and AMR simultaneously, yielding an estimated return of US$5 or more for every $1 spent.Nature | 10 min read

We always like it when brisk, cheap solutions, using existing ideas and technology make a real difference. We hope you do too, gentle readers.

#antibiotics #drug resistant micro-organisms #health #sanitation #clean water