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|LEDS > SEC Filings for LEDS > Form 10-K on 26-Nov-2013
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Annual Report
The following discussion and analysis of our financial condition and results of operations is based upon and should be read in conjunction with the audited consolidated financial statements and the notes included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K, as well as the Risk Factors contained in Part I, Item 1A of this Annual Report on Form 10-K, and other information provided from time to time in our other filings with the SEC.
We develop, manufacture and sell LED chips and LED components. Our products are used primarily for general lighting applications, including street lights and commercial, industrial and residential lighting. Our LED chips may also be used in specialty industrial applications such as UV curing of polymers, LED light therapy in medical/cosmetic applications, counterfeit detection, LED lighting for horticulture applications, and architectural lighting. Our core products are LED chips and LED components, but lighting products have also become an increasingly important part of our business.
We sell blue, green and UV LED chips under our MvpLED brand to a customer base that is heavily concentrated in a few select markets, including Taiwan, the United States, Russia and China. We also sell our new EV LED product series in blue, green and UV. We sell our LED chips to packagers or to distributors, who in turn sell to packagers. In addition, we package a portion of our LED chips into LED components, which we sell to distributors and end-customers in selected markets. Our lighting products customers consist primarily of ODMs of lighting products and the end-users of lighting devices. We also contract other manufacturers to produce for our sale certain LED products, and for certain aspects of our product fabrication, assembly and packaging processes, based on our design and technology requirements and under our quality control specifications and final inspection process.
We are a holding company for various wholly and majority owned subsidiaries and joint ventures. Our most significant subsidiary is our wholly owned operating subsidiary, Taiwan SemiLEDs, where a substantial portion of our assets are held and located, where a substantial portion of our research, development, manufacturing, marketing and sales activities take place, and where most of our employees are based. As of August 31, 2013, we also owned a 66% interest in Ning Xiang, which consisted of a 51% interest that we acquired in August 2011 and an additional 15% interest that we acquired in April 2013. In November 2013, we acquired an additional 21% interest in Ning Xiang, which increased our total ownership interest to 87%. Ning Xiang is engaged in the design, manufacture and sales of lighting fixtures and systems.
We also have interests in unconsolidated joint ventures that we have accounted for as equity method investments and as such have not consolidated for financial reporting purposes. As of August 31, 2013, we owned a 50% interest in SILQ, a joint venture established in Malaysia to design, manufacture and sell lighting fixtures and systems. We expect that this business will incur losses for the near term. As of August 31, 2013, we also owned a 49% equity ownership interest in China SemiLEDs, which was formed to engage in the manufacture and sale of LED chips in China. China SemiLEDs was
originally significant to our China strategy, but we wrote down the investment to a carrying amount of zero at August 31, 2012, as a result of our proportionate share of the net loss and impairment charge reported by China SemiLEDs for the year ended August 31, 2012. Because we have no obligation or intention to provide additional funding to China SemiLEDs, we have suspended using the equity method of accounting and no longer recognize any portion of the net losses reported by China SemiLEDs subsequent to August 31, 2012. We will resume accounting for the investment using the equity method if China SemiLEDs subsequently returns to profitability and our share of future income is sufficient to recover our share of the cumulative losses that have not previously been recognized during the period the equity method of accounting is suspended. The shareholders of China SemiLEDs have been working towards formulating certain restructuring plans since late calendar year 2012 to allow China SemiLEDs to recommence operations. Even if a restructuring can be effected, there can be no assurance that the restructuring would be successful, and therefore, particularly if the banks seize China SemiLEDs' assets, liquidation of China SemiLEDs may be required. We may not be able to recover anything from our investment.
Key Factors Affecting Our Financial Condition, Results of Operations and Business
The following are key factors that we believe affect our financial condition, results of operations and business:
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ş Industry growth and demand for products and applications using LEDs. The overall adoption of LED lighting devices to replace traditional lighting sources is expected to influence the growth and demand for LED chips and impact our financial performance. We believe the potential market for LED lighting will continue to expand. LEDs for efficient generation of UV light are also starting to gain attention for various medical, germicidal and industrial applications. Since a substantial portion of our LED chips, LED components and our lighting products are used by end-users in general lighting applications and specialty industrial applications such as UV curing, medical/cosmetic, counterfeit detection and horticulture, the adoption of LEDs into these applications will have a strong impact on the demand of LED chips generally and, as a result, for our LED chips, LED components and LED lighting products. Fluctuations in demand for LED lights products will also affect the results of Ning Xiang.
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ş Average selling price of our products. The average selling price of our products may decline for a variety of factors, including prices charged by our competitors, the efficacy of our products, our cost basis, changes in our product mix, the size of the order and our relationship with the relevant customer, as well as general market and economic conditions. Competition in the markets for LED products is intense, and we expect that competition will continue to increase, thereby creating a highly aggressive pricing environment. For example, some of our competitors have in the past reduced their average selling prices, and the resulting competitive pricing pressures have caused us to similarly reduce our prices, accelerating the decline in our revenues and the gross margin of our products. When prices decline, we must also write down the value of our inventory. Furthermore, the average selling prices for our LED products have typically decreased over product life cycles. Therefore, our ability to continue to innovate and offer competitive products that meet our customers' specifications and pricing requirements, such as higher efficacy LED products at lower costs, will have a material influence on our ability to improve our revenues and product margins, although in the near term the introduction of such higher efficacy LED chips may further reduce the selling prices of our existing products or render them obsolete. Reduction in the average selling price of LED lights products will also affect the results of Ning Xiang.
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ş Changes in our product mix. We anticipate that our gross margins will fluctuate from period to period as a result of the mix of products that we sell and the utilization of our manufacturing capacity in any given period, among other things. For example, in fiscal 2012, we placed greater
emphasis on the sales of LED components rather than the sales of LED chip where we have been forced to cut prices on older inventory. In particular, we sold a significant volume of a category of lower-priced LED components designed to meet our customers' demand. While such a shift in product mix to lower-priced products lowered our average selling price, the significant sales volume helped to improve revenues and gross margin in fiscal 2012. We intend to continue to pursue opportunities for profitable growth in areas of business where we see the best opportunity for our new EV LED product series of LED chips (particularly the UV market) and continue to expand the lower-priced LED components as appropriate. However, as we expand and diversify our product offerings and with varying average selling prices, a change in the mix of products that we sell in any given period may increase volatility in our revenues and gross margin from period to period.
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ş Our ability to reduce cost to offset lower average prices. Competitors may reduce average selling prices faster than our ability to reduce costs, and competitive pricing pressures may accelerate the rate of decline of our average selling prices. To address increased pricing pressure, we have invested in the development of larger wafer sizes, in particular using 4" wafers, which we believe should lower our production costs. We have substantially converted our manufacturing of LED chips based on 4" wafer technology. We have also improved and increased our production yields to reduce the per-unit cost of production for our products. However, such cost savings currently have limited impact on our gross profit, as we suffered from the underutilization of our manufacturing capacity, primarily for our LED chips, starting in the fourth quarter of our fiscal 2011 and continuing through the fourth quarter of our fiscal 2013, and must absorb a high level of fixed cost, such as depreciation. While we intend to focus on managing our costs and expenses, over the long term we expect to be required to invest substantially in LED development and production equipment if we are to grow.
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ş Our ability to continue to innovate. As part of our growth strategy, we plan to continue to be innovative in product design, to deliver new products and to improve our manufacturing efficiencies. Our continued success depends on our ability to develop and introduce new, technologically advanced and lower cost products, such as more efficient, higher brightness LED chips. If we are unable to introduce new products that are commercially viable and meet rapidly evolving customer requirements or keep pace with evolving technological standards and market developments or are otherwise unable to execute our product innovation strategy effectively, we may not be able to take advantage of market opportunities as they arise, execute our business plan or be able to compete effectively. During the fourth quarter of our fiscal 2012, we introduced our new EV LED product series, capable of operating at a higher junction temperature and with higher thermal endurance, as well as our new ceramic LED component products, the C35 emitters, that incorporates the EV chip and also offers customers greater flexibility in making color choices. In June 2013, we expanded our UV LED product portfolio with the launch of mid- and high-power product series designed for industrial applications such as printing, coating, curing, signage and medical/cosmetic uses. We also broadened our LED components portfolio through an acquisition in July 2013. Our near-term success will depend upon how attractive these products are to our customers versus competitors' offerings and our customers' willingness and promptness in qualifying our new products.
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ş General economic conditions and geographic concentration. Many countries including the United States and the European Union members have instituted, or have announced plans to institute, government regulations and programs designed to encourage or mandate increased energy efficiency in lighting. These actions include in certain cases banning the sale after specified dates of certain forms of incandescent lighting, which are advancing the adoption of more energy efficient lighting solutions such as LEDs. The global financial crisis that began in late 2007 caused extreme disruption in the financial markets. Although the disruption in the financial
markets moderated thereafter, the global financial markets continue to reflect uncertainty about a sustained economic recovery. When the global economy slows or a financial crisis occurs, consumer and government confidence declines, with levels of government grants and subsidies for LED adoption and consumer spending likely to be adversely impacted. Our revenues have been concentrated in a few select markets, including Taiwan, the United States, Russia and China. Given that we are operating in a rapidly changing industry, our sales in specific markets may fluctuate from quarter to quarter. Therefore, our financial results will be impacted by general economic and political conditions in such markets. For example, some of our customers in Russia have experienced temporary liquidity constraints as a result of the impact of the banking crisis in Cyprus in March 2013 on the Russian economy, which have led to reduced and/or delayed purchases of our products by these customers. In addition, we have historically derived a significant portion of our revenues from a limited number of customers. Some of our largest customers and what we produce/have produced for them have changed from quarter to quarter primarily as a result of the timing of discrete, large project-based purchases and broadening customer base, among other things. For the years ended August 31, 2013 and 2012, sales to our three largest customers, in the aggregate, accounted for 14% and 31% of our revenues, respectively.
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ş Intellectual property issues. Competitors of ours and other third parties have in the past and will likely from time to time in the future allege that our products infringe on their intellectual property rights. Defending against any intellectual property infringement claims would likely result in costly litigation and ultimately may lead to our not being able to manufacture, use or sell products found to be infringing. In June 2012, we settled an intellectual property dispute involving Cree. We agreed to dismiss amended complaints filed against each other without prejudice. We agreed to the entry of a permanent injunction that was effective October 1, 2012 that precludes us from (and/or from assisting others in) making, using, importing, selling and/or offering to sell in the United States certain accused products and/or any device that includes such an accused product after that date and to payment of a settlement fee for past damages. All accused products sold before the date of settlement are released under this agreement and our customers and distributors are specifically released. All remaining claims between Cree and us were withdrawn without prejudice, with each retaining the right to assert them in the future. However, other third parties may also assert infringement claims against our customers with respect to our products, or our customers' products that incorporate our technologies or products. Any such legal action or the threat of legal action against us, or our customers, could impair such customers' continued demand for our products. This could prevent us from growing or even maintaining our revenues, or cause us to incur additional costs and expenses, and adversely affect our financial condition and results of operations.
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ş Our ability to realize our strategic initiatives. We have grown our business in part through strategic alliances and acquisitions. For example, our China strategy was initially premised on continuing our growth in China through China SemiLEDs. The launch of China SemiLEDs was not successful; see "Business-Our Joint Ventures and Investments-China SemiLEDs." We now no longer view China SemiLEDs as the vehicle to drive our growth in China. As the world's second largest economy and one that is geographically close to our manufacturing operations, China continues to represent a key market for our products and we have been working towards formulating certain strategic alternatives to exploit the opportunities that it presents, including, but not limited to, developing and expanding our direct sales force and distribution channels through local third-party distributors. In addition, we continually evaluate and explore strategic opportunities as they arise, including product, technology, business or asset transactions, such as acquisitions or divestitures. For example, in July 2013, we acquired an LED components production line and related technology from certain third parties, and we believe this acquisition
should allow us to expand our production capacity for LED components, and strengthen our product portfolio, technology and know-how related to LED components.
Components of Consolidated Statements of Operations
Our core products are LED chips and LED components, but lighting products have also become an increasingly important part of our business.
Our revenues are affected by sales volumes of our LED chips, LED components and lighting products and our average selling prices for such products. In addition, as we expand and diversify our product offerings and with varying average selling prices, any change in the mix of products that we sell in any given period may affect our total revenues. For example, average selling prices for our LED components are generally higher than for LED chips and the average selling prices for our lighting products are higher than for our LED chips and LED components.
We recognize revenue on sales of our products when persuasive evidence of an arrangement exists, the price is fixed or determinable, ownership and risk of loss has transferred and collection of the sales proceeds is probable. We obtain written purchase authorizations from our customers as evidence of an arrangement and these authorizations generally provide for a specified amount of product at a fixed price. We typically consider delivery to have occurred at the time of shipment, unless otherwise agreed in the applicable sales terms, as this is generally when title and risk of loss for the product passes to the customer.
Our larger customers typically provide us with non-binding rolling forecasts of their requirements for the coming one to three months; however, recent global economic uncertainty and weakness has led to reduced spending in our target markets and made it difficult for our customers and us to accurately forecast and plan future business activities. Our customers may increase, decrease, cancel or delay purchase orders already in place, with no material consequences to the customer. As a result, we may face increased inventories and our backlog may decline as a result of any economic downturn or material change in market conditions or economic outlook. We price our products in accordance with prevailing market conditions, taking into account the technical specifications of the product being sold, the order volume, the strength and history of our relationship with the customer, our inventory levels and our capacity utilization. When average selling prices drop, as they did in the years ended August 31, 2013 and 2012, inventory write-downs to net realizable values may also result.
Our customers for LED chips consist of both packagers and distributors who sell our LED chips to their packaging customers. Packagers in turn sell their packaged LED components to end-users of lighting devices. Our customers for LED components consist primarily of distributors and end-customers in selected markets. Our lighting products customers consist primarily of ODMs of lighting products and the end-users of these lighting devices. Distributors accounted for 20% and 43% of our revenues for the years ended August 31, 2013 and 2012, respectively. Our revenues attributable to our ten largest customers accounted for 35% and 49% of our revenues for the years ended August 31, 2013 and 2012, respectively.
Our revenues are concentrated in a few select markets, including Taiwan, the United States, Russia and China. Net revenues generated from sales to countries in these markets, in the aggregate, represented 63% and 78% of our revenues for the years ended August 31, 2013 and 2012, respectively. We expect that our revenues will continue to be substantially derived from these countries for the foreseeable future. Given that we are operating in a rapidly changing industry, our sales in specific markets may fluctuate from quarter to quarter. Therefore, our financial results will be impacted by general economic and political conditions in such markets.
Our revenues are presented net of estimated sales returns and discounts. We estimate sales returns and discounts based on our historical discounts and return rates and our assessment of future conditions.
Our cost of revenues consists primarily of cost of materials, depreciation expenses, manufacturing overhead costs, direct labor costs and utilities cost, all related to the manufacture of our LED products. Materials include raw materials, other materials such as gases and chemicals, consumables, and assembly materials. Because our products are manufactured based on customers' orders and specifications and we purchase materials and supplies to support such orders, we generally purchase our materials at spot prices in the marketplace and do not maintain long-term supply contracts. We purchase materials from several suppliers. Our procurement policy is to select only a small number of qualified vendors who demonstrate quality of materials and reliability on delivery time. We are subject to variations in the cost of our materials and consumables from period to period. Moreover, because we consume a significant amount of electricity in our manufacturing process, any fluctuations in electricity costs will have an impact on our cost of revenues. We also use contract manufacturers to produce for our sale certain LED products, and for certain aspects of our product fabrication, assembly and packaging processes, based on our design and technology requirements and under our quality control specifications and final inspection process.
Direct labor costs consist of salary (including stock-based compensation), bonus, training, retirement and other costs related to our employees engaged in the manufacture of our products. Manufacturing overhead costs consist primarily of salaries, bonuses and other benefits (including stock-based compensation expenses) for our administrative personnel allocated to manufacturing functions, repairs and maintenance costs for equipment and machinery maintenance costs and lease expenses.
Our cost of revenues also includes excess capacity charges as a result of the underutilization of our manufacturing capacity and inventory valuation adjustments to write-down our inventories to their estimated net realizable values as a result of declines in their average selling prices.
Research and development. Our research and development expenses, which are expensed as incurred, consist primarily of expenses related to employee salaries, bonuses and other benefits (including stock-based compensation expenses) for our research and development personnel, engineering charges related to product design, purchases of materials and supplies, repairs and maintenance and depreciation related expenses.
Selling, general and administrative. Selling, general and administrative expenses consist primarily of salaries, bonuses and other benefits (including stock-based compensation expenses) for our administrative, sales and marketing personnel, expenses for professional services, which include fees and expenses for accounting, legal, tax and valuation services, amortization and depreciation related expenses, marketing related travel, lease expenses, entertainment expenses, allowance for doubtful accounts and general office related expenses, as well as compensation to our directors. We expect our selling, general and administrative expenses to decrease as we continue to implement cost reduction initiatives, such as spending controls, and as we continue to streamline our operations.
Impairment of long-lived assets. We recognized impairment charges on our long-lived assets, which consisted of property, plant and equipment and intangible assets, for the years ended August 31, 2013 and 2012. The impairment charges on property, plant and equipment were primarily related to machinery and equipment used in the manufacturing of LED epitaxial wafers and chips. During the year ended August 31, 2013, we also recognized an impairment charge on the intangible asset for
customer relationships that arose from our acquisition of a 51% equity interest in Ning Xiang in August 2011.
Goodwill impairment. During the year ended August 31, 2013, we recognized an impairment charge on goodwill that arose from our acquisition of a 51% equity interest in Ning Xiang in August 2011.
Provision for litigation settlement. We recognized a provision and cash payment for litigation settlement for the year ended August 31, 2012 associated with the Cree litigation.
Impairment loss on investment. During the year ended August 31, 2013, we recognized an impairment loss on our investment in HPO, an equity investment we account for using the cost method, as a result of an other-than-temporary decline in the value of our investment in HPO.
Equity in losses from unconsolidated entities, net. Loss from unconsolidated entities consists of our portion of the income or losses of SILQ, and for the year ended August 31, 2012, also the loss from China SemiLEDs, which we no longer recognize subsequent to August 31, 2012, and SS Optoelectronics, which was dissolved in September 2012. These entities have been accounted for using the equity method of accounting, and as such, we generally recognize our portion of the net income or loss from such entities in our consolidated statements of operations. We report our investment in such entities as investments in unconsolidated entities on our consolidated balance sheets and such investment amounts are initially stated at cost, and subsequently adjusted for our portion of equity in undistributed earnings or losses. If the value of our investment in such entities declines, and the decline is determined to be other-than-temporary, the investment would be written down to fair value. As of August 31, 2012, the carrying amount of our investment in China SemiLEDs had been reduced to zero. See Note 5, "Investments in Unconsolidated Entities," of the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements in Item 8, Financial Statements and Supplementary Data, of the Annual Report for the year ended August 31, 2013 for detailed information.
Interest income, net. Interest income (expense), net consists of interest income and interest expense. Interest income represents interest earned from our cash, cash equivalents and/or short-term investments deposited with commercial banks in the United States and Taiwan. As of August 31, 2013 and 2012, we had cash and cash equivalents of $36.3 million and $47.2 million, respectively, and as of August 31, 2012, we also had short-term investments of $8.8 million, which consisted of time deposits with initial maturity of greater than three months. Interest expense consists primarily of interest on our long-term borrowings and/or short-term lines of credit with certain banks in Taiwan. As of August 31, 2013 and 2012, we had long-term debt totaling $8.5 million and $5.9 million as . . .


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whilst there may be intrinsic reasons for the scarcity of land,
there are no intrinsic reasons for the scarcity of capital. . . . It
will be, moreover, a great advantage of the order of events which
I am advocating, that the euthanasia of the rentier, the functionless
investor, will be nothing sudden, merely a gradual but prolonged
continuance of what we have recently seen in Great Britain, and
will need no revolution.
John Maynard Keynes
Theory, p. 376
was the most influential economist of the twentieth century, which
speaks poorly of the twentieth century. He left behind three widely
quoted phrases: gold as a "barbarous relic," "the
euthanasia of the rentier," and "in the long run, we're
all dead." He also left behind an utterly incoherent but widely
accepted theoretical justification for high marginal tax rates,
government make-work projects, and government budget deficits. His
Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936) is read
by few, understood by fewer, and is the Das
Kapital of our era: widely respected by academics who have
not read it.
clearest refutation of Keynes is Henry Hazlitt's book, The
Failure of the "New Economics" [1959]. Hazlitt
never went to college, so he was not taken in by Keynes.)
legacy was a theory of the free market that argues that the state
must intervene into the operations of the free market in order to
keep depressions from taking place. The free market cannot be trusted.
Keynes believed that the national government's fiscal policy is
the key to leading a nation out of recession: taxing, spending,
and running deficits. The common phrase regarding this theory of
government intervention is one applied to Franklin D. Roosevelt:
"He saved capitalism from itself." (Keynes and Roosevelt
met once in 1934, but they didn't think highly of each other.)
Friedman has always agreed with Keynes regarding the inability of
the free market to be reliably productive apart from government
intervention, but he has focused on monetary policy rather than
fiscal policy. Friedman has long promoted the idea that a central
bank should constantly increase the money supply by 3% to 5% per
year by buying government debt. This of course requires a long-term
increase in government debt. His disciples, the monetarists, agree
with him regarding both the legitimacy and the necessity of central
there are the supply-siders. They are verbal anti-Keynesians, at
least when tax rates are on the downward slope of Arthur Laffer's
famous tax revenue curve, i.e., where the government's fiscal policy
produces lower revenues at high marginal tax rates because of legal
tax avoidance programs that are less economically productive, people's
unwillingness to work, and reduced entrepreneurship and profit.
recommend tax rates set at whatever rates produce the greatest revenues:
the top of the revenue curve. Former Congressman Jack Kemp is the
spokesman for "practical" supply-side economics. As for
monetary policy, they are anti-monetarists. The faintest trace of
an economic slowdown produces cries from the supply-side camp —
Jude Wanniski excepted — for "more liquidity, now!" They
will have none of Friedman's penny-pinching 5% limit. "Get
the printing presses rolling!" is the supply-siders' invariable
call to action. This means, "Get the Federal Reserve buying
more government debt."
slogan unites all three camps of economists: "Deficits
don't matter." All three are convinced that if governments
adopt the correct taxation policies, and the central bank adopts
the correct monetary policy, economic growth will overcome the negative
effects of government debt.
government debt grows larger, so do business debt, consumer debt,
and mortgage debt. Everybody joins in the economists' chorus: "Deficits
don't matter!" Problem: any serious recession threatens the
economy with widespread default on debt. This in turn threatens
the fractional reserve banking system: cascading
cross defaults among banks, Greenspan calls the threat. That
was what happened in 1930—32. The money supply shrank. Anything
that threatens the debt-based monetary system is anathema to Establishment
protection of the banks (e.g., the FDIC), government fiscal policy,
and central bank policy have pumped up the money supply through
the expansion of bank-purchased government debt. Therefore, the
free market — bank depositors — is now a threat to both the expanded
money supply and the structure of invested capital that monetary
inflation has produced. Depositors who withdraw currency can pull
the plug on the fractional reserve banking system. This is what
is happening in Japan today. The central bank's response is to open
the spigots even more to keep the tub filled with money.
economists cry, "Deficits don't matter," but because a
portion of these deficits is funded by central bank credit money
creation, depositors' decisions to withdraw currency matter a great
deal. This is why all Establishment economists hate the free market
when it comes to money and banking. They all believe that "central
bankers know best." They therefore hate those depositors who
grow suspicious of the banks and withdraw currency. They recommend
government intervention into the economy in order to overcome the
interests of these depositors. The war against savers is basic to
modern economic theory.
agreed-upon anti-recessionary monetary policy of all three schools
of Establishment economic opinion was summarized perfectly in four
words by Martin Feldstein, who served as Reagan's chairman of the
Council of Economic Advisors, in an article that appeared on the
opinion page of the Wall Street Journal (Feb. 2, 1992). That
was an election year, an election that President Bush lost in November
because of a recession. Here is the Establishment economists' universal
solution, which was the title of Feldstein's article: "Goose
the Money Supply."
for the Austrian school of economics, its members want no government
control over the money supply beyond the fulfillment of contracts
between banks and depositors. They also don't trust any government-licensed
monopoly, including the most powerful of all government-licensed
monopolies, the central bank. As for fiscal policy, they call for
tax cuts even on the upward slope of Laffer's revenue curve. With
Laffer, they insist that taxes should be cut until they produce
maximum government revenue. Then taxes should be cut some more —
quite a bit more, actually. So, nobody in government pays any attention
to them.
has all this got to do with the plight of savers? A
great deal.
Keynesians have an underlying contempt for the private saver who
acts in his own self-interest. The government can allocate capital
more efficiently, they believe. Anyway, pure Keynesians believe
this. The practical Keynesians — most academic economists over age
50 — think that savers are tolerable, but not when they prefer
to save so much money that the prices of most retail goods begin
to fall. When consumers do this, the government must sell more debt
to investors, including the central bank, and spend more money on
employment-generating projects. Keynes literally called for the
construction of pyramids, if necessary, to supply jobs (General
Theory, p. 220). Keynesians are demand-siders. They regard consumption
as the key to economic growth, not private saving and private capital
monetarists and supply-siders are favorable in general to savers,
but not so favorable that they don't call for more monetary expansion
whenever a recession appears. Friedman made his academic reputation
by arguing in
Monetary History of the United States (1963) that the Great
Depression was the fault of the Federal Reserve System, which did
not pump up the money supply, 1930—32. The FED actually allowed
insolvent banks to go bankrupt. In other words, Friedman opposes
the effects of the free market in wiping out bad debt, including
poor entrepreneurs called bankers. His view of banking is promoted
by 99.9% of the introductory economics textbooks used in every college
on earth, and all of the textbooks in money and banking classes.
(again, not Wanniski) are knee-jerk inflationists. Their solution
to every recession is always monetary expansion at whatever rate
it takes to lower interest rates and get businesses borrowing again,
plus a little more money, just to make sure. They have great faith
in businessmen as the source of society's wealth, and they want
the central bank to subsidize businesses with artificially low rates
of interest whenever the free market calls into question prior monetary
inflation-generated malinvestments by businessmen, i.e., during
a recession. Supply-side economists are to monetary policy what
mercantilists were to international trade policy: Subsidizers
Of Business.
the government taxes savers to get the government into accelerated
spending mode (Keynesianism), this hurts savers. When the central
bank buys government debt with newly created money in order to keep
prices from falling (monetarism), this hurts savers, i.e. creditors,
who are then repaid with money of reduced purchasing power, i.e.,
lower than what the free market would have determined was efficient.
When the central bank pumps new money into the government debt market
to lower commercial interest rates (supply side), it hurts savers,
especially holders of short-term certificates of deposit, money-market
fund owners, and passbook savings account holders.
short, the saver gets blamed for the recession by all three schools
of Establishment economic opinion. His interests are the first to
be sacrificed on the altar of government intervention in order to
"save capitalism from itself."
is happening today, all over the world.
is an old line, "You should save for a rainy day." The
problem is, for the last sixty years, governments in the West have
promised perpetual sunshine.
the United States, the personal savings rate went negative in 2001.
During recessions, the savings rate historically has risen because
people are reminded that income is not a sure thing. They get worried
about losing their jobs, so they save more. This time is no exception;
the personal savings rate has climbed back to a little over 3% of
disposable income. This is not exactly confidence-building. In previous
recessions, it has hit 10%.
I went to the Web site of the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank. This
site is probably the best source of economic charts that are issued
by any single organization. In any case, they're free. Far be it
from me to turn down a free lunch. (Economagic is even better, but
it's a compilation of sources.)
was curious about the rates of savings in various countries. So,
I clicked on International Economic Trends, the SL FED's
quarterly publication. I have read it, or at least glanced at it,
for many years. Its data page has a nation-specific list of topics:
"Output and Growth," "Inflation and Prices,"
etc. You can check data for nine major countries. I clicked "Saving
and Investment." This took me to a page with a chart on "Hourly
Earnings and Output Per Worker." This was not what I had in
due diligence, I sent an e-mail to the SL FED, telling them of the
glitch. I received this reply the next day:
sorry for any confusion our webpage caused. The Savings and Investment
charts were replaced with Inflation (depicting CPI and PPI) charts.
I am correcting the webpage now to reflect the change.
returned to the page. Sure enough, there was no longer any listing
for "Saving and Investment." I sent back a reply:
sure will miss Saving & Investment. Maybe when both are disappearing,
it's time to drop them.
got a million of 'em! Rodney Dangerfield, don't look behind you.
I'm gaining on you.
I received this response:
Yes, that
is exactly why we discontinued them. Unfortunately, several of
the countries that we were reporting savings and investment data
for were no longer updating their files with the OECD (our source
— the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development),
and we felt that it would be better to include charts that had
current data. Hence we chose the CPI and PPI to represent inflation.
response got me to thinking. We are in the midst of a worldwide
slowdown of economic growth. Europe is in what appears to be permanent
economic stagnation. Stock markets in the West and Japan are way
down, and none of them looks healthy.
is any population's commitment to long-term thrift, which alone
can restore both productivity and the stock markets? If the 20%
of the population that supplies 80% of the capital (Pareto's Law)
refuses to save, then the capital necessary to enrich the other
80% will be absent. We will then experience a secular decline in
the rate of economic growth. As capital consumption spreads, we
could even see a contraction of the West's share of the world economy.
is already taking place. Capitalism is spreading to mainland China
and India. As the two largest nations on earth abandon their old
economic views — Chinese Communism and Indian Fabianism — the masses
of these two countries are entering the modern world. Between these
giants, there are at least two and a half billion people. Hundreds
of millions of them work for less than a dollar an hour.
low wage rates will not last. Capital expansion will raise their
wages, along with their productivity. That's what capitalism always
does. But the West's politicians have yet to come to grips with
twin economies whose foreign trade sectors are larger than most
nations' entire economies.
the balance of payments deficit continues at its present rate of
4% of the U.S. economy — unlikely, of course — then what will happen
to the ownership of capital in the United States? This surplus 4%
in the hands of foreigners gets invested in dollar-denominated assets.
Orientals are not inscrutable. They are investors in search of currency-risk
diversification. They are saving by purchasing dollar-denominated
assets. This is what sustains our consumer goods buying spree. As
Asians increase production in comparison to Europeans, Asians will
begin to dominate America's capital markets. The trend is clear:
Asians are steadily securing legal ownership of America's wealth-producing
assets. Because Europeans and Americans are reducing their savings
rate, they are being replaced by Asians.
once led the way. It set the example: export, and invest the surplus
abroad. But Japanese policy-makers in government bought Keynesianism:
hook, line, and economic sinker. The result since 1990 has been
economic stagnation or worse. Japan has a commercial banking sector
that looks exactly like any government-licensed, central-bank-protected
monopoly does after a generation of fiat-money-generated good times:
paralyzed with fear and bad debts.
follows freedom. Where taxes are low, economies are competitive.
This is another reason why Japan is suffering today. It has too
many taxes and too many regulations on business. State bureaucrats
are making too many decisions regarding the allocation of capital.
Other Asian nations are steadily replacing Japan as the source of
low-cost goods and ready capital in American markets.
Cato Institute's Alan Reynolds wrote a piece for the Washington
Times on October 13. He identifies Japan's problem.
problems began with the 1988 Basle Accord that created tough new
rules for the world's banks. By the early 1990s, those heavy-handed
capital standards began to force banks to slash loans to business
and boost their holdings of government IOUs. Japan's banks were
compelled by the Bank of Japan to severely ration credit.
the Bank of Japan was working hard to "burst the bubble"
in stock and land prices, the Japanese Treasury decided to do
the same with new taxes on retail sales, capital gains and land.
The capital-gains tax made it far less attractive to hold stock,
shoving stocks down further. The land tax had the same depressing
effect on land prices, and nasty ripple effects on stocks and
banks. Land had been a key asset behind corporate stock and important
collateral for bank loans. Stocks, in turn, were a significant
portion of bank capital. When stocks the banks owned dropped in
value, the Basle rules required an even tighter squeeze on business
and consumer loans.
monetary and tax policies sank the value of Japanese
land and stocks, and wiped out bank capital and loan collateral.
The mandated cutbacks in bank lending to businesses slaughtered
many companies. Good loans became "bad loans" because
of a bad economy. Meanwhile, the government wasted huge sums on
costly public works schemes that saddle future taxpayers with
a gigantic public debt. As the Economist put it, "Japan's
policymakers appear to have followed the Keynesian textbook."
fiscal policy produces economic stagnation and rising government
deficits. It assumes that the free market needs assistance from
the government. Keynesianism is the primary academic source of the
theology of government-guaranteed sunshine.
Japan's banks have long been on the verge of collapse, with $423
billion of bad debt, fearful Japanese take money out of the banks
and hoard currency. This bank run in slow motion forces banks
to keep extra cash in reserve, in case too many depositors cash
at once.
is the inescapable curse of fractional reserve banking. Bad loans
eventually threaten the solvency of the banks, which leads depositors
to withdraw currency, which hastens the erosion of bank solvency.
This has been going on in the West for five centuries.
of requiring 100% reserves for banking — no issuing of IOU's to
money metals that are not backed up by money metals in the vault
— government policy-makers have insisted on establishing state-chartered
monopolies, central banks. These agencies are supposed to serve
as lenders of last resort to insolvent commercial banks. This is
ancient policy stretching back to the creation of the Bank of England
in 1694. So, I cannot understand why Reynolds thinks that the following
recommendation is anything but business as usual.
currency the Japanese are stuffing under mattresses plus the extra
bank reserves add up to the "monetary base." The Bank
of Japan could increase the monetary base by buying Japanese or
U.S. securities and paying for them by adding to banks' reserves.
Once the banks had enough reserves to feel comfortable, they could
increase profits by using extra reserves to create new checking
accounts by buying bonds or making loans.
read this and think, "Keynesianism with a Wall Street face."
(Note: when he says "securities," he means government debt.) He
then laments the fact that the Bank of Japan is holding back.
the Bank of Japan just doesn't get it. So the demand for cash
keeps outpacing supply. The result shows up in rapid growth of
currency, which is hoarded, but very slow growth of broad measures
of the money supply. Over the past year, the broadly defined money
supply grew by 8.3 percent in the United States but only 3.5 percent
in Japan.
of horrors: the central bank is not inflating fast enough. The extension
of newly created credit money to the government is being restricted
by the Bank of Japan's policy not to debase the currency too fast.
This hampers the banking system's ability to defraud depositors
through inflation. No, no, no: let's get those digital printing
presses running!
to Reynolds, the Bank of Japan is inflating like mad. The adjusted
monetary base is up by more than 20% since last year. M-1 is up
by 30%. (This panic-level increase in money began in 2000.)
Bank of Japan is at fault. The CD rate is just slightly over 0%.
Government bonds pay a little above 1%. In short, the Japanese saver
is getting reamed by the Bank of Japan.
it any wonder that bank depositors are withdrawing currency? Why
shouldn't they? It is costing them almost nothing to get into currency,
which leaves no records, and which will appreciate if banks collapse.
Prices are falling, so the hoarding of currency leads to increased
purchasing power, meaning increased wealth. What rational person
wouldn't do this in Japan, where hardly anyone uses credit cards
or debit cards?
the M-2 rate is not growing by much: a little over 3%. That's because
people are reducing their bank savings accounts, which pay no interest,
in favor of increasing their holdings of currency.
Bank of Japan is following Reynolds' recommendations to the letter.
It isn't working. The sovereign consumer is bringing the bankers
to their knees. The Old Boy Network in Japan — large firms, large
banks, the BoJ, and the Liberal Party — is getting its head bashed
in by individual citizens, who are voting no against mass monetary
inflation, which the BoJ is producing precisely because the banks
are rotten. And the economists all wring their hands. "Naughty,
naughty depositors. Have faith in the banks."
economists had any sense of irony, they would choose one singer
from each Establishment school — Keynesian,
monetarist, and supply side — and do a reworked version of the Beach
Boys' "Fun, Fun, Fun." The chorus:
And they'll
have fun, fun, fun
inflation takes the T-bills away!
again, let me remind you: only the Austrian School of economics
stands fast against the deliberate debasement of the monetary unit
by a government-licensed, monopolistic central bank. All other schools
are cheerleaders of the central banks. They all call for "restrained"
counterfeiting. And every time recession looms, the language of
restraints disappears.
inflation rather than thrift is the hope of Western economists and
policy-makers. Instead of calling for a radical reduction of taxes,
to be accompanied by a comprehensive abolition of government regulations
on business, both of which would help restore Japan's faltering
productivity, the policy prescription is more fiat money. Reynolds
blames the consumer.
get the cash they crave, the Japanese have no choice but to liquidate
goods and assets at distress-sale prices. The result is falling
prices — deflation. The real burden of old debts rises because
producers have to sell more widgets to raise the same amount of
yen. Consumers and businesses are slow to buy, because everything
is expected to be cheaper if you wait.
used to be a monetarist. He launched his career in journalism back
in 1971 with an attack on Austrian monetary theory, which he said
was not accommodative enough, i.e., not expansionist. Years later,
he switched to supply-side economics. He still promotes the same
old solution to recession: more fiat money. His tune has changed,
but the lyrics remain the same.
a recession appears, Friedman's words in 1965 are ratified by Establishment
economists: "We are all Keynesians now." He meant
methodologically, but there is no question that he also meant
at the fundamental level: an acceptance of the state's role as the
primary activist agency for overcoming recessions. The debate is
over how: fiscal policy (Keynes) or monetary policy (Friedman).
Reynolds presents the familiar analysis that has plagued the West
ever since the Great Depression: Keynes'
"liquidity trap." Oh, that short-sighted, self-interested,
unreliable depositor, who does not fully trust the banking system,
and who therefore hoards currency whenever the central bank's policy
of money-creation reduces the interest rate to approximately zero.
The policy-makers and the economists go into St. Vitus Dance just
thinking about price cuts for anything except borrowed money.
all laud Adam Smith's central concept of the growing wealth of nations
as the product of the self-interested individual, but only up to
the point when this individual walks into a bank and says, "I
want my money, in small bills please." At that point, he becomes
a public menace.
fact is, Japan's mild reduction of prices is granting to consumers
some relief from seven decades of price increases. There is no "deflationary
spiral" in Japan. Richard Katz has warned against seeing Japan's
situation as anything even remotely like the Great Depression. In
the Oriental Economist (March 2002), he wrote:
deflation is quite mild. The GDP deflator has been falling about
1.5% to 2% since 1999. The consumer price index is falling at
an even milder, 0.5% rate. In the US, incidentally, wholesale
prices fell 2.6% last year, yet the economy is in recovery.
key point: while weak demand is causing prices to fall in Japan,
those falling prices are not, in turn, causing demand to weaken
further. (There is also a bit of "good deflation" —
a drop in monopolistic prices in a few products, such as food,
clothing and long-distance phone calls.)
is a symptom of Japan's problems, not their cause. Deflation does
have some side-effects, but these are marginal in the overall
picture. Excessive focus on deflation is like trying to cure a
fever by putting ice on your thermometer.
officials at the BoJ are floating this unorthodox idea: the BoJ
should create money and buy depressed equities that are held by
the banks. This is a whole new way of turning economic power over
to central bankers. Instead of becoming the lender of last resort,
the central bank should become the speculator of last resort. Instead
of confining itself to buying certificates of future wealth-confiscation
by the state, it should buy control of the entrepreneurial process
itself — businesses. It should gain the legal authority to choose
who will sit on the boards of directors. It should decide directly
which businesses deserve capital rather than using the commercial
banks as intermediaries. In short, it should make official what
the Old Boy Network has been doing unofficially in Japan since 1868.
transfer of power to the Bank of Japan would lead to the final removal
from the corporate decision-making process of all those pesky, quirky,
profit-seeking private investors. This is what the Old Boy Network
has been after for a century . . . and not just in Japan.
in Japan are now playing Joe Bfstplk for the government's guaranteed
sunshine. Maybe you aren't old enough to remember Joe Bfstplk. He
was a character in Li'l Abner who wandered through the world with
his own built-in rain cloud, which hovered above him, raining. Wherever
he went, disaster followed. He remained untouched by these disasters.
Wet, yes, but unscathed. For a picture of Joe, click here:
the Old Boys want is for bank depositors to be schmoon (plural of
schmoo), those fat, ham-shaped little creatures that laid eggs,
gave milk, and would drop dead whenever a hungry person looked at
them. But cartoonist Al Capp understood the implications of such
the lovable and selfless Shmoos ultimately brought misery to humankind
because people with a limitless supply of self-sacrificing Shmoos
stopped working and society broke down. Seen at first as a boon
to humankind, they were ultimately hunted down and exterminated
to preserve the status quo.
same is true of savers who are willing to roll over and play dead
every time a recession threatens. When savers stop saving, misery
will result. The Establishment economists have never accepted this
universal fact of economic life.
bankers have not yet grasped the implications of the substitution
of fiat money for thrift. They expect savers to roll over and play
dead. They ask rhetorically, "Who needs savers when you have
the legal authority to create digits and print pieces of paper with
politicians' faces on them?"
who worries about imminent price deflation has not thought through
the Old Boy Network and its solution to every economic slowdown:
more fiat money. In contrast, anyone who worries about the long-term
decline of productivity due to the euthanasia of savers has indeed
thought through the Old Boy Network's solution.
13, 2002
North is the author of Mises
on Money. Visit http://www.freebooks.com.
For a free subscription to Gary North's twice-weekly economics newsletter,

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Petaluma, CA, United States | Member Since 2006
"Keeps getting better"
I was a little nervous starting book 3. It had been a while since I finished book 2, and there is the further confusion of where the TV series left off, so it's hard to keep track of what has happened. However, Martin has the confidence of a storyteller who knows he has a good story to tell. He manages to entwine the recap of the last book with the plot threads of the new book in a way that feels totally natural. In fact, he takes such a long time getting his multiple story lines back in motion that I had forgotten I had ever taken a break in between books by the time all the characters were back in place.
I think Martin has improved as a writer. The first two books suffered from having too much exposition inserted under the pretence of interior monologue. Here in the third book the exposition is much better integrated and used to drive the story, not just as background filler. He often sets up certain vocabulary to foreshadow or bleed across in the transition to the next segment of one of his multiple storylines. And somehow he pulls off the amazing trick of making the ending incredibly satisfying and simultaneously leaving you craving the next book.
And now the list of words I would be happy never to hear again: garron, boiled leather, small clothes, milk of the poppy, dream wine, flagon.
"Courage and incompetence"
The War of 1812 always gets short shrift in school, leading a lot of us to assume it was just a minor skirmish. I suppose in some ways it was. But there was still a lot going on, and this book does its part to fill in the blanks. Daughan does a great job setting up the background for the war. The specific issues of trade and impressment and how it was all related to the Napoleonic campaigns, the non-military tactics employed, the eventual breakdown, and the territorial designs of the US and Great Britain over Canada and the "Northwest".
Madison does not come off well in this story. In fact the partisan rivalry between Republicans and Federalists sounds all too familiar to the times in which we live. Madison may have been a great political thinker but he was a lousy war president. Tales of American military and political incompetence abound during this conflict. It would be funny if it weren't so shameful and tragic.
Daughan spends a lot of time on the details of individual military encounters. This really helped bring home the reality of men in the field dealing with what was right in front of them, as opposed to the orders reaching them after days or weeks from people in Washington who had no firsthand sense of what was going on. It also helped confirm that all the details in the Jack Aubrey books and the Hornblower books are pretty accurate.
The two events everyone associates with this war--the burning of Washington and the bombardment of Fort McHenry--turn out to be rather peripheral in the scheme of the overall campaign. Which isn't to say they aren't important.
It's easy in a history to have the thesis get lost in recounting details. But Daughan keeps revisiting his underlying premise that the US naval forces played an important role in changing the attitude of the British toward the US and contributing to the long peaceful affiliation the two countries have shared since that time. While Daughan addresses the issue of privateers, I couldn't help feeling that that story did not get proper weight. Perhaps someone else will tell that story someday.
"Probably more universal than Paton intended"
This is unquestionably a powerful book. Stephen Kumalo is one of the great literary protagonists. You cannot but help bonding with him immediately. Thanks to him, I can overlook other aspects of the book. What starts out looking like it could be South Africa's "To Kill a Mockingbird" ends up being closer to South Africa's "The Jungle". Paton alternates the main Kumalo story with passages of journalistic prose, as well as an attempt to set up a secondary protagonist. I can understand why. His main story simply isn't big enough to fill a novel. But Kumalo is such a great character that the parts without him are such a letdown. Still, the book is just the right length for what Paton has to say. Paton makes an effort to stay even-handed throughout. That is, every character feels true to his own beliefs. That said, there are a few places where it feels like he has stacked the deck in his favor, and that's all I'm going to say about that.
What I found most compelling about the book is the universal message it has to tell about a society in transition. How people respond when traditional ways are under attack and no new societal institutions have been developed to take their place. It's something that people in every country can relate to. And South Africa's situation simply puts it into a perspective that makes it clear to all of us.
Some other reviewers have complained about Michael York's narration. I have my own issues with him. He tends to drift into a sing-song pattern sometimes that makes the book sound like it was intended for children. But when he gets engrossed in the important parts of the book, he does just fine. And while he has been lambasted for his pronunciations, it is interesting that no one has criticized him for any of the words that a non-South African would definitely need help with.
"The magic word is 'influence'"
There is a passage early on where Lord Henry Wotton, the Mephistopheles character in this little morality play, offers a definition of the word 'influence' that encapsulates the central issue of the book. The word 'influence' is repeated often enough in this short book that I think Wilde must have intended that significance. It's something I overlooked the first time I read this book 40 years ago. I must have overlooked a lot because the book has improved a great deal in that time. It helps to have more context about Wilde and his times. And it helps too to know how much the extravagant descriptive passages owe to Wilde's French inspiration, À Rebours, a book sadly not available on audio.
Watching Dorian deteriorate under the influence of Lord Henry, while the positive friend, Basil Hallward, refuses to influence him at all, it strikes me that Wilde is making a rather strong case for morality in contradiction to the usual libertine motives ascribed to him. One thing that I think is often overlooked about Dorian is that he is described by Basil at the beginning as having some kind of special unique personality. Who he would have become if left uninfluenced is one of the mysteries that makes the story poignant.
One wishes Wilde had explored that possibility. One wishes that Dorian, as he ages, would become a person with a more defined persona. But he remains a rather unformed cipher right up to the end. That is yet another mystery Wilde left unexplored. What was it about Dorian that kept him from becoming "the hero of his own life" as Dickens phrased it?
Still, the questions Wilde chose to explore have managed to produce one of the iconic books of the Victorian Age. One might ask what it was about the puritanical moralistic Victorians that has left us with such a collection of horrific Gothic legacy: Dorian Gray, Dracula, Jekyll and Hyde, etc.
The painting itself plays such a small part in the book, one is tempted to wonder if the title is actually referring to the painting or not. I am inclined to believe the title really refers to the book itself (i.e., a narrative picture rather than a visual one).
"Much and more; little and less"
I have a number of quibbles with this book, which may lead some to consider this a negative review. Therefore, let me say right at the start that I love this series and I do not regret one minute of the many hours it has taken to listen to the first 5 books.
Book 5 covers the same time frame as book 4 only focusing on different characters. That puts a solid limit on how much the story can advance. As always in this series, Martin relies on the dialog to move the story forward. He's really good at it, but sometimes I wish he would resort to some old-fashioned exposition and just jump ahead. The problem is that we already know most of the facts the characters are going to consider. If you love the characters and like to hear them talk, then it's no big deal. If you are conscious of the fact that we have a long wait ahead of us before book 6 comes out (and who knows how long till book 7 and possibly book 8), then you'll have to forgive me for being a bit impatient.
Another reason for my impatience is that some of the questionable details of Martin's imaginary world are starting to wear thin: bodyguards appointed for life, an ice wall that lasts 1000s of years without maintenance, multi-year weather patterns that are a big deal in one continent but not in the other, the absence of technological advances in a world that seems to have all the resources ours does, medieval empires of a scope unimaginable in our own world, royal families with almost no members after centuries of unbroken dynasties.
Martin has gotten much better about overusing certain vocabulary since he started this series. Unavoidably, he still gets attached to certain words and phrases. 'Much and more' and 'little and less' are two that stood out in this latest volume. And even though he never strays from the emotional truth of his characters, I couldn't help but feel he made some missteps in this book as far as certain dialogs between characters of different ranks or classes.
Yet for all that, this series is still an amazing exploration into human nature. It is fascinating to watch the main characters discover the perils of leadership and agonizing over the right decision. Just as it is fascinating to watch other characters discover the result of their own hubris. It is hard to think of a single character in this series, whose future we are not interested in discovering, regardless of how we may feel about them. Just the fact that Martin has us rooting for multiple characters, even knowing that they will eventually be in conflict with each other, puts this series in a class by itself.
"A masterpiece of self-deception"
Reading a book like this makes you appreciate how little the world has changed in the last 100 years. And if people bought into the same weird fads 100 years ago, why not 200? Or 1000? Or all the way back to the beginning of civilization?
I thought I knew Elmer Gantry by reputation but I was mistaken. Whether Elmer does or doesn't believe in religion, he works really hard at it. And therein lies a deep and probing search into any of the professions like preaching, politics, activism, where success is measured by how much support and attention you can get. There is a kind of moral hazard created by that phenomenon.
Sinclair Lewis does a brilliant job of showing how Gantry gradually brainwashes himself, and how his hypocrisy arises, not from some deliberate choice on his own part, but from a lack of self-reflection and an absence of self-awareness. Gantry is terrifying, not because he is a hypocrit, but because he ultimately truly believes he is doing the right thing.
Lewis also paints a depressing picture of what happens to people in the ministry who are truly sincere and honest about their faith. It seems they will always lose out to people like Gantry who profess to harbor no doubts. Those who wrestle with their doubts--and even consider that struggle to be essential to their own faith--will never have the popular appeal of a charismatic personality like Gantry. What that says about the general public I leave to your imagination.
"Better written but lacks momentum"
This series just gets better and better. Things that were annoying in the earlier books (like the overuse of certain vocabulary terms) have been fixed or at least mitigated in this latest installment. We will forgive him for falling prey to a new batch of overused terms towards the end.
Unlike book 3, book 4 starts off in a way that seems to deliberately ignore where the previous book left off. Rather than remind his readers of recent critical events, Martin simply goes on with selected storylines, trusting that eventually there will be enough clues to fill in the gaps. His opening scene doesn't appear to fit in anywhere and we will wait an agonizingly long time to find out what it relates to. Likewise, we are forced to wait an agonizingly long time to pick up the story lines for the most intriguing loose ends of book 3.
The result is a book that is always entertaining yet vaguely unsatisfying. While we get to watch the aftermath of the recent war play out, and while there is clearly a lot of background preparation for what must ultimately happen, there isn't a feeling of making much progress toward a final conclusion. I am not wishing for Mr. Martin to telegraph the ending, but book 5 had better do more than simply mark time.
I have recently been subjected to other imaginary worlds of inferior quality and it has me pondering why this particular world holds my interest. Martin has taken the time to construct a back story with unstable forces in play. And then he has taken the trouble to create a host of very individualized characters each with his or her own agenda. But the real magic comes when Martin lets those characters collide with each other and with the sociopolitical forces of their time. At that he is a real master. And all the specific trappings of the imaginary universe assume their proper role as background matter.
"Cool premise in search of an interesting story"
I guess I'm glad I finally got around to reading this. I can't help feeling I would have enjoyed it more if I had read it when I was younger.
There are some genuinely interesting ideas here. The key one being how to construct a vastly larger world than Earth on which we could still function. The parts where Niven explores how this world would differ from our own show some serious thought. We can ignore the technical difficulties such as how to keep it in a stable orbit.
The characters were marginally interesting, although in fairness I do have to note that recent sci-fi shows all seem to have similar conglomerations of personalities so maybe Niven deserves credit for being so influential. All the same I couldn't get especially invested in any of their supposed agendas. Why is it that alien races all have to be so simplistically monolithic in their interests, personalities, and outlooks?
There seems to be a recurring interest in granting human beings increased longevity while maintaining the physical bodies of the young. I suppose this is very appealing to the core audience for this kind of book. What is baffling is that these very old humans seem to have no acquired wisdom, judgment, skill set, or cultural depth that would correspond to this increase in lifespan.
Where the book really let me down was in the absence of any kind of compelling story. I kept waiting for a plot to develop, but it was just a basic adventure story pasted onto a very thin excuse to motivate the action. Niven fans will no doubt take me to task for overlooking the very compelling reasons these alien races had for undertaking this mission, but as I said the imaginary forces working on imaginary races using imaginary technology just doesn't excite me.
Still, this is an acknowledged sci-fi classic and spawned a series of other books exploring the premise, so it must be appealing to someone out there.
"A gutsy experiment but sadly dated"
There are a number of harsh reviews here regarding Heinlein's depiction of women. I wish I could give a hearty rebuttal, but this is not a book I got deeply attached to. On the other hand, I think the critics are forgetting that the attitudes shown accurately depict a significant segment of liberated women in the 1960s, and that we really haven't moved that far beyond that as you can tell from just a glance at TMZ. Moreover, I don't think Heinlein was writing for posterity. As far as extrapolating from the time of writing, I think the book was fairly prescient in describing what the 1970s would be like.
On a side note, his fake news stories of the future are dead on accurate in describing the current events of our own time. I don't know if that is hilarious or just intensely sad.
At this distance, it's hard not to wish that Heinlein had been interested in exploring different questions. However, the issues he focused on (gender relations, overpopulation, class privilege, environmental pollution) were the issues of that time. And as far as the depiction of human relationships is concerned, he does an excellent job of capturing the hypocrisies and inconsistencies of his time. It's never clear whether the author perceives them as such. Too bad. Would that we all could perceive the hypocrisies of our own time as clearly.
There is a hint near the beginning of the book that the whole story could merely be a fantasy constructed by a brain cut off from contact with the outside world. But this isn't supported by any further exposition within the text itself. Still, it's interesting to note that every book is essentially a fantasy constructed within the mind of the author.
I can't help wondering how the book would have come across if read by a female narrator. So much of the book takes place within the mind of a woman, and the dated expressions seem especially incongruous being spoken by a man.
The central theme that Heinlein seems to have been interested in was how to get a totally frank conversation between genders without any of the masks or defenses that customarily get in the way. To that end, he created a rather unique scenario. Sadly, I think his solution was of more interest to him and his readers at the time than it will be to readers of our own time.
"Rich and entertaining"
The first segment is very rich in depth of scholarship. It is a reminder of just how superficial the education system is in terms of touching on the vast range of intellectual thought in human history. If the entire series was like this, it would be daunting. Fortunately, the other 11 segments slow down and focus on smaller topics of interest. That isn't to say they are less intense. These are all carefully crafted essays. You may not agree with everything they have to say, but they make a compelling case in every instance.
The common theme through all the units is exploring the philosophical, political, economic, moral and ethical underpinnings behind the idea of liberty. Not so long ago, I wouldn't have thought such a course was necessary. I thought everyone appreciated liberty as the number one priority of society. But liberty is under assault by a number of other interests. People who, with the best of intentions, think that society would be better off if we could control people better. People who think other people can't be entrusted to make important decisions about their own lives. People who think they can reduce the amount of unfairness in the world by curtailing some liberties. People who think there are higher priorities than liberty. And people who are just outright opposed to the idea of liberty.
Learning about Liberty may not convince everyone that liberty should be the number one priority of society, but I hope it will at least convince anyone who listens to it that there is a good case for that.
I was sorry when it ended. I am hoping Cato will add more things like this to their library.
Just one comment about production values. The overall narration is very good, although there were times when it felt like one of those high school documentary films. The producers made the decision to have actors read the direct quotes from the authors cited. This adds some variety to the material, but sometimes it seems like the actors went a little over the top. For a couple of people, like Ludwig von Mises, the text was nearly lost in the thick accent. Overall though, I think this was a good choice.
"I guess it's all about the coffee"
I had to take a detour into Japanese YA fiction because of the terrific trailer for Edge of Tomorrow, which appears to be (loosely) based on this book. The book is a well-paced, tightly plotted genre novella. It has two things going for it that make it stand out: an incredibly great premise, and one carefully prepared exchange between the two main characters about 3/4 of the way through.
Apart from that, there isn't much in the way of character development, or even the exploration of the possibilities inherent in this rather original alien invasion story. Anime and manga fans will be in familiar territory with how things play out. Sakurazaka is focused on his protagonist only, and he provides as little context as he can get away with. That said, he does cheat a little. When the first person narrative gets in his way, he switches to third person, giving the reader information that our hero can't know, and even some stuff that the human race is not allowed to know. He even takes the cute tactic of having his hero comment on how time travel stories generally don't quite make sense, unlike this one which is "real life". Having disarmed the reader this way, he blithely goes on to spew out his own set of inconsistent time travel conundrums. Once again, anime and manga fans will be unfazed.
As for the coffee… Well, there is a sense in which the book strongly suggests that coffee is the most important thing on the planet. Or then again, it might just be a metaphor. I'm still a little confused by the title. Is that a literal translation of the Japanese? Or am I missing the grammatical intention? All the same, a very enjoyable quick read. Don't let the 3 star rating deceive you.
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Book your room at Rodney Hotel
Hotel in Bristol (Clifton) near Clifton Suspension Bridge
Collect 200 points
Simply enter your Nectar card number when prompted. Your points will be credited 30 days after you return from your trip.*Offers may apply
This hotel is located in Bristol (Clifton), close to Royal West of England Academy, Clifton Suspension Bridge, and Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery. Also nearby are Bristol Zoo and Cabot Tower.
Hotel Features
In addition to a restaurant, Rodney Hotel features a bar/lounge. Other amenities include a conference center and wireless Internet access (surcharge).
Room Amenities
LCD televisions come with premium digital channels. Guestrooms also feature washers/dryers, wireless Internet access (surcharge), and DVD players.Information missing or incorrect? Tell us!
At your hotel
At your hotel
The hotel offers a restaurant. A bar/lounge is on site where guests can unwind with a drink. High-speed wireless Internet access is available for a surcharge. Event facilities include a conference center and a meeting room. This Bristol hotel also offers a garden, coffee/tea in the lobby, and a fireplace in the lobby. Parking is available onsite for a surcharge.
Rodney Hotel is a smoke-free property.
- 24-hour front desk
- Breakfast available (surcharge)
- Total number of rooms - 31
- One meeting room
- Luggage storage
- Number of floors - 3
- Conference center
- Self parking (surcharge)
- Bar/lounge
- Coffee/tea in lobby
- Dry cleaning/laundry service
- Fireplace in lobby
- Wireless Internet access - surcharge
- Laundry facilities
- Restaurant
- Safe-deposit box at front desk
- Year Built 1780
- Smoke-free property
- Number of buildings/towers - 1
- Garden
- Television in lobby
- Use of nearby fitness center (discount)
Stay connected
Available in all rooms: Wireless internet access (4.00 GBP per 24 hours surcharge)
Available in some public areas: Wireless internet access (4.00 GBP per 24 hours surcharge)
Park your car
Self parking (surcharge)
In your room
- Premium TV channels
- DVD player
- Phone
- Minibar
- Daily housekeeping
- Private bathroom
- Complimentary toiletries
- Hair dryer
- Shower/tub combination
- Desk
- Iron/ironing board (on request)
- Washer/dryer
- Digital TV service
- Wireless Internet access (surcharge)
- Room service (limited hours)
- Individually decorated
Eat and drink
Full breakfasts are available for a surcharge and are served each morning between 7 AM and 9 AM.
No4 - This restaurant serves breakfast and dinner. Guests can enjoy drinks at the bar.
Room service (during limited hours) is available.
To make requests for specific accessibility needs, complete the "Special or Accessibility Requests" section of "Trip Preferences" when you book your hotel.
- Accessible path of travel
The fine print for Rodney Hotel
When you arrive
Check-in time starts at 2 PM
Minimum check-in age is 18
When you leave
Check-out time is 11 AM
How you can pay
Your pets
Pets allowed, Only dogs and cats are allowed
You need to know
Extra-person charges may apply and vary depending on hotel policy.
Government-issued photo identification and a credit card or cash deposit are required at check-in for incidental charges.
Special requests are subject to availability upon check-in and may incur additional charges. Special requests cannot be guaranteed.
- Fee for in-room wireless Internet: GBP 4.00 (for 24 hours, rates may vary)
- Fee for wireless Internet in public areas: GBP 4.00 (for 24 hours, rates may vary)
- Self parking fee: GBP 6.50 per night
- Late check-out fee: GBP 5.00


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|Historical Romance Books
A Wicked Wink
Her rakehell of an older brother enjoys hosting house parties and some of London's worse scoundrels stay at his country estate. In order to avoid being a target for the amorous house guests disguised as gentlemen, Emily downplays her appearance by wearing ugly, black and white mourning gowns.
She thought her marriage to Lord Brackendell would free her from having to wear a costume, but the viscount doesn't wish to be married to a comely woman. For now, she must keep her secret.
When she learns her husband is still smitten with an odious London lady with a viper tongue, Emily decides to follow her husband to London and turn the prim and proper viscount's life upside down.
Can she get the handsome rake to fall out of lust with the comely Lady Prisca and into love with a woman as ugly as she appears to be?
A Wicked Smile
All Lord Vernon intended to do was steal a quick kiss from Miss Wynter. A little revenge against her older brother for seducing his sister. He never ever expected to find himself attracted to the unattractive spinster.
And for goodness sakes, he never expected the betrothed woman to be willing to go beyond a kiss.
A Wicked Heart
DeAnna is shocked to find herself in 19th century England and her so-called father is about to betrothed her to an elderly, perverted English lord. With a little bit of lying, and a lot of luck, she is able to entice a powerful duke into marrying her.
Now all she needs to do is find a way to return to the twenty-first century before His Grace figures out she tricked him into marrying her. She isn't carrying his deceased cousin's child.
Romantic Suspense Book
Bigfoot Powwow
Tree knocking
Mysterious shadows
Seven Sasquatch surround Amelia Austin's car.
She quickly goes from non-believer to believer.
Garner Blade believes she wants to destroy the elusive creatures.
He is wrong.----


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Ben the Bodyguard is coming soon to protect your Apple iPhone
If losing pictures, video or text keeps you up at night, head over to the source link for some information on Ben the Bodyguard. Presumably some sort of site that will encrypt your information and protect it using remote wipes and other means, the app's web site is designed to scare you into signing up to receive more information on the service just before it launches next month. Until then, we are in the dark as to the actual methods used, and the cost required to keep our information away from the evil eyes of the bad guys. We would bet, however, that the combination of the app's web site along with the reports of personal pictures leaking from Miley's missing iPhone, will lead to a lot of people signing up for more information.
source: BentheBodyguard
Ben the Bodyguard is coming next month to save spying eyes from obtaining the secrets in your Apple iPhone
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2 Comments
1. clevername (Posts: 1431; Member since: 11 Jul 2008)
Yeah ummm that's what find my iPhone is for. And Now it's free. So unless Ben can provide a service that can do more than track your iPhone to within couple feet, remote lock, remote wipe, send special alerts and even custom messages to your iPhone for the finder/thief to see and hear, and do all that for free, I don't see any reason, regardless of method why this would be needed. Let's see what they have to offer. Hopefully it's more than remote data protection.
2. clevername (Posts: 1431; Member since: 11 Jul 2008)
Well the Facebook page says protecting passwords photos and contacts and such. And the website is talking about people stealing your phone so it must be some sort of remote system. The website makes it very intriguing.
On a side note, if I didn't visit bens site on my iPhone I would swear it was a flash based site. I'm guessing it was JS but whatever it was, combined with HTML 5 for video and audio this is capable of completely erasing flash.