Kim Jong-un has got the usable nuclear weapons he wants and is now turning his attention to shoring up his diplomatic position, mainly to help his languishing economy. Trump can either poop the party and keep applying sanctions, maybe turning the screw a bit, or he can declare peace in our time and congratulate himself on his negotiating prowess in getting the deal and in this way normalise North Korea. I wonder which he will do?
Somewhat answering my own question, I think other US presidents would be wary of going full in for a Kim lovefest. Trump doesn't care if he thinks it plays well with the US electorate and his self-regard. It doesn't make any difference to North Korean nuclear weapons - they are there for Kim to keep and threaten to use when the occasion arises. At least it recognises the reality of the situation, which is safety of a sort.
I think we may be underestimating how quickly things could develop. Kim spoke about the Koreas being "one nation" and mentioned unification.
I agree. Implied promises aren't worth anything. Kim might decide he gets more by continuing to play nice - internationally, domestically he's as nasty as he can possibly be. The point is, he gets to make that choice.
"My own Enoch out-Powelled example comes from the arresting statistic that 57% of Pakistani Britons in the UK are married to their first cousins - and in the city of Bradford it's 75 per cent."
It does look like the Eurozone boom is turning, although Spain is doing well, which is great for them given the horrible unemployment rates they have had. Post-referendum we are trailing remaining EU economically and this drags us down further, unfortunately.
Chris Giles in the FT this morning, as a rough estimate, put the cost of Brexit so far as £30bn per annum, which is a little shy of £600m a week.
Of course, that was written before the Q1 figures.
Oh I think he does. As much as I hate him, I think being unpredictable can help in foreign affairs. Your adversaries will think "hmm you know what he's soooo crazy he might just do it".
It is a variant of "good cop, bad cop" as well. I agree about the unpredictability, I think game theorists will be unpicking this.
Presentation matters, so Trump will benefit. But in hard game theory outcomes, Kim Jong-un is the clear winner. No doubt at all.
What are " hard game theory outcomes," and what would have to be different for Trump to be the clear winner?
Anyone back the winner (Louis)? I didn't dip my toe in the market. Probably would've gone for Arthur and been annoyed it's the second name.
Mr. Z, it's more fun than that. A couple of generations of cousin-shagging, and cousins then have genomes as similar as 'normal' brothers and sister. This then leads to rising learning difficulties (particularly in boys, who are likelier to have them than girls).
It does look like the Eurozone boom is turning, although Spain is doing well, which is great for them given the horrible unemployment rates they have had. Post-referendum we are trailing remaining EU economically and this drags us down further, unfortunately.
Chris Giles in the FT this morning, as a rough estimate, put the cost of Brexit so far as £30bn per annum, which is a little shy of £600m a week.
Of course, that was written before the Q1 figures.
That fits. I reckon about 0.5 to 0.7 percentage points of annual GDP growth foregone. Which doesn't sound much but it will accumulate to a sizeable shortfall if it continues over a decade or more. Big question is how long will it go on for. Will car companies continue to move investment away from the UK in ten years' time? Will banks still be consolidating their operations in the EU and away from London? If it's only a two year adjustment and then things carry as they were before, no-one will notice the blip. Otherwise we are heading for an Italy scenario.
"My own Enoch out-Powelled example comes from the arresting statistic that 57% of Pakistani Britons in the UK are married to their first cousins - and in the city of Bradford it's 75 per cent."
Bloody Hell.
Is there a source for that? That's worrying if true but then again as George Washington once wisely remarked 84% of statistics and quotes on the internet are made up.
Well both - I think the casual observer will think: Trump gets involved with the Koreas...the Koreas seem to have sorted out an intractable problem...hence Trump sorted out an intractable problem.
And who's to say that is misguided?
Absolutely. I don't think there will be much of a political benefit to Trump domestically - but IMO he deserves some credit.
Mr. Divvie, if growth increases significantly in Q2, then it could be attributed to seasonal factors (bad weather most likely). If not, looks worse, but we are due for a cyclical recession.
Worth noting that GDP stats are often revised upwards, which gets little coverage (a decline would, of course, get more).
The year-on-year drop in construction output for the last quarter, worth responsible for -0.2 percentage points ( i.e. 2/3rds of the fall), had largely happened before the 'Beast from the East', so is relatively unrelated to seasonal effects.
It does look like the Eurozone boom is turning, although Spain is doing well, which is great for them given the horrible unemployment rates they have had. Post-referendum we are trailing remaining EU economically and this drags us down further, unfortunately.
Chris Giles in the FT this morning, as a rough estimate, put the cost of Brexit so far as £30bn per annum, which is a little shy of £600m a week.
Of course, that was written before the Q1 figures.
That's probably in the right ballpark, around 1.5% lower GDP than we would otherwise now be showing. You can do a sanity check on the figure by looking at the GDP growth in the UK pre-referendum compared with the rest of Europe, and then doing the same post-referendum.
Of course, it is possible that some of this economic loss is only temporary, inasmuch as uncertainty will have caused businesses to delay investment, and consumers to delay general spending, which will be reversed when the uncertainty is (hopefully) removed. Some of it, though will be a permanent loss, and we've got further turmoil to come.
This is not new information, of course. Voters in the referendum were fully informed about the likelihood of this.
Oh I think he does. As much as I hate him, I think being unpredictable can help in foreign affairs. Your adversaries will think "hmm you know what he's soooo crazy he might just do it".
It is a variant of "good cop, bad cop" as well. I agree about the unpredictability, I think game theorists will be unpicking this.
Presentation matters, so Trump will benefit. But in hard game theory outcomes, Kim Jong-un is the clear winner. No doubt at all.
What are " hard game theory outcomes," and what would have to be different for Trump to be the clear winner?
Kim Jong-un apparently wants two things: Firstly, usable nuclear weapons that people outside and inside North Korea believe he will use if he's attacked. Secondly he want diplomatic normalisation, so he can boost his economy that is being held back by sanctions. It also gives him kudos back home to be seen to operate as an equal with the presidents of China and the United States. These are tangible benefits - the diplomatic normalisation has to play out but it looks like it's going that way.
Donald Trump can't or won't do anything about Kim's nuclear weapons, but he can decide whether to remove sanctions and endorse the North Korean president. I think he will do so, unlike his predecessors. It doesn't do anything about Korean nuclear weapons, which should be his main concern and was the main concern of his predecessors , even though they didn't do anything effective either.
So Kim 2 - Trump 0. But he gets an interesting summit out of it.
Is there a source for that? That's worrying if true but then again as George Washington once wisely remarked 84% of statistics and quotes on the internet are made up.
Not sure it's the same 57% stat, but here's one: The ‘Birmingham birth study’. There are more than one million residents in groups with a preference for consanguineous marriage in the United Kingdom, where they are particularly concentrated in inner city areas. In Birmingham, where more than 25% of babies born are of British Pakistani, Bangladeshi or Middle Eastern origin, a careful prospective study has provided the most detailed information available so far on the relationship between parental consanguinity and the birth prevalence and outcomes of congenital and genetic disorders in a high-resource society. The researchers enrolled a random sample of 4,886 women who had just given birth, as well as their babies. They established parental ethnicity and consanguinity status, took a full obstetric history, and collected follow-up data on all causes of death and disability to five years of age among study babies. The initial objective was to compare outcomes for the children of nonconsanguineous and consanguineous couples, with ethnic group as a factor. However, the numbers in each ethnic group were small and most of the parents of British Pakistani babies were related, leaving too few unrelated couples for a statistically valid comparison within the group. Conversely, the increased genetic risk for related couples seems to be relatively independent of their ethnic origin. The most valid and useful comparison was, therefore, between all 2,432 babies of North European origin and all 956 babies of British Pakistani origin. The genetic implications of a consanguineous marriage are related to the proportion of the children’s gene pairs that are identical because they are inherited from a common ancestor. For example, when first cousins marry, their children inherit one eighth of their genes from their common grandparents, and so one-sixteenth of their genes (6.25%) are identical by descent. This is expressed as a coefficient of consanguinity (F) of 0.0625 (REF. 22). In the Birmingham study, only 0.4% of the North European couples were related. Among the British Pakistanis, 69% of couples were related and 57% were first cousins. Many couples also had related parents, so the coefficient of consanguinity for the whole British Pakistani group was 0.0431 — equivalent to a population average of 70% first-cousin marriages.
http://www.channel4.com/microsites/D/Dispatches/when_cousins_marry/cousins_2.pdf
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https://www.steynonline.com/5063/mr-powell-and-his-peers
(where are you Isam?)
Bloody Hell.
Of course, that was written before the Q1 figures.
Mr. Z, it's more fun than that. A couple of generations of cousin-shagging, and cousins then have genomes as similar as 'normal' brothers and sister. This then leads to rising learning difficulties (particularly in boys, who are likelier to have them than girls).
Of course, that was written before the Q1 figures.
That fits. I reckon about 0.5 to 0.7 percentage points of annual GDP growth foregone. Which doesn't sound much but it will accumulate to a sizeable shortfall if it continues over a decade or more. Big question is how long will it go on for. Will car companies continue to move investment away from the UK in ten years' time? Will banks still be consolidating their operations in the EU and away from London? If it's only a two year adjustment and then things carry as they were before, no-one will notice the blip. Otherwise we are heading for an Italy scenario.
I don't think there will be much of a political benefit to Trump domestically - but IMO he deserves some credit.
Of course, it is possible that some of this economic loss is only temporary, inasmuch as uncertainty will have caused businesses to delay investment, and consumers to delay general spending, which will be reversed when the uncertainty is (hopefully) removed. Some of it, though will be a permanent loss, and we've got further turmoil to come.
This is not new information, of course. Voters in the referendum were fully informed about the likelihood of this.
NEW THREAD
Donald Trump can't or won't do anything about Kim's nuclear weapons, but he can decide whether to remove sanctions and endorse the North Korean president. I think he will do so, unlike his predecessors. It doesn't do anything about Korean nuclear weapons, which should be his main concern and was the main concern of his predecessors , even though they didn't do anything effective either.
So Kim 2 - Trump 0. But he gets an interesting summit out of it.
The ‘Birmingham birth study’. There are more than one million residents in groups with a preference for consanguineous marriage in the United Kingdom, where they are particularly concentrated in inner city areas.In Birmingham, where more than 25% of babies born are of British Pakistani, Bangladeshi or Middle Eastern origin, a careful prospective study has provided the most detailed information available so far on the relationship between parental consanguinity and the birth prevalence and outcomes of congenital and genetic disorders in a high-resource society.
The researchers enrolled a random sample of 4,886 women who had just given birth, as well as their babies. They established parental ethnicity and consanguinity status, took a full obstetric history, and collected follow-up data on all causes of death and disability to five years of age among study babies. The initial objective was to compare outcomes for the children of nonconsanguineous and consanguineous couples, with ethnic group as a factor. However, the numbers in each ethnic group were small and most of the parents of British Pakistani babies were related, leaving too few unrelated couples for a statistically valid comparison within the group. Conversely, the increased genetic risk for related couples seems to be relatively independent of their ethnic origin. The most valid and useful comparison was, therefore, between all 2,432 babies of North European origin and all 956 babies of British Pakistani origin.
The genetic implications of a consanguineous marriage are related to the proportion of the children’s gene pairs that are identical because they are inherited from a common ancestor. For example, when first cousins marry, their children inherit one eighth of their genes from their common grandparents, and so one-sixteenth of their genes (6.25%) are identical by descent. This is expressed as a coefficient of consanguinity (F) of 0.0625 (REF. 22).
In the Birmingham study, only 0.4% of the North European couples were related. Among the British Pakistanis, 69% of couples were related and 57% were first cousins. Many couples also had related parents, so the coefficient of consanguinity for the whole British Pakistani group was 0.0431 — equivalent to a population average of 70% first-cousin marriages.
http://www.channel4.com/microsites/D/Dispatches/when_cousins_marry/cousins_2.pdf