Dan, that remark is quite a tease – is there a book of the history suitable for the lay-woman of the hedonistic reader kind?

Independently from you I noticed probably somewhere during the 90s that the sharp divide between the balance sheet (Bilanz) and cost control (Gewinn- und Verlustrechnung) I grew up with wasn’t general knowledge any longer.

and as an aside – somewhere during the 90s the government agency where I keep my savings changed it’s name from “Bundesschuldenverwaltung” (federal debt administration) to “Bundeswertpapierverwaltung” (federal value paper administration). Today it is named “Bundesfinanzverwaltung” (federal finance administration) but I think they had still another name in between – of course they still sell the same Bundesobligationen which to my mind still represent money I lend to the state against interest.

happiness was most likely achieved quite soon after 2003 due to this no doubt brilliant and effective program but it turned out that after a while people got bored with being constantly happy so in order to make them real real happy again some misery had to introduced, thereby also helping belief in the possibility of overall well-being via “Nudge”
it’s like night and day – viewed against the darkness of the night the sun seems to shine brighter …

I just kept listening to AFN while driving to work (2×15 min a day) – after a while the jumble became words then intelligible then enjoyable and then I found Karl Haas (hope he is spelt that way) who gave me a lead into the world of classical music
one of the most popular guys after 1960 was actually the weatherman a speaker of native German with a heavy English accent – Siss is Werner Lamb from the Rhein-Main-Air-Base …

and unfortunately all the cartoons our kids get to READ are translated, all movies on TV and in cinemas except for a few in big cities have been dubbed (the Fins whose kids are best at reading skills run movies on TV with subtitles. I guess that saves a lot of teachers a lot of work) The list just made me happy because it seems to indicate that there are important things which America still does better than anybody else.

- I hope our German kids make use of the English track on DVDs but on a visit to a German blog where they write in English I found that even though their English is impeccable, quite better than mine, it reads kind of synthetic as if they would run everything through grammar checks – like they would agree to what I have heard so often from people who spent a lot of their work day in English “where I have a choice I prefer to read a translation”
- stuff you have learned by picking it up without acquiring a certificate or having the approval stamp of a teacher is considered to be kind of dubious, unreal – we are Germany and we have a reputation to defend ;-)

Please explain to your readers why you think Tim Geithner should be Obama’s pick to replace Bernanke at the Fed. You wrote this last week. It doesn’t gibe with anything else you write. I still almost suspect it was an imposter or hacker who wrote that post.

Please explain.

I study double-entry book-keeping; I have for many years. I study it because I learned it young in life, over 50 years ago. I have followed software applications in detail ever since I bought a software book-keeping application in 1979 to run my building business. The software could not do the job correctly.

This lead me to follow the development of book-keeping as coded by software developers ever since. By 1983 I knew we would have a major melt-down, but I did not know when it would come. I know today that the potential for a next melt-down is firmly in place, and far, far more dangerous for all the reasons the above posters are aware.

I took my study of book-keeping to the point of writing a software application modeled on a system used at GE in the 1950s. Nobody in the world is interested in such a book-keeping application.

Now consider an exercise for Simon, James and friends by me asking some questions and see if anyone here knows the answers. If you don’t, you may discover a reason to focus on double-entry book-keeping as a method of truly fixing today’s mess.

First, ask every accountant and CFO that you know to define the difference between a debit and a credit. If they say “left side right side.” the don’t have a clue as to what double-entry book-keeping is or does.

Next ask them if they can explain why in Pacioli’s documentation of double-entry book-keeping in 1494 the ledger columns are named Debtor and Creditor. Then ask why during the Industrial revolution the ledger columns were renamed Assets and Liability. What changed in the book-keeping framework of rules? Surely as professionals they know the history of their craft.

Next ask why in most of today’s applications the ledger columns are labeled debits and credits.

Finally, ask what is different about a debtor versus an asset and a creditor versus a liability.

Then, of course, one would want to know how it is that the present generation of book-keepers (so called) get off labeling the columns debits and credits. How do they compare to debtor creditor and Assets Liability?

The short story here is that software developers who took control of double-entry book-keeping code 40-50 years ago do not have a clue how the 650 year old double-entry language works.

Now let me add that many, many companies keep a legitimate set of books simply because the person doing the book-keeping uses their intuition and personal common-sense integrity. But for those who wish to cheat, the field is wide open for them to cheat.

The banking system that is the source of the comments above is as out of control as out of control can get.

My answer to notabanker is, let’s get together and understand the language that has been the trusted solution of honest commercial trade for 660 years, with the exception of the banking industry for the past 40 years or so.

You cannot regulate what you don’t understand. Book-keeping is a legitimate control language designed to insure that all parties to a contract are made whole by the completion of each contract between the parties in trade.

Finally, may I add, that there is no substitute language for double-entry book-keeping. It is the de facto language of commercial trade, world-wide. That is because it is the language of social science and of thermodynamics. There is no other solutions. And software driven book-keeping ought to run circles around every other application in its history. Instead, its evolution has gone backwards.

So let’s see how many of your accounting friends can come up with common sense answers to the questions above.

My consolation fantasy is that Obama doesn’t want to rock the boat with Wall Street; he has to wait until we’re out of the woods with the recession, and until he’s re-elected to a second term. Then he lets loose Rahm Emanuel(I thought he was the strongman – why haven’t we heard his name for months?) and Larry Summers (no wrath like that of a convert!) and they PUT THE HAMMER DOWN on Wall Street. New sheriff in town. Numerous “retirements” among the upper echelon of the Street.

In an attempt to answer some of my own questions above (ehem), here’s a paper by Professor Lord Layard who’s in charge of “Wellbeing” at the Centre for Economic Performance. (It is reasonable to think that general societal wellbeing should be one of our stated goals, no?). What’s a little troubling, is that this paper dates back to 2003. We’ve made no progress on wellbeing for 6 years at the Centre??

http://cep.lse.ac.uk/events/lectures/layard/RL050303.pdf

Professor Layard concludes “Bully for Bentham”

Now which categories would you suggest best characterise current postings on this thread?

4.) people who pay others to make things happen;
5.) people who exploit what happens in the financial markets;
6.) people who deny that something that happened actually happened;
7.) people who pretend not to have seen what happened;
8.) people who advance a set of talking points regardless of what happened;
9.) people who spin what happened into something else; and
10.) people who dispute that anything can happen;

‘What happened to the global economy and what we can do about it’

I read plenty of stuff which seems to loosely relate to ‘what happened’.

When do we get to the ‘what we can do about it’?

I believe solutions can be found but comments unfocussed are unfortunately just noise. If we don’t start today putting the fix together, then we are irrelevant and the TBTF et al crowd will continue with their unchallenged business model.

Will it be action today or manana?

You folk are all extremely clever, so how about some organised focussed thoughts about ‘what we can do about it’?

I recall a pithy saying, there three kinds of people:
1. People who make things happen
2. People who watch things happen
3. People who wonder what happened