Another three months, another check up.
Blood pressure is pretty stable at 130/85. More exercise and less eating is still needed.
Overall, a big tick from Doc Budelmann.
Quick summary then
| Total cholesterol | 4.1 mmol/l | < 5.0 |
| HDL cholesterol | 1.3 mmol/l | > 1.0 |
| LDL cholesterol | 2.5 mmol/l | < 3.0 |
| Triglyceride | 0.9 mmol/l | < 2.0 |
| Total/HDL ratio | 3.2 | < 4.5 |
Sometimes, one is asked to teach a new course. In such a circumstance, what is one to do. Judging by the various listservs, e.g. Management Education, the most popular thing to do is to see what others are doing when they have to teach that type of course.
Now finding that information got a little bit easier with Dan Cohen's very clever Syllabus Finder.
Dan's also a leading light in the Zotero project that adds a citation/bibliography engine to FireFox
Following on from my previous comments on the Official Cash Rate it occurs to me that the people making serious money at the moment are those who are able to tap into the great engine of arbitrage that this behind the housing boom.
Anyone who can "clip the ticket", particularly Banks and Real Estate Agents must be making a bundle. One, only needs to look at the number of Aston Martins being driven round Auckland to realise how well some people are doing out of this boom.
There is a general expectation that Allan Bollard, the Governor of the Reserve Bank will act today by raising the Official Cash Rate (OCR) in order to slow the economy. In particular he is expected to want to slow the booming housing market.
Whilst the economics of the situation might be obvious, what many have ignored is the business imperative that almost entirely negates Bollard's control of the housing market. In other words, the official cash rate is largely de-coupled from the housing market.
As you probably know I am not an economist, so let me explain the business issue here.
The Reserve Bank acts to control inflation by controlling the Official Cash Rate. This has resulted in interest rates in new Zealand that are significantly higher that many other countries. E.g. Right now, the offical cash rates from Interest.co.nz are:
NZ = 7.25%
AUS - 6.25%
USA = 5.25%
UK = 5.25%
Canada = 4.25%
Norway = 3.75%
Japan = 0.5%
There is quiet a spread, and the big the spread the more opportunity for arbitrage. And business, is all about arbitrage; buying in one market and selling in another. So, the bigger the gap, the bigger the business opportunity.
In my mind, what is happening is that the banks are borrowing in low interest rate countries and using that money to lend to Kiwi homeowners, making somewhere between 1% - 7% on the deal. It's easy money.
Of course there is exchange risk, but that can, and is being managed.
Consequently, the big banks don't really need to work about the OCR when it comes to mortgages. Indeed, I predicate that it is possible and likely that the OCR could actually be higher than mortgage rate - just look how slim the the margins are between the OCR and the typical fixed rate mortgage. It can be less than 1% and if the OCR goes up today, it will be less than 0.5% for some lenders.
But that doesn't matter. As I said, the banks can still make money from the deal because they are borrowing overseas. So, whilst they can still make money out of the deal, they will.
No doubt some will argue that the OCR can be used to change consumer sentiment, and that is true. But, is it working in the housing market -- apparently not.
So, what is Allan Bollard to do. Well, the proposed levy on mortgages could be effective, but such a move is likely to guarantee that whichever government supported it be voted out at the next election.
This all means that Allan Bollard is in a now win situation when it comes to mortgage rates...
I've mentioned elsewhere Emirbayer & Minche's great article on agency. In that article they refer to projects of action, and in particular an piece by Alfred Schutz, namely:
Schutz, A. (1962). Choosing among projects of action. In M. A. Natanson (Ed.), Collected papers: Volume 1, The problem of social reality (pp. 67-98). The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
Here are my notes from that chapter
1. The concept of action
2. The time structure of the project
3. In-order-to and because motive
4. Fancying and projecting
5. The foundation of practicability
a) The world as taken for granted
b) The biographically determined situation
6. Doubting and questioning
7. The problematic and open possibilities according to Husserl
8. Choosing among objects within reach
9. Choosing among projects
10. Bergson's theory of choice
11. Leibniz's theory of volition
12. The problem of weight
13. Summary and conclusion
My comments
In moving this site to its new host at A2, I set up Movable Type slightly differently. This meant that many of my old links into and out of the site didn't work any more.
So, I've spent a little time setting up some mod_rewrite rules (Thanks Mike) and tweaking the configuration.
So, hopefully there will be no more 404 Page Not Found errors.
