Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset gave a lecture at the University of Madrid in 1925. This is how he later recalled that lecture. "I stated my theme—some of my students would be able to remember—saying literally: 1 st , it is necessary to renew, from its roots, the traditional problem of Being; 2 nd , this has to be done with the phenomenological method insofar and only insofar as this means synthetic or intuitive thinking , and not merely conceptual-abstract thinking as is the traditional logical way of thinking; 3 rd , but it is necessary to integrate the phenomenological method, adapting to it a dimension of systematic thinking which, as is known, it does not posses;4 th , and finally, in order that a systematic phenomenological thinking may be possible, it is necessary to start out from a phenomenon which may be a system by and in itself ....human life." That is a complicated multi-part thought that bears study. A ...
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Some politics, some finance, and yes some philosophy here. Would you buy a bond for your portfolio that had been issued by the Spanish province of Catalonia? Would you do so in the expectation that the local government, which issued the bond and which now considers itself to be the leadership of a sovereign state, would be ready, willing, and able to continue to make payments? Or, in the expectation that Spain, which has now asserted direct control of the province, would be making the payments? The worry, of course, is that neither will happen -- that the situation will continue to be unsettled, that the government in Madrid won't make these payments as a way of undermining the legitimacy of the folks who issued these bonds, that those folks won't be able to make payments either, and thus that the buyers will be left holding the bag. The website CREDIT SLIPS has noticed something odd about these bonds: http://www.creditslips.org/creditslips/2017/10/catalan-bonds-anyon...
I generally ask myself at this time of year what were the biggest stories of the past twelve months in business/financial news. Of course, I choose the ones I do largely because they illustrate an important theme, and in the list below I'll spell out and italicize the theme. Yet the theme itself isn't the story. Further, I cannot help the fact that in the list as below currency issues keep coming up. That is a fact about the year, not I think about my biases. All that said, here is this year's list. January 2013: The tablet/smartphone wars. Announcement of the BlackBerry 10 from Canadian concern RiM. Concurrently, RiM changes its name to BlackBerry. This will be their big final bid to remain a player on the level of Apple and the Android group. It will fail. February 2013: Currency as policy. A G-20 finance ministers' meeting in Moscow, Russia, focuses attention on competitive devaluations. Japan escapes explicit censure at...
A personal letter, sent on July 1, 1925, from Burguete, Navarra: Dear Scott -- We are going to Pamplona tomorrow. Been trout fishing here. How are you? And how is Zelda? I am feeling better than I’ve ever felt—havent drunk any thing but wine since I left Paris. God it has been wonderful country. But you hate country. All right omit description of country. I wonder what your idea of heaven would be—A beautiful vacuum filled with wealthy monogamists, all powerful and members of the best families all drinking themselves to death. And hell would probably [be] an ugly vacuum full of poor polygamists unable to obtain booze or with chronic stomach disorders that they called secret sorrows. To me heaven would be a big bull ring with me holding two barrera seats and a trout stream outside that no one else was allowed to fish in and two lovely houses in the town; one where I would have my wife and children and be monogamous and love them truly and well and the other where I wo...
I have to say "cheers," and "hear!hear!" and all that to the British Parliament, and perhaps especially to those Tory party members who defied party discipline to oppose the march toward war. US Presidents are hesitant to launch such adventures without the mother country's support. I got some sense of this back when Tony Blair was acting as W's enabler. Cameron stepped up to attempt to play the same role, but it appears at the moment that Parliament has led him to back down. That is good for them and it may prove lucky for us. I'm not sure I can call any possible result of all this "lucky" for the people of Syria. Their fate looks like a dim one on almost any conceivable time line for years to come. Yet I don't believe that US/UK intervention would have made it any better. Ever since the Obama administration has been talking up a strike, I've been wondering this: when do we start calling a series of [separate?] conflicts a...