Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

 Let's just try to think of things anew. I'll work in dialog form.  The following is a discussion between guy-in-quote-marks and guy-without-quote-marks. Old friends. What is the most plausible path to peace? "What are we talking about now,  Ukraine?" Not today. I'm thinking of Israel, or Palestine, or whatever neutral name we might want to give to the territory between Lebanon and Egypt on one axis, between the Jordan River and the Sea on the other. "Let's call it X, as in algebra." Okay. What is the most plausible path to peace for X? "A two-state solution."  Really?  Won't two states in that enclosed space be constantly at war -- or at war until one conquered the other, whereafter the warfare could be reclassified as civil unrest, but would continue unabated? "Very likely." So: the problem I take it is the violence, not the classification.   "The point, though, is that peace for X cannot really be considered in isolati...

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...

  Finance studies the way in which liquid resources, cash and cash-like stuff, moves about in a broader economy, and – if all works well – gets to where it is needed. Finance is a branch of economics, and so as you might suspect is concerned with “supply” and “demand.” But it is concerned with a very particular branch of each. Consider the cash that some people have saved. We’ll call them the Jones’. They’ve put cash away somewhere – in a safe, let us imagine, or in a pillow case – where it is immediately available to them should they want it. Consider also that there are other people and institutions who very much want the use of that cash. These others may have a very restaurant and a distinctive brand, but may need a new infusion of cash in order to expand the restaurant, perhaps making it a chain. In this case, the idea naturally arises that the Jones’ money might be lent to the restauranteurs, as equity (in which case the Jones’ expect a share of profit) or as debt (in...