I’ve decided to give up writing about politics on this site. The reason is that, with a new business to run, there simply isn’t time.

Writing about politics is an all-consuming activity. It glues you to 24-hour news almost 24/7. It entices you to read all the serious newspapers and political magazines every day of the year. Add to that, time spent trawling the internet, Googling for clarifications and chasing up leads, plus the background research and fact-checking.

Instead, Syntagma will revert to type and concentrate on a melange of finance, philosophy and technology as in days of yore.

I know I shall be tempted to dip inky fingers into the increasingly murky waters as the British General Election gets near, but be assured Reader, my resolve will hold.

Except, of course, to raise a hearty cheer, and glass, when David Cameron walks into 10 Downing Street as Prime Minister.

The rest is silence …

John Evans

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At Davos today, Gordon Brown warned that countries should not resort to protectionism to remove their economies from the global slump.

“This is a time not just for individual, national measures to deal with the global financial crisis. This is the time … for the world to come together as one.”

Heaven help us, he’s getting Messianic again. A classic case of fantasy working overtime.

Sanity from Pascal Lamy, Director-General of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), who said that moves towards protectionism during a downturn were expected.

Reference: Sensible protectionism is not a sin

John Evans

The word “protectionism” is on almost everyone’s lips these days. It’s viewed as a bogey word, depicting the worst that could happen.

The fact is, it’s as inevitable as cold weather in winter. In some senses it’s also necessary.

When danger advances, creatures retract to safety. Think of crabs, snails, hedgehogs, wood lice … humans. The flight to safety, as financiers call it, is as natural as autumn rain. It will happen. It is already.

Globalization is fine in the good times. No-one turns away a good deal when there’s no risk, even if it arrives from a far-off country. When we perceive high risk to be involved, we withdraw to what, and whom, we know, in our own communities.

We can’t buck human psychology. We shouldn’t try. Only socialists do that. It wastes precious energy and resources.

The time has come to rebuild our home infrastructure and rethink the way we are governed. Anyone who believes that is not necessary should consider the mechanics of how we operate a variety of our affairs now: The State of the Union.

Latterday protectionism is happening over trade — think U.S. car subsidies — and also in financial markets. Foreign banks have all but pulled out of Britain, leaving massive holes in our ability to borrow commercially and domestically. That is a major part of the problem we face.

Did anyone in the UK with a Post Office savings account know their money was held by the Bank of Ireland? They do now!

We may be lucky that the situation is “only” as rotten as in 1931, especially as 1933 was when the really bad things began — like Major (later General) Patton leading a sabre charge of the U.S. Cavalry against 25,000 starving war veterans in Washington DC. That sort of thing couldn’t occur now, could it? Don’t count on it.

The fact is we’re set on a trajectory that will bring us close to a 1933 scenario. Let’s do ourselves a favour and accept that. We can then set about putting our individual houses in order by retracting to what matters here and now. When the time arrives, we will be prepared for the economic winter to come.

Bleating on about “global solutions” that are never solutions, even in the good times, but merely sticking plaster pretences to save face, is about as counter-productive as it gets.

This is not pessimism, it’s an acceptance of human psychology and having the guts to face up to it. If the worst catches us by surprise, we have only ourselves to blame.

Britain as a nation has always faced the tempests bravely, with fortitude, stoicism and humour. Our leaders need to start preparing the country for a prolonged period of acute discomfort. When we know the worst, the best in us will emerge.

The good news is that when we hit rock bottom, the only option is to rebound.

But will we have rebuilt our public domain by then, so that we can be first onto those bright sunlit uplands?

John Evans

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It’s fascinating how the gathering slump has changed topics of general conversation. Nowadays you can catch shoppers in supermarkets discussing the price of Hungarian credit default swaps over the celeriac counter.

Each generation has its version of the Schleswig-Holstein question. Ours is probably the state of the Baltic Dry Index.

As the Iraq war did more to disseminate geographical knowledge of the Middle East than the entire schools system, we are all passable economists these days.

So, since amateur Keynesians are everywhere stalking the land, let’s consider who is really to blame for the problems we all now face.

After much digging around, we can report that, contrary to many attempts to blame investment bankers, as well as retail banks and their customers for the financial fiasco, real seed culpability lies with politicians of the left interfering in the workings of what are sometimes laughingly called “free markets”.

Here’s the timeline:

1977. President Carter passed the Community Reinvestment Act which forces commercial banks and other financial institutions to supply sub-prime mortgages for social housing to low-income borrowers.

1997. With President Clinton in office, Wikipedia reports: “In October 1997, First Union Capital Markets and Bear Stearns launched the first publicly available securitisation of Community Reinvestment Act loans, issuing $384.6 million of such securities. The securities were guaranteed by Freddie Mac and had an imputed AAA rating.” Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs) and their near kin were born, with U.S. government approval.

Note that in 1997, Gordon Brown and Tony Blair were coming into power in Britain with a policy of free financial markets and a light-touch regime for regulating the City of London. Can such atrocious bad timing possibly be an accident?

For ten years as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown turned his back on the growing madness in the mulched-up derivatives markets, which he clearly did not understand.

When President George W. Bush arrived a few years later, he was almost immediately swamped by the terrorist crisis of 9/11 that dominated the whole of his Presidency and comprehensively wiped out his authority during his first term.

So the financial crash in August 2007 that has turned a drab cyclical downturn into an event of historic proportions, was started by the liberal interventionism of two Democratic Presidents. The implied government guarantee provided by Freddie Mac (now insolvent) also allowed the securitization of toxic debt and sent an arrow through the heart of financial stability around the world.

Both Presidents and Freddie Mac clearly had the best of intentions, but history tells us that when governments skew the marketplace, the worst is more likely to happen than not.

Let’s hope the lessons are learned or we’ll all end up eating celeriacs for supper.

John Evans

As we have been warning here for the past year, deflation is now the major, persistent threat to Western economies.

The recent sectorized twitches of inflation that clouded many minds and drove policymakers for months, is decidedly off the agenda.

In the UK, big beasts are waking up to the gravity of the situation. Former Chancellor of the Exchequer, Ken Clarke, has dismissed comparisons with the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, likening current conditions explicitly with 1929/30.

Economically-literate writers, like William Rees-Mogg in The Times (London), have jettisoned terms like downturn and recession and now use “depression” as their label of choice.

Normally cautious Bank of England Governor, Mervyn King, forecasts a 2 percent contraction in the British economy next year, with interest rates falling rapidly to nought percent for the first time in history.

Deflation is now the enemy we must all factor into our expectations in the near-to-medium terms. So why is deflation necessarily worse than inflation — a learned fellow said this morning, “Three percent inflation is heaven compared to deflation.”?

In an era of massive indebtedness, both private and public, deflation increases the burden. As incomes decline, private debts remain the same — at levels signed for in better times. It’s the exact opposite of the apparent wealth created during periods of rapidly rising house prices.

Professor Peter Spencer of York University says, “It is going to be absolute murder in Britain if inflation turns negative. The big difference with past episodes is that we are now much more heavily indebted. Few people owned their own houses in 1930s. Debts were miniscule.”

Another symptom of deflation is that consumers wait for lower prices before shopping, causing job-losses in the High Street and yet more bad economic news. Japan’s “lost decade” of the 1990s is the technically-perfect example of this psychology of fear taking hold. It is still suffering.

So what can be done either to pre-empt or cure the curse of falling prices across the board?

Curiously, Keynesianism which, in its widely misinterpreted version is disastrous in normal times, does hold out some hope in depressive conditions. Expect central banks to start printing money soon and dropping it from helicopters, if they haven’t begun already. Want to buy some rising stock? Buy helicopter shares. [This is not financial advice.]

If you’re one of those noble souls who saved assiduously during the asset bubbles, you will just have to stand by and watch the profligate oafs who caused the problem clean up, while your own responsible hoard of value drains away.

It’s just not fair, but it will probably have to happen “for the greater good”.

You have only one consolation: you can give the politicians who presided over the madness a good kicking at the next electoral opportunity.

And in the UK, that means Gordon Brown. He’s the one with the faux halo.

John Evans

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Another week, another blog network wraps itself up. This time it’s the business network, Know More Media, which was particularly hard hit by Google’s ranking penalties.

Like BlogNation, a UK-based outfit, they simply ran out of money. I can think of many others that suffered the same fate, but will spare you the litany.

Even the few networks that professionalized themselves by raising VC funding and bringing in experienced managers, are finding the going tough right now. Earlier predictions of another dotcom bust are not off the table yet.

I’ve written many pieces here over the past three years on the choices faced by network owners and the chances of success. Most warned of this present crisis. As a result, Syntagma was ahead of the pack in diversifying into specialist information products on subscription terms. We have not yet felt the full force of the U.S. recession-in-progress.

The coming steep downturn in the UK will have minimum effect on us, except if the pound sterling falls relative to the dollar, in which case we will see our income rise on a windfall.

In America, the startup industry is losing momentum fast, although there’s no shortage of brave souls willing to chance more than their arms.

So, what’s to be done if you have invested heavily in an internet business, whether content or blogging-based or not?

The answer is to spot the second bounce of the ball.

As the economies eventually begin to turn around and a slow recovery takes place, most people will be looking out for “little green shoots” to signify a return to economic growth. In the early 1990s those shoots were a long time coming, and when they did, they grew slowly like hardwood trees, not the swift pines we were hoping for. I suspect the little shoots will keep us waiting even longer this time.

Green shoots may be interesting, but watching for the second bounce of the ball is usually more profitable. If the first bounce online for many of us was mass publishing technologies, what could the second be?

Providing content on your own platform as both writer and publisher makes sense because it cuts costs. Hiring other writers to do it for you made sense three years ago, but with advertisers shunning small-to-medium operations it’s probably easier to flip burgers.

Now we need a second bounce to reflate the whole business of working successfully online.

Forget social media. Maggie Jackson’s book Distracted: The Erosion Of Attention And The Coming Dark Age highlights the price we pay — including actual brain damage — for standard multi-tasking and trying to keep abreast of the information space.

As in my own book on the subject, Mediate Yourself, this is now becoming a common theme whose time is about to come. Finding ways not just of sifting and processing information but relating it to people’s essential requirements is a major path forward. Limiting individuals’ needs to interact with screens is probably more relevant still.

Simplifying the lives of knowledge workers is the big leap forward that will take us to the next level.

So far technology and software have complicated human life immeasurably. The constant pressure to upgrade and learn new tricks is mind-mashingly painful for most people — hence the brain damage.

The truth is, there may be no single second bounce this time, but a series of mini-bounces, with no one golden goose presenting itself for carving.

At Syntagma, we have our eyes on a variety of possibilities. To use a rugby term, all it needs is for someone to pick up a ball and run with it. As I write, there are not many runners out there.

Oh well, I’ll just have to do it myself, I suppose.

A few folk have kindly enquired about our new offshoot Syntagma Photographic (pun intended) — announced recently. Here’s a short update.

Image by Syntagma Photographic

We’re still building a professional photo studio, which is taking much longer than estimated — what doesn’t? We’re having to learn new techniques and technology as we go along. So the professional aspects of the enterprise are currently lagging behind our enthusiasm for it.

That doesn’t mean we are bone idle though. We’ve developed a slightly quirky style putting target objects into unusual settings. You can see a couple of test shots over at Sideways Health, a site which has the advantage of being object and product-rich so fairly easy to shoot for.

They are not technically perfect yet, but the signature style is coming along.

We should be ready for business by early autumn, once we have a portfolio of high definition shots to put on our new website — Syntagma Photographic.

Example: Sinusitis — a Sideways treatment

We have been planning to create a system of satellite businesses around Syntagma Media for a while. The aim is to utilize existing facilities and develop more income streams within the business.

Now, to complement the network, and also our Specialist Information strand, we will shortly launch Syntagma Photographic from its own studios here at HQ.

Initially, we will shoot most of the pictures used across the network. Eventually, they will be posted online and offered for sale, firstly to other website users, then in hard-copy form by mail order.

All our photos will be flagged Copyright Syntagma Photographic and will be appearing here soon.

We haven’t had a major expansion of the public business for quite some time, so it obviously gives us great pleasure to start growing again in the midst of this dangerous downturn.

Antiques Emporium : Image by Syntagma Photographic.

On this Bank Holiday Monday, as the present UK Labour Government crashes and burns before our eyes — no comet was ever so spectacular or so portentous — it’s good to see they have not lost a sense of the ridiculous.

Just when the United Nations admits its “carbon trading” scheme has been systematically looted by rascals in Asia and elsewhere, losing billions of our dollars, our ruling politicians declare that soon we may all be granted “carbon allowances” which we can trade among ourselves if we don’t use them all up.

The UN program — strongly promoted by Brown and his colleagues — was doomed from the start, partly by the impossibility of policing it, but mainly by the eagerness of developing countries to gobble up largesse from the rich West. “Money for nothing, chicks for free”, as the Dire Straits song went.

The individual carbon dole scheme carries the same death-knell flaw as the UN program: it’s over-engineered by people who are not engineers.

The problem with the European Left is that it attracts converts who are completely bonkers. Tunnel-visioned intellectuals with a poor grasp of reality who have been sheltered in universities and public sector jobs from the trials and squalls of the real world. They have always had a soft spot for semi-mythical creatures called “the poor” who are said to be gentle, meek and mild and are preyed upon by those who stand over them, principally the Left’s political opponents.

Thus, the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau — doyen of the Marxist Left ever since — invented “the noble savage “. The trouble was, the only savage Rousseau had ever known was himself. He it was who gave away at birth all five of his children, conveniently produced by his live-in washerwoman. The Foundlings Hospital where he deposited them was run by the state. Almost every child there died before the age of one. Rousseau’s brood was no exception.

Later, as a famous salon philosopher, he excused these brutal acts by concocting the principle that all children must be raised and educated by the state. The doctrine became an act of faith for the Marxist Left. Even today, in the British Parliament, there are MPs who demand that private education must be outlawed. Presumably they have no idea where the principle they hold so dear originated.

Now they have another stick to herd us with: carbon emissions. Our civilization is being shriven in pursuit of yet another utopian ideal, this time a carbon-free world — never mind the awkward fact that all life on Earth is carbon-based. History tells us that in their hands utopia soon tips over into dystopia.

The new Nasty Party even in its death throes still has the power to amuse us with its earnest proposal of carbon allowances for all. Happily we can safely laugh at them in the knowledge it will never come to pass.

Carbon allowances, of course, mean carbon limits, something we don’t have now. Wrapping up a diminishment as a must-have product is the Marxist Left’s idea of good business practice.

As Jane Austen might say to Gordon Brown, were she alive now, “Mr Brown, you have entertained us long enough.”