Yankees Update 11/07/09

Thank God For The Twins

The Yankees had a good week where they finished off the series with Toronto by winning the 3rd and losing the 4th, only to roll into Minnesota to play the Twins. The Yankees wen ton to sweep the Twins, and then with all but the Angels remaining before the all star break, seemed to go on a mental holiday.

The Yankees have thus gone 4-3 this week.

The Twins this season seem to have some kind of mental block about playing the Yankees, a bit like how the Yankees have a mental block about playing Boston and so, they’ve not won a game against the Yankees this year in 7 encounters. This 7-0 record has helped the Yankees balance out the 0-9 record they have against the Red Sox, which sort of explains how the 2 teams are at around 2 games difference in standings.

Why Can’t They Beat These Guys? Part 4 – The Los Angeles Angels of Annaheim

When it gets down to it, the Angels have been the nightmare team for the Yankees this decade. They’re the only team that has a winning record against the Yankees in the AL this decade. Much of that has been them exploiting the weak defenses the many Yankees squads have had this decade, with their put-the-ball-in-play style.

The Angels always seem to have just enough pitching to hold the Yankees’ bats down and just enough contact hitting to outscore what their pitching gives up. What amazes me is that the Yankees don’t seem to have devised any tactic or strategy against this team over the years, except add more bats in Free Agency.

What’s disappointing this year is that even with improved defense and pitching, the Yankees are getting nickel-and-dimed to a tune of 10 runs by the Angels offense whils scoring 6 runs. You’ think 6 runs should be good enough to win most games.

Joba Sucked This Last Month

I should know, I have him on my lone fantasy roster this year. He was doing better earlier in the season but he seems to have lost a little zip. He’s striking out fewer and he’s got an ERA around 4.25. In the last month his ERA has been sitting at 5.16 with 23 Ks in 29.2 innings. I don’t think that’s really cutting it. Together with the inured Wang and Andy Pettitte who is a ERA 4.50 sort of guy now, the Yankees need better pitching out of all their home-grown starters.

Lost Generation

Hello Oblivion!

You sort of get depressed when you see the phrase ‘lost generation’ to describe your generation of directors, but it’s been anything but creative or productive if you’ve been a film director in Australia for that last 15 years. You make your own luck with most things, but there’s been a wholesale destruction of context one wonders if there will ever be a thriving film industry in Australia ever again.

So, here’s today’s guff in The Australian.

Yet there is little doubt many of our directors have wasted years trying to crack the development or funding cycle for one film. Others have released US films that failed to make an imprint on a market that appears increasingly unwilling to embrace independent cinema. Which is part of the problem. A country such as ours that produces generally low-budget films is unlikely to throw up the next director of a Terminator or Batman film, even if our actors populate them and crew members support them.

I’m depressed just reading the rest of the fucking aticle so I’ll keep it at this: it’s not fr wont of trying, but funding bodies are not serious aboutan industry. They’re serious about paying their mortgages like the rest of the regular stiffs. There’s never been *any* urgency to make the in=dustry work as an industry. It’ a little embarrassing that the funding bodies are now forced to consider the audience after decades of negligence. But I’ve ranted about that before. the next bit sort of worries me too:

“The kids who are coming up now are just as interested in directing for the multiplex as the guys who came up in the 80s and 90s wanted to direct specialty cinema,” Ginnane says. “(They) have a better understanding of the international mainstream. In the 70s, people like (Stork and Eliza Fraser director) Tim Burstall, for instance, wanted to make mainstream films but they had no understanding of the international mainstream market.”

Knowledge of that market is obviously far more attainable now than in the 70s when film magazines and journals tended to be a filmmakers’ window to the world. Today, a flight to LA is commonplace and US trailers and box-office figures can be downloaded instantly. Which makes Hollywood seem so much closer.

Jeebus, where do you start? People have been trying for decades to be in the mainstream. It’s hard to be in the mainstream because it’s fickle and fast, but it’s not like there have been a shortage of film makers who wanted to ply their trade and keep doing it in a commercial sense. It’s ALWAYS been the case that the funding bodies have only supported the film makers who are decidedly against any kind of commercial commitment until last year. And even then, the noises we’re hearing from Screen Austalia don’t seem to augur a new era of commercial film investment, but a continuation of supporting crappy films that not even Australians want to see.

In other words, the terms of reference in this whole discourse is so askew it’s not yielding any kind of sense of how our industry got to be so small and insignificant in the span of 30years. But until the media actually readjusts its mypoic astygmatic gaze, theyre never going to understand how far from commercial our cinema actually is.

Fed’s 15th

An Epic Match

Roger Federer made history at long last. It sure didn’t look like it was going to happen along the road this year, but he dug deep and got it done against his favorite whipping post, Andy Roddick. Of course it wouldn’t have been so epic had Roddick not put up a good fight, but in the end, the man of destiny beat it out to the promised land.

Federer’s 5-7 7-6 (8-6) 7-6 (7-5) 3-6 16-14 victory in four hours and 18 minutes came 12 months after he had suffered a heartbreaking defeat here in another epic five-set battle with Rafael Nadal.

This time, however, with a collection of the game’s all-time greats looking over his shoulder from the royal box anticipating the Swiss would win the unprecedented 15th major title, Federer finally endured, breaking Roddick’s serve for the only time in the match on the American’s 38th service game to seize victory.

Clearly exhausted by his toil, and perhaps stunned by the opposition he had been forced to endure from an opponent over whom he had held a 18-2 career record, the often emotional Federer was more relieved than elated as he received the Wimbledon trophy for the sixth time.

“It’s a crazy match, my head is still spinning,” Federer told the crowd.

Pete Sampras, who had flown in for the match at the last minute to see Federer move ahead of him on the all-time grand slam winners list, paid the Swiss the ultimate accolade saying he considered him the greatest player of all time.

“I have to give it to him,” said Sampras. “The critics say Laver, and Nadal’s beaten him a few times … in my book he is.”

The man is a great player and nobody is going to quibble with him being called the greatest until somebody comes along and wins more. Roddick had these interesting words at the end:

Roddick said Federer had, for the first time, been unable to read his serve.

“But you didn’t even get a sense that he was even really frustrated by it,” said Roddick.

“He kind of stayed the course and just toughed it out. He gets a lot of credit for a lot of things, but not a lot of the time is how many matches he kind of digs deep and toughs out. He doesn’t get a lot of credit for that because it looks easy to him a lot of the times. But he definitely stuck in there today.”

If you go 2-19 against the best player of all time, how disappointed can you be at:

• a) winning twice?
• b) getting to play the man 21 times?
• c) your surname has 2 euphemisms for ‘penis’ while the greatest player has none?

Roddick’s a cool dude.

Son Of Rambow

The Enduring Dreams Of A Childhood

It’s sort of funny to pick up a DVD not expecting much but a chuckle here and there, only to be confronted by a film that preserves the best moments of a shining part of childhood. Really, I didn’t expect this film to be this good, thanks to this review here.

This is not a typical British coming-of-age tale. When they’re not doing feature films, Jennings and Goldsmith are kept busy making commercials and music videos and the experience has left an indelible mark on Jennings’s style. He’s the kind of director who takes the phrase “heightened sensation” pretty seriously. Hence, British social realism is left far behind once Will is launched on his new career as a stuntman. It’s clear that we’re looking on the land of childhood through a magnifying lens, which means the film’s production designers have just as much to do with the business of character revelation as its script does. The boys’ already turbulent school life, for instance, is further complicated by the arrival of a group of French exchange students led by the ultra chic Didier (Jules Sitruk). This paragon of style soon has his fellow fashion victims in thrall, leading to a subplot that looks as if it has been lifted straight out of a music video.

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It’s a sweet and intermittently funny film but all that video work seems to have imbued Jennings with a strong taste for the disconnected narrative.

The script is not so much written as assembled, anecdote by anecdote. As a result, you never quite settle in.

Umm, no, no, no,no. This is a complete misreading of the charms of the film and I should have known better than to trust Sandra Hall who gave it 3 stars. This is actually a much more worthy film than her pithy closing line implies. This is a film for film makers to savor; and I’m kicking myself that I missed this at the cinemas.

What’s Good About It

If you were ever a kid that ran around with your dad’s camera shooting recreated movie and TV scenes with your friends, then you understand implicitly the problematic of this film. How do you get your friends to do what you want for the film? How do you get your props? Who’s going to come up with the story? Where the hell are you going to shoot this? How do you do it outside of school hours in the short hours between end of school and sunset?

All these issues are in fact, implicit in the act of film making. You could go to film school and you’re faced with equally vexing logistical problems. You can be working on a low budget film or even a reasonably budgeted film and still face vexing issues of logistics. This film, traces it right back to the school yard where enduring friendships are forged and memories made.

The snippets of Rambo we see are only a catalyst into the world of boys actually having a boys’ own adventure with a camera. I mentioned ted Kotcheff, who actually directed Rambo in the last film review I did for Wake In Fright. My guess is that if you asked him about ‘Son of Rambow’, he would give it 5 stars for being more than an homage, and more of a thesis on the impulse to make films. This is not a film about the cultural impact of Rambo at all. This is a film about film making at its best.

There are many good films about film-making. In fact, you could argue the best films are about film-making because that’s what the writers, producers and directors know best in their lives. What makes ‘Son of Rambow’ more perceptive than all those films is that it doesn’t mention the business. There’s nothing about the evil studios and agents and money-men. It just talks about the joy of making a film. It’s all there.

What’s Bad About It

Ask me another day. I’m sure there’s something, but I can’t think of it today. If you can’t like this film for what it is, there’s something wrong with you, not the film.

What’s Interesting About It

Ostensibly, the film within the film is about the journey of the son of Rambo going to rescue Rambo. What does this mean ina cultural sense? I think it’s an attempt to repatriate Rambo as a figure in fiction.

Does Rambo (and by extension the 1980s) need rescuing? If the critical responses to ‘Rambo’, the fourth movie in the franchise is anything to go by, maybe there needs to be a rescue after all. I wasn’t a fan of the 1980s as they unfolded. Reagan and  George Bush Snr. weren’t much joy, and the MTV thing and the weird quirks of fashion were not something that makes me nostalgic. At the time, Rambo movies were the synonym for big, dumb and Propaganda for the misanthropic conservative agenda. Let’s be honest, they were laughable even then.

Yet, even allowing for all that derision, there is something in the Rambo movie sagas worth rescuing, and therein lies the interest today.

Here’s an article with Syvester Stallone talking about it.

“When I first heard . . . I assumed it was going to be a very broad and stylized joke-a-minute comedy at Rambo’s expense,” Sylvester Stallone said by e-mail. But he took a look at “Son of Rambow,” the playfully rambunctious tale of two boys in 1980s small-town England, and liked what he saw.

“The fact that it was so heartwarming is the result of brilliant filmmaking by its creators,” Stallone said.

It’s the kind of triumph filmmakers dream of. Having finished “Rambow” just a week before its showing at the Sundance Film Festival last year, writer-director Garth Jennings and producer Nick Goldsmith saw it become the biggest sale of the festival. Then came the long wait for licensing approvals — though their confidence in their little film never wavered.

“If we were asking to use the clips to show the film in a negative light, we may have had some problems,” Goldsmith said, “but [our] film is clearly a celebration of that film. I don’t think we ever went in thinking they were going to say no, and from Day One it was all very amicable.”

The first thing that strikes you is that this film isn’t actually interested in the Rambo persona; it’s far more interested in Rambo as an icon around which the kids galvanise their vision into a film. And galvanise they do as only kids can.

It’s interesting because once you get to film school, it’s suddenly a lot harder to galvanise around a project. It’s hard to explain, but I think what happens is that people become so self-reflexive that they refuse to partake in other people’s fantasies. Once you’re out in the business doing this stuff at any level, you sort of switch off to the childish impulses and you busily try to deliver a ‘product’ and end up killing the joy within.

So when Rambo erupts on the screen with the sheltered kid watching, it’s a tremendous moment of re-discovery for us, where we click that maybe Stallone and Kotcheff had a rocking good time making ‘First Blood’; that maybe the reason we keep getting sequels isn’t just because  it’s good repeat business, but because the participants get a kick out of doing that thing that gives them such a buzz.

The film actually opens up a vein of thought that doesn’t get discussed a lot in the business proper. But Orson Welles himself mentioned it at one point wherein he said words to the effect that the directing, he ould do for free. He charges his fee based on the waiting around that he has to do inbetween projects. If you understand that point, then there is no mystery to the genius of ‘Son Of Rambow’.

Yankees Update 04/07/09

Staggering Through The Inter-League Schedule

The Yankees finished up the inter-league part of the schedule with another subway series, this time in Citifield by sweeping the injury-depleted Mets. It wasn’t much of an achievement when you note that they’re missing Jose Reyes, Carlos Delgado and Carlos Beltran, but you take all the wins you can, for what they are. After the Mets series, the Yankees took 2 of 3 from the Mariners and as oft his writing have won the first game against another game against the Blue Jays.

All in all, the Yankees have won 8 games in the last 9- but such reasoning is always a practice in ’selective endpoint’. Counting up the Interleague schedule, the Yankees lost to the Phillies Marlins and Nationals but beat the Mets 5-1 and the Braves, going 11-8. Not quite .600, but good enough, which goes to show how big that sweep of the Mets was. It’s a sweep that begins to redress the losses the Yankees have been dealt by the Red Sox.

Mariano Rivera Reaches Milestone

During the Mets series, Mariano Rivera reached 500 saves. He’s been pitching since that mark and now sits at 503. I guess if he pitched at a 45 save clip per season, he’d reach this goal in 12 years. There have been injuries along the way so it’s taken him until this season, but it’s a milestone that shows how much faith the Yankees have had in his one pitch, the cutter.

Only Trevor Hoffman is ahead on the career saves list with 570-odd. Unless Rivera pitches to his level for 2 season longer than when Hoffman retires, he probbaly won’t catch Hoffman.

Here’s a comparison of their career ERAs.

Here’s his Baseball Reference page.The most similar player with a similarity score of 930 through Age 38 is in fact Trevor Hoffman.

I can’t find a comparison of Win Shares, but I imagine they wouldn’t be too different given how similar their use would have been for the last 10 years. Rivera had a stretch where he frequently appeared in longer than just 1 inning, but it’s balanced a little by his awful stint as a starter in 1995.

I think Mariano Rivera is the player my old man is most fascinated by. You should see the gleeful grin on his face when Mo comes out to save a game. To me, Mo is Mr. Automatic. Will there be anybody else like him? Probably not. Whoever becomes the closer for the Yankees after Rivera is going to have a hell of a time filling his shoes.

The Trade For Eric Hinske

Having acquired the 2003 ROY in the form of Angel Berroa, the Yankees traded for the 2002 ROY, Eric Hinske as a bat off the bench. Hinske came up as a 3B and can play the 4 corners. He’ll fill in for Ramiro Pena who is headed for AAA for more at-bats. The plan for Pena is apparently to nurture him as s super-utility guy, though he wasn’t looking too shabby at short.

The word on Hinske is that he can’t really play 3B any more. He’s posted a -1.2 UZR and 2.5 RF/G at 13 games with the Pirates, which probably isn’t enough to say much. As late as last year his ZR was 1.0 at 3B in 3 times the innings; so he’d be adequate to spell A-Rod for a start. ZiPS is projecting a .247/.355/.396 line the rest of the way. The power seems a little low, and he might even be helped by the new stadium’s immensely short RF porch.

The interesting aspect of this trade is that the Pirates actually had to send cash with Hinske. That’s got to be a new development, when the Yankees ask for cash considerations in a trade.

More Thoughts On Michael Jackson

Still Mourning, Still Trying To Figure Him Out

I’ve been thinking about Michael Jackson a lot because I’m finding it hard to remember a time I wasn’t aware somehow of his work. I imagine it would be harder for people younger than Gen-X to fathom a world where Michael Jackson wasn’t around on the celebrity gossip rags or on the airwaves.

Michael Jackson made his debut at the Apollo in 1967, and rose to prominence in 1968. It’s interesting to note that the rise of Michael Jackson the performer begins during the epoch of the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King making his famous “I have a Dream” speech.

For 40years, there was Michael Jackson’s persona in the public sphere. He’s been around as long as say, Robert Redford or Dustin Hoffman. That 40years is actually looking like a very long time in the public consciousness.

Consider these random facts: his arrival on the public consciousness predates the moment George Steinbrenner buys the New York Yankees by 5 years, and 7 years before the renovated stadium re-opened. He was there before the World Trade Center opened in New York City. He arrived in the year Australians chose to let the Indigenous people of Australia be counted as citizens. His arrival predates the finishing of the Sydney Opera House. The Beatles were still together, producing ‘Let It Be’ and ‘Abbey Road’.

His arrival happened the year of the Tet offensive in the Vietnam War. By the time he died, the Americans were just about to pull out of Iraq’s cities ahead of a draw down.

More importantly – I’ve been pondering this – the end of that 40 years marks the first black American President in Barack Obama. And I keep thinking that across those 40 years, I cannot deny that maybe Michael Jackson did so much to move the world’s perception, to turn Reverend King’s vision from a dream to an electable reality.

Let’s face it, Michael Jackson was so weird, that next to him, Barack Obama looks like… a very normal man. A man so normal he’d pass as politically white. And here’s the key about being thrust next to Michael Jackson: Michael Jackson and his very weirdness pushed the boundaries so far, so wide, so, out-there that we – all of us -look normal, even though we are all slightly weird in our on little ways. By the time a de-polemicised black candidate turned up, the world was ready for Obama.

I’m not saying Obama got elected because Michael Jackson directly enabled him through his weirdness in 2008. No. What I am saying is that over the many, many years in between, Michael Jackson and his entire weird persona crossed over so many borderlines that eventually he weirded us all out. not only did he weird me out, he weirded out everybody to the extent that by the the Obama came along, the weirdness he infected the world made Obama look… decidedly normal.

“What is normal anyway?” I can hear you ask, and I’d not be able to give you a workable answer. But the ‘normal’ in this instance would include notions of being closer to the middle of the spectrum in things such as fashion, social status positioning and even sexual orientation.

So this is what I thnk about all this: In the future, when historians look at the second half of the 20th century, they’re going to have to come to terms with Michael Jackson as a cultural influence. We might think of him as ‘Whacko Jacko’ today, but in 100years time, people might actually come to understand him as the man who changed the cultural landscape of America for the better. There is no doubt in my mind today that we lost a giant.

I Still Hate Soccer But…

Socceroos Are World’s 16th Best Team

It’s hard to believe that the Socceroos would suddenly leap 13 spots in the FIFA world rankings, but they’ve done that on the back of their World Cup qualifying campaign. Yes, they’re now ranked No.16. Even if it is just for this month, this is a tremendous outcome. I’m sure it’s raised a few eyebrows in Europe and South America.

You can just see the eyeballs popping out of the Uruguayans and Portuguese fans as they open the sports sections. like, “What? Australia are ahead of our guys?”

Watch out for falling Uruguayans.

I love it when the rest of the world underestimate how insane we are about our sport. I hate soccer intensely and I still follow it. That just shows you how nutso we are here.  Anyway… here’s the ranking down to 20, and then some other nations of interest.

1. Brazil (+4)
2. Spain (-1)
3. Netherlands (-1)
4. Italy (0)
5. Germany (-2)
6. Russia (+3)
7. England (-1)
8. Argentina (-1)
9. France (+1)
10. Croatia (-2)
11. Greece (+6)
12. USA (+2)
13. Switzerland (+3)
14. Serbia (+6)
15. Denmark (+9)
16. Australia (+13)
17. Portugal (-6)
18. Cote d’Ivoire (+20)
19. Ukraine (0)
20. Uruguay (-3)
Selected
28. Turkey (-16)
30. Gabon (+18)
33. Mexico (-7)
37. Ireland (-3)
38. Egypt (+2)
40. Japan (-9)
48. South Korea (-2)
100. New Zealand (-18)

I don’t know if it kills Japan to drop 9 places to 40, or South Korea to drop 2 and still be 8 behind of Japan.

God only knows how they come up with these rankings. It must be a combination of how they scored and gave up goals versus a weighted comparison of competition faced. Still, placing 16th in this context is a huge breakthrough for soccer in Australia. It means that these players can finally make their home country understand just what it is that they do that is so damned important for Australia. We can cue the band-wagon fans to jump aboard about now.

100 for NZ seems like a nice round number, and thanklessly, they’ve dropped 18 places even though they came top in Oceania. How a nation can win their zone and still drop 18 spots must drive the Kiwis mad – if only they valued it as highly as they value Rugby.That being said, the Oceania portion of the World Cup qualifications is like the boonie-town tour for football.

Remember those horror days for Australia? Well, now they’re the top team in Asia. Weird.

The Socceroos are now ranked ahead of a host of nations with rich football histories, notably one place ahead of European powerhouses Portugal, who boast arguably the world’s best player Cristiano Ronaldo.

They have also overtaken European big guns Czech Republic and Turkey, South American giants Paraguay and Uruguay, plus every team in Africa.

“We are delighted at this news,” Football Federation Australia chief executive Ben Buckley said.

“Rankings are not the be all and end all of football but they are certainly an indicator of our progress.

“The more competitive games we play, the greater the opportunity to improve our position in the world rankings and the more match hardened the team becomes.

“This is a great reward for the Socceroos’ form in the qualifying rounds for the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

“Once again, we congratulate coach Pim Verbeek and the players for their efforts.”

Australia’s cause was helped by a string of impressive results in June in the final stages of their successful qualification campaign.

A scoreless draw with Qatar in Doha, which sealed their spot for South Africa 2010, was followed by wins against Bahrain and Japan in Australia.

Socceroos players spoke last month about their disappointment at the lack of credit they had been given for their emphatic qualification, but they will take solace in Wednesday’s official FIFA recognition.

I dunno if that’s so great. Australia as a baseball nation is actually ranked higher than No.16… Jokes aside, maybe it’s the case that soccer has finally arrived in Australia when the Socceroos are considered in the company of Denmark and Portugal.

Be that as it may… I still hate soccer, but this is a very good day for Australian Soccer.

Crisis For Solar Power

Let’s Not Screw This Up Kruddie!

Here’s an article that should be read, about the state of solar power in Australia.

Australian support for the solar industry is faltering just as the technology promises to deliver baseload power.

Recent breakthroughs in concentrating solar power technology allow heat energy to be stored almost indefinitely – in molten salts – and dispatched as needed.

The Andasol parabolic trough solar thermal plant near Guadiz in Spain, developed and operated by German company Solar Millenium (which has an Australasian joint venture with Leighton Contractors), generates 50MW of clean electricity with enough storage to run for 7.5 hours without sun and around the clock in summer.

Spanish company Torresol, in joint venture with giant Middle-Eastern clean energy investor MASDAR – which is sniffing for opportunities in Australia – is developing other solar thermal projects near Seville and Cediz.

And there’s plenty more coming with Bloomberg reporting 14000MW of solar thermal power stations are in the pipeline in Spain alone. That’s enough clean power to run NSW, according to Matthew Wright, of Melbourne-based advocacy group Beyond Zero Emissions.

In the United States, SolarReserve and a division of giant defence contractor United Technologies plan a series of solar thermal “power towers” in the Californian desert – generating between 50MW and 300MW each – again using molten salts to store energy and able to run 15 hours without sun.

The US Department of Energy predicts that by 2020 concentrating solar thermal power stations with storage will generate clean electricity at a cost of US3c to US6c per kilowatt hour. That’s comparable with the cost of existing (and heavily-subsidised) coal-fired power and way cheaper than if the unknown additional cost of carbon capture and storage (CCS) was factored in.

Even better solar technology is being developed here, at the Australian National University, using super-heated ammonia to store energy. A company called Wizard Power is joint venturing with ANU to commercialise the process.

John Grimes, chief executive of the Australian New Zealand Solar Energy Society, fears a bitter replay of earlier brain drains.

“Australian scientists and research and development are at the leading edge of the world,” he says. “What we lack is government support to commercialise and capitalise on that research.

“We will be the dumb consumers of the technology that we invented.”

Of course the Federal Government turns around and sends mixed signals. While it will fund solar power stations, it has effectively pulled the rug out from under the domestic Photo-Voltaics. It means that most households have minimal incentiveto move to solar power, and that the very manufacturers have deserted Australian markets.

The Federal government really needs to look at the Solar Energy Industry more seriously rather than pretend it’s some kind of unviable Science Fiction. The carbon capture schemes they’re putting a lot of money in is a lot more fanciful than what the Solar Energy Industry is offering.

Global Fried Chicken Critique

What Were We Doing Before The GFC?

Here’s a cool article in the SMH. The juiciest bit is here:

It would be nice if we could rule out the next Great Depression as a result of such committed actions. But the evidence on a worldwide basis is muted at best. Two economists, Barry Eichengreen and Kevin O’Rourke, have tracked the current crisis against the falls that occurred during the Great Depression. Their conclusions, updated this month, are unsettling: “World industrial production continues to track closely the 1930s fall, with no clear signs of ‘green shoots’ as [Bernanke] had labelled the recent signals of incipient recovery; world stock markets have rebounded a bit since March, and world trade has stabilised, but these are still following paths far below the ones they followed in the Great Depression.” (See graphs, right)

The main difference, they point out, is the unprecedented policy response.

Bernanke’s co-authored textbook, Macroeconomics, gives a flavour for how far we have moved from established economic practice, with governments of all stripes printing huge amounts of money to fund the spending packages.

“Heavy reliance on seignorage [printing money] usually occurs in war-torn or developing countries, in which military or social conditions dictate levels of government spending well above what the country can raise in taxes or borrow from the public.” Usually. But now is not “usually”.

The sheer amount of global government spending, without precedent in history, means predictability is very low. The economy takes off like a rocket? Maybe. The huge deficits used to fund the spending create – as a natural consequence – inflation? Maybe. A long, slow, grinding recession after depression is averted, akin to Japan’s lost decade? Again, maybe.

While all this may seem fatalistic, it gives some context to the huge diversity of opinions about the world economy.

Central to the future is whether we have learned anything. The philosopher Herbert Spencer once observed: “The ultimate result of shielding man from the effects of folly is to people the world with fools.”

To the detriment of former Federal Reserve governor Alan Greenspan’s reputation, we were all fools after the Federal Reserve “saved” the US economy from the fallout of the dotcom bubble by keeping official interest rates low and alleviating the 2001 recession.

Yes indeed. So it would seem we are slap bang in the middle of an economic Depression which we’ve muted to a recession with gobs of public debt, that in turn will mute recovery for decades to come. Thus it seems we certainly won’t be seeing the likes of recent prosperity for a good while yet. It really sucks to realise this, but there’s not much you can do.

The prosperity itself was an unsustainable mirage. I don’t think this reality has sunk in to the world just yet as I see the barrage of expensive Eurocars banked up in peak hour traffic. Or the insane consumerism that I see on weekends. It’s as if people are in denial or they’re indulging in expenditure as a way not to think about things too deeply. I’m sure people are cutting costs but you can’t see it when everybody is out there in consumerland pushing trolleys like it’s Christmas.

What I Did With My KRudd Money

I’ve spent it on dentistry. I was listening to the dentists and his assistant talking about the 90million lottery, as my jaw lay open, implements prodding around my teeth and gums. They were discussing what they might do if they won 90million dollars. My dentist said he would opt to work 6 days a week instead of 7.

“What?” I asked.”You’re saying you’d just keep working even with 90 million in the bank?”

“Yes,” he said. “I quite like dentistry. I enjoy every moment I’m doing this. I love it, so I’d like to keep doing this.”

I blurted out, “Doc, I love you man. I’m gonna keep on coming here.”

Yankees Update 28/06/09

Marginally Better

After a moribund 3-3 week, the Yankees wen 3-2 this week. They ended up dropping that series in Florida and went on to lose the first game in Atlanta. During this time, A-Rod sat out to rest his hip. The loss in Atlanta was particularly galling because Chien-Ming Wang actually pitched all right but the bats went quiet.

After that, A-Rod came back and the Yankees won the next two in Atlanta and trundled back in to NYC to play the Mets again,this time at Citifield. The Mets obligingly committed 3 errors in an inning and the Yankees steam-rolled them for a 9-1 win. The problem with this is that Jeter and Damon are now out with the flu,

It either looks like the Yankees turned it around or they are a streaky team with bad patches. In any case they are 4 behind the Red Sox.

Brett Gardner Is Back

Just as Melky Cabrera faded back to Melky-ness Brett Gardner has found himself back in Centerfield. After his 5-for-6 haul with 1 HR, and in 170PAs, he is hitting .303/.374/.441. He’s at about 18 batting runs above an Average CF, and 34 batting runs above replacement level across a 650PA season.

Most encouraging to me is that Gardner’s strikeout rate is much lower than projected. Gardner was projected to strike out in about 20% of his PAs based on his MLEs. He’s striking out 12% of the time. He was projected to walk in about 10.5% of his PAs, and he’s walking in 9.7% of them, so his BB rate hasn’t suffered all that much from any change in approach he may have made to cut down on his Ks.

Like most statheads, I harp on sample size. 170 PAs are not enough to definitively say Gardner’s going to be a starting caliber MLB CF. Still, part of the concerns about Gardner’s game translating to the majors were based on his supposed physical limitations, particularly in the area of power, and his high strikeout rate. So far this season, we are seeing at least some evidence that those concerns may have been overblown and Gardner’s game may be able to play at the major league level, so let’s enjoy it while it lasts.

Makes plenty of sense to me. Brett Gardner is hitting .387 in his last 27 games. That .374 OBP means he’s a decent threat to pitchers and once he’s on base, he steals bases at a very high percentage. He may yet turn into a Mickey Rivers/Kenny Lofton type of player, which is very useful.

His BABIP is .336 which is actually not as high as you would think. As a player who normally has about a 050 – .070 gap between his BABIP and BA, he’s arguably been unlucky for his usual play style. That is to say, he could actually get a higher BABIP and with it his average may actually rise. I know, it’s a bit bullish, but I don’t think super-fast guys sport a BABIP of .336. (For example, Jeter’s career rate is .360.)

A closer look at his BABIP reveals that hi LD% is 21.9 this season, up 4.9% from his 2008 figure. This is pretty good, and an added reason fro optimism.

Xavier Nady’s Injury Woes

Nady, on his way back to the big club through rehab assignments has re-injured his elbow. It’s looking like a second Tommy John surgery for him, which is both rare and sad. He was in his contract walk year so this affects him greatly. If he goes under the knife now, he won’t be back until 2011. He’ll essentially be doing his entire rehab as a free agent.

I don’t know what the Yankees are going to do when all is said and done but it’s unlikey he’s going to be back. If you work back from the results, that trade to the Pirates hasn’t worked out well at all, given that the Yankees missed out on the post-season last year and Damaso Marte hs been largely missing with injury as well this year.

Jeter and Matsui Turned 35

Added to the fact that Michael Jackson just died at age 50, I don’t think I recognise the world any more!