Grand unified books thread

[jimmy olsen]

Interesting fact about the 1871 indemnity.  It was paid off via public bond issuance.  About 1/3 of the subscribers were from Germany.

The victors at Versailles drew all the wrong conclusions from the prior experience in 1871.

What were the right conclusions?

If you are going to impose impossible economic conditions on a country, make sure it's a small one with a tiny army that nobody likes.

Europe's been trying that for the last five years and it hasn't worked out well so far.

[frunk]

Seveneves, Neal Stephenson's latest.  Probably the hardest SF novel he's written (not counting pseudo-historical novels like the Baroque Trilogy or Cryptonomicon).  The first part of the novel is quite entertaining in the "world is doomed in two years, what does humanity do" genre.  Second part shifts to a whole new set of characters many years later, and the disconnect makes me think it should have been condensed or expanded (turned into a ~30-50 page what happens afterward or a whole separate novel).

Big improvement over Reamde, but doesn't quite reach the heights of his best work (Zodiac, Snow Crash, Diamond Age).

[Valmy]

Europe's been trying that for the last five years and it hasn't worked out well so far.

Yes. That was the joke.

[The Minsky Moment]

Interesting fact about the 1871 indemnity.  It was paid off via public bond issuance.  About 1/3 of the subscribers were from Germany.

The victors at Versailles drew all the wrong conclusions from the prior experience in 1871.

What were the right conclusions?

Financial indemnities are a bad idea.

[Valmy]

Did it really matter much? The Germans were already headed to hyper-inflation anyway because of financing the war. Then the Great Depression kicked in. They still could have blamed those things on losing the war and that dirty stab in the back crew even without any treaties.

[The Minsky Moment]

Did it really matter much? The Germans were already headed to hyper-inflation anyway because of financing the war.

I don't think so -- debt levels were quite high but could have been managed by some combination of moderate inflation plus domestic rescheduling and/or financial repression.  The indemnity obligation is what helped give rise to the misguided plan of using massive bill printing as a mechanism of politico-economic resistance.

[Razgovory]

Hyperinflation wasn't what brought the Nazis to power anyway.  The problem wasn't onerous economic conditions, but that the Germans never recognized the fact they lost the war.

[crazy canuck]

Hyperinflation wasn't what brought the Nazis to power anyway.  The problem wasn't onerous economic conditions, but that the Germans never recognized the fact they lost the war.

I don't think there much support for the proposition that Germany's hyper inflation played no role in the political chaos which followed. 

[Razgovory]

Yeah, but they didn't come to power in the 1921.  Hyperinflation had been resolved by the time they came to power. 

[The Brain]

My impression is that the Depression played a much bigger role than the earlier inflation.

[The Minsky Moment]

I don't think there much support for the proposition that Germany's hyper inflation played no role in the political chaos which followed.

Said that way - no role - hard to contest.  But it was definitely secondary to the unemployment crisis a decade later.  German historical memory is selective in that regard - you would think that Germans would be sensitive to the dangers of extreme austerity in the presence of active right and left wing populist movements.

[Admiral Yi]

The hyperinflation wiped out the accumulated savings of the middle class.

[crazy canuck]

I don't think there much support for the proposition that Germany's hyper inflation played no role in the political chaos which followed.

Said that way - no role - hard to contest.  But it was definitely secondary to the unemployment crisis a decade later.  German historical memory is selective in that regard - you would think that Germans would be sensitive to the dangers of extreme austerity in the presence of active right and left wing populist movements.

Sure.  But isn't there a connection between the hyperinflation and the later unemployment which then provided the necessary economic condition for extremist parties to have some measure of success at the ballot box.

[Savonarola]

Annabel Lee by Edgar Allen Poe

Does anyone else think of "Lolita" when they read this?  It's hard enough to think of a idyllic romance in any of Poe's work; but Nabokov made it impossible (at least for me) in this case.

[Savonarola]

Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

While there's a couple transliterations of "Ramses" today, it's surprising that it was ever transliterated as "Ozymandias".  The poem is about Ramses II; who was indeed one of the most prolific builders of ancient Egypt.  A number of the monuments he built to himself are still extant; at the time the poem was written the temple complex at Abu Simbel was just being rediscovered.

I learned that Shelley wrote this as a competition with Horace Smith.  Smith's poem lacks the genius of Shelley's and hammers the point home; but is still interesting.