NZ TV on the global financial crisis

My economist friend Penny Wise weighs in again:

Where would we be without the various Sky News channels from overseas and the ability via the internet to read decent newspapers like the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times to get some informed perspective on the financial crisis gripping world markets? Or, even better than those, the access we have to a huge range of websites specialising in finance or blogs by first-class economists and finance practitioners, e.g. Marginal Revolution.
But if you don’t look at those, what do you get from local television? Oh dear. Lindsay Perigo famously described TV news as brain-dead. Over at TV3 the body seems to be decomposing.
Let’s just consider the performance of John Campbell and Mark Sainsbury last Tuesday night after the emergency package failed to get passed in the US Congress, and the US stockmarket fell 7%, with shockwaves sweeping around world markets. The threat of financial collapse, leading to a massive global economic contraction, was and is very real.
On TV1 news they used a clip from the film Wall Street with that great line by Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko: “Geed is good.” Did they think the movie was a documentary?
When the news dragged itself to a close, at least in Close Up Sainsbury used two well-informed locals to comment on developments, one of them being Gareth Morgan who is always good for a strong opinion and who does know what he is talking about. But why is it not possible to speak with some informed people close to the action in the US – and that does not mean the regular chats with the local journalist based in New York. This is, after all, a huge story.
So far, so bad.
How about TV3? What did we get from John Campbell at 7pm? His contribution was a few minutes prancing around in front of his new pet screen, featuring a very big number, $9,889,199,531,449.08, even down to the absurdity of the last $0.08. Total US public debt. So what? Where was the context, the international comparison, the time series chart, the meaning? Nothing, just Campbell, like an old spinster in a rocking chair, sipping tea and murmuring, “Ooh, isn’t that terrible.”
After that introduction the programme went on to feature lively and stimulating segments on a problem with airline tickets, the inconvenience of bikes on roads (I just give them a nudge with my SUV if they get in the way), and a riveting exploration on how some retired people keep themselves active.
Campbell promised to follow this up the next evening with an interview with the whistleblower from the Enron scandal. Good grief, it is not the same issue – that was primarily about corporate fraud and the exploitation of poorly thought-out electricity industry regulation. The next night we did indeed see the courageous woman who blew the whistle on the fraudsters at Enron, and is now a journalist. A good woman. But for god’s sake she is no expert on these issues, and had nothing interesting to say at all.
Is it beyond the wit of any producer to find somebody knowledgeable on these issues? Start with academic monetary economists or finance practitioners, preferably both in the same person, and work down.

The global financial crisis

I asked my economist friend Penny Wise to explain just what the hell is happening out there. She writes:

I have been ordered to explain this. But why should I do all the work for nothing? Fortunately, smarter and harder working people than you or I have already done this, so I will instead point those interested to useful sources of instruction, rather like a traffic officer at an intersection, wearing the crisp white gloves of seriousness and pointing authoritatively at the links.

1. Does this crisis represent a failure of free markets, of untrammelled deregulation, and the consequence of unrelenting greed?
Oh please.

2. But surely it is greed that motivates Wall St, and is behind all these troubles?
Lest we forget, greed starts early – see these greedy little fuckers. I doubt you are much different. What do you want, that you haven’t actually earned yourself, from Helen and John this election?

3. Did nobody see this coming?
Yes, of course, even decent investigative journalists. Read the opening and closing paragraphs of this from eight years ago. At the heart of this whole sub-prime mortgage mess was Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The story is in hundreds of places, such as here.
This opened up a vast new business in risky loans, which greedy and opportunistic, or enterprising (take your pick), folks leapt into with enthusiasm. These bundled up mortgages became tradeable securities themselves, and holders naturally wanted to shed some of the risk of holding them. Thus insurance companies like AIG got involved and, risk being a difficult thing to assess, they clearly got that terribly wrong. So too did the credit rating agencies that assessed the risk of these financial instruments and financial institutions. Mistakes galore: some were simply mistakes, some were no doubt errors inspired by an inclination to lean in the most profitable direction.

Read on...


4. But don’t these central banking bailouts show that capitalist banking doesn’t work?
No, all financial firms are vulnerable to panics. That is what we have central banks for. Read Willem Buiter: and this earlier post of his as well.
The point about this crisis is that as problems have mounted, and inevitable mistakes have been made by all parties involved, a sense of urgency turns quickly to a sense of panic. We see the stock market on the news, but the real problems are in credit markets, which are hugely larger and more important than the stock market. When Lehman was allowed to fall into bankruptcy, a vast amount of cash got locked in. From that moment, all investment banks became suspect. Hedge funds wanted their cash out, just in case. In this environment, even a very well-run bank can fail. Thus even an investment bank like Goldman Sachs, which appeared to have avoided the sub-prime exposures, got caught and had to be recapitalised quickly to survive – enter Warren Buffett, who may well have grabbed himself another bargain.
With credit markets seizing up, intervention by central banks became essential. That is happening around the globe. But each step up in the intensity of the crisis lowers the value of the assets on financial institution balance sheets – for example, is a package of sub-prime mortgages on Bank A’s balance sheet worth 50c in the dollar, or 20c? As that estimate falls, so does the viability of that bank, and thus its need for recapitalisation. That death spiral is a contagion of panic that the Fed, and now the US government, has to stop. That is why an intervention of some sort must happen. The devil is in the details, but that needn’t concern us – it will be messy and political, and the deficiencies of whatever gets done will be debated for decades.

5. If it doesn’t get done?
It will, because the alternative is genuinely terrible. Let's visit Willem Buiter again.

6. OK, but isn’t the bailout just going to renew all the moral hazard issues associated with the so-called “Greenspan put”?
Ah yes, Greenspan. US monetary policy has been much criticised, and a summary of that argument is here. To be fair to central bankers, and Greenspan, different courses of action would all have led to different sets of problems. Their decisions are always trade-offs made under great uncertainty. There will always be something to moan about with the benefit of hindsight.
The problem with all this is moral hazard, where the message of a rescue package can be that risky activities get rewarded whatever happens. The Fed was clearly concerned about that a few months ago. At this point, however, with Wall Street utterly transformed, that is much less of a concern. Probably unwittingly, the Fed has created way more pain than intended. Shareholders in genuinely insolvent businesses need to get slaughtered, management fired and so forth, all fairly obviously.

7. So should we feel smug that the New Zealand banking system seems very safe by comparison?
Ahem – recall all those finance companies that have gone bust in the past few years, and all the savings that went with them. If the recession here continues, there will be plenty more mortgagee sales as well.
Our own recent experiment with very low interest rates, and high tax rates, helped propel all those naive folks into putting their life savings into finance company debentures to try and get a positive return (after tax and inflation), or into property as that seemed the hot asset. The arithmetic? By late 2003 you could get about 5% on term deposits at the local bank, rising to about 6% through 2004. Inflation was heading up to reach 3% into 2005. House prices were rising at annual rate of 10-20+%. So what does that financially unsophisticated person, not far off retirement, do? What they were facing was a 5% return at the bank, less tax of 33% to 39%, thus an after-tax return of 3.1 to 3.4%. But with inflation in the process of rising to 3% (and they would have felt that it was higher still given the way house prices were flying) their expected real, after-tax return (i.e. subtract 3% for inflation) would have been a mere 0.1 to 0.4%. In short, you really weren’t getting ahead at all by putting money in the bank – it seemed a dumb move. Thus starts the mad and desperate search for higher yields – go directly to the finance company and, as it turned out, without passing GO. Or, leverage up and buy some investment property. Finally we get to today in NZ, with many regular folk wiped out financially, and many who are about to be.

The NZ Reserve Bank and Dr Cullen may have to take part in the walk of shame as well.

8. This is all terribly serious, is there nothing to laugh at here?
Hell, yes. Read this risible attempt from somebody who regularly splashes around in the shallows of economics and finance, but still drowns each time. In a particularly weak attempt to use the financial crisis for shallow political point scoring, we see Finlay McDonald parroting one of the more fatuous lines we have heard from Dr Cullen, namely that John Key as an ex-Merrill Lynch manager is in some way associated with this crisis. McDonald ladles it on further by referencing the Enron scandal and the US Savings & Loan crisis. The Kiwiblog response to this childishness was best.
McDonald cannot seem to refer to something he disapproves of without tossing in a useless descriptor. We don’t have “complex financial instruments”; they must be “insanely complex financial instruments” Well, no, they are just complex – you need a bit of maths to understand them, but not much. He refers to the entertaining book Barbarians at the Gate, but has obviously not caught up with the fact that the authors managed to write the book and get the moral completely wrong – the problem with RJR Nabisco was that the real barbarians (the existing woeful management, wasting the massive cashflow of that company) were inside the gates. He refers to another colourful book, Liars Poker, but the author, Michael Lewis, was no insider, just another guy on a giant trading floor where all sorts of personality types flourish... And so on, splashing around in the shallows, the concluding paragraph being the shallowest of them all.
And we mustn’t forget the political hacks, for example Matt McCarten.
It would be wasting everybody’s time to go through and point out that virtually every sentence is plain wrong, absurdly overstated, or utterly lacking in context or exploration of alternatives. Only the brain-dead could not do this for themselves. The problem with political hacks, from the right and the left, is that they see everything in party political terms. On the right we have all manner of strident commentaries, the strangest being those from the Republican right in the US which oppose any bailout/rescue because it undermines the principle of “so-called” free markets.

9. What does this mean for investors?
If you have your financial snout still deep in the trough, are heavily borrowed and invested in real estate or shares, then life is hellish. As they say on Wall Street: bulls make money, bears make money, pigs get slaughtered.
Oh, and for god’s sake – especially all you folk about to retire – don’t put your life savings into just the one asset or institution. You know what grandma used to say about eggs and baskets.

10. In summary?
There is blame to go around for everybody. Of course we need better regulation, better monetary policy, less political meddling, better governance structures in corporate America and around the world. But just saying so does not equal a solution. These issues are difficult.
Less greedy and opportunistic people, from corporate captains down to unemployed house-buyers would help as well, but we shouldn’t base any policies on that prospect.
At the heart of this crisis is the vast stock of toxic mortgage debt that has unhinged the global financial system. The aggressive buying of sub-prime mortgages, and mortgage-backed securities, by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are a key part of this story. But only a part.

Now, back to work.

Penny Wise is an economist who has spent many a dark and stormy night working in Australasian financial markets.

Well I never

Heading of the month, from Stuff:

Rap music glamorises drug use, study says

Isolde's tale

Alex Ross in the New Yorker on the current production of Tristan und Isolde at the Met:

He might make an arresting Peter Grimes; he already has the weathered, haunted look

I’ll bet, after this experience.

From the archives: Rioja — the big taster

The drinkers
Mark Broatch is NZBC’s film reviewer and Director of the World Service.
Chris Bell writes about TV, whisky and music and is NZBC’s Director of Light Entertainment.

The drinks
a. Herederos del Marqués de Riscal Elciego (Álava) Reserva 2000: $46.95 — Accent on Wine, Auckland
From the label: “This Reserva quality wine comes from the oldest bodega in Rioja. Through adherence to time-honoured skills and original techniques, Marqués de Riscal wines retain a distinctive and appealing character, a style reflecting the best virtues of traditional Rioja. Aged in cask for at least two years, followed by a further year in bottle, Riscal Rioja has a ripe, fruity bouquet and a lingering oaky flavour.”
b. Marqués de Murrieta Ygay Reserva 1999: $42.95 — Glengarry Ponsonby
From the label: “85% Tempranillo, 8% Mazuelo, 7% Garnacha”
c. Remelluri Reserva 2000: $39.95 — The Wine Vault, Auckland
The label includes a map, to help you find your way back home, if you happen to have drunk too much of it at the bodega. However, it’s very confusing if, like us, you live in New Zealand. There’s no information about the grape blend on the bottle.

a. Herederos del Marqués de Riscal Elciego (Álava) Reserva 2000: $46.95 —Accent on Wine, Auckland
MB: “Can you smell anything?”
CB: “Very perky. It reminds me of that one we had in Vivace.”
MB: “All the tannins are settled, toned-down, muted, aged the fuck out of. Does it have the mix on the bottle...? No, it doesn’t say. Usually they’re a mix of Tempranillo grapes, sometimes Shiraz and sometimes they put a bit of Garnacha in them. I dunno… this is going to be difficult.”
CB: “In the tasting notes, he’s talking about the white version of this.”
MB: “Oh… I don’t know, it’s got plenty of front and then it sort of fades away, to my taste.”
CB: “It doesn’t taste as good as it smells. Or as much as it smells.”
MB: “No. Well, different.”
CB: “It’s really perky, I think.”
MB: “What’s that taste at the back? I thought it was shoe polish, but…”
CB: “No, I’m not getting shoe polish.”
MB: “No? There’s something right at the end… There’s something slightly sour about it.”
CB: “Mmm. Yeah, just before it finishes, it’s a bit citrusy.”
MB: “Citrusy.”
CB: “Yeah. Just a tiny bit.”
MB: “Well, I don’t know what I’m talking about.”
CB: “That one smells really good, but I’m kind of underwhelmed by it.”
MB: “It’s hard to know… sometimes it’s not until I get to the second or third glass that I can tell. Shall we try the Marqués de Murrieta?”
CB: “Mmm.”

b. Marqués de Murrieta Ygay Reserva 1999: $42.95 — Glengarry Ponsonby
MB: “This is the one that he says, for the price — $40 to $45 — is one of the best value wines in the shop. This is the 1999 Marqués de Murrieta Ygay. Is that a slightly sweeter bouquet…?”
CB: “I’d have said the opposite.”
MB: “Would you? Sourer? Gee. I wouldn’t have a clue.”
CB: “That smells like boot polish to me.”
MB: [groans] “Let’s just make it all up! OK, I’m going to do this…”
CB: “I’m going in… That’s much bigger. It’s got that kind of ruby thing to it, as well, like a sherry… that sort of tawny edge to it.”
MB: “Oh yeah. I didn’t really look at that with the Riscal.”
CB: “No. This is really scientific.”
MB: “Um. Yeah, muted tannins again. Nothing ugly coming through, is there? They’re all about 13%, which, according to the guy in the wine shop is perfect, that’s exactly what they should be. They shouldn’t be above 14%, or you’d have the alcohol pushing through.”
CB: “Yeah… I reckon this is earthier than the Riscal.”
MB: “Yup. I’d agree with that. Yeah, definitely. And it’s kind of got a bigger middle to it, to my mind… maybe not.”
CB: “The Riscal was all top.”
MB: “Yeah, all top, front, whatever you call it.”
CB: “I was sort of making a musical analogy, so with the next one I could go, ‘It’s got lots of bottom-end.’”
MB: “That’s right. Reverb. It’s a nice, balanced wine. Do you like that one? It’s kind of…”
CB: “I like the Murrieta more.”
MB: “That one’s kind of quite sour at the end, as well. It sort of makes my throat go, ‘mmmerrm’.”
CB: “The Murrieta does?”
MB: “Yeah. Is it sour to you? It does taste quite sour. I think it’s all that… This one is… it says on this one, ‘85% Tempranillo, 8% Mazuelo, 7% Garnacha’. Barrel-aged for 22 months. Bottled back when I was a child: June 2002. It says 18° serving temperature. That’s probably sitting inside a hut. Inside a…”
CB: [slurring slightly] “I like this one much more.”
MB: [gulping] “Yup.”
CB: “It’s just got more character, somehow.”
MB: “Mmm.”
CB: “I think all the character in the Riscal was in the nose. And that might just be a first impression thing.”

c. Remelluri Reserva 2000: $39.95 — The Wine Vault, Auckland
MB: [mouthful of roasted almonds] “Mmm. OK… This is the Rrrrremellurrrrri… Rrremelllllurrrrri [several bogus attempts at pronunciation] Reserva 2000 Rrrrriocccchhha.”
CB: “Your Spanish is getting better.”
MB: “The bottle’s got a nice little map on the back… Doesn’t say anything… something about the old something of the monastery of Toloño. Doesn’t say anything about what’s in it. All right. Rock and roll… Mmm… This is definitely less flowery and perky, isn’t it?”
CB: “Well, my instant impression was that it was really flowery…”
MB: “Well, it’s definitely got more aroma.”
CB: “It’s got a kind of a grassy quality, like mown grass or something. Or maybe not… maybe more like…”
MB: “It smells like a dirty alleyway to me. If I was walking up a street in Spain, I’d say, ‘Should we take this shortcut?’ That’s what it smells like.”
CB: “Actually, now you mention it, I know what you mean [takes another swig]. There’s something rural about it. When I said ‘mown grass’, maybe I meant, like, shit. Like, manure.”
MB: “And it actually tastes the same. No, it actually tastes like it smells, which is the first one — well, to my mind.”
CB: “Yeah, the other two definitely didn’t taste like they smelled.”
MB: “Yeah, definitely agricultural, isn’t it. I don’t know what that means, but… we might be able to find something on the internet about what it’s got in it.”
CB: “Yeah, I’ll look the Remelluri up because it’s got a really weird name.”
MB: [slurring] Rrreemellurrrrri. “It kind of seems less sophisticated to me. To you?”
CB: [gulping down more] “Yeah.”
MB: “Like, it’s not unpleasant or anything.”
CB: “Ah! They’ve got a website, but it’s all in Spanish.”
MB: [slurring heavily] “A very inoffensive wine, that. But it doesn’t seem to have as much character, to my mind.”
CB: “It’s a bit crude, isn’t it.”
MB: “It’s sort of… yeah. Unsophisticated. It must be the country cousin of these.”
CB: [reading from a website blurb] “‘Known not for its aristocratic roots…’ Definitely not. ‘Neither for its successful style of blending modern technology with the traditional extended period in oak, Remelluri has become over the years a cult wine. Its production is tiny…’
MB: “Oh!”
CB: “‘It’s unusual for being a single estate bodega…’ blah, blah, blah…”
MB: “It’s pretty sort of contained as a wine. I think it’s really well done, but... They’ve got all sorts of weird and wonderful varietals over there.”
CB: “It says, ‘Tempranillo, Graciano and Garnacha’. What year are we drinking?”
MB: “2000. These nuts are very moreish, aren’t they? Well, should we try something new? Maybe we’ll get a different impression. Which one did we prefer, do you think?”
CB: “I definitely preferred the Murrieta.”
MB: “Yeah, I think so. Did you?”
CB: “Yeah, definitely. Although, I do tend to agree with you. When I’ve done whisky tastings, the first glass, the first sip, the first sniff was completely not the same as what I thought about it later on. Let’s go back to the Riscal. I want to see what I think of it now.”
MB: “OK. A proper glassful this time. That’s a lovely smell! That’s so comforting. There’s something kind of grandma about it…”
CB: “There is something comforting…”
MB: “Which is what attracted me to Rioja in the first place. There’s just something, like, solid and ‘home’ about it. It’s got a real core to it. It’s not all fucking fancy at the front and blah, blah…”
CB: “Rioja doesn’t feel like winter wine to me. You know, like Shiraz and stuff. Most red wine, I don’t really want to drink it in the summer. But I can imagine myself drinking this in the summer.”
MB: “Yeah, even though it’s got quite a lot of ‘oomph’ to it, definitely. I think because it’s a blend.”
CB: “It’s not as perfumed now as it was when we first opened it.”
MB: “No. But I imagine if you had a sweet tooth, Rioja would be a challenge for you… He says, necking it back like a child with cordial.”

[Back to the Riscal]
MB: “Are you enjoying that one?”
CB: “I’m still not bowled over by it.”
MB: “No.”
CB: “They obviously thought, ‘This wine tastes really average. We’ll have to flash it up with the bottle.’ Put three labels on it and some gold foil.”
MB: “Which one is this one?”
CB: “This is the one that looks like it’s going to be the best.”
MB: “Yeah. Although, you know, you get ropier Italian shit and you know it’s the roughest crap in the world.”
CB: “I mean, two words: Mateus Rosé. But I still think it’s got a bit of citrus in it.”
MB: “Could be, yeah. I’m not disagreeing.”
CB: “Not the thing you get down the back of your throat.”
MB: “On your tongue.”
CB: “Just in your mouth. The feel that you get from lemon juice. But it kind of lacks depth. And look, if you look at the colour of it, it’s nowhere near as tawny as the Murrieta.”
MB: [slurring] “Absolutely. It definitely lacks depth… I mean, it doesn’t lack depth, but there’s not a lot below the surface, is there?”
CB: “It’s like me.”
MB: “Deeply superficial.”
CB: “That can be the heading for this one.”
MB: “But I’m a real convert for the style. It’s just I wish they weren’t quite so expensive. Although having said that…”
CB: “Stop going on about the price.”
MB: “No, having said that, there was one I tried from the shop just over the road, and they do different varieties — I don’t know how they do it, presumably they age it longer — and one had a red label and one had some other colour, and it was just fantastic, and it was $17, which was quite OK. Rock ‘n’ roll.”
CB: “So was that Gran Reserva?”
MB: “What? No, no.”
CB: “It’d be nice to try a Gran Reserva, just to see.”
MB: “Yeeeeaaaah… I haven’t seen one.”
CB: “Maybe you can’t get them here.”
MB: “Maybe not. No, this was just a plain, bog-standard Rioja. But it was great. Really good.”

[Back to the Murrieta]
CB: “Ooh, that’s nice. That’s definitely the nicest.”
MB: “I think so. I definitely think so. But there’s almost nothing to the Murrieta, do you think? It goes down so smoothly.”
CB: “Maybe that’s the thing about them: they’re not really complex. They’re quite strong and heavy, but they’re not hard to drink.”
MB: “No. They’re not like big buggering Shirazes…”
CB: “No.”
MB: “That well, you know, really hammer you around. I mean, they’re great to drink but you know you’re drinking them. Whereas, I reckon you could drink this, and think, ‘Great wine’, and really have a nice experience.”
CB: “See, this… You know it’s got that tawny thing about it. It’s…”
MB: “It’s pitch black, isn’t it.”
CB: “It’s dark, and there’s something sort of chocolatey about it, like really good dark chocolate. I think. I might be completely wrong…”
MB: “No, no! Now that you say it. I’m one of those people who can’t identify things.”
CB: “I think I’ve got a reasonably good sense of smell, in that I can smell things when they’re there. But to actually relate it to stuff…”
MB: “No, I think chocolate is good.”
CB: “Maybe cocoa more than chocolate.”
MB: “Yup.”
CB: [groaning with dread] “I’m going to have to transcribe this tape.”
MB: “Well, there’s big gaps, aren’t there, between us wanking on about stuff. Well, I think we’re agreed: Murrieta.”
CB: “Yes. Although, I want to give the third one a second chance.”
MB: “Yeah, yeah. No, absolutely. I just think it was far enough behind that you could say… unless it kicks in really well on the second glass, Roberto’s your uncle. [Final word on the Murrieta] “Yeah, that’s a lovely wine, isn’t it. It really is so polished.”

[MB back to the Remelluri; CB annoyingly still on the Murrieta]
MB: “I’m coming round to it!”
CB: “Is this the third one?”
MB: “No, you haven’t got the third one.”
CB: “You have?”
MB: “Yeah. I like the colour.”
CB: “I bet it’s not as good as this one.”
MB: “No, but as I say, second glass, you know. I mean, look at that, it’s pretty good, isn’t it?! And my voice is going higher and higher in pitch! Ah, pissed already. It doesn’t take much. That’s the trouble, how many years of drinking? Twenty-five, maybe. I’m no better. It still takes me about a bottle… Yeah, there’s a kind of sourness to it, a top note, if you were thinking perfume or something. No, you’ve still got the Murrieta. Have you still got that one?”
CB: [maudlin, slurred, tired and emotional] “I think so, yeah.”
MB: “I don’t mean to hurry you. I don’t. I really don’t.”
CB: “I’ve got to catch up because it’s too annoying, trying to compare pears with apples.”
MB: “All right. Let’s rock ‘n’ roll. Are you coming round to it?”
CB: “Yeah. It’s definitely between the Murrieta and the Remelluri now, isn’t it?”
MB: “Oooh! that’s a big call. That’s a big call. That’s a big call. The Riscal is the most expensive one! Shall we compare?”

[Side by side comparison: Remelluri and Riscal]
CB: “What’s this one, the Remuera?”
MB: “The Remuera of wines is on the left. What shall we do…? Which one do you prefer in the nostrils? Yup, the Riscal is far more subtle.”
CB: “I think we should have been drinking them out of these sherry copitas all along, because they collect the smell better.”
MB: “The Remelluri is a real rock ‘n’ roll smell now!”
CB: “How dare you come back, you bastard!”
MB: “OK. I’m going to try the Riscal.”
CB: “I still think it’s got that chocolatey, cocoaey… or was that the other one? I can’t remember now.”
MB: “Mmm. Mmm. I think the Riscal is kind of heavier tasting to me, but honestly, the Remelluri has really pulled back. It’s made up some ground, hasn’t it. It seemed thin and pathetic and anorexic.”
CB: “It was crude, I thought.”
MB: “Yeah, like an anorexic farm girl.”
CB: “Or maybe even a fat farm girl…”
MB: “It’s still, I think, unavoidably agricultural.”
CB: [clearly just agreeing with everything now] “Yes, yes, I totally agree with that.”
MB: “But it’s pleasant. Like, you enjoy going to the country.”
CB: “Country matters.”
MB: [shouting] “‘I’m a country member…!’ I remember.”
CB: “Yes, definitely agricultural.”
MB: “Yes, the Riscal is far more refined than the Rrrrrrrremelllllllurrrrrrri. Less offensive. But it’s kind of less interesting as a result, isn’t it?”
CB: [stunned silence]
MB: “Mmm? Don’t you think?”
CB: “Yes, yes, it is. I agree with you. This was the one that was the best in that price range?”
MB: [belches loudly]
CB: “Yeah?”
MB: “Er… No, no. That was… that was… this is slightly cheaper, the Remelluri was about five dollars cheaper than the other two. But the Murrieta was, he said, the best value for $40 to $45 in the shop.”
CB: “Yeah, the Riscal is sort of inoffensive. I can imagine, like…”
MB: “It’s refined though, isn’t it?”
CB: “I can imagine rich, Spanish people drinking the Riscal with dinner. But I don’t think it’s as interesting as the other two.”
MB: “It’s a different kind of interesting from the Murrietta.”
CB: “A different kind of interesting… that’s another good heading. We might need to have lots of crossheads in this review.”
MB: “But… I mean… you know… I think there’s a world apart… myself. But we’ll probably try the Murrieta and go, ‘That’s fuckin’ shit. Eeeuuuuwwwwww!’”
CB: “No, I don’t think so. Not at this stage.”
MB: [semi-coherent] “Well, we’re trying it next. Hmm… Yeah, it’s definitely… yeah… there’s definitely more interest because it’s agricultural. But, you know, it’s got a lot… more… going on. But the Riscal is smart and cleverer and intelligent. It’s like a race between the rich boy and the young boy who wets his bed every night and he has to run home to take the sheets off the line. Do you remember that film?”
CB: “No.”
MB: “So what are we saying? What are we in favour of?”
CB: “Rioja. You drink wine for different reasons than you drink Scotch. But with whisky, the really good ones that I like are the most extreme, you know?”
MB: [mouth full of nuts] “Islay whiskies.”
CB: “Yeah. And the Remellura, to me, is the Islay whisky of the three. I still think the Murrieta is the best, but I kind of think this has got so much character, you forgive the fact that it smells like manure.”
MB: “I think that’s absolutely right. Isn’t that weird? Because the Riscal is the one we thought would fucking knock us over.”
CB: “Yeah.”
MB: “The one with the gold wire on it, third place. How sad!
CB: “I would say it was pretty close, though, between the three of them. As you say, the Riscal is really refined, and I suppose there would be circumstances where that would really work, where you’d want to drink that kind of Rioja.”
MB: “Oh yeah, you wouldn’t want to drink the Rrrrrrrremelllllllurrrrrrri, um, all the time.”
CB: “No.”
MB: “But if you were… yeah.”
CB: “Do the Spanish drink Rioja with dinner?”
MB: [whispering] “I don’t know, really. [On a roll, shouting unnecessarily] They drink a lot, but they drink it over a long period. Like, they’ll drink from ten in the morning until sort of midnight, but they’ll just have a glass here, a glass there, after work, before work… As far as I can tell anyway. They’ll have one in the morning, with their coffee. They’ll have one at lunch. Maybe a couple at lunch. Then they’ll have one after work, then they’ll go out for tapas late, have a sleep, and then their tapas. As far as I can tell…”
CB: “I’m not sure my system would survive that.”
MB: “Yeah, but they don’t drink all the time. Instead of bingeing…”
CB: “Not so much the drinking, but the way they eat, as well.”
MB: “Mmm.”
CB: “Maybe you’d get used to it.”
MB: “I don’t know about the eating late at night. But they do, all the time. Maybe that’s why they get fat when they get old. So are we going to do the Murrieta and then call it a day?”
CB: “Yeah.”
MB: “Now, I think that the Murrieta has the best label, too. Which is no inconsiderable thing. People buy a lot off the label.”
CB: “Although, it has lots of fonts.”
MB: “Yeah. The Riscal bottle is like a woman’s dress after a party: it’s starting to look a bit sad. The wire, you know.”
CB: “The wire’s starting to look a bit sad. And I noticed when you brought it in that the wire had cut through part of the label.”

[Final thoughts on the Murrieta]
MB: “I still think it stands up because it’s got complexity.”
CB: “Am I imagining it, or is the Murrieta actually the sweetest of the three?”
MB: “I don’t know. I wouldn’t like to say. There’s definitely a kind of… it’s got a sort of… there definitely is a like a… a kind of… like a preserved… not preserved… processed fruit thing about it. I’m thinking, like, guava or something.”
CB: “I’m getting guava… I’m getting… pissed.”
MB: [shouting] “I’m getting legless. Legolas!”

Our verdict: The ranking
1. Marqués de Murrieta Ygay Reserva 1999: $42.95 — Glengarry Ponsonby
2. Remelluri Reserva 2000: $39.95 — The Wine Vault, Auckland
3. Herederos del Marqués de Riscal Elciego (Álava) Reserva 2000: $46.95 —Accent on Wine, Auckland

Norton 360 live chat support

The first time I logged in to Symantec Live Technical Support, I was number 2 in the queue. My support agent Kaleem was a fast typist, but didn’t have an instant fix for me:

[23:21] CB: Hi, since installing Norton 360 I’ve been unable to update my internet time settings. I’ve tried disabling the Norton Firewall but I get error messages when I try to synchronise with either of the available Microsoft Time Servers. Does Norton 360 disable this functionality?
[23:21] Kaleem: No Chris, the Norton will not disable the functionality. Before troubleshooting this issue, I need to gather more information about this problem from you. This will greatly assist me in finding a resolution to your problem.
[23:22] CB: No problem. Let me know what you need.
[23:22] Kaleem: Do you have any other Antivirus or Firewall or Spyware programs installed on your system?
[23:23] CB: I have Spybot Search and Destroy installed, but as far as I know, that only scans when the app is open. That’s all — Microsoft Firewall is disabled through the Norton settings.
[23:23] Kaleem: Okay. Please let me know if you can synchronize with the personal firewall disabled.
[23:24] CB: You mean the Norton Firewall? It worked before I installed 360, when I was running whatever the previous Norton internet protection was called.
[23:25] Kaleem: Okay. Please let me know if you had removed the previous Norton programs before installing the Norton 360 program.
[23:26] CB: Yes, Norton 360 removed them automatically.
[23:26] Kaleem: Okay. Please note that this issue can happen if there are remnants left on your computer of the previous Norton programs.
[23:27] CB: Right. Am I able to remove those remnants manually?
[23:28] Kaleem: In order to resolve this issue I suggest that you uninstall the Norton product using the Norton Removal Tool and then reinstall the Norton 360 program.

I did all of the above, which took well over an hour, but to no avail — the Date and Time Properties internet settings continued to return error messages from both available time servers. Next time I logged on to Symantec chat, I was 18th in the queue and it took 90 minutes to get to the front of it. This agent, Suraj, didn’t seem quite as confident and took a while longer to type in his replies, causing a few classic chat post overlaps:

Suraj: Could you please let me know the issue you are facing with Norton 360 program?
CB: I had a previous Symantec Support live chat session, followed all the advice provided in the chat by Kaleem, the support agent (which was to remove old and current Norton 360 software with the Norton Software Removal Tool and then to reinstall Norton 360) but still have the same problem: Even with the Norton and Microsoft XP Firewalls disabled I am unable to synchronise internet time. I have a permanent wi-fi internet connection. Both Microsoft time servers return errors. Any ideas?
Suraj: I am sorry, I was unable to understand. Could you please rephrase it for me?
CB: As I say, Norton 360 won’t allow me to synchronise the internet time (using the clock at bottom right of your screen). I didn’t have this problem with Norton Antivirus. It’s only started happening since I installed Norton 360.
Suraj: Okay. May I place on hold for 2-3 minutes while I research on this issue?
CB: Sure. No problem. I’ [accidentally hits enter key, mid-sentence…]
CB: I’m running XP Pro.
Suraj: Okay.
[Short pause while Suraj does some research…]
Suraj: After uninstalling the Norton program, were you able to synchronise the Internet time?
CB: No. But I reinstalled 360 again immediately after the uninstall.
Suraj: Okay. I suggest you to uninstall the Norton 360 program and then check whether you are able to synchronize the Internet time. Get back to us with the results. All Right?

This turned out to be unnecessary because, after a bit of Googling, I discovered I wasn’t the only person having difficulties synchronising my internet time. Connecting to a different internet time server as described in various group discussions, simply by pasting it into the Date and Time Properties/Internet Time/Server panel (which I hadn’t realised you could do manually) instantly solved the problem and Symantec was off the hook. It was just another of those infuriating internet coincidences. However, full marks to both of my support agents for persevering, and to Symantec for having the foresight to offer live chat as a support option. I’d use it in a heartbeat if I had further problems. It knocks Microsoft and Apple’s support into a cocked hat.

Five minutes with Paul di Filippo

Short story writer, novelist and reviewer Paul di Filippo is the kind of writer other writers love to hate: as if his prodigious output weren’t enough, it’s said he managed to write five of his novels and many of his short stories on a Commodore 128 computer.

He coined the word ribofunk to describe the sub-genre of science fiction in which he specialises, and which uses elements of the hard-boiled detective novel, film noir and post-modernist prose. His manifesto defines the sub-genre thus:

“Speculative fiction which acknowledges, is informed by and illustrates the tenet that the next revolution — the only one that really matters — will be in the field of biology. To paraphrase Pope, ribofunk holds that: ‘The proper study of mankind is life.’ Forget physics and chemistry; they are only tools to probe living matter. Computers? Merely simulators and modellers for life. The cell is King!”

A search on ‘ribofunk’ generates around 20,000 Google hits.

Your biog says you’ve been a finalist for a lot of awards, but have you ever won any?

“I have indeed broken my loser’s streak just once, by winning a British SF Association Award for best short story for 1994’s The Double Felix. The story title was misspelled on the official ballot, and my name was misspelled on the official trophy, which arrived years later and looks like Monty Python’s Holy Grail. I currently use it to hold sticks of incense. All of which is not to negate my gratitude to BSFA.”

Rhode Island: Red state or Blue state, state of denial or state of fear?

“Well, with the recent election the whole country starts to resemble a more regal purple, sensibly blending red and blue. But RI remains more liberal than the average. The citizenry seems more hopeful than fearful, although we do live continuously under the dire threat of colonisation by rich Bostonians to our north.”

You once wrote an exposé of the frustrations involved in having work accepted by Wired, in spite of the magazine briefing its commissioned contributors in detail. Has Wired bought any more work from you since you wrote this article?

“I think a whole new regime has taken over the magazine since my experiences, and with any luck they wouldn’t hold my past outburst against me. And although I have not placed any long pieces with the magazine since that first ill-fated one, I did recently secure an entire page (!) in the November 2006 issue for my six-word short story, commissioned along with almost three dozen others: ‘Husband, transgenic mistress: wife, “You cow!”’”

You’re a prolific author of short stories, particularly of speculative fiction. Good, paying markets for short stories around the world are in decline. How does the market for your own work look in the States?

“The demise of magazines that pay a ‘living wage’ is not good news for me or any other writer whose focus is short fiction. I’m heartened by a prevalence of original anthologies, and classy small-press magazines, but it does become more difficult to sustain oneself by writing just at these lengths for such markets. And of course the invention of webzines is another cheerful development, although their mode of existence is yet shaky. A certain online monetary inflation calculator that I occasionally use indicates that the penny-a-word rate obtained by the pulp writers of the 1930s, once derided as chicken feed, should translate to twenty-cents-per-word in modern terms. So even the top mags that pay, say, ten-cents-a-word are paying half what used to be standard during the Depression!”

You’ve written a sequel to a comic by Alan Moore of Watchmen fame. Was this a daunting prospect, and did you get to meet or correspond with Moore during the course of the project?

“I had almost zero contact with Moore throughout the whole project. But he read my scripts, and I learned of his approval through my editor, Scott Dunbier. I also learned that Moore preferred that I not kill off his favourite character, as I had intended, and that I substitute an adoption scene for a woman getting pregnant by her canine husband and giving birth to some sort of doggy hybrid. Good calls, I say in retrospect, on his part!”

In your essay The Infantilisation, Electrification, Mechanisation and General Diminishment of King Kong, you posit that “seriously intentioned sequels and offshoots of the Original Tragedy … fumblingly recast or attempt to extend the material in such a manner as to rob it of all its archetypical force and resonance”, so what did you make of Peter Jackson’s retelling or, for that matter, Russell Hoban’s?

“Although I thought the Jackson remake was exciting and skilful, in the end it seemed superfluous. What really did it add? The Hoban piece, from what I see online, looks a bit more like a post-modern pastiche than a straight remake, so I have hopes for it, especially given Hoban’s talents.”

If visitors to NZBC only read one book this year, which book should it be?

“For sheer fun and pleasure, if you’re a ‘core SF’ reader, I’d have to recommend The Android’s Dream by John Scalzi. I’ve always been a sucker for Keith Laumer’s Retief series, and [Scalzi’s book] is like a supercharged refashioning of those tropes. But I haven’t yet gotten my hands on Thomas Pynchon’s Against The Day...”

What’s on your iPod’s ‘On the go’ playlist at the moment, or are you an iPod refusenik?

“Although a huge music listener, I am an iPod refusenik, mainly because I don’t need portability of music. I take walks ranging from one to three hours every day — trying to do very little driving — and when I’m out and about I like to talk to people and hear birdsong and random conversations and even traffic noise. I don’t care to be insulated in a fake Hollywood soundtrack of my own devising. When I’m home, I like to listen to large blocks of music composed with a scheme by the creator: in other words, entire ‘albums’ or CDs. And actually, when I’m writing, I play the radio! WBRU, the college station associated with Brown University. That way, I get exposed to new music and also experience the serendipity of someone else’s choices.”

E-books would seem to dovetail naturally with the sci-fi genre and its fandom. Might technology, after all, be the writer’s life-raft?

“Certainly print-on-demand, as exemplified by Wildside Press and its imprint, has been a lifesaver for me, allowing publishers to take on books of mine with only marginal sales potential, such as my collection of humour columns, Plumage From Pegasus. I have little experience with e-books, but selling some reprint stories through Fictionwise was a good experience for me. I don’t think, despite all the headwork by such visionaries as Cory Doctorow, that we yet know the ultimate model for the vehicle that will connect writers and readers, to the profit of both!”

What do you use for note-taking, capturing ideas and tracking submissions? Are you a proponent of pencil and notebook; do you favour proprietary software; or is it open source everything for you, even though your initials are PDF?

“I am old-fashioned enough to still stick with pen and paper for my note-taking. I have a pocket notebook brand that I love, Oxford Memo Books, because it’s sewn together instead of employing a metal spiral, and so when you sit on it, it doesn’t imprint your butt like something out of a Re/Search tribal scarification volume.”

What are you working on right now, when is your next book due to be published and what will it be?

“I’ve just placed two books with PS Publishing: Harsh Oases, a story collection, and Roadside Bodhisattva, a (mainstream!) novel. I’m not even certain which one Pete Crowther intends to bring out first, but there will be one in 2007 and one in 2008. My current work in progress is a novel for the firm of Payseur & Schmidt to be titled either Cosmocopia or Cosmicopia (readers, help me decide!), with illustrations by Jim Woodring.”

What’s wrong with my iPod? iTunes 7.0!

Father forgive me, for I have sinned: I spent a lot of my hard-earned on an iPod hi-fi (fans of geek porn, see the 360° view here), a new oPod case… oh, and an iPod Video, 80GB. Well, you know how it is: I ran out of space on my 40GB after only about 1500 tracks because they were all in Apple Lossless format, and iTunes is downloading new podcasts every week for me to find space and ear-time for.

I’m running iTunes Version 7.0.1.8 and so far have had two brand new 80GB iPod Videos, both purchased from the same New Zealand reseller. Each was apparently defective.

Both iPods successfully loaded my music library and played podcasts and music perfectly, both on headphones and on my iPod hi-fi. But when I subsequently plugged the iPods into any of the four USB 2 ports on my laptop, they failed to show up as devices in My Computer (a Toshiba P20 laptop on which I’m running Windows XP, Service Pack 2) or, just as worryingly, in iTunes.

The problem also occurs on a second PC — the iPod refuses to show as a device in My Computer, Windows File Explorer or in iTunes. However, it does show up in Device Manager, and the ‘Safely Remove Hardware’ icon shows on the Windows status bar as soon as the iPod is connected. Even so, when the iPod is safely ejected, the iPod screen continues to show ‘Do Not Disconnect’. So the only way to safely eject it is to reset the iPod — the Apple equivalent of a forced reboot.

I’ve tried restarting the computer, putting the iPod into ‘disk mode’, as well as the rest of the time-consuming remedies listed on the Apple website. Unfortunately, none of them helps because I can’t get the iPod to appear as a device on my computer. It’s therefore impossible to rename the Drive Volume (to another letter instead of ‘E:’) or restore the iPod to factory settings.

I can’t help thinking Apple has created a Catch-22 situation by removing the iPod Updater option in iTunes 7. None of the previous versions of iPod Updater is compatible with iTunes 7, meaning people who have a disk mount problem can’t restore their iPods: if you can’t get the iPod to show up in either iTunes or My Computer, you’re stuck.

The only solution seems to be a downgrade to iTunes 6.x or another, previous version of iTunes, but even this maddening workaround is fraught with problems.

So why isn’t there a ‘restore’ option in the iPod’s own diagnostics menu, some combination of click-wheel buttons that will allow you to reformat and restore the drive to factory settings? Why has Apple chosen to go down this dark and lonely software cul-de-sac?

My previous (40GB) Fourth-Generation iPod mounts perfectly on both my laptop and another PC, suggesting it’s the new iPods that are the problem and not my computer. And, as I said, the new iPod also fails to mount on a second PC, which would tend to underscore this theory.

Both faulty iPods have been set to ‘manually update’ and I also ticked the ‘Enable Disk Use’ option and removed the checkmark from ‘Automatically open iTunes’.

I have no complaints about TotallyMac.com, the New Zealand reseller from which I bought my iPod and which supplied me with the replacement when the first device proved to be defective. The after-sales service was prompt and courteous and both iPods were replaced by TotallyMac.com’s Sean Carmichael without question. He also spent around 30 minutes above and beyond the call of duty going through a range of possible fixes over the phone with me, all to no avail.

There is clearly a more serious compatibility conflict between the new iPods, iTunes 7.0 and iTunes 7.1. There are a lot of worthy suggested fixes to be found online, but none of them solves my particular problem. While I’m by no means an übergeek, neither am I an iPod newbie nor a computing novice. I’ve spent far too many hours researching this frustrating problem when all I want to do is listen to music on my new hi-fi and download the latest podcasts.

On the recommendation of Sean from TotallyMac.com I took the first of the apparently defective iPods in to the friendly folks at Magnum Mac on Newton Road in Auckland, and the service tech there said, “If you’d bought this iPod from us, we’d replace it — we can’t get it to show up on our PCs.” There was nothing in it for them, so I was grateful for their attention and honest assessment.

I never had any problems with my previous iPod, so I’m hoping my experience with the iPod Video to date will be nothing worse than an ugly and expensive interlude — I’ve spent over $30 on courier fees, taxi fares and toll calls, not to mention the high price I paid for the iPod in the first place.

It’s all put rather a large bruise in my idealised view of Apple and its products. It would be good to hear from someone out there who has experienced similar difficulties and who might be able to explain what the problem is.

And if mine is a problem already known to the folks at Apple, some reassurance that it will be dealt with in future iTunes updates would be nice.