Spent the past three weeks travelling around Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh together with Mayke. India is a very special country, full of contradictions. A lot of beauty that goes seemlessly together with a lot of grime. It took a while to get used to the busy traffic (incessantly hooting at everything that moves) and the unavoidable cows, cowdung and litter. Once we got the hang of things we started to fall in love with this beautiful country though. See some photo impressions here.

Ralph & Marije zeiden ja tegen elkaar, zo getuige ik!

Hans Hoogervorst likens the current response to the financial crisis to an alcoholic chasing his hangover with more alcohol. Although the remedy may be effective in the short run, it doesn’t quite qualify as a real solution. He also makes quite clear that a little too much “alcohol” has been going through the system already which makes more loose fiscal policy seem pretty irresponsible. Perhaps now is a good time to get out of currency, maybe buy into gold, arts and expensive jewellery…

Further on in his speech it becomes clear that there is currently no centrally-coordinated European financial supervision. This strikes me as a bit odd, put mildly. The telecoms industry has seen a concerted European approach since around 1996 but the financial system is left to each individual member state to treat however it sees fit? Somehow, in light of the European Monetary Union (the Maastricht Treaty precedes telecoms regulation by a few years) I have so far taken for granted that a harmonised approach would be in place. Not so.

Steven Horwitz legt de vinger op de zere plek – de oorzaak van de huidige financiële crisis moet niet gezocht worden in de werking van vrije markten en hebzucht maar bij goed bedoelde overheidsinterventie en het daarmee uitgelokte gedrag van private partijen. Wat fout ging was juist het gebrek aan vrije markt.

Overigens verwijst hij naar een artikel uit de New York Times van 30 september 1999 dat precies de neergang van Fannie Mae voorspelt:

The action [...] will encourage those banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans.
[...]
In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980’s.

Je zou dus kunnen zeggen dat de Clinton administratie al heeft gezaaid wat nu wordt geoogst. Overigens denk ik dat als Bush de nationale schuld niet van historisch laag naar historisch hoog had omgetoverd er wellicht weinig aan de hand was geweest.

Some antitrust-minded humour.

Tussen alle regenachtige dagen was zaterdag met zon en een paar wolkjes de perfecte dag om een eindje in de Ardennen te gaan fietsen. Tussen de 5.000 deelnemers Olaf L., Janneke, Ralph, Olaf, Menno, Mayke & ik. Het werd m’n kennismaking met het tourfietsen en de 130 km bleek haalbaar. M’n oude fietsje hield zich uitstekend, zelfs La Redoute kwam die op. Mede dankzij de gouden tip van Olaf L. om een 38 tands binnenblad te monteren trouwens!

Jan recently gave me the assignment to take some photographs through 2 lenses, holding one lens back-to-front in front of the other. The back-to-front lens is supposed to act as a loupe. I gave it a try and here are some results. Thanks Jan, I like it! Want to borrow an old lens?

Karen & Cobi’s wedding in Abbadia a Isola was the perfect excuse to spend a week in the countryside between Siena and Florence. I’ve posted a couple of pictures here.

This year has had a promising start with two weeks of Kenya in January and more recently two weeks of snow in Austria. The first week was in Kirchberg (Kitzbühler Alpen) in the great company of fifteen friends including Mayke, which was a week of great fun, great weather to begin with but not so great weather later on with some rain-skiing (enjoyable for those that enjoy getting wet and going slowly). Fortunately Olaf K. and I had a second week lined up in Saalbach-Hinterglemm which turned out to be a week full of fresh snow. Halfway through the week we were joined by Adriaan, who turns out to be an absolute powder addict.

His powder addiction brought us mostly off-piste and often through woods, which occasionally also gave rise to (minor) complications involving ski-throwing, sliding, stumbling, hanging onto trees, sliding through barbed wire, wading through mountain streams and skiing on what looks initially like snow but turns out to be soil with a thin layer of snow to cover it up. I personally discovered a new turning-method by jumping into a tree and swivelling your ski’s round – great if you need to turn around but the slope won’t allow you to. Adriaan discovered a new way of going past fallen-over trees, which involves a summersault over the tree in question. Best executed by starting off with a jump over another fallen-over tree higher up.

All in all, great fun, rounded off with a day of head-deep powder in Kaprun (and unfortunately for Olaf a rock that got slightly too friendly with his snowboard) and a fun-in-the-woods filled Easter Monday in Zell-am-See. The homeward journey also turned out to involve lots of powder, on which we felt very comfortable thanks to the previous week of powder-only skiing.

Click here for all the photo’s.