As the Olympics approach I am trying hard to get into the mood and share some of the fun and excitement. But I am having a problem. I can’t find the excitement. And no one seems to be having any fun, nor do many think they will even when the Olympics start. The evidence for this is everywhere – in the polls, in the bars, in the coffee shops, around the water coolers and in the media.

I supported the Olympics, in the government when the original decision was made to make an application, during the Vancouver vote and in the forums and discussions about it before and after the vote. I supported it because I believed it would showcase our beautiful city, inspire and perhaps shame us into really doing something to meet the needs of the people in the downtown east side, support our athletes and give us a chance a to celebrate our city and really have some fun. I believed that people in the province and the city would get to participate in the major events and that local businesses would have an opportunity to embrace and profit from the event. I really did believe that in Vancouver it could be the people’s Olympics.

Sadly, I was wrong. Ordinary people see it. They are surly and resentful about the whole thing. It shows in the frustration of many small business people, who have been banned from even mentioning the Olympics in their signs and promotions. They have in effect been told to butt out – these Olympics are not for them. Hard to imagine unless the money is everything. It shows in the herding of the homeless off the downtown streets and into the east side ghetto. This you can see with your own eyes if you go for a stroll on Hastings from Burrard to Main. Suddenly there are no homeless and few panhandlers until you get to Abbot, after which during the day the streets are a bee hive of homeless street people suffering from all kinds of maladies. That is where they have been pushed – out of sight, out of mind. Until its over.

Try as I might I don’t now feel like we are going to be having any fun. I don’t see that many feel they are going to be having any fun.

Mostly now I wonder why, and what went wrong. It will take time to figure it all out but already some of the main reasons are clear. They include:

1. The complete preoccupation with big money. Local business are being put under close watch and tight control because any reference to the Olympics by them might bring protests from the big money sponsors and advertiser. So there is no flexibility, no room for good will embraces by local businesses and no openings to get into the swing unless you have paid. This has turned the whole thing into a gross, vulgar event. How can there be a feeling of excitement when you have suppression of expression worthy of a police state? And why didn’t we have managers and politicians who pushed back on this?

2. The fixation on security. Security costs will be over $ 1 billion. Police and military will be everywhere. Ugly fences, barriers, and temporary structures secured by reminders of the Berlin wall are popping up all over. Already one should not be surprised to be challenged by a creepy security officer for being around some place that seems to have no security significance. We hear abut security zones and no go areas, but the descriptions are impossible to understanding. Its creepy. It’s no fun.

3. Constant reminders about congestion, traffic control, crowd management, pedestrian channeling and a whole host of other things that tell us only one thing – the Olympic managers are afraid of the people. We are their worst nightmare. We are told over and over again where we can’t go, what we can’t do, and what we can’t see. Mostly the message suggests that we should stay away. Especially seeing as how there will be so many rich and important people around. Our presence would take away from their enjoyment. That makes it pretty hard to have fun.

4. Pricing and availability of tickets. Somebody, somewhere in the whole Olympic organization lost their way a long time ago. Few local people got tickets. The one’s that did paid enormous prices. Now all we hear is that you can’t come, because you don’t have tickets and if you want one -say to the opening ceremonies you can get a poor seat for $2000. What are they thinking? How did they manage to stage opening ceremonies for example that are completely beyond the reach of any but the wealthiest. Didn’t anybody think about how to do this to be inclusive, not exclusive.

5. Irresponsible and needless spending. All of us hear that we have to accept cut backs, and that there is no money for housing, the poor, the arts, culture, schools, suffering communities outside Vancouver and on and on it goes. But no one ever seems to say no when it comes to Olympic spending. Need an improved highway – no problem – spend over $1 billion when much less would do. Need better transport form the airport – go ahead – spend a couple of billion and line the contractors pocket with a $400 million windfall over costs that no one will take responsibility for. Want a new building here, a fancy street boulevard there, a new temporary structure over there better built than any homeless shelter – go ahead – no problem if its for the Olympics. The city is literally dripping with dollars spent on extravagances that don’t make sense in these times of hardship. Have you seen the multi-million dollar refit of the ice rink at Robson Square? Have you heard about the $500 million dollar Olympic legacy retractable roof for BC Place? Meanwhile people who are suffering and in need and many important social priorities are being ignored. And the rural areas and communities in the interior are facing serious economic and social problems. The government’s response to them is that we hear your pain, but there’s no money. All of those has created a cognitive dissonance that helps explain the anger and the grumpiness.

6. Fun for the privileged but not for the people. The lack of availability and price of tickets are like a slap in the face to ordinary people. Perhaps it is true, as Vanoc claims, that this is just how big international events have to be these days. But if there is no other business model, than I think most people would prefer we stay out of the business. It is hard to believe that smart people could not have thought of someway to make local attendance easier and more affordable. And then we have the spectre of the Premier, Mayor, Cabinet Ministers, Liberal MLA’s and City Councillours voting themselves expensive taxpayer paid tickets to attend expensive events, ostensibly to encourage investment in our city. This is of course a silly rationale – no serious investor is going to be influenced by a free ticket, a steak and a bottle of fine wine with some petty local politician. As it is, seeing the way things have turned, these self serving politicians are seriously close to losing their social license to use and abuse our taxes and our city amenities.

7. “Help” for the homeless coming in the form of spin, temporary shelters, and security fences. This hardly needs elaboration. The sweeping claim made that a big benefit of the Olympics will be a resolution of the homeless problem because we cannot afford to have the world see this embarrassing scar on the heart of our city has turned out to be empty and meaningless. This is shameful and to most of us embarrassing.

8. And perhaps most of all, stiff, boring, no-fun leaders. Fun events are by definition populist events that resonate with mainstream residents. This is not happening. This Olympics reeks of elite privilege. Part of the explanation is that not one of the leading personalities has a populist bone in his or her body. They are all stiff, humourless, uneasy with people and impossible to imagine having a good time on their own, much less with real people. Gordon Campbell? A fun guy? I don’t think so. Gregor Robertson? Can you imagine having a genuine conversation with him? I doubt it. Furlong. Yikes, not someone you would even think about partying with. Ditto for Cabinet Members and City Councilours. The truth is there is no fun loving face of the Olympics. They are all constitutionally unable to have fun, palpably afraid of real people, and only comfortable with celebrities and the rich. And the leaders define the event. So this one is not going to be about people and having fun with them.

I still think the Olympics is a good idea. And I believe it will still come off as a well managed international spectacle. But handled differently it could also have been the people’s Olympics. It could have been a celebration. Sadly, however we are stuck with the no fun, elite Olympics. For most it will be two weeks discovering what it feels like to live in a police state run by humourless apparatchiks. That’s not the kind of Olympics I had hoped for. And it didn’t have to be this way. It is so much less than what it could have been, if we hadn’t ended up with these unimaginative, humourless, fear obsessed people in charge.

A highly respected climate change scientist has taken aim at fellow members of the UN’s International Panel on Climate Change who engage in political advocacy. Andrew Weaver, a professor at the University of Victoria, is concerned that some panel members have become involved in advocating particular climate change policies and actions rather than serving simply as science advisers. He suggests that those who do so should resign, and that the Panel needs to re-organize to remove the taint of such activity. He suggests that the culprits take their leave of the Panel.

He is right. The panel has over 100 members who are asked to investigate and work on climate change as independent scientists. The work of the Panel has been excellent. Unfortunately that excellence has been compromised in part because some members and associates have become active in advocating for particular policies, including acting as paid consultants to those with an interest in the climate change issue. This creates at least the appearance of using their association with the Panel to further their own interests, which is a sure fire way to discredit the Panel’s work.

Some may think the target here are those who advocate on behalf of the public interest. Oh that this were the case. In an earlier posting I reported on a similar issue related to the activities of one of the panel members from BC. In that case an academic from my own university who has been associated with the work of the Panel took work as a consultant to the Independent (Private) Power Producers association of BC, an industry lobby group. In his report he attacked and attempted to discredit another energy expert who is a recognized professional and author of public interest reports and testimony before the BC Utilities Commission. The expert’s sin was to challenge the positions of the private power producers, who were and are lining up for special deals from the government all the while using the climate change issue to justify highly questionable contracts to supply expensive and largely useless power to BC Hydro. The consultant’s industry sponsored attack came in a widely publicized report paid for by the association. The attack was both unfair and in some aspects just plain wrong. However, it got widespread coverage and was given credibility in part through the author’s association with the work of the UN Panel. Needless to say, it was very damaging to the victim’s reputation and credibility. The attack was couched in very personal terms, notwithstanding the fact that the subject of the attack is one of the most honest, reputable and thorough experts in the field.

One cannot help but think that Andrew Weaver in part had this case in mind when he went public with his concerns.

He is right. This sort of thing must stop. Taking the side of an industry lobby group is about the most unappetizing form of political advocacy possible. Doing so while having acted as a supposed independent adviser to the UN Panel is especially egregious. Those who participate in bodies such as the International Panel on Climate Change must be free of the taint of political activity that furthers private interests. The Independent Power Producers should know better and so should those who do their dirty work, but clearly they do not. The UN should not tolerate this kind of thing from the people who work on its independent panels.

As a matter of interest the same private power producers that bought and paid for this disreputable undertaking in order to undermine and silence an informed and carefully researched critic are apparently once again taking after one of their prominent critics. The highly respected and independent minded journalist Rafe Mair reports that a group associated with the private power interests are circulating a poisonous email about him, twisting something he wrote in December in the Tyee that was critical of them. (see posting at http://www.greenenergybc.ca/media_280110.html). Discrediting critics is clearly part of their way of operating. Mair reports that the circulated email states:

“Rafe Mair’s new found love of nuclear energy is quite suspect. Rafe is ostensibly against run of river hydro because of what he claims to be high cost of production, among other things (which is untrue, as run of river production costs less than what it costs BC Hydro to produce new power).”

These are the words of the private power producers. Note the claim that he “loves” nuclear energy, the careful distortion of facts and the implication that he makes “untrue” claims. And all intended to personally discredit this honourable man.

Rafe’s response is as follows:

“I do not, repeat not, say we should adopt a Nuclear power program in BC, only that we stand back and look at Nuclear with a jaundiced eye but still look. We are, under the Campbell Liberals, bound and determined to destroy our rivers. Campbell, nose growing all the time, says we need the power and that’s why our rivers must be sacrificed. His nose stretches because we do not need the power and even if we did, private river projects won’t help because they only produce power when BC Hydro doesn’t need it. But if there’s a valid alternative, shouldn’t we look at it?

There are, as I see it, these concerns to be dealt with, any one of which would negate the arguments for Nuclear energy.

1. Is it, under 2009 conditions and knowledge, safe? Even if it’s safe
under everyday circumstances could terrorists use it to create an atom
bomb like disaster?

2. How do we dispose of the waste? It’s been this problem that has for
many people made the issue a non starter.

3. Is it cost effective? We know that they haven’t been but are the
numbers better now?

4. Is it really green, considering what it takes to build and maintain a
facility?

We would be damned fools to rush into a pro nuclear policy but also damned fools not to consider it.”

Right minded people should protest this industry group’s tactics to distort and silence critics. One hopes that people across the province will make their disgust about these kind of tactics known in no uncertain terms. These private companies are being granted valuable public land and water licenses with which they will make big returns producing next to worthless power. If they don’t understand that the gift of these licenses requires that they show some basic social responsibility, it is time for BC residents to make this clear to them. They survive and prosper with implicit consent of the people through an unwritten social contract. If they can’t act responsibly and ethically, the contract should be terminated. The people have the power to make that happen.

President Obama has announced a new plan to limit the size of banks and place restrictions on the trading and holding of assets of uncertain value by banks. “The American taxpayer will never again be held hostage by a bank that is too big to fail”, he said.

Much of the media attention has focused on the apparent attempt to use this initiative to shift to a more populist form of politics. Up to now, he has appeared quite timid about the question of bank re-regulation. Many analysts believe that this is because he is listening to his economic advisers, other than Paul Volker, rather than his political advisers who have sensed a restive public unhappy that the banks are not being brought under tighter regulation. Exceptionally, Mr. Volker, a former Federal Reserve Bank Chair, has advocated that Obama move on bank regulation, but the other orthodox economists have, amazingly, remain wedded to their belief in unregulated markets.

However Mr. Obama and Mr. Volker are right, as a matter of policy. If that coincides with the mood of the majority of voters, it is just another indication that the voters often get it right. The trouble with conventional experts on economics and social issues is they too often embrace orthodoxies and conventional wisdoms that mistake their belief systems for factual descriptions. Thank goodness for democracy, and its ability to force correctives in policy.

One fundamental problem with the conventional economists’ views on bank regulation is that it embeds a construction of an idealized world that among other things fails to distinguish risk from uncertainty. Risk can be measured and can be assigned probabilities. Uncertainty cannot. All that can be known about uncertain outcomes is that they can be very damaging if they occur. But the probabilities of different possible outcomes can’t be calculated. Thus it is not possible to insure against them, or to devise instruments that will act as natural counterbalances to them.

The complex derivative financial instruments that were used to finance the highly risky mortgages banks made were so opaque and confusing as to make it impossible to make risk calculations about them. This was the case with the so-called toxic asset backed paper that brought the banks down all across the world. Because they could not be assessed in terms of risk, they could not be insured against, and they could not be made subject to market discipline. The economists advising government were unable to see the implications of this because their education never let them think about market as institutions that can only work under certain situations, and their sluggish minds couldn’t grasp the significance of the difference between calculable risk and uncertainty. So they assured policy makers that risk is the only relevant or real idea, that any numbers are always better than no numbers (even if they are imaginary it seems) and that investors, who are by definition very smart, will always correctly assess risk and trade in instruments that will insure against massive bank failures that might otherwise arise from holdings of toxic assets.

The result that banks were left unregulated in terms of holding such assets. The economists pictured every bank as fully quipped with very smart risk assessors calculating to the millionth decimal point the risk and the appropriate risk protection strategies. It seems never to have occurred to them, and apparently still does not, that this couldn’t be done for the exploding class of derivative assets.

Some say that ii is not fair to criticize the economic advisers for not seeing the need to regulate the investment by banks in these kinds of assets because they were new innovations and their existence could not be understood. This is a faux criticism based on a narrow idea of what it means to understand something. From the 1930’s until the de-regulation of the 1980’s and 90’s, policy thinkers were a bit more broadly educated, and banks were prohibited from investing in any assets that carry these kinds of uncertainties and hard to calculate risk. And it worked. The problem was well known, even if the exact nature of the assets changes from time to time. It was the narrow minds of the policy makers and advisers, and the pressure from self interested financial community that caused governments to de-regulate, not the inability of intelligent humans to understand the problem.

Truth to tell, the conventional economist’s beliefs, and beliefs is all they were, suited their ideological conviction that regulation is a thing always to be avoided in favour of market based mechanisms. To rationalize this they had to construct the imaginary all knowing risk calculators as the actors who protected the whole system. But they were pure fiction, because the risks could not be calculated. The ordinary people, and now Obama, are fortunately a little more subtle and intelligent. They see the problem and they see a simple solution. If the risks associated with these assets can’t be calculated, its simple – don’t let the banks invest in them. It is simple to put in place regulations that block their ownership by banks. This Obama now intends to do, against the advice of his economists. He also intends to limit the size of the banks so that if some still make bad decisions with depositor’s money, they will be small enough when they fail so as not to threaten to bring the whole system down, forcing government to bail them out.

Obama’s and the people’s understanding is absolutely correct. Perhaps they should all get Ph.D.’s, but really it is just practical common sense. And to be honest, there are quite a few economists who agree. But they have been cast in the past as pro-regulation, which is a bad thing to be, and thus have been silenced by the dominant view within the profession. Price based instruments, the dominant view argues, are always better. So they still constantly talk about the challenges of pricing risk as the policy problem, and then excuse the banks because it is so, so hard to do in these cases. Which it is. Indeed it is impossible in these kinds of cases. But they are just wrong in defining the problem, as the experience of the last couple of years has clearly established, and thus fail in reasoning through what to do. It is of no policy use to sympathize with the banks for how hard it is, and to puzzle over how they might better price such risks in order to make policy. It is time for a more practical, intelligent, fact based analysis if we are to have good policy. If it is too hard to price risks, and banks don’t know enough to avoid them, the simple solution is to block the banks from holding such assets. Which means tough regulations that prohibit them from doing so. QED.