Fifty years till the end of fish stocks is the conclusion of a major study. Seems we've gone through one-third of all fish stock already. The way we do it is completely fish out a stock, then head on to the next. You can ask Canadian Cod Fishermen about that. Oh wait, that species is dead - the cod fishermen, that is, not just the cod. Because the entire fish stock was destroyed, and it never came back. The British fisherman saying how they don't believe the study, and how implementing it would destroy them, might want to visit Newfoundland and see what happens when politics trumps science. And no this won't be solved by any individual government, this requires an international solution with teeth, by which I mean warships seizing fishing ships which oversfish and selling them for scrap.

China is having a nice little summit in Africa. Something to do with trade - China needs resources, especially oil. Africa has resources and needs money, manufactured goods and development aid that doesn't come attached to whining about killing too many tribesman with machetes. Isn't it wonderful to see a match made in the heavenly kingdom?

Terror Hysteria has a price. For British Airlines, that price was about a 100 million since the liquid scare.

The IMF "praises" Latin American Growth. Let me translate: high oil prices, socialized properly = reduction in poverty rates. Reduction in poverty rates = increased demand. Increased demand = increased growth. Continued reduction in production costs in offshoring destinations = easier to keep inflation under control. There are two questions - how much of the demand is being fulfilled internally and what happens when the oil boom market ends. And they always end, though I imagine this one still has a lot of legs in it. Will some of these countries be able to get a self sustaining cycle going which doesn't require infusions of hard currency based on a non-renewable resource?

More After the Jump

The BBC reports that a number of gunmen escaped a Gaza mosque by mingling with a huge crowd of women who came when a call went out on the radio. Two of the women were killed. Gaza's fallen off the map, and I'm quite sure the Israelis can starve the Palestinians into quiesence for a time, but this is a sign of a society where the baseline opposition to Israel is fantastically high.

Steve Waldman suggests that the best way to deal with the risk in hedge funds is to not allow them to be limited liability companies, but for each investor to be fully on the hook as a partner. He suggests that hedge funds serve very little of the sort of value to an economy which normal corporations serve, and that since that's the case, and since limited liability is granted by government to encourage companies to form to do things it wants done, simply removing that is a better way to reduce systemic risk, than to start in with lots of different regulations. I don't know that I agree with his cynicism on regulation as always being politicians looking for cash, but I rather like his idea. By all means - go for high returns - but accept the risks that come with that in return.

Richard Fisher, head of the Fed in Dallas blames screwed up Fed policy during 2002 and 2003 to bad data - inflation looked less than it really was, so the Fed kept rates less than they should have been. I'm glad the Fed is finally getting around to noticing the elephant in the room, but honestly, we've known inflation was understated since at least the late nineties - underestimation was deliberately built into the measurements in order to reduce government COLA payments and to allow overstatement of GDP growth. Smart policymakers would have remembered this and accounted for it in making policy, but apparently no one remembers anything. There is also a fetizisation of numbers amongst technocrats, because without the numbers so many of their pretty tools don't work and they have to rely on human judgement. The answer is to not screw with the numbers for political reasons, but if you do, you'll have to rely on judgement, scary as that may be.