America Needs TAHAL

 

From Upmanu Lall (pic), by SciAm: 

There is no central planning for water investments in the U.S. Compare that with the situation for energy, where we have the Energy Information Administration and the Department of Energy. Whether they do a good job or not, there are at least some people tasked with thinking about what should be done and to put some requests for money on the table. In contrast, we have seven or eight different federal agencies with some sort of jurisdiction on water. And that structure is then replicated at the state level and at the local level. 

 ...with agriculture, which is the largest water user, there are options such as agrivoltaics and shifting which crops are grown where. So you start thinking about restructuring the whole system. That is not just a question of liberating money. It’s more a question of getting some good, higher-level planning and thinking in place and then putting money behind these plans and innovations.

 One big concern is the California drought. The agriculture industry there is at an extremely high risk of dying.  More generally, we will see a slowly evolving epidemic of water system failures like the one in Jackson.

Dr Upmanu Lall is another Indian talent lending his brain to solve American problems. I find funny the expression "liberating money". But Lall is very good. TAHAL is my alma mater, תכנון המים לישראל - Water Planning for Israel, a national water planning company, that in its heyday had 800 employees and did much work in Latin America and Africa. 

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Wasted Efforts

 
Michael Pettis wrote:

They failed to recognize in their projections that as investment levels remained high – higher than the economy could productively absorb – an increasing share of growth could only be created by that part of the economy that operated under soft-budget constraints. 

This "growth" – which was really just activity and not growth – could only exist as long as the government and banking system were willing and able to tolerate an unsustainable increase in the debt associated with that activity. 

That means that as soon as debt levels became too high to continue managing, or once policymakers decided they had to address the debt before it became too high to manage, we would see much of the previous GDP growth reversed from the economy. 

Janos Kornai (Kornhauser) already discovered this in Budapest. Communist forced industrialization led to much activity and much waste. 

The Canaanite Dog

 

The Canaanite dog is a pariah, a feral breed descended from the domestic dog of the region. At Ashkelon, they found a 700 dogs cemetery and the dogs were Canaan. It is yellow with black and white patches. The wiki says that it is very common, although I used to trek in the Negev and Sinai, never saw it. 

Hank, Cash, Cline

 

About Angora Cats

The Angora Cat. I never met one. 

Angora should not be allowed to get fat. This elegant cat has fine boning and too much weight can be harmful. 

China fears a bad harvest and famine. It is hoarding soya and fertilizers. 

ICL shares will surely rise.  

Flint gets $626 million for incompetence (Continued)

The City of Flint was unable to maintain and operate its water treatment plant, and the untreated water dissolved the lead in its old pipes. President Obama declared a national emergency and the city received a present of 626 million dollars. For the last month the city of Jackson, the capital of Mississippi, has been without water supply. I understand that the pumps were not maintained and one broke down. The city had no money for the reparation and after a time, the second pump also went out of service. Jackson is 90% African and is blaming the city's former White residents for leaving and abandoning them. I presume Biden will give them national emergency funds to repair the pumps, and that will not be the end, because other Black cities are in a similar pre-emergency situation. 

Anti-Westphalian Trends

 

Henry Kissinger notes that in the Middle East the trend is toward the dissolution of the States: Libya has no central government and its large area is divided among several warring tribes and political factions. Syria has been divided into tribal areas and the formal dictator controls Damascus if even that. Iraq is divided into Sunni and Shi'a parts and a semi-independent Kurdish statelet. Iran is a dictatorship ruled by a utopian clergy. Saudia is owned by one family and Islam's most extremist missionary movement, the Wahhabis. It doesn't look very stable. In all of Africa, there is not one stable Westphalian state. Obviously, the peoples living in the region are unable to organize themselves into working States. Kissinger suggests that they could fall under the protection of willing world power, and mentions China, India, and Russia. Some kind of neo-colonialism.