Hail, Caesar : would that it were so simple

I saw the trailer for the next Coen Brothers movie when I watched The Big Short.

(Mental Note: I'm almost reviewing a trailer here!)

It looks like a celebration of Hollywood's great celluloid movie ride. The basis seems to be George Clooney playing a forgetful actor in a Ben Hur/Bible style epic, with several other classic movies (sailors on the town/russian submarines/westerns/Busby Berkeley) being made on the surrounding sound stages.

The Coen Brothers seem to have packed it with well-known movie faces too, and there will no doubt be some twisted surprises.

Although the cinema trailer said 'Next Year', I suspect it really meant 2016.

Would that it were so simple. Here's a whole scene in the making...

The Big Short

I just watched The Big Short, the movie about the financial crisis of 2007-2008, brought about by the collapse of the sub-prime mortgage market in the USA. It's based on what really happened and derived from the Michael Lewis book, The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, so the characters in the movie are based upon real people. Its not really spoilers to describe any of this, although the movie does dig into some of the Teflon-coated dishonesty rampant in the system.

This was the 2005-2008 era of creating rebundled mortgages (collateralised debt obligations/CDOs) and their even more arcane derivatives (synthetic CDAs).

Hedge fund manager Michael Burry (Christian Bale) discovers that there's a time bomb in many US mortgages, when the interest rates change from the 'lure rate' to an ongoing rate at around three times as much, mainly clicking in during 2Q07. These mortgages have been bundled into packages generally labelled as Triple-A rated, despite their low quality (sub-prime) loan profiles.

He's not the only one on to this and a few other players also delve into the situation, which is more rotten than most could dream, based around a mix of greed and ignorance. There's also complicity from the regulators and later the government, which has to bail out the worst excesses to stop a complete crash of the US financial system.

I can understand that the subject matter might not be everyone's cup of tea, with all the financial lingo, but the movie makers recognised this too. From time to time we have little cutaway scenes like chef Anthony Bourdain explaining blended securitisation by comparison with seafood stew using three-day-old halibut and Margot Robbie drinking champagne in a bubblebath, explaining the CDO marketplace to the cinemagoers.

There's a strong mainly male cast in this 'boys in Wall Street' movie with Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling and Brad Pitt among the players in what is a strong ensemble piece.

At one level its almost a caper story with the big short being the bet against the outcome (i.e. that the US property market will tank). It would be a caper except that the CDOs really happened and people were evicted from homes, lost jobs and billions were wiped out of real peoples' pension funds as a result.

Hardly any culpable bankers lost anything from this (although Bear Stearns and Lehman were toppled) although a Fed bail-out and quick Wall Street shuffle later and those that were out of jobs could just pop up again somewhere else.

Today we don't quite have the old-style CDOs, but the new emerging instrument is called a "bespoke tranche" opportunity. Yes, get ready for it to happen again.

mystery shopping and a spark

A couple of days ago I showed a selection of items recommended to me by Amazon.

I worked out that they were components from inside of a toilet cistern. I don't think I'll be buying anything from that selection somehow.

The next day I was provided another Amazon recommendation. This time it took the idea of toilets, plus movie, plus German language and suggested this:

My guess is that it knows that I (a) watch Amazon Movies (b) have been watching a German language series recently (Deutschland '83) (c) something to do with plumbing, although I'm less sure where this has come from.

Separately from all of that, Marks and Spencer recently started a new Sparks card and sent me a special offer. I'd got just over 6000 points (I reckon 6000 points represents about £600 of spending).

There were actually five offers of similar value and I could select any one I liked! I looked for the best one. It was 20% off all eggs, in store, valid for the next six days.

Well, you can imagine how I wanted to rush to get that offer! I could save maybe 50p-60p on a dozen eggs if I hurried along - and if I selected the offer on-line first.

This is a new level of complication with a loyalty card. Offers that can only be pre-selected on-line ahead of purchase.

Now as luck would have it, when I was leaving the site, a questionnaire popped up. Normally I ignore them all, but I couldn't resist on this occasion. I like to think that my answers are why I got the explanatory email from Sparks about their offers not always being right.

5 million barrels makes all the difference in the world

With all this talk of oil prices, I thought I'd have a look at the consumption and pricing graphs. All the press is reporting about volatility, pump prices and the re-entry of Iran to the marketplace,

I created the above slightly hand drawn graphs by comparing the barrel price with global output statements and an estimate of world demand. Notably the Nynex forward pricing appears completely bonkers with a barrel price swing of between $20 to $90 through to the end of 2017.

It looks as if no-one has a clue.

I was more intrigued to look at the sensitivity of the price around the break-even production point. It makes for interesting reading. Excuse my rough numbers, but they are close enough to illustrate the point.

The world consumes about 94.5 million barrels per day. When it produced less than this amount the (say 92 million barrels per day), the price was around $100 per barrel. On track where production equals demand it is around an America-friendly $65. Now the world is producing 97 million barrels per day, the price has dropped to $30 per barrel. That includes the Americans adding in shale oil, plus the Saudis increasing their output to hold market share and Iran coming back into the market after sanctions were lifted.

Those factors appear to affect the last 5 million barrels of production and crazily create the $70 swing in price.

Break even points are very different based upon which country is producing the stuff. Poke a stick in the ground in Iran and it will come out black from oil.

By comparison, the Americans in self-named Boomtown, USA (also known as Williston, North Dakota) are having to run high pressure fracking systems whose economically sound point is around double the current oil price.

Meanwhile tankers sit moored around the seven seas, each containing 2 million barrels of oil, today worth $60 million but possibly worth north of $100 million if sold at the right time.

This whole demand curve is strikingly non-linear, through a mix of politics and the sort of non climate friendly pricing algorithms that only machines can understand. Presumably there will be more roller coaster upsets through the rest of 2016 as the era of fossil fuels gets restructured.

inspired by my shopping trends?

Yikes.

It looks like a system error?

These robot shopping systems still have a way to go.

no wavering from the agenda

Cameron pitched up at 14:00CET for his 30 minute handwaver, expressly about his four EU negotiation points before the Brexit referendum.

• Competitiveness: The UK to push for stronger efforts to make the EU economy more competitive, through cutting red tape for business and deepening the single market. I suppose no EU country would oppose such a 'no brainer' but any direct steps will be hard to achieve in time for the referendum.
• Sovereignty (nee Treaty): The UK insists on an opt-out from the EU treaty goal of “ever closer Union”. It also wants the EU to give national parliaments more powers to stall or reject new EU rules. For this one, the UK is likely to be given a written commitment that the Lisbon Treaty rights for national parliaments will be upheld. In other words, yes but it will take ages and committees to change the treaties.
• Euro “ins” and “outs”: The UK wants safeguards that the Eurozone members can't outvote the non-euro countries on EU policies (especially financial services). It is predicted that with nine EU countries outside the euro, adjustments to voting should be feasible but will again take time to figure out. This was being discussed on the day the GBP was unexpectedly sliding to €1.30
• Migration:Cameron has called for stricter rules on migration, in particular curbs on in-work benefits for EU nationals coming to the UK. This is the one where there is likely to be large disagreements, although possibly Cameron has built wiggle room into the 'four years qualifying period' part of his statements?

The upshot of it all was Cameron was able to say he'd like to conclude the negotiations by end February, but if it takes longer then so be it. I'm guessing he could get 3 of 4 but the migration one is unlikely to land unless there's some significant changes.

None of the questioners in the last 8 minutes mentioned that UK has 73 MEPs of which 22 (30%) are UKIP hardcore Eurosceptics determined to undermine UK's EU role.

Cameron also stated that he didn't need to have the referendum until end 2017. Perhaps an interesting way to manage UK expectations: announcing the potential for slippage from May 2016 in a 30 minute slot in Switzerland?

And we've just seen how useless the pollsters are, so I suppose the whole referendum vote will still net down to some sort of personality contest about who the voters want to kick out from (UK) office.

Davos discuss the meltdown

There's a few more interesting topics in the Davos snow today.

With global stock markets going into meltdown yesterday, the comments in Davos about global growth in 2016 being 'disappointing and uneven' might be an understatement.


The supposition of these economists is that growth is being held back by (wait for it!) low productivity, aging populations, and the legacies of the global financial crisis.

That'd be high debt, low investment, and weak banks burdening advanced economies - although all that new money being created by the Central Bank in the Eurozone must surely be for a reason?

I can't help thinking that there's other structural forces at play. The new ways of doing business mean that huge pieces of traditional infrastructure are being impacted. Virtual shopping, Printed cars like the early one below. Public/Private domain distinctions.

No wonder companies sit on $7 trillion of cash - they don't know where to invest/what to develop next. Mergers & acquisitions maybe but capital expenditure less likely, all implying low growth. It does raise a few leadership questions - beyond the bluffers and duffers.

Later today, Cameron will present on UK matters which will certainly include the Brexit debate, and there's already been a session on finance.

For finance the buzzphrase seems to be about fintech a.k.a. financial technology. By comparison 'Regulation' seems to have dropped down the list somewhat, or maybe that's a feature of this type of meeting.

A Davos re-spin of the 2008 financial crash implies it was caused by fragmentation in the regulatory world - huh? - anything but the bankers themselves. Not the highly target-driven twenty-somethings given full access to global markets to trade using other peoples' money. Oh no. And I'm not sure that it has really changed that much?

And here's the thing...Fintech inevitably gets linked to disruptive technologies which, by their nature, are the ones less likely to be regulated. Anyone spot the place to drive the coach and six horse string? (gratuitous Tarantino reference)

A quick example of a digital disrupters is the algorithms used for energy trading and risk management. Might these robot calculations be having a part to play in the current oil pricing? Just because these systems don't look like Cybermen doesn't mean they aren't software driven. And now we should start adding virtual money into the mix - has anyone an inkling of how to regulate that?

get rich quick in Davos?

The once a year occupation of Davos is underway again, with the mega-rich taking over the Swiss town to talk about the world economy.

Personally, I've found Davos to be a slightly creepy place, for reasons I can't quite pin down.

Strip away the fancy marquees and street branding and there's a sleepy looking ribbon development underneath, with a few tell-tale trappings of Swiss affluence. Then, towards the centre there is a curious wooden sculpture comprising a procession of people walking into a lake carrying umbrellas.

Nonetheless, I can understand why a premium Swiss ski resort in the middle of a country famous for quiet banking and taxation regimes gets selected. Placing the conference 2.5 hours by road or train from a main airport also limits access, although the staff can still get in to run things and helicopter is still available for those that need to get there quickly.

Alongside the rich folk, there's a good smattering of advisors, with some well-known banking and tax specialists in the mix, as well as a few more -er- specialised organisations. They help maintain the 62 folk who apparently equate to half the world's total wealth. Of course, the WEF conference is larger than that, with some 2,500 delegates.

I'm interested to see if there is can be something for everyman at this world event. It would be so easy to run wallpaper presentations that gently summarise without really bringing new enlightenment and to keep the good stuff off stage in the one to ones.

If the real 1% are even present, they'll all have huge run-rates of software licences, confectionery, ball bearings, beer and fashion items to keep themselves in cash. The very top of the wealth list is characterised by these type of people. I can't help thinking of Weeds or Breaking Bad though. That need to have a car wash or a cake shop to help run the funds through.

Further down we start to get the properly 'diversified','investments' and 'hedge funds' people who'd rather not say what the main secret of the success comprises. And of course there's a few 'casinos' in the mix too.

So let's have a peek at today's world and then today's WEF topics:

First, the world.

• Oil supply Now it's down at $27 a barrel, even the middle east must be worrying. The UK economic viability point for its own production is around $60. Norway is slightly less and the USA is slightly more. The middle east can run at about $30. Now Iran is also back in the game, the entire world is running production at around the lowest possible breakpoint and with a massive and growing surplus. Cheap fossil fuel implies burning the planet and runs against the climate change agenda.
• Eve of Destruction How does that song go? Barry McGuire may have sung back in 1965, but this time it's Stephen Hawking warning about nuclear war, global warming and genetically engineered viruses posing threats to humanity, alongside scientific progress that will create “new ways things can go wrong”. Yikes
• Re-bordering: As Brussels scraps asylum laws that the first country a refugee enters is responsible for any claim, it is changing completely the way that border structures operate throughout the whole EU bloc.
• Rich money: The little scheme dreamt up in Euro-land to pump €60bn per month into the Euro, starting in March. That's quantitive easing money lobbed in at the bond end which flows through to the more affluent end of the market - whilst trying to stop the Euro from capsizing. Pass the bubbly.
• Cyber attacks, of course: If ever I pick up a technical journal, the front cover has something about cyber attacks. As we drift further into Internet of Things and clever cars, the predictions are about off-shored nation state engineering of cyber attacks.
• Loony tunes: What do I know, but it all seems to be going very wobbly in America, what with the President on his farewell tour and Trump having a love-fest with that Alaskan tea-party Palin woman. Large chunks of America seem to love all this stuff.
• China broken and fatter: After its share price rises, China is now jittery and struggling - which is knocking through to everyone else. There's also that recently rescinded 'one child' gap creating a kind of population time-bomb as it ascends into and beyond the workplace. There's also a new obesity and diabetes healthcare epidemic, as well as the west working out how many ways to sell sticks (cigarettes) to the Chinese.
• Climate Change: Should be in the list, but somehow the 62 people = 50% wealth or .1% people = 80% wealth signpost away from this topic.

There's more, of course, but that'll do: The World Economic Forum presentations are in a different vein:

• Top technology trends - Buying that gold Rolex just got easier: Yes - a last minute Christmas $20k gift, bought via an iPhone app. The related trends are: The age of everywhere (like IoT)/ data to add context/ on-demand inventory/ true global commerce/ virtual reality shopping
  
  And my personal favourite - "sustainable shopping" - that's "buy/use/sell" to you and me and will probably appear in Ebay's tag line anytime soon.
• Greatest users of mobile eCommerce?Why, the Brits! Then the Germans and in third place the Americans. 28% of all eCommerce in Britain is mobile generated. Shop till you drop?
• Healthcare in the home: Use of sensors and home monitoring, which is already underway. Then it talks about delivering medicines from one room in the home to another by drone.
  
  Ok. I guess the presentations don't really want to give away anything that could seriously make money.
• Gender equality: Using the index of 0 to 1 for parity of representation, women score 0.0 on Politics, 0.6 on economics and close to 1.0 on Education and Healthcare. For the conference, they'd score 0.18, which is still a low representation.
• Fourth Industrial Revolution Billions of people connected by mobile devices, with unprecedented processing power, storage capacity, and access to knowledge. Possibilities multiplied by emerging technology breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, robotics, the Internet of Things, autonomous vehicles, 3-D printing, nanotechnology, biotechnology, materials science, energy storage, and quantum computing.
  
  Let's face it, there's a lot of people in the rich list that made it with software. There'll be plenty more with all this stuff. Assuming that the government/commerce/citizen triangle can be figured out.
• I, and a Robot The storyline that workers will have greater employment opportunites if their occupation undergoes some degree of computer automation. Just watch out if you see anyone designing a Cylon or a Replicant.

So if the Fourth Industrial Revolution is the overall theme of the conference, with 1) Automation, 2) China, 3) Stuttering emerging markets and 4) What Britain decides to do in Europe all in the mix, then perhaps we could expect some interesting viewpoints?

More likely it's a choreographed move away from the ongoing themes of bankers gone wild, new war zones, terrorism, migration and climate?

Then again, the folk at the conference can probably work out that there's money to be made from the fourth industrial revolution, and maybe it's better for them to keep all the really good stuff secret.

The Hateful Eight in Tarantino's Movieverse

Ever since the Vega Brothers turned up split between two Tarantino movies (Vic played by Madsen in Reservoir Dogs and Vincent played by Travolta in Pulp Fiction) I've been aware of the emerging Tarantino Universe.

The most obvious reference would probably be in the $5 milkshake scene in Pulp Fiction when Uma Thurman's character describes Fox Force Five (i.e. Kill Bill) to John Travolta's character. This was long before the Kill Bill movie was made, of course.

Tarantino indicates that The Hateful Eight is his eighth movie and indeed it is emblazoned across the start. In practice, there's a few more out there where he had a significant role such as True Romance or Natural Born Killers. I reckon the real-time chronology of their settings would be something like:

1. Django Unchained
2. The Hateful Eight
3. From Dusk Till Dawn 3: The Hangman's Daughter (DVD only)
4. Inglorious Basterds
5. Reservoir Dogs
6. True Romance
7. Natural Born Killers
8. Four Rooms
9. Jackie Brown
10. Death Proof
11. Planet Terror (kind of - e.g. the Missing Reel effect)
12. From Dusk Till Dawn
13. From Dusk Till Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money (DVD only)
14. Curdled (a play)
15. Pulp Fiction
16. Kill Bill Volume 1
17. Kill Bill Volume 2

Others have drawn complex diagrams showing the interdependencies between these movies in Tarantino's 'Realer than Real' Universe and the 'Movies Movie' Universe, which contains the kind of films his characters from Realer than Real would go to see.

For me it was the Ultra Panavision 70mm 2.76:1 version of this newest Tarantino movie. This was proper event cinema, an overture before the film, a popcorn intermission.

The outdoor scenes looked stunning on this ultra-wide format and when a large part played out inside Millie's Haberdashery (the stagecoach roadhouse) at times you could every nook and cranny of the room, which became useful for looking out for clues towards other activities.

I can't really talk about plot (which works on different levels) and being a Tarantino, there's some stark and flinch-inducing moments.

At a kind of deconstructed level there's a setup in the snowy wilds of Wyoming, and then an extended play-like format in the roadhouse, based around a series of deliberately archetypal western characters including bounty hunters, sheriffs and a hangman, still raw from the Civil War.

My first impression was of a somewhat slow-burn movie, but progressively the howling winds and snow and burrow into the subconscious.

As I became further immersed in this world I realised I'd got no clue about how things would turn out. Tarantino's pacing was like a Fibonacci spiral, cranking up as the movie progressed.

Sure, I could recognise some leading clues, but there was no way that I could have predicted what actually took place.

vintage downton alien

An intriguing photography-related article appeared across some of the media feeds over the last day or two.

For some time I've been tinkering wth 'old-school' analogue lenses to use with modern digital cameras. In my case they have been inexpensive yet high-quality ones which can be connected to the latest digital still and movie cameras. Good control of depth of field to get that movie-like blurriness, compactness coupled with simple manual control.

It turns out that the professionals are doing it too. The sharpness and extended depth of field of modern kit has created a need for extensive post-processing to get the right 'feel' for the some pieces. Period dramas get singled out for attention, although I'd expect anything with a more arty look to need that blurriness.

Instead of trying to post process it, some of the film and high-end television cameramen are now recommending the use of so called 'vintage' lenses to create the effect naturally as part of the filming.

Downton Abbey gets mentioned in the articles, as does the buying and selling of lenses from well-known movies classic such as Alien.

Although, I'm not sure that Alien was going for a period drams look when it was created?

bicycle targets and silencers

I've loaded my annual targets for my cycling for 2016 and am already on the way (just).

More bizarrely, I noticed the Daily Telegraph encouraging a bicycle target aimed at buying a 'dream bicycle' for Jeremy Corbyn.

It's another dig by the newspaper that encouraged non-Labour supporters to spend £3 to, in the Telegraph's words, 'destroy the Labour party'. This time the campaign appears more whimsical, but still runs the dog-whistle politics of destabilisation.

A leading proponent of these subliminal high frequency influences has been UK-living non-dom Lynton Crosby, who bizarrely secured a knighthood for his extremely well-paid strategising to get Cameron elected. Surely the cash should have been the reward enough, but as he doesn't appear to like Cameron, maybe the 'Sir' was akin to a silencer?

Deutschland '83

With yesterday's passing reference to secret services, I remembered I've been watching some spy films recently. There's the James Bond style fast action ones but then a whole genre of slower paced movies, usually with the Berlin Wall included somewhere.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy which re-appeared on TV in its movie form with Gary Oldman a few day ago. A bunch of the people that moved into later spy television series were in the cast, so last year gave us other beige-world dramas with rain, double decker buses and German borders.

London Spy (shown at the end of last year) was of a similar slow pace - I had a look through the shooting script and there are only about 40 spoken words in the first four pages. Of course, the spy aspect was secondary in that particular story, although it followed the conventions.

Earlier in 2015 we had 'The Game' which was set in the 70s and featured plenty of intra episode plot points to remember. I suppose that's why its easier to get something like 'Death in Paradise' recommissioned, with every episode self-contained comprising 1)a murder 2)some false leads 3)a grand reveal - often with something that only the clever detective could spot 4)a side line jolly jape like buying a rusty boat or learning to water-ski badly.

Anyway, its a long way around to saying I've been watching Deutschland '83 over the last couple of weeks and am thoroughly enjoying it.

There may be some remarkable co-incidences that help the story along, but it seems to be a good way to produce a snappy alternative to the frequently brown-toned spy format. The filming itself is also super saturated and entertainingly framed.

We get the East German border guard who is forced to become a double agent in the West and the inevitable culture shock when he sees the supermarkets for the first time (Sweet dreams are made of this) and the humorous hardship of another double agent forced to stay in the wealthy west as well as rafts of other passing characters.

Set in the 80s at the peak of the Reagan missile deployments, we get Nena's 99 Luftballon playing on the radios both sides of the wall, with the original lyrics that the balloons triggered a nuclear alert. In the German song it was a suspected UFO and some suggestions of street riots whilst the English version had a software bug and political escalation. They both scrambled jet fighters with flying knights thinking they were Captain Kirk. Oh well.

And that's just a side line in this fast moving and sometimes deliberately awkward spy piece. I'm finding it a delight to watch and a whole other style for some of the spy genre to consider. It shares some spirit with 'Good Bye, Lenin!' which is a German movie set just after the wall came down.

So here's Nena, mainly in German but on this subversive version with a bit of French added to the chanson.