Stuff Jos van der Woude cares about

This week the Dutch minority government led by Mr. Mark Rutte fell apart because it could not agree on an austerity package worth 14 billion euros with the populist Freedom party of Mr. Geert Wilders on whose parliamentary support it depends.

In order to comply with the Maastricht treaty rule of limiting the budget deficit to 3% of GDP the Dutch government had to find 14 billion in cuts for the 2013 budget. This was totally unexpected and rather embarrassing in light of the continued lecturing by the same Dutch government of their Southern European colleagues on the very same subject earlier this year.

Mr. Geert Wilder's argument for withdrawing his parliamentary support for the minority government was that he cannot in good conscience agree to cuts that will result in an ordinary elderly Dutch person - the famous and fictitious Mr. Henk senior - having 500 euros less to spend in 2013.

Have you ever owed a debt? Then you will know that, as long as you owe a bank a single euro/dollar/yen/whatever, they own you. If you cannot pay the interest due, they inevitable show a legal contract, signed by you, entitling them to do a bunch of very unpleasant things backed by the full force of law.

The funny thing is that in the context of governments borrowing money it was somehow always presented the other way around. Investors, if they were really very well behaved and played nice, were granted the privilege to lend their money to the Dutch government. Why was this? I suppose the biggest reason was that lending money to Western governments in general and to the Dutch government in particular was perceived as being a very, very safe investment. I understand earlier this year the Dutch government secured a short term loan with a negative interest rate. this means investors, in this case banks, were paying money to have their money deposited in the coffers of the Dutch State. Now why would they do that? The answer is that in a very unsafe world, investors are all struggling to keep their money somewhere safe. Especially if you are a bank and do not trust other banks with your money.

It is this perception that governments are a very safe place to deposit your money that is in question in this crisis. This perception is formalized in the credit rating of a country. Presently the Netherlands is one of the few countries left in Europe with a triple-A status, the highest mark a country can get for being a safe place for your money.


The auction room at the Ministry of Finance where loans are being secured by the Dutch government. See the NOS TV item on the dsta (in Dutch).

Because of this perceived safe haven status the Dutch government can borrow money at a rate of 2.3%. Germany is currently perceived to be the safest place for your money, so it can borrow at a rate of 1.72%. Spain is thought to be less safe, and must pay 5.67%, not to mention Greece, which at some point last year faced a mind boggling 20% interest rate. Just for reference the USA can borrow presently at a rate of 1.99%, in dollars that is. Although a bunch of financial indicators are less favorable compared to The Netherlands and Germany. The reasons for this are complex and could be the subject of another blog entry but in essence it comes down to a simple fact: the USA are presently top dog in the world.

So to put all this in perspective some comparisons
The total Dutch outstanding debt is estimated at 407 billion euros. At a rate of 2.3% this means the Dutch government must pay some 9.4 billion euros interest each year. Were the Dutch government be perceived as safe as Germany this sum would be only 7 billion. On the other hand if the Dutch were in the same position as the Spanish, they would have to pay a whopping 23 billion euros interest a year. The really, really bad thing about all this is that perceptions can change very quickly. And everything depends on perception here.

Some more perspective
The entire Dutch defense budget is about 8 billion euros a year. Fact 1: getting rid of defense completely will not even help the Dutch in 2013 to stay within the 3% deficit norm, since 14 billion is needed for that. Fact 2: If the Dutch were deemed as safe as Germany, roughly a quarter of the entire Dutch defense budget could be paid for by the savings in interest payments alone. Fact 3: If the Dutch government were to have no debt whatsoever, they could fund the entire current Defense budget with the savings on interest payments. Easy, and have some spare change at that. Why do I bring up Defense in this context you ask? Well it is an historic fact that any country not attending to its defenses in the long run will get invaded/conquered/destroyed by someone who just simply can get away with it. If you do not like my Defense example, please realize the Dutch government's total spending on foreign aid amounts to 3.4 billion a year and do the math yourself.

Even more perspective
The Netherlands has roughly 16 million inhabitants. So the total debt per Dutchman is about: 25.000 euros. Yes, each and every Dutchman, woman and child owes roughly 25.000 euros and pays 588 euros interest per year. At German interest rates, every Dutchman would pay only 438 euro interest per year and at Spanish rates that would be 1438 euros per year.

The uptake of all this?
"There ain't no such thing as a free lunch" is an old American lesson which is finally being taught to governments in Europe. I suppose my biggest revelation while researching this issue is the realization that the relative standing of the Dutch government in the pecking order of financial trust is a big deal. Having to pay 9.4 billion a year (Netherlands now) versus 23 billion a year (Dutch debt at Spain's rates) dwarfs all political discussion and bickering about budget cuts. It also puts into perspective the real spending choices political parties have while owing so much money to others. Oh, and by the way you did get the fact that the Netherlands spends more money on paying interest on its debt than on defense, did you? Good, I thought you did.

PS in reality outstanding debt of the Netherlands is on average financed with seven year loans. This is done to insulate against short term interest fluctuations. So calculating the interest due on all outstanding debt based on the daily interest rate is a deliberate simplification on my part. It is really complicated stuff folks.

Now why would any government go to the trouble of borrowing money at such cost if they have the legal right to simply print the stuff? This will the the subject of a later blog entry, so stay tuned!

So I am very particular about watches. Not about the looks, mind you. No, I care about their prime function: keeping time. This preoccupation started when I received a Junghans Mega 1 as a birthday gift, back in 1990. This was the first radio controlled wrist watch in the world. It synced itself once a day using radio waves with a transmitter in Frankfurt Germany. This radio transmitter was hooked to an atomic clock. It does not get much more precise than that! Unfortunately it had a couple of downsides. The first being that you had to be within a 1200 km range of Frankfurt, Germany. I live in the Netherlands, so that was in range of the transmitter. But the very first summer I owned the watch I went on vaction to the Bahamas. Alas, that is definitely out of range. When that happens the watch behaves as a 'normal' digital watch, it simply does not sync itself with the atomic reference clock in Frankfurt, Germany. The second downside was more serious. The Mega 1 has a leather strap which incorporates the aerial for radio reception. I happen to perspire a lot. So after a year or so, the leather strap was worn out. I ended up replacing this strap once every year for a couple of years. The cost of this was prohibitive, so I quit wearing the watch.

After that I received another birthday gift in 1998. A Seiko Kinetic Titanium watch. Cool! No more batteries and very allergy and perspiration resistant. I lost the time syncing capability, that was too bad. Another - related - downside of this watch is that it does not have a perpetual calender. Every 30 day month I have to advance the calender one day manually. Not to mention leap years...

So already in 1998 I envisioned the 'Ultimate Watch': It syncs itself to an atomic reference clock anywhere on earth (the fact that it does not work in outer space is acceptable for the time being), it does not need a battery (by using solar or kinetic energy) and the strap is made of Titanium (no perspiration woes for me).

Too bad nobody could make a watch like this forever. Until I saw this March 2012 announcement:


Meet the Seiko Astron GPS solar. Available in selected stores around the World from August 2012.

This wrist watch totally meets all of my requirements except for one. With a recommended consumer price of over 3000 euros it is prohibitively expensive. Oh well, I better start saving...

Once I really do own this watch I foresee another problem. I will need to go to Kathmandu, Nepal and find out if my watch really automatically syncs to official Nepal time, UTC+05:45. Yes that is 5 hours and 45 minutes ahead of Greenwich Mean Time.

On a side note
In the Junghans entry on Wikipedia it is mentioned that Junghans and Seiko are working together on a truly 'global' watch that knows about all the 39 official time zones on Earth. Aha...

Today I installed and configured my first web blogging system. I used the Simple PHP Blog software, version 0.8. After that I wrote the first couple of articles.

Things I like about Simple PHP Blog:

- it is really simple; works out of "the box"
- no database necessary

Things I do not like about Simple PHP Blog:
- after entering an article the screen goes blank (this is fixed in version 0.8.1)
- after entering a comment the screen goes blank - maybe it is too simple ... 

So am I being serious with this? Am I going to keep blogging? I do not know. For now, I am just testing ...

Today April 12th 2012 it is exactly 808 years ago the knights of the Fourth Crusade sacked the city of Constantinople.


The painting on the right is called "Entry of the Crusaders into Constantinople" by Eugène Delacroix, 1840.

This is one of those pivotal moments in history. Its importance cannot be easily overestimated, even from a distance of 808 years. What happened?

The aim of the Fourth Crusade was to recapture Jerusalem for Christianity. Boniface of Montferrat the leader of the Crusade, with full papal approval and support, negotiated a shipping contract with the Venetians to transport 33500 crusaders to Egypt for an agreed sum of 85000 silver marks. The Venetians took a full year to build 50 war galleys and 450 transports. Too bad only 12000 crusaders showed up in Venice with 51000 silver marks. The Doge of Venice was not amused. He demanded that the Crusaders invade the rival port of Zara in Croatia as a form of financial compensation. Some of the crusaders refused and returned home. The majority of the army followed their leaders to Zara in an attempt to prevent the crusade's complete failure. A letter from the Pope to the leadership threatening excommunication if the army attacked Christian neighbors was concealed from the army. The Christian city of Zara was sacked by the Christian army of the Fourth Crusade on November 23, 1202. When Pope Innocent III heard of the sack of Zara he sent a letter to the crusaders excommunicating them. Out of fear that this would dissolve the army the leaders of the crusade decided not to inform the army of this. Anyway, a little later, regarding the Crusaders as having been blackmailed by the Venetians, The Pope rescinded the excommunications against all non-Venetians in the expedition. Boniface of Montferrat, meanwhile, met with the Byzantine prince Alexios Angelos, the son of the recently deposed Byzantine emperor Isaac II Angelos. Alexios offered to pay the entire debt owed to the Venetians, give 200000 silver marks to the Crusaders, 10000 Byzantine professional troops for the Crusade, the maintenance of 500 knights in the Holy Land, the service of the Byzantine navy to transport the Crusader army to Egypt and the placement of the Eastern Orthodox Church under the authority of the Pope if they would sail to Constantinople (Byzantium) and topple the reigning emperor Alexios III Angelos. It was a tempting offer for an enterprise that was short on funds. Boniface agreed. Most of the rest of the Crusade's leaders eventually accepted the plan as well. Again not all agreed. Those who refused to take part in the scheme to attack Christendom's greatest city left the Crusade and sailed on their own to Syria.

Thus it happened that the great Christian army of the Fourth Crusade lay siege to one of the oldest and most prosperous Christian cities on earth. Starting July 11th 2013 it took the army until April 12th 2014 to the breach the defenses of Constantinople. Too bad the promised riches failed to materialize. Although Alexios tried in desperation to melt down priceless Byzantine icons, he could not keep his part of the bargain. What followed was a sack described by Speros Vryonis in his book 'Byzantium and Europe' as follows: "The Latin soldiery subjected the greatest city in Europe to an indescribable sack. For three days they murdered, raped, looted and destroyed on a scale which even the ancient Vandals and Goths would have found unbelievable. Constantinople had become a veritable museum of ancient and Byzantine art, an emporium of such incredible wealth that the Latins were astounded at the riches they found. Though the Venetians had an appreciation for the art which they discovered (they were themselves semi-Byzantines) and saved much of it, the French and others destroyed indiscriminately, halting to refresh themselves with wine, violation of nuns, and murder of Orthodox clerics. The Crusaders vented their hatred for the Greeks most spectacularly in the desecration of the greatest Church in Christendom. They smashed the silver iconostasis, the icons and the holy books of Hagia Sophia, and seated upon the patriarchal throne a whore who sang coarse songs as they drank wine from the Church's holy vessels. The estrangement of East and West, which had proceeded over the centuries, culminated in the horrible massacre that accompanied the conquest of Constantinople. The Greeks were convinced that even the Turks, had they taken the city, would not have been as cruel as the Latin Christians. The defeat of Constantinople, already in a state of decline, accelerated political degeneration so that the Byzantines eventually became an easy prey to the Turks. The Crusading movement thus resulted, ultimately, in the victory of Islam, a result which was of course the exact opposite of its original intention."

How come two great Christian civilizations turned against each other eventually leading to the rise of Islam in South Eastern Europe? The experiences of the earlier Crusades had thrown into stark relief the vast cultural differences between the two civilizations. The Latins (as the Byzantines called them because of their adherence to the Latin Rite) viewed the Byzantine preference for diplomacy and trade over war, as duplicitous and degenerate, and their policy of tolerance and assimilation towards Muslims as a corrupt betrayal of the faith. For their part, the educated and wealthy Byzantines saw the Latins as lawless, impious, covetous, blood-thirsty, undisciplined and unwashed (literally). However, although maybe a little smelly, in one of the first cavalry skirmishes during the siege of Constantinople just 80 Frankish knights defeated 500 Byzantine horsemen.

Eight hundred years after the Fourth Crusade, Pope John Paul II twice expressed sorrow for the events of the Fourth Crusade. In 2001, he wrote to Christodoulos, Archbishop of Athens, saying, "It is tragic that the assailants, who set out to secure free access for Christians to the Holy Land, turned against their brothers in the faith. The fact that they were Latin Christians fills Catholics with deep regret." In 2004, while Bartholomew I, Patriarch of Constantinople, was visiting the Vatican, John Paul II asked, "How can we not share, at a distance of eight centuries, the pain and disgust." This has been regarded as an apology to the Greek Orthodox Church for the terrible slaughter perpetrated by the warriors of the Fourth Crusade.

Much of the material in this article comes from the Wikipedia entry on the Fourth Crusade. I encourage everyone to read and heed this. Follow this link.

We like to visit museums. It is one of those things that we both really enjoy doing. It is really unfortunate that due to my wife's health we cannot do this as often - or as long - as we used or like to do. Anyway this time we visited the Cobra museum of modern art in Amstelveen near Amsterdam. It is one of those museums that we know about for ever, but have never visited before. This museum specializes in the Cobra - COpenhagen BRussels Amsterdam - art movement. The artists the museum includes work of are: Karel Appel, Corneille, Anton Rooskens, Jan Nieuwenhuys, Frida Hunziker, Piet Ouborg, Lucebert and others.


This is a painting by Jan Nieuwenhuys called Sleepwalking Cock, 1948.

As usual, I made photographs of all works of art that interested us.