Davos Newbies

Ages ago, my wife gave me the best birthday present I ever received: several volumes of the yearbook issued by the Dutch post office and several other Dutch postage ephemera. Cost of the present: zero. She had written to the Dutch post office to say I was a fan of their design and did they have anything for me. I’m not a stamp collector, but I am an aficianado of Dutch design.

It’s not just the stamps. There’s great graphic and product design all over: books and magazines, posters, public signage, you name it. (My first book, the long-forgotten Faber Guide to Twentieth Century Architecture, was designed by one of the Dutch greats, Gert Dumbar.)  The latest wonder from The Netherlands is a new 5 euro coin, on the theme Netherlands and architecture. It’s fabulous.

Contemporary Dutch design expresses complete confidence in the modern age. No need to be retro, or to pay obeisance to traditional forms. The Obama administration has plenty on its plate, to say the least, but it would be one sign of a confident nation if the US Treasury and the US Postal Service were to engage the best contemporary designers in future.

I like Willem Buiter’s curmudgeonly take on why he blogs:

To all those readers of this blog who have requested shorter, snappier, less technical and abstruse postings, the following.  I write this blog for me, not for my readers.  Writing things down is the only way for me to communicate effectively with myself about complex issues.  By doing this writing in the form of a blog, I gain the option of taking on board the comments and criticism of those who read my scribblings and feel compelled to respond to it.  I gain this benefit at the cost of having to plough through a lot of stuff that makes little or no sense, in order to uncover the few pearls hidden among the swine.  There are minor vanity/ego rents to having people read what I write, and my consulting income may receive an indeterminate boost from these activities. But all that is secondary to my need to write.  I don’t know something unless I have written it down.

I started this blog quite independently, at http://maverecon.blogspot.com/.  I was invited by the Financial Times to move my blog to their site.  Because of the likelihood of greater vanity/ego rents and the possibility of more frequent intelligent feedback through wider readership, I accepted this invitation.  When the FT lose interest, I will go private again.  I don’t get paid for this blog.

So no, my blogs will not get shorter, snappier, less demanding, less abstruse, complicated and confusing.  My blog postings are and will be excessively lengthy, long-winded, demanding, abstruse, complicated and confusing where the problems are complicated and confusing.  I make no concessions to my readers.  Why should I?  The readers I lose or miss as a result of writing the way I do are the readers I don’t want in the first place.  They can always go to the National Enquirer, Bild or the News of the World.

PS Some people say I’m arrogant. No idea where they get that notion.

The post is almost certainly the shortest one Buiter has yet written.