Galerianki, sponsorówki

The non-Polish readers are likely to find the title of the post confusing, since both words used there are neologisms in Polish. The former is a combination of the word galeria [handlowa] and the –anka suffix. Galeria handlowa translates into English as “a shopping mall”, whereas –anka in the old-fashioned Polish was added into girl’s surname to emphasise she is still a maid. Hence, after the short processing, galerianka is “a [female] child of shopping malls”, or as the up-to-date net dictionaries offer “a mall girl”.

The phenomenon itself is not new, but it was x-rayed and highlighted anew in the film “Galerianki”, by Katarzyna Rosłaniec, released and generously awarded this year. Some critics have torn the film to pieces, as it’s not a work of art actually, but in this particular case the message is more important than a form. The debuting director gives her audience an insight into the world of teenage (aged approximately 13 – 16) girls who hang around the shopping malls, looking for men, who’d buy them new stuff in return for… sex.

“It’s all because of poverty”, I heard from my friend, who also had watched the film. The characters of the film don’t come from really poor families, their households are far from affluence, but their families make ends meet. The heart of the problem lies in and outside their homes. They grow up in broken families, where the relationships between family members are very poor, everyone pursues their own interests, nobody cares much about the children, who are left alone with their mounting problems. The second factor is the rampant consumerism – teenage prostitutes fall victim to the vision of the world, where the social position is determined by the clothes you wear, handset you call from and a car of your boyfriend. Pathological is such order and the film implicitly points it up. The “veteran” mall girls are ugly, clothes their sponsors buy them are more than kitschy, their white boots and belts stand for the type of fashion typical for a disco-polo tańcbuda somewhere beyond Białystok. Their sleazy beauty, revolting outfits, greyness of their real world (from what I’ve read on forums the depiction of a middle school is very accurate – much has changed since 2003!), contrasted with the riot of colours glittering from the displays in the shopping malls. The film would have lost its educational value, if it hadn’t had a tragic ending. The failure of love is not unexpected in this, no longer innocent, yet devoid of inhibitions, world.

A sponsorówka = a girl who has a (steady) sponsor, is a few years older than a Galerianka (the age usually ranges from 19 to 25), who hails from a provincial town or rural area and has come to a big city to study. Soon it turns out costs of living are prohibitive or she aspires to higher standard of living, better clothes, cosmetics. Money doesn’t grow in trees so she’s looking for an asset which could bring some decent revenues and finds… her own body.

Is it another phenomenon? Age and purpose of their prostitution are not the only features that distinguish them from mall girls. They have a steady partner, by and large a well-off, mild-mannered, well-read, businesslike male, who in return for an intimate relation will provide them with an accommodation, pay the university fees, buy books or ask out for a dinner. In typical prostitution, prostitutes have to serve every client, in sponsorship deals, they can pick and choose. A mall girl as a rule takes pride in their attractiveness and resourcefulness that allow her to make profits on her body, a sponsorówka is mature enough to conceal her disgraceful activity. Her family and friends are never meant to find out about what and with whom she does.

Where’s the thin boundary between prostitution and… And what? According to the narrower definition, prostitution is having sex in exchange for money, the wider one covers all acts and practises related to sexual activity for hire. An average Galerianka wouldn’t call herself (in her peculiar language) a slut. Aside from her way of reasoning which implies what she dabbles in reflects upon her resourcefulness, she might claim she doesn’t do it for money.

So what is the prostitution? Any sex acts committed with a view to obtain any material benefit from it, doesn’t matter if it’s cash, flat to live in, new tacky boots, promotion at work or anything else. In the light of the definition above, both galerianki and sponsorówki are prostitutes. If there’s any commonly morally unacceptable practice to be mistaken for prostitution, it can be sleeping around, for pleasure, fun, or any other, non-material reasons. What is noteworthy in this particular respect is that a man, who often changes sexual partners is frequently called “macho” and a promiscuous woman is a “whore” – still I see some room for improvement in equal opportunities.

The quirky student who runs this blog could argue the sociological analysis of the problems discussed is classical, not Keynesian and some of the readers would rack their brains trying to figure out what he has meant. Everyone who puts the problem of prostitution focuses on the prostitutes, but few researchers try to find out more about the men who are their clients. The transaction on this particular market are entered into, because demand meets supply. The main question then boils down to a chicken or egg dilemma. Are the men paying for sex, because there are girls ready to get paid for having sex, or are the girls ready to hire their bodies because they know there are men ready to pay for it? Rare were the studies of psychological profiles of men, who were clients of escort agencies. And the ones who sponsor students? A typical sponsor is a wealthy, married or unmarried (there’s no regularity), well-educated man in his thirties or forties, who can afford to have pleasure of shagging a young piece of arse without obligations. But who are those creatures who prefer mall girls? Has anybody been interested in their mental health? Has it occurred to anyone that they can also pose a social problem?

Christmas songs

May they serve as an antidote to the pulp (Last Christmas, All I want for Christmas, Merry Christmas everyone, and the likes) played by the radio.

I didn’t know how to sort them, so I put them in a chronological order. All three are older than me…

“The power of love” by Frankie goes to Hollywood, 1982. The lyrics have probably little to do with Christmas, but the video does.



“2000 Miles” by The Pretenders, 1983. Once I heard this song played in Poland, it’s actually not very popular beyond the borders of United Kingdom. If you know what 2000 miles stand for and who’ll be back in Christmas time, you’re on a home straight. The official video, removed like many other clips from YouTube, can be found here.



“Do they know it’s Christmas” by Band Aid, 1984. The only really popular, but with a ear-catching beat and recorded in the good, hardly ever sung by drunk women.



Dear readers,

May your days be merry and bright
And may all your Christmases be white!

Durability

I have to apologise to everyone, whom I misled by writing on Polandian that my Christmas lights were produced in 1972. I don’t know why that date has lingered in my memory and I was truly surprised to turn up there were manufactured in March 1977 by Spółdzielnia inwalidów w Szczecinie (EN: The disabled cooperative in Szczecin). My grandparents bought them the same year to decorate their first man-made Christmas tree, then it was passed on to my parents and since I could remember, they have always lit our Christmas tree, this will be their 33rd Christmas.

All goods manufactured in socialist Poland are now thought to be tawdry, but from my experience the issue seems to be a bit more complicated. In fact, they weren’t technologically advanced, tended to break down often (not as a rule) and had a very poor design (overwhelming austerity). Some of them in terms of durability still surpass their equivalents currently available.


These days if you buy Christmas lights you surely don’t wonder if they will serve you for over thirty years. Neither did my grandparents, but they lived in a system of unchanging shortage of goods. In the insufficient socialist economy it just sometimes paid off to stall a customer with a product so that they didn’t hassle the ailing manufacturer for the next one. In the affluence of the market economy the producers want the customers to come back for more soon, what in turn has a bearing on the durability. When my grandparents bought those lights, they were hard-gained, today we simply go to the shop and buy whatever we want. More and more often what we purchase is a shoddy Chinese knockdown, which usually lacks durability. Whenever your stuff conks out, you replace it with a new one and thus produce waste. Do you think when one bulb in the string of Chinese lights burns out you can replace it and use the lights on? Of course not, when the weakest link breaks you can only discard the whole chain. In my set of 1977 lights I still have four spare bulbs, so if even one of the bulbs burns out, they only trouble is to find the blown out one and change it. Facing such a challenge, many people give in and buy new lights, cause they’re too lazy to do the arduous job.

In this maze of manufacturers’ policies, consumer is faced with many difficult choices and many unknowns. Let’s consider a purchase of a pair of shoes and assume we know that pair A, which costs 50 zlotys, will be worn out after a year and pair B, for which we’d have to pay 200 zlotys will be worn out after five years. Consumer beware! Which pair is more expensive? At first glance pair B, but when we work out the ‘annual walking cost’, we’ll get for pair A: AWC=50/1=50, and for pair B: 200/5=40. So the yearly cost of wearing the ‘B shoes’ is lower, so it’s cost-effective to buy the more expensive pair of shoes. But what if you the price of ‘A shoes’ is reduced to 40 zlotys? Here I see two approaches. Firstly it depends on your preferences: some people like to change their stuff often, some get attached to their belongings, secondly there’s the transaction cost aspect – to get to the shop and buy shoes you have to spend your precious time, pay for fare or fuel to your car, etc. In the light of the second approach, it is advisable to buy the more durable shoes.

In the real life it’s not that easy. We are unable to predict the durability of the things we buy. Once my father bought a pair of shoes for fifteen zlotys in Auchan supermarket and he used them on a daily basis for five years until they fell apart. Another time he bought a pair of socks, also for fifteen zlotys and they shrank by half in the first washing (in the temperature of forty degrees). One of the hints we are offered are the brands. To some extent they reflect the quality, but bear in mind that a part of the price we pay has to offset marketing costs, exclusive interior of the outlet, our prestige from having a brand-name item is also included in price. Personally, I find the quality of the product I buy more important than a label and I am ready to pay more for the reliability and durability, but not necessarily for the brand.

Manufacturers themselves are not sinless. In September my Epson printer blocked itself out of the blue. Its lights began to flash and it informed about an unknown error. I switched the device off and on and it sent me a message, which read: “Some of the parts inside the printer have used up. For further information please contact Epson service centre.” How funny, all of the sudden the damned machine refuses to work and so what to do then? I copied the message which had popped up and pasted it into google. After less than a minute the problem cleared up. As it transpired, Epson printers are designed to block itself after their page count reaches a certain value (14370 printed pages for my Stylus C62). A hapless user of such a printer has basically two options to choose from. Either to go to the service centre and fork out about 100 zlotys for unlocking their printer, or to dispose of the still good printer, buy a new one (here there’s a risk that the customer may turn to another supplier) and produce a few kilograms of electronic waste which still could be in use. A quick look on the forums unveiled a third option and I went for it. I downloaded (don’t ask if legally) a service application and unlocked the printer on my own. I still use it, page count exceed 15000 (though the counter in the service application shows only 700), it will be replaced soon by an all-in-one (PL: urządzenie wielofunkcyjne), but both printer and scanner will be sold for a song via allegro to the people for whom they may come in useful. The Epson’s policy is profitable for the company, but from my customer’s point of view urging a customer to replace a device in full working order is nothing but wheedling out money. And the durability of their devices is a divisive issue. Are 15000 pages a lot? For someone who prints ten or twenty pages per month it would take years to reach such page count, but an ink-jet printer used in a small office could stop working after less than a year. Is a warranty effective then?

I’d be ready to pay more for a more durable and reliable device, but my propensity is constrained by technical progress. The new all-in-one will offer me better quality of printouts, higher speed of printing, higher scanning resolution, more ink-efficient cartridges and some other useful functions. This justifies replacement, when you need an enhanced device. But fortunately Christmas lights do not turn obsolete and probably my kit from PRL-era will have served me for at least fifty years.

Four down, one to go...

It’s the right time to give off some optimism and there’s a concrete reason behind it. The term of current president of Poland will end exactly in a year. And like many Poles I believe this is bound to happen, especially after Janusz Palikot has filled me with confidence, saying that “voters have their heads screwed in”.

Meanwhile Mr Kaczyński is encountering the interminable problem of friends, or rather lack of any. Nobody knows why, but all prominent economists in this country steer clear of the presidential palace and the head of state himself. But those are not the experts who are reluctant to advise the president, that is Lech Kaczyński, who is biased against them and unwilling to take them on. For the first time this became a burning issue, when the president had to appoint a central bank governor. After a long-lasting anguish be finally selected Sławomir Skrzypek (sorry, but this guy doesn’t even have his entry in English wiki!), whose qualifications for this position have been… Well there could have been some other eligible candidates…

The history has repeated itself recently. This time the president had to point three (out of nine, the remaining six are appointed by the houses of Polish parliament) members of the Monetary Policy Council and he was in a fix… Eventually he selected:

Zyta Gilowska, until 2005 a member of Civic Platform, then joined Law and Justice and took office of finance minister in the cabinets of Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz and Jarosław Kaczyński. By running a pro-cyclical fiscal policy (just recall cutting the social benefit premium in 2007), she greatly contributed to the current public finance deficit. Her motto: “It’s running well, so let’s add fuel to the fire.” Views on monetary policy: unknown, but inferring from her past moves, I suppose she’s likely to put forward cuts of interest rates to stimulate the booming economy.

Wojciech Roszkowski, politician, member of Law and Justice, currently deputy to the European Parliament, a graduate of Warsaw School of Planning and Statistics, specialises in economic history. (Any) knowledge or views on monetary policy: kept in the dark

Adam Glapiński (this chap’s biography doesn’t occupy space on English wikipedia servers as well), a dedicated friend of the president and one of his economic advisors. His field of studies in the history of economic thought, in which he lectures at my school. His rousing lectures are tinged with digressions on the current economic order of my beautiful country. The most often repeated waspish remark is that the independent Poland after 1989 is just a “PRL in disguise”.

The new makeup of MPC is… Hard to pick a right word… Crippled?

Three years left?

If you believe in the Mayan prophecy of the imminent end of the world, you’ll probably nod. The 2012 fad is visible all over the world, if you tap “2012” into your google, the results are likely to be divided into three groups: Euro 2012 (the imminent organisational disaster is within the realms of possibility), London 2012 and Doomsday 2012. The one projected to occur in three years is the last we will survive, unless some new manuscripts are found.

Do I believe in this funny theory? No, though there was a time when I was fascinated with it. Is there any reason why? In my humble opinion the end of the world will strike humanity out of the blue. Too much has been spoken about, too many people know about, mostly after the film “Doomsday 2012” was released.

For no apparent reason if people live in affluence the like to devise new problems. Such is the case with year 2012. There’s no other need to worry, so let’s instigate fear of end of the world. Some, like Patrick Geryl try to capitalise on the fear. The main author of doomsday theory is now organising a group of people who will survive the disaster and restore the human kind on Earth. This for me looks like a big scam. This guy might take away the money from those people who trust him and enslave them or set up a sect or something…

Absolutely normal winter

Only the media and other sensation-hunters try to make a mountain out of a small hill. The temperature of minus fourteen degrees in December is more or less as normal as plus thirty in June. How have I calculated it? It’s simple. Mean December temperature in Warsaw is around -0,5C, mean June temperature is something like, +16,5C. Moreover the day-to-night ratio is roughly 2 in June and roughly 0,5 in December. This is important because it shows the time when the earth absorbs and gives off heat. That is why I compare the night-time lows in December and daytime highs in June. Add and or subtract 13,5 degrees and you’ll get respectively thirty or minus fourteen. My reasoning and calculations are a bit approximate as monthly amplitudes of extreme temperatures are bigger in the winter, but daily ones in the summer.

Nevertheless, media spread panic, when nothing unusual has happened and the audience have followed up with the winter madness. Yesterday in Warsaw I passed a group of teenage girls who claimed they didn’t remember such frosty winter. For those who have a short memory I prepared a quick reminder. The last days haven’t been the coldest this year, the temperature in Warsaw dropped to minus twenty two degrees on 6 January 2009 (seven Celsius degrees colder than these days), those girls should also remember 23 January 2006, when the temperature in the capital of Poland went down to minus thirty degrees. The different story is that the few past December accustomed us to the mild weather. The last cold December was in 2002 and the weather was very similar to the current one. The grumblers should blame themselves. There’s no other solution for freezing cold than to wrap up. Most of those elegant shoes or fashionable thin overcoats are not suitable for temperature of minus fifteen and heavy snow.

The media coverage snowed us with the reports of heavy winter attack. In simple words winter did polish off Warsaw on Thursday. I left home at 6:25 in the morning to get to school before 8:00 and I managed. Ul. Puławska was covered with typical slush (thanks for Micheal Dembinski for giving an idea on how to translate Polish word breja, it seems to be quite suitable, as the snow poured with salt or grit begins to melt), but cars were moving forward smoothly and so the bus did. It would have been amazing if the heating hadn’t broken down so students were freezing in the lecture rooms, but in general it was a good day because I won lots of gadgets in E&Y contest. I left school at 15:00 and a quarter later I stood in the middle of the crowd on Wilanowska bus terminus. As it turned out later, buses didn’t come, because had got stuck on the jammed Puławska. The first old Ikarus arrived from Woronicza depot. The ride home took only thirty five minutes (surprisingly short). From what I’ve seen or heard traffic in Warsaw was snarled up everywhere from dawn to the late evening.

On Friday the situation got better after the snow had ceased to fall. In the morning Puławska in Piaseczno was still covered with after-snow mud, but Warsaw managed to clear its street during the night. Warsaw managed clear its roads and the border of the capital, normally invisible was clearly marked by the dirty roads. Below Al. Niepodległości next to the post office where I popped in to send the next item from my allegro sale.


And a pavement along the street, still under the snow and slippery is an exception. All arteries and byways in Warsaw were black.


Nowa Iwiczna seems to prove to be an uncivilised suburb compared to Warsaw. Below my street around midday and then at dusk. Mixture of grit and snow lingers.



I took a few other snaps, however the camera was a bit reluctant to work in the cold and dark and in spite of my attempt to take sharp photos, it didn’t work out. Finally it told me about the shutter error and switched off. After removing memory card and batteries and overnight “drying” it ran fine today.

I decided to make extensive use of the Saturday afternoon and stroll through Nowa Iwiczna and Stara Iwiczna and carry out a road clearance inspection.

Below: the main street of Nowa Iwiczna (ul. Krasickiego), covered with a driven mud


The main street of Stara Iwiczna (ul. Słoneczna) doesn’t look much better


The layer of slush on my street remains intact.


And the coal train siding. Looks in use, but unfortunately I didn’t spot any train, even though the odds were higher (the lower the temperature is, the more trains have to carry coal to the power plant)


Despite the cold, media hogwash and commuting horror I try to look at the bright side of winter. Yesterday, after skies cleared up in the morning, the snow-capped landscape lit by the sun looked wonderfully.

Below: a view towards Puławska,


Pine trees swathed in the snow, as seen from the ground floor bathroom window,


A view from my room – back of the garden and neighbours’ plots


And a frozen pond in Mysiadło (don’t worry if you can’t see any pond…)


I’m identifying another problem – we haven’t had white Christmas in Warsaw since 2002 and your hopes for it may be dashed. We’re going to have a typical “Christmas thaw” this year, so I decided to secure white Christmas in advance and hoarded some snow in the garden (below).


The bigger snowdrift is rather unlikely to melt quickly.

Meanwhile the global leaders who gathered in Copenhagen had to endure the cold spell. The climate summit is perceived to be a failure, but I’m one of those who are pleased with such an outcome. The global warming is a fact. Whenever a frost wave, like the current one comes, I can read posts on weather forums like “and now try to tell me there’s a global warming”. Temperatures are rising in general, but it doesn’t mean we aren’t going to have extremely cold temperatures. But the link between mankind’s activity and warming is not confirmed. I believe it is more a natural phenomenon and our contribution to it is tiny. It used to be warmer on Earth. Why is Greenland called Greenland? Maybe because when it was discovered it was green, only later, when the climate cooled, it got iced. We should cut down on the carbon dioxide emission, but to reduce air pollution, to save forests which produce oxygen, to waste less and produce less waste. Global warming is a political issue, which involves colossal sums of money – and because big money is at stake, there will be no honest discussion on it.

Footloose

LipDUB from SGH

Uplifting, devastating

Today I’ll let you take in a blend of praising, grumbling and dissomething.

I was delighted to read the report published on Wyborcza.biz, in which Maciej Samsik, journalist of Wyborcza’s business column, x-rays commercials, mostly those of banks, shark loans, financial advisors and telecom operators. Such actions are essential in the education and in the civic society, cause people should be aware of the pitfalls of advertised “bargains” and all “catches” in the suspiciously beneficial contracts. I hold it dear and would love to see more such analyses.

The opposite feelings in me were evoked by the real estate guide by TVN Warszawa. Their report on residential area of Nowa Iwiczna is full of factual errors and misrepresentations. Many of the shots in the footage do not actually show Nowa Iwiczna, bus service 739 does not run through Nowa Iwiczna, its nearest stop is half a mile away from the boundary of the village and distance from the nearest public facilities are much higher than given in the video. And the language, both the voice of the lector and the very content of the report are stilted. Dabbling in translating has sensitised to me that ugly style of Polish – clumsy syntax, bombastic, but trite collocations and illogical sentences are asking for being polished up. I got worked up and posted a comment on journalists’ dependability and erudition.

Ludność wzrosła poprzez budowę nowych osiedli i chęć mieszkania na obrzeżach Warszawy.

This is the most appalling example. In English, a population can rise, but in Polish we use “liczba ludności” and in the context of a small village, it is better to use “liczba mieszkańców”. The corrected sentence will read: Liczba mieszkańców wzrosła na skutek budowy nowych osiedli i mody na mieszkanie na obrzeżach Warszawy.

The poorly written texts lie the core of translators’ ordeal. If the source writing is crappy, the target one is more likely to sound badly. Unless a translator cares and does the editing job. This sentence might also illustrate what many translators grapple with, when they are translating from Polish into English. Polish language gives its user a large dose of freedom when it comes to syntax, German has very strict rules, English lies in the middle, but somewhat closer to German. The fact that it has a correct syntax and lots of constructions is used stylistic devises is often omitted in the teaching process, just like another issue of “natural flow”. The basic problem of the sentence I’m taking into pieces is posed by illogical links. It sounds very dubiously that the rising population is the effect of the new development. Those building were put up because there had been the demand on houses or flats in NI.

A Pole could translate the original sentence without taking any pains to produce anything up-to-standard:

The population grew through the construction of new estates and the willingness to live in the suburbs of Warsaw.

It would be also possible to translate the sentence edited by the author of this blog:

The number of residents rose, as a result of the construction of new estates and the fashion for living in the suburbs of Warsaw.

This also sound poorly, “of” appears three times in one sentence and it surely lacks natural flow, not to mention the syntactic trap.

I came up with two, rather decent translations.

1) Newly built estates and the trend to settle down in the city outskirts have brought about a rise in the number of residents.

2) Springing up development and the suburb-living fad have led to a rise in the number of residents.

It took me around a quarter to get to grips with one sentence, still the biggest flaw is the link between newly built estates and the number of residents. Some elements of those two sentences may be combined to reach a better outcome. If you have any suggestions on how to improve this translation, I will welcome your advice. But fifteen minutes? I think I wouldn’t make a living on translation working in such sluggish pace.

And why the hell haven’t the mentioned clogged up Puławska and commuting nightmare that has become a part of living here?!

The Wednesday afternoon brought the news that Ben Bernanke, the governor of Fed had been awarded the prestigious Time’s Man of the Year title. He is credited with averting a total collapse of financial markets, but the prize reflects only on his past accomplishments and leaves out the ramifications of the current US central bank policy. Economy will sooner or later bear the brunt of excessively low interest rates and quantitative easing. Those who benefit from such policy are the government, which finances and will pay its debts cheaper and financial industry, which uses cheap money to speculate. The ordinary people will sooner or later damn him, like they did with Alan Greenspan (look at the amount of criticism towards him in his wikipedia biography note), if not for the next crisis, then for the inflation tax they will have to pay.

The evil of keeping the interest rates low

Just as it has been done for the past year…

Easy come, easy go. Our approach to many things depends on the price we had, have, or will have to pay for them. Human life is (considered) priceless, but the respect to material goods is highly correlated with their value. If we buy a brand new car, we polish it every weekend and park it very carefully so that we don’t scratch it. If you are an owner of a new car, this scratch probably breaks your heart, buy if what you possess is a clapped-out banger, you usually don’t care. This does not apply to everyone, may the author of this blog serve as an example.

The respect for items is in my theory conditioned on the replacement costs, including transaction costs, in more simple words, the crucial criteria are price and availability or effort that has to be made to procure a certain good.

The natural economy is the thing of the past. In the contemporary world, money is used to value goods, fix prices and serves as a legal tender. But in the light of my theory, can you figure out, what the respect for money is contingent on? The most common perception, often instilled in children during the upbringing process is that the more people respect money, the harder they had to work to earn it. In terms of life this can be seen as golden rule, especially when we see the guys (called “politicians”), whose livelihood is spending someone else’s money. In economics, things tangle up a bit, but the phenomenon of ‘price approach’ remains applicable.

Can money have its price? How is this price fixed? In the market economy, price is usually driven by the market forces, so when the supply and demand meet, a certain amount (quantity) of a certain good is sold at a certain price. But hang on! Two questions slip into our reasoning. Firstly, how can the money be valued, is a 100 zł note worth more or less than 100 zł, or maybe as much as the paper it is printed on? And secondly, how do supply and demand on money can look?

The first questions is followed by two answers. The first is based on the existence of exchange rates – money as a currency of one country can be valued in another currency, but that’s not what I’m going to deal with today. In the second and final answer, we assume the money is a specific good, which can be neither sold nor bought, but can be lent and borrowed. Hence, the price of money is the interest rate.

And the “supply and demand” matter. Every student who has completed the basic course of macroeconomics should know the supply of money is controlled by the central bank, which runs monetary policy, either directly, by setting money supply, or indirectly, by setting interest rates. A demand on money is in turn generated by private persons, legal entities and governments and is basically conditioned on its price. So when the cost of money is brought down, demand on it automatically rises. So I’m responsible only for the demand… I cannot just print money at home, go to the shops and use the notes as a legal tender – this is a crime. Central banks, as the current practises of Federal Reserve or Bank of England show, can print as much money as they want and it is not a crime – how funny!

Look at the history: low interest rates in Japan fuelled stock bubble, which later on caused a financial meltdown and the decade of stagnation. Why had it happened? People ahd borrowed money cheaply and invested it in shares, as long as their valuations were on the rise they borrowed even more, hoping the trend would continue. But the moment when the growth potential reached its limits has come, and those people and businesses that had their money in stocks were left with little capital and debts they had to pay off. So instead of spending money on consumption, they had to return it to their creditors, who also had lost as a result of numerous write-offs.

At the beginning of twenty-first century, Alan Greenspan as a Fed governor hit upon a mould-breaking idea that every American should afford to buy a house (as Mr Greenspan declares on pages 229 and 230 in his book “Age of Turbulence”, I quote the original edition), no matter how poor they were (the second part of the sentence is where the author calls a spade a spade). To that end (and some others actually), Fed shaved federal funds rate to only one per cent and kept it down for a few years, until 2006. Availability of cheap subprime mortgages combined with low interest rates, high gains on property and stock markets and new inventions of financial engineering whetted the appetite for risk and blew up sizeable bubbles. When they burst it was too late. In his book, released in 2007, Mr Greenspan admits he had seen the bubble rising, however he claims an average family could move to a posh house and improve their standard of living thanks to his policy. Many of those families found their houses foreclosed, when the rising inflation made Fed jack up the interest rates and adjustable-rate mortgage repayments became they burdens many households could not carry.

A year ago, in an unprecedented move, Fed once again slashed the interest rates almost to zero. The action was intended to ease the pain of financial markets and to boost customers’ confidence. The latter was somehow propped up, but rather by expansionary fiscal policy, not by better access to consumer loans. American customers after they had been taught a hard-knock lesson are still reluctant to spend and borrow. The distressed markets, in particular banks gave a warm welcome to the liquidity injection the were granted. In a short term this move prevented a knock-on effect and ultimate collapse of financial system. After a few months it turned out that big investment banks used the cheap cash for aggressive speculation on stock, gold, crude oil, or copper markets. At the end of the year their balance sheets grow robust and bankers once again grant themselves generous bonuses. The real economy, though in recovery, still does not keep up with the markets.

Interest rates are going to remain low, so the ecstasy on financial markets will continue. Then the inflation will drive the rates higher and the next bubble will be punctured. Why is it so likely to happen? It is in the interest of US government to see the higher inflation which would decrease the real amount of its debt…

Hey, how about Poland? Unlike United States and most of EU countries Poland has not been troubled by deflation and therefore had to keep its interest rates higher in nominal terms. But in real terms our benchmark rate fluctuates around zero (the rate is currently 3,50%, whereas inflation in the recent months has been between 3% and 4%, but beware, this calculation, though commonly used is flawed, because the interest rate refers to the future period and inflation to the past).

Whenever somebody speaks about the factors that have contributed to positive economic growth in Poland, they accentuate two of them: consumer confidence and depreciation of złoty. I cannot deny their role, but hardly anyone mentions the monetary policy run during the boom. Unlike the Baltic States, Poland has not fallen into the indebtness trap. The burden of debts has not clamp down on our development, which, a bit stifled in the years of boom, now turns out to be sustainable. We owe our success not to government of Law Justice, nor to the current cabinet of Donald Tusk, but to the restrictions on denominated loans and other, imposed by our financial supervisory body and to higher than postulated by some “illiterate economists” interest rates, which tightened the credit criteria and prevented the growth of domestic subprime loan market.

To sum up, I see four main reasons, why the interest rates should be kept relatively high.

1) The influence of consumer stances. When the loans are more available (more people can afford them when they have pay not much more than they had borrowed), consumers tend to spend more and more recklessly and find it harder to estimate, what they can afford. Meanwhile their propensity to save declines, because depositors are given lower interest rates in the banks.

2) Flawed investment projects. When the interest rate is low, more business venture become viable, because for a lower interest rate on the borrowed capital, the net present value of the project is more likely to be above zero. Those enterprises turn out to be very vulnerable to any external factors that can hamper their business.

3) Inflation. Dariusz Filar, currently the member of the Monetary Policy Council has put forward a rule that the benchmark rate should be set around two percentage points above the inflation rate. In the present circumstances it should be raised to 5,25% and nobody would agree on it, but in the long term I see it as a sound principle of money value protection. Once the inflation spirals out of control it is hard to pull it down, the effects of the therapy are severe and those who lose the most are usually the poorest.

4) Risk management. When a year ago I paid almost all my savings into a 12M deposit I was bid a decent interest rate of 8,5 per cent and it did not occur to me to seek any other investments when I was given a fixed-income deposit with honest interest. But if I had been given the interest rate of 1,25 per cent on the same deposit, would I have been so eager to leave my money in the safe haven? Probably not, because the secure profits would be tiny and I would be more keen to invest that money in a risky securities. That it what has happened this year – being faced with low interest rates big market players took the chance and earned ten times more than the author of this blog!

Nightmare of the past – episode 28

We have plenty of phrases to describe what happened twenty eight years ago: Wojna Polsko – Jaruzelska (Polish vs. Jaruzelski war), Dzień, w którym Jaruzelski wypowiedział wojnę Polakom (The day Jaruzelski declared war to Poles), or maybe simply Stan wojenny (Martial Law).

Each year, around 13 December the topic of martial law is revived, victims are commemorated, opponents stage demonstrations in front of general’s house in Warsaw. Each year historians, journalists and ordinary people ask if it really had to happen.

My take on this is that we will never find out the truth on the backstage of the martial law. Probably Polish society will be divided in its views on martial law.
Those who claim it could have been prevented point out that Jaruzelski and his henchmen (the biggest part was played by Czesław Kiszczak) were preparing their crackdown on Solidarity since August 1980 and the risk of Soviet intervention in late 1981 was diminutive. They also argue the CPSU leaders were reluctant to offer military help to Poland, as the Soviet economy was on its knees, war in Afghanistan stirred up more troubles than expected and they were afraid of the reactions on the international political arena.
The supporters of the imposition of martial law remind that Brezhnev doctrine was still in force and the threat of Soviet invasion was real. Moreover, they say solving the problem with our own hands was lesser of two evils and if Warsaw Pact armies had trespassed onto the territory of Poland, death toll would have been much higher.

This year, the Institute of National Remembrance published in its bulletin the alleged evidence that general Jaruzelski had been asking or even insisting on [military] help from the Soviets (the article is available only in Polish, the quality of English-language releases from IPN leaves a lot to be desired). I took the trouble to read the short paper, which consists of introduction and the record of conversation between Jaruzelski and Soviet general Kulikov, which took place four days before martial law was declared. In the introduction professor Dudek from IPN asserts Wojciech Jaruzelski declared martial law in spite of Soviets’ refusal to cross the borders of Poland. Meanwhile in the document Mr Kulikov mentions the operation “Shield-81” (a plan of Warsaw Pact military intervention in Poland, known also as ZAPAD-81), though he hopes Polish army will put down the counterrevolution.

Documents, though patchy and from dodgy source (I would like to point up that for no apparent reason documents drawn up by Russians and Secret Service Officers are the most reliable source of information for IPN. For sure Russians, who have always hated Poland and wanted my country to be subjugated to theirs, had always clear intentions and Esbecja officers were morally impeccable and always told and wrote the truth!) show Jaruzelski’s determination to clamp down on Solidarity movement and his fear that Polish army forces would not be up to the task of restoring the law and order of socialism. Historians argue Jaruzelski can be accused of treason on the basis of those documents, the general asserts the notes had been fabricated, former president and former PZPR member Aleksander Kwaśniewski says what Jaruzelski did was a well-thought-out stratagem aimed to outwit comrades from USRR. This is a step too far, but I have another supposition. Jaruzelski tried to sound Soviet military leaders out. Bearing in mind his war experiences and the fact he had been in charge of Polish military units which had taken part in the military operation in Czechoslovakia in 1968, I conclude he must have been afraid of the implications of military support from allies.

In 1981 Jaruzelski found himself between the devil (opposition in Poland) and the deep blue sea (Soviet comrades). The choice he made is controversial but cannot be judged easily – he might have tried to save the domination of communist party in Poland (what he actually succeeded in), it have might have been an adroit coup d’etat, or it could have been the measure taken to prevent a bigger tragedy – the words from general’s speech sound still enigmatic to me.

I was born six years after the incidents I describe had taken place, so I cannot remember those events, that is why apart from reading and listening to the accounts of martial law I am provided by the media, I asked my parents and grandparents how they had felt before and after 13 December. Like millions of Poles, neither affiliated with the party, nor keen to join the opposition, the feared the Russian invasion. No wonder, they had heard about what had happened in Hungary in 1956, remembered well disgraceful operation in Czechoslovakia in 1968 and knew that our potential to put up resistance against Warsaw Pact forces would be much stronger than in the other countries of Soviet Bloc. Even in the Polish army anti-soviet moods prevailed. Those who served there only in the minority were the ones who had voluntarily reported, on account of their desire to defend the socialist homeland, most of the soldiers were called up and if the push had come to the shove they would have started a rebellion.

But the fear of Russian intervention was not the worst. What really filled them with dread was the possibility of CIVIL WAR. Almost nobody mentions that aspect today, everybody focuses on military problems. According to their descriptions of those days, never, after WW2 had the Polish society been so divided as then. The majority backed Solidarity, this part of the nation was numerous and well-organised, the minority followed the line of the party. There were the splinter groups stemming from the Solidarity, whose members wanted to solve the problem of communist power in a very radical way. The chant:

A na drzewach zamiast liści,
wisieć będą komuniści.

(On the trees, instead of leaves,
those to hang will be communists.)

best summarised their intentions of overthrowing the system. On the other side Polish army would not hesitate to put down the counterrevolution. After twenty eight years it is still beyond my comprehension that Poles wanted to kill one another. According to what I have heard directly from many people, Poland was on the verge of fratricidal carnage and it, in their view, justified the martial law. I deeply condemn both parties that stood on the opposite sides of the barricade. Radical anti-communists’ ideas were based on primeval, though kind of natural instincts of getting their own back on their oppressors – but slaughter is not a civilised way of handling conflicts (look at the example of Romania – it probably must have happened, but their tyrant had been much more cruel than our leaders, but is there anything to be proud of?). And the determination of party or military authorities to hold on to their privileges under the system was reprehensible as well…

As an economist I cannot leave out another facet of the problem, also omitted by historians. Those from IPN claim Jaruzelski intimidated Poles with a “vision of cold and hunger”. Indeed in 1981 Polish economy was in the state of collapse, firstly because of all the flaws of socialist concept of extensive development had already come to the light, secondly because it had been paralysed by ongoing strikes. All the current economic liberals would bridle at the economic postulates of Solidarity, which boiled down to a few demands: work less, earn more and maintain the social security offered by the socialism. Their approach in the tough political and economic circumstances is still hard to assess. Soviet Union was unwilling to offer us military help, but cutting off economic aid would cost them much less…

The defenders of general Jaruzelski say martial law paved the way to democratisation and round table sessions, his adversaries state it suppressed our aspirations for independence. My opinion is somewhere in the middle. Before Gorbachev came to power in 1985 chances to secede from the Warsaw Pact and Socialist Bloc without running the risk of military intervention and economic breakdown were tiny. What paved the way for round table session were perestroika in USSR and economic decay of socialism. When the system was at the end of its tether, leaders of People’s Poland decided to share the responsibility for the country with the opposition, at least this is how I see it.

The further we go from the socialism, the more myths arouse. The social support for Jaruzelski’s decision is gradually falling and what is characteristic is that the older the surveyed are, the bigger the per cent of general’s supporters is. The older remember those days better and are more aware of historical situation, the younger, who were either too young to understand what had happened or so young that they were born after 1981, tend to be regard the martial law as a crime. I wonder to what extent the older have been manipulated by the communist propaganda and how the younger are manipulated by the one-sided picture created by Institute of National Remembrance, which has a monopoly for dealing with the modern history of Poland.

History is a part of our identity. I find it highly alarming when the young people asked by a TV journalist on street about the martial law declare they know very little about it. The remembrance of those events and victims of those days should be nurtured. But the whole debate over the martial law which is conducted every year does not move Poland forward. Mr Kurtyka will not build motorways, Mr Gontarczyk (Polish chief expert in decrying former presidents) will not solve the problems of higher education system, Mr Dudek will not simplify Polish tax code. But their merits in undermining the social trust and spreading hatred are indisputable. I partly blame them, whenever I see the youngsters, born like me in the late eighties, who chant the song bringing on hanging communist on the trees. They, who have never been persecuted, imprisoned for their political views, beaten by the milicja during the street demonstration, those who have never experienced shortfall of goods or lack of future prospects find it very easy to air their views in a free and independent country. In my perception, they are eaten up with hatred. History may judge Jaruzelski, but have the youngsters right to do that?

I can only recommend the English website prepared by the IPN. Unbiased and with decent content, but as usually done by amateurs – for sure they have not consulted any native English speaker before publishing it – the mistakes are typical for inexperienced translators (I know something about it from my own experience and mistakes I used to make and sometimes still make – see the problems they have had with word order for instance).

I appreciate it, if some of you shared your recollections of 13 December 1981. What were you doing? What did you feel? And please don’t write: “I hate that guy, he took away my Teleranek”.

Crossroads

At the beginning I would like to thank Mr Santa Claus for a quite decent Santa Claus Slide (Zjazd Świętego Mikołaja) – Warsaw Stock Exchange Blue Chip index (WIG20) dropped by 4,67 per cent in the passing week – it could have been better (bigger drop) of course. I am looking forward to seeing a battlefield on the SE charts next weeks, when two players, or maybe without mincing words – two American investment banks will stage a nice battlefield on the trading floor. For those who are not privy – next Friday is the settlement date for December series of futures on WIG20. One of the players is likely to end up black and blue before Yule.

Secondly, I am delighted to thank all the ones who remembered and whose wishes somehow squared with my wishes, dreams, goals and aspirations.

In the third paragraph of my post, I’ll copy what I wrote on Pinolona’s blog some two weeks ago. It is on why my contemporaries feel disturbingly old.

I have my own theory on why Poles in their early 20's feel oldish. There's already a kind of gulf between us and contemporary teenagers. Those fluorescent-adolescents who are now attending middle and high schools are a totally different generation. Mostly girls, my female friends from teenage years didn't look like that, didn't act like that, talked about different things. The change is visible - all my former teachers who I meet recall my peers and me as "good as gold" children and gripe about rowdy teenagers of these days - those born in the nineties and brought up in affluence, much bigger than the one my generation experienced.

I hear it almost every day, but only from the my female friends – either they gripe about being so old (so old means around 22 – 24), or they declare it is high time to get married and have children. Men in their early twenties, in turn, feel oddly comfortably with their year count.

The feeling of observing the different generation does not ebb, however, I can share with one crucial observation. Those of you who live next to middle or high schools or travel often by public transport probably have noted it as well. All those teenage girls look basically the same – similar coats, trousers, shoes, hairdos, scarves, etc. – there’s no diversity among them (unless you classify two most popular types of coats or shoes as diversity). None of them wants to stand out, a basic goal of a teenager is to blend into the scenery set out by fashion styles. They’re not like my peers and me a few years ago… They behave in a different way, they look like teenagers I saw when I was abroad at the beginning of the new millennium and believe me or not, I was shocked. And I can assure those of you, who complain that your homelands are in decline because of the youngsters, that Poland will meet the same fate. The best proof of this theory are the results of school leaving exams (it concerns the one after primary, middle and high school leaving ones – PL: egzamin szóstoklasisty, egzamin gimnazjalny, matura). The exam papers are getting easier and figures are getting worse. And I wonder what is amiss here, where was the mistake made?

And to conclude, a thought for today’s evening.

Mamusię oszukasz,
tatusia oszukasz,
ale życia nie oszukasz.

In English it reads:

You can fool your mum,
you can fool your dad,
but you won't fool the life.

As requested!

Yesterday one of my friends suggested I tackled here the linguistic problem of masło maślane and its translation into English. After a quick look into the matter I found out the aforementioned phrase, which in Polish common parlance describes the phrase in which more than one word in the given phrase denote the same thing, is just an exemplification of linguistic phenomenon, called pleonasm (PL: pleonazm). Why is it not the tautology? The latter consists of different words, unlike in the “buttery butter” example.

Pleonasms are sometimes used as stylistic devices to emphasise the message to be got across, but usually, in the everyday language, they turn out to be redundant and are considered linguistic errors. In Polish, the most glaring and quite often heard ones are (following wikipedia): w miesiącu lipcu (EN: in the month July), spadać w dół (EN: fall downwards, watch out, not “fall down”, in case of which a falling object must reach the ground), cofać się do tyłu (EN: reverse backwards, it gets my goat every time I hear it in Polish…), dalej kontynuować (EN: to continue on), fakt autentyczny (here I’ll take the liberty of translating it into English as: factual fact). The last example could have been heard when flowing from the mouth of silver-tongued ex-prime minister Jarosław K (in the distant parts of the world this man has become (in)famous for being unmarried, living with his mother and not having a bank account nor a driving license).

Less annoying, but also perplexing are the errors concerning abbreviations, like (once again I have drawn on wiki): numer NIP = numer numer identyfikacji podatkowej (EN: TIN number = tax identification number number). Some of the Polish pleonasms have English origins, like płyta CD. CD stands for “compact disc”, which in Polish means płyta kompaktowa. Things tangle up a bit, when it comes to DVD, which in turn stands for “digital video disc”. Unfortunately DVD has not been translated into Polish, so Poles have to use the clumsy płyta DVD phrase. In English such problems also occur. Let’s take the frequently used specific names like: RAM memory = random access memory memory, or ATM machine = automatic teller machine machine.

Any conclusions? Maybe one, partly content-related: after months of playing about with such linguistic quirks I’m still convinced that choosing to study at SGH I haven’t missed my vocation.

My last economic forecast this year

Initially I was going to write a letter to Mr Santa Claus, as his day falls today, but later on I came to a conclusion that I had been a bit nasty this year and he would not fulfil my requests, so at least I will share with some of my thoughts on the turmoil on financial markets.

Last Friday was expected to be a typically boring day on Warsaw trading floor. Out of my habit during my spreadsheet class I opened intra-day WIG20 chart in a sidebar and I was taking a glance at regular intervals. The index lingered slightly below the Thursday close until the data from US labour market were published. Just a second after the news of better than expected figures arrived at Warsaw, the stock prices shot up by almost two per cent within just a few minutes. American stock exchanges opened over two per cent above the Thursday close, the speculators (I deliberately do not call those who seek quick gains investors) snapped up on the shares, at half past four Warsaw Stock Exchange rose by two and half per cent day-on-day. Before nine in the evening I took a peek at the charts of American indices and S&P was 0,1 per cent negative. Finally main US indices closed about 0,5 per cent higher than the day before. Meanwhile we had a very quaint situation on the currency market – dollar strongly appreciated against euro, zloty appreciated against euro but weakened against dollar, returns on American government bonds and treasury bills dropped drastically, gold prices fell from historic highs by four per cent. The data showed the unemployment in the United States fell by 0,2 percentage points to round ten per cent. It has not been so bad for years, but financial markets do not navigate the absolute figures, but confront expectations with reality, consequently they are very prone to manipulations. Everything has its limits, but what if someone issued a forecast of unemployment rate of twenty per cent in October? How would the markets rally, if it turned out that the aforementioned rate? Would the indices rise so much that the trading would have to be suspended?

The one-off spurt of demand is the best evidence that the bulls are very weak these days, because they have run out of any back-ups for upsurges. Markets have already discounted all the positive signals coming in from the economy, now the market is driven by the loonies, as we witnessed last Friday. Who is to lose then? Probably the ones who do not learn from their own or someone else’s mistakes and invested in stock or equity funds in the last weeks of the bull market. As I read the Polish forum of Bankier.pl and comments to the analyses published on the portal I see a steadily growing pessimism, uncertainty and fear of the imminent bear run. Is it the presage of self-fulfilling prophecy?

BTW: reading the discussions between the forum users means also learning their slang. For example, who knows, what “pakować eSki pod korek” means?

I planned to refer in my letter to Santa Claus to so called Santa Claus Rally (PL: Rajd Świętego Mikołaja). I have read about this idiotic superstition almost every working day since the beginning of November. According to its definition, the rally takes place the last week of a year, between Christmas and New Year’s Day, but our journalists want to see it lasting all December long as if they held out hopes for self-fulfilling prophecy. In my humble opinion this year we will have a Santa Claus tug-of-war (PL: przeciąganie liny) between bulls and bears. The former will be defending what they have earned this year to pay themselves huge bonuses (many of them are the top dogs in investment banks and hedge funds), the latter will be trying to spoil their fun, so until the end of the year I foresee a stabilisation.

What is going to happen later? I expect a correction, but it is hard to estimate its scale – some will take profits, some will sell their assets to buy them back cheaply some time later. Gold price will level off for a while, then it is going to appreciate (read it: the bubble will be rising). Crude oil prices will probably remain stable for a few months. And in Poland – złoty will be in a long-term upward trend, but will be subject to fluctuations of investors’ sentiments, so there will be rather strong positive correlation between stock indices and złoty.

In the very long term… My inner oracle tells me about a big reshuffle, but I will skip it now…

I wanted to ask Mr Santa Claus to bring two guys to their senses.

Barack Obama, who loves to throw away money someone else has earned! US president has not however spent the money of his current voters. The fiscal policy has been loosened and Obama’s administration is giving away money, but the occupant of White House splurges the money the next generation of Americans will have to earn, in the long term sending US economy into decay.

And Mr Ben Bernanke, whose next term as FED Governor is almost in the bug – this guy and his mates have bailed out the almost bankrupt financial institutions and eased the pains of financial markets by slashing the interest rates to the ultimate limits and then through, to put it bluntly, printing money. This unprecedented action will take a heavy toll on the US economy in the future. But at the present he has the support of influential financial industry and of the government. The US economy has officially revived (grew by 2,8 per cent year-on-year in the third quarter), in the author’s brazenly expressed opinion was resuscitated by the drip from the public purse. It is untrue that market players do not realise it, they play the game, where the rules have been set by themselves and they are ready to play dirty to win it.

But don’t you care too much about it, let’s have fun in the Christmas run-up period!

English as a challenge...

Today, after a longish getting-round period, I started my exploration of Jacek Koba’s “Tip of the Week”. The book is written in an amusing and witty style and as one of its reviewers (an university professor) said is compiled in a bit chaotic way. However, the very impression of dealing with something written seemingly without rhyme or reason makes the whole experience even more amusing and unlike the quoted professor asserted, it is of much more than little educational value. I will try to write a short review, in the second half of the month, as soon as I go over it.

In first chapter the author addresses what he calls “do’s and don’ts of communication” (which in fact are rather the latter). One of the given advice follows: “If a word in your native language sounds vaguely foreign, for example, koncepcja, kumulować, konsekwentny, perspektywy, etc., you can safely assume that that’s what it will sound like in English, and that all speakers of English as a second language will understand it too, that is, conception, cumulate, consequent, perspectives, etc.” I could follow up with this list and add to it words such as: premia – premium, ekspertyza – expertise, ewidencja – evidence, prowizja – provision, okazja – occasion (there is a context in which this translation is correct, but how about “I bought these trousers for mere fifty zlotys – that was a real occasion.”, or “Last Monday I had the occasion to watch a new film.”?), windykacja – vindication, adekwatny – adequate, lektura – lecture, and so on… I could go on at the problem of false friends endlessly, as it is as old as hills, but it’s not the point now.

I would have even totally forgotten about it, if I had not run across the timetable below, hung next to the dean’s office in my school. Sorry for the quality of the photo, maybe one day I’ll try to carry my camera round.


Session. Dear native speakers of English who don’t know Polish and read this post – do you know what it means? In Polish the word sesja denotes the period of two weeks at the end of term, when the exams are held. I translate it “examination period”. I have looked it up in my monolingual Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary and in a few online monolingual ones and none of them gives the definition of the word “session” as an examination period, but they offer in unison another definition: “The part of a year or of a day during which a school holds classes.” Classes, not exams, and this is used in Scottish and American English. I had not known that meaning until today, but for the more proficient English students it can be misleading. The rest of them will be enlightened by their fellow students and thus they’ll find out what “session” is.

Then my eyes moved upwards and collided with the note below.


My face fell, my jaw dropped open, I felt dizzy, passed out and then was brought round by a sexy nurse… Well, actually my face fell and I only ended up wondering how many errors can be squeezed into one sentence.

Didn’t I noticed everything wrong?

Dodatkowy termin realizacji szkoleń BHP i bibliotecznego został przesunięty do 30 listopada...

The deadline for receiving occupational health and safety training and library training was extended by 30 November? One could insist that "term" refers to the period of time from 1st to 30th November and they transformed the Polish version in such way, but it still sounds clumsy, even if it is correct. But comprehensible? Lost in translation? Who? They or me?

And the phrase in the bracket which I will not dare to quote is the most glaring error I have seen in my school.

I called on dean’s office to report the blatant misuse of English, but I was fobbed off by the lady behind the counter who told me my complaint was irrelevant, as on 2nd December the note was already outdated. But at least she promised to remove it from the noticeboard.

Maybe we shouldn’t bother and stay complacent with our imperfect English? I recounted the story to my father after I had come home and he asked why had I decided to wrangle with the undereducated fishwives. Maybe it is better to let it go downhill, even bearing in mind my school has pretences to be one of the leading schools of economics in the EU?

I feel confused…

The presidents of Poland after 1989

I hope you will find this biased post both informative and funny.


I found the picture above in Muzeum Czwartej RP on Spieprzaj Dziadu – a Polish page modelled on wikipedia, which is a humorous encyclopedia of the gloomy times when Twin brothers were in power. The site set up during this murky period has been kept up until know, as the temporary occupational government is ruling the country. I surmise the image must have been put up there by the double (Russian and German) agent, whose granddad was in the Communist Party of Poland before WW2, whose parents formed a post-war lumpen-intelligentsia and who currently reads Gazeta Wyborcza and worships Adam Michnik, or maybe another representative of dark forces of evil.

You would be right to say the sense of humour consisting in poking fun at someone’s height is rather lowbrow, but tell me, why is such argument raised most often by the ones who also claim that Third Republic of Poland is just a PRL in disguise – last I heard was on Thursday, when I had a doubtful pleasure of attending the lecture by professor Adam Glapiński, currently economic advisor of Polish head of state (yes, the same one, who pokes out to the right), who stood in for my regular lecturer. I left the lecture after forty minutes…

Wojciech Jaruzelski formally can be included here, however I would not place him before Lech Wałęsa, as he had not been elected by citizens, but by the Houses of Polish parliament under the power-sharing deal in 1989. His term in office lasted around seventeen months and he was replaced by Lech Wałęsa in December 1990.

The first nation-elected president of independent Poland hails from poor family and completed only a vocational school. He gained international publicity after he established himself as a leader of strike in Gdańsk Shipyard in 1980 and then as a leader of Solidarity Trade Union. His contribution to the fall of communism is undeniable, but his presidency was a string of slip-ups and blunders. Sorry to say that, but in spite of his charisma he wasn’t an eligible person to hold an office of president of Poland. His style of exercising power was featured with unpredictable moves and litigiousness. He was defeated in the run-off of presidential ballot in 1995 by a tiny per cent of votes. Before his defeat, he offered to shake his successor’s leg, afterwards the result of the ballot was called into question.

As it turned out, Aleksander Kwaśniewski took office as president of Poland for two terms (ten years). Unlike his predecessor, he took up studies on University of Gdańsk, but he did not graduate from it, because he had not get all credits and consequently could not pass a master’s exam. He later explained himself he had been to busy with other stuff like activity in PZPR – like all people who joined the party in seventies and eighties, he did not believe in the system, but was just an opportunist. The fact the he didn’t manage to complete his studies is not reprehensible, unlike what he did later – he lied about his education, claiming he had graduated. In 1999 he became infamous for his overindulgent behaviour on the cemetery in Kharkov, where Polish officers who had died during WW2 are buried – to put it bluntly he paid homage to them after getting canned. On the other hand, his presidency was not a throwback to communist, he saw through the reforms aimed at moving Poland along and did not block the reforms pushed ahead by Jerzy Buzek’s government (unlike current president, who vetoes almost every legislation proposed by Donald Tusk's government). He was a zealous advocate of integration within European Union and one of reputable figures in international politics. He was the only president of Poland to speak foreign languages – he speaks fluently Russian and French, when tipsy, his English is good enough to deliver a series of lectures in US universities without getting his tongue twisted. At the end of his term he threw support for Orange Revolution in Ukraine, reconciled with Mr Wałęsa after Pope’s death and pardoned some of his henchmen embroiled in numerous scandals which marked the years of Democratic Left Alliance rule . In 2007 the became the leader of electoral campaign of Lefts and Democrats, in the meantime getting pissed two times, what must have impinged on the results of elections. Later on he withdrew from active politics.

Lech Kaczyński took over as president of Poland in 2005. He is said to be the most partial president of my country and in this respect outran both his predecessors, not without reason he is called “a president of his brother”, just operated through remote control. His term witnessed an unparalleled event in the world history – he and his twin brother held the positions of respectively president and prime minister at the same time. His presidency had been running smoothly as long as his brothel was a prime minister. But after Jarosław Kaczyński and his pals from the cabinet screwed everything up, Lech decided to knock back four bottles of wine with Donald Tusk and called early elections. The main occupation of the president in the next two years was bickering with the ruling Civic Platform. Lech Kaczyński was repeatedly accused of struggling drinking problem. I first heard it in 2006 from a man whose friend is in president’s entourage, then the rumours were exposed by eccentric politician of Civic Platform – Janusz Palikot, the same one who staged an event during which president’s doctoral thesis was ridiculed. The current head of state is an associated professor of Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw, but despite his academic degrees his command of foreign languages is commonly thought to be poor. Only in line with the accounts of his sidekicks, president is “proficient in English” and even corrects interpreters. The only substantiated case of such situation was when he corrected incompetent interpreter, who translated “holenderski” as “dutch” (a nie Nederland?). After all, as the first lady said, last year they celebrated thirty years of learning English together, the only result of three decades of efforts are uncontrollable bouts of giggling whenever Donald Tusk is speaking English.

To conclude, will the next president be the one we would be proud of?

Twoja stara też jest na fejsbuku... And some thoughts on life, opportunities, psychology and blogging

Masz już fejsa? I’ve got one. Jesteś już na fejsie? I’ve been there, for more than two years, but I’ve never received so many e-mails with requests to accept someone’s invitation, mostly from my friends from primary and middle school, most of whom I haven’t seen for months.

It seems that Poles have conquered facebook, relished on it and have become a part of international community. In terms of popularity the website, traced back to one of US universities, outran first Polish social networking portal grono.net (currently ailing) and is about to beat off nasza-klasa.

Looking at the inflow of new people into facebook I came up with a comparison to a park. Once there was a nice nook in the middle of the life-bustling city. Few people, including me used to walk there, breathe the fresh air, contemplate the beauty of the nature. Some time later the news that such place existed were spread far and wide. The park was flooded with more and more visitors, handset-ridden mothers with shrieking children in prams began to stroll there, middle- and high-school teenagers would hang around there in the afternoon, sipping beer and then tossing empty cans between flowers, shrubs became a hang-out for the local riff-raff. The place, once a shelter from the city groan, became a noisy cluster of outlandish, self-styled trendsetters, who could boast about being there and mingling.

I don’t consider my friends from teenage years a riff-raff, but what has happened seems out of place for me, as I remember the English origins of the site. One similarity is strikingly true – facebook has been all the rage in the recent months, but I can’t understand where’s the reason to show off – two years ago some of us could swank about a profile there, cause few people had heard about it. Now what’s the point if everyone has it?

Another, indirect analogy is a stock exchange. Usually the small and inexperienced investors discern the opportunity to gain high profits, on the basis of past figures, when the upward trend is about to reverse. The same happens now and is even backed by such “gurus” like Warren Buffett. Investment funds advertise themselves and encourage people to put their money into the most aggressive equity funds. Now, when the growth potential reached its limits and the most reasonable market observers are insecure about the future. What I’ve written above is one of the most common mistakes, in finance and in life. Opportunities should be seized when they’re scarce. What few people have is rare and thus more valuable. This applies also to professional qualifications. And buy stocks when the blood spills on the trading floor! It’s all about psychology, about choices, which are often flawed.

A Polish gullet weekly “Wprost” issued a “Technology insert” a few weeks ago. One of the articles was titled “Czy można się zakochać na facebooku?” My answer is short – no, one cannot fall in love on facebook, it is impossible like in case of skype, gadu-gadu, e-mail, IRC, webcam or any other contraption. All those inventions are designed to facilitate communication between people who know each other, but for some reasons can’t meet face to face. Dear reader, be mindful of my view on it – I don’t believe you can fall in love with someone’s profile on social networking service, you can’t have cybersex via webcam.

After all maybe I should be happy, cause my friend count on facebook increased. But my elation has been so big that I removed the link to the blog from my profile – I don’t care how many visitors a day my blog has. I back the quality of the readers, not the quantity. I’d love to know that people think over what I write here and I’d appreciate more comments, mostly from the shy Poles, daunted by the foreign language I suppose. A comment left by you is a piece of your mind given to me. It may be a disagreement, a challenge or a commendation, may be nasty and stingy, but if you post those few words or sentences it means you have your own opinions, considerations and are ready to share them and so you’re open-minded.

Meanwhile I thought about a Christmas gift for myself and one of the proposals is “removing myself” from grono.net and nasza-klasa on Christmas Eve. How about that?

Trust your intuition

I’d been waiting for a moment like for the last two and a half years. Around quarter past two today something prompted me to head for the railway crossing and take the camera. As I was approaching the destination, still being more than a hundred metres away from it, I heard the double horn of the train. I rushed towards and then through the platform, as late as I could I stopped and took the camera out of my pocket, turned it on and zoomed in. My hands must have been quaking after a sprint and the photo could have been sharper, I could also snap it around a half a second earlier, but all in all I managed to capture the alignment.

The “fast” train from Kraków perfectly coincided with the unit consisting of three Okęcie-bound engines. My goal was to take the picture exactly the moment the fronts of two engines were in one line, which requires a lot of precision and is a rare phenomenon. Still, it’s not what I saw on one sunny Thursday in March 2007, when the front of commuter train heading for Radom, rear of Kraków – Suwałki fast train and front of the Siekierki-bound coal train’s engine aligned in one line twenty metres north from the level crossing in NI, but I feel it under my skin that my patience will be rewarded one day.

Effectiveness or justice – in taxation

During my studies I’ve almost always been taught those two things are mutually exclusive on the macroeconomic level. Nevertheless, economic policy-makers still strive for a fair balance between those two features people expect from the economy.

Today I’ve been pondering upon combining effectiveness and justice in taxation. Effectiveness is usually defined as obtaining as much as possible from the certain resources, or using as little resources as possible to obtain the certain effect. In case of taxes the effects might be collected revenues, the resources might be acted as by the taxation rate, but also costs of running the collection system, or the influence of taxation rate on economic activity. Justice, in turn, refers to the fair distribution or redistribution of goods, based on the given criteria. When it comes to taxes, the considered issue is the taxation system (the most popular ones are progressive and linear).

Still the most relevant criterion taken into account when speaking about effectiveness is the bearing, which the taxation rate has on economic activity. If taxes are low, people are more motivated to work and less likely to evade them – in such countries the level of redistribution is low, usually, because when a country is a tax haven, it draws capital from abroad and small per cent of big sums bring ample revenues. The theory of higher revenues from cutting taxes has been elaborated on by an economic advisor of Ronald Reagan – Mr Laffer, who devised a Laffer curve. Higher taxes are linked to the higher rate of redistribution and as it is argued – they tend to discourage people from working. Some critics of high taxes claim also they put people off earning more – here I can’t agree – cause there are thresholds, over which the additional income is taxed at higher rate, I think it never happens that the higher taxation rate applies to the whole income after exceeding a threshold.

There are plenty of criteria, according to which justice in taxation is perceived. In two most frequent ones the individuals should pay the same per cent of their income (flat tax) or the richer should pay higher share of their earnings (progressive tax). Flat tax is often misidentified with the system where everyone pays the same amount of money in a form of taxes. Such systems are the thing of the past these days – but in case of flat taxes the richer still pay more than the poor, but their burdens rise linearly.

As we went through with the theory, it is time to present my proposal for taxation system in Poland, which in my opinion is a fair combination of effectiveness and justice. I would put forward a flat tax with rate of around 18 – 22 per cent and annual tax allowance of 10 – 12 thousand złotys, with no other deductions and relieves (worth considering are different thresholds of deductible income for single taxpayers, couples and payers with dependants). Rings a bell? Yes, this is similar to the first proposals of American economists from the late seventies. This would introduce an element of justice – the system would be simple, would not discourage people from working and would give much less room for abuses and tax evasion. Under a new system, with the flat rate of 20 per cent and deductible amount of 10 thousand zlotys, the effective taxation rates for a payer:
- who earns 1 000 zł a month would be (12000-10000)*0,2/12000=3,33%
- who earns 2 000 zł a month would be (24000-10000)*0,2/24000=11,67%
- who earns 3 000 zł a month would be (36000-10000)*0,2/36000=14,44%
- who earns 8 000 zł a month would be (96000-10000)*0,2/96000=17,92%
- who earns 15 000 zł a month would be (180000-10000)*0,2/180000=18,88%
Such system would decrease the tax burdens for the poorest, provide the fair, “creeping” progression and would guarantee considerably low taxes for the richer. No deductions and exemptions would mean that tax declaration forms could, as proposed, consist of one page. Much could be saved on the tax collection system – just imagine most of those people currently working for IRS who carry papers from one pile to another and hinder your life, are sacked. The army of clerks given the boot would result in lower budget expenditures for tax collection apparatus. However, some of the saved money should be spent on enforcement tax police – in my opinion tax evasion should be severely punished and penalties should be severe enough to dissuade taxpayers from tax avoidance.

Why is it impossible to put my idea into practise?
Firstly, ordinary citizens perceive it unjust, though in my view this is the most just solution
Secondly, the rich prefer the systems which create the illusion of justice but give a lot of room for abuse, that’s why in the States a CEO of a big company has a lower effective taxation rate than his secretary – he can afford to hire a specialist who’ll reduce his income.
Thirdly, regarding corporate income taxes, there is a big business of tax advisory services, tax optimisation solutions and consultancy firms – such great lobby has a vested interest in the status-quo of the present complicated corporate tax law, on which they can make money.

Achtung Baby!

The post appears accidentally – a speaker in the radio reminded me about the anniversary – one of the most remarkable albums of U2 and in the history of rock music was released exactly eighteen years ago.

The radio station played, predictably, the most renowned song form the album, the one you must be familiar with – One. Personally I think it’s the only U2’s popular song to be of real value – mostly those jewels are hidden somewhere in the latest tracks and only those who buy a CD can draw pleasure from listening to them. Achtung Baby also includes such examples of ear-catching sounds and magnificent lyrics.

The Fly – the first single from the album and the presage of the band’s music changeover. Being interpreted as a call from hell also depicts the rotten pop culture of the early nineties.

Until the end of the world – a history of the last days of Judas Iscariot – no matter if you’re a believer or not, this is a masterpiece…

Ultraviolet (Light my way) – a broken relationship in brief.

Acrobat – the band have never got any higher – in case of music, but mostly in case of lyrics. It carries a big, emotional message, laying bare the hypocrisy, it’s a song about being a hypocrite, as once Bono said, but I see there a lot more – broken up relationships, doubts, religion, need for belonging, emptiness overcome by the hope, but above all feeling of being lost.

The first nation-wide day without debts

As an unwavering opponent of living in the red I can only acclaim the initiative of Polish financial firms and associations, taken in partnership with the biggest debt collection company, aimed at highlighting the problem which affects more and more Poles.

According to the estimations, about fifty per cent of Poles run up debts. They do it for different reasons – to improve their standard of living, to fulfil their dreams, to give their children a better future, to make ends meet or to pay off the earlier outstanding debts (which is a vicious circle in a way).

The scale of problem seems to be increasing – around 1,5 million of Poles default on debts or do not pay them in time. The bad debts hit bank’s portfolios and consequently balance sheets. Bank provisions and write-offs for bad debts are forecast to soar in 2010.

The mail goal of the action is to educate, along with the old principle “prevention is better than cure”. The organisers rightly put the insufficient financial knowledge down to the troubles indebted Poles get into. The biggest mistake of an average distressed debtor is trying to avoid contact with the creditor at all costs. It is not the point, from what I have learnt when I worked in a bank, the creditor will always be ready to negotiate – they want to recover their debts and avoid costs and formalities, which involves taking the collection into the court. So contact them, arrange the schedule of repayments, negotiate the terms of contract.

Having talked to some experts in the issue I came to two conclusions. First one is quite simple – in order not to fall in the trap of indebtedness we should change our consumer habits and not yield to the illusion of having something, despite not affording to buy it. A new TV, refrigerator or laptop bought on instalments is not yours until you pay it off. My second thought concerns education. I was not taken aback by the fact people cannot calculate the actual interest rate of a loan. The regulators, mindful of this obliged banks to include it (in Polish it is known as Rzeczywista Roczna Stopa Oprocentowania – RRSO, EN: annual percentage rate) in the prospectuses and contracts. The lack of strong mathematical skills may also explain unawareness of costs of credit. The borrowers sometimes do not realise they will have to give back much more than they had taken out. Still, it is not the most alarming fact yet. Much more shocking is what has been declared by many people who defaulted on their debts and their property has been foreclosed – those debtors had not realised they would have to pay it back. Mind-boggling dear reader? Yes, they thought it was a gift and they didn’t plan to return the money, not to mention paying the interest on it. Those are the poor, who fall into the trap and end up turned out of their flats. Not creditworthy, with bad credit history are rebuffed by the banks and become clients of loan sharks…

So once again education to move us forward!

Of honesty

Took my first exam in this semester on Friday. For four months (since my bachelor’s exam in July) I had forgotten how it feels to be examined. Self-confident and laid-back I went in for it, what only proved my success in pursuit for not getting stressed-out before trifling event. A stupid exam is not challenging, there are plenty of more stressful situations in life. But it’s not the point yet.

The auditorium was full of students as I turned up, so I managed to find a seat in the upper part of the room. From the strategic point of view that was a bad decision – all the honest people sit usually close to the lecturer, those who are up to something take seats in the further rows. Soon all those guys and one girl who sat next to me set out to outbidding one another who was more unprepared. Such thing is in the students’ community a reason to boast about and gives a lot of room for lying. Not uncommon is that the one who moans “nic nie umiem, w ogóle się nie uczyłem/am” (EN: I have no idea about it, I haven’t learnt at all) the most, gets later on the highest grade. I can’t stand such hypocrisy and can’t stand taking proud in one’s laziness. Blatant laziness, cause my sitting for that exam lasted three hours and I found the test a pushover.

The more appalling thing is the social consent for cheating. In this respect Poles are very permissive and what in other countries (mostly Anglo-Saxon ones as far as I know) is regarded as disgraceful in Poland proves one’s resourcefulness. If you don’t let your friend look at your sheet you’re selfish, unfriendly rat-racer. I don’t get that concept of solidarity – I think I’m a friendly person – I help those who don’t know how to deal with a difficult issue, lend my notes to the ones who couldn’t be present at the classes. But an exam is a situation which requires a certain level of honesty – your grade in a course should reflect your knowledge dear reader, that’s why it’s unfair when a person who had a butcher’s at fellow student’s paper gets the same grade as someone who had sat for the test. It’s a kind of theft as well – it’s stealing someone else’s knowledge in order to get the better note, which can also be a measurable loss – those with better relative average stand a bigger chance for a scholarship and get higher scholarships. Students meanwhile are increasingly insolent – they clamour for the help, but in a thinly-veiled way – “can we check the answers” – they ask. Or maybe they’re really unsure whether they marked the correct one? (don’t be naïve!) In the last minute I gave in and helped those two people who sat next to me and whom I’ve never seen before and will probably never see again. As usual, I’m left with mixed feelings.

One of my professors once told when she had been to the States the lecturer could leave the room when their students had been writing and be sure they wouldn’t cheat. In Poland, in turn, the lecturer bring along their colleagues to have more people to scrutinise the students.

The permissiveness in Poland is fascinating. I don’t urge on denouncing on your neighbour who doesn’t pay taxes or chopped down a tree without notifying local authorities. I’m not in favour of putting the PRL motto “Kontrola dźwignią społecznego zaufania” (EN: Control is a leverage of social trust) into practice, but don’t perceive disobedience as a virtue.

I find it extremely hard to estimate the scale and harmfulness of the problem described above. It can’t be rooted out straight away and as person who’s grown up in this country I learnt to live with it. Well, yesterday I totally forgot about it and made use of beautiful weather – I washed the car, mowed the lawn before winter and tidied up the garden. Today for a change the rain is teeming down and thoughts of honesty returned…

Recently bought

After months of getting round I finally went to the bookshop, looked out for a thick navy volume and bought it.


My wonderful copy knocked me back over 160 zlotys (after combining numerous discounts) – PWN Oxford Polish-English dictionary is indeed a bit pricey, but I consider it the best dictionary available on the market and the money spent on it as a profitable investment. Probably no other dictionary has been worked out so well, other publications don’t cover as many idioms, colloquial words and phrases. The work at least doesn’t omit the most problematic phrases (some time ago I coined a new definition of a dictionary – “a book which translates the obvious words, but somehow leaves out those very ones you don’t know”) and offers thousands of examples of usage of different words in different contexts. It’s not ideal of course – still it doesn’t offer a good translation of the word dziadostwo (much depends on how you understand the original word in Polish – what in my family is called dziadostwo doesn’t square much with the definition given by Słownik Języka Polskiego), moreover, it omits a Polish idiom przechodzić ludzkie pojęcie, what could be translated as “pass all beliefs”! As a would-be professional I wouldn’t carelessly rely on its translations of financial or economic terms.

The second item arrived today by traditional mail. I have to say I’m surprised with the quality of postal services – the book was delivered within four working days (sent by economical registered letter) and it wasn’t soaked up as many other letters had I received.


Tip of the Week by Jacek Koba is a record of the author’s advice given to his colleagues at Ernst&Young, where he used to work as a proof-reader. After having a flick through it I consider it a must for Poles who (will) often draw up writings in the corporate setting. Why is it worth buying? It lists errors often made by Polish writers, touches upon the words Poles tend to have problems with and gives advice on how to write in a plain and comprehensible English. The book is available at the auctions put up by this allegro user – a representative of Altravox publishing office. It cost me only 17,99 zł, which I find dirt cheap, not to mention delivery is free of charge. So, my dear schoolmates, log in to your allegro accounts and keep it under your desk when you’ll be pursuing your careers in consultancy firms…

An uncanny gift to drop bricks?

The organisers of the celebrations of the fall of Berlin Wall probably have not made allowances for the elements of chaos brought in by the former Polish president.

Lech Wałęsa, one of the most distinguished figures associated with the resistance against communism, as an icon of the Polish movement had the honour to push the first block of domino symbolising the wall which carved up the city. He pushed the block briskly and stepped back, knocking down a cameraman, but it could have happened to anyone…

Later on, in his speech he used a word “dyrdymały” to describe the content of the speeches of his predecessors, who insufficiently underlined Poland’s contribution in the downfall of the iron curtain. For everyone who knows the leader of strikes in Gdańsk shipyard it should not have come as a surprise.

In line with the diplomatic protocol each of the politicians spoke in their mother tongue. Some, like French and Russian presidents addressed the Germans in a few words in the hosts’ language. Our president, in spite of his long experience in politics, still has not mastered the difficult art of expressing himself. He should, however, realise his words are straight away interpreted into other languages. As I heard about dyrdymały, I immediately thought about the way of translating the phrase into English. I quickly came up with “talk rubbish”, which was later confirmed by my new Oxford PWN dictionary. The problem is that “talk rubbish” is not an example of official language, so the interpreter was put on the spot by the speaker. As the German interpreter rightly said “in such situation there is no time for thinking”. It seemed that the German who interpreted Wałęsa’s word into his native language knew the colloquial Polish word and as he claimed, had managed to get out of the slightly embarrassing situation and interpreted dyrdymały as “travialties”.

The missteps of our “silver-tongued” president are a good example of a challenge for the interpreters and translators. The former ones are in an unenviable position – I would not like to be in their shoes when Wałęsa speaks. The latter are also given a headache by the former president – as those who translate are not native Poles, they have to consult Poles to figure out what Wałęsa meant. But we can also get lost in the maze of the bizarre metaphors used by the man who had his part in tearing down the Berlin Wall…

The wall torn down

Even tough I’m pressed for time I can’t fail to mention the 20th anniversary of one of the most significant moments in the history of 20th century. Twenty years the inhabitants of East Berlin in the spontaneous act began to pull down the wall dividing the city and the Europe. The wall erected in 1961 symbolised not only the iron curtain, but also highlighted the weakness of the system. The concrete wall and barbed wire fence had to keep the East Germans in the socialist country, there was nothing else to prevent them from fleeing the oppressive system. The same frailty of the system gave rise to the fall of the Berlin Wall. The concrete, 156 kilometre long barrier, although it encircled West Berlin, indeed fenced off East part of the city. The Western one was free, the eastern enslaved…

Polish pension system in brief

Following the recent uproar over government’s plans to take over a fraction of the pension insurance premium, which is currently transferred to the pension funds I decided to familiarise those of you dear readers, who still know little about the structure of the new Polish pension system with its basic assumptions and principles.

Disclaimer and warning: the picture is a bit subjective as the issue is one of the author’s hobby horses. Moreover author has a rather low opinion about the solutions put into practise in Poland.

It’ll take on a form of FAQ – so here we go!

1) How is it designed?
- The new, reformed system basically consists of three parts, called pillars. The first one is run by the national insurer, called ZUS, the second are private-owned pension funds. Participation in the first and in the second pillar is obligatory. The premium is divided and currently around sixty per cent goes to ZUS, the rest to the pension funds. As the replacement rate (last salary to first benefit ratio) under the new system will range from forty to fifty per cent, the employed are encouraged to save in the voluntary third pillar, in which the participants can save under pension schemes and on individual pension accounts, run by banks, insurance companies, or at brokerage firm.

2) How does it function?
- The money which flows to the first pillar is assigned directly for payments of current benefits. ZUS just keeps an account of what has been transferred into the system. The amount of the future benefit is subject to increments according to the political decisions, based mostly on inflation rates. The real money remains in the second pillar, where the companies managing pension funds invest it. Unfortunately the way they build their portfolios is not at their discretion, but they are constrained to buy certain types of securities in order to protect the future benefits. They can invest up to five per cent abroad, have up to forty per cent of stock in their portfolios, at least sixty per cent needs to be invested in government bonds… In the third pillar an employed person can either participate in the pension scheme, set up by their employer or choose an individual form of putting aside money – a bank account, an investment fund (there’s a choice of risk profile), taking out an insurance policy or buying stocks. The amount yearly set aside in the third pillar is at the present capped to over 9500 zlotys.

3) Who this money belongs?
- Good question! Firstly – what money? In ZUS you just have a book record, just a figure in the computing system. The money in the pension fund, managed by a private company is… a public money. You can’t just withdraw this money whenever you want just like in the United States, but if you pop off before you retire, you capital is inherited by the family members, but watch out – as much as possible is transferred into their pension accounts in pension funds. Only the money in the third pillar is available for you. You can pay it out whenever you want, but it entails the obligation to pay the capital gains tax. (The savers are exempted from the tax only if they don’t pay out money until they pension off).

4) Who has a right to decide what is being done with that money?
- For sure not you, dear reader. There’s no influence on the way ZUS is run, nor on the rate of increment. In the pension fund also there’s no possibility to control the investment strategy, which is greatly determined by the precautionary regulations. So if you feel the bear market is coming don’t call the fund manager and advise them to divest of stocks and buy bonds, just keep a cool head and see your money shrinking.

5) Yes, so how about investment strategies?
- ZUS doesn’t invest your money – as it has been written above. Pension funds managers build the portfolio on the basis of rather stiff guidelines. This means the returns of funds are very similar. The most idiotic thing in the OFE business are mandatory investments in government bonds, interest on which is paid from our taxes, so we pay to the state for the return on sixty per cent of portfolio’s makeup…

6) What are the costs?
- In case of ridiculous first pillar not as high as you’d think. In spite of all scandals with marble-laid head offices and luxurious holiday resorts, costs of administering the service of benefits account for around one per cent of managed sum – quite little. In OFE, pension companies charge currently (until the end of this year) a distribution fee of seven per cent of the premium, so out of each 100 zlotys paid into the fund only 93 are invested, the rest goes into managing companies… This is one of the biggest scams, done within the letter of law, pension companies did Poles out of around twelve billion zlotys within the last ten years. The management fees are reasonable and don’t exceed one per cent.

7) What are the incentives for the pension funds to invest the money effectively and what are the punishment if they fail to do so?
As the old Polish saying goes: “czy się stoi, czy się leży, siedem procent się należy” – the old adage, referring to socialist economy is, when paraphrased still up-to-date with the private-run pension funds. People are bound to transfer premiums to the funds, so the risk that they’ll take their money away doesn’t exist. Of course they can change the fund, but there’s no real competition on the market, so even if one goes away, another one comes up. There’s no carrot in the system, as the fees for managers are not dependent on the investment results. The stick also doesn’t work properly – the Polish regulatory body gives (on the basis of calculations) a minimum rate of return setting out the profit each fund has to fetch – this year in March 3Y minimum return was below zero. If it doesn’t it must pay into the fund to make up for the insufficient returns. Such situation took place only once in the history of the Polish system. According to the rule “don’t stand out, if it doesn’t pay off” their investment portfolios are very similar, so the choice of a fund smacks of a fiction…

8) What is the government trying to do?
They want to move some of the newly coming premiums to ZUS, rather than to OFE. Currently 19,52 per cent of the salary are paid as a pension insurance premium. 12,22 per cent go to ZUS, 7,30 per cent go to OFE. Under the new regulations, 15,22 per cent would go to ZUS and only 4,30 per cent to OFE.

9) What’s the purpose and what may it result in?
The main goal of course to have a cash injection to the budget in the lean times, in the long term it means accumulating the “book record of capital” and carrying on building a financial pyramid – it’s a major downside. It’s hard to say, whether the increments in the first pillar will be higher than returns in the second, but it’s almost sure that system’s running costs will be much lower – it’s a major upside. I see another positive aspect of the planned reform – the funds won’t be allowed to collect money for which they’ll buy government bonds. Minister Rostowski goes even further and suggest that funds shouldn’t buy government bonds at all and make profit only in the private sector. This is the wisest thing about our pension system ever said! The restrictions for the fund managers should be abolished and funds shouldn’t have gilt-edged securities in their portfolios. It’s better to issue less bonds (author is in favour of balanced budget at all and in his humble opinion state should issue any securities and run up any debts) and cut the taxes…

10) What else can be done?
I’m calling for more freedom, which means most of all responsibility for the taken decisions. Let me save for my pension on my own, put the money whenever I want or spend it however I want. But if in fifty years I was looking for the food in the rubbish bin – it would be my fault. Such scenario will never be realised as most of people consider it inhuman.

So how would be my ideal pension system look…?
The first pillar would be state-run, participation would be obligatory. Benefits from it would be just tiny “subsistence allowances”. As an element of redistribution, benefits would be equal, but premium would be collected on the principle of flat rate. The second pillar would be private and discretionary. Wish to hand your money over to professionals and pay them for management – go ahead, but not under constraint. Such normal system, based on the free-market rules would work much more effectively. My idea is rather unrealistic, so I’d opt for what has been applied in Sweden – citizens there are obliged to save in the private system, but instead of 15 uncompetitive funds, they have a choice of around 500 institutions offering a wide range of products, including long-term bank deposits, investment funds, insurance policies, etc.

Thank you for getting here. If you see any factual errors or have questions, let me know.

What was missed last weeks...

Was probably the golden Polish autumn – the warm and sunny days, when Poles can enjoy the last rays of sun which really heats the air up. This year, after a clement September, October brought the first attack of winter and temperatures below month’s average.

Yesterday I strolled through Pole Mokotowskie Park to search for the signs of golden autumn. The pictures outwardly bear out the view that this year nature also goes through the phase, but the sun wasn’t accompanied by the mass of hot air blown from over Sahara desert, but by the arctic air pumped into Poland by the high stationary east of my country…


Picture 1 – some trees are already bare, thanks to others the park is still ablaze with colours. In the background – some remarkable elements of Warsaw’s skyline – the big shopping mall Złote Tarasy (EN: Golden Terraces), Palaces of Culture and the skyscraper of Polish Airlines.


Picture 2 – panorama of colourful foliages east to the artificial pond in the middle of the park. Few people walk around – probably the weather put them off…


Picture 3 – an alley next to Polish National Library – notice the trees in the background, still much in leaf, in all shades of red, ginger and brown…


Picture 4 – a carpet made from maple’s leaves. Quality of the shot staggeringly good as for the photo taken against the sun



Picture 5 – here a comparison. The photo was taken last year, on 30 October. The temperature in the afternoon hit fifteen degrees. Yesterday it barely crept above zero and the feeling of cold was heightened by the gusty wind. What is quite surprising, this year the trees have more leaves than a year before, even in spite of cold October.


Picture 6 – I wonder what is the name of the tree which shed such almost white leaves…


Picture 7 – green, golden, yellow… And probably some other colours illuminated by the sun shining low from the sky. Behind the trees there’s the intersection of Al. Niepodległości and ul. Batorego.

Is it going to be chilly like this for the rest of the autumn? Forecasters said the oncoming winter is rather likely to be warm and wet, not windy, frosty and sunny. I’d sooner go for the former. If you realise how cold it is outside, such weather is not uplifting… I won’t abandon my hopes to see the golden Polish autumn, even in the second half of November. Well, eventually I might give in, when somebody promises me the onset of spring in February…

Memento mori...

All Saints’ Day and the subsequent All Souls’ Day – the short period cut out from the contemporary life-centred culture when we bring back the memories of the departed ones. We focus on the past, but pass over the thought of what is inevitable for us – one day we’ll also pass away, but this moment is pushed into the distant future by most of people. As in case of all unpleasant thoughts, this one is also driven out of our minds…

For the past seven or eight months I’ve had several dreams of my death. They were usually set in the future. (below my description from the discussion on W-wa Jeziorki blog)

First one: Centre of Warsaw (pedestrian precinct along Centrum Department Stores. I walk slowly and all of the sudden feel the stabbing pain in my chest, somewhere around my heart, the pain knocks me down, I fall over, other passers-by also cringe, a moment later sky starts falling. My explanation - too much reading about the conspiracy theories of doomsday foretold on 21st December 2012 (the Mayan prophecy).

Second: I simply sit behind my desk in the office (I'm no longer a student), again I feel an unexpected pain in my chest, I slump forward on my desk, my co-workers scream something. Possible cause: premature death on heart attack?

Third: summer, sunny day, I mow the lawn in my garden, meanwhile chatting with my neighbour standing behind the fence. Suddenly it's getting totally dark - the big blackout comes, either I'm blinded by something or the sun goes off - impression just like if somebody turned off the light. The engine of the grass mower stops. Neighbour and I still talk to each other trying to comment on the phenomenon. After ten seconds the pain starts penetrating my body, from feet goes up to the heart, then blows me up - I had the feeling of the bomb exploding inside me. Explanation that the blade of mower caught on the extension cord wire doesn't seem plausible(?)

Three dreams had one thing in common - after my the moment I died in my dream I woke up with the real pain in the chest, it eased off after one - two minutes.

These last ones also have another element in common – an apparent dazzling flash I felt in my eyes just before waking up. The feeling resembles a situation when someone puts a camera in front of my eye and snaps, giving off a flash. I think I had two visions when I was crunched by a tree struck by a lightening – it leads me to the next explanation of the flash. Quite often it was accompanied by feeling of sinking into myself…

I still wonder what this all means. As a typically down-to-earth person I approach such things rather sceptically, but what we dream is conditioned on what is hidden is the darkest ends of our mind. It seems such theory is much more convincing than “harbinger” ones. I don’t think those dreams herald an oncoming decease. After all if our fate is written somewhere, we can’t change, so there’s also no need to worry about the future.

Nevertheless a dose of fear creeps up. It’s not the fear of death, rather of the unknown. It doesn’t paralyse my life, actually it doesn’t affect negatively my everyday activities. It causes only two things. Firstly, it doesn’t let me do, what around ninety nine per cent of people do – I can’t take for granted that nothing bad is going to happen. Secondly, it fills me with gratitude for each day which happened without an unfortunate event. I wonder how many other people experience such brainwaves…

Markets and analysts go insane...

For three consecutive days the indices of stock exchanges were taking on red colour. Analysts finally started arguing whether what we saw was the beginning of the correction and tried to foresee the scale of it. Today the markets around the world turned green and as it’s said in the stockbrokers’ slang, are heading north.

This has something to do with the psychology, to be precise with the phenomenon of self-delusion. Just look at what the investors have just believed in (probably for a short time and to take profits quickly). The US Trade Department trumpeted today the end of the recession in the United States. The growth domestic product of the country rose by 3,5 per cent year-on-year. Taking into account the doom and gloom we had been looking forward to experiencing over a year ago the figure is excellent, no wonder that markets shot up. But wait… Why has the US economy grown by 3,5 per cent? The plan I dubbed a few months ago “resuscitating the corpse” must have worked out. Patient was brought back to life, but at the expense of zillions of dollars and running up huge debts. The subsidies granted under the “Cash for clunkers” scheme and depreciation of dollar also contributed to it. They even seemed to worked a miracle – the inflation rate hasn’t gone up… Yet…!

Dear politicians. If you want to stimulate the economy of your country, print money, blow up the budget deficit, keep the interest rates down. Keynes said: In the long run we are all dead, but why should we die on our knees?

A day earlier the season of announcing the quarterly results began in Poland. The first big company to report its key figures was the TP Group. In general they were worse than expected, to boot some figures topped out for the first time since many quarters. The price of TP shares reacted quickly and plummeted by over five per cent during Wednesday trading session. In an evening commentary analysts put the poor results down to the crisis. How come? The telecommunication industry is not prone to fluctuate during downturns – firstly cause people still need to communicate, secondly many clients are under contracts so they can’t just give up on their phones whenever they wish to. It’s the business model they had adapted and consistently implemented. Lots of trade unions standing up to their privileges, splendid salons, and deplorable infrastructure combined with unreasonable prices (fifty zlotys for the cheapest monthly plan with 60 minutes to landlines included in the charge) only bring people of getting read of the fixed line – the thing of the past in the era of prevalent mobility. Its branch accountable for mobile services – Orange also needs to change its strategy – the rates in post-paid plan are, to put it mildly, unattractive, pre-paid offer doesn’t stand out, but TP managers are presumptively plotting to hammer another nail to its coffin. Prices and transfer limits of mobile internet connections can’t stack up against the ones offered by competitors. Not only by Play, Era and Plus are also much forward. Under such circumstances the outflow of clients is only a matter of time, just like the death of the ailing cash cow. And for this fundamental reason I would never, ever buy the shares of TP…

What happened to my facebook?

I’ve recently realised two years had gone by since I joined facebook. At that time (October 2007, a few days before elections) there were few and far between people in Poland who had heard about this social networking website. That was the time it made it big in the States and in United Kingdom, but its popularity hadn’t spilled over the rest of the world yet. The makeover which took place later only dragged the service down – at least to me.

Facebook has lost its character, as it happens to every social networking utility. One of the sociologists said when you join a certain community, you appreciate its exclusivity, then many other people sign up, after several months you get an invitation from your mother at this is the last straw – you switch to another website. As I joined it, it was totally unknown in Poland, at the beginning I had four connections and, what was the most important, facebook was available only in English. Everyone who wanted to use it, had to accept it. Facebook was a tool to learn the foreign language, pick up some slang vocabulary, two years ago it was an international socialising platform for people around the world, who used the lingua franca – English to communicate. The basic rule was the popular saying: “shape up or ship out”. The ones, who didn’t put up with this had to make do with popular Polish websites like grono.net or nasza-klasa. Here’s what I put the blame on.

In 2008 the drive to jack the profits up brought about the initiative to translate facebook into other languages. Polish was one of the first languages of the new facebook, Polish version of the website was launched over a year ago. In the subsequent months I could observe the abrupt inflow of new people to my English website. The annoying applications in English were supplanted by the Polish ones, translated or created by Polish users. The level of those applications is beyond the pale. If you’re getting bored, you can check out if your day will be lucky, how much do you want sex at the moment (below),


take a test in Polish to find out, who’s going to do the blow job today


(that’s unbelievable I’ve heard some people are already addicted to the application), or become a fan of Auschwitz.


Just put these three things together and imagine an ad of concentration camp popping up between the results of the tests described above.

I still remain faithful to the origins of the utility. I’ve never tried out the Polish version, screens I’ve seen were clumsily translated, so I still use facebook in English (UK) and watch my friends from primary school merrily signing up. As one of the Polish newspapers reports, in terms of popularity facebook has outrun nasza-klasa, which is now for nerds. It’s time to get away from there, from all those accursed websites. Grono.net – I pop in out of the habit once in a few days and log out after twenty seconds, as much time as I spend on nasza-klasa. Daily dosage of facebook takes up around five minutes a day. On professional Goldenline which is still the most bearable of all the social networking services I log in once in a week. I’d give them all up with alacrity. Why won’t I do it? Out of curiosity. Tough I don’t upload my own photos, don’t update statuses, don’t take idiotic tests, I can keep up with my friends. But that’s not the way it should be – we should return to the face-to-face world instead of collecting friends…

Szybki magister was just a hoax...

…but I fell for it as well. Now I can have a sigh of relief…

There was something absurd in it, but the fictional university did a roaring trade – within a few days around five thousand people wanted to inquire about the fees, terms of studying, etc. I’d dearly step up the blogging frequency (you’re reading the 100th post on my blog), however this weekend I’m a bit short of time. To find out more about the made up university of Wyborcza, read their comprehensive report.

Elections, elections...

The parliamentary ones would be held this October, if the previous term of the Polish parliament hadn’t been shortened. I still dread to think what would have happened if the Law and Justice party had remained in power for next two years. They’d probably kept on spoiling the country and its institutions, in the worst (though not really likely) scenario, the next elections in 2009 could have been rigged. Why unlikely? People of my country wouldn’t let them do this, we would take into the streets, picket, show our disagreement, or EU would step in.

The review of the last two years – it could have been better and could have been worse. Currently there’s no alternative for Civic Platform in Poland. Turning Tusk and his entourage away would mean bringing Kaczyński back to power. The last scandals didn’t outrage me much – in every party there will be individuals aiming to set themselves up, make a few profitable deals, arrange a swindle and so on – so no surprise. Those who claim Tusk’s move was a PR stunt are partly right – however I couldn’t see any better way of resolving a problem of suspected ministers than firing them – for sake of transparency. The thought of early elections makes me feel apprehensive. If Poles turn their backs on PO it will mean PiS may earn more votes in the elections. Hopefully our memory is not short as on financial markets and the mistake of 2005 is still being borne in mind.

This weeks the elections are being held in my school. The students vote for their representatives in the senate and other bodies which I won’t mention cause I have too little time to think or check how to translate them. I went to the makeshift polling station put up on the courtyard of my school on Monday. I picked up the ballot papers and dashed off a bit to put my crosses on them. After a moment a group of fellow students, for sure including one who was running for a seat in senate came up to me and offered to help me choose the right candidates. Once again I could kick myself for being not enough assertive – I just kindly turned down their proposal. Should I’ve reported it as irregularity? I only wish I hadn’t hurried with marking the names – had I taken a moment for consideration I could have shown my disapproval and contempt for that cesspit by casting invalid votes…

University of complacency – update

Like on cue, Gazeta Wyborcza published today an extensive report on the pitiful state of education on Polish universities. I’ve just skimmed it, after one of the lecturers told us about the articles in GW. The headings suggest my school is really not that bad…

Free market can engender pathologies

The public debate in Poland has recently concentrated on the issue of the level of education on Polish universities. Commentators and scholars after years deigned to notice how degraded the academic title of Master had been. Today virtually everyone who can afford to pay the fee can get the master’s degree. Why - the private universities have been mushrooming in last two decades. Set up by the businessmen willing to make money such schools churn out thousands of magisters with little knowledge and depressing feeling of wasted five years. No wonder, if their whole activity is based on “pretending” – we pretend that we teach them, they pretend to learn, at the end totally seriously we award them a master’s degree, because they have been paying us for five years, so the deserve to be “magistry”. Free market, although not flawless can pick out tawdry items. Such product are the qualifications of the graduates of those universities, often proved worthless by the labour market.

Reading the Friday issue of Gazeta Wyborcza I found an appalling example of master’s-for-money deal. I was mostly shocked by the message of the ad – Masz maturę – zrób magistra w dwa lata. Firstly the if not broken, then at least cracked Polish – zrób magistra. Should I draw it with crayons or conjure it up from my household waste? Or maybe look for an attractive creature of the opposite sex, do my job and wait for nine months – that’s even faster than two years! But how the hell can a high school leaver get the master’s degree within two years? On average it takes five. The ad gave the address of the School’s website. Curious to see what’s the catch I wasted some of my transfer limit and entered it. Below – the site only confirms the ad’s content and encourages the candidate with the drivelling summary of its offer.


“Unique teaching system” probably means nobody could stoop any lower. The further exploration of the website consumes my precious time and draws my exhausted eyes to the bottom of the page, where my sight runs across a caption (below).


Akademia nie gwarantuje zdobycia należytej wiedzy z zakresu wybranych kierunków w okresie studiów. Umożliwia w szybkim tempie przygotowanie studenta do obrony pracy magisterskiej.

I am deeply struck by the honesty of the school’s authorities. In other words they make no bones about the real goal of the undertaking – producing a graduate whose qualifications and knowledge won’t stand for anything!

At first it occurred to me such school should be shut down. But as I cooled off a bit and came to my senses I realised that according to the premise of rationality of choices made by the individuals such university should go bust without any regulatory help. If it does any harm to anyone, those harmed are the ones who choose to pay for education there – their choice and their potential misery after graduation.

Unfortunately it won’t go bust. There will always be the students who decide to study only to get the slip of paper called “a diploma”. We can only pin our hopes in the labour market – may it be able to verify the real value of job applicants.

Free market has in built-in inclination to favour mediocrity as it conforms to the expectations of the majority. That’s why in the prime time instead of an interesting documentary or a decent recognised film we have to watch “Taniec z gwiazdami”.

Development, but sustainable

The morning ride to school made me mull over the capacity of infrastructure as a barrier in the development. This barrier is a bit similar to a brick wall – to high to jump over it, too wide to go round it, but not heavy and not fixed to the ground so that people can push it forward, but their movement is slowed up and it wears them down along the way.

Let’s look at the example of the main roads out of Warsaw, like ul. Puławska. What’s the most effective choice for the roads users? Today the road was packed with cars, but also all buses I saw were packed with commuters. Let’s analyse a few variants…

Variant 1 – everyone who can changes the bus for a car. Buses run almost empty, those who choose to ride, travel more comfortably, but longer.

Variant 2 – some of the drivers give up their cars and decide to commute by bus. The passengers in the buses are packed like sardines, but their journey last shorter, other drivers also benefit from this.

Variant 3 – urban authorities decide to mark out a bus lane. Hard-line drivers swear like troopers, their journeys to work are fifty per cent longer. Buses are packed but run quickly.

I could come up with some more alternatives, if you want more, use your imagination, maybe leave a comment. The option 1 is undeniably the worst. The second has a certain drawback – the drivers won’t get the incentive to leave their cars because the number of buses serving the line will be too small to provide a decent standard of commuting. The third would not accelerate the journey so much. It wouldn’t last shorter off-peak, but would cause an unnecessary traffic restriction. It the rush hours it would speed it up a bit, but not as much as for instance on Trasa Łazienkowska. On ul. Puławska there are too many bus stops and too many traffic lights so the buses wouldn’t even manage to pick up speed on short sections between junctions and lay-bys.

It turns out that to ensure the decent transport link between the capital and the suburban town the authorities would have to either launch buses which would run once in two minutes in morning peak, or to widen the road to six lanes in each direction. But to unclog it would be imperative to remove most of the traffic lights and build a system of service roads (funnily enough I don’t know the Polish equivalent of the term – is it infeasible then?) along ul. Puławska to serve the residents living along the artery…

New estates spring up, the new dwellers move in, living on the suburbs inexorably evolves into a hell. The residents of my locality can be divided in three groups. The first have lived here almost since ever, like their fathers, grandfathers and so on. The second group moved out of Warsaw to run away from the city groan, fumes and noise. In return they lose two hours a day they spend in a traffic jam. Some of them already gave up and returned to Warsaw. The third group consists of people who arrived here from province in search for a better life. They settled down here cause the property prices were lower than in Warsaw. No wonder, they sought a better future for themselves and their children. We all pay the price.

When a developer builds a new estate, it’s interested in selling the flats or houses, reaping the profits. Hardly ever the developers care about the roads which link their buildings with the rest of the world. Even if they repair or modernise them it’s because the local council conditioned granting the planning permission on their contribution to the infrastructure. As far as I can observe, my locality has reached its limits of development. It should be cut back until the new infrastructure is built. Instead of quantity we should opt for a quality – quality of our lives.

Middle of the summer. I leave work, spend over an hour in stinky bus with people getting sweaty, come back home and what…? I can’t even take a shower cause the water doesn’t flow! Once again the infrastructure is overloaded. The underground water resources are scarce, the capacity of water treatment station is limited, so when a selfish jerk turns his garden watering system on, I can’t take a bath. People don’t care by their nature – they’d rather prevent their lawns and shrubs from withering than let their neighbours take an invigorating shower. In some countries (Great Britain, Sweden) it is forbidden to use water for watering the garden plants or car washing during the drought and people tend to comply to it. It someone breaks away, it’s a… Pole. Here authorities can impose bans to no effect…

Can we afford the development? Will the poor infrastructure turn the further development into an obstacle course. Will the electricity outages like the ones after the last winter attack paralyse the industry?

Look ahead, but don’t dismiss the black scenarios…

On bears, bulls and irrational expectations

In the string of distressing events of the previous week I didn’t manage to find time to highlight the two excellent articles from The Economist – Please do feed the bears and Unrepentant bears – the end is nigh. Not accidentally have they been published after seven months of unreasonable rallies on stock markets. Both are a must for the investors who want to steer clear of herd instinct and mistakes made by many too credulous fellows in 2007. I won’t summarise the content of them, but I’ll share some reflections I’ve had after the reading.

Firstly – why are the ones who bet the declines condemned? Journalists, analysts and commentators boiled down the picture of stock market to a simple rule: green – good, red – bad. No matter how blown up the stock prices are, it’s appropriate to fall into delight over the upward trend. Nobody cares about the underlying of the increase and the possible aftermaths. In the long run the big players start taking profits and puncture the balloon. If the stock indices rise in a reasonable pace, which reflect the state of economy, profits of the companies, increased work productivity and so on, such situation is evitable. But stock exchange is not only a place where the price is fixed and the companies are valued. It’s also a battlefield for speculators who chase the quick, short term profit. They also increase the volatility of the market, mostly visible in the range of consolidation we’re in now. The bears represent the put down voice of the common sense, which tentatively asks about the fundamentals. It’s not a convenient question, it takes the gloss off the gorgeous picture of the market which interminably heads upwards.

There are the ones in whose vested interests are the next rallies. They aim to persuade the others to buy, then when the market drifts up they hold the shares in their portfolios or play on futures market. If they represent investment funds they also seek after higher commission, boast about superb investment results and draw in the naive savers who heat up the bubble at the peak.

But how about governments? Those weren’t only the good macroeconomic data that pushed the indices up. The forecasts could have been lowered so that the real economy could exceed them easily. We owe it to the stimulus packages and loosened monetary policy. The market players flooded with the cheap money (the price of money is… the interest rate) had to invest that money somewhere. The decision-makers chose the stock market cause they had nothing to lose – when the interest rates are high, bank deposits and gilt-edged bond offer a safe return and can make alternative to volatile and rather risky stock market. In a few years we’ll have a perspective which will allow us to assess the measures taken to tackle the crisis. Then we’ll have known if they’d have done more harm than good or the other way round.

To conclude optimistically – I forecast that next week the stocks will tumble, but in spite of those tragic news we’ll be enjoying the sunshine and daytime temperature of at least fifteen degrees (Celsius degrees). 14 October is too early date to be an onset of winter… Sleet and blustery have to get lost!

The winter bike

Left: my newly-bought piece of equipment – a stationary bike. For some it’s an item allowing them to exercise on a daily basis, for others a substitute of a real bike for the months when for various reasons one can’t cycle. I’d opt for the first application of a stationary bike – I made a resolution to get on it each day and pedal for a half an hour, what in my pace, according to the device’s meter means riding thirteen kilometres (average speed – 26 kmph). Irrespective of the weather it gives me the opportunity to have an everyday workout, but it can’t make up for normal cycling, which involves contact with the nature, breathing in fresh air (or fumes from exhaust pipes – depends on where you ride), exploring new places, exposing your skin to the sun, contemplating the beauty of the landscape. Here, staying in one place for thirty minutes I need to get busy with something else – that’s why I have to take a book, a newspaper, a copybook, a phone (more pedalling means more top-ups, more points on allegro, more bonuses, etc.), eventually I can turn to my last resort – the TV is just in front of the bicycle, but that must be really the last resort…

A miracle... in a way...

Fancy reading a joyful post? Better click away this time…

Every road user knows what to do when they see an ambulance in the wing mirror. Cars on cue pull over to give way to the emergency vehicle and then orderly pull back into their lanes. Many realise the importance of such reaction, but few think what is happening on board of an ambulance. Once, probably around a year ago, after the death of my grandfather I thought “maybe the death passed by”. The moment when an ambulance hurtles next to your car rescuers might resuscitate the patient, trying to throw the balance for the life…

The last farewell ceremony is becoming increasingly popular in Poland these days. It is held in a church usually the day before a funeral. The ones invited are only the close family and friends, who can say goodbye to the departed person for the last time.
The classes finished three quarters earlier so I covered the whole distance between SGH and church by Rzymowskiego on foot rather than by underground and then bus and after an hour long walk I managed to get there just a minute before the rain lashed down. Although over ten people were invited only my parents and I arrived. “I cannot come because I live too far” or “I am on holiday so it will have to go without me” are lame excuses, but “it is too much for me” is a wicked excuse! Presence on such ceremony means paying respects to the deceased and keeping company to the family, whose tragedy it is. Theirs, not mine! It was not pleasant neither too see the corpse for the first time nor to see the reaction of the family. Unpleasant, but necessary, such situations must not be shunned, they are a part of our life. I’d say more, they let us look at our everyday problems from a different perspective and see how diminutive they are, compared to bereavement for instance.

The essential part of each funeral are condolences offered to the mourners. It is customary to come up to them and say… But what to say in such situation, avoiding corny fixed expressions and remaining sincere? I am so sorry (przykro mi) – that indeed might be true, it is one of the most obvious phrases which occur to you. You may feel compassion or sympathy for the bereaved. The former is for me much more sincere, the latter quite often less. Compassion is more about feeling sorry, sympathy is about feeling the same, both translate into Polish as “współczucie”, which means sharing other person’s feelings. This is why I never use those hackneyed phrases and try to come up with the words suitable for the situation and still be sincere. I do not think I can mention any sympathy if I do not know how it feels to lose a mother in the age of sixteen. I could not tell that nor to the older daughter of my mother’s friend. I have not lost any of my parents so I do not feel I can speak about sympathy. Maybe I will never understand it because my parents might die naturally in the ripe old age, which is different from the premature death.

But coming back to the older daughter. I cannot be sure my parents will be alive when I turn twenty seven, so there is an element of uncertainty which creeps up to my reasoning. The likelihood of decease is just smaller in case of healthier and younger people, but accidents, heart attacks, diseases diagnosed too late or common cessations of blood circulation happen and strike us out of the blue. I wonder how many people also feel a kind of thankfulness to the God of fate that “it did not happen to me”. This gratitude is soon outshined by the uncertainty and thought: “I did not happen to me… only today. But what about tomorrow?” If you feel like reading some more reflections on this topic, pop in here?

All those events made me ponder upon the inexorable – my own departure. I hope I will stay fit until the old age and pass away quickly, without unnecessary suffering. Senility and cancer – those are the things I had seen prior to the deceases of people I knew well. Lots of us would love to depart this life like this. It usually means a shock for the family, but some claim it’s better than watching your relative’s long lasting suffering. At least your dearest one will be recalled health and fit, not ailing and suffering. And most of all I hope I will outlive my parents and my children will outlive me. Every time I saw mother standing over the grave of her child I felt that was at odds with the order of the nature…

It is often said a birth is a miracle. Death is a miracle in the very similar way. Death is the most difficult things for the humans to comprehend. There used to be a man and they departed forever. The body stiffens, then decomposes, the spirit flies away. It is a mystery for the human kind and it will probably remain forever. Is there an afterlife? Are the Christian teachings about heaven, purgatory and hell true? Is there a reincarnation? Will we start another life after death or will we be plunged into nonentity?

Rozłąka jest naszym losem,
Spotkanie naszą nadzieją.

The small end of the world

Koniec świata

W dzień końca świata
Pszczoła krąży nad kwiatem nasturcji,
Rybak naprawia błyszczącą sieć.
Skaczą w morzu wesołe delfiny,
Młode wróble czepiają się rynny
I wąż ma złotą skórę, jak powinien mieć.
W dzień końca świata
Kobiety idą polem pod parasolkami,
Pijak zasypia na brzegu trawnika,
Nawołują na ulicy sprzedawcy warzywa
I łódka z żółtym żaglem do wyspy podpływa,
Dźwięk skrzypiec w powietrzu trwa
I noc gwiaździstą odmyka.
A którzy czekali błyskawic i gromów,
Są zawiedzeni.
A którzy czekali znaków i archanielskich trąb,
Nie wierzą, że staje się już.
Dopóki słońce i księżyc są w górze,
Dopóki trzmiel nawiedza różę,
Dopóki dzieci różowe się rodzą,
Nikt nie wierzy, że staje się już.
Tylko siwy staruszek, który byłby prorokiem,
Ale nie jest prorokiem, bo ma inne zajęcie,
Powiada przewiązując pomidory:
Innego końca świata nie będzie,
Innego końca świata nie będzie.

by Czesław Miłosz

On the day the world ends
A bee circles a clover,
A Fisherman mends a glimmering net.
Happy porpoises jump in the sea,
By the rainspout young sparrows are playing
And the snake is gold-skinned as it it should always be.
On the day the world ends
Women walk through fields under their umbrellas
A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,
Vegetable peddlers shout in the street
And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island,
The voice of a violin lasts in the air
And leads into a starry night.
And those who expected lightning and thunder
Are disappointed.
And those who expected signs and archangels' trumps
Do not believe it is happening now.
As long as the sun and the moon are above,
As long as the bumblebee visits a rose
As long as rosy infants are born
No one believes it is happening now.
Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet,
Yet is not a prophet, for he's much too busy,
Repeats while he binds his tomatoes:
No other end of the world there will be,
No other end of the world there will be.

Translation by Anthony Miłosz, poet’s son

Have you ever realised the end of the world occurs every day, every minute, every second? It’s mostly up to the reader how to interpret a poem, but in this case comparing this work to a biblical vision of apocalypse is at least inept.

I wondered today how unbearable it is for the bereaved to reconcile themselves that the world has not come to a halt with the departure of their dearest one. Somebody passes away and the world unrelentingly doesn’t notice the spirit flying away from the body. People hurry to work, cars jam the roads, journalists in the radio crack jokes, planes touch down and take off, weather doesn’t react, everything indifferently runs its course. And the fact is that pretty everyone is unconscious of the tragedies which take place round the corner. “It doesn’t affect me” – they’d say, contemporary culture pushes away the death from its collective mind. One the individuals bring it back, whenever the death reminds about its presence by taking away one of our relatives, friends, acquaintances. This morning world also did not cease to move on – the palpable injustice?

Memento Mori!

PLEASE PRAY FOR THE DEPARTED SOUL

Where you stand depends on where you sit

So why should they check if the third time is really lucky, if the second was twice as enough? The Irish voters chose on Friday to adopt the Lisbon Treaty, which they rejected in the previous referendum, held on 12th June 2008. Their decision, this time totally predictable doesn’t necessarily prove their support for the further integration within the European Union (though the framework of the process was vastly abridged in comparison to the draft of European Constitution), but it’s an excellent evidence for the old, but still up-to-date Polish saying: “Punkt widzenia zależy od punktu siedzenia”. In the last months before the outbreak of the financial crisis Irish citizens were definitely reluctant to embrace the document. Now, after their country has been hit be the crisis (the rapid rise in unemployment may serve as the best indicator) and its financial sector has been bailed out by the government they simply seek more security, which in their view can be given by the EU.

People’s views quite often depend on their situation. The disadvantaged, the poor, the unemployed usually tend to support socialists, whereas entrepreneurs and the well-off back liberals. My generation more and more often gives lie to that tendency. Some of my friends from university come from poverty-stricken families but their favour liberal solutions. The group of the ones from wealthy families eager to share their income with the poorer is still rather sparse, but the society is drifting in a good direction. That road will be long and rough unless the public figures realise they should serve as an example in this respect. How can an ordinary citizen stick to his views if the politicians change their minds according to the PR needs or if many biggest figures of financial sector claim less regulation when the business goes well (like in 2006 or 2007 in banks) and when they face serious troubles, they submissively queue up and beg for help from the public purse?

I could write more about those partly moral choices. Unfortunately, I’m short of time this weekend. My school, after the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection levied the fine of 270 thousand złoty on it, has launched a new austerity programme under which students are obliged to give lectures instead of lecturers and I have to prepare for the first one I’m delivering on Thursday. Well, to be precise it’s not a new internal regulation, but more and more lecturers shift the unpleasant duty of giving a lecture onto the students. It takes on a form of blackmailing – if you don’t do it, you won’t get a credit… I think it’s the third time within my course of studies when the teacher just sits and watches the presentations of students without making a substantial contribution. Is this the way the “leading” Polish school of economics” wants to catch up with the western universities. It’s a downfall…

It takes passion and patience...

I’ve just found out today some of this blog’s readers might have some reasons to celebrate. 30 September is the International Translation Day (translated into Polish as Dzień Tłumacza…). My best wishes to everyone who translate or interpret for a living and to the ones who just dabble in it doing the job occasionally. I hope you will all take pleasure in what you do and you’ll be going the extra mile to get the job right.

Surprisingly neither landline phone nor the neostrada have been cut off, so I’m enjoying the last moments of holidays staring at the computer screen. Tomorrow Bartek will be turning over a new leaf – Master’s studies. God knows why at such small hour – first class starts at 8:00 a.m. what means I’ll have to get up before six…

Goodbye Tepsa... :)

What Bartek and his family have been waiting for almost four years will come to a pass tomorrow. We’ll finally part company with the biggest national provider of internet access and landline phone services. Like many Poles we’ll confine to using mobile phones only. Our new internet provider will be… I’ve endorsed that company too many times so the careful readers will surely guess what the choice was. The new connection will be a bit faster, wireless, partly mobile (the coverage is not nationwide, but limited to 500 cities as the operator declares) and much cheaper. The drawback will be transfer limit imposed by the provider – although five gigabytes allows one to surf the web conveniently, downloading more than one or two films a months is up in the air.

A decade ago having a mobile phone in Poland was an extravagance. Since then the call charges have fallen by 85 per cent, handsets have become much more affordable so the penetration (number of mobile phones per citizen) of the market exceeded 100 per cent – everyone has a mobile these days, including pensioners, children from nursery school, drunkards, even the homeless. Meanwhile the landline, still regarded as a basic form of providing telecommunication services tends to be luxurious and maintenance costs are unreasonable. Currently the cheapest monthly plan of Telekompromitacja Polska S.A. costs 50 zł (unless you can submit the slip from local social welfare centre (Ośrodek pomocy społecznej) – then you’ll get the cheaper one, for 18,30 zł) and includes 60 minutes to national landlines. Ludicrous – for sixty minutes of calls to the landlines from my mobile phone I’d pay 3 zł. TP S.A. will charge you round seventeen times more for such doubtful pleasure. Doubtful for sake of the quality of calls, cracking, humming and other noises are what you should expect to hear in your receiver.

Below: the “infrastructure” of TP along my street…


Infrastructure is the official term for those strings tied up together and hanging on the concrete posts. To the left – white box attached to the post – a makeshift device used in 2005 to connect my house to the line, the wires run downwards to the white pipe, also fixed to the post. In the middle, just in front of the lamppost one can notice a beautiful hook-shaped object and one of the wires hanging down – this is the trace of the breakdown caused by Kiryll hurricane in January 2007. To the right – the rusty pipe through which the wire to my neighbours’ house runs. Makeshift all the way, don’t pay too much attention to the stonemason’s plant at the opposite side of the street. They’ll never tidy up there, it’s a matter of mentality, they don’t mind the squalor ('dziadostwo' in the “rightest” context)…

When inquired about the lack of investments in infrastructure in our locality, TP representatives replied according to their calculations it wouldn’t be cost-effective to put the wires underground, so it will stay like this until it falls apart. Such stance means that locals will be deprived of the access to the fast Internet for years – the capacity of such infrastructure is 700 – 800 kbps, what in two or three years will not be classified as broadband connection. In the West 10 to 20 Mbps becomes a standard, in Poland UPC is the provider which develops its infrastructure to provide its clients with such speed of connection, TP does nothing to improve its services. Moreover – its representatives claim their activity is barely profitable, only the price for the end-user is exorbitant. It’s the main reason why so many people turn them away. Assuming that customers’ decisions are based on cool calculation and common sense, the number of TP individual clients should drop drastically within the next five or ten years. French owners milk their cash cow to the limits, but one day the cow will die…

Where I used to live...

Strolling back home from the centre of Piaseczno I took a bit longer route and ventured to pop in to a place where I had spent roughly speaking over seventeen years of my life. I wandered through the typical estate of blocks of flats, constructed in a panel building technology (wielka płyta), similar to hundreds of such clusters of blocks in Poland, saw a few familiar faces, had a chat with my former geography teacher and neighbour and snapped a few pictures, not only for the blog, but for myself. Maybe I will never live in one place for such long time (it’s most likely when I retire), so I thought it would be expedient to capture the place and save the photos as the memoirs of the days which belong now to the past..

Below – a school I had attended for ten years (1993 – 2003) – I had spent there one year in pre-school class (zerówka), six years in primary school (szkoła podstawowa) and then three years in middle school (gimnazjum) – ten years of mostly joyful and carefree days I’ll be bringing back when I grow older.


The school complex was opened in 1988, just two months after I had been born, to meet the needs of new residents of Piaseczno, who had moved in to those newly built blocks. The school has been revamped, now there’s a decent pitch next to it, pupils can use facilities like gym and swimming pool, where sport classes are held. Currently it’s only a middle school, what means teenagers in their “worst” (as teachers call it) age are clustered together in one place – try to imagine eight hundred rowdy girls and boys… The school even has a draft of its English website (refrain from arduous proofreading, please…, mgr E.D. was my English teacher during first year in middle school, she was quite likeable and did her stint really well on the elementary level).

Below – the building where I lived – view to the balconies and entrance to the staircase. The block was insulated and plastered in 2000. Since then the yellow facade has been covered with mouldy-musty green stains of water leaking down the wall from the improperly laid gullets. My family lived on the first floor to the left, the nearest neighbours were rather unenviable.



The man who occupied the flat below mine would beat up his wife every Saturday after coming home under the influence, the next day they would go to the church together like if nothing had happened.
In the family living next door the husband would hit wife occasionally but once he made up his mind, he was determined to do it right. In the mid nineties they moved out to Nowa Iwiczna (my parents strictly stick to the rule “keep at least 200 metres away from the street Mr and Mrs W. live) and the flat was taken over by parents of one of the spouses. They were really affable, but had one irritating habit – they would look for interesting stuff in the rubbish bins and amass them on the balcony. The administration had to crack down on ants and other worms which hatched there. After they departed the flat was sold to a young couple who still live there, now with their children. As far as I know they still believe in an old Polish saying “Jak Bóg dał dzieci, to da i na dzieci” (If God gives children, He will also give [the money to provide] for children).
In the best times of the flat above us there were eight people packed on sixty square meters (Mrs and Mr P., their two sons with wives and children). Now the flat is occupied only by Mrs P., many of former dwellers of the flat enjoy the accommodation in the lodgings of afterlife, in the leisure time they probably swim in a tar.
For a few years my neighbour from the last floor was the current star of “Jaka To Melodia”. Now of course he doesn’t live in such dingy place. BTW – if you’ve never heard of him don’t worry, good for you! His English website is much better than the one of my school, but it could also take some beating…

And below – an alley in front of the building. From the early childhood I remember there was nothing apart from the flat and arid soil. Now there’s a row of trees, the estate is in the greenery, but the overwhelming squalor takes over. Grass has been rooted out by weeds, pavement slabs are so crooked that one could easily trip over them, the area gets more and more dilapidated.


I’m immensely happy I don’t have to live there. I got used to living in a house with a small garden, so I would find it hard in the spring to sit for the whole day between concrete walls. If I decide to move out, I’ll move to Warsaw and buy a flat there (detached or terraced house for years will be out of reach), at least I’ll replace the advantage of fresh air and greenery with another one – of having everything much nearer. There’s also another reason – Piaseczno, although said to be so modern is still very provincial – people know a lot about their neighbours, news and gossips spread quickly, the whole town can speak about one sensational event (accident, fire, etc.) for a week. There’s a sense of community which I cannot experience in the village I’m living now, but on the other hand I have much more anonymity and one good neighbour, amiable and not nosy…

I think I detest Polish...

If you want to argue it’s a blasphemy or I shouldn’t speak like that about my mother tongue it’s your right. It took me quite long to get to such conclusion and what happened today was only the proverbial last straw – my friend asked my to translate quickly (and possible correctly) an excerpt of the report on the biomass in the UK. I glimpsed at the six pages long document, noticed there were no words I wouldn’t understand and tempted by the promise of generous pay I took up the offer.

Just after I set out to dealing with the text I realised or rather recalled one of the basic truths of linguistics: comprehension doesn’t have to translate into ability to translate. The main reason behind this very case is the structure of the language. English has a strict syntax, tends to be plain, uses few words to convey a certain message. In Polish, in turn, use of syntax is at user’s discretion (although putting the words together in the correct and comprehensible order requires some effort), but the worse feature is that my native language is too descriptive – it uses more words than English. To give you the idea of what the problem consists in, I’ll provide you with an example: “low-carbon economy” – could you fit the whole meaning of the term into two Polish words?

The second reason of my disinclination towards Polish is the ongoing distortion of the language, mangled by its native speaker (including those educated ones, like journalists – dreadful!). Sentences are built in such way that it’s hard to catch on what the author intended to say, many words are misused or overused. My mother, a graduate of Polish philology tells me it’s caused by a “linguistic paucity” (ubóstwo językowe) – people know too few words, so they face difficulties with expressing their feelings or giving information. That’s only one side of the coin, still probably the brighter one – in every nation there are scores of people who find it hard to express themselves, by dint of insufficient education. The darker side is misuse or excessive use of some words (may realizować serve as the best example – I hear it a few times a day and every time it pisses me off. As the Polish wiktionary informs, Pinolona was right to claim it’s derived from French and… what’s the most important the definition sets out the contexts it should be used in. They cover broadly the same situations as in English “realise” (1. put into practise, 2. turn into cash, 3. realise one’s plans, ambitions, dreams, 4. become a reality). So why do Poles have to use in hundreds of different contexts – realizować inwestycję (what means to build a house or a road, possibly also carry out another project, like construction of a sewage treatment plant or a windmill, don’t you be taken aback when you see pompous phrases like realizować drogę), realizować świadczenia (I felt like hitting my head against the wall – it means to pay (out) benefits), realizować zyski (to take profits), realizować usługi (to provide or render services), realizować zlecenie (to fulfil or execute an order), realizować płatności (to make payments), realizować materiał (to go over the curriculum).

Improperly used words often confuse translators – the task for a translator is much easier if the text in the source language is written in a plain way – then the work runs smoothly. Whenever they come across an improperly formulated phrase or sentence this perfect mechanism jams. A translator has to figure out the author’s intention, sometimes it’s imperative to change something in the structure of the text. As in the example of realizować – each case of misused Polish word has to be dealt with separately – in some cases realizować can be translated with another English verb, in others you just need to convert a sentence, just like in the receipt I got today by e-mail, after purchasing a top-up for my mobile phone. Doładowanie telefonu zostało zrealizowane will be translated as “your mobile phone has been topped up”. Simple, isn’t it?

After a longer, holiday break, my translation and linguistic fixation has been awakened. More freakish posts with questions I’m pondering upon will appear soon…

Car-free day...

I’d love to call it a carefree day… Daydream… This noteworthy initiative was first launched in 2001, now almost all countries in Europe participate in it, for at least forth time it has been staged in Warsaw. The upshot of the praiseworthy event turned out to be a complete letdown – as TVN Warszawa and Gazeta.pl report, the traffic jams in Warsaw today were much worse than on an ordinary Tuesday. According to the journalists and their interlocutors, the reasons why Warsaw was stuck in the morning can be traced back to our mentality. The drivers stopped by the reporters claimed in unison they had thought all the drivers would have left their cars in car parks and garages and had commuted to work by public transport. Because (almost) everybody thought so, even more drivers chose to go to town by their own vehicles, causing the subsequent traffic jams.

Warsaw Public Transport Authority decided that the best incentive for the car owners to change their cars into buses and trams would be free rides. Here came an overt discrimination – the right to ride without paying a fare was granted only to the ones who could show a registration certificate of their own car. Thus my father went to Warsaw by bus for free and came home quite satisfied with the journey – the 709 bus was almost empty, he had a seat, but the ride took quite long as the bus got stuck with other vehicles on clogged up ul. Puławska. I had to buy a ticket and felt discriminated ;)

The situation looked differently on Trasa Łazienkowska, where the bus lane was opened today. There traffic was snarled up for two thousand drivers, meanwhile the journey from Ochota to Praga Południe by bus is fifteen minutes shorter. The basic problem with bus lanes is that what allows the bus drivers to overtake smoothly other vehicles makes the drivers sitting comfortably behind their wheels stick in the even worse jams. Surprisingly, or predictably bus lanes only slightly put the drivers off commuting by car. Poles are reluctant to travel to work by buses or trams and are blind to (scarce) advantages of public transport. I see two reasons for such stance.

Firstly, Poland is still a society on the make – as a consequence having a car meaning showing (off with) social status. Someone who uses public transport is still in many circles perceived as less resourceful, poorer, in a word inferior. You could argue it changes for the better – where the people are open-minded thing are heading in a good direction. As I commute to Warsaw I can see a clear distinction between those two tiers of people who travel to town. One consists of businessmen, managers, elegant ladies, children of rich parents and all sorts of white collars, another is made up of students, pupils, whose parents don’t drop them off or pick up from school, pensioners, middle-aged women and representatives of blue-collar professions.

Secondly, it’s quality of the public transport. Inside the buses it’s too hot both in summer and in winter, air-con is never on, drivers are impolite, timetables are the approximate source of information on when the buses run. The links are often inconvenient, passengers are packed like sardines, it often stinks.

But the first, status reason still prevails. I’m waiting for the moment I change bus to car, but not to look down on commuters but to increase my comfort of travelling. I’m just tired of breaking sweat in a bus or walking one kilometres to the bus stop in the rain, boiling heat or freeze. But I wouldn’t hesitate to do away with a car, if there was a fast train from where I live at least to the nearest underground station. That’s why I can’t see the reason why many inhabitants of Ursynów, living few steps away from the underground station still use their cars. It mostly gets on my nerves whenever I see a fellow student parking a car with WN, WE or WI number plate (often better than my father’s one) on a tiny car park in front of SGH. It’s much cheaper to go by underground, tram, etc and much more convenient, taking into account difficulties with finding parking space. So the main reason is to show off and emphasise the social status…

I’ve made a New (academic) Year Resolution – I won’t be writing about all the absurdities I experience at school – grief-sodden posts won’t bear any fruit. Today I’ll confine to only one remark – may it render the chaos of allegedly the best academy of economics.
“The students who passed their bachelor’s exam until 3rd July can receive their diplomas” – such announcement was put up by administrative staff today. The case is that bachelor’s exams were held since 6th July…

Oh… And I’ll pass over my adventures with national health service, number transfers, lack of running water in the tap every evening…

To Powsin – by bike and on foot

It was nice to experience one of the last moment of permitting weather and visit the Entertainment and Culture Park in the sunny afternoon, when most of people sit in their offices. I set off at 13:30 to Julianów, where my friend lives, left the bike at his garage and on foot we strolled (or rather marched) six kilometres to Powsin. The route is so short only when covered on foot or cycled – the path runs along the coal line, (below – the level crossing in Kierszek, to my surprise this section of the track has been modernised – old wooden sleepers have been replaced with the concrete ones).


Then in the village Kierszek one has to turn left and walk, ride along the east verge of Las Kabacki. (below – east to the path there are lots of fences of big plots bought by the new-rich. Many of them are dilapidated, here the example of the compatriots’ artistic activity).


Entertainment and Culture Park itself brings to mind the holiday resort. For a moment I feel like in a typical resort. People sunbathing, cycling, pensioner playing chess, some drunkards sipping “sparkling wine”. The quiet was interrupted only by the integration party held by one of the construction companies. Below – a snack bar where we took a rest.


Heading back home I noticed the new landmark of Piaseczno in the distance. The photo below was taken somewhere around Kierszek and shows the “flagship building” of the town – “Sand City Tower” – sixteen storey high building put up just next to Piaseczno’s bypass. Its main asset was meant to be picturesque view splaying out from Landscape Park to the south up to the Warsaw’s skyline to the north. Indeed, it is visible from the distance of seven kilometres, but the view won’t beat the Warsaw skyscrapers’ panorama seen from Lesznowola.


The last snap, from bike in Józefosław – this is a new bus service which links the new estates built south of Las Kabacki with Warsaw. It runs each twenty minutes in the rush hour, to ride it one needs a ticket valid in a suburban zone. Locals already complain about high prices of tickets, bad route and frequency of shuttling…


Late afternoon at home I find – two Polish absurdities.

First from my university – the whole description (in Polish – here). Phone conversation between a student and a lady from the dean’s office.

Student: Kiedy dostaniemy dyplomy? (When will we get our diplomas?)
Lady from the dean’s office: Żle pan trafił bo dziś mamy rekrutację na uzupełniające i nikt panu nie pomoże. (You’re out of luck, today we’re dealing with the enrolment on post-grad studies and no one’s going to help you.)
Student: Chodzi mi tylko o dzień (I would only like to ask which day will it happen?)
Lady from the dean’s office: Proszę pana nie chce mi się przestawiać myślenia na to pytanie bo mam zajęcia związane z rekrutacją które wymagają skupienia (Dear sir, I don’t feel like shifting my thinking into your question, cause I’m busy with the enrolment and this requires a lot of concentration.)

The second one – the news that Play Mobile’s shareholders might wish to shove up its capital brought about a swift reaction the competitors. Jeśli Play znowu dostanie pieniądze, będzie mógł dalej psuć rynek – komentowała anonimowo osoba zbliżona do jednej z sieci stacjonarnych. (If Play gets money once again, it will be able to keep on spoiling the market – commented a person affiliated with one of landline operators). I don’t know whether that landline operator has close capital tie-ups with one of mobile operators and I have absolutely no idea if companies like Telekompromitacja Polska S.A. and Orżnąć have something in common with that statement, but I can come up with one conclusion. It shows what is the attitude towards customer among the old operator. Within last two and a half year the prices dropped by sixty percent (figures for pre-paid plans). The market from oligopoly evolved into customer’s market. All changes which took place were to the benefit of ordinary people who could pay less and use their phone more often. But maybe I should understand the anger of the company which took lower revenues, lost some clients, but one the other hand they deserved it. Serves them right, I suppose the cash injection will be earmarked for investments in infrastructure, but I hope Play will continue to spoil the market, to the benefit of customers and to the detriment of other operators.

Between the anniversaries...

Hang on, I managed to print the photos from holidays. In Piaseczno, where I finally bought the colour cartridges, I spoke to the Epson technical service manager. He frankly admitted printer-blocking system is an element of company’s policy, the firm’s justification are safety reasons (ink could leak into the printer and soak up some parts…). I installed the new cartridges, the printer failed to recognise them (first such occurrence in six and a half years time), so this time I called Epson support desk. The consultant supposed there was something from with contact points, but at the end advised me to hit and turn the device on simultaneously. I followed his orders, the printers indeed kicked in immediately, but the front panel cracked, there’s a big rupture on it. I protected it with a stick tape, but in spite of my attachment to the printer, its days are numbered. It’s getting too hard to get the cartridges, to boot it’s getting unreliable and tussling with its whimsies or shooting troubles in a very peculiar way is too time-consuming.

Yesterday – first and thus round anniversary of the outbreak of financial crisis – the day Lehman Brother Banks went bankrupt – for some that was a shock, for some the aftermath of wobbly financial system based on derivatives, dicey undertaking and misestimating risk. Today LB is a thing of the past and I wonder if the human will learn from their mistakes. When will the speculators blow up the next bubble? When will the banks take excessive risk? When will the monetary authorities run the sensible monetary policy? How will the markets be supervised? Will the prevent the next crisis, just like the government didn’t let the downfall of LB trigger an avalanche of bankruptcies? Will we remember what the knock-on effect means and how dangerous it is for the economy?

Tomorrow – also round but already seventieth anniversary of Soviet invasion of Poland. Marked by the politicians who, trying to capitalise on the remembrance of Katyń Massacre, argue whether it was a war crime or a genocide… Study those definitions (if necessary, switch to Polish) and shape your own opinions. The resolution to commemorate the victims of Soviet regime will probably be passed almost a week after the raid’s anniversary…

What winds me up...

A tinge of absurdity makes our lives more interesting, a dose of absurdity lets us mock at the imperfect reality, but when they make up an ample chunk of our daily routine they paralyse our lives. From time to time I do have such bouts of being overwhelmed by absurdity. That happens usually when I tackle a series of events which go according to the same simple scenario: an activity which should run smoothly causes extortionate problems. To illustrate it with an example: I want to buy a loaf of bread. I go to the first shop – it is closed, in the second they ran out of bread, in the third they didn’t get it from the bakery, in the fourth one the till has broken down and the shop assistant can sell it to me, in the fifth one they have only stale loaves, in the seventh… I could make up such problems endlessly…

I have to order a transfers to my school’s accounts and bring them the proof of payment. How will I know if such hidebound institution like my school accepts printouts from online-banking system. I don’t feel like going to the bank’s outlet and paying ten zlotys for ordering transfers, the proofs will look almost the same, there won’t be those red slips with funny blanks, they’re no longer in use. Hopefully they won’t pick on what I’m going to deliver. You may argue that I think up problems which do not exist. Mates, I know my school, I’ve been studying there for three years and saw much more ridiculous situations… BTW: enrolment fee – 85 zlotys, diploma fee – 100 zlotys, student card fee – 17 zlotys, credit book fee – 4 zlotys. Altogether over 200 zlotys, times over 1000 students and Warsaw School of Economics made over two hundred zlotys on dividing course of studies into first and second degree.

On Friday evening there was an attempt of break-in to my house. Probably the thieves have been observing the empty house for a while and planned the action for the day before owners should have come. The neighbours dog was vigilant started to bark as it saw the strangers in our garden. Neighbours alarmed by barking of usually quiet dog popped out to check what was going on, stared at the burglars and scared them away. They didn’t get in what if they did? I’ve been asking myself if I had a right to overpower them, hit them without warning, break a limb? Should they attack me earlier? Is encroaching upon someone else’s property already an attack? I’m not keen to praise US system where the owner can kill any intruder, I wouldn’t kill anybody. But a burglar is a scoundrel, a dreg of a society, for trespassing my property he deserves punishment, but am I the right person to mete it out? Should I be afraid of defending myself at home because of the possibility of being sentenced for beating up a thief?

Yesterday I wanted to print the photos from holiday trip. Together with my parents we chose 64 pictures to be printed, I decided they would be done on 4x6 inch format and put onto the new album. I have the ink, have my photo paper, I turn on the printer. It hasn’t been used for two weeks so I do a nozzle check (in plain English I check if the device prints in all four colours), the result is not satisfying to I load up head cleaning program, as it ends the gauges on the printer flash interchangeably. “An unknown error has occurred” is the first window which pops up, the next one communicates planned obsolescence of some parts of the printer has just expired… The device has jammed, I copy the content of pop-up window and paste it into Google. To my surprise I don’t need to contact the service facility. I download a service application and unlock the printer. What was the cause? Malicious or rather greedy designer. It turned out that Epson Stylus C62 after printing 14.370 pages – fourteen thousand three hundred seventy pages – if you think it is a round number just let me know – is set to display such hilarious piece of information and block itself.

Dear user, come to us and pay us for unlocking it, if you’re sharp witted do it on your own (like I did), there’s another alternative – don’t bother to wrangle with it – just buy a new printer and let us earn. Who the hell came up with such ridiculous idea that this specific model can print such number of pages and not even one more? Because of tussling with the infuriating device I missed out on a final volleyball game and haven’t seen Polish team winning a gold medal. You’d ask why wouldn’t I just replace it with a new one. I’ve cared for this printer for six and a half years and I’m somehow attached to it. Until now it served me well, but it couldn’t repay me with a good performance cause an accursed engineer set the limit of its capacity…

Unfortunately I wasn’t too proficient with operating service application so I used too much ink for intensive head cleaning (they had jammed themselves, according to the designer’s lousy but carefully contrived plan) and had to go to town to buy new cartridges. I drop in the first one where I stock up regularly (Papiernik, ul. Nugat 7, Ursynów). I buy two black ones, but they don’t have a colour one. Alright, I’ll go to the other shop I patronised earlier – Belgradzka 22, they also don’t have the colour one but the shop assistant tries to foist on me the black one and doesn’t seem to understand that I’ve just bought two and don’t need any more. I head for another shop, I don’t remember the exact address, somewhere on north Ursynów. For no apparent reason they also have only the black cartridges but this time the saleswoman suggests I should buy another colour cartridge which they have on the stock, it takes a minute to drum it down to her head that a different one doesn’t fit my printer… I got back home by newly opened 739 bus line. I got out on the new bus stop, next to Auchan so I decided to pop in there and check if they have the cartridge I’m yearning for. I already hold a foil bag with cartridges I bought so I ask if there’s a storage box to leave for the duration of my shopping. There isn’t any, but three security guards together seal my bag and with such closed bag I can enter the shop. I find only the black ones so I get out of the supermarket. Security guards control my sealed bag and reluctantly let me go…

I’d better have these photos developed before I blow a fuse…

Holidays 2009 – coverage

Back home. Below a short description of rather short holidays – just five days, into which we managed to pack meeting the family and lots of sightseeing. We got on well with newly met family. Friendly, kind but not importunate people showed us round the surroundings of Jelenia Góra.

Day 1 – Cieplice – currently a part of Jelenia Góra, sanatorium resort incorporated into the city in the mid 70’s under the administration reform plan (new capitals of voivodeship had to be big enough to fulfil such function). Below: a market square in Cieplice, revamped and modernised within the last decade. I took there only two photos, as the batteries went dead after only two snaps, without warning. Of course I couldn't get any in the local shops, the rechargeable ones I left in the lodgings.


Day 2 – Karpacz – quite nice town suffused with tourists all year round. In the early September there weren’t plenty of visitors or they were strewn across the town, stretching along the winding road. Below: A Wang Stave Church beyond town.


Residents of the resort make living by the tourism. Below: a piece of evidence that a silly tourist will buy everything. Some of those “souvenirs”, gadgets or however you call it can make quite nice gifts.


Day 3 – Świeradów Zdrój – elegant city located in the midst of Izera Mountains, geared mostly at tourist from behind the west border. The same applies to all of the mentioned towns – boards in front of the shops, menus in the restaurants etc. are bilingual. Shopkeepers, staff and service of hotels, restaurants have to be able to communicate in German. And our western neighbours have relatively cheap holidays in what for centuries had been their land.
Below: a panorama of the town’s high street and a view from Stok Izerski.



Day 4 – Szklarska Poręba – town is beautiful but spoiled by national road no. 3 running through its centre towards the border with Czech Republic. Nobody plans a bypass, as in the mountains it’s just too expensive, not to mention the tunnels which would be the best solution for transit traffic problems. Three kilometres before SP, less than half a kilometre away from national road there’s a picturesque Szklarka Waterfall (below).


Strongly recommended visit, if you can, walk up what my aunt called “a desolated trail” – empty route along the stream, hardly ever can one meet people on one’s way. Here I found the only bilingual information board written in (British) English. Translated rather properly (I’ll leave to natives), I only puzzled over last two paragraphs, why is the penultimate longer in Polish and the last longer in English?


Day 5 – Mysłakowice where we stayed. The village has once been famous for its linen plant (photo below), now derelict, closed down in the 90’s. Unemployment is rather high, squalor and people’s habits don’t differ much from the ones on the other end of Poland. Here it’s a Post-German squalor, perceptible mostly by the architecture.


Comeback – Polish roads are ghastly and full of traffic enforcement cameras (PL: fotoradar) (I’ve seen one in action – if they take a photo of you speeding you’ll see a flash), tractors on national roads, not to mention rows of four or five trucks, impossible to overtake and lunatic drivers. I let my father drive through Wrocław, short of road signs and with dismal streets. Between Wieluń and Bełchatów, after a bit risky overtaking I noticed a police car in the wing mirror. To my surprise I wasn’t stopped by them, and just let them overtake me – they drove on, probably chasing another(?) foul driver… Even the dual carriageway between Warszawa and Piotrków Trybunalski, the first fast-traffic road built in Poland, over thirty years ago, linking Warsaw and Silesia, where comrade Gierek came from, is not up to the standard. The key advantage are the two lanes in each direction, but bumpy tarmac on some sections, tens of intersections and pedestrian crossings make driving fast, but not quite comfortable…

I looked up the plans of modernisations of Polish roads. The pace according to them should be impressing – Poland is in critical need of a decent network of dual carriageways – their standard is absolutely sufficient and make an alternative to toll motorways. Mostly I’d be looking forward to seeing motorway A2 reaching Warsaw from the West and dual carriageways linking Warsaw with Gdańsk, Kraków, Wrocław and… Suwałki.

The next episode soon, hopefully…

Holidays are over?

It’s noticeable on every step – street are much more busy and full of rowdy teenagers. Days are getting significantly shorter. For no apparent reason people tend to fall into autumnal depression as their organisms receive less and less daylight. In my case this year it goes the other way round. I feel much better when it’s either dark or when the day is one of those foggy, overcast, damp, chilly. Maybe it squares with my dark nature?

All in all Mother Nature isn’t stupid and I’m sure she has carefully thought out the arrangement of changing seasons of the year. I’ve noticed that the year (in our latitude and climate) consists of seasons which naturally go by to give way to the next ones. We’re fed up with winter and then comes the spring when the nature is brought back to life, we’re waiting for the warmer and longer days, but after a while we’re missing some cool air and greyness. A Or am I an exception longing for it?

For me holidays aren’t over yet. Tomorrow I’m heading for Jelenia Góra to visit, or actually meet my family found after years through nasza-klasa. Hopefully this time I won’t be pulled back to Warsaw earlier (than on Friday when the return is due) and next Saturday there will be decent photo coverage of early autumn, always beautiful in the Polish mountains.

Wait it out and join the game!

I’m temporarily sick of politics so I’m making do with reading the opinions on the outbreak of WW2 on other EN-language blogs, I’d rather focus on what I’ve been awaiting since April. It seems it has just began and is going to grow apace. The abrupt rally of stock indices since late February has been put on hold for a while. Having risen by around eighty per cent within just six months, share prices need to do a U-turn to return to the levels set out by macroeconomic conditions.

It doesn’t really matter now, whether the recession is over or if we are going to be hit by a second wave (hopefully not). It’s time for a typical correction – the market’s reaction to the unreasonable surge we witnessed. A month ago polls conducted among investors from the States showed the predominance of bulls, today moods are getting downbeat and soon bears might even outnumber bulls. History would prove drop-offs are much more likely in the autumnal months. I’m not in favour of trying to predict future on the basis of past figures, but all I see implies the comeback of pessimism to the markets.

If the correction is inevitable, the open question is only its scale. The readers of Bankier.pl are as always into those euphoric, claiming “two or three days of sale and we’ll be heading northwards” or the ones asserting the new trough will be reached. This time the truth might lie somewhere in between – the correction will wipe out about a half of the current bull market (thus I assume the last upsurge was a beginning of a new trend, not a long correction of a downward wave), so my investment recommendation* is to wait until WIG 20 index drops to around 1700 – 1800 points and enter the game. The tide will turn at around this level and venture should fetch a decent profit

* DISCLAIMER – don’t take anything for granted, you should rely on your common sense (don’t forget about intuition) – there are as many opinions as analysts…

For the first time...

In my life I’m living through the exploration of Polish history of 1939. During the twelve year long period of my school education, the first day of September has usually been the day of inevitable and often unwanted comeback to school. Now, as tomorrow there will be the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of WW2, I’m trying to get the sense of the everyday life in Poland in the days war hung by a thread.

I have two main feeling about those days and their heroes. Firstly – sympathy, as they were facing up to inescapable, many of them knew they were doomed to live under occupation, fight, die. Secondly – I’m sincerely grateful I don’t have to live seventy years ago. I’m truly happy that tomorrow there will be another peaceful day, not the one which would go down in history as the moment when the biggest war in the world’s history began. I’m grateful I have the comfort to have no idea about the quandaries and dilemmas the generation born in the late 1910’s or early 1920’s had.

All my problem seem diminutive compared to theirs, in fact they are incomparably smaller. But my generation, with no remembrance of PRL, grew up in the 1990’s and 2000’s has a totally different common mindset and as a result goals and priorities. We will not have to pay the ultimate price, we are proudly taking part in a rat race, chasing the new opportunities, grasping new challenges and too often forget about the essence in our endless quest for dough, success, accolades, prestige. Sometimes I think we don’t know why and what for we are here…

The shape of the (past?) recession

As almost all the media jauntily proclaimed the end of the deepest post-war recession, those more down-to-earth are trying to foretell the most probable scenario of the upcoming rebound. Almost everyone, with Ben Bernanke on the fore, sees future in the bright colours, without even glancing at the foundations underlying the frail world economy. The most substantive article on the recovery can be found in the last week’s issue of “The Economist”. There, as the parallels are drawn, the sceptical journalists make an attempt to foretell the near future, basing their predictions on the facts, not only good moods. As they point out, there are three most possible scenarios of the revival, for which stand the three consecutive letters of the alphabet – U, V and W.

U – is the most unlikely to happen (contrary to the article!). The shape of the GDP chart should resemble more a bowl, than an ‘U’ letter, what illustrates the sharp decline, followed by relatively long (one and a half year as I suppose) period of diminished economic activity and later a rebound – here the whole part of the cycle lasts longer and takes place rather gently, what does not have to mean less painfully.

V – is what optimists see – the economics indicators have been plummeting for quarters, the scale of contraction was huge and this ought to be reflected in the rebound (as the stock exchanges have already anticipated). This picture is relatively simple, not to say oversimplified and seem to be drawn without a deeper look at the state of affairs of leading economies and merrily omits some data, described below

W – is what I’ve leant towards (currently I’m at loss) looking at some other alarming factors. Take into account worsening banks’ credit portfolios, the number of bad debts, ticking time bomb of unpaid credit cards, decline in investment activity of the companies, tightened creditworthiness criteria, rising (also seasonal) unemployment, job insecurity. In the world I would add boosted by speculators oil prices and still high write-offs made by banks worldwide. Hang on, you can read about it in the press (e.g. Gazeta Wyborcza) almost every day, but those news which herald the glum scenario are outshined by the euphoric visions with no room for such harbinger…

The theory of second wave is still within the realms of possibility, moreover, unsustainable and rapid growth would seriously endanger the recovery. I don’t take pleasure in being a prophet of doom, but the key issue in dealing with critical situations is being prepared for the worst. I sincerely hope that as the economists claim the worst is over and personally I’d rather see a tick-mark recession than a V-shape – I want the growth to be even modest, but sustainable and based on sound foundations.

Finally, our prime minister and minister of finance boasted about the recent figures of Poland’s GDP growth in the second quarter, surprisingly high and the nest in the EU. Good for them that they didn’t succumb to the pressure from the opposition and held off on increasing government spending. For me they should take more hard-line stance – do not yield to the brinkmanship of trade unions, lobbyists, politician in the privileged position of being not in power, what means being able to pull the ruling party up for all deeds and misdeeds and telling “we would do it better”. Why are they so complacent? In fact their biggest merit is that they did so little and managed to resist from tinkering with the economy. In our country the growth was worked out by our bare hands, not by the massive stimulus packages, in Poland politicians didn’t have to resuscitate the corpse, our economy rode out the biggest slump in its post-1989 history alive and did not shrink. Why? Weak zloty, rather high consumer confidence, lack of quick government’s reaction?

Czwarty Czerwca

The title of the book I read last Sunday – going through the 260 pages long paperback took me a bit more than two hours. Reading a book from cover to cover is usually doable when it grabs your attention and you can submerge yourself in the content. This one, written by Joanna Szczepkowska (the Polish actress famous for announcing the end of the communism in Poland) is an outline of her memories of living in People’s Poland.

With some conflicting feelings about the content, I hail the book as readable, gripping and all in all rather well-balanced. At the beginning my approach to the work was rather negative. The first years of Szczepkowska’s life were presented in rather one-sided and selective way. Picture was kind of gloomy – Labour Day parades, the rally in front of the Palace of Culture after Gomułka took over power, moral dilemmas and bickering over the system between her parents. Here the balance is already struck – mother is shown as a hard-line anti-communist figure, father does not support the system but tries to get by in it, hammering out as much freedom as possible without incensing the party dignitaries. Actress’ adolescent years are described as a series of events depicting the evil of communism – forbidden religion classes, children telling on one another, cracking sounds of drowned out Radio Wolna Europa, schoolmate proud of her father taking part in military intervention in Czechoslovakia, events from March 1968, one history taught officially, another passed on at home. The facts to describe were chosen rather selectively, but along the timeline world from black and white takes on the variety of all the shades of grey.

In 1969 an insurgent who fought in Warsaw Uprising pays visit to her parents. His story bears testimony of the big bravery, but as he leaves the flat young Szczepkowska challenges him by telling him what she had heard at school – that the Uprising had been a mistake. He admits, but signifies he’s afraid to said it aloud as everyone who says so is thought to be an Ubek.

In the early seventies actress-to-be flies to France for a theatre festival – here’s where a reader sees what the socialism was – not only lack of free speech, omnipresent lies, political prisoners, etc, but also backwardness. Students from France in colourful outfits making laugh at the poor student from behind the Iron Curtain.

Further comes the delineation of struggling the system, making concessions, fighting for the rights of people, joy with the foundation of Solidarity movement, later on the shock of Martial Law and the subsequent years of gloom. The chapter of 1983 is followed by the one of 1988 – an annoying gap for me. In the last passages the system is already falling apart, the Solidarity elites are divided into the one in favour of carrying on clandestine activity and blowing the system up and the one who incline towards talks with the ruling party. Szczepkowska is for give and take, Szczepkowska does not try to model herself on a person with a anti-communist biography – she was only flesh and blood, she had the moments of weakness.

The very last part is a detailed description of the recording of Dziennik telewizyjny, when she uttered the famous sentence “Ladies and gentlemen, on 4th June, 1989, the communism in Poland came to an end". As I watched the very short fragment of it, I could resist the impression of unnaturalness and theatrical gesture made by the actress – my right, but the fact it was not broadcast live and was not edited out by the censors symbolised the ultimate decay of the socialism – although the party still kept public broadcaster in a grip, the days of communists in power were numbered.

The newer ways of stigmatising

Browsing through the forum for the dissatisfied with the quality of the telecom services, I stumbled upon a comment from a man dividing his friends into callable and not callable… “I mark the people who have their numbers in Play with a star, so that I know who I shouldn’t call if I don’t want to go bankrupt”.

The fourth operator, as it was entering the market in 2007 was granted quite favourable decisions on MTR from the regulator. The discrepancy in inter-operator settlements was justified by the fact Play would have to build its own infrastructure from scratch and by the undeniable truth its offer would boost the competition on the market of mobile services.

The first argument could be disproved – not every entity starting up can get the special terms for conducting the business (apart from tax relieves, etc.), if somebody decides to take the chance and puts a lot of money into a dicey undertaking, they must analyse the competitors’ potential and costs of underselling to convince the clients of the competitor to vote with their feet. The most effective way of drawing new customers is bringing down the prices – so the onset of its activity was marked with the cheap rates and simple pre-paid and post-paid plans, meant to signify its advantage over the “big three”. The bigger price war was sparked off by Play in March 2009, as the operator marked its second birthday with a new pre-paid offer. The new service is not rendered below the costs, but the home truth is that the revenues of the operator come mostly from inflated termination rates. The other operators have thus reason to detest Play. Not only for the sake that more and more of the aware clients ditch them and take their numbers away to Play, causing the operators’ yields to drop. Those are not the termination rates, that’s the crippling price war, in case of three settled mobile providers hitting their balance sheets, in case of the fourth one not letting it break even. From the theory of economics we should know in the long run the price war doesn’t have to be advantageous, even for the customers. The initiator of the fight might be unable to carry the burden of dumping prices and go bust, the other firms on the market may follow suit, so the situation that only the stronger businesses won’t pull out of the market is likely to take place. Moreover, this may lead to a monopolisation of a market. In Poland Play successfully broke the oligopoly set up by “big three” to keep up a fictional competition.

The second argument is backed up by the welfare of the customers. On the market with the barriers to entry the external regulation is often essential to ensure the consumer protection. Play did manage to change the mobile telecom market in Poland. It still has the lead in the stats concerning number transfers and the number of new clients. The price to pay for the rest who stayed with the older operators comes out on their bills or accounts whenever they decide to call a Play user. The rates range currently from 0,72 to 0,80 zloty. In many networks the basic flat rate is currently 0,29 zloty. When looking at termination rates one could see a certain disparity. If the TR for all old operators is 0,1677 zloty and for Play 0,4047 zloty, how big should the rate for calls to Play be? A short calculation tells us it should be 0,70 zloty, so the operators get the extra margin for calls to Play. Many people, conscious of it, were put off by the exorbitant costs of chats with the Play-using fellows.

When taking a decision to transfer my number to Play I deliberately chose to fork out 50 zloty at the time and retain the prefix 608 belonging to another operator. Aside from avoiding the chaos of notifying everyone about the new number I could also avoid comments like “I’ll be paying more for calls to you”. I told those of my friends whose calls to me tend to last more than a quarter, but it never became to them an obstacle to call me if they wanted to talk. I sometimes offered calling back and they took up on it, as the costs of the same call was for me three times lower than for my interlocutor.

The crucial factor for me is the huge amount of perks, special offers, minutes and messages for free, bonuses I get from Play, thanks to which I can spend around twenty five zloty monthly on my phone, instead of over sixty a year ago with the previous operator. I sometimes mind the fact someone pays over the odds, but its their decision to flounder in the clutches of an operator which rips them off. But if you really are so petty to divide your friends into cheap-to-call and expensive-to-call you’re a penny-pitcher! If you don’t feel like paying, ask to call back, you’ll save on your phone bill, but first you’ll have to overcome the embarrassment…

Beneficiaries and losers of Polish transition of 1989

Every revolution eats its children – the adage proved true by the fate Vladimir Ilyich Lenin met in the early twenties could also be substantiated by the calamity of Law and Justice party in the elections of 2007. The Polish transition of 1989 in its economic respect was also a revolution, but this one took place as an evolution, tough, full of sacrifices, turning many spheres of the social life, reducing some of the Poles to the beggars, meanwhile letting the others grow from rags to riches. The changeover, known as Plan Balcerowicza, was the unprecedented attempt to bring the central planned economy onto the market economy, what meant the presumptive results and spin-offs were almost unpredictable. I have to pay homage to the architect of the operation, he showed a utmost bravery by taking up the drafting and execution of the plan, still bearing in mind how difficult it would and how many grudges would some Poles hold against him. The latter statement is of note if we recall catchwords like “Balcerowicz musi odejść” (EN: Balcerowicz has to leave) and the likes (here Balcerowicz can be seen as a victim of his reforms as he took the fall for their ramifications). I can speak highly of him as of the governor of the central bank, but on the flip side I cannot forget about his dogmatism and oversimplified prescriptions for economic problems. Free market is like democracy – nothing better has been figured out and it’s not downside-free. Self-regulating mechanism do not have to reach the equilibrium every time they are facing shocks, so I am calling for more pragmatism.

The person of Balcerowicz is not the core of my today’s reflections. Following the previous post I take the liberty to outline the mark left by the implementation of market economy.

BENEFICIARIES

1) Small entrepreneurs – to quote Balcerowicz it was the biggest success – over a million of self-proprietors, small entrepreneurs, pioneers of fledging capitalism. Many of those businesses went bust, but many turned profitable and their founders are millionaires today. And the stalls put up on fairs, pavements, roadsides are probably etched in our memories as a landmark of the early nineties…

2) All the group which were granted several privileges during the martial law, in the eighties or during the transformation – uniform services’ employees, miners, customs officers, trade unionists, former members of PZPR – they all enjoy not only living in a free and democratic country but also excessive privileges of early retirement, high benefits, job security and so they retain the pick of the previous system.

3) Young, ambitious, go-ahead, clever, determined, add a few more adjectives to this list and you will get the portrait of Poles born in the late sixties who entered their adulthood twenty years ago – they got the unrepeatable chance and many of them knew how to not to waste it. Today they are at the top, they do not have to worry about financial security, their children lead the problem-free life. Many of instead of politics focused on “grilling” and enjoy the time of their lives.

4) International corporations which entered unsaturated market of Poland and built their structures here. Their advance to Poland was a race against time – the ones that found a gainful market niche hit the ten, for many of them Poland, country on the make is a dreamt-up cash cow.

5) The… Should I call it “układ”? There is a grain of truth in it – the last group consisted of the ones who set themselves up where the politics and business met. That was where the great deals could be made. Prosecutors carry out the investigations on some of the privatisation transactions, in some cases the truth will never come to the light – but hundreds of folks benefited from it without remorse, although in fact they had been stealing away the national property. What belonged to the state was built with the hands of its citizens – so factories, plants, etc. were not no-man’s property.

LOSERS

1) Ordinary people who went through an ordeal of inflationary spiral, job insecurity, worsening living standard – that was tough but necessary.

2) Employees of PGRs – collective farms. Under the Plan Balcerowicza all farms were liquidated within a few months. The vast majority of farms were unprofitable and were the great example of “moon economy”. Inefficient, obsolete are now considered the relic of those times. The people once fired in the 1990 or 1991 descended into durable joblessness, many of them got addicted to alcohol. Those losers are irrevocably in the point of no return, however, their habits and attitude will be inherited by their children and the chances to cure the disease are diminutive…

3) The long-term structural unemployed, in simple words the ones, whose qualifications do not fit the employers’ requirements. Usually laid off from wound down factories, unskilled, or semi-skilled, maladjusted to the economy partly ruled by the law of jungle, with computer illiteracy, who do not speak foreign languages, unable to adapt to challenging work environment. Quite often immobile, the stay where they had been born and where they had lived for all their lives. This often means that demand on workforce in Warsaw does not meet the disproportionate supply on province…

4) All the ones who profited from the absurdities of the previous system. The ladies selling meat under the counter, clerks corrupted for making favourable decisions, the ones who had a cushy “czy się stoi, czy się leży, dwa tysiące się należy” (EN: no matter if you stand or lie, you deserve to be paid two thousand) job of putting the papers from one pile to another.

5) For Moherowe berety see he post below…

Pushed around, ridiculed, degraded?

Not yet, though you might say the group is dying away, it can’t be dismissed… Who am I writing about? Approximately the group I’m describing numbers about two million of stalwart, steadfast supporters of the media empire of a prominent Redemptorist and of a certain right wing party which won the election in 2005.

You’re right – the legendary Moherowe Berety are going to have a post on them on my not yet legendary blog. Pity that probably none of them will ever read it and I’ll never see a comment left by one of them like “cosmopolitan traitor of the Polish nation paid by the Jewish forces of evil in conspiracy with Gazeta Wyborcza and TVN 24 mocks at the heart of Polishness”. But you’re wrong if you assume I’m going to ridicule them, I just want to put them under a microscope, that’s the goal.


source: Gazeta Wyborcza

The term to my surprise was first used in October 2004, not long before they became really famous after the elections of 2005 when they were reckoned to clinch the victory of Lech Kaczyński as a president and his party in parliament – against all odds and against the pools. In the voting which borne testimony of Poles’ disillusion with democracy they emerged as a group which supported the certain party, politicians and vision of our country. Soon they were mentioned in parliamentary debate by Donald Tusk who pointed at them as at the social group backing the minority government of Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz. At the beginning old ladies took umbrage at the term, but in a little while they started taking pride in being a part of a no longer dismissed community. The contempt for them, held by the youngsters led up to the humorous action initiated before elections in 2007 – “Zabierz babci dowód” (EN: take away your grandma’s ID). The jocose campaign, resulting from their active participation in the previous voting was intended to encourage young voters to take matters into their hands rather than treating it seriously. However, I disapproved a bit of it – ladies in berets are also a part of civic society and have a right to cast a ballot and have a right to vote for whoever they want. They other story is that I would do everything to mobilise the rest of the electorate to go to the polls in order to outvote them.

As I recall in 2006 all the leftist and liberal media were taking a peek of that group, examining and exploring it inside out. What they turned up was indeed nothing startling but brought to the social awareness the picture of a person quite often forgotten, demeaned, neglected. Not many people realised such elderly women were around us, trying hard to scrape along on their benefits, going every day to church, in their excessive free time listening to Radio Maryja, united in the family under the umbrella of “father director”. They all have one common denominator – they got lost in high-pace Poland rapidly developing after the transition of 1989. The society has been moving forward, embracing the western lifestyle, values, fads, but they couldn’t conform to the changing country. Tight with money, afraid to visit supermarkets, reluctant to relish on modern technical devices they were the possibly most unattractive target customers for the advertisers. Meanwhile the group, growing in number, gathered around the radio station of Tadeusz Rydzyk, where they had the opportunity to feel a sense of community, where they could get in touch with the people like them – also lonesome, lost, conservative, religious. The cause was good, but the business made on it – hang on... The listeners are brainwashed, they put stock in everything what “father director” says, with two major implications – firstly it’s their endowment for the media empire, foundation, etc. Those poor people each month after they get their pension or benefit head for the nearest post office to order a remittance to their spiritual leader. Secondly they emanate the hatred. In the first case it’s their naivety – they’re really besotted, manipulated, they believe in the good cause. The second goes in turn to my ‘beyond comprehension’ filing cabinet – how does it go together with the Christian teaching of the love to the fellow men? One of the most common picture from their annual rallies are the footages by TVN – the members of Radio Maryja Family shouting out at the journalist and cameraman of the liberal station – “Jewish envoys, embodiments of the evil”. In such way they were set against the enemies by their spiritual leader. Their stance stems directly from the fear of the unknown and manifests itself in such feats like tagging “Jews, liberals” all the ones who dare to dissent.

Their round-ups were regularly attended by politicians from Law and Justice, the most famous speeches were made by Jarosław Kaczyński. Two years ago he declared “the Poland is here” (PL: Polska jest tutaj) – as some hostile media took in the round-up spot was the last piece of the free Poland – who raided the rest of our country? This year former prime minister endorsed the new business – mobile telephony set up in affiliation with father Rydzyk. The rates compared to the ones offered by the competitors come out poorly, the allegedly user-friendly handset sold by the operator is three times more expensive than a basic phone in a supermarket and is produced on a Russian license – in a word the next scam, but the loyal followers will fall for it.

I feel sorry for them – lost, manipulated, full of hatred, intently seeking the way to give vent to their negative emotions, regrets, grief… All in all it’s just distressing…

Quo vadis SGH?

Totally out of the blue, almost three weeks ago, on 22 July the Senate Curriculum Commission congregated and… I don’t know if unexpectedly, but passed a resolution on the changeover in the curriculum of Bachelor’s and Master’s studies (I start the latter in October so the reforms will affect me). The heated discussions about the direction my university should evolve have been held in public for months and the next step was just the par for the course, but… But I somehow deluded myself that the bureaucracy-stricken structure of my school would put off implementation of the reform, all in all it didn’t happen. Sadly I can only fall in with the scholars, students and other members of our academic community who disapproved of the drafts of changes, claiming Warsaw School of Economics was drifting towards a vocational school. So once again I sympathise with the ones who call out “Nie róbcie z SGH zawodówki!”.

The modification of the curriculum can’t be rather categorised as common-sense-based. The course of studies in the academy of economics which has pretences to be a member of elite and wants to compete with the best schools of economics abroad can be simplified in the way it is being done. Why were the advanced micro- and macroeconomics erased from the curriculum of Master’s studies? Is the managerial economics going to substitute for it? What was the main reason for crossing out specified specialisations from the curriculum? Should we pick the lectures on our own, yes, this is the step towards more freedom, but how about the specialisation note which appears on the diploma?

On Bachelor’s studies the changes will take a heavy toll on the knowledge of the graduates. Just take a first glance. Even in the times of communism, when Warsaw School of Planning and Statistics was called a “Red Fortress” (PL: Czerwona Twierdza), the distinguishing mark of the school was teaching two foreign languages on relatively high level. The current graduates of BA studies had to go through five semester long course of “language I” (the candidates are expected to have the command of this language on B2 level) and six semester long course of “language II” (here candidates should be on B1 level). The quality of teaching and all the stereotypes linked to it are the topic for the separate endless post, but let’s focus on the shot in foot, which is cutting down the length of both courses to four semester. Altogether 180 learning hours less than before! And the grasp of languages represented by students of SGH, although relatively good still leaves a lot to be desired. Nevertheless the command of two languages has given us the edge over the graduates of other universities. Why do the authorities want to take away one of our assets? The students will have the opportunity to carry on learning under the pool of learning hours and credit system, maybe it will be better to let them take the matters into their own hands? Why aren’t some courses like sociology or economic history compulsory. The proponents of the reform pointed out they’re not necessary or the students should have been given more freedom in making choices. After two years which elapsed since I’ve completed those courses I have conflicting feeling – many freshmen students find those lectures tedious and superfluous and treat as a ball and chain on their way to career and here we reach the heart of the matter – graduates of the prestigious Warsaw School of Economics should apart from strictly professional knowledge have broad mind, horizons, during their studies they should develop the passion to explore and the habit of critical looking at economic phenomena from different perspectives, taking into account psychology. A modern-day economist is not just a mathematician whose over-reliance on models and patterns leads up to bungled forecasts, it’s rather an open-minded person who has a thorough understanding of psychology, social factors influencing the economy, historical background which underlies some stances and be aware of many more things, unlike the callous traders closed in the dealing room who lump together Poland and Hungary when it comes to financial stability of both countries.

I don’t want my school to churn out graduates lacking general education. Narrow-minded people as far as I observed are more likely to try to outwit the others when it comes to financial matters and are more likely to be ignorant of obvious phenomena – they also led to the current crisis, they fuelled stock bubbles disregarding fundamental factors and elementary laws of economics. The two excellent examples of something what was missed out on are LTCM and the current investment results of Superfund (hedge fund managed by computer system operating on the basis of econometrical model)

For a conclusion – do the today’s drop-offs on stock exchanges herald the deeper correction? If so, I wouldn’t be surprised…

Do men need to be praised?

One of those questions smacking on the stereotype we are from Mars, they are form Venus… Males and females are said to perceive everything in a different way, from hues and saturations of colours to remarks aimed at them. It might be a matter of cultural background, upbringing, self-esteem, ego, complexes, or just going over the top with praising…

Today, while having a rest after an arduous week and lying on my terrace with the headphones on my ears I listened to the notorious broadcast in Radio Pogoda. This time it wasn’t as stupid and intolerable as usually, today’s discussion was really up to the point, but the man portrayed by the journalists turned out to be a clumsy midget who wants the others, mostly his partner to boost his ego. How can you explain away the fact one of the journalists pays compliments to her husband for hammering one nail or driving a screw. Those simple activities take sometimes less than a minute and are one of those typical mundane household chores, so where’s the point in praising? Once I’ve read modern young women are angry with their husbands / partners who can mend the leaking tap and have to call a professional – is it an incentive – you’ll change that seal, what requires a lot of knowledge and dexterity and consumes your precious time and I’ll be grateful until the end of my days, I’ll tell all of my friends how wonderful my husband is – he fixed the tap, it doesn’t leak, can your old man do that?

For a past few months I’ve been pondering on the roles of people in the marriage, it finally sank in me that I should look at it not like on the bed of roses, still not like on an obligation (I’m still far away from tying the knot) but like on a situation in which two people have to depend on each other, put up with each other and divide or share some roles. And what comes up? One of my female friends admits she can’t cook at all and has problems even with boiling water in a kettle, another one says she throw dirty clothes on the floor and one day she gets herself together to switch on the washing machine. The third says she doesn’t wash up until the dishes can’t fit into the sink – so the big washing-up comes in regular intervals once in three days. I don’t opt for the obsolete family model where woman has to iron his husband’s shirts, wash his socks and cook and serve the dinner when the tired breadwinner comes home. But here we fall into another extreme – there was said to be a huge generation gap between the generations of my parents and my grandparents – they contested their way of life, defied their hierarchy of values, in many cases, it moved the society forward, but we seem to start paying the price – the new generation brought up already in independent Poland shapes into X-generation, the youngsters who aren’t taught they have any duties, they get everything for free, the get used to it (that’s the most appalling) and have still higher demands, but parents still indulge their whims. Yes, it gets my goat when my peer who stands for much lower personal quality than me drives to Warsaw with a better than my father’s car, when I still commute by bus, cause I was taught at home I shouldn’t use something I cannot afford to – in my view there are lots of errors parents make these days… Who’ll carry the can?

But as I can observe, men as a rule hold out for praising! I try to eschew it, but it’s the order of the day that we ask if the meal we’ve prepared is delicious. “Have I spiced it up correctly?”, “Doesn’t the wall look beautifully after painting?”, “It was my wonderful idea, wasn’t it?”, “Could anyone do it better than me?”.

As a teenager I couldn’t stand being praised, I felt uneasy, blushed, then I learned to cope with it. But maybe everyone needs appreciation, commendation, gratitude? But for what? For doing one’s duty? “So you returned home from hospital and the house was clean, fridge was stocked up and the clothes were washed and ironed?” – such question was asked yesterday by my mother’s friend, claiming her children and husband would neglect the house beyond recognition. Hey, praise not on me, I did my duty, shame on them!

BTW, yesterday I indulged in the national sport of Poles, practised on balconies, działki or in the gardens – making a barbecue. I can’t say I have a heart for cookery but grilling is what I adore. Unfortunately my photo-taking savvy is not already well developed so no one took up operating the camera and capturing me dealing with the sausages and turkey cutlets…

Poised for rebound?

For too long I haven’t been writing about economy, so it’s time for a comeback and time to ask about the current crisis and forecasts for the future. To be honest – I don’t get it – what’s happening around is beyond my comprehension. In the autumn of 2008 economists, analysts and lots of politicians were giving warnings of the deepest recession since the Great Depression. Indeed, the scale of the downturn was sometimes shocking – may the falls of Baltic Republics’ GDPs serve as example. We were being prepared for the years of hardship to come, the worst was still ahead – from the infested financial system the crisis was to spill over the real economy causing plants to be closed down, forcing employers to shed jobs, dissuading consumers from buying and as a result sending prices falling. To counteract the destructive impact on the real economy, governments have decided to pump up billions in the economies, through packages, programmes, scrap(ped) bonuses. The first rescued was the perpetrator – politicians in the States injected taxpayers’ money into the bloodstream of the economy – to the banking system, the next ones who queued up for state aid were carmakers and other big corporations. We could observe the unparalleled bout of state’s generosity, rightfully hailed as socialism for the rich (in the real socialism at least the poorest were beneficiaries).

The upshot? Financial system has been somehow resuscitated, credit markets revived, but what about the real economy? People experience continuous lay-offs, level of optimism among the employers is still unenviable, unemployment isn’t on the rise only by dint of summer period when the demand for temporary workforce is every year higher than in other seasons of the year. It is still harder to get a loan (as a person who’s generally against living in the red I might be a bit delighted), banks’ balance sheets are hit by the poor interest income figures, in some cases they’re even negative. The prices of basic commodities went up, unlike in Euro zone Poland still has relatively high inflation and lower real interest rates. As a country we got away with the worst – our economy didn’t contract in the first quarter, the preliminary figures for the second imply a minimum pace of growth was retained and from the third one our economy should speed up.

Now let’s get straight to the point – so what beats me? I can’t understand how is it possible that the biggest recession since decades has ended after around a year! Indeed, the scale of collapse was overwhelming, but I feel misled. The prophets of doom out of the blue turned into prophets of bright future. It’s clear we can’t just break down and complain about the misery we plunged into (or we were plunged into), but I can’t make out the fundamentals for the cheerfulness.

Stock exchanges are said to be one of the most significant economic indicators, moreover, they anticipate a few months before the upturns and downturns in the real economy, but it still doesn’t mean they’re infallible. Today I browsed the web to look through the opinions of analysts and analysed on my own stock exchange commentaries from the past two years. They’re mostly irrational – the first results from 2007 showed investors were like hypnotised – they all awaited the WIG 20 index to hit four thousand points. Then, throughout 2008 everybody would advise to buy shares as they were undervalued – but the drops went on, then all of the sudden stock exchanges all over the world and our currency hit the trough in the mid-February… After that the investors became insensitive – they came to terms with inexorable fact that economies will be going through fire and water so they couldn’t keep on going short. Soon we witnessed spectacular rallies on stock exchanges – in Warsaw indices rose by seventy per cent within six months (nice return, isn’t it?) and here comes the question – is it just the correction or the beginning of a new bull market? I’d incline towards the former. On the Internet forums opinions are also divided. Some, like me point at lack of fundamentals to back up the surges and since await long a correction, some rather plausible, with WIG 20 sliding down to 1700 – 1800 points, some envisage the lower point of rebound than the February’s lows. The other ones try to stimulate demand and foresee the level of 2500 points to be reached yet in August. The most balanced is probably the outlook of slightly downward consolidation and sticking between 1900 and 200 points towards the end of the month. Opponents sling accusations at one another. The bearish investors claim bullish fellows are over-optimistic and will cover their positions with huge losses. The ones who maybe put their money in shares and aim high at 2500 points say the rest envy them cause they didn’t profit from the surge. I also didn’t do so, perhaps it justifies my point of view. But with some free cash to invest I won’t go into shares right now. One reason is that I don’t believe in fundamentals for the sustainable upward trend, secondly I’m trying to analyse, draw conclusions and keep away from bandwagon. We’re still far from run on funds and stock exchange which took place in 2006 and 2007, ordinary people are still afraid and “lick their wounds”, but let’s find out what underlies the current rises – look at the correlation between exchange rate of zloty and indices of Warsaw stock exchange – those are the foreign big investors who drive our market up. In my view their intention is to persuade Polish investors – mostly from TFI and OFE but also individuals, to join the rally, in a few months, they’ll close their positions and take profits and it’s a possible scenario of how this get-over bull run might end. So I’ll hang on with putting my money there. The securities are too expensive these days. But how about waiting for the peak of zloty’s appreciation and buying currencies then?

A miało być krótko… It didn’t work out, not for the first and not for the last time. It occurred to me there are only two scenarios for the real economy – either a rebound, or a second wave of the crisis, probably not as strong as the first one, but still causing turbulences and making scales fall from eyes of many not down-to-earth optimists…

The scream of exasperation...

A round anniversary means usually celebrations – almost the whole Poland will come to a halt for a minute at five in the afternoon to commemorate the 65th anniversary of the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising.

Sadly, the celebrations are laced with politicking, taking away from one another the heritage of Armia Krajowa (EN: Home Army). The more time goes by, the more myths there are about those events, the less veterans celebrate it alive, the first day of August becomes the day for the politicians to demonstrate their attachment (true or feigned?) to the history of contemporary Poland. Today our president once again accentuated he stemmed from the family with patriotic traditions – his father had taken part in the fights of the Uprising, his mother as he declared also had participated in it. As many critics pointed out Kaczyński’s mother spent those days hidden somewhere on the Mazovian countryside, his father indeed fought, but president somehow passes over the rest of his life – mostly membership in PZPR and lucrative contracts in Libya… Kaczyński seems to have a monopoly for all the graceful accomplishments of Poles in their history since the beginning of WW2 – equating his opponents to ZOMO…

My family, to be precise my mother’s aunt (cousin of my grandmother) and my mother’s cousin try to persuade me that my R.I.P. grandmother was one of insurgents in the Uprising – they follow the tendency to proliferate the number of insurgents, coin the next myths, so they do something I disapprove of. In fact my grandmother was just a civilian and did not participate in the fights, many times she carried the messages for the insurgents through the sewers, many times she acted as a nurse and looked after the wounded insurgents, but what is the point in adding her merits she had not deserved? She lost her parents in the uprising, on 5th August 1944 the tenement where she lived was bombarded, so she lost all her belongings, until he end of September she roamed around (meanwhile helping as I mentioned) Warsaw’s basements or rubble, looking out for shelters, then in the last days of September she was captured by the Germans and got away from the transport to temporary German camp in Pruszków and escaped to the countryside where she waited out the last months of the war. WW2, which a heavy toll on her – she lost her dearest ones – parents and first husband (he was a soldier of Home Army, died in the battle of Monte Cassino in May 1944), during the uprising as a result of protracted stress her hair turned grey…

This year the press reports are also abundant in critical articles and commentaries about Warsaw Uprising, with the ones by professor Jan Ciechanowski coming to the fore. Some regard it as a blasphemy, but I, without taking a line on it, think it is necessary to let such people give their voice. Brushing aside the entire mythology I can today pay respects to my peers, young inhabitants of Warsaw in the flower of their youth who paid the ultimate price in the uneven fight against the German occupier. They were fighting the losing battle, as mine and my friends’ grandparents say, the Uprising was doomed to end with a total defeat… That is why I am not sure whether the generals who were in charge of the Uprising deserve my respect. They brought about something what was totally unprepared and consequently turned into mayhem… My friend’s grandfather who came alive from Auschwitz concentration camp and who was in the centre of Warsaw on 1st August sixty fives years ago says “Hour W” is just a myth, someone tossed a grenade and thus gave a cue to the outbreak… Generals undoubtedly badly foresaw the political situation – Stalin’s army stopped on the East bank of Vistula and stayed there until mid-September – according to Stalin’s plans Warsaw was wiped out and the place was ready to build a new capital of dependent country, build after the communist fashion… Should we blame our allies – United States and Great Britain? Together with Stalin they divided the cake in the conference in Teheran a year earlier. Churchill and Roosevelt admitted they had to give in – Soviet contribution in war against Nazi was too big (for Stalin sending the regiments of thousands of soldiers to die in the battle was like snapping his fingers) and they had to accept his conditions concerning the new spheres of influences in Europe – and so Poland, the everlasting enemy of the Russian nation became a satellite country of the communist empire, it could be worse, we weren’t incorporated into the Soviet Union and were not a soviet republic.

What else could be done? Maybe we should not allow for such material losses and death toll – the ones who died were mostly of the intelligentsia. Maybe if they had lived out they would have helped build a better country even under the conditions of subjection to Soviet Union, maybe they would be accused of collaboration with the Nazi and imprisoned, tortured or maybe just sentenced to death…

I do not hold with the proposals of declaring the anniversary of Uprising’s outbreak a national holiday. I do not want to celebrate the calamity…

And last but not least, the radio journalists asked today what was the patriotism of Poles living at the beginning of twenty-first century. In the times of peace when there is no need to lay down the life for the homeland, there are many way in which it can be manifested. Offhand I figured out a weird one – my today’s resolution is that I will not put my money into so-called antybelka (very often offered these days, for instance by Open Finance or Eurobank) – I will not evade taxes within the letter of law in the situation when my state is in need of money. I will not evade taxes, I will not pick up a fight, I will not emanate with hatred, I will not be green with envy, I will not cease to criticise my country when necessary but I will be proud when there are serious reasons to be, I will not spread myths…?

Four years of living in Nowa Iwiczna

It was an extremely hot (36 degrees) Friday, 29th July 2005, when we moved in here. Humid and close day plus sun beating down relentlessly made the weather rather unfavourable for moving, but somehow it went without major problems and unnecessary chaos.

Every anniversary is conducive to some summaries, this time I’ll refrain from them and confine only to a few conclusions.

Within the last two decades NI turned into a typical dormitory town of Warsaw. New housing estates were mushrooming in the years of construction boom, the biggest put up then number more than one hundred terraced houses, lots of them are fenced off, some guarded. Currently I can see new detached houses built by individual investors, but the crisis clamped down on the development of the huge estates.

The new direction of development sets out patterns of lifestyle. In this respect NI is anything but a village. Its residents know almost as little about one another as the dwellers of Warsaw’s fenced off exclusive enclaves. On many estates inhabitants open and close the gates with their remote controls, pull into the garages and from there move to their houses or flats. The neighbours? They say one another ‘good morning’, know one another mostly by sight. There’s usually nobody to turn to in case of emergency, no helping hand around. Settled residents are not the total contradiction of the new ones, there’s one reason why there’s no conflict between those two worlds – the settled sold their land for the plots on which the new houses have been built – there are plenty of former farmers who just cut off coupons from their banks deposits, laze away and make living by the interests of the money they had made on land sale transactions.

According to the official data the number of residents has quadrupled since 2004. Many of the locals are still registered in Warsaw where the previously lived, unfortunately they also pay taxes there, what translated for instance into the condition of local infrastructure – typically Polish – I live in the suburbs, pay taxes in the Warsaw’s borough but demand that the local administration provides a decent road… The time spent on commuting hasn’t changed a lot, I think it even might have shortened a bit, the worst days were during the rebuilding of Puławska street on its two kilometre long section just beyond the border of Warsaw. Now what gets my goat, no matter if drive a car or ride a bus are countless traffic lights, on average they can stop you once in seven hundred metres. That’s not how the road out of capital should look, but almost every road from Warsaw looks like this – on Raszyn towards Katowice and Kraków it looks similarly, Radzymińska towards Białystok it’s even worse, though the newly opened dual carriageway which ends behind Wyszków makes up for the inconveniences (the road is indeed exemplary!). What Puławska street could do with are the service roads (funnily enough there’s no equivalent of this term in Polish, I’ve never seen it translated!), maybe that would unclog it in rush hours…

And what hurts me the most – this village, dormitory town or whatever NI is, lacks SPIRIT, I can’t see anything that could make the place magical, exceptional, there’s nothing in the neighbourhood that would keep a man here, notwithstanding in the late spring evenings when I stroll around the houses I feel I couldn’t move out. And then I get back into the house, go upstairs, want to take a shower, few drops drip and water doesn’t flow. That’s the biggest drawback of my semi-civilised village – water treatment station and underground water resources didn’t manage to catch up with the pace of development, so the ones at the end of the water pipe have to suffer when the ones who live closer unroll their hoses and spill litres of water into their gardens or turn their sprinklers on… This summer is rather wet so since weeks I haven’t experienced the problems with water supply…

For a comparison – two photos of the back of my garden. The first taken on Sunday, 31 July 2005, two days after moving in, the second taken today, showing the same place. Great changeover which took place without any help of professionals’ hands!

After the (aborted) holiday break…

Alright, over a week ago I gave my word to put here a photo coverage of my stay in Suwalszczyzna and some pictures of Polish bizarre countryside… I didn’t make it, I break the promise… Things have tangled up a bit and I had to pack my suitcases and return to Warsaw immediately on Tuesday (family reasons, situation has straighten up since then, Thank God)… However, I’m a step closer to unravelling the secret of the squalor of Polish rural areas – it’s the mentality (is it a key to the door?). Some argue there’s a common stance of “I don’t care” (PL: nie obchodzi mnie), I’d incline to add also “I don’t mind” (PL: nie przeszkadza mi). It might the major cause of the horrific shape of things in Polish society – peasants don’t mind their roads are in fact dirt tracks, their pavements are crooked or pot-holed, it doesn’t impress them that their yards become quagmires after every single rainfall. They’re used to such squalor because they grew up in it. It only confirms my thesis that what is instilled at home in childhood and partly in adolescence remains with a man for the rest of his life, it applies both to good and bad traits, habits, patterns of behaviour, etc.

The mentality thirty five kilometres behind Suwałki is different than in Warsaw, however I still lean towards claiming that the ones who migrated from there to Warsaw or other fast-developing Polish cities deep down have their another culture, they don’t nurture it, rather try to suppress it and do not let it come to the light…
I still wonder how people can live in such places… Warsaw is said to be a running water – people run rather then walk, elbow their ways, push through, are in the endless haste. Away from the city (which unlike in the advertisement of Citi sometimes sleeps) there’s a land where water is almost still. House are inhabited, but the only symptom which gives away that fact is the smoke coming out of the chimney. Not a man on the street, if you see someone, he’s at least inebriated…

People move by cars, hardly ever brand new ones, usually used and imported from Germany (at first I thought they had a bit of a problem, but later on it occurred to me they never buy newer than nine years), prevailing makes are Audi, BMW, Volkswagen and Mercedes. Bangers, beaten after accidents, with odometers rolled back, are a benchmark of a social status in the community. The landlords of the agrotourism lodgings where I stayed bought this year two Mercedes cars – A-Klasse from 2001 and C-Klasse from 2002. They had paid for the first thirty six thousand zlotys as they declared – much too much a for a badly-maintained car with dirty interior and scratched body – sum is mind-boggling – that’s one hundred and fifty per cent of our car’s value, but ours is two years newer, much better maintained, hadn’t had an accident, but it’s only Renault, driving Renault is not a benchmark of prestige, driving Mercedes is a totally different issue. C-Klasse cost over forty thousand – thus the hosts invested (actually consumed) in themselves instead of their farm. Guest will surely repay them generously – the lodgings is in decline…

Their approach to motoring is and probably will be beyond my comprehension. Idiotic attachment to German makes of second-hand jalopies is one aspect. Another is moving everywhere by car. Some city dwellers suffer from the same affliction – they drive four hundred metres to the nearest shop. If I had to bring thirty kilograms of cement I’d surely drive too, but to buy a loaf of bread, few rolls, milk and yoghurt? Such distances are covered by foot – I have my own definition of such distance, which is one mile (like stone’s throw), sometimes I use Polish yardstick and stretch it up to two kilometres. According to one of the British researches carried out in 2000 I’ve read a few years ago about one fourth of car journeys is shorter than a mile – giving the up would contribute to the reduction of road congestion!

That’s a big pity that cycling paths are still underdeveloped in Poland, currently I rather cycle by pavements rather than by roads, although my favourite place is still the roadside. I came to conclusion there was no point in hampering the life Polish complacent drivers… Coming back to motoring patterns – the motive behind is probably to show off…

Visit to the local shop is also a stressful experience. What outwardly seems to be hilarious in infuriating – locals stripped of any kind of entertainment (leaving out three channel of television) can spend hours on daily shopping. They look around, can’t make any decision. My dear lady, could you show me this and that, and maybe also that, no, sorry, I’m short of money, I’ll buy it on account… And a tourist from the remote capital gets hot under the collar… In Warsaw as we run off our feet we get onto the shop, before we enter we already know what we want to buy, we ask for it, pay and get out, but we have our time as “scarce commodity”, they’re trying to pass the time…

Some of us divide Poland into Polska A and Polska B. Some, like my neighbour who’s right now singing karaoke behind the wall earn in Poland A to spend in Poland B and pride themselves in being provincial. Wiżajny where I spent those few days is even Polska C in many terms, but in the high season all the shops raise prices and adjust them to Warsaw standards, the village makes living of the tourist and the local have no other choice but to earn in Poland B (or C) and spend in the temporary enclave of Poland A.

The next semi-spiritual post coming soon…

Picking up the pieces...

It’s not a breakthrough, nothing uncommon or extraordinary is going on, so why I do feel cut up? Maybe indeed when one stage ends it’s time for an overhaul, but what about being cut up? How to explain the mysterious dreams of death (five of mine this year and series of other visions haunting me since the beginning of July)? A call form above? A reason to be conscience-stricken?

Crisis – that’s not the explanation of course, but it brings me on analysing outlandish social phenomena around me. Many of my schoolmates, including me feel insecure. Some even in spring decided to laze away this summer, some, like me, reckoned that crisis wouldn’t affect us. We were a bit wrong, I don’t know if it’s the cause why some of us feel somewhat of fear of adulthood, a few thought seriously about gap year between BA and MA studies just to put off adulthood and prolong the partly carefree student’s life. In contrary I’ve always been determined to graduate as soon as possible, now I’m not so sure if this is the right idea. And what’s going to happen in 2011? We do everything not to end up in the low-paid position, we’re striving and aim higher, but if the crisis drags on, we’ll have to revise some of our plans created before its outbreak, when we began our studies. We’ll never come back to the times of extortionate salaries, in the worst-case scenario after greeting me Szanowny Panie Magistrze you’ll just add poproszę frytki – popularising showing respect to McDonald’s staff deserves my highest commendation. Warsaw School of Economics won’t probably turn into Redundant School of Economics (Szkoła Główna Bezrobotna). At least for me, by the way – today I took the competence test at one of the banks where I applied for a post of translator and… I realised I had forgotten my native language. I got used to doing what I shouldn’t do – translating into foreign language and when I tackled the documents in English to be translated into Polish I turned out that despite I understood them in one hundred per cent it was hard for me to find appropriate words in Polish. English is marked by simplicity, what can be described in English with two or three words hardly ever can be expressed in as many words in Polish. To all the foreigners who learn Polish – my congrats on taking up such challenge!

Hard to untangle – one bank where I worked last year had to suspend (unofficially) its internship programme, another bank looks for students to trim costs and gets rounds or bends its internal regulations to take them on and farm out task which should be executed by someone else – everything in the name of savings.

But tomorrow I’m heading for Suwalszczyzna, to Poland’s cold pole. I’ll get away from the whole mess, fish, swim, drink home-distilled moonshine and have a whale of time. And I can’t forget to contemplate the idiosyncrasies and absurdities of Polish countryside… That will also a week of computer dry-out, after which I’ll swamp with a photo coverage of the foray…

Bachelor of Economics

I can’t say I feel any wiser or more reputable with holding my first academic degree. However, there’s a feeling of properly fulfilled duty, I somehow believe I have just completed one of the phases in my life, so maybe it’s time to turn over a new leaf… But that’s just a symbolic moment, nothing has really changed.

The very exam is indeed a pure formality which crowns student’s academic career. Mine took even less than ten minutes – I just answered the examiners’ questions, then they conferred and decided to award me the highest grade – excellent (PL: celujący). Quite nice, now I can only wish I had applied myself more during the studies – if my average of grade from the entire course of studies had been a bit higher, I could have got the diploma with distinction. According to my school’s formula my average was 0,14 too low to get it, but it doesn’t really matter now. It’s the brains not the papers that make a man successful.

In October I’m going to start my Master’s studies, I hope in less than two years (around March 2011) there will be a post titled “Master of Economics” on this blog. Before it happens, there’s a lot ahead of me to be done, within that “new leaf”. Maybe as my supervisor said, we should strive for publishing some excerpts of my thesis. When writing it, long ago, in February I thought I wanted to produce something more than a thoughtless compilation of sentences rewritten from academic books – I described the phenomenon which undergoes constant evolution and is not comprehensively described in any of the academic books or papers I managed to reach, and my thesis had in my opinion more to do with practice than with dry theory (I wrote about security in electronic banking) and could be seen as a contribution into the description of those issues.

New satellite photos of the neighbourhood

Several weeks ago I grumbled about outdated maps of my locality which are displayed in Google, contrasting them with rather new ones provided by Polish Internet Locator – zumi.pl.
Yesterday while looking for a florist’s to order the bouquets for my bachelor’s exam I stumbled upon new satellite pictures of the surrounding area. According to some premises, the new ones were taken in May 2009 (deduced by shadows of the buildings), on Saturday or Sunday (few cars on the streets, vehicles usually parked in front of houses and shops, not next to offices) around eleven a.m.
New snaps are much sharper than the previous, the colours are more natural and saturated. When it comes to up-to-date aspect, they outrun Google maps by light years. The biggest services still contains the maps of Warsaw from 2005 and its suburbs from 2002. That’s a shame…


My house can be easily recognised by a distinguishing detail – unlike the houses of my neighbours there’s no car parked in front of it. It must have either sit in a garage or was away at the time. We’re the only household in our czworak (Polish scornful term for the row of four terraced houses) which has only one car, our vehicle is also the oldest (bought brand new in July 2003) among the ones used by the czworak’s dwellers. One can clearly see both cars of my neighbour from behind the fence (Ford Mondeo, neighbour’s company car, bought brand new in 2007 and Suzuki Vitara from 2006, bought last year after his wife gave birth to their son – she never drives and says it’s just too big for her, so my moron-neighbour uses one car on weekdays and another during weekends), further neighbour’s Opel Corsa from 2004, bought last year (they also have VW Passat, 2005, bought in 2007) and the Ford Focus C-Max (bought brand new in 2008) of the neighbour from the other end of the row (they also have Mitsubishi Coupe, also bought last year, but produced in 2006). Maybe it shouldn’t meet my astonishment that my father feels like changing a car (even though it’s still in excellent technical condition!) if everybody around did it within last two year and everybody has newer cars. I still remain totally insensitive to it, like to all crazes, fads, whimsies, gadgets, etc. Somebody once told me one day I’d give in under the group pressure (colleagues from work buying still new cars, mobiles, etc.), but before I graduate I surmise it’s unlikely to happen. Every time I see a young businesswoman trying to park her SUV into a small parking space that sight makes me laugh. Why didn’t she buy a small, stylish car which would fit into the gaps of Warsaw cramped car parks easily?

MOTORING ABSURDITY OF THE DAY
Today my father called on his insurance agent (the motor insurance is due to renewal in two weeks’ time) to calculate the premium and found out… That according to statistics, drivers of Renault Megane cause accidents 3 per cent more often than an average driver so the insurance premiums (both third party liability and car insurance) for the owner of Renault Megane will be 3 per cent higher!!! And doesn’t even matter that my father hasn’t had any accident since December 1981 (dubious date, just a few days before martial law was declared), he’s in a group of increased risk. If anybody sees any link, any explanation to it, please let me know…

The animal spirit of the market

There are some articles an educated man cannot just miss out on, like the one which I found in yesterday’s “Highbrow’s guide” (Niezbędnik inteligenta) insert to Polish weekly “Polityka”. On the first few pages of the insert Jacek Żakowski (incidentally probably the only journalist in Polityka’s makeup who has an excellent command of English – I infer it as he’s the only person who carries out interviews with native English speakers) conducts an interview with Robert Shiller – American psycho-economist. The whole article can be found here (in Polish) – recommendable for everyone who knows Polish.
This time I think there’s no point in summarising the whole content, instead of this, I’ll translate some of the most crucial parts of professor Shiller’s theses. Just after reading it, today in the morning, I e-mailed the weekly’s editors, asking them to provide me with the original version of the interview. My request has met the response of Jacek Żakowski in the flesh, who wrote back he had taken it down it Polish right away. That’s a pity, you’ll have to fall back on the product of my translations skills ;)

I know I have some problems with translating complex sentences, mostly with the word order, hope you’ll forgive me…

The illusion of money
J.Z.: The mortgage bubble which brought about the current crisis has not have as spectacular legend [as the collapse and insolvency of Mexican economy in the early 80’s]. No oil deposits have been discovered, no cartel has caught the mortgage market in its clutches.
R.S.: On the contrary, the pattern was very similar. The mirage of invariably low interest rates, built by FED, governed by Alan Greenspan, thanks to which even the poor families were able to serve huge debts, was the equivalent of giant deposits’ mirage. (…) The crisis which broke out in 2000 posed a threat to the swelling illusion that everyone could get richer by investing on the stock exchange. When the stock exchange failed to turn the quick profits, social hopes were pined on real estate market.
The very legend of mortgage boom consisted, roughly speaking, in the assumption that the house prices would always rise, what was a palpable absurdity. (…) As the bubble was swelling, many economists warned that neither can the prices rise forever, nor the interest rates will be kept down forever. Nobody heard those warnings. After crisis of 2000 all the reflexes of “animal spirit” of America centred on the housing market. The legend of cheap house for everyone fitted the social needs too well too be undermined by any rational argument. No one even bated an eyelid, when in 2008 the Association of Real Estate Owners, intending to fuel the bubble, placed an ad in the media, the ad stated that the real estates are the best long-term investments, cause their value doubles each ten years. People believed it. There was no way of persuading them that there was no profit in it, that it was just another example of “animal spirit”, which is “the illusion of money”.
J.Z.: That is…?
R.S.: That is the perception of prices, costs and investment which omits changing wages and inflation. Everybody remembers they bought the house for let’s say one hundred thousand dollars and is happy cause today its value rose to two hundred thousand, so they took the profit of one hundred per cent. But no one paid attention to the fact the wages also rose by one hundred per cent. (…)
The phenomenon of “the illusion of money” was very well visible during the deflation which accompanied the great depression in the United States. The American economy would have endured it much better if the employees had freed themselves from that illusion in the deflation phase. When the prices were dropping, wages remained nominally unchanged, consequently they rose substantially, what drive many companies to the wall. (…) As far as I know, none of the employers made any attempt to explain it to the trade unions that as the wages are increased along with the inflation, they should be cut along with the deflation. (…)

The herd instinct drives us to work within a group, but our mistrust makes us join it gradually, with reserve. That’s the reason why many bubbles fade. But when the legend is credible enough to reach an enormous size, the acceleration mechanism switches on.
J.Z.: Is this a symptom of the “animal spirit”?
R.S.: Huge (…) As long as an ordinary man finds out speculators from the Wall Street made millions on the speculations on houses, he looks at it with envy or with condemnation, however he does not join it. But when it transpires that his neighbours, colleagues, even brother-in-law made money on house price surge, it gets on the nerves of even those people with the most conservative approach to money. One day, during the supper spouse starts a conversation: Honey, our neighbours moved to a better borough, my workmate bought a new yacht, the property of my brother has tripled. Why don’t you take this opportunity? Why shouldn’t we transfer more of our savings into the stock exchange, why shouldn’t we buy a house to sell it at much higher price in a few years?
Thus the bubble is blown up by new people joining with new money. One day virtually everyone is engaged in it – that is the moment it bursts.
J.Z.: So financial conservatism does not pay off, the later someone joins, the less they can win, the more they can lose.
R.S.: For sure it does not pay off to be an inconsistent conservative. The more because the later someone joins the bull run, the more probable it is they would fall victim to the deception, for a few reasons. Firstly, the longer and the more sustainable the bubble is, the more excessive is its credibility. Secondly, the bigger the bubble is and the higher profits it turns, the stronger is the temptation to raise them even more. Thirdly, the profits cannot rise endlessly only faster. (…) An excellent example was the dot.com bubble – then the well-educated and intelligent experts devised a theory of a new economy based on the assumption of ceaseless growth in share prices, totally separated from work efficiency and profits of enterprises. People believed it, cause they had wanted to believe it. What can be more pleasant than the perception that if you buy some stocks you can sit on your hands and get richer thanks to the spurts on the stock exchange.

J.Z.: Is there any fix for it [helplessness of market participants against growing unmanageable risk]?
R.S.: Primarily the economic awareness should be disseminated just as it was in case of health awareness. (…) Today an ordinary man, who cannot afford to pay for the services of expensive advisory offices, takes the advice of advisors who are paid by banks, mutual funds or insurance companies. Those advisors mostly mind the business of the ones who pay them. Consequently millions of customers and small investors follow the advice of advisors, who are in fact salespeople and take irrational decisions – take out loans they will not afford to pay off, buy houses the cannot afford or invest all their savings in securities which soon will be worth as much as the paper they’re printed on. There are two sources of crises that can be distinguished – firstly people lack competencies which are essential to perform in a market economy, secondly the ones who cannot afford to make mistakes cannot also afford to pay for advice provided by impartial and competent advisors.
J.Z.: What should those impartial advisors tell them?
R.S.: Most of all they should inhibit the behaviours which arise from their animal spirits, that could be done only through giving them objective knowledge. They also ought to offer investments in special products, overseen by the government, destined for the people who cannot take the risk. The poorer people are, the more they pay for the mistakes made when they were driven by irrational reasoning.

The commendation of non-conformism
(…)
R.S.: I have a wife. She’s a psychologist. That’s why I found it harder to believe people take rational decisions. And I have never yielded to the quite common belief that complex processes which take place in the markets can be described with simple equations. (…) Even the teacher who expelled me from Sunday school accused me of my propensity for challenging everything my friends had taken for granted, stating my behaviour had been unacceptable. Roughly the same I have heard from Tim Geithner, who as a governor of FED ousted me from the board of advisors. All they wanted a simple, mathematical answer to the question of the sources of rising mortgage bubble and I have been returning to the unpredictable animal spirit of the market. There is always a group of people who do not put stock in the commonly recognised truth, instead of this they start wondering where is the catch…

Breaking the silence...

Following the anecdote posted as a comment to my previous post about Polish mentality I think I can dissociate myself from the fellow blogger’s journey companions and put forward some solutions. Having read the story of discussion in the train I devised some concepts on what should be changed in Poland, slept on them, let them run through my head, now it’s time to tap them into my keyboard and later on spread into the outer world…

I classified my suggestions into three categories, according to the blog’s title. I doubt whether I did it correctly, but I hope it’s a minor glitch and the overall view is what matters here. It will be long, turns out to be the longest post ever, but I believe it’s worth spending half an hour reading it.

POLITICS

To start with, our perception of that realm critically needs to be modified. Today people come to politics driven by their lust for power, money, privileges, etc. and all of those factors which attract them to our sweet mire in fact corrupt them. The ideal model I would opt for is in a way close to the one which functions in the United States. The ones who decide to become politicians should be mature, experienced, reputable citizens, who had already achieved a lot in their lives but still strive for more. Position in politics should crown somebody’s career and should be therefore treated as distinction and public service to the compatriots. Money should not be a reason why people engage in political activity – politicians should be already well-off people who’d like to do something to the others and the financial aspect of their offices shouldn’t play a significant role.

I thought about some standards which could be set to be me met by politicians, for instance a precondition of graduation of university to be allowed to run for seat in parliament, to be a minister or president. The education should moreover be relevant to the post held by a certain official. At second thought I gave it up – firstly cause it’s in contradiction with the principles of democracy and equality of all citizens, secondly I took a quick at our two former and our current presidents. The first completed vocational school, the second lied about his full university education, the third is a professor and is he any wiser by that virtue?

Let’s touch upon a gist of democracy and misunderstanding it. Some of us, Poles, think it’s still not the best system, some discern its weaknesses but can’t find any alternative, some as allegedly the milieu of Gazeta Wyborcza sometimes give the skewed picture of democracy. In democracy everybody should have equal right to give voice to their opinions and nobody is entitled to claim that Kaczyński twins ought to be sent back to the moon. The beauty of democracy consists in the diversity of the political scene, big and wide enough to find room for moderate centre parties, left and right wing, populists and lunatic fringes. Everyone is granted a right to set up a party and register it, unless it refers to the ideas of communism or nazism. What I’m getting at is that nobody can say that “the Law and Justice party should disappear from our political arena”, no matter how many conceited journalists or pundits would utter such words, it mustn’t happen. Law and Justice will exist as long as there will be the political demand for them. Those are the citizens who decide about political future of politicians and it’s their role to deprive them of power, like they did with AWS in 2001 or Samoobrona and LPR in 2007. We have the power to send the ones who screwed it up to the political nonentity. And we can draw them out of there, dust them off, whenever it occurs to us our country is in need of them.

The next part is on the sidelines of politics – it connects law and bureaucracy. The first should be for sure devoid of loopholes, lame legislations but most of all clear. All the legal acts, deeds, decrees, bills should be rewritten into plain Polish (without bombastic, long, confound phrases), intelligible for an ordinary citizen. The formulation of many provisions leaves a lot to be desired – in a correct version legal regulations ought to be concise and meticulously stipulate everything, step by step, leaving no doubt what is required in a certain situation, how should the proceedings run, how is the particular case handled. And ubiquitous red tape which express lack of trust and need to control everything, keep an account, have stats about everything. Piles of papers, ladies with their omnipotent stamps behind the counters – that should be replaced with mechanism friendly for citizen but allowing the administrative system to function effectively. The approach of both state and people has to change here – state offices should provide the information for their applicants and the applicants should come to the offices fitted out in knowledge on what they want to handle – efficient mutual aid would make lives of both parties involved easier but the willingness is here essential.

ECONOMY

The thing I’ve condemned most often on this blog is the current pension system in Poland, chiefly its second pillar, so called open pension funds. The biggest evil here is the compulsory participation combined with extortionate charges. My counter-proposal is that:
1) the participation in first pillar (ZUS) should be obligatory, it should guarantee every working citizen a diminutive pension benefit, sufficient enough to eke out a living – thus the premium would be quite low. Everybody should pay the same per cent of their salary, in my view less than five per cent, and everybody should be granted benefit in the same amount after pensioning off – that would be the element of social solidarity.
2) I don’t want the pension funds to be wound down – participation in that part of the system shouldn’t be, however obligatory. The newly employed ones shouldn’t be forced to choose a pension fund, the ones who already save there for their pension should be permitted to withdraw all their money amassed there, no matter how big fluctuations on financial markets it would cause. Government should clearly state it gives the citizens free rein and let them save for their pension on their own. If they wish, they can join OFE if they think their money would be managed properly there, if not, set it aside to a bank, buy pension insurance, invest in stocks, bonds or simply go on binge and throw it around within one night if it’s their wish. Scholar like professor Marek Góra have repeatedly asserted that people are too stupid to save for their retirement on their own. Maybe indeed they are, but humans are free and no one, virtually no one can make them pay private companies for managing their money, regardless of the investment results. If you wish, do whatever you want with your money, but don’t expect the state to help you if you spend your money foolishly. Maybe it’s inhuman, but that’s probably the only way we can take matters into our own hands. Besides, government should encourage people to save, through tax relieves and promotion drives, so give incentive not coerce! More about my views on pension system – click tag “OFE”.

Almost everyone in this country grumbles about their tiredness after twenty five years of working, average age of retirement is the lowest in Europe – a shameful figure. Let’s do away with the pathology and put the system of undeserved privileges to an end – people in Poland pension off cause they’re too lazy, sick of their jobs, but nobody realises their pension benefits are financed from other taxpayers’ premiums and taxes (every years ZUS receives a subsidy from state budget), or maybe to be closer to the actual truth – they push it away from their minds. Changing the ratio of employed to unemployed would surely cure our public finance sector. Early retirement is considered a privilege, whereas I think it should signify someone’s weakness – if you’re unable to work you must be ailing, something wrong must be wrong with you if you don’t want to contribute to the creation of national income.
When we’re at social welfare field – it’s time to crack down on fictitious certificates of inability to work excessively made out by doctors. Guy comes to the doctor and asks: “Sir, I’m forty-five, I don’t feel like working any more, I want to get the benefit”. Who pays for such lies and laziness? We!

Claimant’s stance – it’s about time we realised that the state which collects taxes is not an institutions which rips us off. For the taxes we pay we get the infrastructure, schools, partly health service, officials working for us. Let’s switch into another stance – not what I deserve but what I can give. We don’t want to pay taxes but we want to get the benefits from state – for free?

In a few years time I’d propose reaching the balanced budget. Expenditure will not exceed revenue – simple, although never applied. Less money would be needed to finance the debt, investors will lose safe, risk-free securities, gilt-edged securities would not have to be obligatorily bought by pension funds. Markets would sooner or later cope with it somehow – the topic is elaborated on in one of the early posts.

Taxation – the everlasting dilemma of combining justice and effectiveness. Solution? – make it simple, as simple as possible. Reduce tax relieves to minimum, they give a lot of room for abuses, reducing them will also bring down the amount of paperwork to be done to serve it. My suggestion is a flat tax with annual deductions of around ten to fifteen thousand zlotys – the effective taxation rate will be progressive – thus the poorest would pay very little or no tax and as the income would grow, the effective rate of taxation would also rise, but not as drastically as it does now.

The labour relations are where the two conflicting interests coincide. The employers want to pay as little as possible and exploit the workforce as much as possible, the employees would like to work as little as possible and get as much as possible. In the face of this, employers represent the wild capitalism and trade unions represent “who cares” approach. The former don’t take into account some factors (they’re humans, not machines, they have to provide for their families) as they’re chasing profits, the latter selfishly require pay rises and prevent lay-offs no matter how bad the situation of the company is. The trade unions should intervene only when the employer treats his staff really unfairly, in other cases their strikes are to be regarded as disrupting enterprise’s functioning. The “give and take” deal would be helpful here – both parties should make concessions and act in unison bearing in mind the consequences for the another party.

Monetary policy – I can’t say I disapprove of the way it is led currently, nevertheless I would opt for a bit tighter one. Price stability is the overriding goal in my opinion, our country can’t pay the price of high inflation just to retain the high pace of economic growth. There’s also another dimension of keeping interest rates high – market participants are encouraged to save and dissuaded from taking out loans. The economy, to a large degree propelled by credit would be cooled down, but just look at the change of behavioural patterns – it appears to be beneficial. Fancy picking on it – go ahead!

Role of state in the economy – first not to harm. But bother to act, where it’s essential. State should counteract monopolies which are indispensable part of free market economy, it should take over some industries where natural monopolies exist – such as utilities. The state firm wouldn’t be geared at profits, instead they’d focus on providing services to people and expected only to break even. Government should be also accountable for maintenance of infrastructure, construction of new roads, etc. All the parts of infrastructure are public goods so I oppose against toll motorways. Of course state projects should be carried out by private companies but roads are to be owned by state and be free for everyone! Another state’s duty which I postulate that it must be fulfilled is the protection of the weakest. The weakest – you mean who? – You’d ask. The poorest? Not this time? According to the popular belief it’s workforce – poor people exploited by the capitalists. The ones who claim it to my eye depart from the truth. Workers might take industrial actions or resort to another way of blackmailing their company to attain what they hold out for. The weakest link in the economic chain are the customers. Their rights are violated the most often, it’s harder for them to gather together and protest, although there have been such actions like the one staged by irate mBank clients. The government should provide for the legal regulations aimed at consumer protection, protection from big chain stores, monopolist service providers, etc. Consumers are almost always doomed to lose a battle with the stronger company or have to wait for another company to bring back competition on the market and liberate them from clutches of colluded companies, like Play did on mobile telephony market, causing call charges to drop. The step in a good direction is the activity of UKE, with Anna Streżyńska in charge of the office.

Is anything more to be done? Certainly yes, state should actively participate and support all programmes of financial education. The society which understands the mechanisms of economy is less susceptible to yield to populists, can manage their finances better. Better education and raised awareness could also prevent such situations as run on investment funds at the peak of bull market in 2007. Well-educated citizens are then more likely to be treated as wise and responsible and assumed to be able to do without guides.

SOCIETY

The phenomenon which looms as the most disturbing these days is imperviousness (PL: znieczulica), the disease, which afflicted our society. An old woman suddenly passes out in the street – what’s your reaction – it doesn’t concern you, it’s not your business, you’re in hurry. That the classic example – pedestrians pass by, cars drive by, fortunately there’s almost always somebody to stop, call help, bring round. Why are we so insensitive, has anybody wondered what how would the other people behave if it happened to us? Some time ago I started donating small sums of money to charity or making transfers into the accounts of my fellows in need. My contribution is always small – I’ve never given more than twenty zlotys to one person, however I deeply believe if many people give a few zlotys the sum required for treatment or for other purpose will be raised. It also involves trust, cause I have to believe I’m not endorsing someone who tries to cadge off money.

Mistrust – the next disease which slowly devours our society, undermining its foundations, loosening bonds between its members. It goes down from the highest strata of our society – from elites, bringing us down to uncivilised standards of behaviour. Former minister of justice recorded his talks cause he had been driven by mistrust. People lie to one another, cause they’re driven by mistrust, it’s way of playing safe. “If I tell the truth, I’ll be worse off” – that’s our philosophy. Every time someone wants to gives us a hand we’re scratching beneath the surface and try to discover real ignoble intentions. Let’s change it – let’s trust one another, world is full of bastards but good men still prevail, let’s believe in sincerity, compassion, don’t be driven by egoism, mind the others, their needs. The rule of synergy usually applies, so two plus two might give five, but two lies never give one truth. You may benefit from help you give to your fellows, maybe immediately, maybe in the future, maybe not materially but through spiritual satisfaction or through the priceless feeling of well-fulfilled duty.

Money. During the lecture in diplomatic protocol I found out the topic of money is not brought up between well-mannered people. Poland is a shameful example, we quite often boast about our money, that is a bit silly but not harmful, there’s a much worse trend. We simply detest when other people have more money than we, but the worst is that we suppose they come into that money in a criminal way. How does it work? Your neighbour buys a brand new cars. First impression – you’re green with envy, second thought – where did he take the money from? Everyone who owns a mansion, top-of-the-range car, still gets about, wears brand clothes must be a criminal, thief, must conduct a shady business. To big money one can come into by sheer hard work, often making huge sacrifices. My parents have been scrimping and saving for years to buy a terraced house, they have never earned very well but they lied to their family, friends about our financial situation. The same was done by our family and friends, everyone lies they have very little money and barely make ends meet, it’s a pathology, it’s cult of losers, disseminated also by Kaczyński twins – they’re proud they haven’t amassed any property, except for the house of their parents. In America, they’d be ridiculed for it! If you see your neighbour buys a new car, try to match up to him – pull up your socks, work harder, be high-flyer. In Poland it’s easier to bring somebody down than to pull yourself up. That’s why we’re not likely to be as rich as the other nations. The best illustration of our mentality is the scene from “Dzień Świra” – Pole’s prayer, approach entrenched in our mentality – gloomy picture…

Gdy wieczorne zgasną zorze,
zanim głowę do snu złożę,
modlitwę moją zanoszę,
Bogu Ojcu i Synowi.
Dopierdolcie sąsiadowi!
Dla siebie o nic nie wnoszę,
tylko mu dosrajcie, proszę!
Kto ja jestem?
Polak mały! Mały, zawistny i podły!
Jaki znak mój? Krwawe gały!
Oto wznoszę swoje modły do Boga, Maryi i Syna!
Zniszczcie tego skurwysyna!
Mojego rodaka, sąsiada, tego wroga, tego gada!
Żeby mu okradli garaż,
żeby go zdradzała stara,
żeby mu spalili sklep,
żeby dostał cegłą w łeb,
żeby mu się córka z czarnym
i w ogóle, żeby miał marnie!
Żeby miał AIDS-a i raka,
oto modlitwa Polaka!

Sorry for expletives, sorry for the blasphemy and sorry for the lack of translation.

Initially I planned to refrain from referring to Polish Catholicism. It might be offensive, it might be distressing, I’ll hold back and only share one observation – it’s unreflective. Poles go to church cause they were taught to do so, their faith isn’t really strong, doesn’t rest on foundations, Poles treat catholic teachings selectively, the best example is the attitude to pre-marital sex or contraception. What should the church be? Not the buildings, not the clergy but the community of believers – that’s in my, atheist’s opinion the definition of church. I deeply respect and admire true believers who follow Ten Commandments and mostly obey the ultimate Great Commandment, those who are always ready to lend a helping hand, show compassion, never hate, never condemn, are far cry from Polish Catholicism after Radio Maryja’s fashion. Ten Commandments contain some universal rules every decent and moral man should obey and faith in God or belonging to the church should not be a benchmark of being a good man. Church’s attempts to interfere into public life by opposing against in vitro fertilisation or abortion are groundless for me. The true Catholic would never have an abortion, so trying to make everybody comply with the ethics of Catholic church bears witness or church’s weakness. I know it’s a controversial topic, however, we deal here with the matters of human conscience.

It was meant to be shorter, I swear. It was meant to be a collection of my proposals, which put together would outline the shape of Poland I’d dream up. It turned out to be rather a downbeat diagnosis of our national bad traits, analysis of the stereotypes. If in spite of this you deem this post valuable, spread it, give links to, paste some excerpts, I sign away any rights to it. There are the moments when I believe that my country can be changed, there are also the moments when I doubt whether it will ever happen, but without concerted effort it's unattainable...

Mentality

Polish mentality is one of those things which quite frequently bewilder foreigner who come, settle down, or get settled here.
By and large, there are some national traits which differentiate us from other nations.

Griping – an average Pole has to gripe about everything – spanning politicians, work, neighbours, family, bureaucracy, etc. The older, the less educated, the less well-travelled, the poorer, the more they complain.