News: economics

FAVORITE ECO TOPICS!!

2010-03-23T08:44:00.000+02:00

1. TRANSPORT ECONOMICS!!! — having been a victim of traffic in the South…hehe…I’ve started to be passionate about traffic, cars, the LRT and MRT and transportation in general. I just love how mobility facilitates economic growth!

2. BEHAVIORAL ECONOMICS, especially crimes haha — I am very interested with the demography of criminals and the economics behind it..It’s really very very interesting for me, especially when I read why should suicide bombers get life insurance in SuperFreakonomics…I like how economics can reveal a lot about our criminal side/our bestiality..hehe

3. INFORMATION ECONOMICS – I just found out there is such several seconds after writing the statement above. I just speculated about the possibility of its existence then when I searched it online, lo and behold! there really is such a field as information economics! Anyway, in relation to what I have just mentioned in number 2, I like how powerful information is. With economic tools I’m so sure it would even be more powerful.

[Via http://hsbcocos.wordpress.com]

Supply and Demand in the Stock Market

2010-03-23T00:10:00.000+02:00

Jenna Doucet (March 2010).

Supply and Demand in the Stock Market

In most industries the law of supply and demand is an accepted theory to explain the price of products and services. One industry that overlooked the significance of the law of supply and demand in the past is the stock market. Experts attributed the Stock Bubble of the 1990s to an overly simple theory; it was believed that rising prices in stocks were caused by an underlying rise of companies’ value. The price of stocks in the 1990s is today better understood as derived from a shortage of equities in the market (Oswin, 2005). The law of supply and demand is a fundamental concept in economics that explains market factors such as the quantity of a product or service demanded by consumers, the supply of products or services that suppliers are willing to produce and the relationship between supply and demand to create market equilibrium. The law of supply and demand also tries to explain what conditions in the market create changes in quantity demand and supplied in the market (Colander, 2008).

In his essay, The Relative Shortage of Equities, Oswin (2005) describes some of the conditions that affect stock market activity and explains the theories behind the demand and supply of equities, which drive the prices of the market. According to Oswin (2005), the law of supply and demand is the cause behind bear and bull markets. Investors use the term bear market to describe markets in which the prices of stocks are stubbornly declining. A bull market is characterized by a strong upward trend in the prices of stocks. According to the law of supply and demand, the increase in the price of a product is caused by a shortage of supply or excess demand, and a decline in price is associated with a surplus in supply or a decrease in demand (Colander, 2008). Oswin (2005) states that during the Great Stock Bubble “ Investors’ determination to buy equities exceeded issuers willingness to satisfy their demand for stocks” (p. 4). Furthermore, Oswin (2005) notes, “issuers competed with investors in buying back company shares, contributing to the shortage” (p. 4).

What is unique about the stock market is that the value of securities is largely dependent on speculation. In essence market expectations are what drive the demand and supply of securities. Thus, understanding how the law of supply and demand affects stock prices is much more complex than in other industries. To simplify, it can be said that when investors expect market prices to rise and believe they can make a profit, the demand for securities will also rise, the opposite is true when individuals expect declining prices. The law of demand also states that when prices are lower demand rises, and this is also true for securities when combined with reinforcing market expectations. A lower price for a security, especially when that security is expected to increase in value will cause a rise in demand. On the supply side, issuing companies are more apt to sell securities when the price of their stock will be high as to maximize capital to finance growth. This is in accordance with the law of supply that states supply increases when prices are high and profits are expected to increase. However, the demand for supply is also affected by outside forces such as a company’s need for raising capital. If a company has enough capital to finance growth operations and does not need to borrow, there will be no need for companies to issue additional securities. In a booming market, in which corporate profits are steady and growing, and the need for issuing additional securities is low, stocks will be in high demand and prices will rise. Additionally, sellers and buyers of securities in the secondary market create supply in the market. When prices are rising, investors are willing to hold on to their stocks for longer periods of times and there is a shortage of sellers. When prices are declining, investors are more eager to sell their securities to protect their paper profits or to minimize exposure. Equilibrium of price is created when potential buyers willingness to pay for a security matches what suppliers are willing to sell their securities for.

References

Colander, D. C., (2008). Economics (7th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.

Oswin, J. (2005). The relative shortage of equities. Capital flow Analysis. Retrieved onMarch 13, 2010 from: http://www.capital-flow-analysis.com/investment-theory/shortage-of-equities.html

[Via http://jennadoucet.wordpress.com]

News for the Unthinking: Growth and Sustainability May Not Be Compatible

2010-03-21T16:25:00.000+02:00

Economists call for growth as a remedy to the recession. With the current economic recession winding all-too-slowly down, I have heard some economic experts telling the media that we need “more growth, more and faster growth”. How long does anyone think we can continue to fix our economic problems by “developing” (or is it “blighting”) more land and burning up more resources? Isn’t that just pushing down on the gas pedal as our car heads straight towards a cement wall? Where do the media find these so-called experts? How can the “growth mantra” be expected to continue indefinitely in a finite world? What proportion of the population are smart enough to understand this and similar issues, and how can it be increased? In the United States, we can’t keep our current infrastructure in good repair. How do we expect to take care of even more after we build it?

I will write another email to my government representatives on this. Uncontrolled and unthinking growth is self-destruction, in the final tally. I want my grandchildren to have as good a life as possible, though I currently believe it will be no better than I have today, and possibly much worse. I encourage you the reader to contact your representatives and push them to think long-term and recognize that most of what we consider changing now, such as reducing carbon emissions, does little in the face of the global population explosion. The correction to that, and the only one that seems to have the potential to move us towards sustainability, is for people to have smaller families. I can’t think of anything else with any probability of success. I also think we all want to deal with overpopulation ourselves as opposed to letting Mother Nature deal with the problem for us.

The situation is not hopeless. I have written before about the factors that have been proven to reduce family size: education, birth control, and better economic situations. If we put a small part of the resources and funding we put into wars and war-like activities into those three factors, especially in the developing world, I think we could make a big positive difference in our descendants’ lives. Unfortunately our mostly-unregulated form of capitalism puts extremely powerful interests behind short term measures and often-destructive endeavors that benefit them, but harm all of us in the long run. We have a chance if we *all* get involved and make our voices heard. We created government to protect us, and if we don’t stop the subversion of our government for corporate profits we will all suffer, and our descendants will suffer far more. Please write your congresspeople.

As always, I welcome your comments. — Tim

[Via http://timprosserfuturing.wordpress.com]

China, Yuan and Dollar - Part 2 : Current account- deficits and surplus

2010-03-20T08:54:00.000+02:00

Current account:

As the name says, something is accounted for the current period of study. Usually a financial year. What do we do in accounting? Calculate inflows and outflows. Current account is exactly the same. It’s just the accounting for a country’s inflows and outflows.

Current account = balance of trade + Income (a.k.a Factor Income) + Transfer Payments.

Balance of trade – difference between the export and import of a country. It does not include the financial transfers or investments.

Income- Income earned on investments made by a country abroad like interest earned or dividends received. This will be accounted as (+) value, and paid to foreigners by a country will be accounted as (-) sign. (You should note that this will take only income out of investments. Original investments/capital investments will be accounted in a different head Capital accounts) The Income, also includes the infamous Remittances made by our Non residents… (Thanks to millions of SW geeks and labors from across the globe. – We might even say a malayali chai shop or someone working in a construction site, in Arab countries, indirectly influences the Moody’s rating for India J

Transfer of Payments- cash transfers from abroad like foreign aid, charity aid etc… Money spent on society directly than on economy.

So in short,

A current account deficit occurs when Imports are more than Exports (when a country’s total imports of goods, services and transfers is greater than the country’s total export of goods, services and transfers.)

A current account surplus occurs when Exports are more than Imports. (When a country’s total exports of goods, services and transfers is greater than the country’s total import of goods, services and transfers.)

We (India) are in a deficit situation every year… Might be we would have been in surplus before the East India Company or the Moguls ventured in . Currently our fiscal deficit stands at 5.8 billion USD.. .. needless to say, the Chinese are in huge surplus of 284 billion USD, and they say it has come down from 368 billion USD.. and guys, we have more or less the same work force compared to china….( hmm… its all the government /ruler who makes the difference…)

In the next post , lets see about what is balance of payments…

[Via http://capitalmoney.wordpress.com]

Washington - and the halls of Congress - swarm with bankers and lobbyists

2010-03-20T00:26:00.000+02:00

According to the Washington Post, bankers and lobbyists are out in force in Washington, determined to defeat or greatly weaken Sen. Dodd’s Financial Reform legislation.

If not for the sea of navy business suits and the hotel ballroom’s chandeliers, the gathering Wednesday morning might have seemed more like a pep rally than a meeting of the American Bankers Association. But the 900 bankers were preparing to storm Capitol Hill, and they were getting revved up.

“We have a lot of work cut out for us,” David Bochnowski, an Indiana bank executive, said to the troops, who had assembled just after 8 a.m. in the Grand Ballroom of the Renaissance Hotel downtown. “Our job is to have an impact on the Hill. Are we going to have that impact?”

“Yeah!” the bankers shouted, as applause broke out.

“We need to shape what’s in and what’s out of any reform legislation,” Michigan banker Art Johnson told his peers from every corner of the country. “All of us know what’s at stake. It’s really about our industry’s future . . .[...]

The bankers soon headed to Capitol Hill, talking points in hand — white folder for House visits, blue folder for Senate visits. They were to protest the creation of a new consumer financial protection regulator, to argue that national banks should remain exempt from state consumer laws and to advocate that the Federal Reserve keep oversight for some state-chartered banks, among other issues.

While the bankers showed up in force this week, they are not the only ones with a hefty stake in the financial regulatory overhaul under consideration in Congress. Investment banks, hedge funds, student loan firms, coal companies, automakers and credit card companies are among those seeking to influence the reforms.

Of course, partisan politics reared its ugly head, once again, as Republicans signaled their rejection of any Democrat-sponsored legislation. At the gathering of bankers before they left for Capital Hill, House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) acted as their pep rally leader, urging the crowd to “stand up for themselves” and defeat Sen. Dodd’s legislation.

With 900 bankers and thousands of lobbyist, all carrying sacks of money with which to influence Congress, it’s going to be nearly impossible to get good legislation that actually does regulate the banking industry…and brings some sunlight into shadow banking. But good legislation that protects both consumers and investors and brings a lot of the risky financial instruments out in the open and manages the level of risk any bank can take with customers’ money is a necessity.

I hope voters care enough about their wallets and savings to stand up to the bankers and tell their Congress members to stand firm for the American people. After all, bankers are not Gods and should not be treated as such!

Oh, and in case anyone has forgotten what happened over the last two years ago, here’s a reminder of why regulation is necessary.

[Via http://valkayec.wordpress.com]

Mr. Dodd Has A Plan

2010-03-18T08:27:00.000+02:00

With the heated back and forth of the health reform, very little has been reported on the new financial reform bill….Sen. Dodd and some Repub from Tennessee are quietly negotiating for the passage of a financial reform bill….now that it is pretty close Dodd has hit the airways to try and block any “tea bag”-esque attacks that the health reform bill has received.

I was going to write a piece trying to explain Dodd’s lame attempt to regulate the thieves but the Washington Post beat me to it and theirs is a lot simple and more understandable than mine would have been:

1 A Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, housed inside the Federal Reserve, would write and enforce rules protecting borrowers from abuse by lenders.

WHAT IT MEANS: The location of the agency is a nod to Republicans and conservative Democrats who oppose the creation of a free-standing consumer agency, but everything else about this proposal is designed to please liberals, giving the consumer agency sweeping powers and imposing few checks on that authority.

2 A Financial Stability Oversight Council, chaired by the Treasury secretary, would coordinate federal efforts to identify and manage risks to the financial system and the broader economy.

What it means: Dodd wanted to give the council broad responsibility for policing systemic risks. After massive administration pressure, he agreed instead to give much of that power to the Fed. The oversight council will instead function essentially as the Fed’s board of directors on regulatory issues, signing off on its decisions.

3 A new process would allow for the liquidation of large, failing financial firms.

WHAT IT ME ANS: Companies could be liquidated by joint agreement of the Treasury Department, the Fed and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., which already administers bank failures and would play a similar role in the new process. Costs would be paid from a $50 billion pool of money gathered from large financial companies.

4 Credit-rating agencies would be regulated and liable for errors.

WHAT IT MEANS: Breaking with the administration and the House version of financial reform, Dodd’s bill would hold Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s and other rating agencies potentially liable for their judgments about the safety of bonds and other investments. The industry also would be regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

5 Banks would face new limits on trading and investment activities.

WHAT IT MEANS: The bill would restrict banks from running their own investment portfolios or hedge funds, an administration proposal known as the “Volcker Rule” that Dodd initially had rejected. The bill also would regulate the massive trade in derivatives, increasing the proportion of such trades that are publicly reported.

6 Some renovations would be made to the structure of federal banking regulation.

WHAT IT MEANS: Dodd abandoned his earlier proposal to create a single banking regulator after critics argued that the upside was not worth the effort. The bill still would eliminate the Office of Thrift Supervision. The Fed’s authority over smaller banks would be split between the FDIC and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

Is something better than nothing? I hear a lot of the henceforths and heretowiths …..in other words legal-ese and the “too big to fail” group will still have its relief valve….US, we will still be on the hook whenever they screw up….I guess it is a start….but like health reform…..it is NOT reform….it is a tweak of an already broken system.

[Via http://lobotero.wordpress.com]

Skint! Making Do in the Great Depression

2010-03-18T00:49:00.000+02:00

This art exhibition is opening at the Museum of Sydney next week – it looks fascinating.

From the link above:

Skint! Making do in the Great Depression, a Museum of Sydney exhibition that opens on March 27, traces this period, which began with the New York sharemarket crash of 1929. More than 80 years later, mementoes of this period still draw an emotional response, even from those not directly affected.

An example of the items from the era is a Depression peg, which was fashioned from remnants of wire and sold door-to-door by the unemployed. In some cases men would steal wire from farm fences or suburban gates. It’s a grim reminder of how desperate people were. Another poignant symbol is the toy train made from scraps of timber, including a fence paling. It’s a prime example of the “making do” philosophy.

My grandparents were children in the Depression (in the US). They weren’t personally too badly affected, as my granddad’s family kept their farm going, and my grandma’s father kept his job (as a grocery buyer). I’ve always been very moved by stories from tis time, and will definitely be checking this exhibition out, and posting my thoughts.

[Via http://msbetterhome.wordpress.com]

Jamaica and organised crime: Seeking Mr Coke | The Economist

2010-03-16T08:53:00.000+02:00

Jamaica and organised crime: Seeking Mr Coke | The Economist.

The longer Dudus goes free, the more bad press for Jamaica. Bad press shakes up our fragile economy like a rag doll in the mouth of a rabid dog. I just hope that the Prime Minister knows what he’s doing.

The big question is:

Is the “protection of the rights” of this one man worth the rights and dignity of all other Jamaicans whose lives are getting rattled as much as it is?

What do you think?

[Via http://thinkingjamaica.wordpress.com]

'Taking it to the beardies'

2010-03-14T08:47:00.000+02:00

An FT article titled in jocose fashion something like “beware of the beardies”, drew attention towards those elements in the LibDem Constitution designed to prevent any radical changes to the party’s relationship with other parties.

A series of obscure rules buried in the Lib Dem “constitutions” (184 pages) and “business motions” give the party’s left-leaning activists considerable clout over their leader, particularly when it comes to deals with minority governments.

The so-called ‘triple lock’ was appparently introduced under Ashdown, and leaves the leadership obliged to seek several different supermajorities in certain situations.

On the surface, such attention is unwelcome, given Nick’s superb recent efforts (also FT) to get the Lib Dems rebranded as the party that holds the sensible middle ground between nutcase spendingcutters on the Right and wishful deficit deniers on the Left. It is no good having the most respected Shadow Chancellor in modern history and a sound grasp of the difficult dynamics of this situation (see Chris Giles’ wondeful post on this) if you can’t do anything about it, without a cumbersome and uncertain process of internal party haggling.

Martin Kettle in the conference programme makes a flattering comparison between LibDem Conferences and the ’stage managed rallies’ with ‘heavily vetted and coached speakers’ of the other Parties. He writes:

“Among the main UK-wide parties, Liberal Democrats are the only ones whose conference is not from beginning to end a stich-up”.

And I love every minute of them. But I am not sure that a bond market investor eavesdropping upon a ferocious speech defending public spending at all costs would applaud the democracy, rather than question the maths. From the FT article:

Richard Batty, investment director of strategy at Standard Life Investments, said: “This is a laborious process, which could take time to resolve and lead to a delay in the setting up of a coalition government. That creates short-term risks for the government bond markets.”

I agree with Liberal Vision that the triple lock needs to be neutralised for Parliamentary negotiations about taxing, spending, and repaying our creditors. The vast majority of the voters who will be responsible for sending (we hope) 60+ Lib Dems into Westminster this spring think they are in a representative democracy, selecting a man or woman to take his or her own choices in Parliament. They do not think they are giving something they have never heard of a final say over our credit rating, no matter how diligent and worthy the members of that body might be. And if this worries someone like me, imagine how it could be used during the campaign.

As Angela writes, “If we want to claim that a hung Parliament is not necessarily a bad thing and that the markets needn’t panic, we at least need to have our own rules sorted out”

I would love to be able to twist this post around and say “surface impressions are misleading”. But in this case they strike me as true. The FT article suggests, somewhat optimistically, that Nick may be able to use a threat to ‘take it to the beardies’ as a way of gaining negotiational traction with a Conservative or Labour adversary this summer. I cannot imagine this working in the LibDems’ favour. Pure democracy is much easier in the wilderness, and in this case it could be a good way of staying there.

[Via http://freethinkingeconomist.com]

Tory vultures

2010-03-13T23:54:00.000+02:00

First there was ‘compassionate conservatism’, then there was a duck house, an alliance with dodgy Polish right wingers, slagging off the NHS, then Ashcroft, promises to abolish fox hunting and rich folk taxes, and now Tories block a bill to curb the blood sucking activities of vulture funds. To be honest, I was surprised that the bill got as far as it did; Labour play stooges to big money too. So we shouldn’t be surprised that someone stepped in on behalf of the scumbags which profit from the misery of others, and neither should we be shocked that it was a Tory.

What this episode should confirm is that compassionate conservatism is genuine, but reserves all it’s compassion for the rich.

Same old Tories then.

[Via http://brianpaget.wordpress.com]

Podcast: Why GDP Matters For Schoolkids - Planet Money Blog : NPR

2010-03-13T08:33:00.000+02:00

Podcast: Why GDP Matters For Schoolkids – Planet Money Blog : NPR.

Planet Money, a part of the NPR brand, took a look at Jamaica and Barbados to try to observe the effects of GDP on the quality and availability of education in these two countries.

Barbados, which is quite a bit smaller than Ja has a GDP that is three times as large as Jamaica’s. Because of this fact, the Barbadian state can support its schools more comprehensively than Jamaica’s government can theirs.

In the bit (which is available below), Education Minister, Andrew Holness admits that we do not have enough spaces to accommodate the appropriate education and training for our youth for the future. Only 65% of eligible youth will be afforded the opportunity to improve their plight through further education (at the secondary level) and I assume that there is quite a bit less space in our tertiary institutions.

It is important that the students that do get a chance are given the optimum education they need and that they are encouraged to share their knowledge.

There is just so much I want to say on this topic! But for now, listen to the podcast below and comment. I thought that overall, it was a good piece. But, it is more of an introduction of the problem we have, than a full analysis. It will do for now..

[Via http://thinkingjamaica.wordpress.com]

Letter #32: Lionel Peyachew

2010-03-13T00:38:00.000+02:00

March 5, 2010

The Honourable Rob Norris

Minister of Advanced Education, Employment and Labour

Legislative Building

2405 – Legislative Drive

Regina, Saskatchewan

S4S 0B3

Dear Mr. Norris,

As a faculty member of the First Nations University of Canada, I am writing to you about your recent decision to withdraw funding from the First Nations University of Canada, a much need institution of higher learning for First Nations and non-First Nations students and society.

I am a self proclaimed returnee to Saskatchewan, after two decades working as an Alberta citizen. In 2005 my wife and I and four children moved back to Regina after getting an offer to teach Indian Fine Arts at the First Nations University. I am one of those who moved back to Saskatchewan responding to a public pitch by government officials that Saskatchewan has become revitalized, has gone back to being one of the most prosperous growing provinces in Canada. Since I was raised and educated on the economically challenged Red Pheasant Reserve nearby Saskatoon, I found this news to be very uplifting. By contrast, the news today is not so good – the possibility of closing down the university was the most demoralizing news of my career and I am now beginning to regret my move.

Provincial and Federal governments have always encouraged higher education of First Nations people to solve the problems of drugs, alcohol, the soaring rate of illiteracy, poverty, gangs, suicide and incarceration. For over thirty years the First Nations University (formerly the Saskatchewan Indian Federated College) has been in the forefront of realizing an all important goal of improving the lives of young First Nations students by graduating thousands of youth. In the five years I have had the privilege of working in this magnificent building, I have witnessed the success stories of students who were once destitute and who are now major contributors to our economy. Closing down the First Nations University of Canada would be a devastating blow to all students who prefer taking these unique courses and programs that are offered nowhere else in the world.

Since your announcement to discontinue FNUC funding, I have been in a state of denial that hundreds of students will not be able to realize their dream, that hundreds of faculty and staff will possibly lose their jobs because of mismanagement by a hand-full of individuals. Three unqualified individuals in Senior Management controlled our academic offerings, finances, and who we hired as compared to at least 70 faculty who were powerless to make the governance changes that we all wanted and deemed essential for our survival. 3 against 70-some equation that is. The threat of firings by Senior Management and the Board of Governors – all of whose record has to be one of total and absolute incompetence – of those who spoke out in favor of a better governance system was a real possibility so faculty were afraid to speak for change, to hold a vote of non-confidence. We had to try to teach under a regime that knew next to nothing about academic freedom, about academic governance and when it came time to implement or try to make those badly needed changes, could care even less. Now that FSIN has taken the leadership, under Chief Guy Lonechild, to let us make our own governance decisions and systems work, we feel more confident that we are now on the right road and I feel, as a faculty member, that we as a group are more confident than ever before. I continue to trust that Prime Minster Harper’s government officials will work hard to develop a constructive solution to avoid affecting our innocent workforce. I just cannot see any valid reason to close down a university where all the hype in the media in Saskatchewan is about how productive this province is that economically, we are the fastest growing province in Canada. Synchronize this with the fastest growing population of First Nations people in Canada and I continue to ask, is this the proper time and place for your withdrawal of urgently need funding and what looks to be the ultimate closure of this university?

The First Nations people are still on this long journey to recovery from the effects of colonization and residential schools. The irony here is that the Canadian government through the DIA has been on the forefront of demanding that First Nations people become educated, for well over a century. What is happening now? Just when First Nations students and the people themselves are beginning to have some faith and trust in the validity and pedagogy of their own restored educational foundations and systems, you pull the funding! How realistic is that? Your actions make absolutely no sense. I continued to have anxiety and mistrust in the western education system as applied to First Nations people by non-Indians. It was only when the government made a public apology to all First Nations people of Canada, when the churches of Canada publically admitted their duplicity in the colonization of First Nations people and what a sorry chapter in Canadian history that is, did I have a glimmer of hope that our students education will finally be taught by First Nations professors with unique but solid qualifications, expertise, empathy and sincerity. The oppression of residential school continues to affect our children and will continue to affect our grandchildren as well and it is only through our own efforts, as First Nations professors and people, will First Nations people finally be able to eradicate over 200 years of colonial oppression, theft of land and resources, eradication of our spiritually and moral base and mismanagement of our lives by those in Ottawa.

To cut funding at this time, is a step backwards by your ministry, by the Harper government, not just one step backward but a step back entirely into the Nineteenth Century.

The First Nations University can be thought of as a valuable place for sharing common experiences and concerns, of the healing and bringing together of all races in Canada by finally being given the opportunity to teach and learn our languages, traditions, cultures and spirituality that were severed by the Federal Government in the Nineteenth Century, a policy that still has lasting effects on all of us today, including you and your grandchildren. It appears that you are taking us back to that earlier time where only the white man’s knowledge was deemed to be appropriate and necessary for the education of First Nations people. In this contemporary world of the ubiquitous internet, cell phones, satellite television, cars that park themselves, the globalization of education and on and on, that can hardly be the case. Our First Nations students need the experience, the wisdom and sagely advice of First Nations elders, the knowledge and expertise of First Nations professors.

The impending possible closure of the First Nations University of Canada is a mirror image of the negative historical and destructive effects of the so-called education of First Nations people in Canada’s past and should never be allowed to happen or to be repeated. “Those who do not know their history are condemned to repeat it”, as the saying goes.

Do not be one of those who do not know Canada’s own history. On behalf of our future leaders we trust you will continue to be our sincere partner in making First Nations University of Canada, the province of Saskatchewan, and the country of Canada wonderful and unique places in which to live and work.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Respectfully,

Lionel Auburn Peyachew

Assistant Professor of Indian Art

Department of Indian Arts

First Nations University of Canada

(306) 790-5950 Ext. 3290

lpeyachew@firstnationsuniversity.ca

[Via http://fnuniv.wordpress.com]

Health care bills would alter US abortion policy (Madera Tribune)

2010-03-11T08:42:00.000+02:00

WASHINGTON (AP) – President Barack Obama’s health care bill would change federal policy on abortion, but it may not open the spigot of taxpayer dollars as some abortion opponents fear.

Health care bills would alter US abortion policy (Madera Tribune)

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 08:06:50 GMT

The key word in this article is fear. It says that the opponents of abortion might fear the ramifications from the change in the health care bill. My questions are very simple. What are the white fundamentalist Christian men afraid of? Given the fact that 78% of all the women who are murdered in these United States are being killed by pro-life. White fundamentalist Christian men, why are the white fundamentalist Christian men afraid of giving women the right to arbitrate with their creator regarding their own spirituality? Are the white fundamentalist Christian men afraid the if they give women the right to be able to talk to God and around it day, the white fundamentalist Christian men may not be able to kill as many women as they are currently murdering every year? It’s very interesting. Because the white fundamentalist Christians and the abundance claim to be pro-life and yet they are involved in more killing that any group in American history. Which of course makes her actions nothing but one of the biggest lies that has been told in the United States in the history of this nation.

So again, what are the white fundamentalist Christian men afraid of? Are they afraid that if they give women the right of being able to talk to God on their own that women very well may refuse to have children altogether. And then of course the freshest you go of these white fundamentalist Christian men with not have a child to carry on? Or are the white fundamentalist Christian men afraid that they won’t be able to do to women what the Catholic Church did to my mother, which is basically to be able to kill women so that they can steal their child but The church murdered my mother in 1950 and then stole me from her and then sold me on the black market?

So exactly what are the Christian conservatives and the Republican Party so afraid of? I mean, what they’re really trying to fight for is not being pro-life. But they’re trying to maintain their control over women. So that they can do to women with the Catholic Church did to my mother in 1950. Because the Christian conservatives and the Republican Party want right to kill women and then steal their children. Just with the Catholic Church murdered my mother in 1950 in and stole me from her and sold me on the black market. And we know that this is true because in Utah the government of Utah is already planning on building death camps or newly designed Christians, where women who refuse to their children will in fact be sentenced to go to the gas chamber and be killed routinely. So that the Utah government can force them to pregnancy and as soon as they are written Utah government plans on murdering the woman and stealing her child. Because the Utah government doesn’t care about women’s rights. They only care about getting that fetus. That’s exactly why the Christian conservatives Republican Party never talk about women’s rights because they want the same right to do to women with the Catholic Church did to my mother in 1950. They want to force women in the urgency and then once they are pregnancy they wanted and murder that and steal that child so they can sell them on the black market.

That’s why the Christian conservatives and the Republican Party never talk about women’s rights. Because they don’t care about women they just want that fetus. So again, what are the Christian conservatives Republican Party afraid of? That they are not they get the chance to continue their mass murdering of women? Because that’s exactly what the Christian conservatives, and Republican Party are doing. 78% of all the women in the United States are being killed by filthy liars who are pro-life Catholics and stupid bastard to her fundamentalist Christians. And that is a statistical fact.

The Christian conservatives and the Catholics don’t ever want to be responsible for the fact that since 78% of the United States is pro-life Christian that basically means that 78% of all the women and children murdered in the United States are killed by pro-life Christians and Catholics. It also means that Christians in United States are demanding that the world understand that to them being pro-life means killing, because while the Christian conservatives and Catholics are demanding that everyone understand they are pro-life. They are with their own actions, supporting a number of forms of killing, which means that they are NOT pro-life..

78% of all the women murdered in the United States are killed by pro-life Christians and Catholics .
78% of all the children abused in the United States are abused by pro-life Christians and Catholics .
78% of all the children murdered in the United States are murdered by pro-life Christians and Catholics .
78% of all the murders that take place in the United States are committed by pro-life Christians and Catholics .
78% of all the soldiers in the United States, who go out and kill are pro-life Christians and Catholics .
78% of the membership of the National Rifle Association, which support GUNS THAT KILL are pro-life Christians and Catholics .
Every single white supremacist group in the history of United States has always been white fundamentalist pro-life Christian. And these white supremacist groups are dedicated to killing anyone who is not white and Christian.
The Army of God is a white fundamentalist Christian group who is dedicated to murdering and killing every single nonwhite Christian in the United States.
78% of all the people who favor and support the death penalty meaning killing people for committing crimes are pro-life Christians and Catholics.
78% of all the ministers in the United States who carry firearms to church and are threatening to kill anyone who comes near the church was not white and Christian are pro-life Christians and Catholics .
78% of all the crimes against gay people in the United States are done by pro-life Christians and Catholics .
Every month between one and two transgendered females are murdered and every single one of these killings is done by pro-life Christian.
White fundamentalist Christians were the ones who demand the right to own black Americans and to kill them whenever they wanted to during the signing of the Declaration of Independence .
White fundamentalist Christians were the ones who took over the Republican Party during the battle of Washington and try to overthrow the United States government under president Hoover at the battle of Washington in 1932.
White fundamentalist Christians were the ones who took over the Republican Party on the evening before the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation during the American Civil War . And who then used the Republican Party to hire John Wilkes Booth to murder Pres. Abraham Lincoln .

When you have all these forms of killing being supported by pro-life Christians and Catholics it’s easy to understand that the pro-life Christians and Catholics are demanding that everyone else be responsible for their own actions. But the white fundamentalist Christians and Catholics under no circumstances want to be responsible for anything they do because they are demanding that the entire world understand that to them being pro-life means killing, because that’s what they support killing. That’s why that those who claim to be pro-life are now becoming known as nothing more than, “Killers For Christ”. And of course it the white fundamentalist Christians and Catholics don’t like what I’m saying or want to take exception to what I’m saying they need to disprove every single item in this journal entry and my see also section below.

See Also:

Jesus Christ
The Sermon On The Mount
God
The Bible
The Ten Commandments
John The Baptist
The Burning Times
The Crusades
Joan Of Arc
The Children Of Lourdes
The Children of Fatima
The Spanish Inquisition
The American Civil War
Slavery
The Emancipation Proclamation
Abraham Lincoln
John Wilkes Booth
The Christian Conservatives
World War I
Prohibition
The Great Depression
The Battle of Washington
World War II
The Korean War
The Vietnam War
Richard Nixon
Oliver North
The Iran-Contra Affair
The Gulf War
The Savings-And-Loan Crisis
Bill Clinton
The Balanced Budget Amendment
The Iraq War
The Kondratieff Wave
Profitability Analysis
Financial Analysis
Vance Packard
Laissez-Faire
Capital Punishment
Homophobia
Xenophobia
Racism
Prejudice
Bigotry
Fascism
Eugenics
White Supremacy
Mein Kampf
Adolf Hitler
The Ku Klux Klan
The Army of God
US Domestic Violence Statistics
US Child Abuse Statistics
US Child Mortality Statistics
US Religious Demographic Statistics
Gay-Rights
Transgenderism
Women’s Rights
Pro-Choice
NRA
Oliver Wendell Holmes
The US Constitution
The Bill Of Rights
Recording Telephone Conversations
Treason
Sedition
How The Republicans Use The Constitution To Lie (article 1, section 6, subsection b) of The US Constitution
My Biographical Profile
My Philosophy Of Life
24 Hour Suicide And Crisis Help Center
For Those Who Said I Never Knew Ronald Reagan, They Lied
My Encounter With Joan Baez
My Time Studying The Anasazi Indians
My 250 Million Variable Characteristic Hieroglyphic Language
My Tribute To Jim Varney
The Pebble And The Penguin
A Diamond On A Sea Of Glass
Regarding Me And My Journal
My Spinal Fusion And Me Doing 250 Situps
An Installment Notation of The Maschke Family History and Legacy
It’s A Crime
Hey God! You There? I’m Tired… Ok?
In The Midst Of Darkness The Smallest Spark Lights My Way…
I Wrote Something A Long Time Ago…
Kmart To Close Five More Ohio Stores
The Vanishing Of America
A Place Called Earth
How Ya Gonna Keep ‘Em Down On The Farm
Sounds
Reality …
Second Gear
My Financial Analysis Of The Global Economic System
Adventures In Technocracy
An Explanation Of Vernacular Dynamics and Sequencing Regarding Various Forms of Advocacy
The Tortoise and the Hare
Quantum Mechanics And Newtonian Metaphysics
My Global Warming Research

For the record, I am pro-life. I do not support violence against, or the killing of any human being under any circumstances! And the only way that I ever deviate from that stand is that I do not believe that God has ever given any human the right to dictate to any woman how she is to arbitrate her life with the Almighty, and/or God. Therefore, I believe that all women deserve the right to choose for themselves the fate of their own bodies, pursuant to their relationship with the Almighty, and/or God. For an expanded explanation please see my article entitled: "Second Gear"

[Via http://nicolemaschke3.wordpress.com]

Repost-From Bloggingheads: Eli Lake And Heather Hurlbert On Samuel Huntington

2010-03-11T00:34:00.000+02:00

9:26 min discussion here.

Did Bush over-simplify both the depths of the neocons and the American left? Do you partially blame the current state of the left to not martial better arguments in the run-up to the Iraq war?

Is it still too soon to pass judgment on the war?

Hurlbert worries that the application of the idea of the “Clash Of Civilizations” is too simple.

See Also On This Site: The previous post: From The Atlantic: Samuel Huntington’s Death And Life’s Work…A Few Thoughts On The FATA Region Of Pakistan…From The New Perspectives Quarterly: Francis Fukuyama’s ‘Is America Ready for a Post-American World?’

[Via http://chrisnavin.wordpress.com]

Does national debt destroy a country?

2010-03-09T16:53:00.000+02:00

Why GDP Matters: Compare Jamaica To Barbados

March 5, 2010 by Alex Blumberg

When it comes to economic indicators, none may be more abstract than GDP per capita. It is the measure of all goods and services a country produces, divided by its population. Take two countries that seem alike in almost every important way — from geography, climate, colonial history and government structure — but one has a much lower GDP. The differences between Jamaica and Barbados are striking.

budget, bureaucracy, economics, economy, education, funding, government, spending

[Via http://feltd.wordpress.com]

Integration in sports is apparently a one-way street

2010-03-09T00:39:00.000+02:00

We’ve come a long way since the days of minority segregation in sports. It has been 74 years since Jessie Owens won gold and Matthew Robinson won Silver in the 200-meter dash at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, right under the nose of Adolf Hitler. Matthew’s brother Jackie would break the color barrier in Major League Baseball 11 years later. Doug Williams was the first black quarterback to win a Superbowl when he played for the Washington Redskins, a traditionally white-led team even in the mid-1980s. In a majority of traditionally “white” sports and competitive events today, minorities playing hardly causes one to bat an eye. It is hardly true the other way around, however.

It seems that the winners of the first ever Sprite Step Off competition will have to share their first-place trophy. Coca-Cola made the decision on March 1st after reviewing hundreds of comments when a white sorority from the University of Arkansas won the competition at the end of February. Citing a “scoring discrepancy” Coca-Cola (the major sponsor via its Sprite brand) awarded Alpha Kappa Alpha, a team from Indiana University, the first-place tie.

Message boards were filled with vitriolic comments after the ladies from Arkansas won, much of it racially charged. According to the Associated Press:

The uproar began when the all-white Zeta Tau Alpha team from the University of Arkansas beat out five other sorority teams to win last weekend’s national final in the Sprite Step Off competition. A YouTube video of their performance, inspired by the movie “The Matrix,” generated hundreds of comments.

Posters questioned everything from whether a white group should have been allowed to compete to whether judges wowed by the unlikely competitors inflated their scores to let them win.

“Good Job but let the Black folks have their own thing for once!!!” wrote one commenter posting under the name “titetowers” who said the Zeta Tau Alpha team did well but should not have won.

This is a lose-lose situation for Coke. Because of the racial component of the controversy, they can’t take one side or another. This isn’t baseball or the NFL, after all. Nor is it even gymnastics, where the official competition, its rules and scoring procedures have been established for decades. This is the very first year of the competition and so every rule or ruling is easily challenged as arbitrary or even biased. If Coca-Cola sides with the white Arkansas team, then they could upset minority sensitivities and lose 20% or more of their market share to Pepsi, Royal Crown and Cadbury-Schweppes. That loss could last for a generation or more. If they side with the black Indiana team, whites might get upset about racial preferences and the company could face a similar backlash. So Coke took the only ground available to them: Straight down the middle, awarding first place to both teams.

From my moral perspective, I’d like Coke to have taken a stand and said, “No, our competition was fair, and a white team has just as much chance as a black team to win.” Realistically, the backlash that could have resulted was too dangerous for the company’s leaders to explain to their shareholders.

Still, the idea that members of minority groups would be upset about whites winning in “their” competitions is disturbing. One supposes that, by this standard, minorities should not be allowed to compete in hockey, auto racing, baseball, or, say Country Music. It’s not like non-African cultures have ritually or culturally significant dance forms, even ones that involve rhythmically stepping with one’s feet.

Lawrence Ross, author of “The Divine Nine: The History of African American Fraternities and Sororities, said the increased interest in stepping is a natural evolution, much like other urban staples such as rap music that went from an underground phenomenon to mainstream.

“Others are always going to be attracted to what you’re doing and are going to want to participate,” said Ross, a member of Alpha Phi Alpha, a historically black fraternity.

He said the nation is integrating more than ever and blacks who embrace President Barack Obama making inroads into previously all-white bastions can’t have a double standard.

“If (black Olympian) Shani Davis was prevented from speed skating simply because traditionally, no African-Americans were in the field, we African-Americans would be up in arms,” he said.

I couldn’t have said it better myself, Mr. Ross. Fortunately, the girls of Zeta Tau Alpha aren’t disappointed with having to share:

Arkansas senior Alexandra Kosmitis said she and her teammates had worked hard and were very excited when they heard they had won Saturday. They didn’t feel their title was diminished when Coca-Cola told them they’d have to share it.

“We feel truly blessed to have been part of the competition and to have gotten scholarship money to further our educations,” the 21-year-old Pine Bluff, Ark., native said. “The AKA chapter from Indiana University were really nice girls throughout the competition, and we’re glad they are also getting scholarship money too.”

It’s unfortunate your detractors couldn’t show that kind of class, Ms. Kosmitis. Very unfortunate, indeed.

Cross-posted at The Minority Report and RedState.

[Via http://seekingliberty.wordpress.com]

You can't spend yourself solvent

2010-03-07T06:00:00.000+02:00

You can’t spend yourself rich. You can’t spend yourself solvent. And you can’t get rich by working the government’s printing presses either. Is that so hard to understand? Apparently, it is, probably because it’s hard to persuade people when they don’t want to know.

If we’ve had a half century and more of inflation (and that’s just what we have had), what’s so wrong with a little deflation? In fact, what’s so wrong with a lot of deflation? Given that the alternative is more of the same, and a currency crash at the end of the process…

The following article from The Daily Bell begins with a lengthy pro-inflationist quotataion, then proceeds to demolish its assumptions. They need demolishing.

Central Banks Can’t Stop Global Unraveling

Tuesday, March 02, 2010 – by Staff Report

Don’t go wobbly on us now, Ben Bernanke (left) … Mervyn King, the Bank of England’s Governor, seems strangely alone in … seeing the absurdity of a recovery strategy where everybody tightens at once and surplus states keep on dumping excess capacity abroad. “I was struck by the mood at the G7, where several of the major economies around the world said quite openly that they were relying on external demand growth to generate growth. That can’t be true of everybody,” he said. The West risks a slow grind into debt-deflation unless central banks offset fiscal tightening with monetary stimulus – QE, of course – to keep demand alive. Yet the Fed and the European Central Bank are letting credit contract. … Fed chairman Ben Bernanke told us in his 2002 speech “Deflation: Making Sure It Doesn’t Happen Here” that: 1) Japan’s slide into deflation was “entirely unexpected”, and that it would be “imprudent” to rule out such a risk in America; 2) “Sustained deflation can be highly destructive to a modern economy and should be strongly resisted”; 3) that a “determined government” has the means to stop deflation, if necessary by use of the “printing press”. Yet here we are, facing exactly that risk, unless you think one good quarter of inventory rebuilding has conjured away our debt bubble. The one-off inflation blip caused by a doubling of oil prices is already fading, revealing once again the deeper forces of deflation. Core prices fell 0.1% in January. They plummet from here. So why has Bernanke broken ranks with King and begun to flirt with disaster by tightening too soon? Has he lost control to regional hawks, as in mid-2008? Have critics in Congress and the media got to him? Has China vetoed QE, fearing a stealth default on Treasury debt? Don’t go wobbly on us now, Ben. If the governments of America, Europe, and Japan are to retrench – as they must – their central banks must stay super-loose to cushion the blow. Otherwise we will all sink into deflationary quicksand. – UK Telegraph

Dominant Social Theme: Liquidity is necessary to avoid a deflationary depression.

Free-Market Analysis: This article by the Telegraph’s best financial writer, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, is a stunner because it shows us the fallacies of Keynesian economics in real time. The article, when we picked it up initially and decided to analyze it, wasn’t getting a lot of play, but then the Drudge Report posted a link as well. But even though we try not to cover articles that are too well disseminated, we can’t resist with this one. Does Evans-Pritchard believe what he writes in this article? We suppose it is obligatory if he wishes to keep his job. Mainstream media does not take kindly to free-market Austrian monetary analysis.

But we do not write for the Telegraph, and we don’t have the pressures that Evans-Pritchard evidently writes under. We have come to quite different conclusions, therefore. We are learning as we go. Yes, every day we observe the differences between current reality and analyses of the Great Depression of the 1930s, especially as regards America. We are increasingly in a position to make a determination over what was covered up or twisted to buttress certain arguments. Since we have written about these issues – and speculated about them for several decades – the ability to live through them, while exceptionally painful is also in a sense gratifying.

For instance, there are those who maintain that the Roaring 20s was a time of monetary scarcity, and that a lack of money printing led to the market crash and the Depression. This in fact is a quasi-Keynesian argument so far as we can tell, designed to support the idea that more fiat money is always better (and if they’d only printed enough in the 1920s, the Depression would never have happened). But now, based on real-life observations in the 21st century of the current financial crunch (and others before it) the idea that the Roaring 20s was a time of monetary scarcity is hardly credible to us.

Then there is the monetarist perspective – that the Fed, by tightening in the 1930s, or at least not loosening enough, turned a downturn into a disaster. This was a far more feasible scenario to us and others, and has been vehemently debated for decades. But now we have had the opportunity to watch a major credit crisis unfold in the 21st century. Lo and behold, we have seen to our satisfaction that it has NOTHING to do with monetary policy after-the-fact and everything to do with an over-printing of fiat money for months, years, even decades, prior to the latest great unraveling.

Murray Rothbard and the Austrians had it right after all! Friedman had it wrong. It is the overprinting of money that causes the crash – not central bank tightening or other maneuvers late in the day that “trigger” what was actually unavoidable. It is the unrestrained build-up of fiat money in the system that causes the problem. Yet Evans-Pritchard – a reporter of incisive monetary vision – sees none of this. This article of his, excerpted above, is a funny combination of monetarist and Keynesian theory – for both theories attribute to central banks the ability to ameliorate or even avoid a lengthy depressive economy worldwide with the right series of monetary actions.

Read it for yourself. Central banks, he writes, have to print money fast and furiously and make sure that there is enough credit and money available to avoid a dread “contraction.” Has he been living through the same financial crisis we have? There are several obvious problems with this analysis, in our opinion. First, according to Austrian monetary theory it is GOOD if there is disinflation or even deflation during an economic downturn. This means the money that people have lasts longer and gives them additional capital opportunities. Second, and perhaps more important, central banks have no ability to stuff the cooked carcass of a moribund economy, locally or globally, with cash and expect it to waddle to its feet and take flight.

This has been the most important insight. And doubtless many Bell readers and feedbackers have reached the same conclusions we have simply by living through this horrid experience. There is no way, as we see it, that central banks can print enough money to make things right. The distortions of the economy go back a half-century or more. The amount of material goods, of wrong-headed industrial and investment decisions, of misaligned resources are deeply rooted indeed. To some degree, printing money may prop up some of the worst of these excesses for a period of time. But once the economy has decided to purge – it will purge. Does anyone believe for instance that GM is going to survive and thrive by building tiny, green, government-mandated cars?

Mercantilist central banks can print all the money they want, but in a Great Unraveling such as we have today there is nowhere for that money to go. People have realized that there is ruin all around them. The scales have fallen from their eyes and they understand for the first time in years – perhaps in their entire lives – that much of what they understood to be normal and natural in society was the product of the overprinting of fiat money, of monetary stimulation in fact. Many cannot put it into words, exactly, but they “feel” it nonetheless and act accordingly. They pay down debt. They do without. They live simper lives.

We are paleontologists transported back to the age of dinosaurs. We can see clearly now, what we only speculated about before. The Austrians were correct. Evans-Pritchard is wrong. Once an economy has been driven fully off a cliff by fiat money there is no way to salvage it by printing yet more money. These are fictions prated by Keynes after-the-fact in the 1930s to justify whatever it was that politicians wanted to do at the time. Neat fictions wrapped in impenetrable numerology and other mumbo jumbo.

Central banks can print all the money they want. But there is nowhere for the money to go. Economies must purge themselves. Government “stimulus” programs only prolong the pain by propping up businesses that need to fail – simply put, they will attract capital that ought to go to healthy new businesses. Depressions and recessions are economic signals too, and their messages are easy to foul up. Let government inject trillions in jobs programs, let central banks distribute more trillions to too-big-to-fail entities, and the market itself will grow confused and aimless. Real capital will be dissipated. Growth will never occur, save in the most artificial and manipulated sectors of the marketplace –equity markets and in multinational sectors where globalist entities do government business or are involved in various military and security endeavors.

Conclusion: This is what happened in Japan. This is what is happening now in America. This will surely happen in Europe as EU-crats prepare to bail out Greece and Lord knows how many other countries. A short, terrible downturn may have been turned into a decade’s worth of agony or worse. Of course, it doesn’t have to be that bad for everyone. We can still buy gold and silver and take delivery. We can trim our debts and streamline our finances. We can do for ourselves, all the sensible things that government – and those who stand behind it – will not.

[Via http://thehistoricalcontext.wordpress.com]

From Henry George-for later leisured contemplation

2010-03-06T23:47:00.000+02:00

The aggregate produce of the labour of a savage tribe is small, but each member is capable of an independent life. He can build his own habitation, hew out or stitch together his own canoe, make his own clothing, manufacture his own weapons, snares, tools and ornaments. He has all the knowledge of nature possessed by his tribe-knows what vegetable productions are fit for food, and where they may be found; knows the habits and resorts of beasts, birds, fishes and insects; can pilot himself by the sun or the stars, by the turning of blossoms or the mosses on the trees; is, in short, capable of supplying all his wants. He may be cut off from his fellows and still live; and thus possesses an independent power which makes him a free contracting party in his relations to the community of which he is a member.

Compare with this savage the labourer in the lowest ranks of civilised society, whose life is spent in producing but one thing, or oftener but the infinitesimal part of one thing, out of the multiplicity of things that constitute the wealth of society and go to supply even the most primitive wants; who not only cannot make even the tools required for his work, but often works with tools that he does not own, and can never hope to own. Compelled to even closer and more continuous labour than the savage, and gaining by it no more than the savage gets-the mere necessaries of life-he loses the independence of the savage. He is not only unable to apply his own powers to the direct satisfaction of his own wants, but, without the concurrance of many others, he is unable to apply them indirectly to the satisfaction of his wants. He is a mere link in an enormous chain of producers and consumers, helpless to separate himself, and helpless to move, except as they move. The worse his position in society, the more dependent is he on society; the more utterly unable does he become to do anything for himself. The very power of exerting his labour for the satisfaction of his wants passes from his own control, and may be taken away or restored by the actions of others, or by general causes over which he has no more influence than he has over the motions of the solar system. The primeval curse comes to be looked upon as a boon, and men think, and talk, and clamour, and legislate as though monotonous, manual labour in itself were a good and not an evil, an end and not a means. Under such circumstances, the man loses the essential quality of manhood-the godlike power of modifying and controlling conditions. He becomes a slave, a machine, a commodity-a thing, in some respects, lower than the animal.

I am no sentimental admirer of the savage state. I do not get my ideas of the untutored children of nature from Rousseau, or Chateaubriand, or Cooper. I am conscious of its material and mental poverty, and its low and narrow range. I believe that civilisation is not only the natural destiny of man, but the enfranchisement, elevation, and refinement of all his powers, and think that it is only in such moods as may lead him to envy the cud-chewing cattle, that a man who is free to the advantages of civilisation could look with regret upon the savage state. But, nevertheless, I think no one who will open his eyes to the facts, can resist the conclusion that there are in the heart of our civilisation large classes with whom the veriest savage could not afford to exchange. It is my deliberate opinion that if, standing on the threshold of being, one were given the choice of entering life as a Terra del Fuegan, a black fellow of Australia, an Esquimaux in the Arctic Circle, or among the lowest classes in such a highly civilised country as Great Britain, he would make infinitely the better choice in selecting the lot of the savage. For those classes who in the midst of wealth are condemned to want, suffer all the privations of the savage, without his sense of personal freedom; they are condemned to more than his narrowness and littleness, without opportunity forthe growth of his rude virtues; if their horizon is wider, it is but to reveal blessings that they cannot enjoy.

From Progress and Poverty (1879)

[Via http://sxray.wordpress.com]

Welcome to the post that tells you to be somewhere else

2010-03-06T08:50:00.000+02:00

…namely over at my newest blog, The Celebrity Industrial Complex, over at True/Slant. Today’s celebrity-based blog topic? Pondering the purchasing power of prominent posteriors. And Irish saints. Because we’re all eclectic an shizz.

[Via http://raincoaster.com]

Perbankan : Pidato Lengkap Boediono tentang Bank Century

2010-03-06T00:55:00.000+02:00

Pidato Lengkap Boediono Tanggapi Paripurna DPR Kasus Century lokasi: Home / Berita / FOKUS / [sumber: Jakartapress.com]

Jumat, 05/03/2010 | 18:27 WIB

Jakarta – Mengenakan baju warna biru tanpa jas, Wakil Presiden (Wapres) Boediono menyampaikan pidato menanggapi hasil paripurna DPR kasus Century selama 20 menit. Boediono menjelaskan mengenai bailout Bank Century. Dia menegaskan tidak mengambil keuntungan pribadi sedikit pun.

Boediono menyampaikan pidatonya di Istana Wakil Presiden, Jalan Medan Merdeka Selatan, Jakarta Pusat, Jumat (5/3). Boediono didampingi Menko Perekonomian Hatta Rajasa, Menko Polhukam Djoko Suyanto, dan Menkeu Sri Mulyani.

Seperti biasa, Boediono menyampaikan pidatonya dengan intonasi yang cukup datar. Berikut pidato lengkap Boediono:

Bismillahirrohmanirrohim

Assalamualaikum Warohmatullahi Wabarokatuh,

Salam sejahtera untuk kita semua

Saudara-Saudara sebangsa dan setanah air.

Sekarang sudah saatnya saya berbicara mengenai persoalan Bank Century.

Pertama-tama, perkenankan saya menyampaikan bahwa dalam Pemilu Presiden April lalu, saya terpilih sebagai wakil presiden mendampingi Bapak Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY). Hasil pemilihan umum itu telah disahkan oleh Mahkamah Konstitusi dan Komisi Pemilihan Umum (KPU).

Konstitusi mengamanatkan, presiden dan wakil presiden terpilih menjalankan fungsi eksekutif penyelenggaraan negara. Begitu pula DPR sebagai hasil pemilu yang sah menjalankan fungsi legislatif, termasuk fungsi pengawasan terhadap eksekutif. Fungsi yudikatif dijalankan oleh Mahkamah Agung dan Mahkamah Konstitusi.

Pembagian tugas ini adalah untuk menjamin bahwa tidak ada satu pun institusi penyelenggara negara yang mempunyai kekuasaan tidak terbatas. Masing-masing menjaga dan dijaga, agar roda penyelenggaraan negara berjalan dengan transparan, akuntabel, dan penuh tanggung jawab.

Kebijakan penyelamatan Bank Century pada penghujung 2008 yang lalu, adalah langkah untuk menyelamatkan perekonomian nasional dari badai krisis yang melanda seluruh dunia. Sejauh ini, hasilnya sudah terbukti. Kita selamat melalui krisis global tersebut.

Tidak terbersit sedikitpun niat dari saya maupun Ketua KSSK, Sdri. Sri Mulyani Indrawati, untuk mengambil keuntungan pribadi dari kebijakan itu. Apalagi berniat merugikan negara.

Sejauh ini belum ada kerugian negara sebagai akibat dari penyelamatan Bank Century. Seandainya pun kelak kerugian itu terjadi, saya yakin biayanya akan lebih kecil ketimbang kerugian nyata yang pasti terjadi bila Bank Century ditutup pada waktu itu, dalam bentuk pembayaran jaminan simpanan.

Namun, kerugian yang justru jauh lebih membahayakan jika Bank Century ditutup adalah rusaknya sistem keuangan dan perbankan kita karena terseret krisis global. Jika sistem perbankan kita rusak, bukan hanya bankir atau pemiliknya yang menanggung akibatnya. Dampaknya akan memukul seluruh rakyat, baik yang memiliki dana di bank maupun yang tidak.

Kita tentu belum lupa bagaimana krisis keuangan pada 1998 yang lalu sedemikian parahnya mengguncang ekonomi kita, bahkan mengguncangkan sendi-sendi sosial politik negara kita.

Saudara-Saudara Sebangsa dan Setanahair,

Pada saat mengambil keputusan untuk menyelamatkan Bank Century, saya mendapatkan laporan bahwa Bank tersebut dalam keadaan memprihatinkan. Di dalam bank itu sendiri belakangan terungkap banyak terjadi salah urus dan manipulasi oleh manajemen maupun pemiliknya. Pelanggaran hukum itu juga sudah terbukti di pengadilan. Namun demikian, sebuah keputusan harus diambil dengan cepat demi menghindari risiko yang lebih besar.

Pada waktu itu, Bank Century ibarat sebuah rumah yang terbakar di sebuah kampung yang rentan oleh bahaya api. Rumah itu harus kita selamatkan agar api tidak menjalar, meskipun pemiliknya seorang perampok. Jelas, si perampok harus ditangkap, tetapi kita tak bisa membiarkan kebakaran di rumahnya turut memusnahkan seluruh kampung.

Sebagai Gubernur Bank Indonesia saat itu, saya juga sadar akan berbagai kekurangan di lembaga yang saya pimpin. Kekurangan-kekurangan itu baru mulai saya benahi dalam bulan-bulan awal penugasan saya di tempat baru ini. Tetapi kekurangan ini tidak boleh menjadi penghambat sebuah tindakan yang harus dilakukan dengan cepat. Sebuah pilihan yang sulit harus dijatuhkan demi kepentingan yang lebih besar.

Saya yakin, keputusan yang saya ambil itu benar dan terbaik bagi perekonomian kita pada waktu itu. Oleh karena itu saya mengatakan bahwa saya siap mempertanggungjawabkannya di dunia dan akhirat.

Dalam momen-momen yang sulit dan penuh ketegangan itu kita melihat ada pejabat-pejabat di berbagai instansi yang dengan niat tulus bekerja untuk mengatasi keadaan kritis yang kita hadapi pada waktu itu. Kepada mereka saya menyampaikan penghargaan sebesar-besarnya.

Saudara-Saudara sekalian,

Setelah menguraikan dasar-dasar kebijakan itu, perkenankan saya sekarang menyampaikan pandangan mengenai situasi politik di negara kita.

Dalam upaya bersama membangun demokrasi, saya sangat menghormati DPR RI dan semua unsur masyarakat yang bersungguh-sungguh berupaya menciptakan pemerintahan yang bersih dan efektif. Saya juga memahami dan menghargai dibentuknya Panitia Angket Bank Century. Ini untuk menegakkan prinsip transparansi dan akuntabilitas dalam sebuah pemerintahan yang bersih.

Namun demikian, harus kita akui kontroversi penyelamatan Bank Century ini telah menyita begitu banyak waktu dan energi bangsa ini. Perhatian kita beralih dari berbagai tantangan berat bangsa untuk memperbaiki nasib rakyat banyak. Karenanya saya berharap, bila kemudian langkah-langkah lanjutan perlu diambil, langkah-langkah itu dilaksanakan secara proporsional, berkeadilan, dan dilakukan oleh lembaga hukum yang berwenang.

Saya berpandangan, DPR dan partai politik adalah pilar-pilar penting demokrasi, di samping kebebasan pers dan masyarakat madani. Kiprah masing-masing pilar demokrasi ini perlu dipelihara dengan ketekunan dan kesabaran, dengan menghindarkan diri dari desakan nafsu jangka pendek terhadap kekuasaan.

Kita membangun demokrasi bukan untuk saling menghabisi pesaing atau lawan. Tetapi untuk berlomba-lomba menciptakan kemakmuran yang berkeadilan. Belajar dari sejarah di negeri kita sendiri, dan negara-negara lain, nafsu berpolitik sempit yang berlebihan dapat menghancurkan cita-cita dan sistem demokrasi itu sendiri. Kita tentu tidak ingin mengulang kesalahan di masa lalu itu.

Saudara-Saudara Sebangsa dan Setanahair,

Apa hikmah yang bisa kita petik dari perjalanan kontroversi penyelamatan Bank Century ini?

Telah terkuak beberapa kelemahan dalam sistem administrasi kenegaraan kita. Kasus ini antara lain menimbulkan kekhawatiran akan terhambatnya proses pengambilan keputusan eksekutif. Muncul kegamangan para pejabat negara untuk bertindak cepat karena tidak ada kepastian hukum dan tingginya risiko politik. Masalah ini harus kita atasi bersama.

Saya juga sangat bersyukur kepada Tuhan Yang Maha Kuasa bahwa selama ini saya telah mendapatkan kesempatan untuk mengabdikan diri kepada bangsa dan negara dalam batas-batas kemampuan saya. Saya berterimakasih kepada Presiden Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono yang telah memberi kepercayaan kepada saya untuk mendampingi dan membantu beliau sebagai wakil presiden.

Saya menganggap jabatan itu sebagai amanah. Saya tidak pernah memandang diri saya sebagai seorang politisi. Saya tidak pernah memperjuangkan sasaran-sasaran politik kelompok maupun partai tertentu. Dalam melaksanakan tugas pedoman saya selalu kepentingan negara.

Harus saya akui, saya tidak pernah memperkirakan sebelumnya bahwa jabatan ini dapat menjadi beban politik bagi Presiden Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono dan beban pribadi bagi keluarga saya.

Berlarut-larutnya persoalan Bank Century telah menyita waktu dan pikiran Presiden sehingga sedikit banyak mengganggu konsentrasi beliau dalam melaksanakan mandat rakyat untuk menjalankan pemerintahan.

Saya sadar benar, jabatan saya saat ini adalah jabatan politik dan karenanya saya harus siap setiap saat menghadapi tantangan-tantangan politik, baik dalam bentuk kritik maupun hujatan.

Saya juga mendengar tekanan bertubi-tubi dari beberapa kelompok agar saya sebaiknya mengundurkan diri. Tuntutan sebagian pihak tersebut saya dengar. Tapi, bila saya memenuhi tuntutan tersebut, saya akan tercatat dalam sejarah sebagai pemimpin yang lari dari tanggung jawab, sebagai pemimpin yang melecehkan kehendak rakyat yang telah memberikan suara. Di samping itu, saya tidak akan mengkhianati kepercayaan Presiden dan meninggalkan beliau.

Semua ini tidak dimaksudkan untuk mengatakan bahwa jabatan saya sebagai wakil presiden tidak dapat dihentikan di tengah jalan. Bila mayoritas wakil rakyat di Majelis Permusyawaratan Rakyat (MPR) menghendaki, dan bila semua ketentuan dalam Undang-Undang Dasar dan peraturan perundangan lainnya terpenuhi, apapun keputusan akhir MPR akan saya patuhi.

Marilah kita jaga agar demokrasi kita berkembang dengan leluasa dan mantap. Untuk itu marilah kita jaga salah satu asas utama hak asasi manusia, yaitu asas praduga tak bersalah. Marilah kita tidak menjadikan demokrasi kita sebagai arena adu massa dan adu kekuatan dana.

Hanya dengan itu, kita bisa bekerja bersama untuk masa depan Indonesia yang lebih jaya.

Amin ya robbal alamin.

Wassalamualaikum warohmatullahi wabarakatuh.

Wakil Presiden RI

Boediono

(*/dtc)

[Via http://jakarta45.wordpress.com]

"Drop the 'mickey mouse' degrees"

2010-03-04T08:54:00.000+02:00

“Drop the ‘mickey mouse’ degrees” says head of Royal Society of Chemistry

It’s silly season again. According to a blog post from Richard Pike of the RSC:

‘Mickey Mouse’ degree courses should be swept away, and priorities in university education and research should reflect the challenges facing the country over the forthcoming decades. No longer should the government be paying 18-year-olds to start courses on celebrity journalism, drama with waste management, or international football business management.

This seems to be prompted by new constraints in HE funding and suggests that not only is utilitarianism a primary consideration but that university autonomy is also secondary to the perceived national need. Anyway, whatever the philosophical basis of the approach it’s always fun to pick on bonkers degree courses. Which probably explains why the story was swiftly picked up by the Telegraph which quotes Dr Pike:

“We need a population with an enduring set of skills, such as an understanding of the physical world around us, literacy and communication, numeracy, how to function and continue to learn in a complex society, and above all creativity, rather than an ability to satisfy some ephemeral demand that in 10 years’ time will be viewed as a curiosity.”

Further analysis of the courses he lambasts is also offered by the paper:

Celebrity Journalism is a new three-year course to be offered at Staffordshire University from this autumn. It includes topics such as interviewing celebrities and understanding celebrity culture. International Football Business Management is offered by Bucks New University and covers coaching, government policy, and issues in sport and leisure, among others.

All highly entertaining stuff therefore and really nothing new as previous posts on the launch of an MA in Beatles Studies and the offer of a degree in Northern Studies show. For the really masochistic there is also a podcast on “bonkers or niche” degrees.

[Via http://registrarism.wordpress.com]

Equity as a Growth Model

2010-03-04T00:45:00.000+02:00

Earlier this month I was able to attend the New Partners for Smart Growth conference in Seattle. I’ve been meaning to post a recap of what I heard there, and I still hope to, but today I’d rather write about something mentioned by one of the keynote speakers, Angela Glover Blackwell, the President & CEO of PolicyLink. She spoke about the role of smart growth in relation to social equity and creating a sustainable, green economy. The thing that struck me from her speech was her view of the three E’s of sustainability (environment, equity, economic). Most all of us would agree that equity often gets shoved aside in favor of economic and environmental concerns and that it should be given equal consideration among the three. Blackwell, however, argued that equity should rise above the other E’s and be the “growth model” going forward.

I’m not sure if this is a familiar argument or not, but it was the first time I’d heard it put this way and it got my attention more than anything else she spoke about. Too often we think of “growth” as both necessary and good. But what do we mean by growth? Typically it is measured by GDP, but does that really measure anything positive? I would argue that it doesn’t. Prior to the current recession, we saw America’s GDP rise, but the gap between rich and poor grew and incomes for most everyone but the wealthy remained stagnant. Putting GDP on such a pedestal and assuming that its growth leads unquestionably to good things has in reality lead to some pretty negative results. Much of our population, certainly those most in need, has been left behind by growth. From an ethical perspective, this is obviously quite bad. Unfortunately, many people look at things through a primarily economic lens and lose sight of the various externalities that result.

It doesn’t have to be this way. As Blackwell argues, we can achieve both “growth” and increased equity for everyone simultaneously. First, though, I think we need to either drop the term growth or at least redefine what it means. At minimum, a new measure needs to be developed that measures overall quality of life improvements. Gross National Happiness is an example of this, although I think it would have to be renamed in the United States to have any hope of catching on with the business community. This way of thinking falls in line with what that of the Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen. Sen argues that economic growth should not be our concern, but instead human development. Development is defined as enhancing human capabilities through greater political freedom, increased economic opportunities, better social opportunities, increased transparency, and protective security (think social safety nets). Sen sees these elements as the expansion of human freedoms and as both the ends and means of development. If we used increased human development as our overarching objective (with the Human Development Index (HDI) as our metric), we would then be working towards a greater quality of life for all populations. I would argue that this would result in a much better outcome for nearly everyone, rather than pursuing growth for growth’s sake. Maybe the elite will accumulate slightly less wealth, but the rest of the world would be in much better shape.

I worry, though, that this approach is too pie in the sky given the general culture and nature of politics in our nation. We’ve basically developed our entire economic philosophy around the notion that a growing GDP is necessary for increased prosperity. The frustrating thing is that the vague objectives we all generally associate with growth are not that different between growing GDP and growing HDI. The idea is to improve our overall standard of living, but our chosen metric of GDP doesn’t actually measure that. It seems to me that this isn’t widely understood and that resistance would be quite stiff to ditching GDP in favor of HDI or some other similar metric. Perhaps the best chance would be to take advantage of the recession and attempt to explain this issue. In conjunction, some sort of panel or committee could be appointed by the President or Congress that would develop a new metric that fits the American ethos but does a better job of actually measuring growth in equitable prosperity rather than growth in goods produced. Of course, even if we actually started using a new measure (likely alongside GDP at first), it would probably take a generation or two for our national philosophy to shift to supporting HDI. But the rewards could be great and I’d still like to see us try, even if it is a long shot.

Does anyone think otherwise? Are there better ideas out there? I’d like to hear what you’ve got to say.

-Matt

[Via http://healthyurbanism.com]

Do Old Boys' Clubs Make The Market More Efficient?

2010-03-02T08:49:00.000+02:00

Companies operate in a world of uncertainty. Candidates for employment can only communicate so much information to differentiate themselves, with the result that firms search for innovative ways to identify talented graduates.

Whether you call it networking, cronyism or simply the Old Boys’ Club – using contacts and connections to obtain an edge in the job market seems necessary in today’s competitive world. Should proponents of meritocracy really condemn such mechanisms?

Graduate recruiters spend an awful lot of time and money trying to identify talented prospects, something which is only profitable because it is so difficult to do well. For example, this author has been brought to dinner on more than one occasion by firms simply by virtue of being a scholar.

This uncertainty can be a frustrating curse or fortuitous blessing, depending on your perspective. However, it is certainly something which can be exploited for your interest. How? Since firms are seeking credible demonstrations of talent, students in their penultimate year of university should by all accounts be competing as vociferously for internships as they will for eventual employment – knowing that such a policy will reap dividends the following year. But such action though might not even be enough to land employment with the best firms. Why?

Frustratingly, many positions seem to the outsider stitched up by virtue of connections and contacts. The solution: adapt to market conditions by choosing your references wisely, and considering any possible links that you or your lecturers might have to the organisation in question. Of course, the alternative would be to claim that the market is corrupt and full of nepotism. Does this imply that it’s not meritocratic? Not necessarily.

When your connection make a plea on your behalf, it’s not a costless endeavour for them. If you secure a job for a friend or (say) family member who turns out to be completely useless, it hurts. Your networking contacts will see you as either a poor judge of candidate quality or a more concerned with nepotism than providing reciprocal and mutually beneficial recommendations. Either way, they won’t be listening to your advice in filling future positions.

So if a friend puts in a good word for you, it’s a credible signal of your talent because it costs your friend to put his reputation on the line. It’s a credible signal that you’re determined too. How can we deduce this? Presumably, because otherwise you wouldn’t be getting your friend to do the favour for you. After all, there’s no such thing as a free lunch and you must be offering him something in return for getting you the interview (or whatever).

In the end, employers will only adhere to recommendations from the Old Boys’ Club if they end up being profitable. Otherwise, such companies will lose custom to more efficient competition and perhaps go out of business. There’s still plenty of room for abuse through cronyism – After all, your recommendation need only be slightly better than operating under uncertainty to be worth listening to.

There are limits to the extent that the Old Boys’ Club contributes to meritocracy. If contacts are incredibly important in the actual business of work, then talent may eventually take a back-seat. This is clearly unfair to individuals who are talented but didn’t have the benefit of attending the right school or mixing in the right social circles.

There’s also collateral damage to these same people even if cronyism does make the market more efficient. If employers couldn’t receive advice from networks and connections, they would have to find the most talented recruit using more conventional methods. Unfortunately for some, that would make the company less profitable than under the status quo.

[Via http://thefreemarketeers.wordpress.com]

Hello I must Be Going - A Health Care Legislative Update

2010-03-02T00:48:00.000+02:00

Last week, just prior to the Health Care Summit, the president posted his “final” word on the proposed legislation. It was basically the Senate bill with a few of the House versions more egregious programs tacked on. This was the party line until this afternoon. Now we hear that he will instead offer a stripped down version this week. The polling numbers really sucked over the weekend and now it’s a free for all.

The Summit failed to sway anyone, and the president’s poll numbers dropped. Over the weekend, Nancy Pelosi stated that “The health care bill can be bipartisan even though the vote may not be bipartisan.” She said this on CNN and the peanut gallery is still howling with laughter.

A number of leading Democratic senators have come out against using the reconciliation process to pass the health care bill, and with the opposition of various factions in the House to each others nonnegotiable demands, the whole thing is turning into a Marx Brothers movie with guns. Meanwhile, Charlie Rangel is hiding in the closet hoping no one knocks on the door.

The Republicans, who actually made a little sense at the summit, are on the sidelines almost as confused as everyone else except they’re avoided stepping in the dog poop. They have been very clearly told they are irrelevant, so now the Democrats have no one to blame but themselves.

On the funny pages also known as Op/Ed, Paul Krugman has taken leave of his senses and is now drooling in the corner after a nervous breakdown while E.J. Dionne is restating the party line faster than Pravda during Glasnost. His latest on the subject is that the reconciliation mess staring Congress in the eye is actually a great big fuzzy bunny because the Senate already passed a bill and all the House has to do is agree. Al Hunt is urging the president to go gangster on Congress and strong arm them the Chicago way into doing his bidding.

Pretzel logic is the order of the day. It would actually be funny if we didn’t have so many other pressing matters.

[Via http://oceanaris.wordpress.com]

Ouija Boards

2010-02-28T00:07:00.000+02:00

Hmmm…a scientifically tracked and computer predicted event that turns out not to happen at the appointed time, and certainly not to the predicted degree.

Much huffing, puffing, trauma, wall-t-wall TV coverage and then…

Nothing?

Or, at least nothing much.

Where have I heard this before?

And we are thinking, thinking….

The Hawaii Inundation Warning and tsunami alerts have been canceled.

Hilo, which was scientifically predicted to be as much as seven feet was considerably less than that “computer predicted’ number. We will await the actual MEASUREMENT.

I have previously stated that MEASURMENTS are science – computer predictions are Ouija Boards.

Case closed.

(My friends are aware of my background as a machine language programmer, head of R&D in computers at the Naval Electronics Center, Core Adjunct Prof. of Computer Science — 14 years, etc)

[Via http://usna1957.wordpress.com]

The Stand-up Economist in Minnesota

2010-02-27T08:53:00.000+02:00

Yoram Bauman (PhD), “the world’s first and only stand-up economist,” will be in Minnesota next week.

His Schedule:

* Mar 02: University of South Dakota. At 8pm at the Business School Auditorium at USD. Free and open to the public!

* Mar 03: St Olaf College. At 8pm in Holland Hall room 501. Open to folks at St Olaf College and neighbor Carleton College.

* Mar 04: St. Cloud State University. Part of the Winter Institute. I’ll be speaking at 7:15pm, after dinner.

* Mar 05, 2pm: St. Croix Preparatory Academy (Stillwater MN). Open only to folks at this public charter school, and congrats to Rebecca Wahl and students for getting this gig via my free show Google map!

* Mar 05: Macalester College. I believe this is at 4:30pm in the JBD lecture hall, but check google as the date approaches for confirmation. Macalester folks only, sorry.

He’s funny. Check out his website:

www.standupeconomist.com

[Via http://martinandrade.wordpress.com]

Kmart To Close Five More Ohio Stores

2010-02-27T00:24:00.000+02:00

The retailer notified the state of Ohio that it would be terminating 314 employees as part of the closings.

Kmart to close five more Ohio stores

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 16:36:00 GMT

Well here’s a bad mood waiting to happen. I live in one of the toughest a sections of Cleveland, which is actually the poorest section of the entire city, and is called, the stockyards. So, when I see that Kmart is basically going to lay off most of its work force that depend on Kmart to survive, like I said, here is a bad mood just waiting to happen. I’ll say it again. Cleveland needs some sort of brokerage personality. Cleveland needs the kind of personality that can sit across the table from someone who has 30 or $40 billion and be able to schmooze that person into investing perhaps 20 or $30 million in Cleveland. Unfortunately, Cleveland doesn’t have a personality like that. I mean, there’s nobody that I know of that has that kind of moxie in Cleveland. And until Cleveland can actually draw people here to want to invest in the city, Cleveland is just not going to grow.

The reality is, which most people don’t realize is that the Maschke family and their friends, meaning, the Hana’s, and the other families who were friends of the Maschke’s, actually built most of what Cleveland was. But as generations what on and Cleveland lost a lot of its brokerage talent, Cleveland also lost personalities who could actually schmooze or represent the city of Cleveland in such a positive way as to be able to draw businesses to Cleveland.

And so for those who don’t know, Cleveland Ohio in the space of approximately 6 months saw the population drop from 1,500,000 people down to just 400,000 people. So now Cleveland is basically struggling economically so badly that it is hard for people to realize how Cleveland is suffering. For example, the residents of Cleveland have been informed that as of January 1, 2010, the city of Cleveland will begin charging approximately 9 dollars per month just to pick up our trash.

That’s how bad it’s getting.

Now, the reality also is something that someone urged me to share. When I say that Cleveland is in my blood, it’s the truth. In 1968, when I was being operated on at University hospitals of Cleveland, I began to bleed to death shortly after I was opened up on the operating table. The blood loss was so huge that I basically went through all the blood in University hospital within a matter of minutes. As a result, my family and the station manager of Channel 3, then with the call letters of KYW TV, in Cleveland, went on the air and begged people to please come to University Hospitals to rescue me and to save my life. My father was in tears as he pleaded on the air for his fellow Clevelanders, to please come and save the life of his son. The plea was broadcast over three counties.

According to my family and other people who were there at the time, the brave and wonderful people of Cleveland, rushed to the hospital. And when all was said and done, 5000 people, 5000 of my fellow Clevelanders, from 3 counties, had come to rescue me and to save my life, by giving blood so that the doctors could continue their life saving surgery on my spine, that. was taking place on September 1, 1968. And so the reality is that when I say that I have Cleveland in my blood, I’m really telling a true story of a single moment in time, from so long ago, when I literally was in the cross hairs of death, and my fellow Clevelanders, with their courageous and compassionate effort said, with their actions… NOT ON MY WATCH!

I could not love any city more than I love Cleveland Ohio. All my life I have struggled with so many different issues, both physical and psychological, that I have worked as hard as I could to try to always do something positive with m life, because I always felt that I was a burden to society as a result of my physical disabilities and then subsequently my mental disabilities. So as a result of my being in the position where I am moving towards 60 years old, and basically dealing with some rather serious and not very pleasant physical terminal disabilities, I am always prepared, at almost every given second to give up my life, in defense of various issues I have supported all through my life. Like I am prepared to die in defense of the Constitution or in defense of women’s rights or children’s rights or gay rights or equal rights for all Americans and people throughout the world. But I’m also prepared to die in any given second to help my beloved Cleveland, If I could, I would give my life to help people around the world to realize the courage and the bravery of the people who live here in Cleveland Ohio. For having lived here for over 59 years, I can tell you that not only is Cleveland, we Clevelanders love to say, , the best location in the nation, but I have always looked upon Cleveland as being what I have always called it, which is in fact, a diamond on a sea of glass.

The Terminal Tower Of Cleveland, Ohio – taken in the 1960’s from the top of the Erieview Plaza building

Now, I took this picture when Vernon Stouffer, the founder and owner of Stouffer foods, requested me to take a picture of the terminal tower for his personal office. The picture was taken in the 1960s when I was running a professional darkroom. And this is simply the proof of that picture. Meaning it was a proof shot. And a proof shot is a picture of what you are going to do for your clients. But that is taken with not the camera that you’re actually going to do the shooting with but is in fact taken by another camera simply to get your perspective to make sure that your position and other things are correct, for when you actually take the shot.

I kept this picture all these years. And like I said, it’s easy for people to discount Cleveland and to make fun of our city, But that’s because most people don’t really understand the huge courage and the unlimited kindness that are literally the hallmarks of our great city, Cleveland, Ohio. So, I must admit that I DO love the phrase, the best location in the nation. But due to a single moment in time, when I had no idea that there were any friends about, and yet they came by the thousands, for just one purpose. To save the life of an unknown fellow Clevelander, a young boy of just 17 years of age, who lay dying on an operating table, and who desperately needed their help. And as I said, their courage has lived in my heart all these years. So, on that account, in my heart, Cleveland has always truly been, for me, … a diamond on a sea of glass.

Economic Fact Sheet (Current as of Jan. 2010)

1. The United States currently has a national debt in excess of $12 trillion.

2. The interest on the national debt is now in excess of $11 trillion.

3. The operating budget for the United States government is now in excess of $43 trillion.

4. The members of the United States Congress stole $200 million from the Medicare fund, which was going to go for cost-of-living increases to Medicare recipients, so that the members of Congress could have their paper medical records converted to computerized medical records. The attitude by the members of Congress was that they didn’t care if they murdered American citizens as long as they get the medical protection they wanted.

5. The Christian conservatives and the Republican Party are taking the stand that they do not want American citizens to have any kind of healthcare the of healthcare is extended to anyone that the Christian conservatives or the Republican Party does not like. And this is based not on constitutional law or the Christian conservatives and the Republican Party being patriots. It’s based upon the Christian conservatives Republican Party demanding that the American government understand that no Christian conservative or Republican Party member will in any way ever support the US Constitution above their Christian religion and above their Christian Bible. And so as a result, their Christian Bible and Christian religion says that healthcare should not go to Hispanic Americans or black Americans or Jews or Muslims or gay Americans or Native Americans or anyone who is an immigrant that the Christian conservatives Republican Party just doesn’t happen to like.

And so as a result, the Christian conservatives Republican Party members are trying to commit mass murder in United States by denying health care to millions of American citizens who are in desperate need of medical attention. But the Christian conservatives Republican Party doesn’t really care about that because as far as they’re concerned if they have to walk through rivers of blood to make sure that their Christian religion and their Christian faith is supported more than the Constitution of these United States and the Christian conservatives will do just that.

6. The current level of unemployment in the United States is now over 10%.

7. The current cost for liquidating the national debt is now in excess of $39,000 per person, which means that every man woman and child in the United States would have to pay at least $39,000 to be able to liquidate the national debt.

8. When you look at the history of United States from the American Civil War until present day you find that the Republican Party and Christian conservatives were in total and complete control of the United States government every single time there was a financial crisis from the American Civil War to present day. And that basically means that all the policy decisions that were being made by the American government during these times when these financial catastrophes were taking place were being made strictly by Christian conservatives and the Republican Party . And of course that’s all public record.

9. As my financial analysis of the global economic system , in my see also section below, clearly shows, it was the Republican Party and the Christian conservatives under President Bush who gave the American banking industry $400 billion of taxpayer money and simply told the banking industry to use the money anyway they wanted to. And the banking industry did just that they use the money to pay for expensive gifts and presents and take vacations.

10. To date, the banking industry has only paid back $30 billion out of the over $500 billion that was given to them by the American taxpayers.

11. The issues of profitability indexing, pursuant to profit margins and per unit costs and customer bases as they relate to compensation packages throughout the entire corporate sector have not been resolved. That basically means that most businesses are being held hostage by upper level management and executive employees in their own companies who are demanding more and more for their compensation packages. As a result of this most companies are having to readjust their per unit costs for their goods and services in such a way so that what they are doing is pricing their services and their products. So that mostly the upper class and the wealthy will be able to afford them. And this is being done so these companies and corporations can get as much money into their company as possible.

But they are in fact forgetting one of the major factors which is that while most of the money that any company gets comes from the wealthy are customers most of their day-to-day cash flow actually comes from the middle and lower income customers. This is true regardless of where that company exists. So as a result of this most of the companies in the corporate sector are operating on what is known as a cash poor basis. And this basically means that since they are pricing their goods and services in order to get the most money possible they are foregoing pricing their goods and services so they will be more affordable to the middle and lower income customers, which actually provide these companies with their day-to-day cash flow. And so as a result, these companies don’t have enough money to pay for employees or many of the other day-to-day costs that come up.

This factor has not been dealt with in any country in the world at this time. Furthermore, these companies are refusing to be honest about their financial reporting. They are constantly using and accounting,/statistical variance, which is .5%. And .5% variance is such a large variance pursuant to statistical and financial analysis that you can basically drive a moving van through the space. That is allocated for plus or minus error correction in the statistical analyses and financial analyses that are in fact done with .5% variance. This is why I have never used that level of variance statistically or financially. I’ve always used .05% variance because it is such a small variance that the statistical analysis of the profitability analysis cannot be falsified. It is true that using .05% variance does require an additional 100,000 to 200,000 calculations in order to be able to complete the analysis. But when you consider that the final product is incredibly more honest and reliable. It’s worth it.

12. The banking industry has turned cruel. For example here in Cleveland Ohio Keycorp is taking a lot of pride and threatening senior citizens and kicking them out of their homes so that they can foreclose on the property. This is happening all over Cleveland Ohio and KeyCorp actually is one of the most hated banks in the entire state of Ohio. But KeyCorp is not the only one who’s doing this practice. Because was really happening is that banks all over the United States are basically threatening senior citizens with foreclosure to the point where suicides are now escalating and accelerating at an alarming rate. So badly that the medical community is swamped by the number of suicide calls they are getting. And this is all happening because KeyCorp and other banks like KeyCorp are basically taking the attitude that they don’t care how many men and women and children they have to murder. They just want their money.

When you consider these kinds of factors are going on in the banking industry you realized that the other thing that’s happening is that senior citizens and homeowners are becoming incredibly sick. Do becoming physically ill as a result of the horrible attitude that KeyCorp in other banks like KeyCorp are pushing on the citizens. And there is no help for this at all.

13. Additionally, the medical community is helping with this because we have a hospital here in Cleveland Ohio called MetroHealth that basically is working hard. Just like KeyCorp to threaten senior citizens and have them thrown out of their homes. So that they can foreclose on the property. And basically kill the individuals. I have been personally threatened by KeyBank and MetroHealth and have recorded conversations proving that.

So MetroHealth does all these commercials where they’re talking about how good a hospital they are and yet they have been sued a number of times for Medicare fraud. They have also been sued by their own employees for unfair business practices. And they have lost doctors so badly because they don’t treat their doctors very well either. Nobody likes MetroHealth.

And for the record, it needs to be understood that my grandfather’s brother, Dr. ally Maschke, was the director of medicine at mount Sinai medical center here in Cleveland Ohio until his death. And my cousin, Dr. Victor Vertese, was also the director of medicine at mount Sinai medical center until his death. Additionally, my grandfather, Maurice Maschke, and his business partner, Mark Hanna, who founded the Hana mining company, which became the 3M company, basically built mount Sinai medical center in Cleveland. And in addition to that, my father, Maurice Maschke Junior, was on the Board of Trustees at Case Western Reserve University, University hospitals of Cleveland, Cleveland clinic, and mount Sinai medical center until his death. And in addition to that, my father, Maurice Maschke Junior, and I., were partners and co-owners of pioneer linen supply company of Cleveland Ohio for 25 years until 1975 when we sold the company.

14. So given all of the foregoing as actual facts. The only reason that the accelerated growth has taken place is because certain industries in the United States have in fact been making money. Only because their industries are addressing sections of the population who are otherwise disenfranchised by most of the business sector. For example Tyco International is a business that specializes and fire prevention and warning systems and security systems. And of course they’ve done a really good job because people are scared to death and living in their homes and there are so many foreclosures going on that people are having to protect their homes because in most cities the number of police has dropped so badly because most cities are in a huge budget crisis. In Cleveland, Ohio, for example, the city went from 1,500,000 people down to approximately 400,000 people in only a matter of months. And conditions are so bad in Cleveland that Cleveland is now charging nine dollars a month just pick up our garbage.

So given those facts Tyco International for one example is making a lot of money because people are having to protect their homes because they can’t really, the police that much because the number of police has dropped so the greatly because of the budget crisis going on throughout the world and throughout the United States.

15. Additionally, when you look at a company like Microsoft, who reported a huge profit. This is because Microsoft isn’t doing really well. Because they’re not the only reason Microsoft made this huge profit was because their previous product, Microsoft Windows Vista was actually one of the worst programs and products Microsoft ever created. And so since it did so terribly in the market naturally Microsoft’s increased now is looking fantastic, which is not because if you analyze the overall productivity and effectiveness of Microsoft you will see that they are basically floundering under Steve Ballmer’s direction.

So again, it’s really easy for people to talk about how well the market is doing that the foregoing represents the actual facts of what’s going on in business.

And as I said before, I have been studying the stock market since I was six years old. At age 6 I started studied the stock market at Prescott ball and turban here in Cleveland Ohio. With one of the partner broker’s, Bernie Towell, who was a personal friend of mine. And so every day for four hours every day and age 6 until age 16 I studied the stock market and learned economics and financial analysis . At age 16, while working and being a partner and co-owner of pioneer linen spy company in Cleveland, I did my first financial analysis and profitability analysis . It was done on the linen supply company’s of Cleveland Ohio. The analysis was so good that the results were used to program some computers at the time. And in 42 years and having been a financial analyst I’ve never once been wrong in any financial projection I’ve ever done. Not once. Just like I’m not wrong now.

In my financial analysis of the global economic system in my see also section below, I clearly show that the American market system was going to lose $800 trillion of market value in the third business quarter of 2009. I further substantiated this claim last January in January of 2009. When I explained that the American market system was going to take a huge hit in the third quarter and that it would come out to about $800 trillion of market loss. And that this was in fact in line with the Kondratieff wave . And in fact that’s exactly what did happen. Which means the analysts were wrong. And I was right.

So again, if you go ahead and look at all these factors without looking at all of the peripheral details than you are going to be responding to the information in a very symptomatic, or symptomatically oriented manner whereby you will behave to the information in an extremely reactionary way. By the like term, if you look at all of the information regarding economics throughout the entire global economic system in a problematically oriented manner you will be looking at the financial information in a more anticipatory manner. And much more pervasive rather than in a stereotypical or linear manner. And as a result, you will begin to understand that all of these different factors that I have brought forth in this article right now. Actually do justify what I’m saying that the American market system is on the verge of collapse. And that the economic system for Greece is about to go under. And that unemployment in Spain and France and England is running at almost 30%.

These do not make things look like they’re going good in the United States is basically doing nothing but lying about the economic they I went to school with most of the people who run a lot of these companies in the United States and who are working on Wall Street either went to school with them at Case Western Reserve why went to school with them at Fort Lewis college board went to school with them at southern Arizona school in Tucson Arizona. Or, I did business with them throughout my life.

So again, this is a reality check. And all I can say is, if you don’t believe what I’m saying that’s not a problem. Because you haven’t believe me, for 40 years, what I’ve been talking about all of these issues facing the economic system in the United States and the global economic system. So why would you believe me now?

But the fact is that just because you may not believe what I’m saying doesn’t mean that what I’m saying is not true. Simply means you are refusing or are not able to see the veracity in what I’m saying and that’s all it means.

Deutsche Telekom loss narrows despite Greek costs

2010-02-25T08:51:00.000+02:00

BERLIN – Germany’s Deutsche Telekom reported Thursday that its fourth quarter loss narrowed to euro3 million ($4.1 million) on improved revenue in its domestic market but said the financial crisis in Greece had cost its operations there euro500 million.

The German provider of high-speed Internet access and home and cell phone service said the quarterly loss compared with a euro730 million loss a year earlier, when the global credit crunch was most intense.

Revenue was up more than half a percent in the final three months of 2009 to euro16.2 billion, a sign of improvement in its critical home market. The figure compared with euro16.1 billion a year earlier.

The company was hurt, however, by the ongoing financial turbulence in Greece through its acquisition of Hellenic Telecommunications Organization SA, or OTE, in 2008.

For the year, the company earned euro353 million in net profit, down 76 percent from nearly euro1.5 billion in 2008 business card. Revenue, however, managed to rise nearly 5 percent to euro64.6 billion compared with euro61.6 billion the year before.

“After a bumpy start, we rounded 2009 off with good results,” said Chief Executive Rene Obermann. “Cost discipline was key to getting through economically challenging times. However, we did not save at the expense of the future, but continued to invest heavily.”

Late Wednesday, the company committed itself to paying dividends from this year through 2012, and proposed a dividend of 78 euro cents a share for 2009. From this year to 2012 it said it planned to pay at least a 70 euro cent per share dividend and pledged to buy back shares, a move that it said was worth around euro3.4 billion.

___

On the Net:

http://www.deutschetelekom.com

Deutsche Telekom loss narrows despite Greek costs

Hot News: Deal Seen for Stake in China Investment Bank

[Via http://frenkinews.wordpress.com]

Facts and Statistics: The War on Drugs

2010-02-25T00:55:00.000+02:00

“According to the US Census Bureau, the US population in 2000 was 281,421,906. Of that, 194,552,774 (69.1%) were white; 33,947,837 (12.1%) were black; and 35,305,818 (12.5%) were of Hispanic origin. Additionally, 2,068,883 (0.7%) were Native American, and 10,123,169 (3.8%) were Asian.”

Source: US Census Bureau, Department of Commerce, Census 2000 Redistricting Data (P.L. 94-171) Summary File for states, Population by Race and Hispanic or Latino Origin for the United States: 2000 (PHC-T-a) Table 1.http://www.census.gov/population/cen2000/phc-t1/tab01.txt

“Most drug offenders are white. Five times as many whites use drugs as blacks. Yet blacks comprise the great majority of drug offenders sent to prison. The solution to this racial inequity is not to incarcerate more whites, but to reduce the use of prison for low-level drug offenders and to increase the availability of substance abuse treatment.”

Source: Human Rights Watch, “Racial Disparities in the War on Drugs” (Washington, DC: Human Rights Watch, 2000), from their website at http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/drugs/war/key-facts.htm

—

“Because of their extraordinary rate of incarceration, one in every 20 black men over the age of 18 is in a state or federal prison, compared to one in every 180 whites.” In five states, between one in 13 and one in 14 black men are in prison.

Source: Human Rights Watch, “Racial Disparities in the War on Drugs” (Washington, DC: Human Rights Watch, 2000).

http://www.hrw.org/legacy/reports/2000/usa/Rcedrg00-01.htm#P149_24292

—

“When incarceration rates by State (excluding Federal inmates) are estimated separately by gender, race, and Hispanic origin, male rates are found to be 10 times higher than female rates; black rates 5-1/2 times higher than white rates; and Hispanic rates nearly 2 times higher than white rates.” Source: Harrison, Paige M., & Beck, Allen J., PhD, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear 2005 (Washington, DC: US Dept. of Justice, May 2006) (NCJ213133), p. 10.

http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/pjim05.pdf

—

(2005) Of the 253,300 state prison inmates serving time for drug offenses at yearend 2005, 113,500 (44.8%) were black, 51,100 (20.2%) were Hispanic, and 72,300 (28.5%) were white.

Source: Sabol, William J., PhD, and West, Heather C., Bureau of Justice Statistics, Prisoners in 2007 (Washington, DC: US Department of Justice, December 2008), NCJ224280, p. 21, Appendix Table 10.http://www.ojp.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/p07.pdf

—

“At the start of the 1990s, the U.S. had more Black men (between the ages of 20 and 29) under the control of the nation’s criminal justice system than the total number in college. This and other factors have led some scholars to conclude that, “crime control policies are a major contributor to the disruption of the family, the prevalence of single parent families, and children raised without a father in the ghetto, and the ‘inability of people to get the jobs still available.’”

Source: Craig Haney, Ph.D., and Philip Zimbardo, Ph.D., “The Past and Future of U.S. Prison Policy: Twenty-five Years After the Stanford Prison Experiment,” American Psychologist, Vol. 53, No. 7 (July 1998), p. 716.http://www.csdp.org/research/haney_apa.pdf

—

“The racially disproportionate nature of the war on drugs is not just devastating to black Americans. It contradicts faith in the principles of justice and equal protection of the laws that should be the bedrock of any constitutional democracy; it exposes and deepens the racial fault lines that continue to weaken the country and belies its promise as a land of equal opportunity; and it undermines faith among all races in the fairness and efficacy of the criminal justice system. Urgent action is needed, at both the state and federal level, to address this crisis for the American nation.”

Source: Summary and Recommendations from “Punishment and Prejudice: Racial Disparities in the War on Drugs” (Washington, DC: Human Rights Watch, June 2000)

http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/drugs/war/key-reco.htm

http://www.hrw.org/legacy/reports/2000/usa/Rcedrg00.htm#P103_18435

—

“In 2001, the chances of going to prison were highest among black males (32.2%) and Hispanic males (17.2%) and lowest among white males (5.9%). The lifetime chances of going to prison among black females (5.6%) were nearly as high as for white males. Hispanic females (2.2%) and white females (0.9%) had much lower chances of going to prison.”

Source: Bonczar, Thomas P., US Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, “Prevalence of Imprisonment in the US Population, 1974-2001,” NCJ197976 (Washington DC: US Department of Justice, August 2003), p. 8.

—

“Due to harsh new sentencing guidelines, such as ‘three-strikes, you’re out,’ “a disproportionate number of young Black and Hispanic men are likely to be imprisoned for life under scenarios in which they are guilty of little more than a history of untreated addiction and several prior drug-related offenses… States will absorb the staggering cost of not only constructing additional prisons to accommodate increasing numbers of prisoners who will never be released but also warehousing them into old age.”

[Via http://aconerlycoleman.wordpress.com]

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act analyzed by TU experts

2010-02-23T08:30:00.000+02:00

Thomas

February 17, 2010 marked the anniversary of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) implemented by the Obama administration to boost employment and lead us out of the economic recession of 2008 and 2009. RESI, also, held an important event on this day, our Annual Economic Outlook Conference. Ok, maybe, I exaggerate when I compare a national event to our event but it was still important to us. During the conference, three panelists provided us with some excellent opinions on the effects of ARRA on the economy. In particular, two Towson University economists, Dr. Dorn and Dr. Rhoads, were especially knowledgeable and gave us two differing opinions.

Dr. Dorn and Dr. Rhoads

Professor Dorn opinioned that ARRA has not been an efficient policy and American taxpayers will have to pay the bill through higher taxes in the following years. In his view, the government sector is not as efficient as the private sector and increasing public sector spending does not provide as many jobs as the private sector. He also questioned the assertion by some people that the US had many “shovel ready” projects that needed investment from the federal government. Few of the allotted dollars have been spent on public infrastructure projects so far and maybe there were not as many “shovel ready” projects as portrayed. In his opinion, the problem was the supply side of the economy. Instead, the Federal government should have given more tax breaks to businesses and eliminated corporate taxes for example. Also, the ARRA money would have been more efficient if the government would have given it to the private sector to spend and manage public infrastructures.

Professor Rhoads had a different take on the efficiency of ARRA. He reminded us that in extremely difficult times, the government needs to provide short term economic relief and has a legal obligation to create policies leading to full employment. In his opinion, the private sector does not have the ability to lead us out of one of the most difficult economic times facing the US economy. Many economists participated in the craft of ARRA and found this policy necessary. According to Dr. Rhoads, another positive aspect of ARRA was that the government made sure that it did not put all its eggs in the same basket. Seemingly, the government had learned from past policy mistakes. Therefore, spending for ARRA was rightly divided in several different areas; tax breaks to businesses, extended financial support to unemployed people or people in dire economic situations, and investment in public infrastructures. In addition, the use of monetary policy could have not been as successful. The federal interest rate has been kept at almost zero percent since 2000, which meant that it was not as effective as before.

These two distinguished experts made some excellent arguments regarding the efficiency of ARRA. And I left with so many questions of my own.

Was the policy crafted efficiently?
Will American taxpayers pay higher rates of tax in the future?
Should the Obama administration have implemented more tax breaks for the private sector?
Will more tax breaks on businesses create more jobs?

Etc… All in all the RESI conference displayed TU’s expertise at providing varied solutions to complex problems while also giving the audience food for thought going forward.

[Via http://tuoutreach.com]

On the ontological status of stereotypes

2010-02-23T00:43:00.000+02:00

Where “are” stereotypes? We all recognize certain stereotypes as real stereotypes (perhaps African-Americans’ love of fried chicken or the poor driving skills of Asians) and reject others as simply made up (such as African-Americans’ fear of ceiling fans or the fact that every Asian man can do like a thousand push-ups) — even though we simultaneously believe that stereotypes are themselves untrue.

What’s more, very few people will admit to holding a stereotype, though they recognize them when they hear them. Indeed, when pressed even people who seem to be hardened racists will most often admit that of course not all black people are like that, etc. — calling into question whether racists, as stereotype-believers par excellence, really “believe” in stereotypes in some straightforward way. And even if we imagine that some people believe certain stereotypes to be at least grounded in truth — and indeed, it may be difficult to tell a stereotype from a genuine cultural difference — it is difficult to imagine that there is anyone out there who believes all of them, especially since they are so often contradictory (such as stereotypes of Mexicans as both lazy and absolutely desperate to work).

If no one (or almost no one, or no one who counts) believe in stereotypes, if they aren’t beliefs in a critical mass of heads, then where are they? Some might claim that they are in those heads, but as unconscious beliefs — but where else does the unconscious manifest itself but in what we do? That, I suggest, is where stereotypes abide, or at least the broader images that the stereotypes point toward.

For instance, one might say that the idea that black people like fried chicken — a food that surely every meat-eater enjoys, just as I know very few people of any race who don’t like watermelon — points toward the idea that black people just naturally enjoy cheaper food (not beef, but chicken; not fruit juice, but Kool-Aid) and therefore that the dominance of fast food outlets and convenience stores (rather than good restaurants and grocery stores) in black neighborhoods simply reflects the way black people are and is therefore “okay” — and so you don’t see the mayor of Chicago trying to get more grocery stores into black neighborhoods, for instance.

The dominance of cheap, unhealthy food in black neighborhoods is where all the stereotypes about black food and drink preferences “are.” And one could perform this exercise for all kinds of stereotypes that of course no one “believes” — we don’t have to believe them, because the very physical terrain of our society believes them for us. Where we go and what we do every day believes them for us.

[Via http://itself.wordpress.com]

Those constitutional jesters: AZ’s State Universities: “As nearly free as possible”

2010-02-21T00:45:00.000+02:00

Arizona’s three state universities presidents are proposing steep increases in tuition this fall, saying they are necessary to make up for cuts in state funding.

University of Arizona is proposing the steepest hike with a $2,130 jump in tuition and fees for undergraduate students, raising the cost by 31 percent, to $8,972 a year.

Arizona State University where President Michael Crow and his wife Sybil Francis are paid phenomenal salaries (as of last report back in 2007), is recommending a $1,286-a-year increase for new students, or 19 percent, bringing annual tuition and fees to $8,126. The daily reports that under the proposal, current ASU students costs would not increase quite as much but could still face hikes of nearly 14 percent, or $770 to $871 more a year, depending on when they started.

Incoming students at Northern Arizona University would pay $1,040 more a year, or 16 percent. The new charges would bring tuition and fees to $7,667 annually. NAU said Friday that new students’ tuition would be frozen at that level for the next eight semesters, though they could pay more in future years via fee increases.

The stunning proposals need the approval of the 12-member Arizona Board of Regents, which oversees the three state universities. Individual contact information is here. Let your voice be heard. In this toughest of economic times, these steep increases will keep many students out of the education loop.

The Arizona Constitution Article 11, Section 6 requires that “the university and all other state educational institutions shall be open to students of both sexes, and the instruction furnished shall be as nearly free as possible.”

Apparently ASU.’s President Michael Crow, U of A’s President Robert Sheldon, and NAU’s President John Haeger haven’t gotten the message.

[Via http://seeingredaz.wordpress.com]

Hauser's Law of Tax Increase Futility

2010-02-20T16:50:00.000+02:00

In a corollary to the Laffer Curve, the Californian economist Kurt Hauser pointed out that no matter what the tax rates had been in postwar America, tax revenues had remained at around 20% of GDP. This remained the situation whether the top individual rate was 90% as in the 1950s or 30% in the late 1980s. The best way to raise tax revenues is to increase GDP, not simply to increase top tax rates since such an action simply reduces the GDP. If any of the New Labour grandees had ever held a job or had any experience of the workplace, they would realise that higher taxes reduce the incentives to work, produce, invest, and save, thereby dampening overall economic activity, and job creation. A large number rich are likely to choose to live off their capital until tax rates come down to a level they view as fair or move to another country where the tax rates are more welcoming. Capital migrates away from regimes in which it is treated harshly and toward regimes in which it is free to be invested profitably and safely. In this regard, the capital controlled by our richest citizens is especially tax intolerant.

[Via http://jucameron.wordpress.com]

Family Survival in Tough Times

2010-02-20T08:00:00.000+02:00

I’ve often detailed on this blog the tough economic times that are ahead for many people –some are already there. Since I’ve defined the problem, it would be good to look at how it affects the basic group unit above the individual level and provide some possible strategies for weathering the storm ahead. Many authors have addressed basic survival of the family unit in the sense of stockpiling food and maintaining a secure home. Charles Hugh Smith took families to the next level in his book Survival+ in the sense of placing them in small communities with a common supportive philosophy.

In Operation SERF I used many families (one in particular) scattered across the USA and placed them in a fictional scenario of a long economic collapse followed by a civil war. The families ranged from the anonymous poor to the well-connected and powerful. This was based on my years of experience as both a health care provider serving America’s urban and rural areas for many years and as a former soldier who served in Iraq. Through this experience I had the chance to see the effects of different things that can happen in life at both the individual and family levels and how larger factors far beyond the control of those families can affect their larger communities and a nation as a whole.

With all those things in mind, I would like to begin posting some of my current thoughts on the topic of Family Survival in Tough Times beginning on Monday, Feb 22, 2010. I might do this for one day or an entire week –it just depends where the topic takes me. Please stay tuned for more. Thank you.

[Via http://gardenserf.wordpress.com]

Drugs (cartoon) and User Activism (report)

2010-02-18T08:48:00.000+02:00

In case you’re not getting enough laughs on a daily basis… enjoy!

BBC Cartoon video about Drugs

And now seriously folks, the Eurasian Harm Reduction Network has produced On the Road to Activism, an excellent 76 page report on drug user activism (with a special focus on Eastern European countries). Download your copy here – it’s worth it just for the fantastic photos of junky graffiti.

And on an equally serious note, check out The Budgetary Implications of Drug Prohibition (2008) by Harvard University Department of Economics Professor Jeffrey Miron. Although focused on U.S. stats regarding the wastefulness of prohibition, it addresses the potential for Tax Revenue from Drug Legalization which is the sort of exploration that is critical when arguing for realistic alternatives to the dismal status quo.

[Via http://opiated.wordpress.com]

Philosophy of Science in the FT

2010-02-18T00:42:00.000+02:00

Wednesday

In yesterday’s Financial Times columnist Michael Skapinker wrote an interesting piece — Business has not yet found its Copernicus — in which he discusses the impact that Thomas Kuhn’s famous work on the philosophy of science, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, had on his own intellectual development.

Skapinker makes the interesting point that while Kuhnian paradigm shifts might not apply to areas outside science, in the socio-political realm economics has come the closest to establishing itself as a science. (Not only is economics a science, after a fashion, but like the “hard” sciences such as particle physics it is a mathematical science, on which cf. E. Roy Weintraubs’ How Economics Became a Mathematical Science.)

Skapinker suggests that the recent financial crisis might have been the opportunity for a paradigm shift in economics, except that no other paradigm was available to take the place of the “normal science” represented by contemporary economics. I agree with this, and Skapinker’s observations suggest a couple of points about revolutions, scientific and otherwise:

1. The exact mechanism of theory change within a Kuhnian model has been the occasion of much debate. We have all heard that nothing can stop the progress of an idea whose time has come. The converse of this is that nothing can advance the prospects of an idea whose time has not yet arrived. A paradigm, whether scientific or social, might suffer repeated crises and remain an accepted paradigm because no alternative has emerged that can serve the same function. History provides many examples of this — e.g., revolutions during the Middle Ages, when no political paradigm other than aristocratic feudalism existed. Thus: a crisis, in and of itself, and no matter how severe, is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for a paradigm shift.

2. We should view scientific revolutions, including revolutions in the “soft” sciences like sociology and psychology, as a matter of degree. No revolution is total. Not all epistemic paradigms come crashing down in a single catastrophic collapse. Anomalies can emerge within one portion of a theoretical paradigm, and even mount to the point of forcing changes, while other portions of the same paradigm can remain untouched. Perhaps the Kuhnian model applies most clearly and directly to scientific revolutions, but still applies, perhaps a little hazily, outside science, to revolutions generally.

I‘ll look forward to more asides on the philosophy of science in the pages of the Financial Times, and when the economic paradigm shift does emerge from some future crisis, I suspect the FT will be there to tell the story.

. . . . .

[Via http://geopolicraticus.wordpress.com]

The Worst Chancellor Ever?

2010-02-16T08:40:00.000+02:00

From the moment Brown stood up to give his infamous Robert Maxwell Memorial Budget in 1997, most people with experience in finance feared that the New Labour experiment could end in tears. His stealth tax on pension funds was the first marker on the road to disaster. He then sold off our gold reserves having first told the world and creating a final bottom to a decade of stagnation. His system of financial regulation dividing powers between the Treasury, the Bank of England and the FSA was absolutely loony. Eddie George knew this, threatened to resign, and unforgivably did not carry through on his threat. His next cunning plan was tax credits which predictably proved to be a complete disaster zone. Then there was his infamous corporation tax threshold, introduced the teeth of all expert advice, which encouraged every Jack the Lad to engage in outrageous tax avoidance. Underscoring his reputation as a fantasist, he claimed to have ended boom and bust while steering the property market to a spectacular bust. His abolition of the 10p tax rate hilariously left 2 million low paid workers paying an effective tax rate of up to 70%. Finally his public-sector net borrowing hit £28 billion last month, the highest on record, marking him out as the worst ever Chancellor of the Exchequer.

[Via http://jucameron.wordpress.com]

The Greek Scam

2010-02-16T00:52:00.000+02:00

John Mauldin at Seeking Alpha has an excellent piece up on the Greek financial crisis entitled “Sovereign Default: stuck between dire and disastrous”. Today, the Greek Finance Minister, George Papaconstantinou, set the crash in motion by refusing to agree to fiscal cuts necessary to move any agreement with other EU countries forward just prior to this week’s meeting with other European finance ministers. he also compared their economy to the Titanic. Not the best of analogies.

Already in Greece, public sector unions have been protesting nonstop and the situation is threatening to careen out of control. There is no will at any level in the country to reign in the excesses and corruption which have gotten them into the current mess. So far, the government has only offered fig leaves, trying to delay a plan into March or April. One way or the other, it is likely the current government will fall as the situation degrades. The choices, as Mauldin points out, are dire or disastrous.

But it gets worse. The Greek government knowingly and aggressively went to Wall Street with a cooked set of books to borrow even more. Working with Goldman Sachs and other firms, they then issued derivatives that were kept off the books by the government . The full extent of the mess is still not known. So far they are up to somewhere north of 250 Billion Euros in debt with an immediate need to refinance 64 Billion this year. What they are doing is rolling over the interest on the debt. Greece, to put it bluntly, is using payday loans to keep disaster from the door while they cover their ears and eyes to try and ignore the problem. Bernie Madoff ’s got nothing on this scam.

In addition to this, Dubai World has floated a tentative offer to pay back their debt ($50 Billion+) at 60 cents on the dollar, sticking their investors for up to $20 Billion. The Chinese government is also rumored to be considering allowing the RMB Yuan to float more freely in order to brake the economic bubble in that country. This would increase costs of Chinese goods in export markets which, coupled with inflationary pressures to devalue currencies such as the Euro might set off a stagflation.

The fireworks will begin this week as hedge funds and traders digest the news and act. While many Asian investors are celebrating the Year of the Tiger, money never sleeps. Right now, it’s like Wile E. Coyote trying to tiptoe away from the box of Acme explosives tied to his tail.

[Via http://oceanaris.wordpress.com]

When you think that most of the civilized world has universal healthcare...

2010-02-13T08:00:00.000+02:00

…and we in the good ole USA don’t, encountering stories like the one about artist Tom Fowler that Cary Tennis tells in Salon make us regret the corrupt political/commercial alliances that have given us our current situation.

A clip:

Tom had died. He had gotten a toothache. He had gotten a toothache but had not gone to the dentist because he didn’t have health insurance to pay for the dentist. He lived with it. Then he got sick but thought he was OK. Then he collapsed and the emergency medical people came and they told him he should go right into the hospital. But after reviving he said he’d be OK and he went home and made himself some soup. He lasted a couple of more days like that. Then he got really, really sick and they put him in the hospital but by that point the infection that had begun in a tooth had spread massively throughout his body and despite the doctors’ best efforts Tom could not be saved.

He died because he didn’t go to the dentist and didn’t go to the doctor because he was trying to be an artist and didn’t have health insurance and didn’t think it would kill him.

The stupidity of our system is so obvious, yet we are unable to move in the direction that would cure our ills and save our society. We are herded into our corrals by Big Pharma and Monster Insurance Companies and other Corporate Entities which are, by the grace of the Supreme Court, participating citizens in our government… and by politicians whose major goals are 1.) get reelected, 2.) bow to your big donors, and 3.) pretend that you will fix things…soon. Decades go by and the attempts by the few naive and well intentioned amateurs to bring us up to the Rest Of The World Standard in Health Care that appear from time to time get chewed up and spit out and (as Republicans say) we’d better slow down… we’re moving to fast. What’s the Rush?

It has given us a season of distrust. We elected a man on the assumption that things would change. We gave a Congress the majority it needed to make that change. We heard promises and patter designed to keep us believing that something would happen. But, in the long run, all we have been is screwed.

And my wife asks me if I didn’t wish we lived in Canada.

[Via http://underthelobsterscope.wordpress.com]

Interesting News from Elsewhere

2010-02-13T00:49:00.000+02:00

“Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something.”

- Henry David Thoreau

Applied Drug Policy Analysis
A redesign of Valentine’s Day has been in order for a long time. Thanks to Studio 360 for facilitating it.
None of us have any money. Just about none anyway.
Esquire interviewed neighboring Governor (and likely presidential candidate), Tim Pawlenty.
Bank of America foreclosed on a house that the couple paid cash for.

Happy Valentine's Day!

[Via http://laflog.wordpress.com]

End the Fed: Book Summary (Chapters 10 - 12)

2010-02-11T08:48:00.000+02:00

End the Fed By: Ron Paul Index Quotes Chapter Ten: Why End the Fed? The Federal Reserve should be abolished because it is immoral, unconstitutional, impractical, promotes bad economics, and undermines liberty. Its destructive nature makes it a tool of tyrannical government.. Page 141Money does not equal wealth, gold alone is not wealth. Page 147 One must wonder what our Federal Reserve notes will be worth when discovered in some hideaway a hundred, fifty, or even a year from now. Page 144 The Fed needs to be abolished because it is all bad and no good. For thousands of years gold has been used as a money supply. It’s used because it is rare, easy to work with and desired. Nations, such as the Byzantine empire, successfully used gold for hundreds of years. The Byzantine empire was a mighty and powerful empire, right until it diluted the gold in its coins to fund a war with Turks, their demise was a financial tragedy.The Federal Reserve exists only to dillute the money supply so that a tyrannical government can fund wars and projects it otherwise couldn’t. Our trade imbalance exists because of the Federal Reserve. The illusory wealth created by inflation and low interest rates created a housing boom, providing the appearance of false wealth that fooled the Fed. The cause of the current economic slump is the Federal Reserve’s poor monetary policy. A free people need a money that has value. More Information Review / Critique Ron Paul

B-Note | Posts | Wiki

Democrats

B-Note| Posts | Wiki

Republicans

B-Note| Posts | Wiki

Damn! The opening paragraph was bad ass! (Well, as bad ass as a conversation about monetary policy can ever really be…) I quoted the whole thing up there, page 141. Damn! Smack that! The whole book right there in one paragraph. Ron Paul just grabbed that chicken by the neck and shook the hell out of it! Thems are fighting words!Kidding aside, it was a very good chapter. The book’s revving up towards the end and he’s making his sales pitch. It covers a lot of ground, and covers most of it pretty well. Plus the little bit of history on the Byzantine history was cool (can get a woot from everyone in the crowd who loves reading about the Byzantine empire?) Quotes Chapter Eleven: The Philosophical Case The entire operation of the Fed is based on an immoral principle. Page 150Big government breeds corruption. If government has nothing to sell, bribery is useless. Page 152

To put it simply, the system is morally corrupt. Page 153

The tragedy is only recognized when the fraud of an immoral unsustainable monetary inflation comes to an end. Page 154

Very simply, there can‘t be a more immoral system of money than one based on a banking monopoly that can counterfeit money in secret with no oversight… Page 156

The entire purpose of the Fed, inflating money and devaluing our money and debt is immoral and theft. It is immoral to devalue your money supply. It is immoral to transfer wealth through inflation. Providing the power to fund programs the government otherwise couldn’t afford breeds corruption. The power of congressman to borrow and spend allows for legal bribes called donations.The moral weakness is shared by all. The people allow the immorality to continue because they expect the government to everything, and not to tax them. Congressman benefit by sending home the pork to their constituents. Businesses embrace the immorality as a way to privatize their profits and socialize their losses. Some embrace the immoral Fed in a distorted attempt to achieve fairness and equality.

Meanwhile, those who fight back against this immorality are labeled ideologues, as if the immoral act of pragmatically stealing money right out of people’s hands is morally superior. Then, afterwards, when the immoral actions returns home bringing economic turmoil, it’s the free market that is blamed, and more immoral laws are considered to more properly take away freedoms and more fairly distribute wealth. The moral argument should be enough to do away with the Fed.

More Information Review / Critique The Fed (wiki)Criticism of The Fed (wiki)

Ron Paul Forums

End the Fed (Facebook group)

The Greater Good (post)

Are inalienable Rights really So? (post)

Well, this is by far the best chapter so far. This is his emotionally, moral and philosophical argument. This is ethics. This is his heart and soul, and it damned impressive reading. I didn’t even know what to quote. Every line was quotable. Every paragraph. The book is worth it for this chapter alone.I found the chapter extremely compelling, well thought and blunt. His argument was equally compelling and very convincing. It is an impassioned plea meant to strike at the core beliefs in all of us that stealing is wrong.

To the left I included two links to posts I wrote that deal with completely different topics, but relate heavily to morality in making decisions. I think they’re fairly relevent.

Quotes Chapter Twelve: The Constitutional Case The gross distortion and undermining of the Constitution by McCulloch v. Maryland has done great harm throughout our history and explains how we‘ve ended up with the size of government we have today. Page 167-168Noble reasons are always used to justify the inflation, but the real reasons are far more sinister. Page 171

I believe the conditions are more conductive today for achieving some real success in getting an audit than at any time since the establishment of the Federal Reserve System. Page 178

Article I section 10 states clearly and simply that states can only use gold or silver as legal tender. Article I section 8 explains all the things the congress can do. Paper money is not listed, nor is a central bank. The Tenth Amendment then says that Congress can’t do anything other than what they’ve been told to do. Right there, as simply as possible, is the constitutional argument for why fiat money and a central bank are unconstitutional.The beginning of the growth of the federal government was McCulloch v. Maryland, in which case the Supreme Court ruled that the Congress could pass any law they wanted, regardless of the Constitution specifically prohibiting such an interpretation. This decision led directly to the first national banks and then to the Federal Reserve. This fight, between federalist and anti-federalists, Jefferson and Hamilton, was won by Hamilton and the Federal government has grown ever since.

The power of the Fed is only dwarfed by its secrecy. At first, the secrecy was a result of no law specifically forcing them to report to Congress. When a law was passed, it was watered down to a point that their reports have no value. I, and many others, have been trying to audit the fed for years. The powers that the Fed possess are comparable to that of Congress and the White House, if not superior. Congress has a constitutional requirement of oversight, oversight we do not exorcise due to legal restraints we’ve placed on ourselves. I hope that after a full audit reveals all the mischief performed by the Fed, people will reevaluate its value.

More Information Review / Critique US ConstitutionArticle I Section 10

(Only Gold or Silver can be used as gold)

Article I Section 8

(Things Congress can do)

The 10th Amendment

(Can’t do anything else)

Freedom to Listen (post)

Free Speech Abridged. (post)

Impeach Chief Justice Roberts. (post)

This was a much drier chapter than the previous one. It’s very well put, but the subject is of law and history and the constitution which just tends towards dryness. Still, he presents the material well and argues his case pretty good.The simple fact is, America has never really followed the constitution in its entirety. The 10th Amendment is uniformly ignored. The Commerce Clause is abused and the coinage issue is ignored. But we also ignore the fact we can’t technically have an Air Force. To the left I put some links to posts I’ve done on the first Amendment and Freedom of Speech. It’s not directly related to the Fed, but it does focus on how the Courts have interpreted the First Amendment.

[Via http://politicalbooks.us]

Moving Towards Sustainability - What is the Payback Time on an Outlet Strip?

2010-02-11T00:41:00.000+02:00

One of the biggest problems for those of us who understand the need to pursue sustainability is to know what to do. There is far too little information available about how to conserve energy, minimize one’s carbon footprint, and make a positive move towards living sustainably. Just when you think using paper bags is more ecologically responsible than plastic bags, someone figures out that the energy required to make the paper created more pollution than the processes that produced the plastic bag. Then, some time later, someone else tells you that the paper comes from renewable trees while the plastic is made from non-renewable oil, and paper is therefore more responsible. There are so many pieces of conflicting information flying around in the media that it is daunting, and a lot of people give up trying. Perhaps I can throw a very tiny bit of light on this topic with a simple idea, the common electrical outlet strip, backed by some simple calculations.

When population is great, small, widely-observed practices can make a big difference. The media has long told us that wall chargers use power whenever plugged in, and not just when the device they power is turned on or charging. Such devices have even been nicknamed “vampires” because they “suck” small amounts of power when not in use, taking a “bite” out of your electrical budget and necessitating more highly-polluting power plants. If you touch a wall charger or power supply when it is not powering anything it will feel warm; a sure sign of wasted energy. While it may only take a few watts to warm the case, consider how many of chargers are drawing power in your house. Then consider the energy required to power the devices of more than 300 million Americans, and you start to get a sense of the scale of this problem. At a conservative 2 watts each, the wall chargers of Americans use the energy output of a medium-sized coal-fired power plant, more than 250 megawatts.

Electricity “vampires” are everywhere. Devices such as TVs and stereos, and most devices that have remotes or any features called “instant on”, also draw power continuously and have a power switch that is really a standby switch. Some may have a main power switch hidden somewhere, but what looks like a power switch is quite often only a standby switch. While today many wall and table clocks are battery powered, any appliance with a clock has to power the clock circuitry or mechanism and probably draws electrical power to do so. Anything with a remote has to keep a receiver powered on in order for the remote to work. Some devices require large power supplies that draw proportionally more power than a cell phone charger. Basically, anything that feels warm when it is turned off is probably drawing power continuously.

Some devices have to be vampires. Before you start unplugging everything, think on this: a great many electrical devices we use today (2010) were designed to stay partially on (on standby) all the time, and turning them off may impair their effectiveness or create inconvenience for you. Hopefully that will change as the need to save power becomes more prominent, but for now it may be necessary to let some vampires suck power. Is a furnace or refrigerator a vampire since its controls require continuous power?

A curious case in which data bandwidth is a factor. My cable TV tuner is always hot to the touch and has a lot of vents in the top – sure signs of a “power hog”. If I unplug the tuner when I’m not watching TV, when I turn it on again it won’t be able to display programming information until it reloads that data from the cable TV network, and the listings gradually appear over a period of 45 minutes or so. Apparently the data bandwidth in the cable TV network is too small to load the programming information very quickly. Perhaps someday that will be improved, but for now it discourages me from disconnecting the power to the cable box, even though it wastes a lot of energy.

The simple solution: a switchable outlet strip. Devices that don’t need to be on all the time can be plugged into a control of some sort, the cheapest of which is probably a multiple-outlet power strip with a switch. If you plug your cellphone chargers and similar electrical devices into a switchable outlet strip it is easy to control them and be sure when they are on and when they are truly off. While a decent outlet strip can be had for $5 or less, it is possible to spend considerably more. Whether the extra cost is worthwhile is questionable.

The payback period for an outlet strip can be fairly short. I have an outlet strip next to my bedside into which I plug the chargers for two cellphones, my laptop computer, and my CPAP machine (used to treat my sleep apnea). If each of the cellphone chargers draws 2 Watts when not in use and the other two devices draw 4 watts each, all I have to do is turn off the outlet strip when I leave in the morning and turn it on when I come home, and I am saving 12 watts continuously for 12 hours per day. In that fashion I save 12 x 12 or 144 watt hours per day. Since I pay an average of 13.7 cents for each kilowatt hour, I am saving (144/1000)*.137 dollars per day, or $0.005328 per day. Since an inexpensive outlet strip can be found for perhaps $5, if you remember to turn it off most of the time, perhaps 250 days per year, you will save $1.33 per year, and the outlet strip will pay for itself in 3.75 years, which is not bad for a device that can last decades. That payback period will be shorter if rates go higher, too.

There is power in numbers. You also save the power company having to generate 12 watts for most of each day, and if 10 million people do that in the United States, it can save a lot more. Due to inefficiencies in the power grid and the need to handle peak demand, generation capacity must be maintained at a level that is around ten times the actual power demanded. That means that 12 watts of electricity demand must be supplied by a capacity of 120 watts. The same 10 million people, by putting their chargers on an outlet strip and turning it off when not in use, avoid the need for 1,200 megawatts, which is the capacity of a large nuclear power plant or up to five coal or gas-fired power plants. Personally, I have no problem investing $5 to avoid the need for another giant power plant with all it will cost to build and all the pollution it will produce.

Surge protection, an outlet strip extra, is not worth the expense in many cases. One of the most popular extras among outlet strips is surge protection. I have had many outlet strips that advertised “surge protection”, and have even paid extra for strips that had the added capability. I have also installed surge and transient protection in an outlet strip, adding appropriate capacitors and metal oxide varistors (MOVs) inside the outlet strip. More recently, however, I have read how relatively cheap MOV’s can explode or burst into flames when hit by a major power surge, such as when lightning strikes nearby. For this reason I rarely use a surge protection-type outlet strip unless there is no other protection and I am using a power source with a higher than normal risk of surges and spikes, such as that from my portable generator or in an area where power is often interrupted. Since I own my own home, I had an electrician install a proper commercial surge protection unit in the circuit breaker panel (cost is usually under $500 for the surge protector and labor combined). With this protection in place I don’t worry about damage from surges and spikes, nor do I ever need surge protection in my outlet strips.

The path to a sustainable civilization will be built on many small changes such as using outlet strips to conserve electricity. As you can see, if only 10 million individuals in the United States used an outlet strip to stop electricity being wasted by “vampire” devices, it could avoid the need for an entire nuclear power plant costing perhaps a billion dollars. In the future more of our electrical devices will be built to be more efficient, and those that require standby power will make more efficient use of it, but today there are many power-sucking devices in our homes that are just wasting energy. Every bit of energy we can save today moves us closer to sustainability and buys more time to get our population growth and pollution under control, and an outlet strip can be a sound investment in the future with a very reasonable payback period.

As always, I welcome your comments. Thanks for reading this. – Tim

[Via http://timprosserfuturing.wordpress.com]

Mea Culpa, Scotland

2010-02-09T16:32:00.000+02:00

The Irish government has set up a truly independent body to recommend how shrinking public resources can best be deployed to maintain key priorities. Last July it Ireland’s proposed a 5.3 billion euro package of cuts, a 5% reduction in social welfare programmes and the loss of 17,300 public sector jobs. Scotland could also do with a truly independent review of public expenditure. Of course, unlike Ireland, Scotland was fortunate the UK government was able to take responsibility for its banking collapse. As Ireland painfully discovered, being a sovereign and independent nation is great fun up to a point, but if your bankers make a complete horlicks of their operations it is nice to have nurse on hand to clean up. Ireland is awash with books agonizing over its experience of the crash, led by the redoubtable Fintan O’Toole’s ‘Ship of Fools: How Stupidity and Corruption Sank the Celtic Tiger’. Others have chronicled how bankers, builders and property developers and their cosy links with the political elite in Dublin helped bring that the country to its knees. Such national soul-searching is yet to be seen in Scotland even though our First Minister was cheerleader-in-chief as his old employer, the Royal Bank, as it set out on its disastrous bid to conquer global markets. Had Scotland been an independent country by the millennium, the SNP have done nothing to curb the expansionist ambitions of Scotland’s two leading banks. Had Scotland been independent when they finally tottered towards insolvency in late 2008 and had to be rescued, an SNP government in Edinburgh would have been presented with a similar bail-out bill as Dublin and Reykjavik. Of course, as taxpayers and UK citizens, we Scots are sharing with our English, Welsh and Northern Irish neighbours, the costs of bailing out our banks and the consequences of the deep recession that followed. We will be paying that price in higher taxes, lost jobs and constrained public services for years to come. And we should also confront, as the Irish are doing, our own collective role in this disaster.

[Via http://jucameron.wordpress.com]

Busted budgets: states desperate for new taxes - Garry Reed

2010-02-09T00:21:00.000+02:00

News & commentary from the liberterrain…

California, struggling with budget deficits, growing debt, and possible bankruptcy, has been seriously considering legalizing their $14 billion per year cash crop, marijuana.

A bill in the state’s Assembly would impose a $50 per ounce fee on legal sales, bringing in “nearly $1 billion a year” depending on which expert’s opinion gets quoted in which newspaper.

In Colorado, candy and soft drinks are legal but they’re exempt from the state sales tax.

The Centennial State, having already closed a $2.1 billion budget gap, faces a billion dollar shortfall in next year’s budget. The state’s politicians see a 2.9-percent “Twinkie Tax” on sweets as a way to sweeten the public pot. A bill to do just that passed the House Monday and, if approved by the Senate, is expected to raise “3.58 million this year and $17.9 in 2011.

In January, New York Governor David Paterson, staring a $7.4 billion deficit in the face, went looking for $1 billion in new taxes and fees even after carving out nearly $800 million from New York City and slashing other taxes.

A $1 tax hike is proposed for that old favorite of politicians everywhere, cigarettes, which will raise a pack to $3.75. Other proposals include a 1-cent per ounce soda tax, legalizing and taxing cage fighting, collecting more revenue from wine by allowing sales in grocery stores, and introducing 50 new speed cameras to catch and fine motorists as much as $100 (thereby belying the claim that speed cameras are justified purely as a “safety” concern.)

Commentary…

So what will happen if California and Colorado and New York and every other state with fiscal afflictions get the increases they want? History tells us that in a year or so they will each spend 150% of their new taxes, face yet another fiscal emergency, and go looking for more things to tax.

Giving more tax money to politicians is like giving a shot of José Cuervo to a stumbling blind slobbering drunk.

They could tax everything in the country with a pulse and never have enough money.

(Or, as libertarian columnist, editor, and author Vin Suprynowicz recently put it, “If you pay taxes, you’re ‘rich,’ so you should expect more taxes.”)

Anyone who believes that politicians and taxes can ever solve any problem anywhere is in greater need of rehab than the tax-addicted politicians or the alcoholics they mimic.

[Via http://marinlp.wordpress.com]

Dear Undercover Economist by Tim Harford

2010-02-07T08:16:00.000+02:00

I wasn’t going to read this, but a friend saw it on my LibraryThing profile, and asked to borrow it. She promptly returned it, and informed me that it was actually a good read. So I had it sitting next to me at work for a few weeks, and every couple of days, while waiting for Stata to do its thing, I read a few pages.

The book is about a hundred columns from the London Financial Times Dear Economist agony aunt column. Overall, some entertaining material – but by the end I was sick of the repetitive formulaic responses… One column in particular caught my eye:

Dear Undercover Economist

I am often offered the chance to have an unauthorised copy of a current film downloaded from the web. As family circumstances presently preclude cinema trips, these offers peresent my only chance to see some films promptly.

I do not believe in enjoying the fruits of other people’s labours for free. So is there any way in which I can make financial reparation for watching an unauthorised copy?

I live very close to a cinema so one option is to buy a ticket for a screening even though I won’t actually be there. Or I could buy a copy of the DVD when it comes out, even though I don’t really want to own it.

If I cannot put this right in economic terms, my conscience tells me not to watch!

– Yvonne, London

And Tim Harford’s response:

Dear Yvonne,

You should certianly watch since there is a positive benefit to you and zero marginal cost to the studio. Yet I believe you’re right to feel uneasy about free-riding on someone else’s time and talent. It is not only unfair but contributes to the wrong incentives for future filmmaking; in fact one suspects that the reason so many Hollywood blockbusters are childish is that the studios know adults don’t have time to go to the cinema any more.

But your proposal to buy cinema tickets or DVDs doesn’t seem right either. It sends a misleading signal that cinemas and DVDs are what you want. You might try alternating your patronage of cinemas and DVDs, while downloading pirated copies many more times than you actually need to. If the studios are paying attention they might start to realise what it is you really want.

All this assumes that your need for an immediate copy is genuine.

I would question that. Do you shoplift when you’re in a hurry?

I would question Tim’s answer on two fronts. First, his assertion that downloading ‘unauthorised’ copies of Hollywood movies “contributes to the wrong incentives for future filmmaking” is contradicted by his advice in the second paragraph (infact, even the advice in the second paragraph is wrong; alternating between cinemas and DVDs while downloading many unauthorised copies sends a confusing signal, if anything!).

Second, the suggestion that shoplifting if you’re in a hurry is the same as downloading a unauthorised copy because you don’t want to wait for the DVD implicitly assumes that watching a film on a DVD is the same as downloading a film – and obviously there are a number of differences. Not least to mention that, depending on where you live, it wouldn’t matter how long you wait – you could never download certain films.

Anyway, this book would be a good present for someone who likes faux novelty, formulaic comedy and one page chapters.

[Via http://tsu.tsu.mu]

Deconstructing the Taylor Rule

2010-02-07T00:55:00.000+02:00

John Taylor, the Stanford University economics professor and former Undersecretary of Treasury for International Affairs, wrote what has become a landmark paper since 1993, the year former president Bill Clinton took office. It was called “Discretion versus policy rules in practice.” The essence of the subject of the paper was a technical discussion of how to fit the data of Federal Reserve policy over time to a curve: to a regression equation. The paper had done such an extraordinary job of tracking Fed policy and explaining it, that it became a benchmark to both expect Fed policy and to judge it in the subsequent years. It had become a rule by which monetary policy can be reasonably expected to be made by any central bank as if to say: you made it this way all along, so follow my rule and make it the same way in the future and the world will be alright.

Without getting into the mathematical details of the Taylor Rule, it would suffice to say that the variables in the equation are the interest rate that the Federal Reserve sets based on the current inflation, the interest rate the economy really experiences, the inflation the Fed likes and its deviation from the current inflation, the deviation of the current economic growth rate from the growth rate that is tolerable by the economy without raising prices for the same goods and services because businesses have to spend more to invest to meet the higher demand and because the ensuing higher demand for the inputs into production can raise their prices and eventually consumer prices if production technologies and processes are not more efficient. Many variants of the Taylor Rule have proliferated in the literature since 1993.

Before John Taylor, two well-known American economists, Irving Fisher and Milton Friedman, had more parsimoniously dealt with the same problem. Fisher had lived and done most of his work before the Great Depression and during the period of industrial ferment in America in the late 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries. He was among the earliest economists of the American Economic Association (AEA) after it was founded in 1885. And he had given considerable thought to interest rates and prices and formulated his findings in a simple mathematical relationship that bears his name to quantitatively describe the relationship between the interest rate everybody knows (nominal interest rate), inflation (the deterioration of the purchasing power of money) and the interest rate they actually experience because of inflation (real interest rate).

The Fisher equation simply says that if you subtract inflation from the nominal interest rate, you get the real interest rate. Meaning, because some depreciation of the value of money is always the case and is unavoidable because of scarcity, people really do not pay as much in interest as they think they do. More simply put, the higher the inflation, the cheaper are the loans that people take out. When prices do not change and inflation is zero, they pay in interest really as much they think they are paying. When prices fall, as was the case during the Great Depression that came close to Fisher’s death, inflation is negative and therefore adds to the interest rate people are quoted, making their loans more expensive. The Fisher equation, as is, is the first part of the Taylor Rule.

Milton Friedman, the founding modern monetary economist, had later respecified the Quantity Theory of Money (QTM), which has its roots in classical philosophy. QTM, like the Fisher equation, another simple mathematical relationship which equates the product of the quantity of money supplied and the rate at which that money changes hands and the product of the overall price level in an economy and the rate of growth of the economy, as it is computed being since World War II.

Beyond the academic interest surrounding that equation, its meaning is profound: it says that the amount of money supplied produces both inflation and economic growth. The challenge is to minimize inflation while increasing growth, because both more growth and less growth can cause inflation. More growth causes inflation because the prices of resources will rise with scarcity and less growth will cause it because without making more and diverse real things, the same things that are made by the economy will cost more causing inflation if money growth is not reduced when the economy is not innovating to produce more. And economics has no way to make an economy innovate, at least not as yet (Joseph Schumpeter provides a compelling explanation of the innovation dynamics in a free market economy under limited government, but does not provide a mechanism to modulate innovation).

Often, as Friedman himself did, the focus had always been on the relationship between money supply and its causation of inflation. He did not want, along the lines of classical thinking that goes back 2 centuries before the quantity theory was picked up by American economists, more money chasing the same goods causing money to become cheaper because the same goods cost more. Still, from Friedman’s restatement of QTM in 1956 to determine the optimal money supply, mathematically relates the change in the price level in the original quantity theory which is the macroeconomic definition of inflation to the quantity of money and national output or income.

But all of this is pure monetary theory even if the purpose of theoretically trying to determine optimum money supply is to make monetary policy. The classical philosophers and economists did not particularly care about modulating money supply to control the economy. They saw the relationship between money and economic growth as fairly linear with economic cycles being caused by other factors in a free society.

This view is surprisingly correct, on average. The growth of national output is indeed a linear, straight line sloping upward. Milton Friedman himself had subscribed to this view, but his attempt to determine the optimal money supply was more about trying to determine the fixed extent to which the monetary hose must be left open by the government, year after year for the economy to take care of itself, not to either shrink it or expand it based on the economic circumstances, meddling with it without understanding it, contributing to the causation of business cycles even if the intent is business cycle stabilization. If politics are factored in, to sympathize with the time consistency motivation behind John Taylor’s seminal paper, business cycle stabilization could fast turn into a cover for the political manipulation of the economy, even if the capacity to do so is inadequate.

That was indeed the world in which Irving Fisher had lived as the United States evolved from the railroads to the automobiles at a feverish pace over a period of about 75 years, with a few ups and downs until the Federal Reserve founded in 1913 tried to fine tune money supply after 1929 by reducing its supply, not once but twice in 1933 and 1936, to prevent more money chasing the same stocks, thinking that that could have caused the asset prices to appreciate. The economy would perhaps have been better off had it done nothing, opening the monetary spigot at a fixed rate of money growth and leaving the rest to the economy.

Still, the temptation to produce prosperity by raising money growth is justifiable if the money is used to produce more food, more machinery, more innovation and more support to both agriculture and the industry through the related services. This temptation is the addition made by John Taylor to the Fisher equation to come up with his rule. The threat of targeting the rate of change of prices, the Taylor Rule implicitly assumes, can make the economy produce more by using money more efficiently.

John Taylor hopes with his equation to raise the utility of money through the stick of an inflation target. The tighter the target, the more pressure on the producers to use the money they have been supplied more efficiently to raise the economy’s speed limit. However, he does not say if the economy can indeed do so because economics has no mechanism to ensure that that can happen to the best of the ability of the various economic actors and in good faith. After all, they could seek short term profits and increase inflation to the Fed’s target level and keep doing so until the circumstances force them to work hard, with each cycle of the rise and fall of the Fed’s interest rate depressing the rate of growth of the national output over time until that can no longer be possible without causing economic decline. This behavior is verifiable in economic data since Paul Volcker began targeting inflation in 1979: the U.S economy doubled under Reagan and Bush, grew by about 75 per cent under Clinton and around 30 per cent under Bush and is in stagnation thus far under Obama, if the trend of growth rate is measured in decade-long intervals since 1979, albeit the intermediate short-term fluctuations both up and down.

Taylor’s addition to the Fisher equation will be zeroed out when inflation and output are at target, leaving behind the Fisher equation. Because inflation target is the central bank’s choice, the economy will end up determining its speed limit and John Taylor did not contribute anything new to economic knowledge, either in theory or in practice, beyond what has already existed for about 75 years.

The Taylor Rule may track Fed policy well with either an implicit inflation target (which the Fed has) or an explicit inflation target (which the Fed does not yet have), but the rule itself does not help grow the economy until the old-fashioned money-for-real investment values return to the economic culture to see derivative financial assets such as stocks and bonds and all else as subordinate to real assets. The prices of financial assets and real earnings of the firms upon whose performance those assets are predicated must be in balance for an economy to be on a balanced growth path.

The only purpose of money supply by fiat is to grow the real economy as efficiently as it can while providing a quality life for the workers. Targeting inflation alone will not do that job.

[Via http://ctamirisa.wordpress.com]

Who is Sisyphus

2010-02-06T08:00:00.000+02:00

Between work and writing Book 2 of Operation SERF this weekend, I will not have any free time left for a lengthy political socioeconomic analysis today. If you’re a regular reader of this blog, I would encourage you to purchase a copy of Operation SERF Book 1 since it contains a synthesis of many viewpoints which I have placed within a hypothetical relatively near-future scenario.

My apologies again for forgoing the usual high protein juicy meat post on this blog today as I leave you with this dried out beef jerky link to a character from Greek mythology named Sisyphus. Although the name sounds wimpy, the story is actually quite good. If you chew on it for a while, you’ll get a taste for how it may be applied to empires, politics, and economics.

[Via http://gardenserf.wordpress.com]

Weekend Whiteout

2010-02-06T00:17:00.000+02:00

It’s Friday! And all I see outside my window is a white blurry mess, so clearly mother nature wants me to hibernate tonight. Darn.

No worries though, I got in some good out-of-the-classroom friend time this week and still got big, big plans for this weekend:

Saturday Morning: Drag my lazy ass to Economics Library, since I pawned my book for a bracelet (totally worth it.)
Saturday Afternoon: Watch Sidney Crosby score ninety-thousand goals against the Montreal Canadiens.
Saturday Night: Umm…yeah I’ve got nothing, but I’m working on it. I swear.

Sunday Morning: Sleep off massive feeling of relaxation, most likely due to a night of Lifetime movies and an H2O power hour.
Sunday Afternoon: Watch the epic battle of Crosby vs. Ovechkin.
Sunday Night: Get reminded AGAIN that the Steelers’ loss to the Browns kept them out of the playoffs…Seriously. Depressing.

That is all. Good luck trying to top it. Happy Weekend from the Arctic Circle.

[Via http://jjparks.wordpress.com]

End the Fed: Book Summary (Chapters 6 - 9)

2010-02-04T08:53:00.000+02:00

End the Fed By: Ron Paul Index Quotes Chapter Seven: Conversations with Bernanke

We have a savings rate which is negative. If we had true capitalism, this would be very, very serious we’d have no savings and no capital to invest…We can create credit and money out of thin air and it acts as capital by stealing value from the existing currency. Page 101

They don’t say inflate the currency, they don’t say debase the currency, they don’t say devalue the currency, they don’t say cheat the people. They say lower the interest rates. . Page 104

[Politicians] first create the problems and then they are delighted with all the activity in expanding government and solving the very problem they created. Page 110

In his role as House Member, Ron Paul questioned Ben Bernanke several times. He used these occasions to challenge Mr. Bernanke on the concepts of sound monetary policy. He challenged Bernanke on the idea that growth is the cause of inflation, that inflation is good, that inflation is confiscation, on the decrease in real wages, the wisdom of a weak dollar and the idea of moving away from the fiat dollar. Bernanke’s answers are decent, but also evasive.

Bernanke’s ascertains that the economy is sound only months before the financial collapse shows the failings at the Fed. The problem if an expanding money supply is ignored when the country is in good times, and the solution to bad times is to continue expanding the money supply. The only way to avoid this cycle of boom and bust is to take the power to create money out of thin air away from the government.

More Information Review / Critique Ron Paul

B-Note | Posts | Wiki

Democrats

B-Note| Posts | Wiki

Republicans

B-Note| Posts | Wiki

This was a good chapter, but a bit of a copy of previous chapters. Essentially, Ron Paul is making the same argument he made in the first several chapters to Ben Bernanke and writing down the answers. So it was a good chapter, and I suppose it has value in the sense that we know that Bernanke was told these things and dismissed them.

Frankly, Bernanke doesn’t come across as bad as perhaps Ron Paul had intended. His answers are pretty good really, except that they disagree with Ron Paul of course. As Bernanke pointed out, the reason the Fed was created was because of the financial panics in 1903 and 1914, which are excellent points.

As I read his book I find myself agreeing with a lot of his points, but keep coming back to a key question, do we really want the money supplied left completely on its own? The Federal insurance on deposits has worked wonderfully to protect people from bank runs and panics. Does Ron Paul make a good case that the Fed has too much power and interferes too much? Yeah. But Bernanke hit the point on the head, the cycle of boom and bust existed before the Fed.

Quotes Chapter Eight: Congress’s Interest in Monetary Policy

“…in all seriousness, a member asked me in private whether the dollar was “backed” by gold, having up until then assumed that it was.” Page 114

“This ignorance is what allows conservative and librals alike to spend, borrow, tax, and inflate to finance their various programs, both foreign and domestic.” Page 115

“Authoritarianism, supporting statism on moral grounds for whatever reason, is the real threat.” Page 121

Congress’s Interest in monetary policy can be explained as non-existent. Congress doesn’t know what the Fed does, how it does or why it does it. Without a proper understanding of the Fed or Monetary policy, Congress can’t perform proper oversight. What the Fed does, is provide enough money for the politicians to have both their guns and butter. There is no need for fiscal constraint when you can print money,

The Fed has also been used for undue political benefit. The interest rates tend to drop before elections and nominations, where as economic slumps between elections are fought less fiercely. Allowing an institution to play with our nation’s money supply for base political motives hurts all of us.

Some accuse Congress and the Fed of constituting a conspiracy to control the money, that assigns more intent than is really there. There isn’t any secret conspiracy working to hurt the economy for imagined political gains. Rather, the system is broken and flawed, and Congress is an incapable bastion of oversight. Even if Congressmen understood monetary policy, the system is inherently flawed in that it attempts to control the free market, something more powerful than any of us.

More Information Review / Critique

The Fed (wiki)

Criticism of The Fed (wiki)

Ron Paul Forums

Why the Flat Tax would be better (post. Slightly off topic, but it’s about how congress uses taxes for political gain and how that is bad for America.)

Quotes Chapter Nine: The Current Mess

“Artificially low interest rates are achieved by inflating the money supply, and they penalize the thrifty and cheat those who save.” – Page 133

“With the collapse of the imbalances created by the dream of easy wealth, the poor, deceived into believing politicians could deliver the moon, are now unemployed and without a home.” Page 137

“[The stimulus] will only stimulate sectors of the economy that are failing. This is like trying to rid the world of gravity by throwing things up in the air. It addresses the symptoms, not causes.” Page 139

The seeds of the current mess were laid by Greenspan after 9/11. There was a national desire not to let the terrorists win by hurting out economy. He dropped the interest rate from 6.5% down to 1% and held it there for a full year. This delivered the desired result, it gave the appearance of a strong economy. It created wealth, but that wealth was, in the words of Barack Obama, illusory. When the interest rates returned to 5.5%, the bubble popped and the housing and financial markets collapsed.

A slew of governments agencies and departments are involved in intervening in the natural workings of the free market. These agencies though are the cause of the problem are not the cure. They work together to take risk out of the system. Any system that allows for profit without risk through creates a moral hazard, a risk that is born by ‘someone else‘. That leads to risky economic decisions that leads to eventual economic disaster.

After intervening in the housing market with a 1% interest rate, and experiencing the result, we are now intervening in propping up the financial markets and car industry, with the government now responsible for hiring and firing CEO’s. As bad a job as the government did picking winners in 2001, we’re likely to do equally bad picking winners with the stimulus bill. The only result will be more fake money creating more illusory wealth.

More Information Review / Critique

Alan Greenspan (wiki)

Economy (Posts)

Free Market (posts)

48% of Houses underwater (Post)

Paul Krugman: Why markets can’t cure healthcare (Post)

More about the aftermath of 9/11 The Great Story Ever Sold (book)

This was perhaps the most relevant chapter so far. He’s beginning to bring all of his previous arguments together and demonstrating how previous actions lead to the current crisis, and how current actions are setting us up for the next one.

His explanation of how 9/11 shaped our money policy isn’t surprising, but it does put a new light on those decisions. He makes a point of not attaching any kind of partisan or untoward intentions. America had been hit hard, and those in power didn’t want to let the terrorists hurt us further by inflicting us with a bad recession, so they fought that recession as hard as they could. As Ron Paul says, Greenspan tried to shoot the terrorists in the head, instead he shot the economy in the foot. I think that story is perhaps the most important part of the book so far. We did this to ourselves. There were no ill intentions behind any of this, but out of a sense of fear that we’d look weak or suffer through a bad year, we fought to push off the inevitable and when we finally got the bill, the bill was the Great Recession. The current mess. Very good chapter.

[Via http://politicalbooks.us]

Fix the Balance Sheet, Fix the Economy

2010-02-04T00:52:00.000+02:00

Just about everybody realizes that the Stimulus did did not stimulate our economy. In fact, it was probably quite counter-productive, since the borrowed debt and newly printed Dollar Bills have severely weakened the Dollar in comparison to other currencies like the Euro, Yen and Pound Sterling. Now, with the realization fully in the mind of the American people, President Obama and others are suggesting that we pull the repaid from the TARP program and unspent stimulus funds to spend it on “job creation.” Fortunately, some in Washington oppose these ideas.

Pardon me, but wasn’t this what the Stimulus Bill was for? Wasn’t it passed to stem the rising unemployment rate at no more than 8 percent? Shouldn’t the funds in the Stimulus Bill have already been spent “creating” jobs?

The answer, of course, is no. The Stimulus was based on Keynesian economic theory, developed in the early 20th Century by the John M. Keynes (for whom the theory is named). Keynes and his followers (called “Keynesians”) believed that government could, in times of economic downturn, spend money out of their treasuries to build infrastructure and replace inventories of depleted or outdated government equipment. After the ensuing economic expansion, the government could then replenish its treasury with the increased tax revenues.

The money spent in such economy-stimulating spending would filter out into the economy, in what is called the “multiplier effect,” a concept not invented by Keynes but which was key to his theory to work. Companies hired to build roads and bridges might buy new paving and earth-moving equipment and hire additional employees. The companies that build the bulldozers would hire more employees and buy more steel. The steel manufacturers would buy more iron and coke. The coal mine would upgrade its digging equipment. This “trickle-down” effect is the basis of all government “stimulus” plans, whether that plan is one of tax-cuts or additional spending. It works–to a point.

The problem is that Keynes assumed such spending would be out of the Treasury. “Treasury” being defined as the money and resources a government has stored in its possession. This means that money that is already part of the system is not currently active is added to increase the liquidity of the system. “Liquidity” is a term that refers to how much money is flowing through the economy, essentially a ratio comparing durable goods and wealth to circulating money. The idea of a stimulus is to “fix” a liquidity ratio from too low (too few dollars and too many fixed assets).

For those who are unaware, the Treasury of the United States currently has a$12 TRILLION hole in it. Our Federal Balance Sheet is so lop-sided that the only reason anyone still lends us money is that we’ve never defaulted on anything.

Yet.

So, in order for our Federal Government to spend any money, it must first print, borrow or tax it from somewhere else. We have no reserves from which to spend on a Keynesian-style stimulus plan. Rather than adding money to the economy, we must first take the money out through taxes or borrowing, skim a bit off the top to pay the bureaucracy the administers it, and then insert the money back in. This accentuates the liquidity problem in the near term, making the economy suffer more and reducing the effect of the “new” stimulus dollars when finally spent.

The government, being the owner of the presses that print Dollar bills, could simply print more bills. This would quickly solve the liquidity problem without having to pull money out of the economy first. There’s just one problem: Money without wealth to back it up is adds nothing. Government revenue by taxation is money taken from wealth. Somebody or some entity did something valuable to earn that money, and the government took a percentage of the profit. Borrowing is similar: Someone took their wealth and chose to place it in the “safe” hands of the government, instead of a bank or market investment.

When government spends from its treasury, it is returning wealth to the economy. When government just spends newly printed bills, it is not returning wealth, it is merely adding dollars, increasing the number of dollars per amount of wealth and reducing the value of every dollar including those already in the system. This is the opposite problem of too little liquidity, resulting in inflation since more dollars can be spent but with no increase in wealth.

Today, Keynes would be appalled at the excessive government spending and the massive borrowing and printing required to effect the stimulus plans he envisioned. His theory was founded on the idea that a spend-thrift government would have a healthy balance sheet and reserves in its Treasury, not the lop-sided and poorly managed debts we have today.

The answer to fixing our economy and creating jobs lies not in additional government spending, despite what the economic sophomore Elites in Washington might tell us. Rather, it lies in fixing our spending policies such that the value of the Dollar, and thus the wealth of our nation, is not deflated by poor money management. The Federal Reserve must discontinue its policy of trying to steady our economy and focus once again on stabilizing the supply of money. The Federal Government must stop spending money it does not have, instead focusing on reducing its deficits and debts to a manageable level. A fix as simple (!) as correcting our Federal Balance Sheet will go a long will toward fixing our national economy.

Cross-posted at The Minority Report Blog.

[Via http://seekingliberty.wordpress.com]

Expendable Americans

2010-02-02T08:00:00.000+02:00

I’ve addressed airport security and Flight 253 in particular in a few posts. These include DC Dithers Again, but I have a Real Security Plan, The Missing Letters, and Post 9-11 Security Still Not a Priority.

A blog post from a passenger aboard Flight 253 and a recent news article from Detroit have reopened some questions into this matter:

THE TRUTH ABOUT FLIGHT 253 HAS BEEN REVEALED- By Kurt Haskell

Now it all becomes apparent. Let me detail everything we know about the “Sharp Dressed Man” (SDM).

1. While being held in Customs on Christmas Day, I first told the story of the SDM.

2. My story has never changed.

3. The FBI visited my office on December 29, 2009, and showed me a series of approximately 10 photographs. None were of the SDM. I asked the FBI if they brought the Amsterdam security video to help me identify the SDM, but they acted as though my request was ridiculous. The FBI asked me what accent the SDM spoke in and I indicated that he had an American accent similar to my own. I further indicated that he wore a tan suit without a tie, was Indian looking, around age 50, 6′0″ tall and 250-260 lbs. I further indicated that I did not believe that he was an airline employee and that he was not on our flight.

4. During the first week of January, 2010, Dutch Military Police and the FBI indicated that over “200 Hours” of Amsterdam airport security video had been reviewed and it “Shows Nothing”.

5. The mainstream media picked up the “Shows nothing” story, which slanders my story. After visiting my office twice for a flight 253 special, Dateline NBC and Chris Hanson indicated that my story was “Unsubstantiated rumor dispelled as myth” and our story did not air during the tv special.

6. On January 2, 2010, I receive a call from a flight 253 passenger who indicated to me that it may be in my best interest to stop talking publicly about the SDM because he believes I am “wrong” in what I saw. He did not make any claim that he saw the SDM boarding gate incident at all. This call was made out of the blue after he made a “revelation” of this event on January 1, 2010. I later discover that this caller has ties to the U.S. Government.

7. On January 20, 2010, current Director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), Michael E. Leiter, made a startling admission. Leiter indicated that: “I will tell you, that when people come to the country and they are on the watch list, it is because we have generally made the choice that we want them here in the country for some reason or another.”

8. On January 22, 2010, CongressDaily reported that intelligence officials “have acknowledged the government knowingly allows foreigners whose names are on terrorist watch lists to enter the country in order to track their movement and activities.”

….

13. The Amsterdam security video has not been released. A much more minor airport security violation occurred at the Newark New Jersey airport several days after the flight 253 incident. That video was released shortly thereafter.

14. Senators Levin and Stabenow, as well as Congressman Dingle, all refuse to discuss the matter with me.

The more the government acts like a tape from the airport doesn’t exist, the worse it looks for them. At least one camera somewhere in the airport caught something. There is no way you can walk through an airport in Europe or North America without being caught on video. Although Haskell questions if the SDM was working for the U.S. government, I do NOT believe that to be the case. However, the feds playing “dumb” on the existence of a video does make it look like they’re hiding something and shielding someone. That is a stupid move. They need better advisors.

Here is the news story:

Terror suspect kept visa to avoid tipping off larger investigation

Washington –The State Department didn’t revoke the visa of foiled terrorism suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab because federal counterterrorism officials had begged off revocation, a top State Department official revealed Wednesday.

Patrick F. Kennedy, an undersecretary for management at the State Department, said Abdulmutallab’s visa wasn’t taken away because intelligence officials asked his agency not to deny a visa to the suspected terrorist over concerns that a denial would’ve foiled a larger investigation into al-Qaida threats against the United States.

“Revocation action would’ve disclosed what they were doing,” Kennedy said in testimony before the House Committee on Homeland Security. Allowing Adbulmutallab to keep the visa increased chances federal investigators would be able to get closer to apprehending the terror network he is accused of working with, “rather than simply knocking out one soldier in that effort.”

[GardenSERF: Absolute Bullcr@p.]

….

Politicians have also criticized the decision to treat Abdulmutallab as a civilian after the arrest in Michigan, with Miranda rights being read to him after less than an hour of interrogation and without input from the intelligence community.

Intel from Adbulmutallab will be of little value. He was a low level bomb mule. It was only by the grace of God that he couldn’t detonate his bomb in a plane over Detroit on Christmas Day. However, if the intelligence community was supposedly tracking Adbulmutallab, one must ask why he was allowed to board the plane with a bomb in his underwear? Walk down the path to the next question: Who would have benefited if the plane had been destroyed and 289 people murdered? Why NOT try to stop it from happening in advance?

L. Cassius ille quem populus Romanus verissimum et sapientissimum iudicem putabat identidem in causis quaerere solebat ‘cui bono’ fuisset.

[Via http://gardenserf.wordpress.com]

Man Can't Shoot for the Moon, can't shoot for anywhere

2010-02-02T00:49:00.000+02:00

And NASA is basically useless, right? After $100 billion is spent on the International Space Station, NASA intends to deorbit and destroy the engineering marvel only five years after its construction is completed.

And to stick a hot poker up the collective hindquarters of NASA, President Obama’s nwe budget slashes the $100 billion “To The Moon” plans that the Space Agency had. Here’s the problem with this kind of pussy-ass action on behalf of not just the US Government, mankind has been strip-mining and raping the planet of its natural resources with reckless abandon since the Industrial Revolution started, and its on a break-neck pace currently.

Space exploration is the key to our continued survival. If we had dedicated the last 20 years to space exploration and looking to establish a permanent base on the moon — the need to power that station with solar cells and other similar types of energy collection technology would have increased our solar cell technology level by mabye 10 fold, and perhaps even the wind turbine (imagine starting a wind turbine in space and having go for days off of a single stroke of the blade?)

The Space Shuttle Program is being decommissioned this year, and there’s nothing on the near horizon to replace man’s desperate need to continue exploring space. All the unmanned drones that we’ve sent to Mars and other places in the Solar System is just fucking aroud. I would say that Obama’s decision to gut the NASA To The Moon plans will render the Space Agency irrelevant in a time when the need for a new technology would be a boon for the country, nay, the planet. In the next 5 to 15 years, when the NEXT economic downturn has hit and a new factor of production is required to pull the nation’s economy from the brink of disaster.

The one thing about NASA is that since the US Government can’t fund it, they should spin it off and make it private or they need to take all this money that they’re giving to the bitches in Detriot and the sodomizers on Wall Street and the sociopaths in the Pentagon, and pump that money into the space program. If the US wants to regain its prominence, then it needs to create new tech and as I stated early the best new tech in the last 30 years originated as programs at NASA (or other related space-age operations/companies).

[Via http://tostereotype.wordpress.com]

Full Moon Sheds Light on China

2010-01-31T08:00:00.000+02:00

Today’s blog post is dedicated to the rising tension with China. I will make a couple of comments at the end.

As China Rises, Conflict With West Rises Too

DAVOS, Switzerland —As recently as 2008, when China was still an emerging economy eager to put its best foot forward for Western consumers, it lifted censorship, at least temporarily, on several Web sites before the Beijing Olympics. At the same time, it responded to pleas from U.S. and European politicians to cooperate on several other fronts.

….

Its currency, the renminbi, is frozen at an undervalued level…

….

“China is the West’s greatest hope and greatest fear,” said Kristin Forbes, a former member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers and one of hundreds of top officials and executives flocking to this winter resort for the annual World Economic Forum, which is taking place Wednesday through Sunday.

….

China is the biggest recipient of foreign direct investment in the world: 450 of the Fortune 500 companies have business presences there, and many of those still reeling at home are doing brisk business in China. “G.M. is hurting anywhere else, but here [in China] things are quite profitable,” Mr. McGregor said.

….

Some say Chinese officials are using their country’s $2.4 trillion in foreign currency reserves as a bargaining chip, knowing that any hint of reducing those reserves would rattle currency markets.

Bargaining chip is a nice word for yoke or leash, isn’t it?

Irritable year ahead expected for relations between the US and China

It is going to be an irritable year in relations between the US and China. After Google’s threatened exit from China, the deadlock of the Copenhagen conference, the latest scrap over Taiwan and half a dozen other points of friction, it is clearly a year in which both countries are exploring whether their relationship is fundamentally changing.

….

It would be wrong to be too optimistic. This year has opened with more discord than Obama’s team appeared to expect a year ago. Nor have Sino-British relations fared well. But even if the tone is sour, it is not, at the moment, getting worse.

China may build Middle East naval base

Mr Yin said a permanent base in the region would help supply Chinese ships. “We are not saying we need our navy everywhere in order to fulfil our international commitments,” he said, cautiously. “We are saying to fulfil our international commitments, we need to strengthen our supply capacity.”

….

Yin added he was aware that Chinese naval ships in the waters near the Gulf have aroused suspicions, but believed other nations understood Beijing’s intention was to counter pirates. As the world’s largest importer of oil, China is believed to want to establish bases throughout the Indian Ocean and South China Sea to protect its tankers.

US arms sales to Taiwan raise tensions with China

China has cancelled all military exchanges with the US in a sign of its anger at the proposed sale of advanced missiles and helicopters to Taiwan.

….

Beijing has also imposed sanctions on the companies selling the arms.

“We made the decision out of considerations on the severe harm of the US arms sales to Taiwan,” said Defence Ministry spokesman Huang Xueping in a statement.

“The US plan will definitely seriously disturb the relations between the two countries.”

….

Beijing regards Taiwan as a renegade province that is still part of its territory.

….

“The US plan will definitely undermine China-US relations and bring about a serious negative impact on exchanges and co-operation in major areas between the two countries,” said He in a statement.

Under a 1979 Act of Congress, Washington is legally obliged to help Taiwan defend itself.

Flashback to 1995-1996:

Third Taiwan Strait Crisis

The Third Taiwan Strait Crisis, also called the 1995-1996 Taiwan Strait Crisis or the 1996 Taiwan Strait Crisis, was the effect of a series of missile tests conducted by the People’s Republic of China in the waters surrounding Taiwan including the Taiwan Strait from July 21, 1995 to March 23, 1996.

….

Another set of missile firings, accompanied by live ammunition exercises, occurred from August 15 to 25, 1995. Naval exercises in August were followed by amphibious exercises in November. Though many of these military activities were part of the normal PLA training regimen, this was the first time in many years that they were announced publicly.

The U.S. government responded by staging the biggest display of American military might in Asia since the Vietnam War. President Clinton ordered ships including the USS Nimitz into the Taiwan Strait in December 1995. This was the first transit by a U.S. warship in the Taiwan Straight since 1976, a clear signal by the U.S. that it was willing and ready to defend Taiwan in the face of Chinese aggression.

And what was the American response after that? Buy Chinese goods, sell them Treasury paper, and move our factories over there.

Ok, so what’s really going on this time? Will there be more saber rattling again followed by the excuse that our symbiotic dysfunctional economies are nosediving together later this year as a result? It wouldn’t be a surprise considering the same people who played “tough” back in the 1990s are still in the same federal positions today.

Is everything just about in place yet for the next world war?

[Via http://gardenserf.wordpress.com]

A Bit Rich: Calculating the real value to society of different professions

2010-01-31T00:47:00.000+02:00

The link below connects to a recent report issues by the New Economics Foundation on how the value of work is calculated. It can be dowloaded in .pdf format, or ordered printed and bound.

Thank you for passing this my way, Monika!!

————————

This report takes a new approach to looking at the value of work. We go beyond how much different professions are paid to look at what they contribute to society. We use some of the principles and valuation techniques of Social Return on Investment analysis to quantify the social, environmental and economic value that these roles produce – or in some cases undermine.

* * *

Pay matters. How much you earn can determine your lifestyle, where you can afford to live, and your aspirations and status. But to what extent does what we get paid confer ‘worth’? Beyond a narrow notion of productivity, what impact does our work have on the rest of society, and do the financial rewards we receive correspond to this? Do those that get more contribute more to society?

Our report tells the story of six different jobs. We have chosen jobs from across the private and public sectors and deliberately chosen ones that illustrate the problem. Three are low paid – a hospital cleaner, a recycling plant worker and a childcare worker. The others are highly paid – a City banker, an advertising executive and a tax accountant. We examined the contributions they make to society, and found that, in this case, it was the lower paid jobs which involved more valuable work.

The report goes on to challenge ten of the most enduring myths surrounding pay and work. People who earn more don’t necessarily work harder than those who earn less. The private sector is not necessarily more efficient than the public sector. And high salaries don’t necessarily reflect talent.

The report offers a series of policy recommendations that would reduce the inequality between different incomes and reconnect salaries with the value of work.

* * *

http://www.neweconomics.org/publications/bit-rich?utm_source=nef+%28the+new+economics+foundation%29+List&utm_campaign=daf4a1636f-eletter-january&utm_medium=email

[Via http://notimetolose.wordpress.com]

Lets Know About DEMAT ACCOUNT - Part 1

2010-01-30T08:31:00.000+02:00

Hello Friends here we come up with our another write up on “SMC Gyan Series”. .

Lets Know About DEMAT ACCOUNT - Part 1

. Topic is DEMAT ACCOUNT – Know how it really works ! . In this First part of Blog, we would try to discuss about the importance of Demat account and would like to share the fact that why demat account is must. . With growing financial awareness, more and more people now want to dabble in the share market. To do this, one should understand the basic requirements to trade in shares.

A company enlisted in a stock exchange, is under obligation to offer the securities in both physical and dematerialized mode.

Physical securities mean actual certificates giving information about the shares of a company owned by a person.

In the same manner, Dematerialization is the process of converting physical shares (share certificates) into an electronic form.

Shares once converted into dematerialized form are held in a Demat account. Today, almost all of the shares trading happens using the Demat mode of shares.

What is a Demat account? . Demat account allows you to buy, sell and transact shares without the endless paperwork and delays. It is also safe, secure and convenient. . Just as you have to open an account with a bank if you want to save your money, make cheque payments etc, you need to open a demat account if you want to buy or sell stocks. . So it is just like a bank account where actual money is replaced by shares.

You have to approach the DPs (remember, they are like bank branches), to open your demat account.

Let’s say your portfolio has 100 of Satyam, 200 of IBM and 120 of TCS shares. All these will show in your demat account.

So you don’t have to possess any physical certificates showing that you own these shares. They are all held electronically in your account.

As you buy and sell the shares, they are adjusted in your account. Just like a bank passbook or statement, the DP will provide you with periodic statements of holdings and transactions. . Is a Demat account must? . Nowadays, practically all trades have to be settled in dematerialized form.

Although the market regulator, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), has allowed trades of upto 500 shares to be settled in physical form, nobody wants physical shares any more.

So a demat account is a must for trading and investing. It is a safe and convenient means of holding securities just like a bank account is for funds.

Next Blog we would try to touch upon the aspects like why demat account as well as features and benefits of Demat account.

Stay Tuned for more and more on this

However For More latest Industry,Stock Market and Economy News Updates, Click Here

[Via http://smcinvestment.wordpress.com]

Directors’ remuneration: One long video

2010-01-30T00:47:00.000+02:00

A few months ago, I posted an item entitled Directors’ remuneration: A few long videos with links to a set of videos from a roundtable that the European Commission held last March. Judging by the brevity of commenting (not helped by my failure to follow-up Worldbystorm’s question in the third comment), I guess few people might have watched the videos. I certainly didn’t send encouraging signals when I said of them “I think it is amazing how little attention is given to the the issue of social justice“.

If you had told me before this week’s conference in Davos that a debate at the World Economic Forum would be more — much more — positive from a Left perspective than one organised by the guardians of “Social Europe“, I would not have believed you. However, one of the sessions on Wednesday was on the topic of Rethinking Compensation Models. Speakers — with the exception of Shumeet Banerjii, who sees no problem with the levels of CEO pay — were more engaged with social justice issues, and the trade union speaker, Philip Jennings of UNI Global Union was impressive.

(I loved Jennings’s reply to one of the ‘middle ground’ speakers, who responded to his passion and anger by saying that “raising the temperature does not facilitate getting to the right answers”: “I see it as my job to raise the temperature.” And then he explained why: “What we are seeing is simply unacceptable”.)

No, I wasn’t in Davos for the WEF. I watched on the web this session. It does run to 78 minutes, but much more enlightening and hopeful than the event in Brussels last March.

[Via http://cedarlounge.wordpress.com]

Indian Private Equity Industry to Hit By US Banks Curbs : Experts

2010-01-28T08:51:00.000+02:00

Indian Private Equity Industry to Hit By US Banks Curbs

In case, US President Barack Obama’s proposal to curb the role of commercial banks in hedge and PE funds is implemented, then fund-raising could indeed become a very tough task for Indian private equity players.

But at the same time, the move could help Indian funds take part in more deals, market players insist.

Obama has proposed to bar commercial banks from owning, advising and investing their own capital in PE and hedge funds.

Though most investors in Indian PE funds are university funds, endowment funds, pension funds, insurance funds and institutional investors, the industry expects the move to impact fund-raising in the long term and in big way, as banks will be barred from taking part in these funds.

A large number of venture capital and PE funds of US-based commercial banks had reduced their exposure to India during the economic slowdown.

Though few big ones like Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch etc; stayed back in the market. Indian PE players hope to get more deals if these players vacate the market. . Market experts do not see any significant impact in the coming few months, but cannot deny that a slowdown in USA market will surely impact the Indian private equity industry.

They feel that any curbs on banks would make fund-raising a very difficult task since banks were the biggest contributors of funds.

Industry players say the focus will shift from funds of banks to fund of funds, pension funds, and university and endowment funds.

“It will be difficult to put a number as these transactions are structured in a complex manner. But I believe a significant proportion of investments in India-based PE funds come from balance sheets of these banks. These firms will be affected and will have to look for new sources of money,” said Jagannadham Thunuguntla, equity head at SMC Capitals. .

[Via http://smcinvestment.wordpress.com]

Kingston Fossil Plant, Tennessee, TVA

2010-01-28T00:52:00.000+02:00

The Kingston Fossil Plant, part of the Tennessee Valley Authority, is proud of its record in reducing certain emissions at this coal fired plant as expressed in their website. Yet, and a big yet, they have not reduced the emissions of CO2, that greenhouse gas that is the main culprit in global warming. Overall, in 2008, the plant produced 9,409,452 pounds of toxics as stated in their “Toxic Release Inventory.” This figure does not include the approximately 22,000,000 pounds of Carbon dioxide released. It also appears that the 20,000 pounds of Nitrogen oxides and 100,000 pounds of Sulfur dioxide are not included in the toxic release inventory.

There is an infrastructure in this country that supports the use of massive amounts of coal as the fuel source for much of our electrical generation. This is not going to change anytime soon. Yet for every bit of coal that is burned, we put toxics and other chemicals into our air, ground, and water. Yes, the coal industry is doing much to mitigate this problem; but the fact remains that these toxics and chemicals, even if properly sequestered, are still admitted into our environment.

The long-term solution is to leave the coal in the ground and find other non-hazardous methods of energy production. Solar and wind are the best long-term solutions we have right now. Nuclear fission is not the long-term solution. However, if nuclear fusion comes into play, it may become a viable option.

Once a solar generating site has been set up, train-loads of coal need not be shipped to it. Here is a link to a Google map image of 2 such locations a few miles east of Barstow, California.

Certainly there are maintenance costs associated with all generating costs; but solar and wind plants emit no toxic chemicals or CO2.

Think “Photovoltaic.” That’s direct conversion of solar energy to electrical energy. Pioneering relativity theorist Albert Einstein won the Nobel Prize in 1921 – but not for his famous theories of relativity and the iconic equation E=mc2. The prize was for his 1905 discovery of exactly how light caused what was then called the photoelectric effect (photovoltaics). This is the wave of the future, and the sooner we jump on that bandwagon, the sooner we get away from relying on coal.

I’m sorry Wyoming, West Virginia, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and all the other states that dig coal. Start building plants to manufacture solar panels and wind generators. That’s the future.

[Via http://wetlandstom.wordpress.com]

Vac. jobs opportunities for SA students

2010-01-26T08:48:00.000+02:00

“Hi all I was approached by a recruitment company today They are looking for 400 people to assist in the boxes at the stadium during the world cup.

Job types:

1. Barmen/Waiter @ R25/hour · Required to welcome guests · Serve food and drinks · Look after them

2. Superviser/Captain @ R45/hour · Manage 5 – 10 boxes · Ensure staff are doing what is required · Ensure suites are clean and well stocked · Deal with any problems that arise

All candidates must be

· 18 years and older · presentable,

· English literate (read, write and speak clearly)

· Must be able to commit to all 8 games & 3 training sessions (11 June – 6 July 2010)

· Do not have to have waiter/barmen experience

Hours: 10am – till end of game (± 10 hour shift)

Need to get own transport to the Presclean offices in Brooklyn – vehicles will be look after (security will be present) – they will transport the staff to and from the stadium.

Dress code: they will supply a shirt – the person will need to wear black trousers, black socks, black shoes

Closing date for applications 31 January 2010 CV’s required for those wanting to do the supervisor job

This is open to everyone –

Please send me names & contact details ASAP!!

Details I need: Address, Contact number, ID, Shirt size and Next of kin details.

Especially for the unemployed/youth in our communities[Alexia Leetz] - send details to Zaeemah Dollie Dollie.Zaeemah@damelin.co.za“

[Via http://minilicious.wordpress.com]

Dual Specialites

2010-01-26T00:47:00.000+02:00

Having dual and diverse specialities is one way to become highly in-demand in this age of short-term employment and globalized competition. Unfortunately, many educators and parents have not realised that and some even discourage dual specialisation, seeing it as a waste of time.

In JC, I wanted to do Biology and Economics. The principal refused. You had to do either (1) Biology, Chemistry, Physics, and Maths, or (2) Economics, Chemistry, Physics and Maths.

I wanted (3) Biology, Economics, Chemistry and Maths. There were students who wanted other Biology combinations too… eg. (4) Biology, Economics, Maths, Physics. They were refused too.

The reason given for refusing us? In order to get into the Medical Faculty, you needed combination (1). What could you do with option (2,3, 4) besides teaching?!!

Today, Health Economists and Biostatisticians are amongst the world’s most sought after specialists. They are so rare, because we’ve always been conditioned to think that we need to be a master of one, rather than a jack of all trades, especially here in Asia.

Health Economists are people who are both specialists in biology/medical/health sciences , AND economics. [ combi (3) Biology, Economics, Chemistry, Maths] These are the people who plan and design national health care systems, deciding who to subsidise, what to spend money on, how to generate revenue etc. They are the people employed by WHO to create financially sustainable health care programmes for countries in need of help. Large pharmaceuticals or investment firms pay them huge salaries to forecast which class of drugs is worth investing in. Large insurance companies need them to forecast how much medical-claims they have to pay, and how much premiums to charge to be profitable.

Biostatisticians are people who are both specialists in biology/medical/health sciences AND maths [combi (4) Biology, Economics, Maths, Physics/Further Maths] After sampling 1% of the population, the Biostatistician tells you how many people in the country are likely HIV+, how many people are going to be HIV+ in 10 years. Biostatisticians are arguably THE people responsible for the whole Human Genome Project and all the genetic studies we’re going to do over the next 50 years.

(I’ve described what other highly sought-after dual specialities are, at the end of the main article.)

Lately, because I’m finishing up my PhD thesis, people are asking me what I want to do after graduation. When I tell them I’ll like to go into public health planning & policy-making, they go “Why don’t you want to do lab research?!?! Your PhD would be wasted and you’ve been in biology research for 10 years!” hmmm….. wait till they hear that I want to go into religious studies one of these days too ; )

A person’s health conditions are determined by a combination of his/her genetics, environment and behaviour. My PhD hopefully makes me an expert of the first. Going into public-health will hopefully make me an expert in seeing how we can create environments good for every citizen’s health. And religion — that’s fascinating! It’s fascinating how religion can be so subjective, faith-driven, and yet have such huge tangible effects on our economy, politics, health and society. So many religious practices have direct impact on health-determining behaviour. So many religious commands, I suspect, has its roots in ancient public health policies.

Few people understand the concept of dual/multiple specialities until you explain it to them. Most of the time, that’s all right = ) We can’t all know everything, and we learn something new each day.

However, I think it is very dangerous and sad when parents and educators don’t understand this concept, and INSIST on how a child should be educated, INSIST that a child should not do such dual/multiple and diverse subjects in school. It’s very dangerous and sad when parents and educators assume that they know how the world works, and how the world will work in future, and INSIST on limiting a child’s potential, in the name of NOT WASTING TIME. Because in the end, you might be denying these children some fantastic opportunities to really make it big in this world.

Many developed countries, including Singapore, are seeing increasing and very worrying unemployment trends amongst PMETs (Professionals, Managers, Executives, Technicians). This is not surprising given how India and China are mass producing cheap PMETs. Telling people that they should not be picky, have better attitudes, accept lower pays, getting re-trained, improves the situation to a certain extend. However, few people accept this advice happily.

I look on with worry, at the number of engineers, bankers, biotechnologists etc we’re churning out. No doubt, these are good jobs with good incomes in good times. But when the industry goes through a bad patch, you get lots of unemployment. On an individual level, you really have to be in the top percentile to keep your job. How can YOU as an individual make yourself more recession-proof? How do you increase how in-demand you are? Many people decide to do advanced degrees, which is great. Getting an advanced degree in your field, is great too, because you’re capitalising on what you already have. However, you’ll still be competing with people specialised the same way, and there’re just so many more of such people.

On the other hand, few people specialise in 2 different areas, and few people might choose the same combination as you did. Suddenly, you are peerless. There’s no competition. The demand for such dual specialists far outstrips the number of such specialists, and you become an expert overnight. One such example is Dr Martha Lee, whom people often mistake me for. She’s specialised in Communication, Public Policy and Sexuality — 3 specialities ( www.eroscoaching.com/profile.html ) . It’s easy to see how each of her specialities have complemented each other, how she has been able to market herself as an expert in Sexology to become Singapore’s leading Clinical Sexologist in less than a year.

So why not consider doing a specialisation in a totally different field? You wouldn’t be wasting your first degree. You’ll be one of those rare, rare people, who can do it all.

———————————————————————————————————

High-demand dual specialities.

( Everything here is health/biology-related, because of my familiarity with this field. I’m sure you can come up with your own speciality-pairings in your familiar field)

Health Economists

Biostatisticians

Computational biologists (Computer Science + Biology)–

The human genome has 3 billon letters. Trust me, you need high CPU power for that one.

Biology – Engineering –

I’m referring to the people who create the powerful machines that push biological experiments to the cutting edge. You need to know engineering to make it work, you need to know biology to make it useful.

Lawyers –

Indispensible aren’t they? Trust me, defending pharmas, doctors and hospitals from lawsuits are huge money. Handling Intellectual Property for pharmas and research institutions are huge money. But if I told my JC principal I wanted to do Biology, Econs, Maths and English Literature, she’ll just roll her eyes and not even bother with me.

Science Journalists —

A lot of public misunderstanding and suspicion of science and biology happens because most scientists frankly, are too specialised too communicate normally.

Biology and politics, biology and religion etc etc —-

you see why bad policies/doctrines are made? Sometimes it’s not because of anything more than ignorance.

[Via http://mathialee.wordpress.com]

Follow along now, I'll get there in JUUUST a minute.

2010-01-24T00:25:00.000+02:00

I LOVE shit like this. Exercises the brain, gives you a wake up call. What, you may ask? “Conspiracy Theories” that prove to be true.

“Conspiracy THEORY? It’s only a theory until you prove it!”

THAT is an article about some, by no means all, that have been proven after dismissal by “the powers” because they’re very ugly. Go read that, I’ll wait.

Now to the point.

You KNEW that, somehow, no matter how much shit got thrown at the masses to try to blind them, ObaMao was coming for our ability to fight back. He, and his crew, would try to defang the “Gadsden Snake”. Cripple if not remove our ability to overthrow the tyrannical government envisaged by our Founding Fathers.

Freedom Fighter did the research and had some links. I will take you to those links, and expound. This one is from Infowars, they’re very good at being on top of stuff.

Simply enough put, that is false charges AND an attempt at entrapment with them. Anybody ever buy a house? Or sell a house? You pay the inspector, you pay the realtor. The other name for this is “lead commission” on a sale to the agent or agents establishing the sale of a good or product to another entity. But what the puppets of the Bilderbergs are trying to do is cripple those of this nation. This, from The New World Order Report, identifies further the who and what of that set of attacks on our freedom, and ability to retain it. Jimmuh Peanut, or his congress critters, established the law that these men are accused of violating.

I don’t mean to dwell on the NWO aspect, but look back at that earlier post about “the people that own the Earth”. Look at the PROVEN “Conspiracy Theories”. Look at the STATED intent, from the campaign trail, of this government. How much of a theory, how much of a stretch to see that as quite probable truth?

Then we have the shut down of the Texas gun show, as set up by the Austin PD, or the ATF, or whoever it actually WAS that set this up.

It is not illegal for private citizens in Texas to sell firearms. The demand by the ATF and Austin cops is a direct violation of the Commerce Clause(Article I, Section 8, Clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution). In addition, under the terms of the Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986, individuals “not engaged in the business” of dealing firearms, or who only make “occasional” sales within their state of residence (including parking lots) are not subjected to federal regulation.

What they did was provide false identities to convicted criminals and illegal aliens. Then they sent them in to make PRIVATE purchases from NON-FFL PRIVATE sellers, who would not have the resources to check, and would NOT fall under the “known, or should have known” that these buyers were not simply other citizens wishing to make said private purchase to avoid dealer mark-ups. So they’re Mexicans. Or Mexican-Americans. Has anybody out there got the first fucking clue about how many “persons of Hispanic origin” there are around these parts? Go read that link. In it, right below the one I just quoted, is even more good linkage to the first point in here.

And then there’s this, an FBI identification of “persons of interest” sent to gunshops. They’re coming. They’re trying to cripple our ability to fight back. They’ve been around for damn near a millenia, what makes you think they can’t hold on another 10, 20, 30 years?

Check the links, read the articles, hell, do a bit of background yourself. If we don’t stop them, we’re done.

[Via http://cmblake6.wordpress.com]

Spanish Verb Conjugation - The Basics

2010-01-23T07:58:00.000+02:00

The importance of understanding the conjugation of Spanish verbs can not be underestimated. Having an excellent knowledge of the basic training Spanish verb provide a solid basis for future studies.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

PR Log (Press Release) – 21 Jan 2010 – Spanish verb forms are generally quite disciplined and easy to learn clean fireplace. There are actually three types of verb you need to know, regular verbs, irregular and reflexive, and each verb, regardless of type of verb, will have one of these three purposes,-ar,-er and-ir.All forms of Spanish verb without exception belong to either-ar,-er or-ir groups, but with regular verbs Spanish verbs we start.Regular Forms: The group of regular verbs is by far the most three large groups of verb forms with verbs ending in-ar greatest.All regular verbs follow the same pattern as provided by the grammatical rules governing regular verbs in Spanish, and they are; When the stem of the verb is it usually means, especially with regular verbs, the verb, the less is finished, for example, the stem of hablar (to speak) would HABL. (we use the regular ar verb hablar in this example) In this example the conjugation of hablar now a regular-ar verb, you can see that the stem is used for each pronoun, but the endings are different, which makes Spanish, which is affectionately called, prodrop language, which means that in most cases, the pronoun may be filed as the verb ending is enough to show who is the fulfillment of task.Obviously it There will be times of ambiguity and, where appropriate, the pronoun is generally used.HABL Yo-o I speakTú HABL as you speakÉl / Ella / Usted HABL-a He / She / It speaks (as you mention [in the singular policy] is used when Usted) Nosotros HABL-Amos We speakVosotros HABL You speakEllos-Ais / Ellas / Ustedes-year HABL They / You tell ([plural of politeness] when Ustedes is used) This example shows that the present for a regular-ar verb, but every other time have their specific models of training as the main thing to remember is that all verbs that are designated regular follow these models, the same can be said for ER-and-ir verbs, althou Hot News: Meet The Neighbors Attending Microcredit Summit in Nairobi

[Via http://roniyon.wordpress.com]

What kind of economics?

2010-01-23T00:47:00.000+02:00

Last night, the London School of Economics hosted a public debate, with Geoffrey Hodgson and Paul Ormerod, on the question, ““What kind of economics should we teach?”

Here is a link to a pdf version of Hodgson’s slide show. His main point:

Students should be trained to question assumptions and adjudicate wisely between competing explanations.

And for that economics education needs to include philosophy, the history of economic thought, and economic history. Otherwise, students are taught a set of neoclassicals principles and formal models as a common sense, as a single representation of the economy.

The debate held at the LSE is happening around the world. Unfortunately, it’s exactly the kind of debate that is going to be eliminated at the University of Notre Dame (for more, see here and here).

[Via http://anticap.wordpress.com]

The beginning of the end of the USA?

2010-01-21T08:00:00.000+02:00

I’m not one to make predictions about the demise of the last superpower, since there are too many of those, but with the thumping of the Democrats for the senate seat in Massachusetts – the safest Democrat seat in the country, we are told – I can’t help the feeling that things are fucked across the Pacific. It’s not so much that the Democrat candidate – Martha Coakley – blew a 31% lead, but that voters are now angrily blaming the government, whatever government, for their increasing ills. Not a good time to be in government; not a good time to be in the USA.

[Via http://stalinsmoustache.wordpress.com]

The Common root causes of sickness in Bees and Humans - are we both headed towards the same early human caused extinction?

2010-01-21T00:36:00.000+02:00

The BBC has an interesting article today that links the decline in bees in many countries to the decline in biodiversity. I agree with the article and have a further take on the subject.

Shock horror – bees are getting sick for exactly the same reasons as humans – they are eating a diet and getting stressed in ways that their systems weren’t evolved for – and the cause is the modern human environment, diet and lifestyle.

Just as we are increasingly eating a diet of processed sugars and carbohydrates – that come from fewer and fewer food sources so are the bees.

Note: Processed and reconstructed variations of corn and soy make up an increasing component of the diet of humans and animals, and this includes bees. One of the ironies is that bees have access to a more diverse diet in cities than they do in the country side – there is now more plant diversity in cities than in the modern farming countryside.

Bees no longer live in stable environments. The bee industry has been commercialised. Bees are now dragged all around the country in trucks to service different farms. This constant change and travel causes stress in much the same way as we humans are stressed by changing jobs, work environments and constant travel. And it should be no surprise that chronic stress weakens their immune systems in the same way as it does ours.

And, to supplement their bland diets and increased workloads, commercial bees are fed simple sugars in much the same way as we feed ourselves sweets, sugary drinks and coffee to keep ourselves going.

The problem for the bees, and poor humans, is that they don’t have choices like the well off humans do. Their environmental choices are set and limited by the environmental conditions created by the wealthy humans who own the businesses that create these environmental conditions and employ the less well off.

The bad news for the wealthy humans is that they are shooting themselves in the foot. If the bees die off the human species will die off too.

The downside of being at the top of the food chain is that we humans are dependent on the survival of the species lower down the food chain for our survival.

While the wealthy have the option of escaping climate change and environmental damage in the short run, by moving location and putting on the air con, the species on which our survival depends do not have this luxury.

99.9% of species that have been on this planet are extinct and we are now in the midst of the 6th great extinction. And this extinction is being caused by us humans.

Alan McCrindle

[Via http://alanmccrindle.wordpress.com]

Make 'Em Pay!

2010-01-19T08:28:00.000+02:00

For months now I have been a bitch about the taxpayers money being used to give bonuses to the fat cats on Wall Street…..at every turn the banks have gotten a special treatment and it looked like the taxpayer was screwed…..

Today Obama will announce a plan to recover upwards of $120 billion of the money originally given the banks….

Obama’s announcement will come as U.S. unemployment is stuck in double digits and public anger is growing over big bonuses that some financial firms are poised to resume paying, barely a year after the height of the global financial crisis that made the bailout necessary.

The Obama administration official said the amount of money raised from the fees would not exceed $120 billion since this was the higher end of conservative estimates of the cost of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP.

Sounds like a pretty good idea to me….but as usual there is a downside to the plan…..The source, speaking anonymously because the fee has not officially been proposed, said government officials are also discussing exempting automakers and insurer American International Group from the fee, even though these companies are expected to represent a large chunk of the bailout losses.

There are other ways of “Making Them Pay”……that would be a Goldman-Sachs shareholder that is suing the company……this was posted in “Before Its News”:

the firm is supposed to spend about 50% of its net revenue on salaries and bonuses. But in 2008 Goldman dished out $4.82 billion in bonuses despite earnings of only $2.32 billion..In the first quarter of 2009, it spent 259% of its net income on employee and executive compensation and in the second quarter 193%. Brown is now Goldman for exceeding its own rules on salaries and bonuses.

I makes me happy to see that at least someone is mad enough to do something as a payback for the screwing the banks have given the taxpayer….I just wish more people would take these a/holes to task….

[Via http://lobotero.wordpress.com]

January Recommendations

2010-01-19T00:47:00.000+02:00

Who doesn’t like recommendations?? Eh? Who? No-one. So, even in the midst of piles and piles of books, here are some for you from me:

Florence & The Machine – Lungs

Review here

Listen here

Soul-tinged, bluesy alt-rock. Lyrically interesting. Highly recommended by U2. Music the wife and I can agree on.

Sufjan Stevens – The BQE

Review here

Listen here

His first classical album. Some excellent tracks. Number three sounds quite like Satie. Being received well in the ‘classical community’ apparently.

•

Philip Goodchild – The Exceptional Political Theology of St. Paul – PDF here

Fine article, if a bit rough around the edges, arguing for the exceptionality of Paul’s political theology, in conversation with recent atheist treatment from the likes of Badiou, Žižek and Agamben.

Philip Goodchild – What Is Wrong With The Global Financial System – PDF here

Another good one, Goodchild giving his diagnosis of our ongoing economic troubles, and arguing that a more radical solution than simply “better regulation” is required to fix them. Actually offers quite a bleak outlook.

•

The Radical Orthodoxy Reader (Oliver & Milbank)

Details here

Love it or hate it, and people do, this is an absolutely stunning introduction to all things radically orthodox. Articles by Milbank, Pickstock, Ward and Cavanaugh. Lucid introductions to each section by Simon Oliver.

Democracy & Tradition – Jeffrey Stout

Details here / Preview here

Interesting discussion of the place of traditioned communities in liberal democracies, contra Rawls et al on one side, and Macintyre, Milbank and Hauerwas on the other. Suggests a mode of genuine ‘conversation’ is achievable in political discourse without any notion of ‘public reason’. Not entirely convinced, but an interesting read.

AND FINALLY

Dr. Samuel Johnson’s fabulous Twitter Feed

link here

I’m not a fan of Twitter, but this alone has made me glad it exists. Witty 18th Century commentary on 21st Century news and culture from writer of renowned dictionary. Here are a few gems from the last few days:

“In England, Snowfall & Society do proceed in Lock-Step: one Inch of Snowfall does equate to one Day of SOCIAL COLLAPSE”

“He who wishes to brush the Cloak of Mortality should brake in Herr AUDI’s Prussian Carriage ‘pon an icy Highway”

“Mister JOBS descends from Cupertino brandishing a TABLET unto the same Adulation as MOSES descending from Mt. SINAI”

[Via http://simrav.wordpress.com]

How High Pay Interferes With Ethical of Even Logical Decision Making

2010-01-17T08:27:00.000+02:00

Is our compensation system pushing us to do things that are right for society generally?

There is a great misconception that is almost a requirement for one to believe if one lives in the US. This is that high pay is necessary for motivation and that more pay causes more motivation, and that this motivation is always in the right direction. Undiscussed is whether compensation can cause people to be over-motivated and to actually do things that are bad for society in general. The question to ask is what would a person do for $1 million or even $20 million? How can people who make such large amounts of money be expected to put anything in front of that money? What would you do for that much money? Would you use sweatshop labor, would you perform unnecessary operations? The higher pay becomes, the more likely unethical behavior will result. In fact, pay does not need to be what any of us would consider outrageous; in fact it only needs to be high relatively to what else the individual is used to.

Illegal Aliens: The vast majority of illegal aliens in the US are Mexican. Mexico, along with the much of Latin America has drastically mismanaged its economy, infrastructure, and is a basket case. Because of this pay in Mexico is extremely low, and the vast majority of the population in Mexico is completely illiterate and treated no better than slaves by the white / Spanish over-class. The pay in the US is so much higher, that it causes Mexicans to violate immigration law and to migrate to the US at great danger to themselves. Once in the US, they will do any job, no matter how dangerous in order to survive. The primary reason for this is because they can make 10x the money they would make in the Mexico.
H1-B Visa: These are work visas for temporary workers that allow large companies like IBM and Accenture to bill very high rates to clients, while paying their workers less, and enriching the elite at these companies. The H1-B workers will do anything to stay in the US and can be pressured to IBM and Accenture to say anything and get behind any program in order to stay. This
Doctors: Because of overcompensation doctors perform a large number of unnecessary operations, and continually look for pharmaceutical solutions to health maintenance problems. Overcompensation of physicians is one reason why the US only scores 37 in the world in health while spending 16 times what countries do who are similarly ranked.
CEOs: These individuals make so much more money than the rest of society that they really see themselves as separate from it. They will make decisions that benefit their stock price to the detriment of very other priority in society including the health and wellbeing of their employees, the cleanliness of the environment and the sustainability of the overall society.
Wall Street Workers: As we have chronicled repeatedly in this blog, Wall Street is an unnecessary grouping of financial firms that pulls money from the rest of the economy without providing anything of value back. The US economy would be larger if not for the stock market and mortgage backed securities and other derivatives. Wall Street loads up companies and other financial services companies load up individuals with debt without consideration to what it does to their lives.

Conclusion

Compensation is directed towards the wrong things and away from those areas of the economy that actually add value. The compensation in the US, and in other countries, needs to be altered so that people have the incentives that are aligned with what is good for society generally. The current compensation model is based upon what you can “extract” from the system, not what an individual contributes to the system.

[Via http://counterecon.com]

Local Registered Nurse Receives Prestigious Award

2010-01-16T23:58:00.000+02:00

Debbie J. Judd, RN was awarded the status of diplomat after completing a two-year fellowship in clinical science of anti-aging, regenerative and functional medicine online nursing programs.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Log-PR (Press Release) – January 16, 2010 – Spokane, Washington, December 29, 2009-Debbie J. Judd, RN was awarded the status of diplomat after completing a two-year fellowship in clinical science of anti-aging, regenerative and functional medicine. The scholarship program is offered by the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine organization. "Anti-Aging Medicine is a clinical medical specialty and field of scientific research aimed at early detection, prevention, treatment, and reversal of age-related decline. It is well documented in medical journals and and uses scientific methods based on evidence to make patient assessments.The American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine was established in 1997 as doctor of professional certification and review board, which offers recognition of physicians in the form of specialty-based examination in Anti -Aging Medicine. It represents 12,500 physicians, scientists, health professionals, mental and public health from 73 countries worldwide. "1 The health of the U.S. population is rapidly declining. With obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer on the rise, there must be a new direction and approach to treatment these chronic diseases and related problems. Functional and regenerative medicine are the new paradigm of health care. Patient "life stories" are evaluated for underlying causes of disease; lifestyle are used to relieve Many symptoms related to chronic diseases. Debbie Judd is co-owner with her husband, Dr. Michael Judd, of the Metabolic Institute.The Metabolic Institute has been in business for four years and focuses on evidence-based medicine using a functional approach in medicine in the treatment of chronic diseases. In addition to working at the Institute, Debbie is currently a student at Gonzaga University to pursue studies t

[Via http://porrtocar.wordpress.com]

A Lesson In Crony Capitalism

2010-01-16T08:43:00.000+02:00

The Obama Administration’s favoritism towards its political allies is glaringly obvious. They want to impose a “Financial Responsibility Tax” on banks, but they are willing to give a pass to the automakers who have benefited from TARP and have yet to repay the American tax payers. Here is an excerpt from the Wall Street Journal:

The real TARP losers—General Motors, Chrysler and delinquent mortgage borrowers—are exempt from the new tax. Why the auto companies? An Administration official told the Journal that the banks caused the crisis that doomed the auto companies, which apparently were innocent bystanders to their own bankruptcy. The fact that the auto companies remain wards of Washington no doubt has nothing to do with their free tax pass.

Also exempt are Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which operate outside of TARP but also surely did more than any other company to cause the housing boom and bust. The key to understanding their free tax pass is that on Christmas Eve Treasury lifted the $400 billion cap on their potential taxpayer losses expressly so they can rewrite more underwater mortgages at a loss.

In other words, the White House wants to tax more capital away from profit-making banks to offset the intentional losses that the politicians have ordered up at Fan and Fred. The bank tax revenue will flow directly into the Treasury to be spent on whatever immediate cause Congress favors. Come the next “systemic risk” bailout, taxpayers will still be on the hook. “Responsibility” is not the word that comes to mind here.

[Via http://thecanopener.wordpress.com]

Separation of Race and State

2010-01-16T00:43:00.000+02:00

MSNBC.com published a story about the increase in the number of moms as sole breadwinners.

What I found disturbing in this age and it was probably unintentional and maybe not was the racial profiling of Americans.

Some people may think it is important what a black or latino family makes as compared to oriental or caucasian, but to me that is state verification or acknowledgement that not all Americans are equal and they publish numbers illustrating the inequalities.

For example:

According to the Census data, the increase in the number of moms as the only worker was seen across all racial and ethnic groups. But it was biggest among black women, whose numbers rose from 9 percent in 2007 to 12 percent last year as black men suffered disproportionately higher rates of unemployment. The share of Hispanic moms rose from 5 percent to 8 percent, while the share of white non-Hispanic women rose from 4 percent to 7 percent and the share of Asian women grew from 5 percent to 7 percent.

According to the data, white women have less financial responsibility that a black woman. Which makes a black woman better prepared to fend for herself than a white woman.

Anyway, if I were in one of the mentioned groups I would feel a little uncomfortable that my government is not viewing me as an equal citizen, but a citizen of race. Like a white America, black American, non white Latino American or Oriental American.

Me, I’m a pygmy so I don’t show up on any demographic charts and am too small for the census people to take seriously. Have you ever heard of a pygmy American?

[Via http://plainview.wordpress.com]

Free software and externalities

2010-01-14T08:50:00.000+02:00

I’ve been thinking of externalities and by far the hardest form of externality examples to come up with has to be “positive production externalities”. That is, where the production of a good or service leads to a beneficial spillover effect for the rest of society’s producers. I came across an older post by Jason Welker where he speaks of the difficulty in providing examples. In that post he quotes economics professor Dr. Tim Haab who had this to say about PPEs:

The problems usually come in defining a positive production externality. A benefit to someone that is not fully captured by the producers–usually difficult because producers are usually pretty funny about finding ways to recover the full benefits of their production.

The case of proprietary software provides evidence for this claim. When proprietary software is published, it uses trade secret, patent and copyright laws to keep other producers from benefiting fully from the spillover. For example, trade secrecy keeps useful source code hidden from 3rd parties. Patent laws can keep 3rd parties from implementing similar ideas in their programs. As well, non-disclosure agreements are used within companies in an attempt to stop any benefit from “leaking” to other producers. Proprietary software production is an allocatively inefficient deployment of resources (historically justified under the fallacy that quality software won’t be written otherwise) and represents a market failure.

In the case of Free software production, the PPE isn’t negated by NDAs and patent thickets. With Free software, all producers are affected by the benefit. Non-copylefted Free software brings the marginal private cost (MPC) curve closer to the marginal social cost (MSC) curve while copylefted Free software aligns the two even closer as producers are unable to prevent others from acquiring the same benefits they received. Therefore, it makes the most sense for government policies to support businesses and other institutions in a way that encourages even more development of Free software.

On a related but unfortunate note, countries like Germany are trying to correct a negative consumption externality of proprietary software. Specifically, the burden of malware. Promoting Free software also tackles this problem as Free software offers users the best defense against malicious code.

[Via http://gnuosphere.wordpress.com]

There really is no correct way to raise a kid

2010-01-14T00:50:00.000+02:00

My head is full of a bunch of ideas, so instead of boring you 2 viewers out there with a bunch of paragraphs, I’ll just list everything.

I was watching a video of me as a child over Christmas vacation at my parents’ place, and it was depressing. The kid, me, in the video grew up to be embarrassed about any childish activities he took part in, despite the activities being proper for his age. My dad had little tolerance of childishness, and I picked up on that early on. One of the first times I found out was my mom clued me in that he didn’t like it when I ran around in my underwear in the house. I think I was 6 at the time, and I never forgot that, and I wore clothes in the house forever after that.
Dad lost his father when he was young, and probably grew up super quick, losing out on his childhood.
Dad also expected a lot out of me, which made me push myself hard in school and get better grades than the average kid, even though maybe I was pretty average myself. I learned lots of stuff outside of class, and while I may not have been smarter than the average kid by the end of high school, I knew different stuff and could hold interesting conversations.
Mom complimented me relentlessly and still does. Dad, not so much. I never cared that mom complimented me, but every time dad did it I loved it.
I tried to please dad at every turn, but wasn’t sure how to do it. I think I picked up the idea that he liked mom, so I tried to look like mom, but was scared to death he might find out about it. Pretty confusing for me. I was a closet CD early on. So I went about it the opposite way, by doing fight scenes and action films. He liked these, but the other compulsion was always there.
In an attempt to impress him with my intelligence I started studying economics and the like, which ended up working against me since he doesn’t agree with any of it. This is a fairly recent event, since I only picked up these ideas in the past 18 months or so, and I’ve noticed my CD tendencies have been off the charts. Rarely does he say anything nice about my views on economics, or say I have a good point, even when I debate him out of the room. This happened during Christmas too, and it was pretty disappointing.
That’s when I came up with the plot for my movie, about the self-destructive guy who’s forever trying to impress his dead father and has no other real course in life. The store came out like someone opened a valve.
I worry/wonder if my CD habits are going to start fading once/if this ever clears up.
At least I wrote a kick-ass story.
Maybe I’m totally wrong, because I come up with a new theory all the time. This one seems better than the rest, though.

[Via http://xout.wordpress.com]

Fund Raising by PE and VCs to Increase by 30-40 percent in 2010

2010-01-12T07:59:00.000+02:00

Fund Raising by PE and VCs to Increase by 30-40 percent in 2010

Private equity (PE) players and venture capitalists (VCs) are back in the market to raise funds.

Market experts believe that 2010 will see these players raising $13-15 billion, almost as equal to what PE players and VCs raised in 2008.

PE players and VCs had raised $10-11 billion in 2009, though most of this was in the second half of 2009.

Experts expect to see a 30-40 per cent rise in fund-raising this calendar year courtesy PE players and VCs.

“Close to 45 funds are either preparing to enter the market or have already hit the road to raise funds. While I feel that matching the level of 2007 is difficult, the year will be better than 2009,” said Jagannadham Thunuguntla, equity head, SMC Capitals.

Industry experts expect that this year will be governed by returns. Many Industry experts are of view that LPs are going to focus on returns and returns will be more than 20 per cent, better than in 2009. . “I think LPs are still trying to rework their portfolios. It will be difficult for general partners to convince LPs to invest,” said Thunuguntla.

Infrastructure, consumer services, education, healthcare, financial and clean technology will be the favoured sectors, say experts.

One sector that is already in focus is infrastructure. The players are in the process of raising close to Rs 8,541 crore ($1.78billion) worth of infrastructure funds.

“Investors will become company-specific rather than sector-specific. Good sectors can have bad companies and so it makes sense to focus on companies,” said Thunuguntla.

Fund-raising by VCs already seems to be gaining momentum. Moreover Industry experts are of view that fund-raising will be more selective this year. It will be better in 2010 than what was seen in 2008-09.

However experts say that the number of funds that get allocation from LPs will come down significantly this year.

[Via http://smcinvestment.wordpress.com]

Obama's Progressive Radical Socialist Transformation of America--Government Dependence To Command and Control The American People

2010-01-12T00:39:00.000+02:00

Glenn Beck Show – January 11, 2010 part 1 of 7

Glenn Beck Show – January 11, 2010 – Pt 2 of 7

Glenn Beck Show – January 11, 2010 – Pt 3 of 7

Glenn Beck Show – January 11, 2010 – Pt 4 of 7

Glenn Beck Show – January 11, 2010 – Pt 5 of 7

Glenn Beck Show – January 11, 2010 – Pt 6 of 7

Glenn Beck Show – January 11, 2010 – Pt 7 of 7

[Via http://raymondpronk.wordpress.com]

Environmentalism "uber alles"?

2010-01-10T16:45:00.000+02:00

While there are valid reasons to be concerned about environmental degradation, we’re now in a situation in which concerns over saving the environment are being co-opted to support an agenda in which people and nations have are being cast as enemies. Look at they’ve been saying:

“In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill …All these dangers are caused by human intervention and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy, then, is humanity itself.” – Club of Rome, The First Global Revolution, consultants to the UN.

“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsiblity to bring that about?” – Maurice Strong, former Secretary General of UNEP

“The concept of national sovereignty has been immutable, indeed a sacred principle of international relations. It is a principle which will yield only slowly and reluctantly to the new imperatives of global environmental cooperation.” – UN Commission for Global Governance report (1999)

“We’ve got to ride this global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy.“ -- Timothy Wirth, former US Under Secretary of State,

current Head of the UN Foundation

“No matter if the science of global warming is all phony… climate change provides the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world.” – Christine Stewart, former Canadian Minister of the Environment

“…we need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination…. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts…. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.“ -- Stephen Schneider, Stanford Professor of Climatology, lead Author of many IPCC reports

“The only way to get our society to truly change is to frighten people with the possibility of a catastrophe.” — emeritus professor Daniel Botkin

“We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis…” -- David Rockefeller, Club of Rome executive member

“A New World Order is required to deal with the Climate Change crisis.” -- Gordon Brown, British Prime Minister

“Democracy is not a panacea. It cannot organize everything and it is unaware of its own limits. These facts must be faced squarely. Sacrilegious though this may sound, democracy is no longer well suited for the tasks ahead. The complexity and the technical nature of many of today’s problems do not always allow elected representatives to make competent decisions at the right time.” – Club of Rome, The First Global Revolution

Quotes above are from the Windfarms blog.

Thanks to Marjorie Tietjen at Lyme Disease Sentinel blog for the heads-up.

[Via http://thebovine.wordpress.com]

2020 Retrospective: What will the '10's be remembered for?

2010-01-10T00:41:00.000+02:00

With the new decade, and my newly redesigned blog underway, there will be new issues that will change the landscape of the sport more drastically than the last. The rise of sports media may have changed how sports is reported, however this new decade could bring about the restructuring of leagues, networks, and even the fabric of a team. Here are the three events I foresee changing the landscape of professional sports.

3. The end of the ESPN Monopoly

ESPN has established itself as THE place to go for sports news. If a story breaks, it isn’t official until you hear about it from ESPN. Though their online presence has been eaten away by other online news sources, their television presence is unmatched. They hold the rights to broadcast three of the four major sports in the United States and hold broadcast rights for numerous NCAA events.

The reason they have this monopoly is because there hasn’t been a large enough entity to compete with ESPN and their parent company, ABC/Disney. News Corp tried launching Fox Sports Net as a national sports news network, but it unfortunately fell flat and is now a regional sports network. CBS has their own college sports network, as well as broadcast rights to the NFL and College Football and Basketball, but it doesn’t nearly have the reach as ESPN.

Ironically for ESPN, it might be the sports entity they don’t have broadcast rights to that could lead to a dramatic shift in sports on television.

The NHL sold its broadcast rights to VERSUS in 2005 after ESPN declined to match the $200 million that VERSUS offered. Since then, the network has quietly been picking up other sports properties, such as College football, College basketball, and World Extreme Cagefighting (owned by UFC). VERSUS made efforts to buy the rights to broadcast MLB games in 2006, but came up short.

On the surface, this might not seem significant, however VERSUS is owned by the cable television provider Comcast, which owns several cable television channels. In addition, they also operate Comcast SportsNet stations in various markets, including Chicago, Michigan, Philadelphia, Washington DC/Baltimore, New England, Northern and Central California, and the Pacific Northwest. On top of that, they also launched The Mtn. (based in Colorado) and SportsNet New York and are a minority partner in the MLB Network. These Comcast Sports affiliates carry FSN Sports programming and games. They also acquired the rights to broadcast NBA games locally in those markets.

Comcast’s biggest splash occurred in December of 2009, when they bought a controlling interest in NBC/Universal, giving them 51% control of NBA/Universal. This gives them tremendous influence nationwide and further increasing revenues.

If they already operate local regional sports stations, and they own a controlling interest of a major broadcast network, don’t you think that a National Sports Network is next? Three of the four major sports leagues have television contracts expiring during the next decade, and with Comcast owning a piece of NBC, the pieces are in place to create and successfully launch a large enough network to compete with ESPN the same way CNN and Fox News compete.

The difference though is that ABC/Disney is not a cable provider. On the other hand, Comcast is a growing cable provider who can get their network on everyone’s cable packages and make matters worse for other broadcast companies.

2. The Restructuring of Professional Sports Leagues

The early 2000’s saw increased revenues across the board for all four major American sports leagues. Television contracts got richer, leagues and teams found new ways to bring in revenue, and more importantly, more fans came out to the games.

In 2008, the worst financial collapse since the Great Depression of the 1930’s unfolded. Unemployment has skyrocketed in the past 24 months into double digits, and many Americans are out of work, and those that still have their jobs have much less disposable income than in the past.

Unfortunately for sports teams and leagues, less disposable income means less revenue for teams. Many teams that had been struggling to operate in good times are now deep in the red, highlighted by the Phoenix Coyotes declaring bankruptcy and being owned by the NHL. Because there’s less revenue, many of the smaller market teams simply can’t compete financially with those teams in larger markets. the disparity between the have and the have-nots is growing to where there are many more bad teams than there are good because the bad teams cannot bring in marquis players without taking a huge financial hit.

There are going to be two results I foresee happening in this decade. The first will be relocation of teams. All of the leagues saw major expansion in the 90’s and 00’s when times were good. Markets that would normally not be home to professional sports teams were given franchises of their own, even if it didn’t make much sense, such as putting a NHL franchise in Nashville. If there’s a market that can make a team financially viable, they will move there.

The NHL’s failed expansion in the southern part of the United States might be the gain of cities in the northern United States and Canada. Hockey is Canada’s biggest sport, and cities up there would be more open to supporting a hockey franchise. In addition, college hockey is popular in the Northeast and Midwestern United States, and fans in those regions could support a pro hockey team. The Winnipeg Jets, Quebec Nordiques, Hartford Whalers, and the Minnesota North Stars all relocated south, and while Minnesota has since regained a team, the other three markets remain empty even though they have more fan support than citizens in cities such as Phoenix. Many sports teams with expiring leases and low attendance will look to move their franchise in hopes of greener pastures.

The other option would be contraction. With 30 or more teams in each of the four professional sports leagues, players who would not have made a team in the 80’s, are seeing their bank accounts surpass their actual on the field talent. Teams now are less talented than they were back in the 80’s and early 90’s because the talent pool is more spread out.

Much like other businesses which have shut their doors due to financial problems, don’t be surprised if leagues decide to cut their losses and cut teams. MLB toyed with the idea of contraction in 2001 but that was ultimately shot down. With revenue and attendance down league wide for all sports, contraction could be a viable way to cut down on expenses and even improve the quality of play on the field. If teams don’t move, look for leagues to cut back and shrink the amount of teams in their respective leagues.

1. The Gay Athlete

Girls, cars, money, etc. are open topics of conversation among athletes in the locker room. Additionally, because of their wealth, athletes often find groupies throwing themselves at them, and have made the most of it. Most notably, Wilt Chaimberlain claimed to have slept with 20,000 women.

One topic of conversation that is rarely brought up publicly by athletes is the subject of homosexuality.

In the last decade, there have been more and more openly gay people in public places, including politicians and actors. This decade saw states legally recognize (and in some states ban) gay marriage. More Americans are accepting of gay people and their rights than they have been in the past.

The lone exception to this movement is in the realm of professional sports. While some athletes have come out of the closet, the majority of them don’t do so until after their playing career is done. In the four major sports, and in team sports for that matter, knowing that one of your teammates is openly gay could create some discomfort publicly among fans and privately among the team. Additionally, with sponsors wary about athletes actions off the field, being associated with a gay athlete in any way could hinder endorsement deals with companies with conservative values.

With gay people being accepted by the public, and younger players entering professional sports, there is a chance for players and coaches to be more accepting of one of their athletes being gay. Privately, they may already know. This subject was brought up in the short-lived ESPN drama “Playmakers”, in which one of the players was outed by his lover, and he eventually came out to the team. The series was canceled by ESPN, partly because of pressure by the NFL, so the end result of that will forever be unknown.

But the question remains, will an athlete in either the NFL, NBA, NHL, or MLB, come out of the closet while they are still an active player? Whichever athlete decides to be the first one to do so will be in the line of fire. It will most likely be the closest thing my generation sees to Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier in baseball.

He will most likely lose all endorsements they have, whether it be the companies decision or if they’re pressured by public opinion. He will also have to endure some of the harshest taunting athletes will ever hear, and his personal life will become much more public. Whichever team he’s on will most likely face public backlash from fans and sponsors.

When the smoke is cleared, gay athletes will be accepted by the public like openly gay actors and politicians. The road to acceptance will be a harsh one.

[Via http://commonsensesports.com]

Handouts: It's Your Right America

2010-01-09T08:02:00.000+02:00

Take a lesson from the past Democrats

As if a lesson from Reaganism appeared long before Ronaldus Magnus became one of the greatest Presidents this country has ever known, then John Kennedy was on to something. So why are today’s democrats using a spending model as a way to stimulate the economy? It doesn’t make sense.

Obama Defies Logic and Economic Sense

Plus Picking Nose and Picking Pockets

So, let me get this right. Obama says spending more tax dollars, our money, is good for the economy? To me a stimulus is more money in my pocket, not more money taken out of my pocket. The arrogance and hubris this Obama spews is complete nonsense.

Real economic stimulus is not government spending, it’s people spending money, and People cannot spend money if the government is taking our money away from us. Business cannot create jobs because no one knows how the health care bill will effect business spending. No Jobs, No Spending, No Recovery.

“Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; and you will not have to listen to his incessant whining about how hungry he is.”

“Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; and you can sell him fishing equipment.”

“Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to use the Net and he won’t bother you for weeks.”

“Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. Unless he doesn’t like sushi—then you also have to teach him to cook.”

“Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he will sit in the boat and drink beer all day.”

“Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime. Teach a man to sell fish and he eats steak.”

(H/T amatecon)

What’s For Dinner?

Red Snapper

“Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today.

Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime”

[Via http://kinialohaguy.wordpress.com]

Living in the age...

2010-01-09T00:50:00.000+02:00

Living in the age of the biggest economic downturn since the Great Depression has me thinking. I’ve read a lot in the last two years about people blaming the government, big banks, credit card companies, and Wall Street for the economic crash. When do we stop blaming everyone else and start taking a hard look at ourselves We are the ones that have lived beyond our means since the end of World War II. Buying houses we can’t afford, charging things we don’t need and don’t have the cash to buy, keeping up with the Joneses . When do we, as citizens of this country and of the world, take responsibility for our part in the crash of the World economy? Before World War II, people lived in small houses that they could afford and they were happy. People saved to buy furniture and go on vacation and buy a car. They sat down at night with their children and ate together,talked together, shared their lives.

When did we, as a people, become so discontented with our lives that the only way, if only fleetingly, that we could feel good was to go shopping, buy a fancier car, a bigger house, stop cooking and spending time with our families to work non-stop to try and stay ahead of the bills. When did all the values that we, as a nation, have held dear since our birth over 200 years ago become obsolete?

I see some people now thinking ,as I am, about changing their lives, going back to the ways of our parents and grandparents. People are saving again, paying with cash, haunting thrift stores, growing gardens, cooking meals at home and reliving those wonderful evenings at the dinner table talking to their children, catching up on their days. I’m glad to see the changes but I wonder, will they last? Or, will we go back to the old ways…..will we once again start to think that what we have isn’t good enough, big enough, or fancy enough? I hope not. With responsibility comes joy, a simpler way of living, a re-connecting with family and friends, a slowing down of the frenetic life that we, as Americans, have lived for far too long. And that, is this humble Americans opinion.

Chris Schultz

[Via http://politicalstrife.wordpress.com]

Is Your Credit Score Affected In A Debt Consolidation Program?

2010-01-07T07:58:00.000+02:00

There are several factors that affect your credit score, and you have complete control over almost all of them.

What is the best company for debt consolidation?

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Log-PR (Press Release) – Jan 06, 2010 – About the only thing you do not control your credit score is when the credit agency commits an error and distorts your information nursing training. Hector Milla editor of the Consolidation Best Debt Services "Website – http://www.ReputableDebtConsolidationCompanies.com – said:" … But even then you can request that they fix this error, and get your credit report accurate.The decision to take on the accounts of various credit is yours, and where these accounts you may take if you are using are consequences that you will continue to face … "Some things that can negatively impact your credit score is to have too much credit, using credit too, having too many inquiries on your credit report, and delays payment to your credit accounts . If you allow your credit accounts to grow out of control, then they stand a very good chance of having a severe negative impact on your credit score.One things you can do to fix this is to consolidate debt . With an aid to the debt, you can take all your high interest debt credit card and boil all at one program at low interest rate loan.This will instantly improve your credit because it removes excess credit available for your name because you are canceling the account after you pay, it stops the story accounts credit card before they can cause more damage, and it reduces your monthly debt that has a huge impact on your credit score. A business debt consolidation can also save you hundreds of dollars per month on your bills by eliminating multiple service fees that used to exist on your credit multiple accounts, which can release a lot of extra cash in your monthly income to hel

[Via http://roniyon.wordpress.com]

The Issue of the Federal Reserve.

2010-01-07T00:33:00.000+02:00

THIS BLOG WILL TALK ABOUT THE PROBLEM WITH THE FEDERAL RESERVE’S EXISTENCE AND THE ASSUMED NOBALITY OF THE INSTITUTION

The Reason Most Economists are Keynesian Economists…

Is not because they believe it is the form of economics that best works it is because…

From the 1940’s to the early 19080’s the most widely used textbooks used for the study of economics for universities were written by Samuelsson. All of the rest quickly made their textbooks Samuelsson-clones for the sake of their sales.

So most economic journalist and decision makers were taught in Samuelsson economics. Samuelsson was a fellow disciple of John Maynard Keynes.

The a late edition [1989] of the Samuelsson text book said this about the fed,

The Federal Reserves goals are for steady growth and national output and low-unemployment. It’s sworn enemy is inflation. If aggravate demand is excessive so that prices are being lifted up the federal reserve board-they want to slow the growth of the money supply thereby slowing aggravate demand and out-put growth.

If unemployment is high and business is languishing the fed may consider increasing the money supply thereby rising aggravate demand and augmenting output growth.

That makes the Federal Reserve sound like a independent working machine that fights for the good of the economy. And I am sure that their (the fed) hearts are in the right place but they are not independent and they are not working for the good of the economy—This blog with show that…

POLITICIZAITON OF THE FED.(Not independent)

The Federal Reserve constantly reminds the public that they are not politicized. However history, the best teacher, tells another story….

The national bank of Andrew Jackson’s day gave 100,000 to Henry Clay for his campaign against Andrew Jackson.

FDR appointed Mariner Equises as head of the Federal Reserve. This man had no experience in economics or a college degree, even. And he was also a huge advocate of deficit spending. FDR wanted deficit spending, coincidence? Mr. Equises was a political yes man.

This way by appointing this man FDR for all practical reasons ran the fed.

Eisenhower wanted slower money growth–he got it. Fed grew the money supply at 1.3% during his administration.

Kennedy came in and he wanted faster money growth–he got it. Fed grew the money supply at 2.31% during his administration.

Lyndon Johnson, for the war, of course wanted a faster rate of growth so he grew the money supply so it was at 5%. This establishes that when it comes to the Federal Reserve in power, there is no economic difference between Republicans or Democrats. Sorry Obama fans but, George Bush was a Keynesian and so is Barrack Obama. So how much change can we really expect?

This all under the same Federal Reserve chairman William Shezny Martin, by the way. The idea that all these changes happened under one Federal Reserve chairmen proves that the Fed is clearly politicized. So although the Fed claims they are independent of political influence they are clearly not.

Carter was scared he wouldn’t get re-elected for office so in fear of this he had the Federal Reserve spike the inflation rate from an already high 8% to a thundering 16.5% in just the last five months of his administration. His hope was this would create fast illusionary wealth in the country making it seem that he was in control.

It IS NOT FOR THE GOOD OF THE ECONOMY…

Price level of goods was about the same during the age of the constitution as in 1913, under the Gold Standard.

But since the Fed’s beginning in 1913 the price levels are at least 15 times more. The value of our dollar has depreciated 97% since 1913. These facts prove how the Federal Reserve discourages savings because if you had 10,000 dollars in 1999 for a college fund—you now only have 7,000 thanks to all the bailouts and cheap credit bubbles of Greenspan and Bernanke.

Multiple administrations have sought steps to remove the gold standard. And since the removal of the limiting standard we’ve had a lot more severe up and downs, like never before; We have had some sort of recession, by ratio, every 3.4 years since 1913. In the entirety of nineteenth century we had I believe 11 recessions and, that’s being generous because I remember the figure being under ten.

These items (such as the 97% decrease in value of the USD), which are of a negative value, cannot, in any respect, be the product of a “too” free market. The reason for this conclusion is that in the 19th century the market was as free as it has ever been. This is especially true in the times after Andrew Jackson’s ending of Hamilton’s central bank. Currencies competed with each other and gold was abundant(which restricts inflation.)

The time after Hamilton’s bank the country was run by gold/silver/competing bills and with no economic interventions from government. During this time there were seldom recessions, no dramatic price changes, no external wars and, the currency was something that solely had to do with the market and nothing to do with the government. Thus this chaos we now see could not have been derived from the free market that showed no negative effect on society in the 19th century. In fact the population, in the nineteenth century jumped more than ever in history. The only item that could have possibly supported this vast growing population was the gold standard because it gave the growing poor demographic more buying power because inflation was seldom, under gold. Also, if you were in the growing middle class—you were able to save you dollar without worry of it loosing buying power, under gold. Austrian Economics is what saved the growing population of the nineteenth century. There is no way our twentieth and twenty-first century form of Keynesian Economics could have supported such a population with such perpetuated inflation.

To argue otherwise is an argument that, to uphold, must ignore history.

And ignoring history is in of itself foolhardy and fallacious and it is what we are currently good at.

In all cases ignoring history has never proven wise. Like in sleep, knowledge is gained through history.

According to recession.org/history these are all of America’s notable economic declines:

Late 2000’s Recession

Early 2000’s Recession

1990’s Recession

1980’s Recession

1970’s Oil Crisis

Late 1960’s Recession

Early 1960’s Recession

Late 1950’s Recession

Early 1950’s Recession

Late 1940’s Recession

Recession of 1945

The Great Depression

Recession 1926

[RECESSION OF 1921]

Post World War I Recession

Panic of 1907

1870’s Recession

1890’s Recession

Panic of 1857

Panic of 1837

Depression of 1807

Panic of 1819

Panic of 1797

America has been around for 233 years. The Federal Reserve has been around for ninety-six years. In that time that have accounted for fourteen of America’s great recessions, being 60%.

We had truly free-market society for roughly fifty years in the mid 19th century and in the early twentieth century. In that time there were four recessions. And the Panic of 1837 was actually because people lost confidence in banks because banks were attempting a move to paper currency.

Thus if they would of held true to the commodity then really only three recessions would be under the belt of the free market society. But notice yet how even that recession was a product of the people’s s confidence but not that of the corrupt, murky, secretative, governmental organization, the Federal Reserve. So really in their recessions, at least the glass was half full.

This is the one other recession that the exists under the time of out free market society in the nineteenth century:

The Panic of 1857 lasted longer than most previous U.S. recessions had. Basically, the failure of a huge life insurance and trust company, which was called the Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Company, spurred a huge drop in European speculation for the U.S. railroads.

United States banks, which had lost much of their confidence, began a downward spiral that business began to feel the very first year of the recession. In the first year of the recession alone, over 5,000 businesses folded. Unemployment soared as people lost jobs all over the country. In fact, the labor scene was so bad that there were regular protest meetings held in urban areas after the businesses failed.

This recession helped prove that other economies, not just the U.S. economy, play huge roles as far as what happens on U.S. soil in terms of bank confidence, labor, and business survival.

This recession ended in the December of 1858; it lasted 18 months. In a free-market society when companies were going to fail they were going to fail. This makes companies more unwilling to fail as they then know that if in a free market society you fail you actually fail. There’s no one to pick you up and say “oh hey go give it another go-around.”

The consequence is fatal for capitalism if corporations no longer fear failure. The consequence is also corruption will begin to thrive like ever before. The fear of failure is what drives competitiveness in a financial market.

If those on top are profiting off of their failure and are being kept alive despite their failure then they have little incentive to get into a truly competitive nature. This nature of course is what gives people the lowest possible prices on consumer goods.

The Federal Reserve may boast that they subsidize for this lack of competitiveness by orchestrating the interest rates. Well there is two obvious things wrong with such a statement coming from the Federal Reserve.

1. False interest rates that with Greenspan and Bernanke go as low as 1% cause a ripple effect of misplaced confidence; people placing risk where they other-wise wouldn’t have placed it. E.G. our current depression.

2. The very essence of Keynesian Economics, what the Federal Reserve represents, discourages saving and encouraging mass spending and borrowing. Through their philosophy of inflation cures inflation the value of our dollar has depreciated 97% in value. Thus if you saved in a family fund in 1913 of $400,000, you would now only have $10,000….These two items are not a healthy subsidy.

In the transcripts of Congress the general consensus of the advocates for the bill that passed the Federal Reserved into existence was that they wished America to pursue something of an empire. They did not want America to be restricted to a republic of our constitution. They wanted to be an empire that would rival that of the British Empire. And they knew they needed a central bank to finance that.

[Via http://jonathanbruce.wordpress.com]

Corporate India set to prefer QIPs for Funds Raising in 2010

2010-01-05T08:10:00.000+02:00

Corporate India set to prefer QIPs for Funds Raising in 2010

Merchant bankers are of view that Qualified institutional placements (QIPs) are expected to still be the preferred route to raise money in 2010.

Earlier, QIPs had gained traction during the middle of the year but ran into valuation headwinds in the last quarter of 2009.

In 2009, Indian companies had raised close to Rs 33,000 crore by way of 45 QIP issuances.

Also, about 33 QIP issuances are trading above the issue price, while 12 issuances are trading below the issue price.

2009 was the year of the QIPs. QIPs are expected to rule the roost, as there is serious interest and appetite in the overseas markets for instruments like converts/ADRs/GDRs. . QIP, which was introduced in May 2006, picked up momentum in 2007 and then stagnated in 2008 when the market was in a bear grip.

Delhi-based real estate company Unitech successfully raised $325 million through a QIP in mid-April 2009.

Later, Indiabulls Real Estate and PTC India raised Rs 2,657 crore and Rs 500 crore, respectively, through such placements.

QIP is a private placement by which a company sells its shares to qualified institutional buyers (QIBs) on a discretionary basis with the two-week average price being the floor.

In a QIP, unlike an IPO or PE investment, the window is shorter (four weeks) and money can be raised quickly.

According to a study by SMC Capital, the 45 QIP issuances have resulted into a mark-to-market (MTM) return of about more than 21.60 per cent, amounting to a profit of about Rs 7,050 crore.

Some of the QIP issuances trading significantly above the issue price are Unitech (first round of QIP issuance), Emami, Shree Renuka Sugars, HCC , United Spirits, Dewan Housing, etc.

Those trading below the issue price are Network 18 Fincap, REI Agro, Indiabulls Financial Services, Punj Lloyd, Delta Corp.

“The overall positive listing performance of QIPs in 2009 will encourage investors as well as Indian corporates to access this route for fund-rising in an aggressive manner,” says Jagannadham Thunuguntla, equity head, SMC Capitals.

QIPs had hit a pause button when a large percentage of them ran into valuation headwinds, resulting in companies raising a much smaller amount than what was initially proposed.

[Via http://smcinvestment.wordpress.com]

Hayek on Freedom

2010-01-05T00:36:00.000+02:00

Think for a minute about how progress is made. It doesn’t follow a constant, linear path. It is unpredictable. It comes in violent fits and starts. It happens at the whim and fancy of genius.

Everyday life is much the same. Life is what you make of it. You have to be free to find what’s best for you. That means making wrong choices sometimes. It means not just trial, but error. Or, as Hayek put it:

“If we knew how freedom would be used, the case for it would largely disappear… It is therefore no argument against individual freedom that it is frequently abused.”

-F.A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty, p. 31.

[Via http://inertiawins.com]

Let Us Look Back At TARP

2010-01-03T08:20:00.000+02:00

Lots of anger….lots of shouting….lots of frustration….lots of cash……lots of everything but justice….by justice I mean the justice where the people that paid the bail out tab got something in return….they got NOTHING….the taxpayer got fleeced!

Let us look back for a moment…..a moment provided by Andre Damon and Barry Grey of wsws.org:

It is worth recalling the justifications that were given at the time for the passage of TARP. Then-President George W. Bush went on national television after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in the fall of 2008 and declared that Wall Street had to be bailed out in order to rescue Main Street. The alternative, he said, was mass unemployment and the worst recession since the 1930s. The taxpayers had to bail out the banks, he insisted, in order to allow them to offload their bad assets so they could begin lending again to consumers and businesses.

These claims were lies. The banks have used their government handouts to boost their profits and further enrich their executives, big shareholders and creditors. They have refused to expand their loans to small businesses and consumers, contributing to the worst jobs crisis since the Great Depression. They have refused to sell off or write down their bad assets, confident that, in the end, the government will make sure that they are able to palm them off at top dollar, or, in extremis, bail them out again.

A good portion of the banks’ revived profits have come from the systematic and open gouging of the public. They have jacked up interest rates and fees on credit cards, imposed higher fees on checking account overdrafts, and gamed the foreclosure crisis in order to profit from the tragedy of families driven into homelessness and destitution.

The American taxpayer has gotten the shaft yet again….they voted for change and they got the same screwing they always get…….no lube….no kiss….no cash……nothing has changed….see what corporate cash can buy? It buys lots of politicians, even though taxpayer’s money pays them to do a job for the whole country…..they disregard that pledge and work for the captains of industry….the same people that caused all the economic problems……

[Via http://lobotero.wordpress.com]

orgtheory quiz #2: what's the world's oldest firm?

2010-01-03T00:39:00.000+02:00

Hey, tough guy! Think you’re “the situation?” Answer me this: what’s the world’s oldest firm?

It’s Hyoshi Ryokan. It’s an inn in Japan. Been running since 718. The previous record holder was Kongo Gumi, a Japanese construction firm, founded in 578 and running till 2006. Here’s a list of other old firms, compiled by b-school prof William O’Hara.

Didn’t get that? You flunk into demography!

[Via http://orgtheory.wordpress.com]

The Road

2010-01-02T16:46:00.000+02:00

As people always say, the road to hell is always paved with good intentions. I read this quote and found its timelines appropriate given the altruistic intentions of our current administration.

The great tragedy of the drive to centralization, as of the drive to extend the scope of government in general, is that it is mostly led by men of good will who will be the first to rue its consequences.

Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom, 3.

[Via http://andrewwalker.wordpress.com]

Economic Impacts from the Promotion of Renewable Energy Technologies

2010-01-02T08:39:00.000+02:00

Manuel Frondel, Nolan Ritter, Christoph M. Schmidt, Colin Vance have recently published a paper on the economic impacts of promoting renewable energy technologies in Germany.

The allure of an environmentally benign, abundant, and cost-effective energy source has led an increasing number of industrialized countries to back public financing of renewable energies. Germany’s experience with renewable energy promotion is often cited as a model to be replicated elsewhere, being based on a combination of far reaching energy and environmental laws that stretch back nearly two decades. This paper critically reviews the current centerpiece of this effort, the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG), focusing on its costs and the associated implications for job creation and climate protection. We argue that German renewable energy policy, and in particular the adopted feed-in tariff scheme, has failed to harness the market incentives needed to ensure a viable and cost-effective introduction of renewable energies into the country’s energy portfolio. To the contrary, the government’s support mechanisms have in many respects subverted these incentives, resulting in massive expenditures that show little long-term promise for stimulating the economy, protecting the environment, or increasing energy security.

[Via http://freemarketmojo.wordpress.com]

More End-of-Year Goodies: The Pogie Awards for Best Technological Ideas

2009-12-31T08:50:00.000+02:00

The Pogie Awards for the Year’s Best Tech Ideas

By DAVID POGUE Published: December 30, 2009 Wow, what an opportunity! Imagine having a newspaper column published precisely on the last day of the year. What a chance to step back, look ahead, sum it all up!

Or else I could just trot out my usual end-of-year silliness, better known as the Pogie Awards.

These honors, now in their fifth consecutive year, aren’t meant to identify the best products of the year; that’s way too obvious. Instead, the Pogies celebrate the best ideas of the year — great, clever features that somehow made it past the obstacles of cost, engineering and lawyers.

Kindly turn off your cellphones and refrain from flash photography. All right, then, let’s begin.

DROID DOCKS The Motorola Droid, of course, is an app phone (that is, an iPhone wannabe with a black rectangular touch screen, etc.). It’s generally a very good one, with slide-out keyboard, excellent speed and the Verizon network.

The winner here isn’t the phone, though — it’s the docks. One $30 plastic dock suctions to your windshield. When you slip the phone into it, hidden magnetic sensors automatically fill the Droid’s screen with Google’s new GPS navigation software, complete with turn-by-turn driving directions, spoken street names, color coding to indicate traffic, map icons (for parking and so on), satellite view and more.

Or buy the $30 home dock. When you insert the Droid, the screen becomes a handsome, horizontal-layout alarm-clock/weather display, complete with buttons that let you access your music or even dim the screen for sleepy time. You have to charge your phone overnight anyway, so why shouldn’t it be doing something useful in the meantime?

ITYPE2GO In 2009, the risks of text messaging went mainstream. Statistics made it clear that texting while driving was shockingly common — and incredibly dangerous.

But what about texting while walking? You’re looking down as you flail away on your keyboard; next thing you know, you’ve crashed right into a person, a tree or a fence. Trust me: It’s hard to look cool when you’ve just face-planted on a No Parking sign.

Fortunately, iType2Go (a $1 iPhone app) is a funny idea that really works. It superimposes what you’re typing over a live camera view, so you can see where you’re going even while you’re focused on the screen.

With the touch of a button, you can also direct your typing output to an e-mail message, Facebook page or Twitter update. And you can rotate the phone to get the widescreen keyboard, if you prefer. (Similar for Android phones: Droid Text’n’Walk, $4.)

MIFI. It’s not often a company invents an entire new category with one fell press release, but that’s what Novatel did. The MiFi ($100 from Verizon or Sprint; monthly fee required) is a tiny, credit card-size, personal, portable, powerful, password-protected wireless hot spot. That’s right: you now have a Wi-Fi hot spot in your pocket, purse or laptop bag.

In many ways, it’s better than those U.S.B. cellular modems that jack into your laptop. On the MiFi, five people can connect at once. There’s nothing to connect or disconnect and store. And the MiFi can handle more things than laptops; Wi-Fi netbooks, cameras, game gadgets, iPhones and iPod Touches can get online, too.

SAMSUNG DUAL-SCREEN CAMERA The front of Samsung’s DualView TL220/TL225 ($300/$350) looks completely shiny and black. But when you tap the empty spot next to the lens, a small screen lights up, right there on the front of the camera.

Having a front screen is great for framing self-portraits, for letting your subjects see what they are going to look like, for displaying a self-timer countdown, or for displaying a happy face as a “Smile!” cue when you’re taking a group photo. The screen can also display a choice of cartoon animations that keep younger subjects riveted, smiling and facing the camera. The camera itself isn’t so great, photographically speaking. But what a great idea.

NIKON PROJECTOR CAM You can’t mention great camera feature ideas of 2009 without bringing up Nikon’s Coolpix S1000pj ($430). It’s another so-so pocket camera with a killer hidden feature: a built-in projector.

When you want to show your pictures or videos to friends, no longer must you crowd them around the camera’s little built-in screen. Now, with a single button press on the top of the camera, you can turn on the projector. The image is beamed straight from the front of the camera onto a wall, a ceiling or a friend’s T-shirt. Nobody’s going to confuse the image (40 inches, max) with an Imax movie. But especially when the lights are low and the wall is nearby, the projected image is perfectly adequate and really something to see.

BING POP-UP PREVIEWS The actual search results from Microsoft’s new Bing.com service may not always be as good as Google’s. But Bing has a few incredibly juicy features, like the one that lets you point to any search result in the list without clicking. A popup balloon shows you the first few paragraphs of text on it. Without leaving the results list, you know if it’s going to be helpful. You really miss this trick when you return to Google, where you have to click a link to see what’s behind it.

PALM PRE DATA CONSOLIDATION Palm’s latest app phones, the Palm Pre and Palm Pixi, offer a software trick that’s satisfying both in concept and execution: it consolidates the different sources of your life’s information.

For example, you get to see the appointments from your online Google or Yahoo Calendar, your Outlook work calendar and your Facebook events, all on a single color-coded calendar. Ditto with your various online address books, your various e-mail accounts and your various chat program buddy lists. Simple is a good thing; we like simple.

FIND MY PHONE. Your cellphone, obviously, knows where it is, especially if it’s a model that has built-in GPS functions. So why do we wind up losing our cellphones so often?

That’s the question that Apple answered with its Find My iPhone feature, an incredibly useful aspect of its $100-a-year MobileMe service. On the me.com Web site, with a click you can see where your iPhone is on a zoomable map.

If it’s just lying in your house somewhere, the Web site lets you make it beep loudly for two minutes, so you can hunt it down among the couch cushions. If the phone is in the hands of some stranger, you can make the phone display a message (say, “Return my phone! It’s covered with deadly germs!”) or even erase the thing completely by remote control, so at least your personal life is protected.

The only thing that could be better than Find My iPhone would be a free version. That’s what you get with certain Motorola phones, like the Droid and Cliq. May this one catch on with every phone company.

READABILITY The single best tech idea of 2009, though, the real life-changer, has got to be Readability. It’s a free button for your Web browser’s toolbar (get it at lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability). When you click it, Readability eliminates everything from the Web page you’re reading except the text and photos. No ads, blinking, links, banners, promos or anything else. Times Square just goes away.

You wind up with a simple, magazine-like layout, presented in a beautiful font and size (your choice) against a white or off-white background with none of this red-text-against-black business.

You occasionally run into a Web page that Readability doesn’t handle right — no big deal, just refresh the page to see the original. But most of the time, Readability makes the world online a calmer, cleaner, more beautiful place.

Go forth and install it.

Oh, yeah — and happy high-tech new year.

[Via http://cliftonchadwick.wordpress.com]

Curled up and dyed

2009-12-31T00:52:00.000+02:00

and a few doors uptown…

…and directly across the street. They moved a block or two north on Broadway, but still… you know?

Finally, two blocks away at 79th and Amsterdam.

[Via http://closedforbusiness.wordpress.com]

RUBBER - STRETCHING & MOVING ON THE WAY AHEAD Part 1

2009-12-29T08:22:00.000+02:00

Hello Friends here we come up with another write up on “Commodity Corner Series”.

Topic is RUBBER ………… “STRETCHING & MOVING ON THE WAY AHEAD”

RUBBER - STRETCHING & MOVING ON THE WAY AHEAD

We would touch upon aspects like the investment scenario of rubber in India and price movement of the rubber in Indian market.

We would also read about the gap in the demand and supply of the rubber in the market.

– Rubber is springy & has the potential energy of getting stretched. These properties are also seen in the price movement of the prices. The year 2009, has given stretchable & phenomenal return on investing in rubber futures.

–

INDIAN SCENARIO :

The four-month period between October and January is the peak season of rubber output in the country. The total area of plantations in the country is 662,000 hectares of which 92-93 per cent is in Kerala. Tripura is the second-largest rubber planting state in India after Kerala.

–

DEMAND & SUPPLY GAP –Walkthrough 2009:

As we know that profit increases when the difference or the gap between the cost price & the selling price increases. This immense gap was witnessed in rubber prices. Tight supply & tracking the rise in Asian markets like Tokyo and Singapore gave momentum to the prices to rise through out the year.

The Indian industry consumed 356,400 tonnes of natural rubber (58 per cent of the total domestic consumption) during April-November. In April-November, natural rubber production in India dropped 6.5 per cent at 538,125 tonnes against an increase of 3.5 per cent in consumption at 614,600 tonnes. So there was a gap of 76,475 tonnes in production and consumption.

– PRICE MOVEMENT “Focus on the journey, not the destination”:

The spot prices at the benchmark Kochi had begun its journey at Rs.67.23/Kg & touched the high of Rs. 139.19 within a year. Strong appreciation in prices in all major global markets which touched Rs 130.48 per kg, made the domestic market bullish.

Similarly, the futures at MCX posted a gain of 78.94% as of 22nd December, 2009. This spike was also supported by the increased gap between production & supply.

– Next Blog we would read about the impact of the shortage of rubber industry on major industries and the scenario of the rubber production in other countries. Stay Tuned for more on this.

– Note : For More Latest Industry, Stock Market and Economy News and Updates, please Click Here

[Via http://smcinvestment.wordpress.com]

Reduce Housing Costs by Recycling and Bartering

2009-12-29T00:41:00.000+02:00

Almost every part of a new home can be obtained at lower cost through using recycled goods and bartering. The concept is very simple. Someone, somewhere likely has an excess of what you’re looking for and will gladly trade or sell those goods at below market cost.

For instance, plumbers replace sinks and bathtubs routinely. Busy plumbers have so many old ones that they can barely give them away fast enough. While some fixtures will be in poor condition, many are replaced because they have a small chip or because people want something new and more fashionable.

You can buy recycled building materials from Salvation Army or Habitat Restores and similar thrift stores. This makes shopping convenient because there’s a large selection under one roof.

Often the lowest prices can be found by dealing directly with people who have items they no longer need. It’s amazing what can be scrounged from remodelers, dumpsters, trash haulers, demolition companies and curb sides (drive around at night in affluent neighborhoods). Workers at city dumps typically sort out items of value and sell at very low cost. And don’t forget about yard sales and Craigs List.

You can use the same process to find low cost earthbags (sandbags). Network with farmers and feed stores in your area to locate used grain or feed bags in good condition. Make sure they are comparable in strength to new sandbags and have been stored away from sunlight. You could buy one new sandbag for comparison, and fill and tamp one sample bag before buying a large quantity.

I know artists who have built their homes with recycled materials, and the end results are stunning. One of these artists mixed various colored 4”x4” tiles using leftovers from tile workers and made the most beautiful countertop I’ve ever seen.

[Via http://earthbagbuilding.wordpress.com]

How Big is the US Economy??

2009-12-27T08:37:00.000+02:00

Sometimes, particularly now, with the Obami creating incredible indebtedness, one forgets just how big is the US economy.

Mark Perry has calculated the GDP of each U.S. State and then found a country in the world that has a similar GDP.

Some of the examples are impressive, like New York State has the same GDP as Russia!!

[Via http://cliftonchadwick.wordpress.com]

Not sure if this has been discussed here...

2009-12-27T00:27:00.000+02:00

Not sure if this has been discussed here. http://www.courier-journal.com/article/2009912220363

This article discusses how many ’seminaries’ are looking to decrease the number of students on campus and go to long distant/internet education formats. I know Jody Apple works with VBI, there is OABS, East Tennessee School of Preaching is looking to this format, and I am sure there are others. With the probable economic collapse in the next few years, do you see preaching schools (and degreed programs) having trouble surviving and others going to other teaching formats?

Citation

[Via http://fellowshiproom.wordpress.com]

Cartoon(s) of the Week ... hard choice to make!

2009-12-26T16:15:00.000+02:00

There were too many good ones this week and I had too much time on my hands reviewing them, So here are my favorite four:

Mike Luckovich in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Yes, it has been a great Christmas for lobbyists… and we once thought that with Obama they’d get a lump of coal in their stocking!

- and -

Tony Auth in the Philadelphia Inquirer:

Isn’t Scrooge supposed to learn that he has been wrong?

= and -

Tom Toles in the Washington Post:

And it looks like the strategy is well on its way…

- and -

Clay Bennett, Chattanooga Times Free Press:

Belief is a strange thing…

[Via http://underthelobsterscope.wordpress.com]

Religiosity and Income

2009-12-26T08:39:00.000+02:00

Using factor analysis to derive a measure of religiosity, Martin Paldam (Aarhus University) and Erich Gundlach (Kiel Institute for the World Economy) find that religiosity is negatively correlated with per capita income.

The figure below shows the relation between religiously and income:

[Via http://freemarketmojo.wordpress.com]

The Elusiveness of Value

2009-12-24T08:01:00.000+02:00

Economics used to be so much easier when things were about growing food and bending metal. When we were trading sheep for grain and grain for horseshoes, the more sheep, grain and horseshoes we made for each other, the better off we were. As we’ve worked our way up the Maslow Hierarchy of Needs, figuring out what’s valuable and what’s not gets wickedly complex.

Thought experiment:

If you have $10, there are all kinds of things you can do with your hard-earned, Federal Reserve-endorsed, green portrait of Alexander Hamilton. If you use it to buy a sandwich (sure, an expensive sandwich), you’ve engaged in a transaction that has benefitted both you and the gal selling you the sandwich. Everyone’s happy. Economic value has been created.

But if instead a gal steals your $10, we can all agree that no economic value was created. It’s simply a wealth transfer; no one has created anything and you’re certainly not happy. The act of stealing also has the negative externality of reducing your trust and thus future economic activity.

These are the extremes on either side of a value continuum; there are a whole lot of fuzzy stuff in-between. Consider gambling. Let’s say you play the slots in Vegas with your $10 for an hour and eventually lose your money. Was economic value created? Hard to say. Casino gambling combines two functions: entertainment and insidious wealth extraction. The casino can argue that they provided you an entertaining service, which included drinks and time in their ornate, oxygenated room protected from the sun’s harmful UV rays and any distracting indication of time. You can argue back that you thought you were going to make money — do a little wealth extracting of your own — and you did not intend to lose your $10.

How about spending $10 to see a movie? Remember, economics is the system of how we provide for each other the things that will enhance our well-being. If you find the movie highly enjoyable, it has enhanced your well-being as much as a sandwich, and the people who sold you the movie are happy you saw their film. Everyone’s happy. Economic value has been created.

But what if the movie was bad? How about if it was really, really bad? It’s hard for me to say if economic value was created, though GDP did go up as a result of that transaction. How about if you paid $10 for a movie, but when you went into the theater, it wasn’t a movie at all, just a blank screen for two hours? Isn’t that the same thing as a gal stealing your $10 bill? Or more interestingly, how’s the blank screen different from a bad movie? Or… how, in a very technical economic sense, is a blank screen purported to be a movie even different from a great movie that enhanced lives?

The difference is people’s well-being. I submit that economic value is created only if everyone involved in the transaction is satisfied with what they got out of it. Unfortunately, traditional economic metrics just measure the back-and-forth activity regardless of how much lives were enhanced. I.e., economics treats the blank screen and the good movie the same.

I’m not arguing for some type of goofy Bhutanesque gross national happiness index, and I’d rather see GDP go up instead of down. I’m arguing that as economies become less about feeding, clothing, and sheltering people, goods become more about improving people’s mental and emotional lives. For poor countries that are hustling to make more sheep, grain and horseshoes, GDP is a wonderful proxy for the well-being of a nation. But as rich countries’ economies become more about the exchange of ideas that make us feel better, the exact percentage of year-to-year changes in GDP aren’t nearly as important. We shouldn’t pretend it is.

[Via http://stephendodson.wordpress.com]

"Neither Rain nor Sleet nor Gloom of Night"

2009-12-24T00:49:00.000+02:00

Christmas just wouldn’t be complete without a last-minute visit to the post office. This afternoon was our day to send overnight packages to far away friends and family. It is a lovely day on the West Coast, with nary a cloud from San Diego to the Bay Area. Imagine our surprise when the postal clerk at the counter in Huntington Beach told us when sending a package to a son in San Francisco that “Due to the weather we are not guaranteeing overnight delivery. It will most likely be delivered Monday morning”.

Now I understand hubs and spokes and shipping centers, etc, but this is a simple package delivery 300 miles up the coast. You see the Post Office trucks and FedX trucks and UPS trucks going up and down the 5 all night long. It doesn’t matter how the package gets there as long as it gets there on time and 1-2 days is standard. Except, I guess, for the Post Office’s Overnight Mail. They’ll take your money for Overnight Delivery, of course, but no guarantees. I wonder what FedX and UPS would say?

And these are the people who want to take over our health care?

[Via http://oceanaris.wordpress.com]

Environment: if North Korea were to stall the Climate Summit ?

2009-12-22T08:13:00.000+02:00

Suppose that some rogue state, such as North Korea, entered the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit and effectively shut it down due to its unwillingness to participate with the rest of the world in light of its own economic concerns … what would be the appropriate recourse from the global community?

I usually think that these non-participatory rogue states, whose actions have the potential to harm other peoples around the world, should be sanctioned.

But unfortunately this time it is not Iran or North Korea, etc., but it is us, and I cannot help but think that on a fair playing field we, America, might need a threat of sanctioning posed against us by the rest of the world.

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[Via http://goodflagbetsy.wordpress.com]

The Grifters - Our Senate at work.

2009-12-22T00:32:00.000+02:00

“Grifter – A person who swindles by means of deception or fraud”

Pork barrel politics has a long and mixed history. Fighting for Federal dollars has long been a part of the process. But lately, it’s gotten completely out of hand. Senator Ben Nelson’s (D- Neb) decision to support one of the most flawed bills in our history in exchange for hundreds of millions in Medicaid support exclusively for the citizens of Nebraska, along with Senator Dodd’s $100 Million grift and Senator Mary Landrieu’s $100 Million price tag will in the end foist trillions of dollars in debt on every taxpayer in the country. These have to be the most expensive votes in the history of graft. Then there is $300 Million for California Medicaid payments, $10 Billion for the Unions in a reinsurance program, Vermont & Massachusetts’ payoffs for their underfunded state programs that haven’t worked out very well; a $7 Billion tax payoff for Blue Cross/Blue Shield and other “nonprofit” health insurers, the Big Pharma payoff, Bernie Sander’s (Socialist – VT) $10 Billion free clinic fund, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, as Yul Brynner said in The King and I.

Nelson sold his lifelong anti-abortion stance down the river, while Dodd makes no bones about a simple grab because the grabbing was good. He would have voted for the bill regardless. Landrieu simply exhibited pure hypocrisy after posturing for months about the cost of the bill.

The latest version of the bill was released only 3 days ago and is 2,000 pages. The Congressional Budget Office graded it as revenue neutral, and yet there are so many gimmicks and gimcrackeries no one knows the real cost. How can the CBO have fully analyzed the bill in 3 days? As their previous scores were, even with the accounting tricks, clear about the hit on the federal budget, it seems now someone has told them to toe the party line.

None of the common sense cost solutions are in this bill. No limits on outrageous malpractice awards. No increased competitiveness. No efficiencies of scale or service. On the one hand it’s a money grab, and on the other it’s a power grab. Plain and simple.

By sleight of hand and in the middle of the night we are losing even more of our freedom and government will expand even further. And we will have unprincipled grifters like Nelson, Landrieu, and the rest to thank for it.

[Via http://oceanaris.wordpress.com]

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