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Decision-Making Information
and editor ramblings
have a suggestion, e-mail antonw@ix.netcom.com

1. No One Pays More Federal Taxes especially IBM's CEO
2.
Sandy Aid, Unlike Katrina Aid, Went to Rich states.
3. Farm income and land values continue historic climb.
4. Many With Associate's Degree out-earn college grads.
5. Social Security keeps our elderly out of poverty.
Please

6. Cutting the Federal Budget from OMB and CBO.
7
. Being the World's Greatest Jailer Cost Money
8. What's Killing Us?

9. Understanding Green is Not Easy
10. Determining the Economic Return of a College Education

Other Topics     Economics   The War   Social Security   Education   Health   Miscellaneous   The Bottom Line- Housing   Educating the Class of 2030 & 1 Pg Summary of 2030

 
May News

Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“For all the millennia before this in human history,” Coburn says, “it was all about tuberculosis and diarrheal diseases and all the other infectious disease. The idea that anybody lived long enough to be confronting chronic diseases is a new invention. Average life expectancy was 45 years old at the turn of the century. You didn’t have 85-year-olds with chronic diseases."
Washington Post

Editors Note: The next time someone talks about the good old days suggest they go back to the 1950's when kids got measles, mumps, chicken pox and cavities by the hundreds. I hated the low speed drill used by my dentist who never used shots to kill the pain. My neighbor Eddie got polio at 13 years of age.

 

What I'm Thinking About

Brilliant.org runs a weekly math  contest to find the brightest young people from around the world. So far, 70,000 people from 155 countries have taken part.
The contest to date has found nine really bright kids.

In a similar vein, a number of startups use the Internet to organize groups to solve really difficult science/mathematics problems. Participants agree ahead of time to share profits with those running the contest. This means the natural sciences will make even greater contributions to our well-being.

Not to be left out, the social sciences and education are spending many hours trying to get Race to the Top (Flop) federal educational grants.

Delaware won $100,000,000 and is very proud that
1) No measurable change but it is early  I agree it's early but none, zero?
2) Instituted an elaborate expensive to spend the grant computerized system to measure outcomes/teacher effectiveness. What will principles do now that there most important function is done by machine?

3) An elaborate recurring five hour session of teacher peer assistance has been instituted. You get what you pay for doesn't apply.  There were a lot of really good women teacher years ago but now they are lawyers, business women, and scientists. Rather than pay they get Psychic income. I heard this on Bloomberg's weekly education show and can't remember how often this takes place

4) A 16 school(?) pilot programming immersing primary school students in either Spanish or Chinese has been institute, Fine but what did they eliminate from the curriculum because the brain and student willingness is fixed over extended period? That's why programs that measured well but eventially accomplish little academic improvement. Is it voluntary magnet program or did they just choose districts? Are all students, not just those with gifted language skills, required to be in the program. If its required by all students, the collateral damage will be immense.

My sixteen word Race to the Top proposal for secondary education.
Year-round half-day calendar with creative optional use of the other half of the day.
Substantial cost savings and grant money to be invested in prenatal care.
From Educating the Class of 2030

Please

April News

Obama-corruption

 

 

 

Obama-Signs-Bill-Killing-Anti-Corruption-Pro-Transparency-STOCK-Act-Provisions meaning congress still has two ways to be political,  accepting money and legal insider trading.
from m.dailykos.com  4/16/13

 

 

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March News
from seekingalpha.com 3/1/13

Editors' Note: The strong economic period from 1985 to 2007 made many well intentioned commentators to young an unprepared to analyze the current period. I'm thinking of people like avid Brooks and Charlie Rose. They are not 95ers, like Rush Limbo and Racial Maddow who say only things their audience wants to hear, things that are often negative about the other side.

What I'm Thinking About

People Not Voting Their Pocketbook is Literally Killing the Poor

Many of these people are from poor rural southern states where many do not have insurance but they have an issue that is so important they give up economic gain.

1) Anti abortionist    2) NRA advocates

3) Rural limited government advocates want a sedimentary life

4) Working poor, usually not insured, need to dislike the lowlife's that need welfare. These people don't want a handout until they or someone they know gets sick.

Southern European states-- Italy, Greece, Portages, and Spain insist on voting their pocketbook to the detriment of society and rich states--Germany and other northern states do  want to pay the bill. In the US, southern states not only do not vote their pocketbook they refuse help like Obamacare coming from the north. US south easily defeats the European south in the economically stupid war!

Special Notes:
Many poor people don't collect Social Security because the die and while science will keep even poor people alive longer, their debilitating diseases will make them miserable.

econintersect.com/ has more in Income Inequality

Can you think of anyone else?

e-mail thoughts to retired teacher/site editor antonw@ix.netcom.com

February 2013 News for Understanding/Decision Making

Please

My Bucket Trip to the Capital One Football Bowl Game revealed:


1) They sell beer.

2) Biggest possibility for graft a corruption was the security subcontractor who brought people by bus to the game from near by hotels, collected tickets, were everywhere including the many who showed people to their seat in the easiest stadium to find your seat I've ever been in.

3) Homeland security decided searching each person wasn't necessary except that they were looking for some guy named George Orwell who in the name of national security so they can "keep you safe," must be captured dead or alive.

4) The high school cheer leaders who perform for free are the team winners from summer camps and whose parents get to pay for a four-day stay at Disney World.
 
5) In one Florida town the parent of a cheerleaders pays a $400 for yearly expenses.

6) A church group volunteered clean up the seldom used stadium.

7) After the game the police, working OT, did a great job helping me find my car.
The people watching a parking lot near my lot had no interest in seeing that what happened to me, taking about an hour to find my car, did not happen to those using their lot next year.

 

January's 2013 News for Understanding/Decision Making

 Investing in Education Data from collegemeasures.org/ Descriptions added.

From Community college grads out-earn bachelor's degree holders See Economics of a College Education

Too Many Lawyers
1/18/13 issue of The Week magazine reports that the BLS estimates that through 2020, the annual new job demand for lawyers will average 21,880 while the supply will be 44,000. The over supply of bachelors will be much larger but not as a percentage. They will end up working for pedestrian wages at state run
health care exchanges. Lawyers have been in oversupply for many years and the median earnings have been below most advanced degree holders.   Please

What I'm thinking about.

The Paranoia caused by media attention from the Newtown, Connecticut tragedy is driving me crazy. Our children are safer than ever before. Does anyone want to go back to the 1950 when my parents had to worry about polio, measles, mumps, chicken pox, and whooping cough. The country was half its current size and Interstate Highways and living in the suburbs was in the future yet we managed to accumulate  50,000 auto deaths per year due to unsafe cars with no seatbelts of any kind? What about bike helmets?

Yes we have people who have problems that result in their using firearms to destroy lives. Changing these people will take a long time as we know that people have changed little since Cain killed Able. Was Cain a banker, a neoconservative or just having a difficult life?

We could get rid of guns but member of the NRA are not willing to make the sacrifice of their individual freedoms to benefit the country. They seem to think that because it is not the complete solution, it should not be part of a solution.

Media is about viewers generating advertising dollars. Our country is so large that a relatively small group allows Fox and CNN to be very wealth serving a very small audience. CNN just began 11 hours of tomorrow’s inauguration. A few weeks ago they ran four straight days of Newtown grief pornography. It makes money! Fine. Get upset if you must, but don't become paranoid. Fulfilling the predictions of 1984 makes a lot of people money, its ruining lives, it must be stopped.

In the U.S. people not only insist meat handlers use gloves, they want them changing gloves when changing foods! At  Wal-Mart shoppers are using hand wipes to clean their hands on the way in. Why on the way in?. Did you have dirty hands? Why not on the way out since my guess is Wal-Mart has a germ problem and put the hand wipes where people will was their hands on the way in. Problem is the people with germy hands are not the type to clean them before entering Wal-Mart. I'm not immune but I do use the handy wipes on the way out!
The Economist Magazine 2/16/13 p65

Stories of the Month

January 2013,

http://www.epi.org With Democrats, especially in Florida, going crazy because a chain-weighted CPI would cost SS recipients about $5 per month.

Green: Franking and Regulation

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) findings that 4% of the methane produced at a field near Denver was escaping into the atmosphere. A Utah study that suggested an even higher rate of methane emissions—9% of the total production. NOAA describes methane as 25 times more potent of a greenhouse gas than CO2. The percentage of methane leaked is key to determining whether switching to natural gas from coal-fired generators has a climate benefit; it must be less than 3.2% for that to be the case, he writes.  The Obama administration has embraced Fracking as part of its "all-of-the-above" energy strategy.
Editors Note; With livestock being a much an important source of methane and almost no chance of decreasing it's rate of increase in the U.S. and the developing world, lowering global warming through other adjustments will be  unproductive. Fourteen percent of our Green House Gas comes from live stock. Said gas is expected to increase by 60% by 2050. Chance of slowing it down, zero until the next big flood; Noah, are you building a boat?  I betting on a terra forming solution.

Earth Warming Slows down A University of Colorado Boulder dtram looking for clues about why Earth did not warm as much as scientists expected between 2000 and 2010 India and China that are estimated to have increased sulfur dioxide emissions by about 60% from 2000 to 2010 through coal burning as small amounts of sulfur dioxide emissions from Earth’s surface rise 12 to 20 miles into the the atmosphere, where chemical reactions create sulfuric acid and water particles that reflect sunlight back to space, cooling the planet and
have counterbalanced as much as 25% of the warming scientists blame on human greenhouse gas emissions.  http://www.rdmag.com/news/2013/03

Supply of energy is still a big issue! peak-oil-the-shale-boom-and-our-energy-future-interview-with-dave-summers Please

 

China's use of coal negates all the rest of the world is doing to be more Green.

Chart from www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-03-21

 

 

What I'm Thinking About

Windows 8 is designed to function with mobile, touch-screen communication devises, it is not really good for a stationary lap top.

Why buy insurance, point, line, and trend people vs. analysts.
Most people think today, the past and future are not part of their decision process. Why buy insurance, I'm not sick at thids point in time.

Some bring in the past. I'm not sick, they, (the hospital, not the government) took care of me in the past when I was sick, why buy insurance?

Some people bring in the future by extending the past with a straight line. I'm not sick, "they helped me before and will help  me again. Why buy insurance?

Analysts ask questions.
What do my genes indicate about my future health needs?
Do these need indicate early detection could mean better health
? Will my closest emergency room be closed, as many have been, as hospitals cut cost?
Are people on this welfare medical system treated as well as those with insurance?

Editors note: Thoughts arose as I listened to ESPN radio commentators discusses whether Rex Ryan should be fired. No analysis, mainly a line looking back with a little, straight line look into the future.

 

Stories of the Month November 2012

Cutting the Federal Budget

Economist Magazine 12/12

Please

 

December

Our Asian Alias Easily Outspend China

REGIONAL INSTABILITY: Defense spending in Asia is increasing.

http://www.businessinsider.com  12/12

 

 

The fight over Right-to Work laws in Michigan means that some people want a job so badly that they are willing to ignore our  income distribution problem which will take care of itself, though at a slower rate  than  some would like.

GDP per person has gone up forever.

Business owners have tried to maximize their share forever.

Workers began fighting for more about125 years ago, and were successful. Non-union workers also benefited from these union activities.

After WWII, the U.S. the destruction of our competition gave us an advantage. Owners and many workers benefited.

Then competition arrived from Germany, Japan, South Korea, ... 
and again there was a fight for share.

Now with the recession a lot of people are rightfully scared.

When this recession is over, as in the past, change will come.

Health care will cease to be a problem as some way will be found to  make sure everyone has it.

In many industries, the workweek will drop by at least 4-5 hours with workers pay staying the same for a while before  it begins to increase.  It has already happened Germany where rather than law people off, some workers work (+ or-)  15% less for 10% less pay. Pay will be returned as they increase per-person GDP.

Products will continue to get better. I'm big into big screen TV's, love Blue Ray disks, and can't wait for 4K.


It will take much last time than the last 75 year adjustment. It  ended with the great depression and lasted ten years WWII was a big price to pay, but it began the 40 years of good times.

It will not be easy, but try to be understanding. Please remember,
psychologist agree that losing one's job is the second most trying experience one can endure. Those poor people in Connecticut are going through number one.

Stories of the Month October 2012
Economist Magazine10/13/12  

 

 

Editors Note: Since 1990, transfer payments, tax credits, etc. have really helped the poor. The return of the stock market since 2009, (not shown) has the top 1% flying high again.


 

Editors Note: This is the same country that tried to kill a young girl for wanting to go to school. Maybe we should just leave, period.

Special Election Data  
No matter who is elected, slow growth means this stuff goes!

Bush tax cuts through 2020: $3.5 trillion.

Income tax cut <  $250,000 $1,184 billion                     63%
Income tax > $250,000 a year or more: $700 billion    37%   100%

Alternative minimum tax change: $584 billion**
Marriage tax relief: $360 billion
Child $1,000 tax credit: $359 billion
Capital-gains and dividend tax cuts: $238 billion
Other: $71 billion

* This analysis excludes the estate and gift tax cuts.
** Without this patch, the AMT would snatch back the Bush cuts from many higher-income taxpayers

Data: Joint Committee on Taxation, Treasury Dept. and Bloomberg Businessweek

Election

1) Debt will continue to come under scrutiny with the cost of  Obama Care added to  private and public underfunded pensions, social security, and big time military spending. Here is some data and my two cents printed in red. The Big Secret Behind U.S. Federal Debt 

2) Health Care will be a main topic of election discussions as voters choose between the president and state officials who have budget problems and need decide on accepting the cost of Obamacare's expanded  Medicaid program. Here is some data, comments from mainstream media and comments in red from yours truly,  Professor A. 
Who Will Solve These Health Care Problems   
Why Health Care Cost are Increasing
 
Cutting Health Care Cost
 
Health Care Miscellaneous
 

3) Education in a Capitalistic Democracy requires we look at U.S. Education vs. Germany and Britain, Our Biggest Value Added Competitors is a subject I became interested in when I semi retired in 1989. It lead me  Individualized Curriculums- a way to improve education, keep valuable teachers, and lower cost. 

4) Election Economics  page 2  e-mail antonw@ix.netcom.com

Charts of the Month for September of 2012

[WAGES]

 

[WAGES]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

from http://online.wsj.com/article/
SB10001424052702304248704575574213897770830.html

 

Chart of the Month for August

FRED Graph
Real Per Capita DPI growth has been increasing at a decreasing rate since 1965

Some think it is LBJ's Great Society, I think its the world getting flatter and flatter. Note how our 20 year debt binge cause the line to accelerate for a while, but, in the long run, society as a whole can't get something  for nothing. But it can produce a lot of rich people to avoid taxes and give up their citizenship. I'd make them leave the country, and charge them in the many millions or special health care.

July Chart of the Month 2012

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What I'm Thinking About

Medium Size Business, with sales between 10 million and a billion added 2.2 million jobs last year while large business lost 3.7 million.  Heaven forbid if they and small business lower employment because of Obama Care. Small business because its an added expense they can't afford, medium sized because it is more expensive than there current plans. 
Capitalism is under attack because Europe's high welfare, slow growth system is falling apart, the U.S.'s high growth, high individual freedom, hodgepodge welfare system faces huge future pension/health care liquidly cash outflows, and China's totalitarian capitalism appears to be more corrupt and less capitalistic than believed. The history of economic growth shows long periods of slow and fast growth. The current slow period will end like other balance sheet recessions (big drop in assets results it the need to pay off huge liability balances), after an average of seven years. The rate of recovery will be high if some new product makes investment so profitable that many worker are higher with good wages for a long period. Fracking for natural gas and conversion to this cheaper power source comes to mind as does 3-D printing. Both should insure our lead in manufacturing continues.  But whatever it is, when it comes, we will forget the Great Recession and be able to afford Obama Care. 
Will Germany pay again? Since  the fall of the wall in 1989, West Germany has invested about $1.9 trillion (reuters.com.) to modernize the east with taxpayers paying the bill with a 5.5% surtax on income tax owed by individuals and companies. After a decade of economic growth, stagnation resulted so in 2004, then Prime Minister Schroeder took on the unions and many in his own party by trying to limit unemployment benefits, rein in pensions, and reform of the labor market. It worked, the economy became the strongest in Europe, but he was not reelected. Now Greece wants to extend the terms of her bailout and not go through what Germany put herself through about a decade ago. Greece wants to delay laying off 150,000 government workers, lowering the minimum wage, and other changes to make her more competitive. Germans are being asked to pay. Our Tea Party doesn't want to pay for what the government gives them, imagine a tax increase to pay for foreign aid!
Learned Something 6/22/12 Bloomberg economist Joe Brusuelas reported that $500 billion of QE2 credit expansion ended up as excess reserves in the banking system and most of the remaining $100 billion was borrowed by people with really high credit to invest in commodities and big ticket luxury goods. Their demand for resources pushed up oil prices so he feels the middle class again helped  the rich.
Monetarists
worry that the excess reserve will lead to inflation. Having seen Volker ring excess reserves out of the economy in the early 80's. that doesn't worry me ( it probably should since 'm 100% into fixed stuff plus SS and Medicare. I put a lot of $ into all three investments so ...) Volker  may have caused a second dip back then but I am more concerned about the extra 5 million unemployed workers still in our first dip. Monetarists are like Alpha male Puritans from Sparta, if it doesn't cause pain, it won't work. Of course, we all know that like Libertarians, Monetarist believe government can solve all problems.
A Different Country
Since 1983, the percent of 19-year-olds with a driving license dropped from 87% to70% and in the last five years, car sale to those to 18 to 34 year of age dropped from 16.5 percent of the population to 11.5% of the population. Auto Week 9/17/12 This plus the fact that job instability caused by our "Flat World" makes home ownership more of a risky investment will lead to a more urban population.
Corporate Welfare Queens who lease 80 million acres of energy land and gifts of "swaths of the digital spectrum" on the cheap and bother me more than Welfare Queens, who even if some are not deserving, they lead a poor lifestyle.
James Surowiecki NYT. The Week 10/19/12

Why Am I  Me

Like many, I wonder why I live in my head rather than someone else's head. Of 6 or 7 billion people, why am I me?  Looking very similar to my older brother, I figured that was genetic. Having my younger sister's personality, I figured it was nurture. You know, the Pavlov's dog part of our being. 

Now it turns out that that too was genes! If that's the case, there had better be a page two or the entire experience has been a pain in the poop!

June   Chart of the Month of 2012

 Chart of the Month, May of 2012  

Keynesians 1, Austrians (i.e. Germany) 0

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Editors Notes: What happens to growth and inflation will determine the winner.

What I'm Thinking About
Job situation worse than I thought
I've known for a few years that our "flat" competitive world with few union jobs means a substantial decrease in the percentage of high paying jobs available to H, S. and college graduates. Now, two new factors have made the situation worse. First, higher paying STEM jobs, which require highly motivated academically oriented graduates who are in short supply, are facing more competition from Internet outsourcing. Second, the half life of computer engineers is becoming shorter as salaries max out at 35, and most are out of the field at forty as experience high salary programmers find it difficult to learn new computer languages and compete with recent college graduates and visa caring programmers.
Within a year, economic cycle questions will be answer.
Europeans are getting tired of German imposed austerity and may elect leaders who won't combine short term economic stimulus with long term structural labor reforms and social welfare reforms. The U.S. has gambled that increasing federal deficits and the resulting growth will continue until some economic stimulus replaces debt as the driver of economic growth. She too needs to balance short term growth needs with long term structural reforms. 
Economic cycle expert, who ten years ago began predicting  that twenty years of excess debt driven economic development may take more than the seven year average for this type of recession. Recommendation: combine (1) a two year increasing in the debt ceiling and (2) a continuation of the Bush tax cuts with (3) fixing social security. You must choose three!  Obama Care adjustments may be needed. If in the expansion is continuing for two years, do it again, this time with Medicare.

Genetic adjustment to misquotes may severely limit their ability to cause malaria. When conservatives read this or hear the ads of the young children with asthma wheeze, don't they feel a little guilty for slowing down advancements from genetic medicine.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As of 2/16/13 Europe was still in recession.
The Economist Magazine

Germany adjusted early when world  growth was high, Spain is going through the pain, France and Italy and France are delaying the inevitable.

Score Update 2-0 as voters in the Ireland, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, and maybe France if they vote down German demanded austerity on May 6, 2012 election. They did so we will see.

August 18, 2012 U.S. real growth continues, though weak, 
German growth is about zero, everyone else is negative. 

U.S. as a safe place to store wealth is keeping interest rates low and politicians may not act until there is "blood in the streets"

economist magazine 8/18/12 p. 47  

4/3/13 WSJ Real Time Economics

 

Louisiana voting for Santorum is like Afghanistan asking U.S. to leave.
Both are proud people who don't feel the perceived gains a foreign authority say will follow are worth the impositions and conditions imposed by said authority. 
With Florida trying to limit the right to vote, I checked it out at infoplease.com/timelines/voting
The End of Our Debt Cycle
Deleveraging is much more difficult than managing a business cycle. It requires a "combination of debt restructuring and write-offs, austerity, wealth transfer from the rich to the poor, and money printing." Done with balance, GDP can grow slightly more than nominal interest rates. The first and last requirements have been done by Bernanke, the states are doing some austerity, and President Obama is trying to going after the rich. Europe is concentrating on austerity with some printing of money by the ECB to solve liquidity problems. Sovereign debt solvency will hurt bank solvency until there is a political solution. My guess is some gives backs by government union workers will be required with changes to entitlements limited to those under sixty and delays in the implementation of Obama care. Adopted from Ray Dalio: Man and machine | The Economist.
April of 2012 Story of the month  

Editors Note: State pensions are also high for those at the top with  12,199 retired California government workers receive pensions in excess of $100,00 and the top 10 receiving >$250,000. 
Read more at .businessinsider.

Please



Health Care Expenses

Health and dental care are still a pain in the pooper. Retiring at 57, they cost me close to $50,000 for single coverage over four plus years. Now 68, I'm on Medicare. Its annual cost is about $2,600 and a supplement  is another $3,000. Plus Medicare Plan D cost another $40/month. I had company sponsored government subsidized health and dental insurance since I was 22. In addition my employer and I paid into Medicare. It is scary how much employers and I paid for health insurance over the 35 years I worked. I'm still paying and those who think of my benefits as an entitlement are ill informed..

Of course, the system is not set up for singles like myself. Married people with children and the poor receive a much more of a benefits relative to their payments. Now gays want equal rights for federal tax purposes. I wouldn't mind if they made the marriage tax benefits dependent on being financially responsible for children Heterosexuals without children would lose the benefit until they had or adopted children. Gays, to receive the benefit, would  have to adopt American children. Always wonder what black Americans thought when they see white Americans adopting Asian children?

Went for my Sunday Ride Around rural, central Florida

Stopped by one of the many boat raps in rural Florida and found about ten older trailers and trucks. Nice to see the average Joe enjoying their day off. Visited one of our many county parks where electricity, water, bathroom facilities and playgrounds are provided. Found groups of four or five families with many children enjoying the day. Many said "God Bless You" which reminded me this was the bible belt. Stopped to grocery shop and saw a pickup with both regular hay and really green hay. Turns out the green stuff was alfalfa  the women used to feed the horses she boarded.. She liked the tax advantage her little farm received and felt "farmers must be protected." Turns out her husband had a job that paid the families health insurance and like many rural Floridians, she would vote Republican to keep government out of her life. Driving home I wonder what uninsured boaters and picnicking people would do if someone broke arm or leg. My guess is they would go to the emergency room of the local hospital for free treatment and like my farmer friend, vote republican to keep government out of their lives.

March of 2012 Story of the month Chinese Yuan Exchange rate
China is Doing Her Part with a lower exchange rate.
President Obama's fifty person committee to duplicate the work of existing investigators seems a little political, especially since China can't appreciate her currency too fast or growth will be hurt and peasants flooding the cities will revolt.

 

As a Result
Her surplus is Going Down.

5/26/12 Economist Magazine

Salary Increases will Keep 
the Trends Going

February of 2012 Story of the Month 

Recent Debt Accumulation by Country.


Editors note: By comparison, US total debt is low. Most of it was piled up by households, businesses, and financial institutions with government debt, state and local, fairly level. Since 2008, 
all U.S. debt is down except the Federal Government, which is borrowing to maintain entitlement and military spending and it is giving the states money to forgo layoffs. U.S. consumer debt is down because people are walking away from underwater real estate.  See The Economist  and
The Debt Issue for details. 

 

America is currently paying less on an annual basis to finance its debt than it was paying in the '90s.

http://www.businessinsider.com

January of 2012 Story of the Month 


Editors Note:
I don't think of SS and Medicare as entitlements or transfer payments. I started paying into SS at 16, paid in the max for all of the 25 years they count and at 68, I'm still paying in. I realize both are progressive and single guys like me who stayed healthy and paid in the maximum gets less of a return on investment than average earners and family people. No big deal. I got a few tax benefits. But it is not a transfer payment or entitlement program, its a return on a retirement/health policy investment.  I was fortunate to have company paid health care but Medicare and a supplemental program cost about 
$5,000 annually

What U.S. politicians know
The Germany government spent $1.9 trillion modernizing East Germany.
It caused high unemployment and slow growth which continued into 2003.
Social Democrat Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who turned the economy 
around by fighting unions and many in his own party to limit unemployment
benefits, rein in pensions, and reform of the labor market, was not reelected 
in 2005.
From The German Economic Colossus Issue 1/20/12 of The Week Magazine.

Information that caught my eye. Updated continually
1) Revenue earned by M. Jackson estate over 18 months. $310,000,000.
2) 51,000  science and math Geeks from 186 countries signed up for a $1,000,000  contest  to solve a high-tech problem to increase productivity.  A company called Gaggle, now employing 25,000 people 
quickly formed to solve other difficult problems to increase productivity around the world. As a result, 
Our macro lives, living longer, healthier lives will be much better but poor distribution will limit our 
micro lives, our salary from the added profits from productivity gains which go to a very few highly 
talented scientists and entrepreneurs.
3) Paralegals looking for information and journeyman sportswriters can't keep up with software
4) China has institutional beds for only 1.6% of her over 60  population compared 
to 8% for the developed world and unlike Japan who also has an older population, 
China will get old before she gets rich.
5) Tiger's X wife Ekin Nordegren has razed her recently purchased $12.2 million 
North Beach House to build a more roomer palace. Tiger is living nearby on Juniper
Island in a 9,727 sq. ft. home.
6) Total Apple iPad production costs of $275 get charged to our imports from 
China when only $10 is actual work (assembly) performed in China. Profit
Looks like we trade balance with China may be a little overstated. 
http://www.pcic.merage.uci.edu/
7) Top 70 Chinese legislators added $11.5 billion during 2011 or about $140 million per person.
The  536 U.S. Congress members, President Obama, his cabinet, and the Supreme Court and
others of the t op 660 in U.S. officials increases $7.5 billion, a little over $10 million per person.
Our top 70 ?.
8) Strict Gun Control laws in NYC have resulted in a suicide rate of about half the national average
with 12% of the suicides caused by guns as compared to 51% nationally.
9) Driving slow in the city can save 6 MPG over EPA estimates and 14 MPG highway (55 vs. 70)
using a 2012 Ford Focus SFE, see 4/12 of Popular Mechanics.

10) PepsiCo, which spent $17 million to stop thirty states from passing soda taxes to pay for 
health care reform, is trying to charge a $50 per month fee to employees related to smoking 
and obesity. Problem is that modern medicine will keep unhealthy people alive, but their quality of 
life will be poor and they will cost Medicare a fortune. No one in America wants to sacrifice so 
watching the healthy fight the unhealthy will be interesting.
11. Student loans and employment insecurity will slow housing growth for at least a decade.
12) Most of the ten largest occupations were relatively low paying, with only registered nurses,
with an annual mean wage of $69,110, having an average wage above the U.S. all occupations
mean of $21.74 per hour or $45,230 annually. Annual mean wages for the rest of the 10 largest occupations ranged from $18,790 for combined food preparation and serving workers to $33,120
for customer service representatives
13. German police fired 845 bullets in all of 2011, NYC police fired 84 shots at one suspect in 
April of 3012. Looks like Germany wins?
14. A record 6 federal fisheries returned to health last year bringing the total to 86 percent. 
One point five million are employed in this $183 billion dollar industry. Rebuilding the remaining 46
means $31 billion and 1/2 million jobs.  
15. New accounting rules lowered the 2010 assets of public pensions funds to 76 percent to 57%..
16. Only 55% of the 2011 law school graduates found full time employment requiring a law degree 
within nine months of graduation.
17. A 2001 study in five states found that medical debt contributed to 46.2% of all
personal bankruptcies and in 2007, 62.1% of filers for bankruptcies claimed high medical expenses.[4]  
18. Over a ten year period ending in earl 2012, the Federal Reserve has increase its duration of Treasury holding so that those lasting one or more years went from 0.04 to 0.475. With operation twist extended
to the end of he year, the duration will continue to rise making future interest payments smaller. 
Some might think he is following in Alan's footsteps by doing whatever it take to be reappointed.
20. The 2009 CARD Act, passed at the height of credit card defaults has work very well with May defaults of $ 276 million down to 2006 levels. The peak was $821 million. Bloomberg Businessweek 7/30/12 
21. In 2009, 630 cyclist died and 51,000 were injured. Makes concussions in football look insignificant.

22 The Great Indian blackout could lead to a quick fix that ignore green energy.
23. Despite losing 716,000 jobs since 2008, state and local governments still have 7.3 percent more workers than in 2000.- NY Post from The Week magazine.
24. From the shale fields of Texas and Wyoming to the Marcellus in the northeast, the U.S. Department of Energy contributed more than $100 million in direct federal research to help develop fracking, and Congress added $10 billion in tax breaks. Now, some of the biggest supporters of shale gas say the government should continue to back renewable energy research - for decades, if need be - to deliver future breakthroughs in that field. (AP)

25. Baxter, an inexpensive flexible robot some think will be to robotic manufacturing, what the PC was to computing, goes on sates 10/12. This along with inexpensive energy because of fracking, is why the U.S.
will continue to be he largest manufacturer in the world!
26. The WSJ reports that the Consumer Protection Agency already has almost 1,000 employees, over 60% make over $100,000 PER YEAR AND FIVE PERCENT MAKE OVER $200.000 PER YEAR.
27. Between the 1980's and 2012, the number of Irish men enrolled in seminary dropped from more than 150 per year to only 16 in 2012. BBC as reported in The Week.
28. Two-thirds of 53 women who died between ages 32 and 101 had male DNA which researches believed migrated from the male fetuses the women carried. The were less likely to develop Alzheimer's so it must of migrated to the brain. The women's eggs?.
29. Researchers estimate that 60% of our social mobility is determine by conception and the speed of social mobility has not changed since the Middle Ages. The Week Magazine 11/2/12, p23
30. Mostly because of Republican controlled legislatures using redistricting, Republicans control the house, 233 to 195. In Penn. won 5 of 18 went though they won the popular vote by 70,000. from Philadelphia Weekly.com and The Week Magazine of 11/23/12, p 14
31. Since 2000, the number of U.S. 5 largest cities that do not allow smoking in bars, restaurants, and the workplace has increased from one to fifty. The Week, 11/3/12 

32. Court battles in California will determine if public employee unions can be forced to take haircuts in salaries and benefits or the entire cost of austerity must be born by tax payers, bond holders, and other creditors. Economist, 12/8/12, p31
33. Handsome people make 13% more than looks challenged and may have a better chance of being hired during a recession. Smithsonian, 11/12, p18
34. German and Spanish wealth states are tiring of transferring wealth to poorer states. The Economist  10/27/12
35. Paul Volker believes that Dodd/Frank's liquidation procedures for a "too big to fail" bank may very well work, especially if work being done in England to pass laws that would assist Federal Reserve liquidation actions related to said bank's foreign subsidiaries. C-Span Book2, 12/16/12
36 "University" Degree is academic code for "Respectable" degree as most college students do not do enough work or have the academic ability to earn an "University" Degree.
 
37. The Atlantic reports that the real price of air travel has halved since deregulation. 3/13
38. In early 2009 PO asked agencies to award fewer noncompetitive "wasteful" contracts and by 2012 agencies had responded with an increase of 8.9% increase with 87% of the $115 billion going to defense contracts. Who gets the blame, PO, former Secretary of defense Panetta, what government official lost their job? BW 3/25/13 p26
39. The federal government’s civilian workforce fell by just 2,000 in March apart from almost 12,000 cuts at the U.S. Postal Service, which of course has a different set of problems. (Total federal civilian employment is still around 2.8 million.) State-government jobs rose by 9,000 to 5.1 million, the second straight monthly increase. Local-government employment dipped by just 2,000 jobs, sitting around 14 million WSJ blog 4/2/13
40. Obama-Signs-Bill-Killing-Anti-Corruption-Pro-Transparency-STOCK-Act-Provisions so congress has two ways to be corrupt, take money and legal insider tfrading.
41. Households with less than $13,000 take-home income spend an average of $645 on lottery tickets.Salon.com
42. During FDR's 12 years there were 6 filibusters, two were to stop anti-lynching laws, in the last six years there have been 170 by Republicans to stop legislation & presidential nominees. reported in The Week from Salon.com

Military Spending 
Virginia Class Submarine  Type:
nuclear submarine   Total Cost: $83.7 billion
R&D: $7.2 billion  > Procurement Cost: $76.6 billion > Total Units: 30
Price per Unit: $2,552.6 million #3 on a list of big budget defense items.

The Virginia Class submarines are arguably the most advanced nuclear subs in the world. 
The Virginia is 377 feet long and weighs 7,800 tons, or the equivalent of 821 school buses. 
The massive underwater craft is produced by General Dynamics (NYSE; GD) Electric Boat 


and Newport News Shat this figure has been building, which are the only two shipyards capable of building nuclear
 subs. The Virginias carry 38 different weapons, including Tomahawk Cruise Missiles, mines
 and torpedoes. While eight are currently in operation, the Department of Defense 
has 30 of these $2.5 billion subs budgeted.

Read more: The 10 Most Expensive Weapons in the World - 24/7 Wall St. http://247wallst.com/2012/01/09/the-10-most-expensive-weapons-in-the-world/#ixzz1j0hkLMg

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December of 2011 Story of the Month

November of 2011  Story of the Month

What I'm Thinking About    e-mail your comments

History of the Banking Crisis
1971
The Nixon Shock takes U.S. off the partial Gold Standard, inflation results, 
       and house prices begin to dramatic rise.
1980's : Home Equity Loans/lines of credit
replace Home Improvement Loans and the bedrock of 
        America's retirement savings begins to disappear.
1986 Financial Accounting Standards Board
becomes hypersensitive to offending the sensibilities 
        of big banking and big industry
:

1988: 
Collateralized Debt Obligation invented by City Group, use short-term low interest borrowing 
         to buy longer term higher interest paying bundled mortgages creating a substantial increase in 
         the funds available for home mortgages. CDO  are a type of derivative as they 
         derive their value form the value of some underlying assets (mortgages).

1990's Rubin, Summers, and Geithner strongly recommend government takeovers
to solve the 
          emerging market banking crisis. The feel bank owners and managers and creditors should bare 
          the cost and taxpayers for funding the takeovers, should get potential profits.
          Community Reinvestment Act is used by the Clinton Administration to increase housing 
          opportunities for the poor
.  Real estate and banking professionals turned this into subprime lending.
1999
: Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, also known as the Financial Services Modernization Act repealed the part
         of the Glass-Steagall Ac
t that had prohibited
         a bank from offering a full range of investment, commercial banking, and insurance services since its enactment in 1933.  

2000: Commodity Futures Modernization Act
deregulates derivates. Recommended to President Clinton by the
        President's Working Group on Financial Markets--Lawrence Summers, Treasury, Alan Greenspan, Fed, 
        Arthur Levitt, SEC, William J. Rainer,CFTC,  these derivatives, especially the credit default swaps, would be at the heart
        of the financial crisis of 2008 and the subsequent Great Recession.

2003: Credit Default Swaps, used to insure CDO (derivative that bundled home mortgages) were becoming a big 
        money maker on Wall Street. Anyone could buy them for a small fraction of the derivatives face value because sellers
         believed that a nationwide fall in house prices was not possible.
         By the end of 2007, asset bundles insured for $62.2 trillion would fall by 2010 to $26.3 trillion. 

2008 3/14 Bear Stearns suffers as subprime mortgages begin to fail. It is bailed out by the Federal Reserve
               and investment banks.  

       
9 /15 Lehman Brothers
is not bailed out and becomes the country's largest bankruptcy at $600 billion in assets. 
              
Use of leverage (borrowed money)  caused large losses because the subprime mortgage crisis made CDO
               to be worth much less than their book value
. A panic results as many financial institutions were involved in the
               subprime derivatives using leverage and insurance from sellers of CDS which couldn't pay due to small reserves.
             
Rubin, Summers, and Geithner strongly recommend a blank government check to solve the U.S. banking
              crisis. 
Bank owners, creditors and managers feel no paid and get the potential profits.
 
2008 AIG
, the world's 29th largest corporation in 2000 and a big one-sided player in the CDS market (sold insurance but did
        not cover themselves by buying insurance) is bailed out by the Federal Reserve for investments totaling $185 b

Debt did not cause the banking crisis. Unethical, mainly Republican politicians, local bankers, financial bankers, real estate people, and home buyers were the cause. The economic slowdown was caused by over building in housing and the lack of demand caused by many people borrowing on home equity that went away Those two alone have caused a typical financial balance sheet recession where it takes seven years on average to recover the 7 million lost jobs.

The real problem is future entitlements all governments have promised but pay for without a rapidly growing economy-- remember, we never paid for WWII or any war, we just grow our way out and beginning in 1980, used inflation. Both make the debt go away as a percentage of GDP.

 
This real problem might cause a society breakdown that could financially hurt people like myself. I am dependent upon SS, Medicare, and a pile of retirement money invested in corporate and government bonds plus a small pile of cash. All four sources could lose out big time though if this happens,  the price of everything, including medical, would really be low and the pile of money would be worth more. 
I don't worry about these things as I can't control them. What I can control is sitting on the 15,000 dollars I would use to buy a new car, living on just annuity interest and SS and enjoying life by watching the process unfolds.
 
This possible real problem was predicted by the book Generations. A shorted follow-up book entitled The Forth Turning, is available in paper and audio tapes. It takes place over 15-20 years beginning in 2010. There is also a blog that the author stopped contributing to December of 2010.

 

 

 

 

 

October 2011 Story of the Month

Editors Note: The bulk of the product went to paying health care and income to the top 1%.

For thirty years after WWII the U.S. had a competitive advantage, 
World demand grew very fast, profits for U.S. firms were abnormally high, 
and some of this excess was passed on to unionized workers and there was
a spillover to the nonunion workers. Now world supply has grown so fast-- 
first Germany and Japan, then S. Korea, then China, India, Brazil, Mexico.
-- that profits quickly disappear unless a company becomes very cost efficient.
This meant fewer workers doing more work. This resulting higher 
productivity reached a peak kept profits high, but productivity is now declining.

But the big problem is still a lack of demand. But, manufacturing and will never pay
like it did during the 30 years U.S. monopoly power. Technological advantage 
will result in high wages but competition in a flat world will limit the length and 
magnitude of worker benefits. Technology will make our "Macro-lives" longer and 
more enjoyable but our "Micro lives" (wages and fringe benefits) will slowly drift 
downward), until we start to lower the work week as Germany is doing or there is 
a big decrease in cost from very cheap energy or ...
 

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Story of the Month September

Economist Edgar Feige estimated in 2009 that unreported economic activity was costing the US government $600 billion in tax revenues, and the growth in that number—from the Internal Revenue Service's 2001 estimate of $345 billion—indicates 
the growth of the informal economy.
Inside the Trillion-Dollar Underground Economy Keeping Many Americans (Barely) Afloat in Desperate Times Alternet

Editors Note: At an average of about 450 billion per year it lost revenue, It looks like those steeling from us account to about 4.5 trillion dollars.
I wonder how many of these people are Tea Party members?

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Story of the Month September #2
Only the most educated 3% saw wage gains between 2000 and 2010by Laura ClawsonFollow for Daily Kos Labor Tue Sep 20, 2011 at 12:31 PM PDT

The Rising Value of a Science Degree             But, All Majors Are Not Created Equal

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Story of the Month      August 2011

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Economist Magazine 4/28/12

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Making Sure Obama is not Hoover August of 2011                                                                                                                              
Cut Future Spending Now                                                                                                                                 

1) Balance Social Security now                                                                                                                      
e-mail your comments
    A. lower the inflation adjustment to just cover inflation
    B. raise both the early and normal retirement age for those under 50
2) Lower Medicare costs by raising the eligibility age to the normal retirement SS age of those under 60.
3) Delay the expenditure side of Obama Care until unemployment is below 8%
4) Extend the federal pay freeze until unemployment is below 7%
5) Freeze Federal government hiring and step increases until unemployment goes below 8%
6) Surtax of 5% to10% on taxable income over $1,000,000
7) Eliminate tax subsidies to farmers.
8) Tax away Social Security income for those with taxable income over $100,000.
Allow Medicare to bargain with drug companies.
Raising Future Taxes Later
1) Retain payroll tax holiday for employees only until unemployment goes below 8%
2) Retain the payroll tax cut on small business until they make a profit
3) Retain Bush Tax cut on those with taxable income over $500, 000 until unemployment goes below 9%
4) Retain Bush Tax cut on those with taxable income over $250,000 until unemployment goes below 8%
5) Retain Bush Tax cut for those with taxable income below $250,000 until unemployment goes below 7%
Lower Taxes Now
Eliminate Social Security taxes  (Not Medicare) on the owners (Not Employees) of new small businesses for two years then permanently cut it by 50%.
There is no reason someone starting a small business should be required to have for retirement. If successful, pay half since we don't know how successful. 
And as a society, we can't just let them eat cake, which is why we have Medicare and SS in the first place.

Increase Consumer Spending Now
1) Requiring banks to randomly select and securitize 5% of their delinquent loans every 3 month. Correct market price will result quickly.
2) Requiring banks to refinance mortgages quickly with and equity swap for collateralized bonds. 
    President Obama, like FDR, should keep Supreme Court busy.
Increase Government Revenue Now
1) Replace our Democratic Capitalism with a
Capitalistic Democracy
2) Create a Congressional Information Office similar to the Congressional Budget office to supply legislative information so congress and 
the public do not have to rely on lobbyist and think tanks for date used for analyzing information related to possible legislation. 
Increase Government Revenue later.
Require banks to lower underwater mortgages to collateral market value and government receives 50% share in equity over eventual home sale profits.

Educate the Public Now
1) Calculate the Net Worth of the Federal Government so people know the U.S. is not bankrupt
2) Explain why the Social Security will always be paid but probably with dollars that are less valuable because of inflation
3) Explain how to lessen the hurt from inflation
4) Fix public education
    A. Treat academic all stars like sports stars
    B. Stress economic and personal skills enhancement of those in the middle
    C. Follow the lead of the cities like Baltimore in keeping kids from dropping out
 
5) Create a Congressional Information Office, similar to the Congressional Budget Office, 
    to provide unbiased information of the economic affect/collateral damage of proposed legislation.

1) Combine the Departments of Defense and Health/Human Services into a Department of Health and Safety 
so their lobbyist must compete against each other for tax dollars that save lives.
2) Once in a while, the President should take 5 minutes to talk to people in the Middle East during his weekly radio address to communicate a special message on something we are doing to help them. Can't do it too often or it won't be special. 09/26/12

Story of the Month August of 2011 will not be special.

August 1 Tradable Jobs    http://www.economicpopulist.org/
 From 1990 to 2008... " the 27.3 million jobs added from this time period, 97.7% of them were non-tradable.  What do the authors mean by tradable jobs? Jobs that can be offshore outsourced." ... "As an example, health care must be domestically sourced because sick people are here. Computer architecture, on the other hand, can be offshore outsourced and the results moved around the globe to a manufacturing center."

But foreigners are investing here.

Indeed, investment inflows from foreign manufacturers hit about $91 billion last year—the highest annual total since 2007. Among the attractions: Proximity to the world’s richest consumer market and access to America’s stock of skilled workers and low-cost energy.

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/

2012/08/22/foreigners-invest-in-u-s-manufacturing/

THE NEXT ECONOMY from the Atlantic
A series of articles about education and job creation trends that will impact the next decade. 
America 2020: Health Care Nation                            Four Horsemen of the Job-Apocalypse
What If Education Fails to Fix the Jobs Crisis?          The Hallowing Out of America's Middle Class

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July 27, 2011 from Econmix of the NYT Where the Job Growth Is: At the Low End A report finds that the jobs lost in the recession were largely in the middle tier of wages, but most jobs created in the recovery have been low-wage positions.

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July

In 1950, the United States Steel Corporation employed 30,000 workers at its plant in Gary, Ind. Today that factory employs only 5,000 workers. But they produce more steel: 
7.5 million tons a year now, compared with 6 million tons then.
NYT 11/07/12/the factory age isn't over

From 2006 through 2010, Detroit automakers shed an astonishing 120,000 jobs, more than one-third their combined total...  ...pay benefits and other costs from dropped from $75 to  $49 an hour for Chrysler $78 to $58 for Ford. Newly hired hourly workers are paid $14 to $16 an hour, about half what veterans get and are locked into less-generous benefits than veteran workers and they will become the majority of hourly workers as others age and leave. usatoday 2011-07-26.

Author Ramblings 
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7/25/11

Been thinking that the potential taxpayers revolt is not about the money but what is bought with the money. We ran up a much bigger debt paying for WWII and got little since our battle against Fascism was replaced with a battle against Communism.

Ask anyone angry about government spending to cut three of the following areas. Social Security, Medicare or Defense. They have a problem.

The big question is exactly how big is the divide between the parties. The first big divide resulted in the Revolutionary War. The second, the Civil War. Is this the third big divide?

In 2005 the median income for a family of four was $67,000. 
June 21, 2011 
Are Taxes High or Low? A Further Look NYT

Author Ramblings 
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Got some Bad News Today 6/17
For years I've been wondering if bad health habits of baby boomers was good news because they would die early and lower  SS and Medicare spending or bad news because they would long, sickly, debilitating lives with high Medicare cost. The Week reported that cholesterol-cutting medicine and diabetes drugs are keeping obese people alive until their early eighties and they cost and extra 42% annually to keep alive. Obesity Not Aging Causing Ballooning Health Care Cos
ts.

6/15 On extending the payroll tax cut
A two year delay in the employer portion of payroll taxes for start-ups and a delay in additional spending on Obama care until unemployment drops below 7% would both be better than existing small business adding employees than paying lower payroll taxes.  Lack of demand and
uncertainty are why existing small business are not hiring.

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6/14 The Lost Decade? You Mean Another One?

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6/8 Bloomberg Surveillance broadcasting from England taught me
        1.With the Pound having less exorbitant privileged than
           the dollar, England had to  tighten earlier than he U.S. 
           or pay really high borrowing cost. Her political cycle 
           being ahead
           of the U.S. so the Conservatives took over.
        2. All economies can't tighten at once or there would be 
            trouble.
        3. Developing world is doing better than developed world.
            Big Business is doing better than small business.
            Europe's core is doing better than her periphery.
        4. I didn't buy a new Infinite G37 because Bernanke 
            lowered the value of the dollar. 
            Question, will I buy a Cadillac CTS instead.
        5. China doesn't  have to worry about political Courage.
        6. Tom Keene thought Parliament was less partisan.

  May of 2011 Federal Spending in 2005 billions of dollars    Source [Excel 39k] | [PDF 75k]
Selected Years 1990 2000 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010

Change

Direct payments to individuals, grants to State and Local Governments, other grants 903 1291 1640 1693 1742 1801 2079 2365

1,461

National defense

461

361

495

499

509

549

580


626

165

Non discretionary

279

191

218

218

167

200

440

226 -53

Net Interest 

256

251

184

219

223

232

169

168

-87

Undistributed offsetting receipts

-67

-53

-65

-66

-76

-78

-82

-70

-3

Total in Constant2005 Billions of $

1,832

2,041

2,472

2,564

2,565

2,704

3,186

3,315

$1,483

Change 209 431

92

1 139 482 120  

Bush I & Clinton

 Bush II Obama
April, 2011 Are State and Local Employees Paid too Much? from the NY Times  

May, 2011

The Rise of the McWorker

The evidence points to the latter. According to a recent analysis by the National Employment Law Project (NELP), the biggest growth in private-sector job creation in the past year occurred in positions in the low-wage retail, administrative, and food service sectors of the economy. While 23% of the jobs lost in the Great Recession that followed the economic meltdown of 2008 were “low-wage” (those paying $9-$13 an hour), 49% of new jobs added in the sluggish “recovery” are in those same low-wage industries. On the other end of the spectrum, 40% of the jobs lost paid high wages ($19-$31 an hour), while a mere 14% of new jobs pay similarly high wages.

For more read  Welcome to the McJobs Recovery Andy Kroll, TomDispatch

 

 

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February, 2011 Drought in China adds pressure to world food prices  source

 
 
   March, 2011

For some, Investing In Social Security is a Bad Idea.
 Red, Bold people don't make it to full SS collection at 67

Economist 7/2/11

   Based on 50 year old,  5'8", single. non smoking, non drinking, poor eating, non-seatbelts person living a  sedimentary life working close to home in a stress 
   free service industry job earning $25,000 per year.
Race

Life Exp of Lowest Quartile

Life Exp for Median

150 lbs 200lbs 150 lbs 200lbs
White 64.42 62.04 70.53 69.16
Nonwhite 61.31 59.36 67.90 65.55
Add One Pack Smoking and 4+ Drinks Per Day
White 61.17 59.54 67.441 65.23
Nonwhite 58.65 57.38 64.86 62.52
1Add more than 10% calorie intake from fat and this drops to 66.9.
http://diskworld.wharton.upenn.edu/mortality/perl/CalcForm.html

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January, 2011 Story of the Month

Just-Released IRS Data Show Effects of Our Radical New Greed-Is-Good Culture David Sirota, Open Left

"We learn, for instance, that 1941's top executive at IBM, Thomas Watson, collected $517,221 in compensation that year, about $7.7 million in current dollars. Watson paid 69 percent of his total 1941 income in federal income tax.

Last year, today's chief exec at IBM, Sam Palmisano, took home $24.3 million for his executive labors. We don't know how much income above that sum Palmisano reported in 2009, or exactly how much of that total he paid in taxes. But we do know that the 13,374 Americans who reported incomes over $10 million in 2008, the latest year with IRS stats available, paid an average 24.1 percent of their taxable incomes in federal income tax.

In other words, IBM CEO Palmisano last year took home, after adjusting for inflation, over three times more than his predecessor Thomas Watson took home in 1941. Yet Watson in 1941 paid almost three times more of his income in federal income taxes than Palmisano likely paid in 2009."

from openleft.com

 

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Unemployment-extension-wont-help-99ers/ from the NY Times 12/18/10

 

 

 

 

 

 

The reason some may have already exhausted their benefits is that the name 99er is a bit of a misnomer. Indeed 99 weeks is the longest possible duration of unemployment, but the total varies by state depending on the unemployment rate and whether the state participates in certain voluntary programs. Before extended benefits expired on Nov. 30, just 24 states and Washington D.C. offered the full 99 weeks. Six states offered benefits for 93 weeks, five had them for 86 weeks, nine allowed 73 weeks, and five states were at 60. Mississippi was alone in offering 79 weeks. (The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has a map here, but be warned it could change with the release of state unemployment data Friday.)

Click here to see 19 scary facts about getting a job

 

 

Unemployment-extension-wont-help-99ers/ from the NY Times 12/18/10

 

The reason some may have already exhausted their benefits is that the name 99er is a bit of a misnomer. Indeed 99 weeks is the longest possible duration of unemployment, but the total varies by state depending on the unemployment rate and whether the state participates in certain voluntary programs. Before extended benefits expired on Nov. 30, just 24 states and Washington D.C. offered the full 99 weeks. Six states offered benefits for 93 weeks, five had them for 86 weeks, nine allowed 73 weeks, and five states were at 60. Mississippi was alone in offering 79 weeks. (The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has a map here, but be warned it could change with the release of state unemployment data Friday.)

Click here to see 19 scary facts about getting a job

 

December, 2010

Ten Year Cost of Government Borrowing were putting on a show in Europe on 11/23/10
German 2.63 
U.S. 2.74 
Spain 4.81
Portugal 6.90 
Ireland 8.34
Irish 8.61
Greek over 12 percent for the first time since May 7,
just before the creation of a euro-area rescue facility.

The EC Bank saved Greece from default with a May bailout but rates were back near their high on 10/23/10.

Interestingly, EURO countries have agreed to a bailout fund but to date, no country has financed it. Since Spain is bigger than the other PIIGS added together, lets hope the market stays somewhat happy with her.

"Exorbitant Privilege," old article on why we are not Greece is still relevant 

 

November, 2010, With newly acquired power, what will Republicans do about these trends?

Workers Pay More


 

Government  Worker Unaffected 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In 2008, the average wage for 1.9 million federal civilian workers was $79,197, which compared to an average $49,935 for the nation’s 108 million private sector workers (measured in full-time equivalents). The figure shows that the federal pay advantage (the gap between the lines) is steadily increasing. With much less pay volatility , government workers should be paid less, not more! Editors Note: Almost All Get Free Health Insurance. http://econompicdata.blogspot.com/2009/08/its-good-to-work-for-government.html

  October of 2010 The Economist Magazine

 

 

 

 

Editor's Note: When savings from the underground economy runs out, then debt will go up or  aggregate demand will go down.

 

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September of 1010

#1  from Wall Street Journal's  Real Time Economics Blog

 

# 3 David_McCandless' Video The Beauty of Data Visualization from TED: Ideas worth spreading.


 

Enjoy the NYT
on your Kindle

 

August of 1010

Bush tax cuts through 2020: $3.5 trillion.*

Income tax cut <  $250,000 $1,184 billion
Income tax > $250,000 a year or more: $700 billion Alternative minimum tax change: $584 billion**
Marriage tax relief: $360 billion
$1,000 child tax credit: $359 billion
Capital-gains and dividend tax cuts: $238 billion
Other: $71 billion

* This analysis excludes the estate and gift tax cuts.
** Without this patch, the AMT would snatch back the Bush cuts from many higher-income taxpayers

Data: Joint Committee on Taxation, Treasury Dept. and Bloomberg Businessweek

 

 Free Trade Doesn't  Work book review

 

 

Story of the Month July, 2010

Do we really have too much debt?

GDP for 2009 estimated at $14.0 trillion
Debt is (3.697 percent)(14.0) =  about  $52.0 trillion
About $13 trillion each for Households, Governments,
Financial Corporations, Non-financial Corporations.

Household and Nonprofit equity = $54.0 trillion see chart
2005 value of American companies $21.0 trillion source
Valve of federal, state, and local governments, unknown
but certainly over their share.

 

 

 

Free Finance Book Summary

Story of the Month, July 2010

Jails Cost Money

The High Budgetary Cost of Incarceration
June 2010, John Schmitt, Kris Warner, and Sarika Gupta

 

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Story of the Month 2,
June 2010

Saving Social Security
12 ways to fix Social Security MSN

A report (.pdf file) recently issued by the Senate Special Committee on Aging outlines policies Congress could institute to lower or eliminate Social Security's projected deficit. Options include tax increases, benefit cuts and program tweaks that could be

Here's a look at possible Social Security fixes:

Reduce benefits by 3% for new beneficiaries beginning in 2010
Lower shortfall by 18%
Lower shortfall by 30% with a 5% cut

Increase from 35 the number of years use for calculate SS
Lower shortfall by 14% for 38 years
Lower shortfall by 23% for 40 years

 

Raise pending retirement age to 67 right away or

Raise retirement age to 68 or higher or
Index retirement age to longevity

Lowers shortfall by about 30%

Increase 6.2% contributions from workers and employers
7.3% would eliminate deficit

Increase 6.2% to 7.2% in 2022 and 8.2% in 2052
would eliminate deficit

Increase contribution by .05% per year for 20 years
Lowers shortfall by about 70%

Increase income base from 106,800 to 100%.
Illuminates shortfall if increase didn't count toward benefit
Lowers shortfall by 95% if increase counts toward benefit

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Story of the Month, June 2010

The Sagging of the Middle Class

See Also The Great Deprivation, How Much Do We Spend Caring for Family?,What We’ve Learned: Our (Increasingly) Non-Market Economy, What We Don’t Know, and Perhaps Can’t, The Disservice Economy

Story of the Month, May 2010
In 2009, U.S. Treasury Debt held 
by foreigners was only 5.8% 
(3,162/64,464)x100 of U.S. 
Households and Nonprofit 
Organizations Net Worth.
 
China, Mainland       744
Japan                 768
United Kingdom 2/     234
Oil Exporters 3/      219  
Brazil                171 
Hong Kong             152 
Carib Bnkng Ctrs 4/   144
Taiwan                121  
Russia                120 
Total-all countries       3,162
Cash, Savings, Money      7,750
Markets of U.S. Household
and Nonprofits
Their Net Worth was      54,176
Net Worth was            64,464 
in 2006.
Editors Note: So much for the U.S. needing
China to finance our federal debt.

 

 

 

Free Finance Book Summary

Story of the Month, April, 2010

Don’t believe the hype on GM’s loan. repayment.

 

WhiteSmoke's writing software

Story of the Week, March 28,  2010

Older Americans Made the Recession Look Better (Excerpts)  by Marianna Kudlyak, Devin Reilly and Stephen Slivinski of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.

 

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No One Pay's More Federal Taxes March 22, 2010

 

 

 

Most Farmers Don't Even File Estate Taxes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just-Released IRS Data Show Effects of Our Radical New Greed-Is-Good Culture
David Sirota, Open Left

"We learn, for instance, that 1941's top executive at IBM, Thomas Watson, collected $517,221 in compensation that year, about $7.7 million in current dollars. Watson paid 69 percent of his total 1941 income in federal income tax.

Last year, today's chief exec at IBM, Sam Palmisano, took home $24.3 million for his executive labors. We don't know how much income above that sum Palmisano reported in 2009, or exactly how much of that total he paid in taxes. But we do know that the 13,374 Americans who reported incomes over $10 million in 2008, the latest year with IRS stats available, paid an average 24.1 percent of their taxable incomes in federal income tax.

In other words, IBM CEO Palmisano last year took home, after adjusting for inflation, over three times more than his predecessor Thomas Watson took home in 1941. Yet Watson in 1941 paid almost three times more of his income in federal income taxes than Palmisano likely paid in 2009."

from openleft.com  Editors Note: The 1944 current after tax income was 0.31 X 7.7 mil or about 2.4 mill, the latest CEO estimate is 0.759 x 24.3 mill or about 18.4 mill, almost nine times for the same job.

Editors Note: In 1984 the average U.S. Household spent 16.8% on food, in 2011, 11.2%, a decrease of 5.6%. Business Week, 3/4/13.  So  what we have to do, eat and pay taxes went down! Is it me, or are the complainers a little on the greedy side!  This story is copied from Jan. of 2011

e-mail antonw@ix.netcom.com

 
 
   
 

Story of the Week March  15, 2010

     

 

Story of the Week March  15, 2010

 

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Story of the Week Feb. 15, 1010

Story of the Week Feb. 22, 2010

 Story of the Week Feb. 1, 2010
Formal Education Beyond High School Not Required for 66% of the Job Openings
from 2008 to  2018 
Bureau of Labor Statistic PDF (3.5M)

 

Story of the Week Feb. 8, 2010

Story of the Week Jan. 25, 2010
from the The Big Picture

Deficits annual) and Debt (cumulative are High

Story of the Week Jan 18, 2010
The Economist Magazine,
p32 of 1/16/10

Story of the Week Jan 18, 2010
Bernanke's Double Bubble Bind
(Series/The Government We Deserve)

C. Eugene Steuerle

January 4, 2010
Story of the Week

Source
: The lost decade for the economy
NEIL IRWIN, CRISTINA RIVERO AND TODD LINDEMAN
Washington Post, January 1, 2010

 

 December 28, 2009 Story of the Week
Health Care Basic Data from Advanced Countries

December 21, 2009  Story of the Week

The Party is Over: Copenhagen Devolved, Ricky Rood is a professor at U of Michigan and course leader on climate change and how it interplays with business and policy. This is his Blog to www.wunderground.com/

 
 
 

December 14, 2009  Story of the Week  

Household Debt Problem
Editors Note: When home improvement loans became home equity loans, we were doomed by the housing cycle which was a major contributor to the Great Depression.

Chart courtesy of NYT

 

December 7 Story of the Week

NFIB Jobs Statement: Expect Coal in Small Business Stockings
National Federation of Independent Business (hat tip reader Scott, who  points out that this report is very
much at odds with Friday’s employment release).  Editors Note: The federal government spends so much time seasonally
adjusting data that understanding what is happening is difficult.

 

November 30
Story of the Week

 

 
Why You'd Better Beware of the 'Big Shift' from Business Week of November 23, 2009
Conventional wisdom says productivity is a key driver of corporate profitability. Yet this long-held assumption is challenged by a report from Deloitte's Center for the Edge. The study, led by John Hagel III and John Seely Brown, finds that despite major improvement in labor productivity over the past four decades, many U.S. industries have experienced "alarming" declines in return on assets (ROA), a key metric of corporate performance. The authors say that trend is being driven by what they term the "Big Shift"—a tremendous increase in competitive pressures, combined with the increasingly pervasive digital infrastructure.
    In a follow-up report released on Nov. 10, Hagel & Co. delve deeper into the numbers to figure out how the Big Shift is playing out in nine U.S. industries. Surprisingly, the steepest declines in ROA came in technology, telecommunications, and media—sectors traditionally regarded as innovation hotbeds. The auto industry also had a poor showing, though that's not so startling. Banking, retail, consumer products, and insurance fared better. But only two sectors, health care and aerospace/defense, saw ROA climb. Keep in mind that these industries are subject to heavy government regulation, which tends to muffle competition.
  
   Overall, the Deloitte report provides fodder for those, like BusinessWeek's Michael Mandel, who argue that the woes of the U.S. economy extend beyond the financial sector and began showing up well before the housing bubble. (Deloitte's Center for the Edge, "2009 Shift Index") —Edited by Harry Maurer & Cristina Linblad

November 9 Story of the Week
Krugman on the Need for Jobs Policies from Naked Capitalism

November 2, 2009 Story of the Week
Unemployment hits 10.2% and

 

Long-Term Unemployed Are Losing Skills

As The Economy Improves, Some Will Get More Hours  Before Hiring Begins

Others Will Re-Enter The Labor Force So Both Employment And The Rate of  Unemployment Will Go Up For A While.

Consumer Borrowing Falls Sharply so consumer demand is staying low.

 

 

October 26 Story of the Week
Jon Stewart takes on Fox News

 

October 19 of 2009 Story of the Week
State Revenues Fall
Fiscal 2009 Brought Record Overall Decline of 8.2 Percent, or $63 Billion 
Rockefeller Institute of Government

 
 
  October 12, 2009  from Credit Write downs  

The Debt Issue
A Brief look at the Asset-Based Economy at economic turns by Edward Harrison

Summary
Author believes borrowing by financial companies since early 80's has kept U.S. economy growing though people and business have done their share. Comments to the post show not everyone agrees with the conclusion that borrowing by financials could help avoid a second economic dip. Many agree that debt servicing is a long term problem.

We Have Lots of Debt!

 

But It's Not Government


It's Non-Financial Business

 

People

Financial Services

 October 5, 2009 NYT

 
 

9/20/09

CEO Panel on FOX News Sunday talk about the recession,  Chris Wallace ...
 
   9/13/09 USA Today Story of the Week
Salaries Down, Governments Not That Affected!
 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While USA Today did not think these stories were related, I do!
 Orlando is talking about laying off firefighters but with government big headline
about layoffs usually are followed by a small page 20 story of "we found the money."
It is not big government that people are against, it's that when things get tough,
everyone has to suffer except the government!

 

 

 

 

Politics
A Christmas Story
The Death of Conservatism authors interview on Charlie Rose 10/2009
5 Myths About Health Care Around the World (Washington Post) 8/27/09
Historian Juan Cole & Journalist Shahan Mufti Bill Moyers speaks with historian Juan Cole and journalist Shahan Mufti about the U.S. relationship with Pakistan, how it relates to the war in Afghanistan, and why they think Pakistan is not likely to become a failed state anytime soon.
A populist interpretation of the latest Boom-Bust cycle 05/09
William K. Black: CSI Bailout
Bill Moyers sits down with William K. Black, the former senior regulator who cracked down on banks during the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s. Black offers his analysis of what went wrong and his critique of the bailout.
Dark musings, 2009-03-24 from Steve Waldman who explains how the cost
to the tax payer of the private-public partnership may be larger than it appears
because the FDIC will leverages up the assets bought with a given investment.

The Limits of Power Bill Moyers sits down with history and international
relations expert and former US Army Colonel Andrew J. Bacevich who
identifies three major problems facing our democracy: the crises of economy,
government and militarism, and calls for a redefinition of the American way of life.

Russia and a new democratic realism Francis Fukuyama, Financial Times
Here Are Five Things Republicans Won't Tell You: Caroline Baum
The Deficit  Been Bigger
Econbrowser, March 26,2009

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Economics
Democratic Capitalism vs. Capitalistic Democracy is from our editor.

Irish begin to wake up the fact that they are repaying money that is then burned.
"Exorbitant Privilege," old article on why we are not Greece is still relevant 

A Brief History of U S Banking 7/24/10
"The Global Jobs Competition Heats Up" Economist's View 7/1/10
Jobless recoveries econbrowser, J6/30/10
America's Ten Most Corrupt Capitalists  AlterNet, Zach Carter  5/13/10

entitlements-picking-up-in-u-s  
and Entitlements Part II  05/10
How to walk the fiscal tightrope that lies before us (FT)  2/18/10
MIT World Videos on Economics
for 2009
Hard Road Ahead Hoisington Investment Management, 1/15/10, is a concise explanation of why this economist feels there will be little inflation.
The Year's Biggest Ideas in Economics NYT from The New Republic, 12/30/09
Paul Volcker Finds a Hammer  December 17, 2009
Econ Talk This Week covers many interesting current economic topics. December 14, 2009
What America Needs is an Economic Strategy from Michael Porter of Business Week October 30,2009
Are Federal Workers Overpaid? NYT 10/13/09
Bill Moyers  10/9/09 Marcy Kaptur Simon Johnson rep from Ohio and Simon Johnson professor of Global Economics and Management at M.I.T.'s Sloan School of Management think Wall Street is still running the show?
American inequality has its magnitude of  been exaggerated? 9/23/09
Long Term Unemployment Rate 9/9/09
Recession Job Losses: 3 Views 9/9/09
Unemployment: The Harder You Look, The Uglier It Appears 9/2/09
The lost decade shows how growth has been slow for a while. Comments are very interesting. 08/20/09
Broad Unemployment Across the U.S. Check out this interactive map from the July 14, 2009 NYT.
Where Are We Now? Five Point Summary written by Simon Johnson, June 13, 2009 at 9:01 am from baselonesenario.com
The new global balance: Financial de-globalization, savings drain, and the US dollar clearly explains what might happen to interest rates and what might have happened with little government involvement.
Fed Watch: Turning Which Corner? 05/11/09 -Tim Duy
Recession, Far From Over, Already Setting Records 4/25/ NYT
Four Markers to an Economics TurnAround
"Just How Progressive Is the Tax System?"
US families lost $11 trillion in 2008 "Household assets as a whole fell 15% to $65.7 trillion, unadjusted for inflation, compared with a decline of less than a percentage point to $14.2 trillion in total household liabilities. The net worth of American households -- the difference between assets and liabilities -- was $51.5 trillion, down $11.2 trillion, or nearly 18%, from 2007. That sets Americans' total wealth back to levels lower than in 2004. It was the first decline in American household net worth since 2002."
Analysis: Since 2008 started at the end of both a housing and a stock market bubble, it seems to me  American families are still much better off than they were before the bubbles and spending slow down should not be dramatic and as soon as unemployment stops increasing, spending should begin to rise at a sustainable rate.

10/06/12

image

Businessinsider.7-most-illuminatingeconomic charts of 2011-12

 

 

Relevant Job Information

Editors 2/13
1. Conservatives blame extended unemployment and social programs for low participation rate
2. I add the increase over the years in two family workers has make one being unemployed
    a little less of a problem,  baby boomers who prepared for retirement properly decided to 
    collected until they ran out of benefits and then retired, more employment opportunities
     in the underground economy and as a nation, U.S. is a much wealthier economy than
     in the 1950's, 60's and even the 80's and this allows families to help each other out more 
     than in the past.

image

Editors Note Some of this is debt write off of mortgages.  9/24/12
CHART OF THE DAY: Global Growth Has Collapsed

stateofworkingamerica.org

Recent Economic History

Beginning with the economic expansion  caused by WWII, demand for U.S. manu -factored goods increased dramatically.  It took Germany, England and Japan  many years to repair war damaged  manufacturers and bring an end to U.S.  manufacturers monopoly power. As a 
result, demand increase.  Profits maximization resulted. Thanks in  part to Unions, these manufactures shared  their excess profits with unionized workers and wages increases spilled over to many nonunion workers. 

Serious competition from foreign  manufacturers, beginning with  automobiles and steel,  increased supply. Rust belt industries lost all their excess profits and  some incurred a loss as supply increased too much. Wage give backs began and  many other workers found themselves with  stagnating wages. Companies used technology  and outsourcing to be more competitive and  this continues to put pressure on wages.

This also happened in the finance industry with  competition coming from foreign banking and  cheap Internet trading. Their attempt to increase D for their services with exotic products  like derivatives has not worked out well as  of 07/01/10.

As a result, the high ever increasing standard of living enjoyed in the  U.S. will grow very slowly as we share the  wealth  with people from around the world.  We may even have to give some back  because of our energy dependence and recent decadence though increased production of energy and shale lessen this dependency. But we will still enjoy the highest standard of living in the industrialized world and technology will continue to make our  lives better, especially now that the Asians will be contributing because of their investments in R&D.  And, always remember the best things in life will  continue to be free and having enough money is a function of demand, not supply.

 

Current data on The Business Cycle.
Radio Economics
A new dynamic for the Middle East Jim Hamilton, Econbrowser Jim Hamilton, Econbrowser
U.S. Expansion May Be First in Six Decades to End Without Income Recovery
Bootstrap Theory of Oil Prices by Anthony de Jasay explains why speculators are not causing high oil prices.
Obama vs. McCain on Taxes, Economy, Social Security

Podcast from Bloomberg

The Shock Doctrine: The evil of “Disaster Capitalism”, a book report video was posted to the Crooks and Liars  blog on December 1, 2007
Income Inequality Gap Widens
By GREG IP
October 12, 2007; Page A2 of the Wall Street Journal
Who has the Oil from the Energy Bulletin
Help Not Wanted, Congress is doing its best to lose the global talent war from The Economist Magazine of April 8, 2008
2008/05/Paul Volcker  on the 2007-08 financial crisis and the Federal Reserve bailout of Bear Stearns.
Investing in college: Is it worth it?

Chart updated 6/6/12


 

The "carried interest rule" allows the managers of private-equity funds (formerly called leveraged buyout firms) to call their 20% bonus for success capital gains rather than income. The bonus is in addition to the 2% of assets they get as asset managers is taxes at 35%. One estimate has the carried interest as 1/3 of company profits. as  estimate   

The prophets of doom Meet the Cassandra's, 14 economists, bloggers, politicians and businesspeople of all political stripes who have become the most strident critics of President Obama's stewardship of the economy. Source: The prophets of doom Andrew Leonard Salon, Apr. 16, 2009

Critique Employment Stimulus Bank Plan Alternate Plan
P Krugman, Princeton Economist Too Small Won't Work Nationalize
G Mankiw
Harvard
Economist
 
tax cuts better, buy American is bad part bank creditors need
to accept loss
 
S Johnson&
R. Kurtz
Blog founder
MIT Professor
Too Small Won't work Oligarchs should be put into receivership
N Roubini, NYU Economist fewer tax cuts, better international coordination Changed mind, plan is viable Nationalize
W. Buiter
London Sch of Econ
Economist Won't work Its financial shenanigans close zombie banks
M Wolf
Fin Times
Ass Ed and
Fin Commentator
Not large enough if others don't help more Won't work close zombie banks
W Black
U of Missouri
Economist Too Small designed to cover up fraud by banker  put into receivership
D Baker
Center  for Econ
&Policy Research
Co-director Too Small Won't Work banks getting too much, taxpayers too little

Military/The War

Cutting Military Bases and other costs 2/8/12
R
ather than asking congress for more money for Alzheimer's research, President Obama should 
ask that half the savings from closing military basis be used to finance said research. It is about time
he educate people on the opportunity cost of military spending.

Now that ewe got Bin Laden, The War is Over   5/1/11 
Presidents Obama and President Bush should have a fireside chat with the American people. From the Oval Office
our current president would thank his predecessor for having the foresight and gumption to make sure Bin Laden 
was not able to manage a world wide organized terrorist movement. Al Qaeda has been dispersed to many parts
of the world and their leader is dead. President Bush should thank President Obama for continuing the fight,
thank the American people for making the financial and personal sacrifice needed to continue an unpleasant task,
and thank American soldiers and law enforcement officials for making us safer. Both men should warn that as it was before 9/11, 
terrorist groups of all types from many cultures will attack cultures that differ. But the war is over! We can now direct
our maximum attention to making sure terrorist do not get a nuclear bomb, a difficult but less demanding task.
Both men should agree that we are not now , and must protect against creating, the Orwellian world of 1984.


Guest Post: Instead of Fixing the U.S. Economy or Creating Jobs for AMERICANS, Obama Will Spend The Money in Afghanistan and Iraq
 4 Nov 2009 11:34 AM PST The Economist, November 3-9,2007, page 17 of A special report on religion and public life.
" One great irony of the war on terror is that although George Bush has declared war on jihadist, his enemy devote very little energy to fighting him.
The jihadists' main war is not against the West but against apostate Muslim regimes [those that reject the faith]: where they do battle with outsiders,
it is mainly against occupying powers--Russia in Chechnya, America in Iraq, India in Kashmir, and Israel in Pakistan."
The Limits of Power: Democracy Now interview Andrew Bacevich, a conservative historian who spent twenty-three years serving in the US Army.
Some Facts from Wikipedia and Sunset Social Studies Department
A Concise 20th Century History of Iran
A Concise 20th Century History of Iraq
Sunnis and Shiites at War
History of Al Qaeda Power Point Sunset
Al-Qaeda, Taliban, and Muslim Fundamentalism
Militant Hamas versus Moderate Fatah in Palestine
Historical Timelines collected by
George Emery a librarian at Conesus College.
Iraq Timeline

Iraq History Timeline
The Iraq Crises Timeline - MidEastWeb
First Gulf War Timeline
Iraq War II Power Point 
Sunset Social Studies Department
September 11, 2001: Timeline of Terrorism -
InfoPlease
Terrorist Attacks in U.S. Timeline - InfoPlease
History of Terrorism : Timeline of Terrorist Acts

Book Reviews from the New York Times, Crooks and Liars, and The Economist
Blackwater The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army
Book Review-- American Dynasty  Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush
Book Review-- HOUSE OF BUSH, HOUSE OF SAUD
 The Secret Relationship Between the World's Two Most Powerful Dynasties from the New York Times
Book Reviews-- Presidential Courage summary of the first eight chapters from
How jihad went freelance is a review of three recent books. Al-Qaeda has evolved from a single group to an amorphous movement.
Does that make it less dangerous or more so?
Jan 31st 2008 of The Economist.
Book Summaries from 21st Century Learning Products
American Dynasty Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush, by Kevin Phillips
Second Chance Three Presidents and the Crisis of America Superpower, by Zbigniew Brzezinski
Presidential Courage Brave Leaders and How They Changed America 1789-1989, by Michael Beschloss
Social Security
To Improve Social Security, "Follow the Money"
  by Walter Antoniotti Data  is from
The Center For Retirement Research at Boston College
Effects of long-term care on Medicaid costs.
The recent trend towards
later retirement
.
Will people be healthy enough to
work longer
?
Social Security Benefits are Progressive

Our Experts Can Help With Difficult Assignments  

     History      
Literature
Psychology  
 
Sociology 
Social Science

s

 

Education edited by  21st Century Learning Products

USA  Today "Study boosts rankings of U.S. Schools"  2/16/12

The US rank of 11th in math is misleading. At the top are Hong Kong, Singapore, and Chinese Taipei, three cities whose populations are far from representative of their entire population. Japan, #4, is an economic and cultural basket case. The next four have a median score of 543 and include England at 541. USA Today"s next grouping of five countries at have a median score of 529 which is the U.S. score. Germany, our main competitor for values added exports scored 525. Australia led the next grouping at 316. Those who believe the education lobby should know the U.S. never led the world in international testing 


"The media you use make no difference at all to learning," says Richard E. Clark, director of the Center for Cognitive Technology at USC. "Not one dang bit. And the evidence has been around for more than 50 years." from  LA Times 2/4/12
Who really benefits from putting high-tech gadgets in classrooms?

College Educated Wasting Degree  1/4/11
Thoughts on President Obama's Educational Plans

The Sagging of the Middle Class. Technology and Trade are destroying good jobs.
Weighing the Value of an Elite-College Degree
Pay Scale Com has useful career information.
Lies My Teacher Told Me Audio Book
6 reasons not to save for kids' college 10/13/09
Best Undergrad College Degrees By Salary
The months since the collapse of Lehman Brothers have been disastrous   for professionals, except those in the fields of health care and education. From August to April, there was an overall drop in employment of 4.3%. More significant, however, were the steep declines in highly skilled occupations: 9.3% in computer and math jobs, 10.3 For more read % in engineering and architecture occupations, and a whopping 11.5% in arts, design, entertainment,
sports, and media occupations. Economy Takes White-Collar Workers to the Cleaners Tue Jun 9th, 2009, www.minyanville.com, Ryan Goldberg

BTW The Business Week: It Pays To Be Friendly - Business Week Good 
social skills enhance earning potential.
Book Reviews of Real Education  Real Education 1 and 2  Real Education 2 by 
Alan Murray, bestselling author of The Bell Curve.

Education and Income Inequality, chapter 21 of The Age of Turbulence, 
Adventures in a New World, by Alan Greenspan

From the Department of Labor
About13.9 million( 25%) of  the 54 million job openings to be filled by workers entering an 
occupation for the first time between 2004 and 2014 will be by college educated workers. .
  Only 6.9 million(12.8%) of the openings will be for "pure college graduate" occupations, "... 
those where at least 60 percent of current workers aged 25-44 have a bachelor’s or higher 
degree, fewer than 20 percent have a high school diploma or less education, and fewer 
than 20 percent have taken college courses but do not have a bachelor’s degree." For 
economic analysis by different occupations read
No Bachelors Degree and
Sundry Material
Did You Know
explores the future  with interesting statistics.
College Graduates from the Fall of 2006 Occupational Outlook Quarterly. From the 
Washington Monthly

 "Is Our Students Learning?" From Forbes Magazine
Five Reasons To Skip College
Click here to see the five more reasons not to go to college.

From the National Center on Education and the Economy

Tough Choices’: Radical Ideas, Misguided Assumptions
is a good summary with an incorrect
  conclusion. Do no harm means take no risks and "Creative Destruction' requires we take risks.

From
Walter Antoniotti,
Every Child Employable, not  "No Child Left Behind", should be our educational slogan.
Governors Wrong, College Prep Not For Everyone provides information on how many 
need a college degree.

Education is Up For All, Wages are Up For Some Women
Education Reform explains why educators, not academicians should design our 
educational system.

Investing In Education, An Economic View is provided by leading economists and managers.
Not All College Majors Are Created Equal
Interesting Thoughts Concerning Education from Business Experts


A little humor?  The 5 Minute University

 

 

 

 

 
Federal Governments Enters Education

When the /Morrill_Land-Grant_Acts  was passes, substantially less than half of our children graduated H.S. Only the very rich and those very academic oriented attended private colleges. Anyone able to pay, could go to Harvard College. The Morrill act created agricultural /industrial colleges for our very rural, agricultural based economy. They were for the select few who finished H.S. and didn't want a liberal art education.

After WWII, people realized that the very, very select group who graduated from these private colleges and land-grant colleges made more money than H.S graduates. So the college audience expanded to those not quite as academic, but willing to sacrifice time and money. This very select group also made more money then H.S. graduates. Required qualities being in short supply, states and the Federal Government began to help with funding. 

Soon parents were demanding states and the federal government help their not so select children go to college. Politicians responded. Then the Federal Government started increasing funding for those who were really poor with no other source of help. These Pell Grants combined with state funds to provide much more than the cost of attending a local state institutions. Lo and behold there was a tremendous in those attending local colleges. Many didn't finish but there was still an increase in college graduates. Some could even compete for a good job so that the average salaries 
began dropping. 

But parents still wanted their kids to go to college, H.S. teachers liked teaching geometry rather than drafting. School administrators and politicians got parents off their backs by insisted that testing would prepare kids for college. Big publishers started making big money. Twenty years went by!

Then the world got flat and really bright people from Asia began competing with some of our brightest college graduates. A top decile graduate from Asia got the job over the top quartile graduates from the states.

Now our service based economy needs fewer and fewer academically oriented H.S. graduates. Only the very brightest with outstanding work characteristics will get an economic return from the investment parents, students, and society make in a college education.

It's time to retool and make the changes necessary so the non-academically oriented two-thirds of our children get value from our primary and secondary educational systems. They must be prepared for the work, in a service economy.

s

Health

What Killed Us then an Now!

Avoidable deaths | Where do all the dollars go? | Economist.com

America lags behind its peers in preventing avoidable deaths.
www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10499177 -
Similar pages
The Urban Institute estimates that 137,000 people died between 2000 and 2006 because they were uninsured. NYT

The expense of Obama Obamacare makes me nervous. 12/4/12
Talked with a guy while we were waiting at CVS to get our flew shot. He looked old enough, but said he was nor yet collecting SS. Discovered he was a type 2 diabetic, had just tests showed he had liver enzymes in his blood, was trying to quit booze, and he couldn't afford health insurance. Data has shown that modern medicine/drugs extend for many years , what will be an unhealthy old age. Obamacare will exacerbate this trend. Costs to Medicare and SS will increase dramatically. I have a feeling many uninsured poor people are more sickly than most and with government picking up the tab for Obamacare, these people will really brake the budget. Later today, this this article from the University of Pennsylvanian predicting that Accountable Care Organizations won't work ads fuel to the problem.. http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/3120.cfm

Here is how the article ends. 

"Obamacare advertised two big features, Burns says: one, the extension of health insurance to 30 million new people, and two, a plan to pay for them with efficiencies on the delivery side that ACOs are supposed to supply. "What our paper shows is that ACOs are not going to save money. They are going to cost a lot of money," Burns states, expressing frustration by what he sees as a failure to consider past experience. "Obamacare will cost a lot more than everybody thinks." Examining "the soft underbelly of Obamacare" exposes looming cost overruns with scarce prospects for improvement in the quality of health care for sick individuals or the population as a whole, he adds.

Burns points to the 5% to 10% of Medicare beneficiaries who run up most of the tab or Medicare. 'That is where efforts ought to be targeted," he says. "Everybody changing everything invites more upheaval than the system can take.'"

Health

 

 

 

 

historicaldeaths-615.jpg

Question: What happened in 1978, 1984, and 2000 to increase cost?

Drugs are dangerous. In 2009 drugs killed 37,484 people, suicide 36,500, car accidents 36,284, firearms 31,228, falls 24,834, and murder 16,591. So drugs killed a lot of people but of those who died of a drug induced death, only one in five was from an illegal drug, the rest were prescription and non-proscription pharmaceuticals. That means approximately 7500 people died of illegal drug use, the majority from cocaine, heroin and amphetamines. To put this number in perspective it is only 31% of the number of people who died of direct alcohol induced deaths which doesn't included car accidents, suicides or other causes of death related to alcohol abuse. Even that pales in the light of the 450,000 annual deaths from smoking a legal product, tobacco.

opednews.com/articles/Toke-Up-The-Revolution-Wh-by-John-Kelley

 

 

 

 

 

Miscellaneous

 

 

Who has the Oil from The Big Picture blog of December 22, 2007 For more info read the Energy Bulletin.

Happiness: The US is looking good.

The Shock Doctrine: The evil of “Disaster Capitalism”

Posted: 01 Dec 2007 06:40 PM CST

video_wmv Download (1076) | Play (1167)  video_mov Download (610) | Play (657)  (h/t Logan)

There has been no shortage of books chronicling the dystopia that is the Bush Administration.   And in this job, I’ve read quite a few of them.  None of them have made as powerful an impact as Naomi Klein’s The Shock DoctrineI promise you, it will change how you look at government policy and responses.  It also finally sealed forever, for me at least,  the coffin of the utter bollocks of Friedman economics.  Listen to me carefully, you free market fanatics: FRIEDMAN. POLICIES. DO. NOT. WORK. PERIOD.  His version of ‘free market economics’ STIFLES democracy.  They create an oligarchy that is the opposite of democracy.

Don’t believe me?  Author Naomi Klein gives compelling examples in history proving  that “Disaster Capitalism” has been the foundation of government’s actions and how none of it has been done for the benefit of the populace.   

Al-Qaeda

How jihad went freelance

Jan 31st 2008
From The Economist print edition

Al-Qaeda has evolved from a single group to an amorphous movement. Does that make it less dangerous or more so?

Panos

TERRORISTS are a bit like you and me, or so Marc Sageman suggests. It might be comforting to think that angry young Islamists are crazed psychopaths or sex-starved adolescents who have been brainwashed in malign madrassas. But Mr Sageman, a senior fellow at the Philadelphia-based Foreign Policy Research Institute, explodes each of these myths, and others besides, in an unsettling account of how al-Qaeda has evolved from the organization headed by Osama bin Laden into an amorphous movement—a “leaderless jihad”.

Mr. Sageman is a leading advocate of what is called the “buddy” theory of terrorism. He has spent much time asking why well-educated young men, from middle-class backgrounds, often with a secular education and wives and children, become suicide bombers. He suggests that radicalization is a collective rather than an individual process in which friendship and kinship are key components.

The process has four stages. The initial trigger is a sense of moral outrage, usually over some incident of Muslim suffering in Iraq, Palestine, Chechnya or elsewhere. This acquires a broader context, becoming part of what Mr. Sageman calls a “morality play” in which Islam and the West are seen to be at war. In stage three, the global and the local are fused, as geopolitical grievance resonates with personal experience of discrimination or joblessness. And finally the individual joins a terrorist cell, which becomes a surrogate family, nurturing the jihadist world-view and preparing the initiate for martyrdom. Many Muslims pass through the first three phases; only a few take the final step.

Mr. Sageman has unusual credentials: a former CIA officer, he is also a forensic psychiatrist and a counter-terrorism consultant. He published the first version of his theory three years ago in an influential book, “Understanding Terror Networks”. His aim, to put the study of this new kind of terrorism on to a scientific footing, has not changed. But al-Qaeda has, and the task of analyzing it has become more complex.

In his new book Mr. Sageman's sample of militants has grown from 172 to 500. He gives more prominence to Europe, where, after the London and Madrid bombings and other thwarted attempts, a new front-line has opened up. He devotes a chapter to the internet. Crucially, he argues that most of today's suicide bombers have little or no link with the original al-Qaeda (dubbed “al-Qaeda central”) but are part of a broader, more amorphous phenomenon which he calls the “al-Qaeda social movement”. Mr. Sageman is skeptical of the view, which gathered weight last year, that “al-Qaeda central” is resurgent. Rather, it is the mutual attraction of freelance jihadists, outraged by the Iraq war and increasingly mobilized online, which should worry us most.

Like others, Mr. Sageman believes the Iraq war, which appeared to legitimize the idea of a rapacious West in conflict with Islam, was a spectacular own-goal for America. Unless that idea can be successfully countered, he says, America may find itself confronting not just a terrorist fringe but a substantial segment of the Muslim world, which would intensify and prolong the conflict to disastrous effect. A successful hearts-and-minds campaign, on the other hand, would stiffen moderate spines and help take the glory out of jihadist; eventually, “the leaderless jihad [would] expire, poisoned by its own toxic message.” It is an optimistic conclusion, given all that has gone before.

There is much common ground between Mr. Sageman and Daniel Byman, a counter-terrorism expert at Georgetown University and the Brookings Institution who was at one time on the staff of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States (also known as the 9-11 Commission). He too laments the Bush administration's lack of a coherent strategy, the needless alienation of allies, the failure to win Muslim hearts and minds, and the deadly fall-out from Iraq. Both authors believe that in the war of ideas Americans should focus on jihadist brutality rather than trying to burnish their own image. Both regard Europe as the main battleground, and they also question just how useful democratization can be as a tool of counter-terrorism; indeed Mr. Sageman believes it is entirely irrelevant.

Mr. Byman argues that America must do better on five fronts: the military, the war of ideas, intelligence, homeland defense and, in a nuanced way, democratic reform. Many of his policy proposals are eminently sensible, though some people will decry his advocacy of Israeli-style targeted killings. But where Mr. Sage man is plain spoken, Mr. Byman is often hesitant and diffuse. He has a disconcerting knack of undercutting his own arguments. Moreover, his remorseless concentration on prescription, with a minimum of explanatory background, will put off all but the most dedicated experts.

Counter-terror specialists are seldom knowledgeable about the intricacies of modern Islam, and vice versa. Those looking for a reliable guide to the currents of political Islam, of which al-Qaeda-style jihadist is but one, could do worse than turn to a young American scholar, Peter Mandaville, an associate professor at George Mason University, near Washington, DC. Mr. Mandaville's primer, “Global Political Islam”, is a well-informed account of the origins of mainstream Islamism, the strategies of Islamisation, the emergence of the radical fringe, the competition for authority among Muslim elites and the impact of globalization on Muslim politics. This is a study which sets out to transcend the “narrow moment” of al-Qaeda. Given our current obsession with global jihad, this book is a welcome companion to Mr. Sageman's work.

 

 

A Brief History of the Gains from Deficits and Debt.

In 1940, the federal gross debt was about 42 billion dollars or 40+% of GDP and the U.S. was facing the first axis of evil, Germany, Japan and Italy. By 1946 the federal debt was 270 billion dollars or 120+% of GDP. This addition to the debt had been raised by the sale of bonds to Americans using  massive bond drives. The U.S. still faced an axis of evil, the Soviet Union. Most of the physical items bought with this debt had been destroyed by the war though the worlds largest and most technically advanced industrial complex which would rule the free world until the oil embargos of the 1970's had been built. Soon to President General Eisenhower would later warn that this industrial complex might be taken over by those with strong military interests.

In 2008 the gross debt was about 10 trillion dollars or 70+% of GDP and the US was still facing an axis of evil. This time it was Iran, South Korea and others. The new president wants to increase the debt to grow the economy. Some don't like  the bigger debt. Others don't like wasting it on energy and green projects. Still others fear the new debt will cause a great inflation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Econintersect vide on No Prosecution of Financial Fraud