Jan Baker

Who Thinks This Recession Is Over?

I was getting a kick out of the comments until I got to Midwest and his observation that 'the recession would be over when consumers got their confidence back,' and it makes me so goldarn mad I have to sputter something. I'm so tired of that line that it's all caused by us. We are not spending our money because we DON'T HAVE ANY MONEY. Wages have been flat in the US for decades. Union organizing is over. Labor's old friends just strangled the last symbols of a future for even the concept of a living wage with the push for the bankruptcy of GM and their no-fault divorces from their commitments to their workers. We have been enslaved, that's the reality. That it kills the economy is secondary to those who are last to die.

Are Airlines Going Bankrupt Again?

Couldn't they charge us by the pound?

Are Airlines Going Bankrupt Again?

All's I know is, United breaks guitars.

Are Airlines Going Bankrupt Again?

There is excess capacity because we killed fifty million consumers in the last forty years. They would have been born with a credit card in each fist, but we allowed them to be aborted.


On Jul 06 04:24 AM Crocodilian wrote:

> Author writes: "it is obvious air fares are simply too low to support
> the on-going fixed and variable costs of one of this country’s most
> important business sectors."
> ----------------------...
>
> Um . . .head scratching . . . if the airlines aren't filling the
> seats with these cheap fares, how do you think they'd do with higher
> fares?
>
> The problem with the airlines is not "cheap fares" -- its too much
> capacity.
>
> Why is there excess capacity? For the same reason that there are
> too many condominiums in Las Vegas: far too much credit, on much
> too easy terms.

Kool-Aid and GDP: The Delusion of Economic Activity

Well, the honest question quoted seems as good a time as any to point out that we have killed fifty million pre-born producers and consumers in the last forty years since Roe. Our population has remained at bare reproduction, no growth, in spite of sucking up half of Mexico, while Europe and Asia (for whom we are consuming) continued to contract in population, thus imbalancing the whole shebang and causing the pressure in the US to consume on credit, to issue credit to shaky borrowers. We have chosen to ignore the implication derived from economists like Georgetown University's John McNeill, "A big part of economic growth to date consists of population growth," like it or not, and we don't like it, it means the party is over, and so we turn away, whether one calls it kool-aid or denial.

Do we really understand that even though GDP falls, if population falls faster, there's MORE per capita. We made a pact with the devil and we're eating pie as fast as we can. We're gonna pop.

A solution, maybe the only solution: wipe out the last fifty years of population assumptions, go back to traditional families. This will take convincing women. Do what it takes. Have lots of kids, don't worry about population but enjoy the growth. It will not 'spoil' the citizenry because it will be distributed over more people, as nature is desinged for. Elect distributist governments that will gently over time break up monopolies and fund cooperatives, most importantly the cooperative development of space. Go to space. Free energy and weightless manufacturing are waiting for us there.
>
> However, nobody can deny that Americans are producing and consuming
> less now. Any way you want to look at the economic pie, it has clearly
> has shrunk.

6 Ways to Short the Obama Health Plan

This is what they have in mind. All about 'choice.' Those old folks will 'choose' to put their names on the dotted line, just the way too many women 'choose' to get drug into an abortion clinic by the boyfriend. 'Choice' will be the magic word again, folks. We could quote Dylan again, 'Freedom is a word I never use/without thinkin' " and maybe this time we should listen.


On Jul 03 04:08 PM curley55 wrote:

> Obama is a lot like Hugo Chavez. He is willing to sell out Isreal,
> say it is OK for Iran to have a nuke. Trying to take over the health
> care system is a very bad idea. I only see 3 ways to cus healthcare
> costs.
> 1. Tell the doctors they will get paid less
> 2. Tell the drug companies they will get less and
> 3. Tell the consumer they will get less.
>
> Telling an 80 year old that needs a hip replacement that he will
> go on a list for 3 years before he gets the procedure is scary. The
> govt will hope he dies before his procedure is done. Perhaps Obama
> can send a Dr. Kavorkian type to anyone over 59. That would cut costs
> and fix Medicare and Social Security.

6 Ways to Short the Obama Health Plan

It's 'the times they are a'changin.' " Honestly! What were you smoking?

I wish someone would explain just once what 'short' and 'long' mean. I deduce, peraps incorrectly, that 'to short' something means to abandon it as a viable whatever--plan, or person, or stock,, or whatever. And 'to long' it would be to marry it. (Yes I do get an image: him on his knees with the ring elevated like a sacred host: Will you long me?)

Is that right?

6 Ways to Short the Obama Health Plan

I skimmed the link, thanks for it. Usually, as a senior teacher who was awake most of the time, I can spot the bs in these kinds of initiatives, but I cannot remember having experienced the fall out from funding a more expensive and aggressive mental health program (other than observing that it does not seem to work at all!). The link is Kennedy's words. Is there a link that reveals the subsequent project's defects?


On Jul 02 01:58 PM Buckoux wrote:

> If I had been in the stock market, instead of grammar school, when
> President Kennedy launched his mental health care bill, I would have
> gone long on psych-pharma. But, as things turned out, there was really
> no there, there. The shorts do have the edge on good intent policy
> and investment. We chronically suffer from the effects of this good
> intention legislation on our society and economy some 46 years later.
>
>
> For those who are interested in the siren-song of of good intentions
> that have disastrous unintended consequences, there is the University
> of California at Santa Barbara's presentation of JFK's special message
> to Congress regarding legislation for the mentally ill that became
> law in October of 1963. It is at:
>
> www.presidency.ucsb.ed...
>
> This is the presidential outline for the act of Congress known officially
> as the "Community Mental Health Centers act of 1963". It will both
> enlighten AND frighten one at its naiveté. A cautionary tale, indeed.
> We must be careful what we wish for.
>

Why 'Cash for Clunkers' Is a Bad Idea

Hey! I resemble these remarks that I have credit issues or scurvy for driving my 1998 ruby red Golf. She goes, she takes the kayak on top, she sits when I tell her to sit because I'm taking the bike today, tra la. My credit's great, you think it's because I don't spend it on cars?

12 Signs That the Economy Is Not Getting Better

I don't get the housing point, either, but I sure get the meaning of earnings at 16% of 1972 levels! I wonder if the author could do the math and tell us what the percentage is of, say, 1950 levels? When women could stay home and raise their kids? when there was a new Chevy in the driveway?

The Perfect Storm: Three Forces to Undo the Recovery

But the infidelity to contracts was so predictable--the first time the public took infidelity to the marriage contract, and divorce, as an acceptable option. They go together. They were always linked. Both contribute to social stability, and growth, and prosperity. They both took so many thousand years to establish. And so few, just a few generations, to trash. But there's a certain justice in the current situation. Those abandoned stockholders can perhaps now look with somewhat more sympathy at the plight of abandoned wives, and perhaps feel their pain as all their friends now tell them, regarding their crushed retirement funds, 'Let it go, move on, think of it as a new opportunity.' Yeah, uh-huh . . .we'll all love working until we die. Just like abandoned wives. Oh the joy of no-fault.

Are Job Losses Really 'Fewer than Forecast'?

Did you know, regarding the proposed GM and Chrysler shut-down, that there is a proposal that is trying to get a hearing from the Obama Administration, for a government-organized worker buyout of the big 3? Google Michele Mauder AAWOC, I don't have the website on me.

Of course, that so won't happen under Obama. So what is the picture when GM and Chrysler shut down, AND troops begin coming home from Iraq? Or will they all be sent to Afghanistan (so useless!) ? I've often wondered why no one has discussed that impact on the economy, either.

Analyzing Consumer Sentiment: Chicago Fed Has 'Proven' Nothing

I don't think the demand problem has to do with the question of consumer sentiment. Consumer sentiment emanates from those creatures known as human beings, and they will have changed their minds and lied about it to the surveyer in the time it takes us to say it.

If American consumer spending began to fire up again, it would have to be on credit. Even the well-to-do can only live in so many houses, drive so many cars, eat so much. Markets are saturated, that's a measurable figure. I do not have the numbers but there can be no arguing that income has been stagnant or fallen over the last decades, after the temporary spike caused by the wholesale entry of women into the labor market. Wages have even fallen in important sectors, among males in general, for example.

And there is no movement among any party to administer CPR. Indeed, wages took a blow from the inside, when the Dems happily cooperated in the euthanasia of the auto worker in the latest round of talks accompanying the bail-out of auto row. There was hardly any debate! If there was fightback from organized labor, the media monopoly just didn't report it. It is as if there had been an unspoken agreement that the American public is simply not worth a middle class lifestyle. I think we all got a good look at all the videos of the defaulting subprimers with their beer guts and three day stubble and sagging boobs and nasty hair standing next to the chandeliers in their half a million dollar hideaways and said, are these the caretakers? Who are these people?

The real consumers must rise from the dead. Those who would buy hovels if not houses, who would buy used cars if not new shiny ones. Who could buy a hamburger without risking diabetes. I mean the fifty million we killed in the last forty years.

There Is No Replacement for American Consumer Spending

Will the real consumers please rise from the dead?

Because we've killed fifty million pre-born of them in the last thirty-five years. PP's official tally, US alone, since Roe v Wade.

Just thought I'd mention it.

There Is No Replacement for American Consumer Spending

The American consumer is maxed out. 123% in debt related to earnings. We owe more than we make (and we're worth less than we owe, skill-wise). And yet it is also true that we are the only developed country that has--up to now--reproduced enough to be considered a 'growth market,' unlike Europe and Asia, which have severely cut any growth in population (the latter by forced abortion, the former by lifestyle choices).

We like to hide these numbers lest conclusions be drawn. We like to pretend that American consumers are being 'stingy' or sitting on money they could spend if they had more 'confidence.' Nah. The ratio of debt to earnings is easy to research. So is the ratio of savings to debt and savings to earnings. We are not sitting on money. We are out of money.

The only thing that will save us is a nice jump in births, I mean really nice, not like the latest little quiver that we all went gaga over; and like the bogus stimulus package, even a substantial jump in births will take a number of years to kick in and produce car and home buyers.

In any case, we don't want to hear that. It would mean the party's over in more ways than one.