Henry Ford, for all his faults, once stated that he needed to pay his workers enough that they would be able to buy the cars they manufactured. I guess globalists thought such laws don’t apply when you ship the jobs to a foreign land.

Now I hear people say that a cheaper dollar will make American products more competitive to foreign buyers. Who exactly is going to buy these “cheaper” American goods? Some Chinese guy earning $2 a day? Now out of a job because there’s an ongoing depression in the United States?

Rather than bring the rest of the world’s workers up to some sort of decent living standard, global financial players and manufactuers raced toward the lowest common denominator: workers earning slave wages, receiving no benefits, toiling in unsafe conditions, exploited to produce a bunch of cheap disposable products then sold in our big box stores.

I was trying to think of ways that we could possibly take down as many financial problems as we can while simultaneously bringing the power back to the people. That is, going through our own channels rather than the official process that has proven itself to be ineffective.
I was mulling bank bailouts, "too big to fail" and the notion of money as power when it hit me. What if we just took all of our money out of big banks and put it into local community banks and credit unions? This would greatly strengthen the community, rewarding banks that actually stick to banking, keep money local and even help bolster small business loans, while forcing the large banks to break down. Sure, things would be hairy at first and it wouldn't be pretty, but wouldn't it be a better situation in the long run?

Interesting take from Sabrina Tavernise in the NYT:

The military and intelligence establishment remains unassailable. It is both revered and feared by Pakistanis, who suspect its nationalist fringes of maneuvering behind the scenes, with help from allies in the news media, to keep civilian governments off balance.

At the same time, the news media today need little prodding, and are more diverse, powerful and nationalistic of their own accord than at any other point in the nation’s history.

“The media has a larger-than-life role,” said Maleeha Lodhi, a former Pakistani ambassador to the United States. “It’s been setting the agenda for the country.”

Pakistanis themselves are not entirely comfortable with that development. In a Gallup Pakistan poll released last Friday, nearly one-third of 2,765 Pakistanis surveyed blamed the media for political instability in the country, according to the Gilani Research Foundation, which released it.

The anti-Americanism is part of that new media explosion. “It reached a fever pitch,” said Madiha Sattar, a journalist with the monthly magazine The Herald, who wrote a cover article on the topic in October.

Pakistanis have reason to mistrust the U.S. of course. Most notably our backing of the military dictator Zia who crushed dissent and executed the elected president. That was followed by ignoring the region once the Cold War ended. Now we're suddenly concerned again. It's no wonder the local Rupert Murdochs see a play in fomenting against the Great American Satan.

I wish I had the weekend off

By Emily Kaiser and Nancy Waitz - Analysis

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. government is having a tough time guesstimating how many small businesses failed in this recession, casting doubt on the reliability of vital data on employment and economic growth.

The formula the U.S. Labor Department designed to help it deliver timely, thorough monthly employment reports broke down in the heat of the financial crisis, miscounting the number of jobs by an estimated 824,000 in the year through March.

The most likely culprit is the so-called "birth-death" model, which the Labor Department uses to estimate how many companies were created or destroyed.

- Hey Preacher, Leave those kids alone.
This week, the final phase of the atheist bus campaign will appear in London, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast – not on buses, but on billboards.

"Nobody would seriously describe a tiny child as a 'Marxist child' or an 'Anarchist child' or a 'Post-modernist child'. Yet children are routinely labelled with the religion of their parents. Guardian

THE DEPROLIFERATOR -- As you no doubt know, deterrence is the product of a balance of power -- nuclear arsenals, in other words, that are roughly equal. Constrained by the eye-for-an-eye principle, but to the umpteenth power, states armed with nuclear weapons, such as the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and India and Pakistan today, keep their nukes holstered.

But terrorists, according to conventional thinking, are immune to deterrence. If they ever obtained nuclear weapons, they'd suffer few qualms about using them. First, they're secure in the knowledge that they're ostensibly stateless. It's unlikely that the state which they've attacked with nuclear weapons, such as the United States, would retaliate against the state which served as their command center for the attack. (Can't speak for another possible target, Israel, though.)

Extraordinary microscope images

It is midnight. The IT processes I stayed up to babysit at this critical time for retail companies have completed. I am anticipating the likely bankruptcy of the business I've worked for these past years. To say sales are "soft" does not really do justice to what is happening. I will most likely join the ranks of the unemployed sometime before Spring; perhaps sooner if the Bank pulls the line of credit out from under us.

We sell across the US and we know that one of our competitors is in the same trouble; this competitor is much much larger than us and you, dear reader, dear consumer, most likely know their name. They were suckered in by those first few weeks of October when it seemed like it might, just might, be a decent holiday season for retailers. Its not going to be a good retail season; imagine that in a period of just four weeks sales have plummeted 70% even as we begin the holiday shopping season. Its not just our main store but all of our sales channels; even the Amazon channel is down.

CNN - The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists reports that 26 journalists have been killed since 2005 in Mexico -- most of them while covering the crime or corruption beats. By comparison, 10 journalists were killed in the same time period while covering the war in Afghanistan.

In charting how far afield (or a'sea) that Somali pirates are venturing into the Indian Ocean, Gadahn at maritime blog Information Dissemination also points out. . .

With Army Generals in Afghanistan now pointing out that Al Qaeda has almost entirely shifted out of Afghanistan to Pakistan and Somalia, Somalia should be treated as an emerging asylum for the global jihad with intent to attack the United States. It is unreasonable to suspect Al Qaeda movement and activity in Somalia only to additionally assume they will ignore the incredible effectiveness of piracy originating from Somalia. The tactics, training, technology, and revenue streams surrounding the Somali piracy problem suggests an ideal environment for further expansion of Al Qaeda capabilities and techniques, and the absence of any containment off the coast of Somalia is an invitation to future disaster for western nations that depend on trade at sea. The ranges involved in recent attacks highlight that containment must be examined as the next step, because if the global community does not move to contain the expanding problem of piracy in the Indian Ocean, we are playing with gasoline in one hand, and a flamethrower in the other.

Flying is the pits, especially in America. It's also getting worse:

A failure early Thursday morning of a system that feeds flight plans to air traffic controllers snarled thousands of flights in the eastern United States. By mid-morning the system was working again, but the backlog caused wide airport delays.

The same system failed in August 2008, but it was not clear if the cause was the same this time. The system, the National Airspace Data Interchange Network, situated in Atlanta with a backup in Salt Lake City, was a casualty of another failure in the tightly linked [system], one official at the Federal Aviation Administration said. Technicians were still trying to determine the cause of the glitch.

This is just another argument for a better, more comprehensive and expanded rail system in the United States. Sure, it's not a 'shovel-ready' infrastructure project, but it is one that will help grow the economy, create jobs and increase the quality of life for many Americans.

The airlines would surely lobby against such a thing, however, just like Southwest lobbied heavily against a high-speed regional Texas rail system several years ago.

By now most people who follow Goldman Sachs in the news know that it received $13 billion from the Federal Reserve to liquidate its portfolio of derivatives with AIG. Because the Fed was willing to pay Goldman par value on these derivatives, even though the market valued them at about 48 cents on the dollar, Goldman walked away with no loss whatever from the AIG collapse. This has been described as a great gift for Goldman and all the other banks who dealt with AIG and who were treated the same way. Many others have described this as a colossal rip-off of the taxpayers.

How did this come about? We know a lot more this week about these transactions because of a report that has been issued by Neil Barofsky, the Special Inspector General for the bank bailout programs. The press has described this report as particularly damning of the NY Federal Reserve which negotiated these deals with the banks, and which was led at the time by Timothy Geithner, the current Treasury Secretary. These press reports, however, have mischaracterized what happened and what went wrong. The NY Fed acted properly and entirely as one would expect under the circumstances when they negotiated these contract abrogations. To see what really went wrong, follow along on the details below.

The publisher--they wanted me to review the book?!?-- recently sent me a copy of Christopher I. Beckwith's book, Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present. I've already read the book and have my own well worn, dog-eared, underlined and highlighted copy. So, the first person to email me at my personal email address--or a PM--I'll mail this copy to, if you are so inclined.

Book has already been claimed.

And people wonder why I am not a Christian anymore:

Posters to various message boards tell stories of seeing bumper stickers with the message “Pray for Obama – Psalm 109:8” on the highway, only to look up the verse and find, “Let his days be few; and let another take his office.” …

Anyway, now it’s a real thing: CafePress is selling T-shirts and bumper stickers . . .

However, as a number of commentators have noted, the wording that follows this bumper-sticker appeal is somewhat more disturbing:

Let his days be few; and let another take his office.
Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.
Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg: let them seek their bread also out of their desolate places.
Let the extortioner catch all that he hath; and let the strangers spoil his labor.
Let there be none to extend mercy unto him: neither let there be any to favor his fatherless children.
Let his posterity be cut off; and in the generation following let their name be blotted out.
Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered with the LORD; and let not the sin of his mother be blotted out.
Let them be before the LORD continually, that he may cut off the memory of them from the earth.

Love thy neighbor, indeed.

Just because I'm on a zombie kick (I watched Zombieland last night, Fun movie):

Never underestimate the zombie

Zombies are not mindless hunters. They are swifter and craftier than one might expect. A lone zombie can burst out of hiding and take a chunk out of you in the blink of an eye.

Never engage a zombie if you can avoid it

Though zombies are surprisingly quick in confined spaces, they are not swift runners. Engage the zombie only when you are trapped, and escape is not an option.

Focus on the task; keep fear out of your head

No one, no matter what their powers of description, can fully prepare you for your first encounter with a zombie. Their grotesque appearance and smell, along with the inhuman noises they emit, can induce a level of fear and terror that precludes rational response and causes one to freeze. You must not react to the zombie's appearance. Focus instead on delivering a combination of offensive and defensive strikes that will buy you enough time to escape.

More at the link. Thanks MC.

MarketWatch First Take

Nov. 13, 2009, 2:03 p.m. EST
The downside of a weak dollar
Commentary: Inadvertently driving a bigger trade defici

By MarketWatch

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- The latest international trade numbers border on blasphemy.

For the generations of college kids who learned the ABCs of global economics from Paul Samuelson, a weak dollar is supposed to tip the balance of trade in favor of the nation's exporters. So why is the trade deficit exploding?

The dollar has lost 16% of its value against six other major currencies since March. In one quarterly report after another, companies doing business abroad showed they padded their profits every time they converted sales in local currencies back into U.S. dollars -- effectively enjoying the equivalent of a price hike without actually hiking prices.

I'm a frequent critic of President Obama, but sometimes it's really important to read between the lines. Yesterday the AP posted this story. In it the writer reports that the upcoming 'jobs summit' at the White House isn't about jobs:

President Barack Obama says creating jobs isn't the goal of a coming White House forum on jobs and economic growth.

And the headline reinforces the lede:

Obama: Job creation not goal of Dec. 3 jobs forum

However, a close reading of the story in question would leave the reader confused:

More after the jump.

"The (task force) recommends against routine screening mammography in women aged 40 to 49 years." U.S. Preventative Services Task Force, Nov. 17, 2009

"My message to women is simple. Mammograms have always been an important life-saving tool in the fight against breast cancer and they still are today. Keep doing what you have been doing for years - talk to your doctor about your individual history, ask questions, and make the decision that is right for you." Kathleen Sebelius, Health and Human Services Secretary, Nov. 18.

Talk about a short news cycle. A Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) appointed "best practices" task force dismissed the value of "routine" mammograms as a cancer prevention technique for women 40 to 49 years on Tuesday, November 17.

More after the jump.

For the second day in a row, the new bushfire warning system has been implemented down under.

The map shows all areas affected by the top three warning levels for Nov 20th - the first time I can recall seeing nearly 50% of Australia under immediate threat of bushfire, with almost 60% of the Aussie population living in that area. Night time temperature in Canberra today, Nov 19 is ~22C - the normal maximum November daytime temp. We are experiencing Jan/Feb daytime temps. It's going to be a long summer, and record high temps are likely to continue.

Imagine yourself to be the nun sitting at her desk grading these papers
all the while trying to keep a straight face and maintain her composure!

test answers after the jump :)

I'm going to say right up front that I don't come to any conclusions in this post. I was simply struck the contrasting outcomes in these otherwise very similar stories.

First there is the news that the pseudonymous call-girl and author "Belle Du Jour" has revealed her true identity, as a PhD level cancer researcher named Brooke Magnanti. Check out how her illicit activities have paid off for Dr. Magnanti:

The Belle du Jour blog became a hot media property, spurring speculation about the true author, a lucrative book deal. The book was serialized on UK prime time television in 2007’s “Secret Diary of a Call Girl,” starring actress of Billie Piper, and eventually played on pay cable in the US.

When I read this story, I couldn't help but recall the sad story of Brandy Britton, an American college professor who similarly dabbled in prostitution, but with a very different outcome:

More after the jump.

First they organize a tea bagging of a speech by Al Gore, then they vandalize the venue. I wonder if Koch Industries $ paid for the spray paint?

Full Disclosure: While I am not involved with this speech, I do consult for the Alliance for Climate Protection

The results of this poll are pretty interesting:

Americans don't want to shoulder the cost of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul themselves. They think the rich should pay for it.

I don't think it will happen that way, however. As a matter of fact, I know it won't. At least not yet. But it's another indication that Americans are much more progressive, especially when it comes to taxation, than politicians realize--I also think it is an indicator of just how pissed the middle class is with the wealthy in this country.

As I have noted many times here, I am in favor of a return to golden-era Eisenhower-like taxation, but I'm not holding my breath. If the Democrats really wanted a decent health-care plan, one that creates real health-care cost savings across the board, however, they could push one through. Instead we'll get a mushy-halfway plan that will be more of regressive tax on the middle class. But we all knew that, didn't we?

Read and weep.