My friend Chuck Spinney writes in from Turkey this morning riffing off a recent op-ed in the Times. I can't quibble with what either of them have to say. Chuck says:

As someone who has lived in Turkey for most of the last two years, I have watched the development of her foreign policy with great interest, not to mention a good deal of confusion.

It is hard to make sense out this rapidly-emerging, vibrant country of 70 million, increasingly well-educated, industrious people. While its remote interior is still very traditional, Turkey's coastal regions are already beginning to blossom into an outward looking, modern multinational consumer society, and the effects of rising incomes and education are very visible. In the coastal regions, I would say that living standards are now higher than those of Portugal, about the same as those of Greece, and somewhat lower than those of Spain. To be sure, the interior is poorer, especially as one travels east, but even in the east, there is growing modernity. Everywhere, markets are chock a block with high-quality healthy food and vast quantities middle income consumer goods, and there is fresh water galore, especially in the coastal regions.

If you knew you were going to stranded on a deserted island for a full year with no cable, iPod, DVD/Blue Ray or any other assorted form of entertainment and only had room for five books, which five books would it be?

Me? The Histories of Herodotus, The Divine Comedy by Dante, the complete Essays of Montaigne, The Complete Poems of Yeats and East of Eden by John Steinbeck.

You?

Many of you, I have a feeling, will like this one:

Where are my green shoots?

The U.S. unemployment rate climbed to 10.2% in October, topping the 10% mark for the first time in 26 years, the Labor Department reported Friday.

Nonfarm payrolls dropped by a seasonally adjusted 190,000 in October, bringing to total number of jobs lost in the recession to 7.3 million. It was the 22nd straight decline in payrolls. Large losses were seen in manufacturing, construction and retail. Health care and temporary-help agencies added jobs.

10.2% is not, I repeat, is not a good number.

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This one is for our Canadian friends.

These are mostly random thoughts, for the future never really coheres into a narrative until it is long since past. I'll address the Rights of Women and the Environment tomorrow. I'll be adding random thoughts as they occur.

Military/War/Diplomacy:

The US retains it's dominant power position, if only just. Most of it's power will rest on innovations long since past. China and the EU will have set up an alternative to the US's space dominance, however. The US will be unable to affect it's will in the Asia heartland but will still dominate the global littoral. The SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization) will emerge as a serious player led by China, Russia and a nuclear Iran.

If the banking crisis and the bailout wasn't enough to piss you off, watch this.

Speaking of irony, this is a classic.

It's a conversation I have all to frequently. And one I had just the other day.

"How much do you make a year?"

"About $35-40k."

"You work hard for your money?"

"Hell yeah, I'm in the landscaping business. But my taxes are too high. The government takes too much of my money to pay for welfare and gives it to immigrants."

"Who are your best customers?"

"Mostly people who live in Westlake and Tarrytown. (The wealthy areas of Austin.~spk)

"Do you have a retirement plan?"

"Social Security but that needs to be privatized so I can get better returns. Just look at the markets! I had a 401(k) but it got creamed after I got laid off."

"And you're business has a good health care plan?"

"No, I'm self-employed. But I'm going to get a health care plan soon. I don't want socialized medicine. I don't want to wait in line to see a doctor."

More after the jump.

The Yankees win it in six! 27 time world champs! All is right in the world tonight!

I was going to start today, but Numerian beat me to the punch:

The Rights of Women

Women will have made advancements across the globe – chiefly in those countries where their rights today are heavily restricted, such as in the Middle East. In most countries, women will enjoy the same rights available to a woman in France or Japan or the US today, but in these countries, women will improve their situation only marginally. This will still be a patriarchal world, and wars and insurrections will remain the work of men.

How about a little light verse today? It gets too serious around here at times and remember: humor is good!

Common Sense ~Ogden Nash

Why did the Lord give us agility,
If not to evade responsibility?

Do you have any light verse favorites? Limericks? Doggerel?

While I was in Denmark my best friend, Stuart, asked me what I thought the world would look like in thirty years. Yes, yes, I know it's prediction and a lot of people don't like to speculate. But I think exercises like this are good, even if all they do is project the attitudes and prejudices of the present onto the future. In that vein I'd like to offer a challenge to all the readers/diarists here and the writers/editors including Don, Numerian, Brian, Tina, Nat, QB. In a nutshell: a short essay, say a thousand words or less addressing how you see the future developing in five broad categories. Those categories are: agriculture/food, economy/development, environment, military/war and the rights of women. You can write about just the US, or the world at large, or, if you are an ex-pat the country in which you live.

I'll start tomorrow.

From The Guardian:

In Wired for War, author Pete Singer speculates the machines are harbingers of a new era of "cost-free war".

"It's an historic change," said Singer. "Going to war has meant the same thing for 5,000 years. Now going to war means sitting in front of a computer screen for 12 hours. Then you go home and talk to your kids about their homework."

Am I the only one who finds this method of war tantamount to terrorism? And despicable, to boot?

Oh yeah, they hate us for our freedoms. Sorry, I forgot.

It's obvious by what I've written in the past (here and here as well.) that I don't think highly of India's economic prowess, writ large and I don't believe any of the hype when it comes to India's economic miracle. But Quax makes a point about Kerala that deserves further comment.

Quax brings up the point about the matrifocal ethnicity in Southern India, namely the state of Kerala. And he's right: Kerala is different from the rest of India. I'm not sure what makes Kerala different: the prevalence of Christianity, the relative freedom of women in the state, years of Communist rule, and the forward looking and commercial character of Muslims there? Perhaps it's a combination of all four. Needless to say, Kerala was the cleanest, least intimidating and most upwardly mobile of Indian states, even more so than the miracle city of Bangalore. And I found the Muslims in Calicut to be the most forward looking of any Muslims I've ever encountered, outside of pockets in Turkey and those in North Tehran.

Their daughters were educated, free to pursue a love match--not an arranged marriage and not relegated to a very real purdah extant in many places in India. It's the sort of place where a young Indian woman can have lunch with a strange foreign man and no one raises an eyebrow. I'm not sure how much of this is due to the fact that the area around Calicut has been integral to the global economy for two thousand years--ships have plied the monsoons from East Africa to the Malabar Coast since very early Roman times, bringing pepper an other spices to the West in exchange for gold, or how much of it is due to the tolerance between Hindus, Christians and Muslims. There is much more history to this area than meets the eye.

More after the jump.

People love to talk about how India is a rising power in Asia:

Upshot: America is done. Our once-great empire is cooked. Not only is China (and India, fast behind) about to stomp all over everyone in economic power and resource abuse, they already own a huge chunk of our debt, manufacture most of our holidays and build almost everything we like to buy. And that includes the device you are reading this on right now. Oh well. We'll always have football.

I'd submit to any writer who just looks at the raw statistics on Indian growth rates to actually visit the place. Take a look at the crumbling infrastructure. Reality looks a lot different on the ground.

Yes, I realize it is only a throwaway sentence by the writer, but still, it's propagating a meme that doesn't represent reality.

Now, there is a case to be made about China. I've seen a great deal of the country and there is a very real energy to succeed and get ahead there. And while many Chinese are mired in poverty, it isn't the kind of nasty, pervasive, grinding poverty to be found in India. In India if you are born poor there is virtually no chance you can rise in society. Not so in China. (Not to idealize the life of the poor in China, mind you. It's still extremely difficult to find real upward mobility in China. In India on the other? For all intents and purposes, such a concept doesn't even exist.)

Furthermore, culturally speaking the Chinese are much better when it comes to cultural or societal innovations than India is. For example: arranged marriages are still the norm in India. And the place of woman is rotten. In China? Not likely. Especially as the idea of romantic love spreads among young female factory workers with a disposable income. (Again, not to idealize often gruesome working conditions for these young women, and yet.)

India when it comes to culture, is probably the most extremely conservative place I have ever visited. Indians like to think they can compete with the Chinese, but they cannot. And we shouldn't buy the tripe that India is an emerging economic power. The only reason we do business with India is wage-arbitrage. It's cheaper to pay an Indian twenty five cents an hour for something a well-educated American would ask fifteen dollars or more for.

And yes, I realize I am a white, post-Colonial man of European descent making cultural judgments. Having visited both countries multiple times I am quite comfortable doing so.

Here's a novel idea for the New York Times Editorial Board to consider: if it is too big to fail, it is too big to fucking exist. We don't need a systemic risk regulator. What we need is anti-trust enforcement:

Authored by the Treasury Department and Representative Barney Frank, the chairman of the committee, the proposal broaches a number of essential reforms. Chief among them is the creation of a systemic risk regulator to look for problems that could lead to cascading failures. The regulator would also have resolution authority — the power, if necessary, to seize and restructure critically ill bank holding companies and nonbank financial firms whose failure would pose a systemwide threat.

Why is it that little old me, a dirty fucking hippie in his pajamas sitting on a porch, sipping coffee can see the such an elegant and simple solution and the well-educated, credentialed and connected village folks can't?

What am I missing?

There is a great deal of truth in Barbara Ehrenreich's new book. Of course village media-folk don't see it that way. After all, it's much easier to compare her to Michael Moore than take her criticism seriously. But no one, in my opinion, is better at shattering dearly held American myths better than she is.

The gist of her criticism is pretty indisputable if you ask me. She writes that we live in a society where we are taught that unemployment is your fault--actually, pretty much every economic ill that befalls you--is your fault. It's not the fault of rogue bankers and criminal executives. It's not the fault of spineless politicians and failing institutions. It's your fault--you, the individual because you didn't pray, wish, or 'visualize' well enough to find a better job, or grow thinner or find a new and improved spouse, soulmate or whatever.

Look, the world is a rough place. And America is certainly a much easier place to live in than say Cambodia or sub-Saharan Africa. But that doesn't mean that economic life here is not cutthroat and brutal. That doesn't mean there isn't an elite in this country that's pillaging the place. Both are very real. And American's passion for the power of positive thinking, as she notes, "has become a potentially deadly weight – obscuring judgment and shielding us from vital information."

It also shields us from making rational decisions, decisions based on our economic self-interest as opposed to some phantom based self-esteem issues. Did you lose your house? Well, it's your fault. Work on your self-esteem and you'll be content with less.

Did your husband leave you because you are too fat? Never mind that an individual may have a genetic predisposition to obesity, or the simple reality that most people in the world don't grow old so gracefully? Well, it's your fault that you don't look like Brad Pitt or Uma Thurman. There's something wrong with you! Think positive and buy this new weight loss pill advertised on TV!

Are you unhappy? Has the stress of having $50,000 in unpayable medical bills got you down? Just lard yourself up with anti-depressants until you're too numb to give a shit.

It's the perfect prescription for elite control of a post-Modern society and the best way to curtail the growth of angry populism.

The Romans called it bread and circuses.

I cannot but help but to applaud the new (at least new to me) Dove Campaign for Real Beauty. It is a much needed counter-narrative and antidote to the anorexic, stick figures with implants culture we live in. Real beauty is a flawed beauty. Real women have flaws that are to be celebrated, no retouched by photo shop.

If you haven't watched the videos, I encourage you to do so. They are refreshing.

Now this is one funny book review:

The fact that this comparison (between central philosophy and doghouse blather) is so easily made is just one of the reasons why objectivism is a morally bankrupt, dilettantish, and fucking stupid way of thinking. People like it because it is the philosophical equivalent of college: a potentially meaningful but incredibly misused scaffolding that enables people to think, “Bitch, I do what I want.”

Read the rest here.

The point of an economic stimulus package is to grow the economy. There is no question in my mind that the stimulus enacted by Obama and the Congress succeeded in doing that. I've been pretty clear in giving credit where credit is due on that front. But the problem is this: it was the wrong kind of stimulus--too many tax cuts and not enough money to the states. Cash-for-clunkers? A beefed up subsidy for first time home buyers? Lots of military Keynesianism? Wasn't it this kind of free-for-all in credit what got us here in the first place?

Meanwhile, the states are still in the red, bloody oozing red that it is. And business spending, that engine of economic growth and employment? Where's that? One could go on and on.

As Krugman says, "we’ve gotten the big boost, and it’s clearly far short of what we really need."

Do you feel stimulated? Or are you still personally retrenching?

To repeat: the stimulus was good, but it wasn't enough and was targeted correctly. And we'll see the results of a committee designed stimulus plan soon enough.

Americans love to pay lip service to the idea of education. But let's face it, when the rubber hits the pedal to the metal (purposely mixed metaphor) Americans don't give a fuck. Exhibit one is here. And it ain't pretty. The story out of the New York Times magazine documents a public higher educational system that is rapidly being privatized in all but name. It also documents a system that has shifted it's focus to educating the children from lower income families to one that seeks out prosperous out of state students. It further describes a system that is raising prices almost as fast as healthcare and failing in its primary mission of providing an inexpensive education for all Americans. Lastly, it's clearly a system that the separate states have simply abandoned financially.

I'm an absolutist when it comes to education. Higher education should be subsidized, if not completely free to all those who qualify. I have a hard time getting exercised by just about anything these days, but when it comes to education I tend towards the apoplectic. Long the bedrock of our success as a nation education has now become just another overpriced commodity. One thing I don't understand is why students aren't in open rebellion at paying thousands of dollars in fees? Fees! What the hell is a fee at a university? Isn't that what the tuition is for?

As Ian might say, it's just another regressive tax on the middle class that they can no longer afford. Instead students are leveraged to the hilt by the time they graduate. The American dream is rapidly slipping out of reach for all except the wealthy in this country.

But I think the most odious aspect of this article is the description of how the University of Florida is now pushing students away from the flagship state school and steering them to a second class institution: the University of Central Florida. (Before an UCF grads get their panties in a wad please note I graduated from a second class university myself.) It's unreal.

Take Florida. The University of Central Florida, now the state’s largest university, serves roughly the same demographic the University of Florida did 15 years ago. That’s partly because the University of Florida accepts far fewer good students, sticking mostly to great ones. It is attracting students who also apply to Duke and Emory and other expensive private institutions.

The bottom line is that while Americans say education is a high priority it's not. It's not even in the top ten.

I've dealt with a few traders in my time. And one aspect I always enjoyed, being that I like language and words and whatnot, is the argot in which they speak. It's rude, impatient and very euphemistic. Here are some good examples:

Better Lucky than Smart – The only thing we have going for us.

Buyer Outside – Something sales traders say to force your hand when they get tired of watching you play stock market.

Clean up - If you believe that I have a bridge to show you.

CSA – Clusterf**k Service Alternative: When it’s easier for you client to just write a check rather than trade with your team of farm animals.

Discount Bid – Chinese trading fire drill. There’s a 1 in 10,000 chance you actually get a trade on at the price but it’s a good exercise for going through the motions and a great way to kill a few minutes and piss some people off.

Down a Touch – This thing just came off like a f**king prom dress.

Fair and Reasonable – Something the buy-side has no concept of.

Fast Money – Just means they’ve got money moving out the door quicker.

Fill or Kill – Respond this second or deal with the consequences of this extremely illiquid stock not trading and me miraculously catching a second buyer who wants to bid you for the exact same amount in about a half hour or so.

Find out who’s moving the stock - Pick a name out of a hat.

Floor Looks: The only way to be 100% wrong 100% of the time.

Good Guy – Doesn’t ask me any difficult questions.

Great Guy – Doesn’t ask me any difficult questions and gives me business.

Happy – “Happy to get involved”, “Happy to get you started” – Although coming across like Mr. Sunshine, It’s Wall Street’s way of reminding you that your sales trader is just a whore at heart and willing to take one in the keester if it gets him an order.

I have a call into my analyst – If it’s important, go get the info somewhere else.

Enjoy the rest at the link, here.

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Do you work to live, or live to work? There was a time when I asked myself that question on a regular basis. But now that I'm a complete and total corporate drop-out not so much. I think Joe Bageant sums it up nicely in this graf:

It may be my bias, or my imagination, or my distaste for toil, but from here America looks like one big workhouse, "under God, indivisible, with time off to shit, shower and shop." A country whose citizens have been reduced to "human assets" of a vast and relentless economic machine, moving human parts oiled by commodities and kept in motion by the edict, "produce or die." Where employment and a job dominates all other aspects of life, and the loss of which spells the loss of everything.

Read the whole post, Bageant captures the tedium and ennui that I feel for contemporary American life quite well.