The People Are Revolting!

They certainly are.



French strike to save 'birthright' of privileges

"We want to stop working at 60 because it's something our parents, our grandparents and even our great-grandparents fought for," says Gilly, 50, a union representative at Saint-Pierre Cemetery, the largest in this bustling Mediterranean port city.

"And over the years ... you can see that we're losing everything they fought for. And that's unacceptable."

You know, once upon a time a Frenchman* stood (figuratively) knee-deep in de Nile, and could see the pyramids from where he stood ... that didn't end well for him.

[*--Yes, yes, I know he was really an upstart Corsican. It's an allegory, dammit!]

Geithner's Kevin Bacon Moment

Geithner vows U.S. will not devalue dollar

"It is not going to happen in this country." Geithner told Silicon Valley business leaders of devaluing the dollar...

...On Friday, the dollar index hit a 10-month low against a basket of major currencies, while the greenback has been plumbing fresh 15-year lows against Japan's yen.

Do not buy a used car from this man.

Because I Don't Have Time For Serious Posting

One-Legged Goose Wins Ass-Kicking Contest

Good News, Everyone!

OK, I couldn't resist the title & pic combo. But it IS nice to finally see a small suggestion of a bright spot in the employment situation. Below is a chart from the Mercatus Center at George Mason U. regarding temp staffing contrasted with payroll employment.



While the short text implies the fall in temp staffing is a bad sign, I have a somewhat different take seeing the two stats together*. The fall-off in temps staffing coincides with a positive uptick in payroll hiring, which strongly suggests that an equilibrium is being reached in payroll staffing. To wit, it suggests that employers have reached a point where they have quit downsizing and insuring against further decline, and for the moment are feeling comfortable with fully staffing at their current levels of production.

That's a far cry from actual growth, mind you, but given the very expensive mandates already shoved down their throats (ObamaCare, new taxes and regs), the threat of more to come (more tax hikes and even more burdensome regs), the weak economy and ongoing workout of bad assets from the real estate and fnancial bubble-bursts, amd the enormous uncertainties associated with all of the above, it's a positive indicator of equilibrial stabilization, perhaps due to watchful waiting ahead of the elections. Which beats the hell out of further decline and IMHO is a positive indicator of reduced "double-dip" potentials.

If the "watchful waiting" hypothesis is correct, evidence of it will be found in market trends tracking the polls the closer we get to the elections, and in the election-reaction market movements the first week of November, as election results are confirmed.

[*--Pay attention to the somewhat different scales so as to not get the two levels confused as being the same. Also, for those not used to reading such things, please note that positive/negative is where the lines cross their respective 0.0% lines, not where the trend direction changes. Payroll jobs did not start upticking in early-'09, for example, that's where the rate of losses started reducing. But increases in payroll employment do not begin until the 0.0% point was reached in the uptick of the trend, roughly May '10. And temp staffing did not hit 0.0% until July '10.]

The More Things Change...

... the more they stay the same, or why I am bored with the hyperbolic squabbling over the Ground Zero Mosque.

Namely, because despite the hysteria and demagoguery and posturing, the same arguments in slightly different forms are the same ones heard all the bloody time in every city in America. It's a land use flap over a by right usage, and I've heard it all countless times before.

Hells' bells, you (literally) don't have to go farther than the morning news to see this same dynamic at work all over the nation. From today's headline feed, out of the first dozen stories I find ...

Casino proposed near battlefield splits Gettysburg

Proposed pot farm on countryside angers residents

If you want to build something and some people don't like it, they will throw everything they can think of at it. Tully's Corollary™ to Kaplan's Law of the Instrument states:

"When you really want to drive a nail, everything starts to look like a hammer." It doesn't matter if it's a rock or a wrench, a blender or a board or a baguette. If you really really want to drive that nail, everything suddenly looks like a hammer.

At no time is this more evident than during election season.

Here's a couple of useful acronyms for such situations: "CAVE people" and "BANANAs." Citizens Against Virtually Everything" and "Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything."

What George and Laura Did On Summer Vacation

Class act.

Public Service Announcement

Personally, I believe that anyone who has more than a couple of bumper stickers of any kind on their vehicle is likely to be somewhat deranged. Experience has to date supported this view.

If Ignorance is Bliss, William Greider is Ecstatic...

...and he insists on sharing his joy with us in The Nation.

Goodbye Keynes, Hello Hoover

The first fundamental failure of Keynesian economics occurred forty years ago during the Vietnam War when the economy was overheating but the political system failed to take the corrective steps that would restrain price inflation—that is, raise taxes and reduce federal spending. The decade of economic stagnation that followed became a central factor in discrediting both liberalism and the Democratic Party.

Wrong. Despite popular mythology, Keynesian economics actually first failed during Keynes' own lifetime, back in the Great Depression. More accurately, the rather selectively-interpreted and extremely cherry-picked tactics scalpeled out of Keynes' theoretical work failed, in large part because of that selective interpretation and cherry-picking. And among the first to say so was Keynes himself, who noted that his prescription was for short-term ameliorative action, not long-term doctrine. But I digress...back to Greider:

We are now witnessing a second great failure of the doctrine John Maynard Keynes devised for managing a healthy economy. This time, Washington faces the opposite problem—a starkly underperforming economy in which 10 percent of the workforce are without jobs and income. Yet the President and Democratic Congress, spooked by the swollen federal deficits, are unwilling to do what Keynes prescribed in these circumstances—pump up federal spending enormously and run even larger budget deficits in order to force-feed a stronger recovery.

One can gain a solid grasp of Greider's own political stance simply by noting what he (along with most other liberals) leaves out of the classic Keynesian prescription for recession -- cutting taxes. Yet Greider and his ideological cohorts have no problem whatsoever remembering the "raise taxes" part of the Keynesian price inflation prescription.

Keynesian theory has many empirically demonstrable flaws and it's not my intent to begin a long dissection of them*. My point here is highlighting the willful selective ignorance of those socialist/statist ideologues who want more government and more more spending and (at root) more more MORE state control over individuals with the concomittant loss of freedom that implies, and use Keynes as their crutch. Even dedicated Keynesian Paul Krugman (who really is a brilliant economist when he's not being a complete political-media whore for "progressivism") has had some things to say about Greider's utter lack of critical-thinking skills, at least in the field of economics.

So when you hear ideologues tossing derogatory sneers at "Keynesianism" and "Monetarism" and "Libertarianism" and such, keep in mind that the overwhelming majority of them, like Greider, haven't got the intellectual foundation to know WTF they're talking about. Or even the ability to grasp that they don't have that foundation.

[*--For a much more balanced and empirical rather than ideological view of the current state of our economic situation and the failed applications of Keynesian theory thereto, N. Gregory Mankiw's recent article in National Affairs provides an excellent start for the intelligent layperson. Pay particular attention to his thoughts on the disparities between theoretical models and observed reality -- they have major applications in other areas, such as climate "science."]

How's That Stimulus Coming?

About as I predicted.

Stimulus aside, we're not seeing increase in jobs

The economy will kick into gear again when the private sector begins adding jobs. Investors were spooked Friday because it isn't doing that yet. Of the 413,000 jobs added in May, just 41,000 of them were in the private sector, barely a fifth of what economists expected, and many of those jobs were temporary ones. Speaking of which, virtually all the public-sector job increases were the result of temporary workers hired by the U.S. Census Bureau...

...The Keynesians who advocate for bigger stimulus spending to avoid a double-dip recession are beginning to bump up against the limits of their argument that deficit spending can lead the economy back to a growth cycle. The stimulus spending has to show some private-sector results. We can't keep pointing to the census workers, teachers and other public-sector jobs that have been "kept" thanks to stimulus money.

This really isn't rocket science or brain surgery. The "stimulus" bill was, as I repeatedly said, mostly aimed at shoring up government and union (and public-sector union) jobs, NOT at "stimulating" the private economy that actually generates the wealth that pays for all that government. While private-sector employment crumbled, government employment barely budged at state and local levels, and actually grew at the federal level.

Shoring up government at the expense of the private sector is not stimulus. It's an attempt to permanently expand government. And it won't boost the economy. Quite the opposite. It suppresses growth, as we're seeing. When we do begin to see positive recovery in the private sector, it won't be because of government "stimulus," but in spite of it.

Miss W? Hell, I miss Jimmy!

Well, I tried to warn you. No need to elaborate, the headlines of ongoing corruption and incompetence already tell the tale. I just wanted to say I told you so.

Since I'm too busy to post much if any for the near future, I'd urge all five of my regular readers to avail themselves of the blogroll on the left sidebar to feed their blog jones. And if you're inclined, you can visit my minimalist CafePress store for appropriate bumper stickers. T-shirts to come!