Speaking Personally
I enjoy the ritual of voting. So on Tuesday morning about 10:45 at Grace Church it felt good to put my ballot in the tabulator and watch its counter changeover from 772 to 773. My vote made no difference since Kansas is a Red state but the Presidential election outcome is pleasing. The results of most local elections leave me feeling like an underdog who sometimes just wants to roll over.
An inflation adjusted chart illustrates the likelihood that we are in a secular bear market with the 2007 peak in total S@P returns coming in lower than the 2000 peak. More immediately the Weekly Leading Index and other data from the Economic Cycle Research Institute indicate the United States is in a deep recession and there is as yet no indication of an end or even the middle.
President elect Obama's economic kitchen cabinet met in Chicago. Obama gave his first press conference since the election but was not specific on methods other than 1) big fiscal stimulus to create jobs and 2) something to preserve jobs and manufacturing capacity in the U.S. automotive/support industries which is essential to the US industrial base. Triage in these industries will be ugly. In companies deemed unworthy of saving/loans, stockholders will loose whatever capital value they placed on their stock. Inefficient plants will join the rustbelt. Workers will lose high paid jobs and look for lower paid jobs in an 8-10% unemployed environment. Automotive pensioners and healthcare will need other sources of funding...this may not be a depression but it feels like the great recession. Robert Reich calls it the "mini depression."
Rahm Emanuel was all over the Sunday morning news programs. Fox News Sunday had John Podesta who is co-chairing the transition team. Both emphasized "there is only one President at a time." On face the nation Emanuel outlined a middle class cash flow change with the average family today having $2000 less in income and $4000 more in health and education cost. Initially Mr. Obama's program will address this $6000 cash flow problem with a new $1000 income tax deduction. This is 60% more. stimulus than the 2008 tax rebate.
Saturday, a local Mensan, Bob Beattie, author of Nightmare in Wichita: The Hunt for the BTK, spoke about his NEW book and made himself available to talk with our group about the Electoral College. He is involved in politics as well as election law. Bob is a good guy and I have a copy of Nightmare in Wichita on my bookshelf in the small collection of Wichita/Kansas books. He says there is not much overlap between the true crime and mystery book segments. For me that is very true. I enjoy reading mystery but true crime leaves me cold. I've never read In Cold Blood. Clouds of Witness by Dorothy Sayers is my idea of good recreational reading.
Three Important Stories
The Political Mind
See also: Winter Lights Oxford: hysterical tosh The Mini Depression and the Maximum-Strength Remedy
Quotes and Pointers
"We reason in terms of frames, metaphores, and narratives."
George Lakoff
"here are some major themes. A frequent one in the US is that global elites are plotting – via the Bilderberg Group and the Council on Foreign Relations, among others – to establish a “One World Government” dominated by themselves rather than national governments. Sometimes, more folkloric details come into play, broadening the members of this cabal to include the Illuminati, the Freemasons, Rhodes Scholars, or, as always, the Jews.The hallmarks of this narrative are familiar to anyone who has studied the transmission of certain story categories in times of crisis. In literary terms, this conspiracy theory closely resembles The Protocols of the Elders of Zion , featuring secretive global elite with great power and wicked aims. Historically, there tends to be the same set of themes: fearsome, uncontrolled transformative change led by educated, urbanized cosmopolitans.
Students of Weimar Germany know that sudden dislocations and shocks – rapid urbanization, disruption of traditional family and social ties, loosening of sexual restrictions, and economic collapse – primed many Germans to become receptive to simplistic theories that seemed to address their confusion and offer a larger meaning to their suffering."
'So the crucial questions become (1) how much will the government have to spend to get the economy back on track? and (2) what sort of spending will have the biggest impact on jobs and incomes?
The answer to the first question is "a lot." Given the magnitude of the mess and the amount of underutilized capacity in the economy-- people who are or will soon be unemployed, those who are underemployed, factories shuttered, offices empty, trucks and containers idled -- government may have to spend $600 or $700 billion next year to reverse the downward cycle we're in.
The answer to the second question is mostly "infrastructure" -- repairing roads and bridges, levees and ports; investing in light rail, electrical grids, new sources of energy, more energy conservation. Even conservative economists like Harvard's Martin Feldstein are calling for government to stimulate the economy through infrastructure spending. Infrastructure projects like these pack a double-whammy: they create lots of jobs, and they make the economy work better in the future. (Important qualification: To do this correctly and avoid pork, the federal government will need to have a capital budget that lists infrastructure projects in order of priority.'Robert Reich
Out and About on the Net.
Braveheart - THE Speech
NANO WIRE BATTERY
Presidential Power on the Road
et alli is cross posted at The Intelligence Forum
A.Word.A.Day from Wordsmith.org:
