Ed Cone has declared Kudlow Day:
Three years ago today, a post exemplifying the pathologies of the finance/media complex.
Hard to believe it's only been three years since our irrational exuberance was shot in the butt.
Man, you know times are tough when people steal crops:
Deputies in Yadkin County are investigating the theft of crops from two fields…
In that case, farmer Billy Dale Harris reported that about five buckets of green beans had been harvested from his land…
Four days later, a farmer on Simmons Patton Road in Jonesville reported that corn was missing from a field.
Two sayings I've always associated with the rich are: "Only play with other people's money" and "Never touch the principal." A new one might be, "When the going gets tough, walk away."
Money quote from the story: "The rich are different: they are more ruthless."
I love it when columnists try to make one point and unwittingly make another. Case in point, this columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times in her column titled There is no 'free' lemonade argues that these kids, who are giving away lemonade that their parents paid for, are doomed because we can't even teach them the basics of running a lemonade stand. From her column:
"No!" I exclaimed from the back seat. "That's not the spirit of giving. You can only really give when you give something you own. They're giving away their parents' things — the lemonade, cups, candy. It's not theirs to give."
I pushed the button to roll down the window and stuck my head out to set them straight.
"You must charge something for the lemonade," I explained. "That's the whole point of a lemonade stand. You figure out your costs — how much the lemonade costs, and the cups — and then you charge a little more than what it costs you, so you can make money. Then you can buy more stuff, and make more lemonade, and sell it and make more money."
The folks at BoingBoing point out why the columnist is inadvertently making out a point other than what she intended:
Get that, kids? The correct thing to do with the stuff you appropriate from others is sell it, not give it away! Sounds about right — companies take over our public aquifers and sell us the water they pump out of them; telcos get our rights of way for their infrastructure, then insist that they be able to tier their pricing without regard to the public interest. Corporatism in a nutshell, really.
Lex is right, if the Democrats don't do something about the job situation they're gonna get killed in November. Unfortunately both parties have played a part in this mess so I'm not liking any of the "leadership" alternatives these days. Fec has a nice post on politicians and the job situation too. The fun job graphic that prompted Lex's post:
An interesting article in the New York Times about the lack of skilled workers available for manufacturing jobs in the U.S.:
Here in this suburb of Cleveland, supervisors at Ben Venue Laboratories, a contract drug maker for pharmaceutical companies, have reviewed 3,600 job applications this year and found only 47 people to hire at $13 to $15 an hour, or about $31,000 a year.
The going rate for entry-level manufacturing workers in the area, according to Cleveland State University, is $10 to $12 an hour, but more skilled workers earn $15 to $20 an hour.
All candidates at Ben Venue must pass a basic skills test showing they can read and understand math at a ninth-grade level. A significant portion of recent applicants failed, and the company has been disappointed by the quality of graduates from local training programs. It is now struggling to fill 100 positions.
Since I work in Greensboro and have to be in different parts of the city on a regular basis I have ample opportunity to pass through intersections like the one at Merritt and High Point roads that feature strip malls with nail salons, pawn shops and "cash for gold" stores. The picture below is of one of the kids that the "Cash 4 Gold" proprietor hires to dance in 90 degree heat while wearing a stormtrooper helmet painted gold. Ed writes about the interesting economy we live in, epitomized by the cash 4 gold ops. Times are still tough people.
Fec put together some interesting info re. unemployment insurance. He ended with a sobering sentence:
There are 5.6 workers for every job opening in this country.
There is a stunning graph about foreclosures between 2005 and 2010 here. One of the pieces of info contained therein is that 23.3% of ALL mortgages are underwater. Not of sub-prime mortgages, or mortgages taken out during the boom, or mortgages in Florida, etc. That's 23.3%, or nearly a quarter, of every single mortgage in the US of A is underwater. The chart also shows that there will be over 1 million homes repossessed in the US in 2010.
Yee-ikes:
Befuddled 