Reports of Recession Greatly Exaggerated
Quote[size=18]Recessions Are in the Eye of the Beholder[/size][size=9]by Ben Stein[/size]
How many times have you been witness to an event and then read about it in the newspaper later? How many times would you say the newspaper reported the event as you witnessed it?
If you're like me, truthful, accurate reportage is a rarity in your experience when compared with, well, with your experience.
Reports of Recession Greatly Exaggerated
This is as true of giant national events as it is of neighborhood ones. I've been involved in many of these big events, from Watergate to the Drexel/Michael Milken junk bond scandal. The media simply never gets it right. They give an impression, highly colored by the inexperience, bias, and laziness of the reporter. Most of all, in national events, the reporting is based upon the reporter's urgent need to magnify his or her own importance. This is only human, but it's good to recognize it.
I've been thinking about this a lot because in the last few weeks, we've seen a barrage of data buried in the back pages of major newspapers telling us that the "recession" everyone said was a certainty, the "recession" that the reporters assured us would be about as bad as the Great Depression, is simply not happening.
The bond markets have rallied staggeringly. The stock markets had one of their best months ever in April. The rate of defaults on corporate bonds remains extremely low. And index securities that track mortgage defaults are saying that the fear of a colossal national mortgage default epidemic was ill-founded.
Ignoring the Data
Just as I am writing this, new employment data has come out showing only very small job losses in April -- 20,000 jobs out of a labor force of very roughly 160 million, meaning that 1 in 8,000 jobs has been lost. The actual rate of unemployment is falling to a very modest level -- 5 percent.
Yet the national media is still selling us fear of a recession. One of the major national newspapers has a reporter who's desperately trying to peddle a story of national economic collapse even as the economy stays afloat.
And the beautiful part is that it's now crystal clear that we're not in a recession (we could be later -- anything can happen). There was just a report that showed first-quarter 2008 GDP growth was positive, meaning that as a matter of arithmetic we can't be in a recession, any more than a man who's gained weight can also be losing weight.
The Economy's Still Afloat
No, that's not the beautiful part: The beautiful part is that because we're not meeting the definition of a recession -- two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth -- the pundits are trying to rewrite the definition, to make it just about anything they feel like making it. (Or, as I like to say, the new rules allow liberals to call a conservative administration's tenure a recession any time they have the urge.)
Ladies and gentlemen, the dogs may bark but the caravan moves on. Adroit moves by the Federal Reserve have saved the economy from a bad recession. The housing crisis was never anywhere near as bad as the media naysayers were trying to claim. The mortgage foreclosure problem was never the disaster hedge fund traders and their allies in the media were trying to say.
This big old leaky barge of an economy is still floating lazily down the river. It's not as strong as it was two years ago, but it's still above the water line. The big problem for most employers now (as they tell me) is getting decent labor. Any halfway skilled, halfway decent college grad can have her choice of jobs. Anyone with a real work ethic and an education can make a fine living.
Get Real Now
I've come to feel that you, my readers, are my family. So I hope you haven't been terrified by the media and didn't sell your stocks. I hope you've been buying while the market was down. It may have some further air pockets, but the direction sure looks like it'll be up for a while now. P/E's aren't at all high, and foreign stocks are amazingly cheap.
And I'll add another suggestion. My evidence is anecdotal at this point, but I'm hearing of an uptick in home sales in my beloved Southern California and my native Washington, D.C. I think the tide is hitting full ebb, and while it may ebb for a while, it'll turn before long.
The nation is still rich. Mortgage rates are low. Employment is high. Contrary to media reports, loans are easily available to qualified buyers. Houses are still tax-subsidized. Young families need homes. We old people need retirement homes. People are moving for many reasons, and they need homes, too. Clearly it's a good time to dip your toe in and see how you like the residential real estate water.
Bunk, More or Less
As for the financial journalists, take a cue from Henry Ford, who famously said, "History is more or less bunk."
I wouldn't say business journalism is all bunk. But I would say it's about glorifying the reporters and selling newspapers. And while fear sells papers, it doesn't make for good investors.
http://finance.yahoo.com/expert/article/yourlife/81478
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School has child taken away because "psychic" ...
Quote[size=18]School has child taken away because "psychic" claimed she was abused[/size][size=7]Posted by Cory Doctorow, June 17, 2008 10:37 PM | permalink[/size]
The administration at Terry Fox Elementary in Barrie Ontario called Children's Aid on Colleen Leduc and accused her of allowing her autistic daughter to be sexually assaulted. They based the accusation on something a "psychic" told the special ed worker who worked with the kid.
"The teacher looked and me and said: 'We have to tell you something. The educational assistant who works with Victoria went to see a psychic last night, and the psychic asked the educational assistant at that particular time if she works with a little girl by the name of "V." And she said 'yes, I do.' And she said, 'well, you need to know that that child is being sexually abused by a man between the ages of 23 and 26.'"
Victoria, who is non-verbal, had also been exhibiting sexualized behaviour in class, actions which are known to be typical of autistic behavior. (See other typical actions here) That lead authorities to suspect she had a bladder infection that may have somehow been related to the 'attack.'
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/06/17/school-has-child-tak.html
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The Commonwealth Publications Saga Part III: Implosion
The afterglow didn’t last long, however. The proverbial ‘red flags’ soon began to appear. The volume of complaints from authors steadily grew; the production backlog became the elephant in the room, and uncertainty over company funds became fodder for water cooler chat.Then on August 31, 1997, an event occurred that signaled the beginning of the end.....
http://www.themoderateseparatist.com/2008/05/commonwealth-publications-saga-part-iii.html
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The Commonwealth Saga Part II: Black Clouds
The ad in the Edmonton Journal read: ‘North America's fastest growing mass market publisher requires Public Relations professionals.’ Having just moved to town, I was looking for a fresh start and a new direction. Like many of the authors I would come to know, I took a fateful chance on the small Edmonton publisher.....http://www.themoderateseparatist.com/2008/05/commonwealth-publications-saga-part-ii.html
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The Commonwealth Publications Saga Part I: A Scam Is Born
...In the city of Edmonton, Alberta in the early 1990’s, there was one such man. His name was Donald Phelan, and what he built – and subsequently destroyed – left a long trail of broken promises and shattered dreams.....http://www.themoderateseparatist.com/2008/05/commonwealth-publications-saga-part-i.html
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[quote:1b1e477f46="D. Johnson"] It's a petty move.
Agreed.
[quote:1b1e477f46="D. Johnson"] And quite frankly, where pettiness happens, it should be encouraged, if for no other reason than to see how far the trait goes with the person exhibiting it...
Not sure how one would go about encouraging it; but I know what mean.....give someone enough rope, eventually they will hang themselves. This is fine so long as there is no collateral damage.
[quote:1b1e477f46="D. Johnson"]An example would be the two men "debating" over on the EnCana forum. Now, I happen to know who is baiting whom, because from one of those fellows I learned that trait. The remarkable simarity between Stelmach in the Ledge wasting the Dippers time in questions by bashing the AUPE and the repetitivness of thought in that thread is.... unsurprising.
I am not familiar with EnCana’s forum. Though I certainly can see how the banter in the Leg could be akin to an internet exchange. Sadly, Stelmach does not have an exclusive on that --- all parties are guilty of it.
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CCTVs don't solve crime
Quote[size=18]CCTVs don't solve crime in UK; Scotland Yard's answer: more CCTVs![/size][size=7]Posted by Cory Doctorow, May 5, 2008 11:45 PM | permalink[/size]You know all those Orwellian cameras that line the streets of London? Pretty much useless in crime-fighting. Scotland Yard's solution? More cameras!
Massive investment in CCTV cameras to prevent crime in the UK has failed to have a significant impact, despite billions of pounds spent on the new technology, a senior police officer piloting a new database has warned. Only 3% of street robberies in London were solved using CCTV images, despite the fact that Britain has more security cameras than any other country in Europe.
Link [size=7](Thanks, Clifton!)[/size]
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/05/05/cctvs-dont-solve-cri.html
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This board is in total stagnation!
I have been working my butt off recently but it seems to me that this board is ceasing to become the going concern it should be. Why is that?Politics don't just stop. The politicians don't just quite being stupid. The government doesn't just start doing what it should be doing. What is going on with respect to this board?
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Rookie blogger (First Lady) gets published ! !
[size=18]Rookie blogger gets published ! ! [/size]I must say I was pleasantly surprised when a magazine requested permission to print an excerpt from my blog.
Continued: http://janemorgan.blogspot.com/
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making it illegal to use the Internet
Quote[size=18]Copyright crazies gaining steam in Canada[/size][size=7]Posted by Cory Doctorow, April 26, 2008 5:21 AM | permalink[/size]
The lobby for US-style copyrights in Canada has gone into overdrive, recruiting a powerful Member of Parliament and turning public forums on copyright into one-sided love-fests for restrictive copyright regimes that criminalize everyday Canadians.
Dan McTeague is the Liberal MP from Pickering-Scarborough East, and he's set to become the successor to Sam Bulte, the MP who lost her job for funding her campaign to get elected and appointed Heritage Minister by lining her pockets with massive donations from the very industries she would have ended up regulating. Reliable sources tell me that he's the guy who pushed for Canada signing onto the WIPO copyright treaty in the committee's anti-counterfeiting report last year, and that any time anyone in committee mentions fair dealing and user rights, he has a complete melt-down and shouts them down.
At a recent copyright panel in Toronto, McTeague essentially read out a list of record industry talking points about Canada's supposed status as a pirate nation, characterizing infringement as theft and refusing to acknowledge user rights; saying that Canada's international reputation had been tarnished by its soft copyright laws (the World Economic Forum says that Canada's copyright system is more advanced than Japan's and the US's). and, incredibly, [size=24]proposed that we should pass a law making it illegal to use the Internet to "threaten" Members of Parliament with negative publicity if we don't like their political positions.[/size]
The supposedly non-partisan Public Policy Forum is holding a major, one-sided IP symposium on Monday. Invited are the U.S. Ambassador to Canada, former head of the Canadian Motion Picture Industry Association, and other big-stick-swingers for American-style copyright disasters. But when copyright lobbyists discovered that noted copyright scholar Howard Knopf would appear on just one of the panels, they went berserk and pushed successfully to have Knopf removed, ensuring that dissenting voices would be minimized on the day.
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/04/26/copyright-crazies-ga.html
(Emphasis mine)
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