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The New York Times illustrates why America’s new mantra needs to be MAKE OR BREAK. 

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The Hathaway Effect: How Anne Gives Warren Buffet a Rise

The Hathaway Effect: How Anne Gives Warren Buffet a Rise

The automated, robotic stock trading programs pick-up news of Anne Hathaway and mistake it for positive sentiment for Berkshire-Hathaway. 

I don’t see any way our economy could go wrong, with such spot-on automation in place. 

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If you want to know what the federal government is really doing, just look where it’s spending our money. Two of every five dollars goes to Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid, all of which provide some form of insurance. A bit more than a buck goes to the military. Then there’s a $1.50 or so for assorted other spending – education, infrastructure, environmental protection, farm subsidies, etc. Some of that, like unemployment checks and food stamps, is also best understood as forms of insurance. And then there’s another 40 cents of debt repayment. Calvin Coolidge once said that the business of America is business. Well, the business of the American government is insurance. Literally. If you look at how the federal government spends our money, it’s an insurance conglomerate protected by a large standing army.

Ezra Klein, The Washington Post, February 14, 2011. With thanks to npr. (via politicalprof)
Headlines

2010 IN PICTURES: Treasury Secertary Timothy Geithner (left) and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke pose for photos during the unveiling of the new $100 note at the Treasury Department April 21, 2010 in Washington, D.C. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

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2010 IN PICTURES: Treasury Secertary Timothy Geithner (left) and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke pose for photos during the unveiling of the new $100 note at the Treasury Department April 21, 2010 in Washington, D.C. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

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The Bennie Who Stole Christmas

The Bennie Who Stole Christmas

Gotta love Jim Quinn’s questioning of our beloved Fed chair’s concept of inflation:

Only an Ivy League academic could examine the following yearly price data and conclude, as Bernanke has, that inflation is well contained:

  • Unleaded gas up 24% 
  • Heating Oil up 28% 
  • Corn up 50% 
  • Wheat up 48% 
  • Coffee up 56% 
  • Sugar up 27% 
  • Soybeans up 30% 
  • Beef up 26% 
  • Pork up 22% 
  • Cotton up 101% 
  • Copper up 33% 
  • Silver up 72%

(Thanks to Colin for the link.)

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A Good Teacher Is Worth $400,000/year

A Good Teacher Is Worth $400,000/year

From a report by the National Bureau of Economic Research, by way of The Atlantic: 

A teacher one standard deviation above the mean effectiveness annually generates marginal gains of over $400,000 in present value of student future earnings with a class size of 20 and proportionately higher with larger class sizes. Alternatively, replacing the bottom 5-8 percent of teachers with average teachers could move the U.S. near the top of international math and science rankings with a present value of $100 trillion.

This follows a McKinsey report in 2009 which found that the U.S. raising education levels to those of Korea would improve the economy by a sixth of GDP, or more than $2 trillion.

It’s been very in-fashion to talk about reinvesting in Main Street America and small business, posturing while alluding to, but never directly suggesting a shift away from decades of corporate welfare disguised as healthy American enterprise (thoughts of Weekend at Bernie’s now sadly come to mind). But asking American business to create more domestic jobs, then asking them to fill those spots with a less-than-world-class workforce – is this how we expect to compete in the global economy? 

Of course, trying to resuscitate American business and American education while covering the costs of two wars and a vastly expanding senior population who expect to live well into their 80s and beyond may be a tall order if a few more people don’t start rolling up their sleeves.  

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Obama’s electoral coalition was built around the promise of amelioration, a better deal for workers and peace abroad, and neither has been delivered. Obama has been far more completely Wall Street’s president than anyone expected. This also helps explain why the corporate media has felt it necessary to act as a mouthpiece and booster for a layer of corporate-funded middle class Poujadists. It is to pre-emptively colonise a political space that might otherwise be filled by the millions of working class Americans who are angry over wages, unemployment, the banks, repossessions, and the endless war. It is to drown out the rational concerns of more popular political constituencies with pageantry, noise and fury, irrational howling, and home-made bigotry. It is to stage the fight that capital wants to see – between ostensibly liberal, cosmopolitan, internationally-oriented, capital-intensive industry, and a parochial, nationalist, bigoted populace, often small business owners working in labour-intensive industries. And the viewer’s role is to pick a side, and forget that neither represents their interests.

Richard Seymour