Past dooms du jour Jun-May 2009

Timesizing® Associates - Homepage

hopes/dooms du jour,
June-May 2009
[Commentary] ©2004-09 Phil Hyde, The Timesizing Wire, Box 117, Harvard Sq, Cambridge MA 02238 USA (617) 623-8080 - HOMEPAGE

6/30/2009 tuesday

(archives)

–

TIMESIZING instead of downsizing in the news

(archives) - Google Search newsclips of what the world's doing that's on the right track - the core solution is so obvious, nobody's noticing it - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and it's reinvented thousands of times a day in every downturn despite *dismissal by the 'experts'

Dollar advances as consumer confidence falls, The Associated Press.
.Also Tuesday, official figures showed Germany's jobless rate edged down to 8.1% in June, posting a weak seasonal improvement as programs to put workers on shorter hours helped stabilize employment amid a serious recession...
- see whole article under today's date.
[So shorter hours are happening anyway, but not the best way = by redefining "full time" downward for everyone and increasing jobs, wages, spending and markets.]

Breaking News: Vibe Magazine Folding, Photo District News - New York,NY,USA.
.VIBE also reduced its frequency from monthly to 10 times a year. Employees were put on a 4-day workweek March 1...
- see whole article under today's date
[Here shorter hours cushion a closure.]

Time will tell, by Milne & Groom & Birchall, FT.com - USA.
.Gardening leave? Employers speak of a ‘remarkable solidarity’ in job preservation by working shorter hours, while trade unions point simply to the ‘hard facts of a recession’ [caption on photo of reclining girl reading in garden]

LESS-STRATEGIC GOOD NEWS (archives) -

Sears will let jobless stop payments, Boston Globe, B7.

'Buy-local' pitch boosts Main Street, Wall St Journal, B1 pointer to B4.

Consumers find fulfillment in renting [handbags, designer clothes, bikes, cellphones, ladders, power tools] - Eco-friendly and cheaper, trend gains converts, Boston Globe, B9.
..."less about treasure and more about pleasure"...
[Maybe if people stop buying and start renting everything, we switch from "buy local" to "rent local."]

$250,000 FDIC guarantee will protect your account through 2013, not just 2009, Boston Globe, B8.

Bank [for International Settlements in Basel] urges end of stimulus spending [by governments], Boston Globe, B6.

Swiss banks closing Americans' accounts amid US pressure, Boston Globe, B9.

doom du jourtm = today's headlines from helltm (archives)
– face the bad news here in the context of the waiting solution:

JOBLOSS-RELATED SUICIDE in the news (archives) -

Ex-ABN banker, Boumeester [49], found dead - Executive who was involved in the 2007 takeover battle had been looking for a job recently, by Munoz & Bryan-Low, WSJ, C3.
London - A former top banker of ABN Amro Holding NV was found dead outside London on Sunday, a week after he disappeared and his family reported a gun missing from his collection.... A car matching the description of Mr. [Huibert] Boomeester's vehicle was found nearby.... Police said that at this point there are no signs of foul play. A person familiar with the matter said it appeared to be a suicide.... He..had been feeling down.... He had an apartment near Knightsbridge in London and the family also has an estate in Scotland...
[So money isn't everything. In fact, having a good job was more important than money here. And there we have another good reason for guaranteeing full employment at an overall level by manipulating the workweek, not the workforce, in any recession.]

ONGOING DEATHSPIRAL (archives) - reversed only by dumb war or smart timesizing -
Only the employed need apply, by Dana Mattioli, WSJ, D1.
With [officially admitted] unemployment at 9.4% and rising, it's a buyer's market for employers that are hiring.
[And has been ever since 1970 when the babyboomers offset the wartime-prosperity-causing killoff of World War II and replaced the labor surplus of the Great Depression, causing real wages to stagnate and sink ever since.]
But many employers are bypassing the jobless to target those still working, reasoning that these survivors are the top performers...
[How many ways can we split our population into an ever smaller cohort of frantically overworked people and an ever larger army of desperate un(der)employed? How many more ways can we destroy ourselves? And we're not alone -]
Learning to protest - A lack of jobs drives young Japanese to challenge a taboo [against protesting], NY Times, B1.
Constant fear and mob rule in South Africa slum, NYT, front page.
[= America's future? For sure, unless we implement homeostatic full employment via shared work.]

6/28-29/2009 sunday-monday (archives) –
TIMESIZING instead of downsizing in the news (archives) - Google Search newsclips of what the world's doing that's on the right track - the core solution is so obvious, nobody's noticing it - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and it's reinvented thousands of times a day in every downturn despite *dismissal by the 'experts' -
Cultural affairs: Nevada museums cut hours this week - Cuts leave no staff for new exhibits at Springs Preserve, By Ed Vogel, Capital Bureau, 6/29 Las Vegas Review-Journal - Las Vegas,NV,USA.
.Faced with a one-third cut in his budget, Department of Cultural Affairs Director Michael Fischer did what any realistic business manager would do: He cut hours of museums and libraries, laid off some employees and reduced the work week of many others to 32 hours... - see whole article under today's date.
[So shorter hours are happening anyway, but not the best way = by redefining "full time" downward for everyone and maintaining jobs and markets.]
Our view: Jefferson County commissioners must agree on a budget cut plan to deal with loss of occupational tax, 6/28 The Birmingham News - al.com - Birmingham,AL,USA.
.The reduced workweek and reduced pay also only applied to hourly workers, and not to salaried employees, such as commissioners... - see whole article under today's date
Union workers reject offer by Globe paper, 6/28 Reuters - USA.
.The union, which represents 450 workers at the national paper, said the paper's offer included pension benefits cuts of up to 50 percent; salary reductions in some wage categories; a general two-year wage freeze for all employees;
longer work days and a longer work week... - see whole article under today's date
[So in some cases and places, things are going backwards.]

LESS-STRATEGIC GOOD NEWS (archives) -
Calls for second stimulus rejected, 6/29 Boston Globe, B6.
Valero harnesses wind energy to fuel its oil-refining process, Wall St Journal, B1.

doom du jourtm = today's headlines from helltm (archives)
– face the bad news here in the context of the waiting solution:

LOOTIN' N' LAYOFF TRIGGERING MERGERS in the news (archives) -
M&As provide a superhighway to monopolies & the Black Hole economy by opening up the Great Leak Upwards -
mgmt's economy-shrinking merger skills need replacement by shorter-shift suturing skills -
Consultancies merge in a $3.5B deal, Bloomberg News via 6/29 Boston Globe, B6 (NY Times, B3).
New York - Towers, Perrin, Forster & Crosby Inc. and Watson Wyatt Worldwide Inc...all-stock transaction...
[...just 'play money' anyway...]
ECONOMY-KILLING DOWNSIZING in the news (archives) - all quickly reversible by substituting timesizing -
Exiled to Russia's far reaches: Casinos and [hundreds of] thousands of jobs, by Clifford Levy, New York Times, A1.
Moscow - One of the largest mass layoffs in recent Russian history is to occur on Wednesday...economic crisis or not. The government is shutting down every last legal casino and slot-machine parlor across the land [except in] four regions in remote areas of Russia, as many as 4,000 miles from the capital.\.under an antivice plan promoted by Vladimir Putin...
MAKEWORK in the news (archives) - always too little too late, & unnecessary with full employment via timesizing -
The state [Mass.] will use $20 million in federal stimulus funds.., Boston Globe, A1 pointer to B5.
..for solar energy projects at Logan Airport, nine water facilities, and other locations.
[Artificial, unsustainable 'stimulus' instead of market-demanded, sustainable, overtime-targeted reinvestment? You be the judge.]
ONGOING DEATHSPIRAL (archives) - reversed only by dumb war or smart timesizing -
Generation gap in US largest since 1960s, study shows - Young, old disagree on social values - Religion is a far bigger part of the lives of older adults, by Hope Yen, Boston Globe, A2.
[Let's not get distracted onto the values gap. It's the income and wealth gap that's blocking our system feedback, and the actionable synonym for that is the astronomical concentration of the nation's income and wealth among the top 0.01% of the population, a mere 30,000 individuals of our 300 million population. How do we centrifuge it back to workable proportions by market forces? Create a wartime level of labor shortage by cutting the workweek. This gets wartime prosperity without the war by getting employers bidding against one another for good help, instead of today's thousands of desperate resumes begging for just dozens of job openings.]
Property losses bedevil banks, WSJ, C1 pointer to C10.
Wary banks hobble toxic-asset plan, by Enrich, Rappaport & Strasburg. Wall St Journal, A1.
[Boy, they're really ASKING for it!]
..Public-Private Investment Program, or PPIP..originally billed as a $1 trillion endeavor [ie: theft from taxpayers].\.has lost momentum. Big banks worried about having to sell at fire-sale prices [they'd be lucky to get ANYthing on the open market!] while small banks feared they would be shut out...
[So America's entire banking system is on welfare! And the real reason they're balking is their 'need' for as thorough as possible a coverup lest they 'stimulate' a massive bank run.]
Difficulties stem plan to thwart foreclosures, Boston Globe, B1 pointer to B7.
'They need to do a much better job on the basic management & operational side.' Michael Barr, Asst. Treas. Secy,
Boston Globe, subhead, B7 (NYT A1).
Public health services have been curtailed sharply.., Boston Globe, A1 pointer to A5.
..in some Massachusetts communities, and officials fear that budget problems will force many more such cuts.
Hunt goes on for missing Madoff money - Just $1.2 billion recovered so far; Mrs. Madoff gives up $48,500 in fur coats, WSJ, C1.
[Hey, at least she was supporting the economy by spending it, unlike most of the wealthy with most of their money.]
For victims, downsized lives - And many shattered dreams, WSJ, C1.
[Our hearts bleed...]

6/27/2009 saturday (archives) –
TIMESIZING instead of downsizing in the news (archives) - Google Search newsclips of what the world's doing that's on the right track - the core solution is so obvious, nobody's noticing it - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and it's reinvented thousands of times a day in every downturn despite *dismissal by the 'experts' -
Traffic up at library, Fergus Falls Daily Journal - Fergus Falls,MN,USA.
...Sometimes that means fewer staff, shorter hours and a backlog of backroom work... - see whole article under today's date.
Two in coroner's office retire after Jefferson County cuts workweek to 32 hours, Posted by Carol Robinson, The Birmingham News - al.com - Birmingham,AL,USA.
...With a 32-hour workweek, they would lose up to 5 percent of their pensions if they continued to work, in addition to the 20 percent pay cut... - see whole article under today's date
[And similarly, full employment by sharing work via a fluctuating workweek can have unintended consequences which would be mitigated if it was done on a citywide, statewide, or nationwide basis across all jobs and skills.]

LESS-STRATEGIC GOOD NEWS (archives) -
China reiterates its call for a new reserve currency, putting pressure on the dollar, Wall Street Journal, B1.
[China wouldn't be calling for a new reserve currency if US bankers and politicians hadn't been doing everything they could - with considerable success - to pressure the US dollar themselves.]
[US] House backs bill, 219-212, to curb global warming - A first for Congress - Cap-and-trade system could transform use of energy in U.S., NYT, A1.
[Too little too late, but at least - at last! - some motion.]

doom du jourtm = today's headlines from helltm (archives)
– face the bad news here in the context of the waiting solution...

ECONOMY-KILLING DOWNSIZING in the news (archives) - all quickly reversible by substituting timesizing -
Detroit's black middle class, NYT, A1 pointer to Sunday book review.
A comfortable life is slipping away, plant closing by plant closing.
ONGOING DEATHSPIRAL (archives) - reversed only by dumb war or smart timesizing -
Dow declines 34.01 points, ending week down by 1.2%,
Wall St Journal, B1.
SEC chased small fry while big fish, Madoff, swam free, NYT, B1.
Prosecutors will recommend a 150-year sentence for Madoff, NYT, B1 pointer to B3.
[Too much, too late.]
Small banks not shying from TARP, WSJ, B1.
[See Paul Weaver's 1989 book, "The Suicidal Corporation," meaning the corporation that's forever looking for government (=taxpayer) handouts, always on the excuse of saving or creating jobs. No wonder the powers-that-be fight tooth and nail against full employment via work sharing, however short a workweek it may take. They'd lose this pathetic socialist lever to drag handouts out of politicians. So a frozen workweek is just as big a crutch as religion, for weak corporations to be able to use JOBS! as a lever (or club!) for subsidies.]
Americans save more, amid rising confidence, by Kelly Evans, WSJ, A1.
[This headline would be more believable if it read, "Even more of the US national income funnels up to the top 0.01%, as investors happytalk themselves back into complacency." And saving is not what you want in a depression, so why try to spin this as a Good Thing in the headline, while burying its badness in the sixth paragraph, carefully weakened with a "some think..," and a "keep a lid on" instead of "hold back" -]
...Some think the high saving rate will keep a lid on consumer spending and a broader recovery,\.
[This should read simply, "The high 'saving' rate will hold back consumer spending and economic recovery." "Broader" recovery implies the existence of a narrower recovery - which if it exists at all, exists only insofar as the super-rich are sweating quite so profusely as last fall, having deluded themselves into believing that we are on major new ground, waaay out over a cliff. What general truth there is to the original headline is explained thus -]
...The gain was partly attributable to one-time government payments to eligible seniors made under the Obama administration's economic stimulus plan intended to spur consumer spending...
[And buried in the second-last paragraph we find -]
Households are facing the weakest labor market in decades, as the US unemployment rate - 9.4% as of May - is likely to march higher when June data are released next Thursday. Roughly 6.7 million workers are drawing uemployment benefits...
["March higher" instead of just "rise" like other economic indexes? - as if it's employees' choice, or as if it's employees staging a demonstration or march, or worse, as if 'workers' are a bunch of commie pinkos staging a military-like march. And we can't just report the disgraceful numbers - instead we see the phrase "drawing benefits" as if they're leaches sucking-dry the taxpayer - as if CEOs, investors and bankers aren't doing it at thousands of times this level. Truly America is finished, because this rot is sooo pervasive. But everyone else in the world is watching, and some will learn, and carry on.]
Buffett's son Howard takes a key role in the war against hunger, WSJ, W1 pointer to W3.
[The wealthy keep doing high-profile distractions from the fact that THEY are the problem. This level of concentration of national income and wealth is self-undermining. They can't spend it and it's now so consolidated, they can't even invest it sustainably. And it's based on the careful fostering of a huge general labor surplus, and ever lower real wages. No one is hungry who has food, but you can't just "give a man a fish" or he'll just "live for a day." No one lacks food who has money, but you can't just hand out money or you'll just create dependency. Besides, no one lacks money who has a good job, and taking working hours away from overworked A to give to unemployed B makes B independently self-supporting and gives A a life. So work sharing is the place to start. We did it successfully in the private sector from 1838 to 1938 as we cut the workweek from 84 to 44 hours, and we did it successfully in the public sector from 1938 to 1940 as we cut the workweek from 44 to 40.]
New border fear: violence by a rogue militia, NYT, A1.
...ARIVACA, Ariz...
[But if government is too corrupted by cheap employers who want to hire the slave labor of illegal aliens, this is what happens while the rest of us are distracted by tragic anecdotes of individual families. The Timesizing program puts population variables front and center in Phase 5, starting with uncontrolled imports alias "free trade," then moving on to uncontrolled adult influx alias illegal entry or uncontrolled job outflow alias outsourcing, and finishing with uncontrolled parenthood and global lack of birth policy except in China where the situation is desperate and desperately addressed.]

6/26/2009 friday (archives) –
TIMESIZING instead of downsizing in the news(archives) - Google Search newsclips of what the world's doing that's on the right track - the core solution is so obvious, nobody's noticing it - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and it's reinvented thousands of times a day in every downturn despite *dismissal by the 'experts' -
Judge rules county furloughs can start Monday, By Marie Rohde and Steve Schultze, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel - Milwaukee,WI,USA.
Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker has the right to shorten the workweek for county workers to 35 hours to help the county cope with its financial problems, Reserve Judge Dennis J. Flynn said in a decision issued Friday...
- see whole article under today's date.
New Madrid Cuts Work Week To Four Days, fox4kc.com - Kansas City,USA.
In an effort to cut costs the City of New Madrid, Mo. will shorten their work week from five days to four...
- see whole article under today's date
[So shorter working hours are happening anyway, but not the best way = by redefining "full time" downward for everyone and maintaining jobs and markets.]

LESS-STRATEGIC GOOD NEWS (archives) -
Bernanke blasted in House - Political heat mounts on Fed as grilling over Bank of America shows ire at its interventions,
Wall Street Journal, A1.
[Interventions all doubtless coverup-motivated. Hopefully the whole coverup will gradually fall apart, we can find out how bad things really are, depose, jail and strip-the-assets-of the crooks in high places, and begin real healing. But don't hold your breath...]

doom du jourtm = today's headlines from helltm (archives)
– face the bad news here in the context of the waiting solution...

ECONOMY-KILLING DOWNSIZING in the news (archives) - all quickly reversible by substituting timesizing -
Recession's children - As plants close, Class of '09 has to remake its future, NYT, B1, and -
As factories close, recession's children rethink their future, inside head, B5.
ONGOING DEATHSPIRAL (archives) - reversed only by dumb war or smart timesizing -
Holding firm against plots by evildoers, NYT, A8.
[The last eight years we've had a lot more to worry about with the plots by the would-be GOOD-doers. Cases in point -]
Tug of war on control of derivatives takes shape, NYT, inside head, B5.
[Under the circumstances, why is anyone fighting the strictest control of these liars' dice?]
Judge approves U.S. financing for G.M. - In speedy [rushed-through??] hearing, $33.3 billion loan is granted in 15 minutes -.., NYT, B3.
[Money has become meaningless to these people. None of this should happen without the explicit consent of taxpayers via binding public referendum. However much the machinery of such referendums would cost, it would be trivial compared to the money that's being robbed from taxpayers these days by those who are supposed to have taxpayers' interests foremost, and clearly don't.]
..- The General Motors case is moving quicker than Chrysler's did, subhead, B3.
[They're getting smoother and smoother at robbing powerless ordinary Americans and bankrupting America's consumer base and future prospects = good news for all America's enemies.]
Nestlé unit denied FDA requests -
[So why wasn't it shut down???]
- Inspection reports reveal U.S. plant that made cookie dough didn't allow agency access to its records, WSJ. B1.
[So Nestle has been trying to turn us into a China of dangerous foods and low product quality. What stops government from shutting down these outrages? Answer: The threat to JOBS. Job threats are used constantly and universally and pervasively. And they are meaningless because the jobs are moving out of state and out of country anyway, regardless of whether governments cowtow or not. Already, our economic system has become so complicated and distorted that only governments with automatic, workweek-fluctuation-enabled full employment could withstand the job threats that incompetent CEOs constantly use to "guilt" politicians and bureaucrats into bailing them out and aiding their coverups...]
Italy intercepts billions in fake [US] Treasur[y notes], NYT, B2.
[No matter. Geithner, Bernanke and the other "bailout" artists have turned all US Treasuries into worthless fakes. We've moved from the dot-com bubble to the housing bubble to the bailout bubble, and coming to your neighborhood soon, The Melt-Up.]
Islamists amputate limbs of 4 Somalis accused of theft - Insurgents' strict [shouldn't that be "barbaric"?!] punishment reaches Somalia's capital [Mogadishu], NYT, A9.

6/25/2009 thursday (archives) –
TIMESIZING instead of downsizing in the news (archives) - Google Search newsclips of what the world's doing that's on the right track- the core solution is so obvious, nobody's noticing it - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and it's reinvented thousands of times a day in every downturn despite *dismissal by the 'experts' -
Herman Miller says worst is over, by Julia Bauer | The Grand Rapids Press, Michigan Business Review - MLive.com - Ann Arbor,MI,USA.
ZEELAND, Mich. -- Although most employees for Herman Miller Inc. still are on a four-day work week, the future is looking a little less choppy, CEO Brian Walker said Thursday. In fact, the savings from the shortened work week were offset slightly by performance bonuses, paid to employees who managed to meet aggressive performance goals in a brutal economy... - see whole article under today's date.
Library to cut hours, staff again, NRToday.com - Roseburg,OR,USA.
...The shorter hours, Leek said, are a consequence of roughly an 8 percent cut in the library's budget. Systemwide, the equivalent of 5.5 full-time employees will be lost. [But with more hourscuts than jobcuts, only] two part-time employees on the circulation desk will be laid off at Headquarters Library... - see whole article under today's date
[So shorter working hours are happening anyway, but not the best way = by redefining "full time" downward for everyone and maintaining jobs and markets.]

LESS-STRATEGIC GOOD NEWS (archives) -
Obama signed into law a $106 billion measure.., WSJ, A1 news squib.
..to wind down the Iraq war [GOOD] and ramp up operations in Afghanistan [BAD].
[Yet when you try to say anything to this adminstration, you get the same answer, "You don't understand politics." Well, a nation is in deep trouble when its politics doesn't understand what's required for its survival, and coddling its arms industry merely accelerates its demise - "He that lives by the sword shall die by the sword."]
The IRS is demanding.., WSJ, A1 pointer to B3.
..that hedge funds and private-equity investors disclose billions of dollars in offshore investments amid a crackdown.
[So let's see, the World Bank and the IMF are corrupt crowds of crap; the US central bank (the Fed) under Bernanke and the US Treasury under Geithner are both rotten building blocks of America's current financial foundation on vapor; but, the Congressional Budget Office is still honest, Bill Black believes the Federal Deposit Insurance Fund (FDIC) is still competent and here we learn that ironically, the IRS is playing a vital role in slowing America's deathspiral. And here we have corroboration of the competence of the FDIC -]
Bernanke to testify as new BofA details emerge, by Crittenden & Fitzpatrick, WSJ, C1.
[Ben "Mr.Coverup" Bernanke's testimony is going to be fluff, but in the midst of the "confidentiality" policy that gives banks time to tackle serious problems "without the glare of outside attention" -]
...FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair wrote to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke that there was "strong discomfort with this deal at the FDIC." Ms. Bair was referring to a [Fed?] plan to have the FDIC guarantee losses on certain BofA assets. ['This deal" is further evidence of Bernanke's corruption and Bair's heroism -]
.\.Bank of America got $20 billion in capital [from the Fed?] and a loss-sharing agreement to go through with its takeover of Merrill Lynch & Co.., where losses were ballooning in the weeks before the deal closed....
"My board does not want to do this," Ms. Bair wrote on Jan.14. The government "rescue" [our quotes] was announced two days later..\.. Internal documents unearthed by congressional investigators...also deepened questions among some lawmakers about the Fed's handling of the mess at Merrill. Neither the securities firm's losses nor negotiations that resulted in the government bailout of BofA were disclosed until after the deal was done....
[This also indicates Congress is trying to clean our Augean stables, and... the Wall St Journal itself, after cravenly supporting the Bush regime while it attacked our very foundations for eight years, has now taken up a role in uncovering coverups. And may now be starting to suspect that it is the end of their world. But then Chomsky always claims to prefer the Journal to the Times cuz "they have to publish SOME reality for investors."
'Those whose deeds are evil come not to the light, lest their deeds be made known." Hence now the "bailout bubble" and the impending "melt-up." There was so much pond scum for so long under the Bush catastrophe that much of it floated to the top and remains there to this day, notably Bernanke and Geithner. If this nation and its finances survive, it will be largely due to Sheila Bair and our markets will forever be - you guessed it! - Bair markets (and she-Bair markets at that! or in Quebec, she-LaBair).]

doom du jourtm = today's headlines from helltm (archives)
– face the bad news here in the context of the waiting solution...

ECONOMY-KILLING DOWNSIZING in the news (archives) - all quickly reversible by substituting timesizing -
Unemployed hit the road to find jobs, WSJ, A1.
Redefining luxury after a downsizing. WSJ, D1.
[The Wall St Journalists are not unaware of the problem, but the global future of guaranteed full employment and robust markets - no matter how short a workweek it takes - never occurs to their unimaginative little minds. They just assume humans are going to be this stupid forever - so as to cover up their own low expectations and lack of creativity.]
ONGOING DEATHSPIRAL (archives) - reversed only by dumb war or smart timesizing -
Fed reserved as slump eases, Wall St Journal, A1.
[Yeah, they're holding their breath lest the real story break and the damage control unravel.]
Senate panel slams big health insurers for underpaying claims, WSJ, D1.
[Americans keep trying to compare their health insurance 'system' with the Canadian system, and there are lots of anecdotal complaints on both sides, but bottom line, the US is not in the same league and no comparison is possible, for two reasons: (1) every Canadian is covered and one in six (50m) Americans isn't, and (2) the US does not have a health insurance system, just a jery-built patchwork quilt of costly duplicated private insurance-company bureaucracies. And that's why, whatever the anecdotes, Canucks are getting a lot more for their healthcare buck than Yanks.]
Hedge-fund manager Hohn tries to calm investors; he may return cash,
Wall St Journal, C1 pointer to C3.
Monsanto announced plans to restructure its crop-protection business and posted a 14% drop in profit, WSJ, A1.
[The drop in profit could not happen to a more deserving gang of thugs willing to sacrifice everyone else and the whole future of life on Earth for their own short-term gain. And as for their plans to "restructure their crop 'protection' business," considering their "business" consists in the crop destruction of long-term-untested, genetically modified, one-crop-only seeds, let's hope their attempts to hook everyone on their toxic crapcrops and frankenfood restructures into a road to annihilation of only them and their worst-of-suicidal-capitalism corporation.]

6/24/2009 wednesday (archives) –
TIMESIZING instead of downsizing in the news (archives) - Google Search newsclips of what the world's doing that's on the right track- the core solution is so obvious, nobody's noticing it - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and it's reinvented thousands of times a day in every downturn despite *dismissal by the 'experts' -
County government braces for up to 40 layoffs, Biddeford Journal Tribune - Biddeford,ME,USA.
...Last week Brown discussed the possibilities of a reduced workweek of 30 hours with MSEA local 1297. On Tuesday he said the county can’t mandate a shorter workweek, that the offer must come from the union. Brown also said a reduced workweek by the estimated 50 members off the union would eliminate some layoffs, but likely not all of them...
- see whole article under today's date.
JeffCo Commissioner Carns to take pay cut, Bizjournals.com - Charlotte,NC,USA.
...To save money, the commission recently voted to close all of its satellite courthouses and shift workers' workweek to four days, which sliced their pay by 20%... - see whole article under today's date
[So shorter workweeks are happening anyway, but not the best way = by redefining "full time" downward along with tied-in benefits.]

doom du jourtm = today's headlines from helltm (archives)
– face the bad news here in the context of the waiting solution...

ONGOING DEATHSPIRAL (archives) - reversed only by dumb war or smart timesizing -
Fed chief advocates bigger role, NYT, B1.
[Yep, Geithner wants more power to clinch his coverup of how unimaginably bad things actually are and how complicit he was in getting them that way (and keeping them that way via robbing taxpayers/consumers and covering it all up - so it ain't really going to stop or get better).]
Now hiring, and desperately seeking, specially skilled workers, NYT, A1.
[But not seeking "desperately" enough to train them - today's CEOs are so spoiled by the general labor surplus that they want a free lunch. They're so incompetent they just don't know WHAT to do if they can't choose from thousands of over-qualified resumes clamoring for each lower and lower paid job opening.]
Frugal shoppers drive grocers back to basics, Wall St Journal, B1.
[Ah, don't they mean laid-off shoppers..?]
Discounts force [restaurant] chains to eat their own lunch - Bargains lure frugal [ie: downsized] diners but reduce profits, NYT, B1.
Tech slump finally catches Oracle - Software maker posts a 7.2% decline in net [profit] as strong dollar leads to first sales drop since 2002, Wall St Journal, B1.
[Well, well, my old employer, nee IRI = Information Resources Inc. (nee MDS = Management Decision Systems).]
As China stirs economy, some see protection, NYT, B1.
[No kiddin'. But then, why should China be as stupid-hypocritical-suicidal as US?]
Kyrgyzstan to keep US base, NYT, A1 pointer to A6.
...reversed a decision to close...
[Ergo, secret payoff &/or threat.]

6/23/2009 tuesday (archives) –
TIMESIZING instead of downsizing in the news (archives) - Google Search newsclips of what the world's doing that's on the right track - the core solution is so obvious, nobody's noticing it - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and it's reinvented thousands of times a day in every downturn despite *dismissal by the 'experts' -
Union wants Walker at hearing on shorter workweeks, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel - Milwaukee,WI,USA.
The union fighting Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker's mandated 35-hour workweek filed legal papers Tuesday demanding that Walker cut short his motorcycle trip around the state to attend an arbitration hearing...
- see whole article under today's date.
Moonlighting's a way of life for workers in tough job market, USA Today - USA.
...When Bill's workweek was cut to four days, Christy..got a part-time gig at a garden center...
- see whole article under today's date
[Thus increasing the labor surplus and guaranteeing that wages will sink further and they'll have to run even faster and longer to stay in the same place financially. That's why after defining the problem in Timesizing's First Phase and getting companies to convert their overtime into training and hiring in Phase 2, we use Phase 3 to include in the overtime-to-jobs conversion individuals who evade the corporate workweek ceiling by moonlighting for other companies. That way there are, already available, lots of corporate training programs in place for them to use to upgrade their skills and get the income they want within the standard workweek instead of having to overwork and monopolize the vanishing market-demanded employment...]

doom du jourtm = today's headlines from helltm (archives)
– face the bad news here in the context of the waiting solution...

ONGOING DEATHSPIRAL (archives) - reversed only by dumb war or smart timesizing -
Markets fall on growth fears [as well they may!] - After lofty gains, stocks, commodities drop amid worries over global contraction, Wall St Journal, A1.
Stocks' drop is the biggest in 2 months, WSJ, C1.
[Once the national income and wealth get this funnelled onto this small a fraction of the total population, the stock market goes into major instability because there is weakened employment-base/consumer-base foundation to maintain marketable productivity and any stock-market rises are merely a function of the astronomical money concentration and the lack of marketable productivity to provide any sustainable investment alternatives.]
Growth, but at a price - In a downturn, China eases up on a law to protect workers, NY Times, B1.
[Weaken workers and you weaken your domestic markets, if any - so the price these geniuses are paying for growth, will be growth itself, since they can depend less and less on external export markets in a global downturn, and must depend more and more on internal, 'domestic' markets - over which they have much more control, but which control they are stupidly using to weakenthose newly precious domestic markets.]

6/22/2009 monday (archives) –
TIMESIZING instead of downsizing in the news (archives) - Google Search newsclips of what the world's doing that's on the right track - the core solution is so obvious, nobody's noticing it - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and it's reinvented thousands of times a day in every downturn despite *dismissal by the 'experts' -
Economy Taking Toll On Dallas' Hope Cottage, Reporting Bud Gillett, CBS 11 News - Dallas,TX,USA.
..."The options are layoffs," said Interim CEO Dr. Lottye Brodsky, "which would be terrible but something we have to realistically look at; (and) shorter hours, which we really don't want to do because babies are born at all hours of the day or night."... - see whole article under today's date.
Culinary Union agrees to wage freeze, Casino City Times - Newton Center,MA,USA.
...The revised contract still guarantees a 40-hour workweek for most positions. Many industries, including casinos, have reduced labor costs by replacing full-time workers with part-time employees, who may not be eligible for health insurance and other benefits... - see whole article under today's date
[So hours cuts are happening anyway, but not the best way = by redefining "full time" downward along with associated benefits.]

doom du jourtm = today's headlines from helltm (archives)
– face the bad news here in the context of the waiting solution...

ONGOING DEATHSPIRAL (archives) - reversed only by dumb war or smart timesizing -
2009 bank-failure tally rises to 40,
Bloomberg News via Boston Globe, B6.
Healthcare reform waiting room, editorial cartoon by Walt Handelsman, Newsday via Boston Globe, A10.
Man holding 2009 Obama Plan to skeleton beside him holding 1993 Clinton Plan, "Been here long?"
PCB-tainted sludge bound for West Texas, by Betsy Blaney, Boston Globe, A5.
LUBBOCK, Texas - Later this month, the first trainloads of PCB-tainted sludge dredged from the Hudson River will arrive and, in the eyes of the critics, will turn a stretch of West Texas into New York's "pay toilet."...
But for 15 new jobs and the little bit of money it'll bring local businesses, the folks who live near the site are willing to take the risk of tainting the area's ground water....
[Job desperation strikes again! The "free-market" hypocrites who have frozen the workweek since 1940 while continuing with technological disemployment have distorted EVERYTHING.]

6/21/2009 sunday (archives) –
TIMESIZING instead of downsizing in the news (archives) - Google Search newsclips of what the world's doing that's on the right track - the core solution is so obvious, nobody's noticing it - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and it's reinvented thousands of times a day in every downturn despite *dismissal by the 'experts' -
Hoover Dam sign hurt business, so it's gone, Las Vegas Sun - Las Vegas,NV,USA.
...A few other city departments have some workers in the office on Fridays as well, but most of the city's employees have been on a four-day workweek since 1983... - see whole article under today's date.
What if YOU had to work for free?, Mirror.co.uk - London,UK.
...other workers are being asked to take an unpaid holiday, work shorter hours or give up some perks – all to avoid the looming spectre of redundancy... - see whole article under today's date
[Workweek reduction is happening anyway, but not the best way.]

doom du jourtm = today's headlines from helltm (archives)
– face the bad news here in the context of the waiting solution...

ECONOMY-KILLING DOWNSIZING in the news (archives) - all quickly reversible by substituting timesizing -
Ranks of police brass expand - Payroll rises 6% as cuts loom for overtime, cadets, by Maria Cramer, Boston Globe, B1.
...That money [the 6% = $173,000] would have saved only a few of the department employees threatened with pink slips - Mayor Thomas Menino has proposed cutting 67 police officers, 23 police cadets, and 12 civilians in his budget...
[Overtime cuts good. Job cuts bad.]
ONGOING DEATHSPIRAL (archives) - reversed only by dumb war or smart timesizing -
Too big to fail, or too big to handle? - Stronger oversight, but root causes are ignored, NY Times, BU1.
...banks...
[Frozen 40-hour workweek + evermore worksaving technology > ever deeper labor surplus > ever lower real wages > evermore concentration of the national income and wealth > ever less negative feedback to the plutocrats > evermore suicidal resistance to vital adaptation.]
Sham-ocracy - Signs of decline: Canada's Access to Information Act, once a model of open and accountable democracy, is collapsing from a combination of neglect and bureaucrats foiling citizens' right to know from foot-dragging and fees - It is just one example of a steady erosion of our principles and institutions, Toronto Sunday Star, A1 pointer to A10.
[So what's the big deal about democracy? Well from the system science viewpoint, the whole point of democracy is to provide system feedback for purposes of adapting to changing conditions, and a large system with no negative feedback (the kind that indicates adaptation dba change is needed) is inherently unadaptive and temporary, ie: doomed. All the English-speaking "democracies" are suffering from this now because, unlike Switzerland, they have not moved significantly toward what Buckminster Fuller called "24-hour telephone referendums on issues." See the letters to the editor of the Economist of London on 5/23/2009 under Continuing Deathspiral. Hey, at least Canada does not yet have single-party designed and manufactured electronic voting machines like those from Diebold, ES&S and Hart InterCivic in the rotting megazombie "democracy" to the south.]
The inheritance - A Father's Day meditation on the invisible costs of war - and their [legacy within families], Boston Globe, C1.

6/20/2009 saturday (archives) –
TIMESIZING instead of downsizing in the news (archives) - Google Search newsclips of what the world's doing that's on the right track - the core solution is so obvious, nobody's noticing it - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and it's reinvented thousands of times a day in every downturn despite *dismissal by the 'experts' -
Grass-mowing sheep? Public has lots of ideas, Minneapolis Star Tribune - Minneapolis,MN,USA.
...There were the basics:...Cut the county workweek to four days... - see whole article under today's date.
Humphryes voluntarily takes pay cut, al.com - Birmingham,AL,USA.
Jefferson County Commissioner Bobby Humphryes today said he will take a 20 percent pay cut "in order to be able to look the employees in the eyes." The County Commission voted unanimously Tuesday to switch about 3,200 hourly workers to a 32-hour workweek beginning Monday to help make up for a loss of revenue...
- see whole article under today's date
[Now that's a good employer! = all sacrifice together, starting at the top - just like timesizing Lincoln Electric of Cleveland.]
Are we allowed to cut full-time employees' hours to meet budget requirements?, Business Management Daily - Falls Church,USA.
...the US Department of Labor has approved a practice in which an employer reduces an exempt employee's workweek as a result of economic conditions... - see whole article under today's date

LESS-STRATEGIC GOOD NEWS (archives) -
GM to recall 900 workers at Michigan crossover plant, Toronto Globe & Mail, B7.
...near Lansing...
[Not so much 'less-strategic good news' as a goodnews exception that proves the badnews rule of suicidal downsizing instead of sustainable timesizing.]

doom du jourtm = today's headlines from helltm (archives) – face the bad news here in the context of the waiting solution...
JOB-RELATED SUICIDE in the news (archives) -
'Did we push her too much?' - Days after arriving in Kandahar, Major Michelle Mendes, a smart and driven analyst [whatever "analyst" means in this context], committed suicide..., Toronto Globe & Mail, A1.
[Get US & Canada OUT of the Third World. Third World populations are centuries behind us in social evolution dba complexity of socioeconomic system, and they barely understand a single word we say in the sense in which we understand it - and v.v. - they have not evolved the categories. A nation maybe one stage away from them can relate constructively, but we're just damaging them and deluding ourselves that we're helping them by intervening/interfering. Let the Prime Directive of Star Trek rule!]

ONGOING DEATHSPIRAL (archives) - reversed only by dumb war or smart timesizing -
Rebound at risk - Tales of bidding wars for houses on both sides of the border have bred hope of a housing recovery...- In the midst of a recession, with mortgage rates rising, jobs disappearing and consumers shell-shocked [= impoverished], is it a new day for real estate (a), or is it a false dawn (b)?, Toronto Globe, B1.
[That would be (b).]
..Cracks in foundation of U.S. housing recovery, Toronto Globe, inside header B4.
[More like, Transparently groundless attempt at damage control by concentrated media ownership.]
For growth, look to emerging shopaholics, Toronto Globe, B1.
[WHAT "emerging shopaholics"???]
..Leveraged to the eyeballs, [the rest of the] developed world can't help us now, Toronto Globe, inside header.
[and exports just aren't that big a part of an economy anyway unless you're just a citystate like Singapore or HongKong.]
Recession-shocked Canadians hoard growing pile of cash, Toronto Globe, B3.
[Must be talking about average saving stats that are being yanked up by the hugely concentrated income and wealthh of the top 0.01% of the population - who were already spending all they cared to before they got the last $10 million. Here's more like the real story -]
What's the deal? - Unions in public relations battle for benefits in bad times, National Post, p.1.
[Unions should smarten up, get back to their power issue, and cut their own surplus-of-labor-hours-on-offer-in-the-robotizing-job-market by fighting to shorten the workweek, thus harnessing market forces on employees' side for a change as employers bid against one another for good help.]

6/19/2009 friday (archives) –
TIMESIZING instead of downsizing in the news (archives) - Google Search newsclips of what the world's doing that's on the right track - the core solution is so obvious, nobody's noticing it - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and it's reinvented thousands of times a day in every downturn despite *dismissal by the 'experts' -
Gov. Lingle seeks cut in workweek, Honolulu Star-Bulletin - Honolulu,HI,USA.
...She said the state budget has already been reduced by $2 billion through the next three years, and now an additional $688 million will be cut by reducing state workers' pay through furloughs... - see whole article under today's date.
Some Jefferson County employees say pay cuts should be spread to commissioners, department heads, Posted by Barnett Wright--Birmingham News, al.com - Birmingham,AL,USA.
...Labor law experts agree that the county generally cannot cut hours from the workweek for salaried employees, as it can for hourly workers... - see whole article under today's date
[They either make this legally possible - as it was from 1840 to 1940 when the workweek was cut in half from 80 hours to 40, or they guarantee that their part of the economy will slide deeper into recession and further backward in progress.]

doom du jourtm = today's headlines from helltm (archives) – face the bad news here in the context of the waiting solution...
ECONOMY-KILLING DOWNSIZING in the news (archives) - all quickly reversible by substituting timesizing -
Parts makers forecast to shed 36,500 jobs, Toronto Globe, B6.
...Canadian autoparts industry...in 2009...
[thus cutting a lot of their own best customers...]
ONGOING DEATHSPIRAL (archives) - reversed only by dumb war or smart timesizing -
Watching their livelihoods turn to dust, farmers raise alarms on drought 'disaster' - Driest spring in 70 years decimates crops in Alberta, Saskatchewan - 'The hills look like sawdust', Toronto Globe & Mail, A1.
[The Dust Bowl of the 1930s revisited along with the Depression of the '30s!]
CIBC overtime class-action case dismissed, by Craig Wong, THE CANADIAN PRESS via TheStar.com.
..."In my opinion, there is no asserted common issue capable of being determined on a class-wide basis that would sufficiently advance this litigation to justify certification"... - see whole article under today's date.
[The time dimension is the commonest issue there is, and so is unpaid worktime = slavery. This contemptible and unimaginative excuse for a judge has set Canadian economic progress back to the 19th century, and in particular, betrayed her gender. Now hundreds of thousands of Canadian women (and men) will continue to be pressured into working overtime without pay in an increasing number of banks and other companies, thus concentrating further the yet-unautomated employment and distorting the economy further toward the third world.]

6/18/2009 thursday (archives) –
TIMESIZING instead of downsizing in the news (archives) - Google Search newsclips of what the world's doing that's on the right track - the core solution is so obvious, nobody's noticing it - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and it's reinvented thousands of times a day in every downturn despite *dismissal by the 'experts' -
Union Fights Against Shorter Workweek, WISN.com - Milwaukee,WI,USA.
...Last month, Walker declared most employees must start working five fewer hours a week beginning June 28...
- see whole article under today's date.
[Only half the union movement has ever had a clue where their power issue lies = if they can only get one of their two historic goals, higher pay and shorter hours, and it's higher pay in the short term, they wind up with neither in the longer term because they're pinning an arbitrarily and artificially higher price on a surplus commodity, their own working hours. But if they can only get one and it's shorter hours, they wind up with both because cutting hours cuts the labor surplus and harnesses market forces on their side as employers bid against one another for what they need of a scarce commodity. less plentiful working hours.]
New Doctors, Struggling for Balance, New York Times - United States.
...Unfortunately all the efforts to reduce work hours don't necessarily make life for residents less stressful - just the work day shorter... - see whole article under today's date

doom du jourtm = today's headlines from helltm (archives) – face the bad news here in the context of the waiting solution...
ECONOMY-KILLING DOWNSIZING in the news (archives) - all quickly reversible by substituting timesizing -
Michelin cuts 1,093 in voluntary scheme,
Toronto Globe & Mail, B9.
Financial executives to continue cost cutting, Toronto Globe, B9.
...shedding staff...
[Thus helping guarantee there'll be no "return to normal" in 2010 as they're predicting. They're still trying to grow/upsize by downsizing.]
BANKRUPTCY tsunami (archives) in the news - staunched only by risky war or safe timesizing -
Eddie Bauer gets creditor protection in Canada, Toronto Globe, B9.
ONGOING DEATHSPIRAL (archives) - reversed only by dumb war or smart timesizing -
On a collision course?, Toronto Globe & Mail, B1.
If inflation rises and he moves to raise rates, Bernanke could be at odds with the President who just gave him new powers...
[Aside from the fact that Bernanke and the Fed stoked the systemic risk ("Banks: Too big to fail, too big to solve, 6/16/09 WSJ, C10*) that triggered the economic crisis and participated in the massive fraud of toxic assets, both he and Obama are still shadow-boxing with the two fundamental problems using the same lame old "tools" = raise interest rates vs. inflation or take money from the poor to give to the rich vs. recession. Result: 3d-world disease, stagflation, or conqueredcountrysyndrome, hyperinflation. Neither are anywhere near the sustainable solution, disciplining management and centrifuging the black hole of investment money by resuming our 100 years of workweek reduction so that market forces can finetune wages in a range where they have a prayer of being sufficient to buy their own technology-multiplied output. The next economies to break out of the slacking, lagging pack are going to do it by activating their full potential consumer bases via homeostatic full employment, however short a workweek it may take.]
The bubble economy - 'Stability' refrain in plan that takes aim at volatility, by Jon Hilsenrath, Toronto Globe, B8.
[Stability in the financial markets, which depend on employment and consumption and which they're weakening daily with downsizing? Impossible. You can't try to grow the financial markets by shrinking the markets they are based on.]
With his proposed regulatory revamp, US President Barack Obama is setting out to do what history suggests can't be done easily
[yes it can if you quit thinking you can further enrich the rich while impoverishing everyone else]
- tame the financial system's tendency to drive itself off a cliff...
[It's not the financial system that's doing the driving - it's the financial executives who think they're their own foundation and anchor - so they can impoverish employees and consumers to any degree with no damage to themselves and their system. It's the myth of infinity = "Oh the things we want to downsize are infinite and invulnerable, and our downsizing (however cumulative) will have no effect and make no difference."]

6/17/2009 wednesday (archives) –
TIMESIZING instead of downsizing in the news (archives) - Google Search newsclips of what the world's doing that's on the right track - the core solution is so obvious, nobody's noticing it - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and it's reinvented thousands of times a day in every downturn despite *dismissal by the 'experts' -
Haywood passes budget that includes tax hike, Waynesville Smoky Mountain News - Waynesville,NC,USA.
...Ensley suggested furloughs and shortened work weeks for more county employees instead of raising taxes.... Another 11 employees will be cut to a 36 hour work week... - see whole article under today's date.
Today's Business Leaders Should Learn From Companies That Outperformed During the Great Depression, Says Boston Consulting Group Report -- Analysis of Depression-Era Winners - Such as P&G, IBM, GE, DuPont, and Even GM and Chrysler - Reveals What It Takes Not Only to Survive the Downturn but to Thrive in the Upturn, SYS-CON Media (press release) - Montvale,NJ,USA.
...To retain as much of its talent as it [GE in 1930] could and maintain its competitive advantage in the long term, it shortened the workweek, cut wages, and shifted skilled employees to lower-skilled jobs rather than lay them off...
- see whole article under today's date

doom du jourtm = today's headlines from helltm (archives) – face the bad news here in the context of the waiting solution...
ECONOMY-KILLING DOWNSIZING in the news (archives) - all quickly reversible by substituting timesizing -
Job cuts came fast, but were they deep enough?, Toronto Globe & Mail, B3.
[Hey, employers can always cut deeper if their markets have not yet tanked deep enough for them! As for employees -]
Ease anxiety over layoffs with a Plan B - Imminent job loss, financial stresses or the spectre of scandal are external events...but they can trigger a cascade of internal biochemical reactions that can be life-threatening, by Susan Pinker, Toronto Globe, B16.
...First, [see] your family doctor to make sure you're not depressed...
Second, stay engaged at work [but] shift your expectation of payoffs from the company to yourself...
Third, reframe...so that you gain a sense of control. For example...tell yourself that this job [taught] some unique expertise [but] it's time to learn something else. Or, that [layoff would be a] sign pointing to...Plan B: pursuing a goal that you've always had in the back of your mind...
Lockheed Martin plans [up to 750] cuts after losing helicopter deal, Toronto Globe, B6.
[Hey, at least it's part of the military-industrial complex that's shrinking this time!]
30% of its US workforce (420 employees) to be cut by MySpace as it gets eclipsed by Facebook, instead of just trimming 30% of its workweek, re-investing overtime savings in OT-targeted training&hiring, & keeping everyone together working, earning & spending 70% as much money as before (TG B7).
London layoffs cast a long shadow,
Toronto Globe, B5.
ONGOING DEATHSPIRAL (archives) - reversed only by dumb war or smart timesizing -
How the mighty fall, in five stages - Convinced they can do anything, the companies stray from the disciplined creativity that led them to greatness and leap into new areas - often several at one time - where they cannot be great,
review of Jim Collins' "How the Mighty Fall," by Harvey Schachter, Toronto Globe, B14.
...1. hubris [careless arrogance] born of success...
2. undisciplined pursuit of more...
3. denial of risk and peril...
4. grasping for salvation...
5. capitulation to irrelevance or death
[4 and 5 are less explanatory and more descriptive.]
Nervous eyes see a deteriorating S&P 500 rally, Toronto Globe, B10.
[Kinda contradicts the neighboring headline: "Signs of stability expected," TG, B10.]
At job interviews, expect the unexpected - With fierce competition [between job candidates], employers are turning to some innovative tactics, and making candidates jump through many more hoops, Toronto Globe, B13.
[With fierce competition, job candidates are also driving down each others' wages and employers' markets - capitalism only works well when employers perceive a shortage of candidates so market forces can raise wages and markets and centrifuge the massive 'black hole' of income among the super-rich who can't possibly spend it and after a point, can't find enough marketable productivity in which to sustainably invest it.]
Best Buy profit hit by recession-weary shoppers, Toronto Globe, B6.
[...or starved by laid-off employees and impoverished consumers...]
Saab's future murky despite 'rescue' [our quotes], Toronto Globe, B7.
[Sounds familiar, but... You can't rescue a company without rescuing its markets. And to rescue markets, you have to rescue consumers. And to rescue consumers, you have to rescue employees. And to rescue employees in free-market capitalism, you can't decontrol everything but the workweek. You have to convert consumption-killing excess-capacity workforce from anxious unemployment into financially secure free time as you inject worksaving technology. It is not optional. It's mandatory or bust.]

6/16/2009 Tuesday (archives) –
TIMESIZING instead of downsizing in the news (archives) - Google Search newsclips of what the world's doing that's on the right track - the core solution is so obvious, nobody's noticing it - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and it's reinvented thousands of times a day in every downturn despite *dismissal by the 'experts' -
Working, partly unemployed - To avoid layoffs, states chip in..to replace pay as work hours are cut - Keeping a skilled work force in place until times get better, NYT, A1 pointer to B1.
...Under the program, known as work-sharing, employers reduce their workers' weekly hours and pay, often by 20-40%, and then states make up some of the lost wages, usually half, from their unemployment funds
[which the companies' continuing employment is sparing]... - see whole article under today's date.
Europeans rely on mix of concessions to save jobs, NYT, B8.
...Many countries have short-time compensation programs, tailored for the manufacturing sector, under which employers can apply for temporary assistance to lift the wages of workers working reduced hours...
- see whole article under today's date.
FAA chief seeks rules to prevent commuter-pilot fatigue, WSJ, A6.
...The FAA now appears poised to act on more than a decade's worth of sleep research by crafting new standards for tighter limits on flight hours and workdays for commuter crews... - see whole article under today's date.
[THREE articles today on shorter worktime in America's two top newspapers?! If it continues, this is a breakthrough. Next step is for them to realize that any incidents of 'timesizing' instead of downsizing are parts of a potentially unified worksharing strategy that can solve the economic crisis from the bottom & therefore sustainably. And the third step - by stopping the strain to fill a frozen 70-year-old eight-hour day, this agenda can save the biosphere = it's central, all-pervasive and all-facilitating, so we need to move fast on it.]

doom du jourtm = today's headlines from helltm (archives) – face the bad news here in the context of the waiting solution...
LOOTIN' N' LAYOFF TRIGGERING MERGERS in the news (archives) -
M&As provide a superhighway to monopolies & the Black Hole economy by opening up the Great Leak Upwards -
mgmt's economy-shrinking merger skills need replacement by shorter-shift suturing skills -
Vandemoortele's Alpro purchased for $455 million [by Dean Foods], WSJ, B4.
MAKEWORK in the news (archives) - always too little too late, & unnecessary with full employment via timesizing -
Michigan and the knowledge economy, WSJ, A13.
With the highest unemployment rate in the nation and two of its Big Three auto makers bankrupt, Michigan could benefit from a dose of Sen. John McCain's tough love. Instead, it got VP Joe Biden bearing $2 billion in stimulus bonds for roads and infrastructure. And that's sad news for anyone hoping to see the emergence of what this depressed state economy needs most: [Apparently the WSJ thinks only rich people and bankers should be able to rob taxpayers. But neither has the solution = worksharing.]
BANKRUPTCY tsunami (archives) in the news - staunched only by risky war or safe timesizing -
Bankruptcy is sought by hotelier [Extended Stay Hotels], NYT, B2.
...acquired at the peak of the commercial real estate market for $8 billion...
ONGOING DEATHSPIRAL (archives) - reversed only by dumb war or smart timesizing -
Greed layered on greed, frosted with recklessness, NYT, C1.
In her useful new book [Fool's Gold], Gillian Tett of The Financial Times writes that the global financial meltdown, which economists estimate could result in total losses from $2-4 trillion, was 'self-inflicted.' Unlike many banking crises, she adds, 'this one was not triggered by a war, a widespread recession, or any external economic shock,' Rather, the entire financial system went wrong as a result of flawed incentives within banks and investment funds, as well as the rating agencies; warped regulatory structures; and a lack of oversight...
Banks: Too big to fail, too big to solve, WSJ, C10.
[Wrong: they've already failed, ten - a hundred times over. And they can't be 'solved' unless we admit it, and get rid of the people in the Treasury and the Fed who stoked the systemic risk - and go back to the real foundation of the economy in the employment base and shared costs&benefits. Put these last two together and you get work sharing. And to ease the transition, go back to wartime levels of graduated income tax.]
Shares in retreat on fear of slow, late recovery, NYT, C1.
Dow falls 187.13 in return to loss for '09 -...NYSE volume of 4.6 billion is below average, WSJ, C1.
[With this tight a concentration of the money supply, the wealthy can't even keep up the volume of the financial markets.]
Entrepreneurs take second jobs to stay afloat - In a tough economic environment, alternate sources of income help owners fund their ailing companies, WSJ, B4.
Commodities take a breather from 'rally' [our quotes - the 'rally' is happytalk] - Oil falls 2% and copper sheds 3.6%; 'There has been some profit-taking', WSJ, C8.
['Take now thy profit in the days of everyone's confusion, ere the evil days come, when men shall say, "There are no sales to yield profit." ' ]
No shelter in housing bottom, WSJ, C10.
[Cuz no bottom?]
Investors shed U.S. assets - Risk hunger returns as outflows total $53.2 billion, WSJ, C6.
[Oh I dunno - with US assets turned toxic, it's probably security hunger that's driving them.]
Retailers head for exits in Detroit - Shopping becomes a challenge as auto-industry collapse adds to city's woes, WSJ, A3.
[Birth of a ghost town.]
Dollar-trashing rates low on BRIC agenda [Brazil Russia India China], WSJ, C2.
The four largest emerging-market nations are meeting Tuesday [today] in Russia...for the first time...independently to discuss common interests.... A central topic of interest is reducing reliance on the dollar as a reserve currency. In a first step, Brazil and Russia have both announced their intentions to unload $10 billion of US Treasury bonds each - a small sum compared with their total holdings
[..gotta keep perceptions 'small' to sap America's strength without her noticing..]
for new IMF securities designed to bolster the institution's aid programs.
[Oops, they're trading trash for rubbish. 'Out of the frying pan, into the fire.' And the IMF is still just the US puppeteers behind the screen, and the 'aid' has given Nurse IMF the nickname, Typhoid Mary. Better they should switch to euros.]
But getting rid of dollars will be a long process. Any rushed dollar selling would affect the exchange rate of the unit and cause the value of national reserves to fall. In an apparent U-turn, Russia's finance minister said over the weekend that the dollar remains the world's major reserve currency. China has recently toned down its criticism of the dollar as well.
[A very good idea to keep the drunken giant asleep while you strip him, and to praise a 'stock' just before you sell it.]
IMF advises Swedish banks to raise cash, WSJ, C2.
[Like the IMF has any standing except as a reverse pole star.]
ECB [European Central Bank] says write-downs by banks will increase, WSJ, A9.
...will need to write down $283 billion more by the end of next year and sees the bloc's total crisis-related losses at $649 billion, far below the $904 billion the IMF forecast in April...
IMF upgrades its view of U.S. economy, WSJ, A2.
[-d-o-n-'-t-w-o-r-r-y-,-b-e-h-a-p-p-y-]
Audit finds that U.S. overpaid Blackwater, WSJ, A6.
[Nooo kiddding - WHAT a surprise!]
European and Asian stocks end in the red - FTSE sheds 2.6% as miners pace declines; Nikkei maintains 10000 level but declines by 1%, WSJ, C2.
Air India to delay paying 31,000 workers, AP via NYT, B5.
Defaults pose latest snag in Islamic-bond market, WSJ, C1.
Crisis exposes gulf[/Gulf] in bank lending policies, WSJ, C10.
...[Persian Gulf -] financial difficulties at two of Saudi Arabia's largest family-run business empires...
Obama says Iran must pick its own leaders, WSJ, A8.
[Wouldn't THAT be nice for a change, considering Iran's troubles started in 1953 when the US deposed its democratically elected leader, Moussadeq, and installed a dictator, the Shah.]
Wanted: 'hope' for Iran, WSJ, A13.
[Wanted: Americans that mind their own damn business. Problems enough they've got of their own. They have no street cred for lecturing anyone else.]

6/15/2009 Monday (archives) –
TIMESIZING instead of downsizing in the news (archives) - Google Search newsclips of what the world's doing that's on the right track - the core solution is so obvious, nobody's noticing it - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and it's reinvented thousands of times a day in every downturn despite *dismissal by the 'experts' -
On a Furlough, but Never Leaving the Cubicle, By SUSAN SAULNY and ROBBIE BROWN, NY Times, A1.
[So shorter hours sometimes happen in a phony way rather than a well-designed way.]
...In California and elsewhere, people have put their imaginations to work trying to make the best of furloughs — temporary, usually unpaid, leave — ever appreciative that they are a far better alternative than layoffs...
- see whole article under today's date.
Henderson NV considers closing all city offices on Fridays, 6/14 Las Vegas Sun - Las Vegas,NV,USA.
...But when Henderson went to a four-day work week for most employees in 1983, it kept a few offices open to provide basic services... - see whole article under today's date.
[Shorter hours have happened before, but not in the best way.]
Siemens labour reps seek shorter work week - paper, 6/14 Reuters - USA.
...FRANKFURT, Germany - Siemens (SIEGn.DE) labour representatives want to negotiate a permanent cut in working hours in exchange for lower pay to pre-empt any moves by the German conglomerate to axe jobs, its works council head told a newspaper... - see whole article under today's date.

doom du jourtm = today's headlines from helltm (archives) – face the bad news here in the context of the waiting solution...
ECONOMY-KILLING DOWNSIZING in the news (archives) - all quickly reversible by substituting timesizing -
Boardroom to boardwalk? ,
NY Times, A1 pointer to A15.
Laid-off job seekers flocking to the Jersey Shore are finding that many employers would rather hire students than their unemployed parents.
BANKRUPTCY tsunami (archives) in the news - staunched only by risky war or safe timesizing -
Six Flags files for Chapter 11 in accord with lenders, WSJ, B1.
Vedanta to raise bid in Asarco bankruptcy, WSJ, B6.
ONGOING DEATHSPIRAL (archives) - reversed only by dumb war or smart timesizing -
Is this bull cyclical or secular? Signs suggest stocks' surge is blip within a bear...,
Wall St Journal, C1.
Despite job losses, stimulus works, Biden says, Boston Globe, B6.
[If it worked, he wouldn't have to defend it. As usual, they're stimulating the wrong end = the top of the economy (which is already WAAAY overstimulated) instead of the bottom. And you can't stimulate the bottom with money (especially their own tax money). You stimulate them by reframing them as a scarce commodity instead of the surplus commodity they have become since 1970 when the babyboomers replaced the labor surplus of the Depression which was only possible since 1940 when the workweek was frozen at the pre-technology level of 40 hours. And do you reframe labor as a scarce commodity? By resuming the 1840-1940 reduction of the workweek from over 80 hours to 40. Or more effectively, the two-year 2-hr/yr reduction of the 44-hr workweek from 1938 to 1940. This would get employers bidding against one another for good help, and leach the money deactivated in the black hole in the top brackets back out into circulation in the active economy.]
USA Inc. - The state of capitalism - Federal intervention pits 'gets' vs. 'get-nots', WSJ, A1.
[This is not the 'state of capitalism' - it's the disgrace of soft, downsizing capitalism degraded into suicidal, black-hole socialism for the rich.]
U.S. stresses over Europe's banks, WSJ, C1 pointer to C6.
[US, butt out! You're in no position to preach.]
Hackers infect ads on the web, WSJ, B1 pointer to B7.
[Job desperation has many forms in a frozen workweek economy.]
Seeing sea stars - and lots of them - Shellfish predator's population surging, Boston Globe, A1.
It's time to cool the planet - Cutting greenhouse gases is no longer enough to deal with global warming, says Jamais Cascio - he argues that we also have to do something more direct - and risky, WSJ, R1.
[Sometimes their names give them answer - Jamais in French means Never! This guy wants to kill us all fast instead of most of us slowly.]

6/14/2009 Sunday (archives) –
TIMESIZING instead of downsizing in the news (archives) - Google Search newsclips of what the world's doing that's on the right track - the core solution is so obvious, nobody's noticing it - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and it's reinvented thousands of times a day in every downturn despite *dismissal by the 'experts' -
College cuts face growing criticism from the Louisiana business business community, The Times-Picayune - NOLA.com - New Orleans,LA,USA.
...Brown worked at the University of New Orleans in the early 1990s, when statewide budget cuts to higher education pushed the university to reduce its work week to four days, shed nearly 90 jobs and cut back on course offerings...
- see whole article under today's date.
[So shorter hours have happened before, but not in the best way.]
Cheap trips during reduced workweek, Nashua Telegraph - Nashua,NH,USA.
Q: I am trying to look at the brighter side of my company reducing my position to part time and am wondering if you can suggest some midweek excursions in the mid-Atlantic area. If you had Tuesday and Wednesday off work for the entire summer, what (cheap) two-day trips would you plan for someone who loves the outdoors?...
- see whole article under today's date.

doom du jourtm = today's headlines from helltm (archives) – face the bad news here in the context of the waiting solution...
ECONOMY-KILLING DOWNSIZING in the news (archives) - all quickly reversible by substituting timesizing -
[Salem] State College lays off 25 workers,
Boston Sunday Globe, NO1.
Lynn - Parents protest school closing - Ford [School] Annex plan aims to save $1.5m,
Boston Sunday Globe, NO1.
MAKEWORK in the news (archives) - always too little too late, & unnecessary with full employment via timesizing -
Infrastructure!, NY Times Magazine, cover story.
[More accurate: Makework!]
BANKRUPTCY tsunami (archives) in the news - staunched only by risky war or safe timesizing -
Checkmate at the Yellowstone Club - Bankruptcies jolt a ski haven for the superrich, Sunday NY Times compliments of Porter Sq Starbucks, Cambridge-Somerville MA (who were just about to discard halfadozen of 'em at 7:59pm priorto closing), BU1.
[What did we tell you about the people who have arranged for unlimited percentages of the national income and wealth to gravitate to them and their total inability to spend it - they were already spending all they cared to before they got the last $20 million. And now they can't even invest that much sustainably with the consumer markets they have weakened by technological downsizing of employment instead of technological timesizing.]
ONGOING DEATHSPIRAL (archives) - reversed only by dumb war or smart timesizing -
Barbara Ehrenreich on the permanent poor, NY Times, WK1 pointer to WK10.
Too poor to make the news - For some, a bad economy just means more of the same,
by Barbara Ehrenreich, NY Times, WK10.
Debts coming due at just the wrong time - Sure, some banks are repaying aid, but it's too soon to celebrate,
New York Times, BU1.
As U.S. overhauls the banking system [same guys in charge? = no overhaul!], 2 top regulators feud, NY Times, A1.
,,,John Dugan, comptroller of the currency [vs.] Sheila Bair, chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp...
[Neither of whom are focused anywhere near the real problems of (1) unlimited concentration of the money supply on one ten-thousandth of the population who can neither spend it nor invest it sustainably and (2) the constant downsizing of the employment base which does a negative multiplier effect on the consumer base - both of which are corrected gradually, flexibly, diversely and market-wise by unemployment-adjusted workweeks and overtime-to-jobs conversion.]
Surviving in America's recession capital, by Ben Sherwood, Parade Magazine via Boston Sunday Globe, p.10.
[There are a LOT of towns vying for that title.]
EL CENTRO, Calif. - Ben Solomon wears two cellphones clipped to his belt. The one on his left hip is for his family and the one on his right hip is for local families facing foreclosure. The..mayor of El Centro, Calif. has received so many urgent calls for help from constituents unable to pay their mortgages that he needs a separate line...
Innovation economy - Where the jobs are in anxious times, by Scott Kirsner, Boston Sunday Globe, K1.
Hot sectors
Cloud computing [buzzword alert!], Healthcare, Energy/green technology
Hot jobs
Clinical development and regulatory approval of new drugs, IT help desk and support [may have to move to Mombai for these jobs], "Sustainability czar"
Cold sectors
Manufacturing, Construction [gotta stop paving over paradise to make parking lots anyway], Network communications equipment
Cold jobs
Early-stage drug research and development, Computer hardware design, Marketing/PR
Recessionary reads - In belt-tightening times, forget news purchases and reach for old favorites,
Boston Sunday Globe, K1 pointer to K4.
[So much for the sacred cow of Innovation when it's responded-to by more market-eroding downsizing instead of market-sustaining timesizing.]

6/13/2009 Saturday (archives) –
TIMESIZING instead of downsizing in the news (archives) - Google Search newsclips of what the world's doing that's on the right track - the core solution is so obvious, nobody's noticing it - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and it's reinvented thousands of times every day in every downturn despite *dismissal by the 'experts' -
Views mixed on incentives for trade-ins, Meriden Record-Journal - Meriden,CT,USA.
...His workweek has already been cut back by a day and he has taken a pay cut as a result of the poor economy ...
- see whole article under today's date.
[So shorter hours are happening anyway, but not in the best way.]
Hold the presses - A French postal strike, Examiner.com - USA.
...Les facteurs (mailmen) were striking to protest the national government’s decision to cut postal services on Mondays.... Their wages are being cut. But hey, this is France. What's being cut is the work week. Forget wages. Normally, anytime there’s an excuse to work less it’s un jour de la rejouissance (a day of rejoicing)...
- see whole article under today's date.

doom du jourtm = today's headlines from helltm (archives) – face the bad news here in the context of the waiting solution...
ONGOING DEATHSPIRAL (archives) - reversed only by dumb war or smart timesizing -
Stocks in the black on gusher of cash, by E.S. Browning, Wall St Journal, A1.
[Stocks in the black - but what their value is based on, the employment and consumer bases, are in the mega-red thanks to the theft of megataxpayer money in favor of the super-super-rich - this is human stupidity, cluelessness and irresponsibility on a colossal scale.]
With a 34% rebound in 3 months, the Dow..has pushed into positive territory for 2009, and one of the main reasons is disarmingly simple: Financial markets once again[?] are awash in government cash. - see whole article under today's date and #1.
...Governments around the world are pumping money into "the economy" [our quotes] at a frenetic pace.
[Actually by redistributing their money supply into the topmost income brackets instead of the bottom, they are pumping money OUT of their economies since these millions cannot possibly be spent by their overloaded recipients and the baseless stock runup shows it cannot possibly be invested sustainably either.]
Lender's role for Fed makes some uneasy, New York Times, A1.
[No kidding. Are there any OTHER ways in which we can destroy ourselves???]
Geithner's plan on pay falls short - For banks, the rules have to apply well below the top brass, NY Times, B1.
[Geithner can't and won't be doing any meaningful about pay - he's part of the problem. He belongs in jail with the rest of the fraudster-banksters. As long as we're dinking around with Geithner et al. unreplaced, we're still plummeting.]
Creditors cry foul at Chrysler precedent, WSJ, B1.
... A bankruptcy court judge [approved] the government's plan to sell Chrysler to Fiat SpA and leave creditors with big losses \and now\ Chrysler Group LLC's restructuring is altering the bankruptcy landscape well beyond the auto industry.... A lawyer in the bankruptcy case of the National Hockey League's Phoenix Coyotes invoked Chrysler in trying to push through the speedy sale of the team... [We started by using mergers and acquisitions to violate the sanctity of contract with employees in wages and tenure and pensions. Now different parts of the financial community are screwing-raping one another, deeper and deeper, more and more painfully and suicidally.]
Is Vanguard sailing in uncharted seas?, WSJ. B1.
[We all are.]
Medical identity theft is a growing problem as patients use stolen identities or stolen insurance information, NY Times, A1 pointer to B1.
[The old US healthcare was hospital emergency clinics or incarceration. The new US healthcare is identity theft. How pathetic the once-great USA is becoming - and how quickly.]
San Francisco at a crossroads over its immigration policies, NY Times, front page.
...sanctuary city [for] undocumented residents.... But over the last year, buffeted by several high-profile crimes by illegal [entrants] and revelations of mismanagement of the city's sanctuary policy, San Francisco became...more like many other cities in the United States: deeply conflicted over how to cope with the fallout of illegal [entry]... - see whole article under today's date and #2.
[Note the illegitimate legitimizing of illegal entrants and entry with the words 'immigrants' and immigration (which we have corrected back to 'entrants' and 'entry'). Note the assumption that illegal entry is an inevitable Act of God that means we can only hope to cope with its fallout instead of simply stopping it - as if the nation that sent humans to the Moon and evaporated Hiroshima and Nagasaki can't stop illegal entry if it stops its own sob-story policy-making - or undermining. Certain policies are simply unsustainable, no matter how sad the individual stories. No one nation can make everyone in the world happy, especially when it declines to confront its own super-super-wealthy who are vacuuming-in everything in sight without limit and creating a huge economic black hole. THAT is our first priority, and the gentle, market-oriented way to solve it is Timesizing. Everything else is secondary. Meanwhile, enforce the existing immigration laws and cut the quotas back to replacement levels. No complex organism can exist without a skin.]

6/12/2009 Friday (archives) –
TIMESIZING instead of downsizing in the news (archives) - Google Search newsclips of what the world's doing that's on the right track - the core solution is so obvious, nobody's noticing it - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and it's reinvented thousands of times every day in every downturn despite *dismissal by the 'experts' -
Conflicting News About the Job Market, U.S. News & World Report - Washington,DC,USA.
It's no secret that the average workweek has been shrinking over the course of this recession...
- see whole article under today's date.
[- which should be good news in an efficient high-tech economy that sincerely values freedom...]
Open question - What reasons can i give for working shorter hours at a job i started? Yahoo! Answers.
i applied for this job and when applied the hours were 10-3 as advertised, i got the job and ave been put down for 10-6...
- see whole article under today's date.
[So things can go backward as well as forward. Then there are some employers who are determined to protect "employees' freedom to choose longer hours."]

LESS-STRATEGIC GOOD NEWS (archives) -
Wind, water and fish - As turbines spread..in Northwest, rise of wind power brings calls to tear down dams.\.and save salmon -..Dams provide clean energy, but have helped endanger the wild salmon, NY Times, B1, B7.

LOOTIN' N' LAYOFF TRIGGERING MERGERS in the news (archives) -
M&As provide a superhighway to monopolies & the Black Hole economy by opening up the Great Leak Upwards -
mgmt's economy-shrinking merger skills need replacement by shorter-shift suturing skills -
Black Rock to buy Barclays Global Investors, creating behemoth, Wall St Journal, C1.
BlackRock to acquire Barclays investment unit - $13.5 billion deal for asset manager, NY Times, B3.
ONGOING DEATHSPIRAL (archives) - reversed only by dumb war or smart timesizing -
Airlines predict more trouble, broaden cuts [of flights],
Wall St Journal, B1.
And now, it's crunch time for timeshares - Prices slide, as owners try to avoid the burden of fees and mortgages in a once-resilient market, New York Times, C31.

6/11/2009 Thursday (archives) –
TIMESIZING instead of downsizing in the news (archives) - Google Search newsclips of what the world's doing that's on the right track - the core solution is so obvious, nobody's noticing it - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and it's reinvented thousands of times every day in every downturn despite *dismissal by the 'experts' -
City to move to four-day workweek, Tuskegee News - Tuskegee,AL,USA.
Upon further review, Tuskegee City Manager Al Davis has decided city workers cut to 32 hours a week under a cost reduction plan will work Monday through Thursday of each week. Under the original proposal approved by the Tuskegee City Council effective Monday (June 8) of this week, non-public safety city employees were to work 32 hours a week with offices open Monday through Friday... - see whole article under today's date.
Cuts to impact courts? Wisconsin Law Journal - Milwaukee,Wisconsin,USA.
In an effort to address the estimated $14 million shortfall facing Milwaukee County, County Executive Scott Walker has asked all county departments cut back on hours of operation... - see whole article under today's date.
[So shorter hours are happening anyway, but not in the best way.]

LESS-STRATEGIC GOOD NEWS (archives) -
Can 10% be the solution? - Groups say a small share of consumer spending can save local businesses, by Katheleen Conti, Boston Globe, GN11.
Amesbury [Massachusetts] is the latest community in the region to join the [grass-roots] Local First movement, which encourages residents to buy from local establishments. [photo caption]
...Amesbury..is also getting ready to adopt the 10% Shift, an initiative that asks residents to pledge to shift at least that much of their annual budget toward local purchases.
"People who go outside to big chain malls are preventing the Amesbury economy from thriving," said Laury Hammel [from Laurence?], founder of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE) and the Sustainable Business Network of Greater Boston.... BALLE is an organization of Local First groups in the nation, while the Business Network is the umbrella organization for a number of local projects including the founding of Local First campaigns [eg: Amesbury First, Somerville First, Arlington First, Portsmouth NH First, Grand Rapids MI First], said Hammel, a Cambridge resident and author of "Growing Local Value," a book about how small businesses contribute to the community...
[And if they combined this with Local First Worksharing where the local underemployment rate determines the intensity of worksharing and local-income spreading and spending by controlling the local workweek, they would maximize local jobs and employment and business and also maximize local, financially secure free time so they'd have time to shop locally, and read books (local bookshops boom), and enhance personal grooming (local hair salons boom), and travel (local travel agencies boom), and work out (local health spas boom)..., as in France when they cut the workweek from 39 to 35 between 1997 and 2001.]

doom du jourtm = today's headlines from helltm (archives) – face the bad news here in the context of the waiting solution...
ONGOING DEATHSPIRAL (archives) - reversed only by dumb war or smart timesizing -
U.S. regional economies slip and trade deficit grows - Higher crude oil prices contribute to a widening trade gap,
New York Times, B3.
[There's just waaay too much of M1 (the money supply) in the 'black hole' at the top 0.01% of the population for the circulation of the currency (what's left of it) to support. And the decision-makers in that 0.01% are just too insulated to receive any change-indicating feedback. So, they're cannibalizing their own consumer base (not to mention their more fundamental employment base) and they've turned us into a bloated system with no feedback, kinda like brain cancer.]
Dow falls as $71 oil, bond yields spark worry, Wall St Journal, C1.
Shares slide on interest rate concerns - Yields on 30-year Treasury bonds hit their highest levels in a year,
New York Times, B11.
Rate rise clouds recovery, Wall St Journal, front page.
...30-year fixed-rate mortgages jumped to 5.79% from 5% two weeks ago.../ That jump will cut roughly in half the number of borrowers with an incentive to refinance...
U.S. effort to rescue automakers is defended, by Nick Bunkley, New York Times, B4.
By investing billions of dollars in General Motors and Chrysler, the government "saved hundreds of thousands of jobs" and gave the car makers a chance to be "viable, competitive American businesses" again, [Ron Bloom,] a leader of president ['President' not capitalized?? - is Obama getting special treatment?] Obama's auto industry task force testified on Wednesday...
[What a joke. The auto industry pretending it cares about jobs, or still connects the dots between its workforce and its customers' customers. The last time that happened was nearly 100 years ago when Henry Ford, to stave off the unions, jumped his workers' pay to $5 a day so they could afford their own product in 1912. Today the lords of manufacturing are just going to use this money to robotize further, and since they seldom arrange top spread-around the surviving human employment, all they're doing with higher technology is weakening their own markets. Today all this kind of bailout does is worsen the essential problem - the amount of the money supply that is concentrated in the top brackets is far far beyond the threshold where it becomes self-undermining and these bailouts just make it worse. Why? Because as money is redistributed up the income scale, it changes function from spending power to investing power, because the wealthy were already spending all they cared to before they got the last $20 million. Now all they want is sustainable investments (profitable return on investment is probably too much to ask) wherein to even just store their off-the-scale entitlements, and there aren't any because by not spreading what little human employment is left (by resuming 1840-1940 workweek reduction), they have fostered a wage-depressing labor surplus such that the consumer base can no longer purchase the output of the technologically output-boosted (and population-decimated!) labor force. And sustainable investments require marketable productivity to reside in. So wealthy decision-makers aren't making at least two connections: they're not connecting the dots from their employees to their markets, or from sustainable investments to marketable productivity. So Ron Bloom and his ilk have saved thousands of jobs temporarily and lost millions of jobs permanently - by worsening the black hole of concentrated money among the top 30,000 Americans and furthering the deadly imbalance between bloated investing power and starved spending power in this economy.]
Filene's Basement goes back on the block as Men's Warehouse retreats from its bid, Boston Globe, B1 pointer to B7.
[And next to next 'pointer' -]
Back Bay parking spot sells for record $300,000, Boston Globe, B1 pointer to B7.
[Hey-ell, it's gitting so's thet fer the price of a Back Bay parkin' spot, you could buy Filene's entire Basement! Note evidence of income gap and two-tiered economy. And here's evidence that the top tier is weakening -]
Neiman [Marcus] tries out less lavish prices, Wall St Journal, B1.
[Hallmark of depression = deflation = prices cascade. But fighting this is the trillions of dollars governments have printed to "bail out" their financial sector (but will do quite the opposite).]
New Asia-Pacific statistics offer little hope for growth - Exports fall further across the region as a result of the recession, New York Times, B9.
[But then, the bigger your export sector, the less your degree of control.]
...In Japan, orders for machinery slid 5.4% in April from a month earlier... In Malaysia, factory output [was] down 11.4% from a year earlier... In the Philippines..exports were down 35.2% from a year earlier and 3.6% from March, South Korea..unemployment rose to a nearly four-year high of 3.9% in May...
China fills its pantry with global commodities, New York Times, B1.
[Preparing for hyperinflation and barter? They should know - with the trillions of US T-bills they're now saddled with.]

6/10/2009 Wednesday (archives) –
TIMESIZING instead of downsizing in the news (archives) - Google Search newsclips of what the world's doing that's on the right track - the core solution is so obvious, nobody's noticing it - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and it's reinvented thousands of times every day in every downturn despite *dismissal by the 'experts' -
Citing revenue shortfalls, Walker commissioner considers furloughs, Daily Citizen - Dalton,GA,USA.
...Last week, it was announced that Catoosa County would begin furloughing employees one day per pay period. Because they are paid every two weeks, this amounts to a reduction of four hours per week. “The typical work week is a 40-hour week. With Catoosa’s furlough, that is the equivalent of a 36-hour work week for their employees,” Heiskell explained. The city of LaFayette has been operating over the past several months with many of their employees on a reduced work week of some 37 hours... - see whole article under today's date.
Steel makers cut jobs, curb costs, Business Day - Johannesburg,South Africa.
...Local operations are still well off this target. Cost of production was at between $340 and $420 a ton, Lunsche said, and the group was looking at a wide range of measures to cut costs. These could include shortening its work week...
- see whole article under today's date.
[So shorter hours are happening anyway, but not in the best way.]

LESS-STRATEGIC GOOD NEWS (archives) -
In hard times, businesses find freebies pay off - Efforts to lure cost-conscious consumers [ie: consumers jeopardized by jobloss] also winning loyalty, Boston Globe, B8.
[For example -]
Turbine [Inc. of Westwood, Mass.] offers new lure: free D&D play, Boston Globe, B9.
...beta version of its..Dungeons&Dragons Online: Eberron Unlimited...
[Then there's three 'good, but's -]
10 banks get OK to repay [federal] aid; US loses leverage, Boston Globe, B8.
[Not that US used its leverage anyway -]
White House ready to issue pay rules, Boston Globe, B8.
Nearly three months after American International Group bonuses provoked an angry reaction in Congress, the Obama administration is ready to issue new regulations limiting the compensation of top executives at financial institutions that have received government rescue funds...
[Too late. Here's the omnibus Wall St Journal version of all this -]
Salaries safe, bonuses hit - Obama drops tough plan on bank compensation; 10 lenders repay bailout cash [$68B], WSJ, A1. [The NYT headline (frontpage) claims this is a 'quarter of bailout funds' but how they get only 68 billion by dividing over $700 billion by 4, us'uns jess cain't figger.]
Lawsuits force disclosures by C.I.A. - Court cases pry open documents about brutal interrogations, NYT, A12.

doom du jourtm =today's headlines from helltm (archives) – face the bad news here in the context of the waiting solution...
ECONOMY-KILLING DOWNSIZING in the news (archives) - all quickly reversible by substituting timesizing -
The showrooms go dark - 789 Chrysler dealerships being pared from network, including 12 in Massachusetts,
Boston Globe, B7.
20% of corporate staff cut (61 open positions cut & 264 workers leaving the company) at Talbots Inc. as the US women's clothing chain tries to reduce 'expenses' and save $21m/yr while ruining 325 of its best customers, instead of just trimming 20% of its workweek (one 8-hour day a week for everyone, including top executives), re-investing overtime savings in OT-targeted training&hiring, & keeping everyone together working, earning & buying 80% as much women's clothing as before (BG B8, WSJ B4). [Notice that for Talbots, employees are now just 'expenses.']
MAKEWORK in the news (archives) - always too little too late, & unnecessary with full employment via timesizing -
College in need closes a door to needy students, NYT, A1.
["Bad, but.." Most of college for most people is just makework anyway, a design of the collective subconscious to keep young people OUT of the technology-shrunken job market stuck on a pre-tech 40-hr workweek for as long as possible - and invisibly centrifuge some money from their generally wealthier parents a bit more than otherwise. See Realm #3 of Realms of Modern Makework.]
Magazine researchers explore new ways to weigh ad impact, NYT, B1.
[Job desperation is everywhere, like air, in a frozen-workweek economy. Take the promise of technology as shorter workhours with higher pay and more fundamental freedom in the form of financially secure free time, or you'll keep getting it as higher under-employment and more intrusive/invasive/deceptive-desperate advertising and spam (and gov't flailing).]
BANKRUPTCY tsunami (archives) in the news - staunched only by risky war or safe timesizing -
A major German retailer [Arcandor] files for bankruptcy,
NYT, B3 (Wall St Journal, B1).
...after the government rejected its request for a loan guarantee of 650 million euros...
[At least the German government has some sense, but then, they also have enough of a social safety net to stop caving to the super-rich's ginormous & system-suicidal jobs blackmail. So they have a much better chance to stop plummeting sooner&higher than US.]
ONGOING DEATHSPIRAL (archives) - reversed only by dumb war or smart timesizing -
Rally fizzles: Stocks flat as oil sizzles, Wall St Journal, C1.
Wall Street response to bank news [$68B repay] is muted, NYT, B6.
[Bad, but.. a glimmer of common sense? - maybe it's that "salaries safe" that done it.]
Sea of red ink: How it spread from a puddle - Bush, Obama and a long-gone surplus, New York Times, p. A1.
Failed banks dot Georgia's vista - How a risk-regulation imbalance [luvly euphemism!] drove many insolvencies - with more likely, Wall St Journal, C1.
7 indicted on charges of selling tax shelters, NYT, B1.
[This is another 'bad, but..' - some consumerbase-cannibals got caught but only seven - now we only need to arrest all the rest of the financial industry with their liars' loans, NINJAs and toxic assets.]
Lender settles with state for $10m - Subprime loans targeted low-income areas, [Massachusetts Atty.Gen. Martha] Coakley says, Boston Globe, B7.
Fremont Investment & Loan Co., once one of state's largest subprime mortgage lenders...
[Targeting low-income areas means cultivating risky mortgages, possibly/probably encouraging mortgagees to inflate their income-job-assets, making these NINJA loans (No Incomecheckup & No Jobcheck or Assetscheck) alias "liars' loans," meaning fraud/deception vs. whoever bought these loans when they were packaged up and sold as securities, often as AAA, according to Bill Black in his Apr.3/2009 interview with Bill Moyers. Black wrote "The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One" about the savings&loan crisis.]
Appraisal discrepancies hold up some sales - Real estate slump, rule changes make tough to establish property value, Boston Globe, B7.
Work & family - Raising kids who can thrive amid chaos in their careers, WSJ, D1.
Immigrants [ie: illegal entrants] become hostages as gangs prey on Mexicans, WSJ, A1.
[Another 'bad, but..' - these gangs may be more effective in getting our already way-over-replacement immigration laws enforced than our rule-by-sob-story (and greed) leftists (and sweatshop owners) allow.]

6/09/2009 Tuesday (archives) –
TIMESIZING instead of downsizing in the news (archives) - Google Search newsclips of what the world's doing that's on the right track - the core solution is so obvious, nobody's noticing it - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and it's reinvented thousands of times every day in every downturn despite *dismissal by the 'experts' -
Ford's Explorer plant layoffs could come next month, Louisville Courier-Journal - Louisville,KY,USA.
...The plant employs about 1450 workers building the Ford Explorer sport utility vehicle who have been alternating one work week with one week of furlough since last year as demand for the vehicles has slowed...
- see article & comments under today's date.
German Labor Costs Increased Most on Record in First Quarter, Bloomberg - USA.
Hourly labor costs in Germany’s manufacturing and service industries increased the most on record in the first quarter as companies cut output and introduced shorter working hours to weather a recession... - see whole article under today's date.
[So shorter hours are happening anyway, but not in the best way.]

doom du jourtm = today's headlines from helltm (archives) – face the bad news here in the context of the waiting solution...
CONTINUING DEATHSPIRAL (archives) - reversed only by dumb war or smart timesizing -
Rising gas prices threaten to slow a recovery, New York Times, B1.
...hurting areas like the Midwest, which have high unemployment...
[And the wealth-insulated decision-makers continue to weaken their own consumer base -]
Sales-tax increase called a certainty [in Massachusetts], Boston Globe, B1.
[They know you get less of whatever you tax (per Milton Friedman). They know we've already got too little of sales. Yet what do these self-mutilators tax? Sales, instead of concentrated income and wealth currently so out-of-scale that its possessors cannot even find sufficient marketable productivity to sustainably invest it in, let alone sufficient wants and needs to spend it on. And all over the economy, we find stories like this -]
[Boston] Globe union votes no - Paper['s owner, New York Times Co.,] declares impasse, slashes wages 23 percent, Boston Globe, A1.
[And there goes another clump of Globe subscriptions and another layer of New England spending, all to save the dysfunctionally astronomical $ymbolism of super-rich pecking order/odor.]
Economic crisis pits Europe against its parts, NYT, A1.
[Premature international unification makes for loss of control and finetuning. What is mature unification? Nations have to implement the great integrating mechanisms of social evolution, in chronological order: spoken language, schedule, written language, loyal opposition between standpatters and progressives, problem quantification, homeostasis. Money, as economic energy, is 6th-dimensional, building on worktime (5th-D economic momentum) and population (4th-D economic mass). It cannot paper over disintegrities at lower-dimensional levels without much friction, cost, waste and inefficiency.]

6/08/2009 Monday (archives) –
TIMESIZING instead of downsizing in the news (archives) - Google Search newsclips of what the world's doing that's on the right track - the core solution is so obvious, nobody's noticing it - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and it's reinvented thousands of times every day in every downturn despite *dismissal by the 'experts' -
600000 New Jobs for the Summer, Truthdig.com - United States.
...If they combined this with a guarantee of a spare but not-destitute retirement at age 55 and a reduction of the “work-week” to 35 hours, they might just fix the problem, not just for now, but for good... - see article & comments under today's date.
Cal Poly Pomona cuts summer sessions, Los Angeles Times - CA,USA.
...Electrical engineering student Fernando Casillas, in an e-mail, questioned why the cuts were not taken in other areas, such as summer staff reductions or shorter hours for full-time staff... - see whole article under today's date.
[= another independent invention of the obvious by the powerless, as decision-makers commit economic suicide, everyone else first.]

doom du jourtm = today's headlines from helltm (archives) – face the bad news here in the context of the waiting solution...
MAKEWORK in the news (archives) - always too little too late, & unnecessary with full employment via timesizing -
Commuter-rail tunnel set, AP via Wall St Journal, A4.
...The nation's largest transportation project, another tunnel linking [NJ] to New York City...third tunnel under the Hudson River, an $8.7 billion project expected to be completed in 2017...
CONTINUING DEATHSPIRAL (archives) - reversed only by dumb war or smart timesizing -
Land mines pockmark road to recovery,Wall St Journal, A1.
...Last Friday..the market for US Treasury debt had its worst day in nine months... oil briefly traded above $70 a barrel... economists..hope..that a wave of government stimulus will hit the economy in time to unleash pent-up consumer and business demand...
[But injecting 'stimulus' money at the bottom instead of at the top would immediately unleash pent-up consumer - and immediately thereafter, business - demand, but instead these geniuses injected it at the top where they simply add it to their already fabulous bonuses and it becomes more mere pecking-order symbolism instead of medium-of-exchange.]

6/07/2009 Sunday (archives) –
TIMESIZING instead of downsizing in the news (archives) - Google Search newsclips of what the world's doing that's on the right track - the core solution is so obvious, nobody's noticing it - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and it's reinvented thousands of times every day in every downturn despite *dismissal by the 'experts' -
Health, climate change vie for boost in Congress, Reuters - USA.
...For the next five weeks, he said, the Senate's normal three-day work week will be extended to five so a bill can be passed... - see whole article under today's date.
[So shorter hours is already here for U.S. elite - and isn't what's normal and good enough for the US Senate good enough to be normal for the rest of Americans in the age of robotics?!]
Parking citations, tied-out dogs, park hours get cut, by Jamie Page: Pensacola News Journal - Pensacola,FL,USA.
...Partying at county parks has resulted in shorter hours... - see whole article under today's date.
[- as here, sometimes economically irrelevant shorter hours come about for economically irrelevant reasons.]
Watsonville Heads for Four-Day Work Week, 6/05 SantaCruz.com - Santa Cruz,CA,USA.
...It’s been a little over a week since Watsonville’s city council approved a series of tentative agreements that will whack the city employees’ work week down to four nine-hour days, creating an overall 10 percent reduction in cost to the general fund and a service blackout one day per week, likely Fridays... - see whole article under today's date.
[So shorter hours are happening anyway, but not in the best way.]

doom du jourtm = today's headlines from helltm (archives) – face the bad news here in the context of the waiting solution...
CONTINUING DEATHSPIRAL (archives) - reversed only by dumb war or smart timesizing -
[Stock] market undeterred by troubling jobless data, Boston Sunday Globe, G6.
[And we can be sure the downturn is undeterred by investors who have amassed so much of the national income and wealth that they've outstripped the capacity of traditional solid investments to absorb this kind of megadough. At this 'black hole' level of money-suppy concentration, the stock market has become so cushioned and insulated that it's no longer functioning as a DEW line for trouble = distant early warning aka 'canary in the mine'. How centrifuge the national income out to the people who actually want and need to spend it? Create a World War II level labor shortage, not by killing people, but just by resuming the 1938-40 workweek reduction of two hours per year and squeezing out the natural market-demanded employment on more and more unemployed people. Cut the surplus of anxious wage-undercutting resumes and you raise wages and deconcentrate concentrated income and wealth.]
Concerns are rising on water overuse - Fish stock, rivers drop as lawns soak, Boston Sunday Globe, A1.
[And you think it's bad in Massachusetts where we have high water taxes because Dukakis didn't jump of the federal subsidy for harbor cleanup in the late 80s - check it out in the Southwest where boomtowns like Phoenix and Tucson are located in the middle of deserts, and so is Las Vegas with all its fountains and swimming pools, and they're all paying lower water rates than New England (so we're subsidizing their unsustainable madness) because they did stronger lobbying. As we've said before, the once-great USA should write a book on 100 ways to guarantee that your empire declines.]

6/6/2009 Saturday (archives) –
TIMESIZING instead of downsizing in the news (archives) - Google Search newsclips of what the world's doing that's on the right track - the core solution is so obvious, nobody's noticing it - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and it's reinvented thousands of times every day in every downturn despite *dismissal by the 'experts' -
Buffalo crash opened window into pilots' life, The Associated Press.
...Rice described draining 14- to 16-hour duty days, much of that time unpaid and spent waiting in crew lounges.... Perks like holiday and overtime pay don't exist, he said... - see whole article under today's date.
[Shorter hours urgently needed for safety reasons, as with truckers and medical interns!]
Councilors not short on budget ideas, Fall River Herald News - MA, USA.
...He listed suggestions he’s proposed that have gained limited traction: a four-day work week at Government Center to reduce energy costs; selling or reusing 15 old school buildings... - see whole article under today's date.
[So shorter hours are happening anyway, but not in the best way.]

doom du jourtm = today's headlines from helltm (archives) – face the bad news here in the context of the waiting solution...
ECONOMY-KILLING DOWNSIZING in the news (archives) - all quickly reversible by substituting timesizing -
Slower job losses lift hopes, WSJ, A1.
[Whose hopes? The tiny group of Americans who buy the Wall Street Journal? How long is that kind of hope going to last when these cushioned narcissi realize they need markets for the productivity they're invested in, and markets are one thing that under- and un-employed people can't provide?]
The less educated take the worst hit, WSJ, A2.
[This is where Timesizing's automatic conversion of overtime and overwork into training&hiring comes in.
Job losses offer clues to recovery, WSJ, A2.
[No they don't, unless you have the imagination to think of switching from losing jobs and consumers to losing surplus working hours per job and deregulating our obsolete 40-hour definition of full-time employment, regulated to a freeze by private-sector shortsightedness and suicidally unextended self-interest for going-on 70 years.]
Employment report fuels GOP attack on Obama policies, WSJ, A2.
[But they're not even offering the crucial workweek-reduction policy of the first 75 years of their own history. They've got nothing, they're bankrupt of ideas, and they've got NO STANDING because they're the ones that accelerated our collapse into this recession and are still driving taxpayers into bankruptcy through the huge bailouts that THEY STARTED. They're radical socialist hypocrites who want socialism only for themselves. Their policies amount to Suicide - Everyone Else First.]
MAKEWORK in the news (archives) - always too little too late, & unnecessary with full employment via timesizing -
Millions face blank screens in TV switch, NYT, A1.
[Here's one huge private-sector makework project that's going horribly wrong. The cable companies and the TV-set manufacturers got together and lobbied and campaign-funded politicians into forcing everyone to repurchase their TV sets, and guess what - millions of us (a) can't afford to, and/or (b) aren't going to bother - so they've just slashed the audience for their increasingly desperate and shrill commercials - and consequent markets, if any. Brilliant. Another huge self-mutilation for the former Leader of the Free World with the 70-year-old workweek and the least amount of the most fundamental freedom, free time.]
ERODING RETIREMENT in the news (archives) - no problem with short-time full employment via timesizing -
Bankruptcy can result in lower pension benefit, WSJ, B1.
[Nooo kidding! We've impoverished our consumer base in favor of our supersuper rich today, and we're making sure it won't come back in the future. And here's another way we're doing it -]
Smaller pensions for new hires, NYT, A1 pointer to A15.
A deal in Albany with state employees seeks to reduce pension costs.
[American CEOs should write a book on how to turn the biggest free-market economy in the world into the world's biggest socialist-for-the-rich basketcase. And boy, don't they resent being shown up by France?! -]
France's largesse insulates many from recession, 6/07 Boston Sunday Globe, A13.
[How DARE they give government money to anybody but us CEOs?! (never mind our need for markets)]
CONTINUING DEATHSPIRAL (archives) - reversed only by dumb war or smart timesizing -
The Intelligent Investor - Wall Street's clearance sale leaves few bargains, by Jason Zweig, WSJ, B1.
It's the Great Garbage Market all over again. ...A hot stock market in the late 1960s..was led by such junky companies as AAA Enterprises and Minnie Pearl's Chicken Systems. Many of these firms eventually ended up in the landfill. This year, since the market struck bottom on March 9 [or reached the first lower terrace], it has again been the cruddiest stocks that have covered investors with glory.... But after this big and fast a bounce, how much upside can be left? After all, once any kind of garbage gets hot, it's only a matter of time before it begins to stink...
[This is one of the tip-off symptoms of an economy which lacks anything close to an adequate centrifuge mechanism to deconcentrate the money supply and spread the national income around and out to the millions who need and want to spend it. As money redistributes DOWN the income scale, it changes function from investing power to spending power - monetary circulation speeds up with the zillions of smaller transactions and the economy gains dynamism, markets, marketable productivity and sustainable investments. As money redistributes UP the income scale, it changes function from spending power to investing power - monetary circulation slows down as consumers are starved of purchasing power and despite all the rhetoric about the Fabulous Value of Huge Investments, the economy loses dynamism, markets, marketable productivity and paradoxically, sustainable investments. However, it gains fabulous amounts of unsustainable investments as poverty creeps up the income scale and more investment-oriented people get desperate. The stock market, whatever the historic levels of P/E ratios, takes off - this was first pointed out, to my knowledge, in the early 90s by a Hawaiian investment newsletter which spoke of so much money concentrating in the top brackets that top-bracket investors literally had NO OTHER CHOICE but to throw it into the stock market - and, presto, the P/E ratios took off and crap investments start appearing - derivatives, hedge funds, single-stock futures... = zombie 'blood buckets' back from the dead. The most market-oriented and sustainable remedy? Switch from our current gross labor surplus and sinking real wages to engineer a perceived shortage of labor. This is the essence of wartime prosperity - a labor shortage in the stupid, wasteful and inefficient way (because it kills a lot of consumers along with wage-depressing surplus labor hours). Resume the workweek reduction halted in 1940 at the pre-technology 40-hour level. The two keys: fluctuating adjustment of the workweek against under-employment and automatic conversion of overtime into training&hiring.]
New managers pursue the rich, WSJ, B4.
[But percentage-wise, there are SO FEW of them.]
Hedge-fund measure dies in Connecticut, WSJ, B4.
Hedge funds have dodged another attempt at regulation...

6/05/2009 Friday (archives) –
TIMESIZING instead of downsizing in the news (archives) - Google News Search newsclips of what the world's doing that's on the right track - the core solution is so obvious, nobody's noticing it - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and it's reinvented thousands of times every day in every downturn despite *dismissal by the 'experts' -
Job losses slow dramatically - Employers cut 345,000 jobs in May, the smallest loss since September - But the unemployment rate hit a 26-year high and experts say the market is still weak, By Chris Isidore, CNNMoney.com via money.cnn.com - USA.
...What's more, the average work week slipped again to a record low 33.1 hours. That pushed average weekly wages down as well during the month... - see whole article under today's date.
[But not as much as it would have pushed wages down if the workweek had stayed the same or been pushed up with the cuts done in the workforce instead of the workweek. That would have meant more anxious resumes pushing down the pay in fewer job openings. Here's same story, different newswire with a relevant sentence that got edited-out in later version which is all we have -]
Steep fall in US job cuts 'encouraging', Financial Times - London,England,UK.
...Companies have also begun trimming hours as a way to cut costs without laying off more workers...
CHRB approves Hollywood Park date cut request, Thoroughbred Times - Lexington,KY,USA.
The California Horse Racing Board, by a vote of 5-1, on Friday approved Hollywood Park’s request to race only four days a week through the end of the current meeting on July 19, thus eliminating Wednesdays...
- see whole article under today's date.
Short workweek sparks little interest from government workers, By Rob Shaw, TimesColonist.com - Victoria,B.C.,Canada.
The British Columbia provincial government is pushing ahead with a voluntary four-day workweek for civil servants, despite relatively low initial interest... - see whole article under today's date.
[So shorter hours are happening anyway, but not in the best way.]

doom du jourtm = today's headlines from helltm (archives) – face the bad news here in the context of the waiting solution...
ECONOMY-KILLING DOWNSIZING in the news (archives) - all quickly reversible by substituting timesizing -
Jobless claims decline slightly, the first time in 20 weeks, NYT, B5.
[Whoopeedoo. This article says 'slightly' - another article (above) says 'dramatically' = the cheerleaders are so sunk in lying they can't get their story straight.]
CONTINUING DEATHSPIRAL (archives) - reversed only by dumb war or smart timesizing -
Report signals jobs slump easing, Boston Globe, B6.
...[but] initial applications for unemployment insurance [were still] 621,000 in the week ended May 30 [having fallen by only 4,000 or 0.64% from the previous week]...
[Talk about shouting the tiniest piece of good news (while whispering or ignoring the biggest piece of badnews)! And when people lose their jobs, the downward spiral starts another turn as the newly jobless buy less stuff and sales sink deeper -]
Defying optimism, retail sales post a 10th month of decline, Boston Globe, B6.
...Nationally, same-store sales fell 4.6%...
Retailers report poor May sales as consumers remained cautious, NYT, B1 pointer to B5.
['Caution' is the WRONG METAPHOR. The right metaphor is that a black hole of concentrated national income and wealth has vacuumed the surrounding economy of spending money. The vast majority of the nation's consumers NO LONGER HAVE THE MONEY - it is all concentrated among the topmost 0.01% = the top 30,000 Americans, who have unlimited money to the point where its function as a medium of exchange is meaningless, since they were already spending all they cared to before they got the last $20 million (and most of them are completely unaware of that event anyway). The centripetal forces on money in this economy have completely overwhelmed the centrifugal forces. How do we deconcentrate this concentration, as much as possible by market forces rather than government. By first spreading the concentrated worktime per person and resuming our 1938-40 reduction of the workweek. This reduces the gross labor surplus and harnesses market forces to raise general wage levels and deconcentrate the national income and wealth. How much to reduce the workweek? As much as reducing unemployment requires - it's a market call! How fast to reduce the workweek? As much as the affected population desires - it's a referendum call which is as close as we can get to a market call in areas where markets are silent.]
Across low and high ends, retail sales fell in May, NYT, target article on B5.
[Allowing the national income and wealth to concentrate in the hands of a small fraction of the population DOES NOT increase sales or monetary circulation dba economic dynamism. Quite the contrary.]
Mortgage rates reach high for '09 [to 5.29% for 30-year from 4.91% a week ago], Boston Globe, B7.
...signaling the Federal Reserve's plan to lower borrowing costs has stalled...
[You can't solve a depression by giving more money to the wealthy, trusting them to use it the way you want them to, such as to lower mortgage and interest rates instead of just taking it in bonuses or dividends. You've got to draw a line, and you can't draw a line on money first because if you take money from rich A to give to poor B, you just make B dependent and you don't noticeably compensate A. But if you start by drawing a line on work, and take working hours away from overworked A to give to unemployed B, you make B self-supporting and you give A more of the most basic freedom, free time. There are still a few honest people in our financial industry - there's investigator Bill Black, author of "The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One" - and then there's -]
Madoff funds long gone, investigator [Harry Markopolos] suggests, Boston Globe, B7.
[And there's also -]
FDIC pushes purge at Citibank - [FDIC Chairman] Sheila Bair wants to shake up management, sought to cut rating of bank's health, WSJ, A1.
[But still -]
Venture capitalists head for door, WSJ, C1.
[What do they know that's been hidden from us?]
Tax break for profits went awry - Investments from repatriated money? A study finds few, NYT, B1.
Bank teller [Jeffrey Gautreaux, 25] charged with fraud in $270,000 scheme, Boston Globe, B3.
[Hey, he's just following the example of most of our 'leaders.' Case in point -]
Countrywide [Financial] chiefs charged with fraud - SEC alleges [Angelo] Mozilo, lieutenants hid risks from public; 'Investors were left with a mirage', WSJ, C1.
[And speaking of concealing from the public -]
They just don't get it - Massachusetts politicians meet to discuss government transparency - behind closed doors!, Boston Herald, p.1.
[Then there's the ongoing can of worms in the Middle East, pleasing only the arms manufacturers -]
Obama chides Israel, Arabs in his overture to Muslims, WSJ, A1.
[What's wrong with this picture? - how is an overture to Muslims going to work if you're chiding Arabs?? The Israel lobby in Washington has cost U.S. taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars and the whole world's goodwill as Israel commits slow genocide on its neigbors and demands a "balanced" treatment from US politicians. Thus they can't chide Israeli government villains without 'chiding' their Arab-Muslim victims.]

6/04/2009 Thursday (archives) –
TIMESIZING instead of downsizing in the news (archives) - Google News Search newsclips of what the world's doing that's on the right track - the core solution is so obvious, nobody's noticing it - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and it's reinvented thousands of times every day in every downturn despite *dismissal by the 'experts' -
Law and order first in line for Fresno Co. budget cuts, By Brad Branan / FresnoBee.com - Fresno,Calif.
...What's more, employee groups are threatening legal action over another budget proposal — Navarrette's plan to institute weeklong furloughs and a 36-hour work week for some county employees... - see whole article under today's date.
ArcelorMittal cuts work week at Ukraine's biggest mill, KyivPost.com - Kiev,Ukraine.
...ArcelorMittal Kryvy Rih, Ukraine's largest steel mill, announced plans in late May to cut its work week for daytime workers from five to three days... - see whole article under today's date.
[So shorter hours are happening anyway, but not in the best way. At the moment, Arcelor is timesizing in Ukraine while downsizing in Spain (see below). And here's a wierd one -]
Paid time off, by Goldfarb & Maharg-Bravo, New York Times, page B2.
[Vacation Central ! -]
Oh, to 'work' at BBVA. The Spanish bank's offer to let staff take up to five years off at 30% pay looks very generous.... The novelty of BBVA’s latest approach is that it can help employees as much as it does the employer. The paid time off — at a minimum of 12,000 euros (about $17,000) a year, with health care valued at 3,600 euros to boot — will afford many the time to do as they wish, including postgraduate work.... Some United States law firms have done something similar, but only with yet-to-join recruits and only for a year or so. BBVA’s plan looks smart enough that other companies — even those beyond banking and outside Spain — might keep a close eye on it. - see whole article under today's date.

LESS-STRATEGIC GOOD NEWS (archives) -
Regulator to detail [regulation] plan for derivatives, New York Times, B1.
WASHINGTON - The new chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission [Gary Gensler] will ask Congress today to impose substantial new costs and restrictions on large banks...that deal in...derivatives...

doom du jourtm = today's headlines from helltm (archives) – face the bad news here in the context of the waiting solution...
LOOTIN' N' LAYOFF TRIGGERING MERGERS in the news (archives) -
M&As provide a superhighway to monopolies & the Black Hole economy by opening up the Great Leak Upwards -
mgmt's economy-shrinking merger skills need replacement by shorter-shift suturing skills -
Procter & Gamble acquires Art of Shaving brand, Boston Globe, B8.
...that operates 36 stores... [Stay tuned for closings.]

ECONOMY-KILLING DOWNSIZING in the news (archives) - all quickly reversible by substituting timesizing -
Service industry continues to decline, shed jobs [in April] - Trend is expected to slow recovery [or lock-in downturn?],
Boston Globe, B8.
...Nonmanufacturing businesses...make up almost 90% of the economy ...companies cut 532,000 workers [est.] from payrolls...
[Now where do we run for jobs? The service sector is where we ran after automation and imports (and now outsourcing) took over manufacturing, just as manufacturing was where we ran after mechanization and imports (and eventually agrobusiness) took over agriculture. And now robotization and immigration are taking over services. All this as the urgency of demand declines when we look from agriculture to manufacturing to services (idea credit to Art Dahlberg's 1932 book, "Jobs, Machines & Capitalism").]
ADP Employer Services estimated companies cut 532,000 workers from payrolls [in April]...
Closing dealers is painful but vital, GM and Chrysler tell panel, NYT, B4.
[No it isn't, you morons! Downsizing is painful and fatal, period. It cuts the workforce, shrinks the consumer base, slows the currency circulation, starves markets, shrinks marketable productivity, and ruins investment. It worsens all our problems. But the neglected alternative, timesizing, is challenging but vital and sustainable. It maintains the workforce or expands it with deeper workweek cuts, and reverses all the negatives of downsizing. You can't GROW = upsizing, by DOWNsizing. Schumpeter and his 'creative destruction,' in plain language - it needs to be said - are costly, wasteful and traumatic bullshit. It's great how cushioned elite rationalize destruction - for others. Even Steve Roach (Morgan Stanley) favored downsizing until his own sister experienced it - then and only then, he 'did the flip.']
1/2% staff cut (100 jobs to be cut starting next month) at Fiserv Inc. as the financial tech services firm tries to 'improve the scope of services & scale for Boston clients & support future Fiserv growth' by closing its Franklin MA office & consolidating work in Houston & St.Louis & cutting its own customers' customers & everyone's markets, instead of just trimming 1/2% of its workweek (2 1/2 minutes a day for everyone, including top execs), re-investing overtime savings in overtime-targeted training&hiring, & keeping everyone together working, earning & buying 99.5% as many financial services as before (BG, B8)
Steel maker plans deep layoffs in Spain, by David Jolly [hohoho], NYT, B6.
AcelorMittal, the world's largest steel maker, said..the Spanish government had granted it permission to lay off a major part of its work force in Spain, another sign of retrenchment in a country that already has the highest jobless rate in Europe...18.1% in April, and nearly double Europe's average of 9.2%.\. All laid-off workers will receive..90% of the gross salaries, with part..paid by the government [=unemployment insurance.] The company did not say how many employees it intended to idle... - see more of story under today's date.
[ArcelorMittal - and Spain - should quit wasting time with unemployment insurance and other corporate and government bandaids and just institute permanently sustainable fluctuating workweeks against under-employment - aka timesizing. At the moment, ArcelorMittal is downsizing in Spain while timesizing in Ukraine (see above). Song (apologies to Julie Andrews): "The timesizing in Spain, is moooostly, iiiin, the Ukrai-aaaaine."]

CONTINUING DEATHSPIRAL (archives) - reversed only by dumb war or smart timesizing -
Rising interest on nations' debt may sap growth - Downside to stimulus, NY Times, A1.
[Not to mention the 'stimulus' is only worsening the socialist redistribution of national income and wealth to the topmost brackets and worsening the fundamental problem = the Great Leak Upward and the resulting Black Hole Economy, where the circulation of the currency slows down more and more because the wealthy were already spending all they cared to before they got the last $20 million. And now they're just looking for sustainable investments in volumes that are completely out-of-scale with the marketable productivity available to accommodate and sustain them. Why? Because with nearly 70 years of downsizing instead of timesizing in response to technology, the power elite have fostered a huge, officially denied, public-income-shrinking, private-income-bloating labor surplus, thereby cannibalizing their own employment and consumer bases and vacuuming the spending power away from the markets for the productivity they NEED to invest in sustainably. And as we found out when the dot-com bubble popped, productivity is no good as an investment target unless it is marketable productivity. All this worrisome 'debt' is held by the wealthy, and since they're now the only ones with any money, sooner or later they are going to have to pay themselves back, and the next 20 years is going to be the story of trying every possible way for them to do that without biting the bullet and resuming work sharing for the long run and restoring wartime levels of graduated income and estate taxes for the immediate emergency. And speaking of the Great Leak Upward via fostered-but-denied labor surplus...]
Shining a light on executive pay, by Goldfarb & Maharg-Bravo, NYT, B2.
Banker pay is about to receive some sunlight. Regulators in Switzerland and the U.S. are pushing for greater disclosure of salaries and bonuses. Encouragingly, rather than kowtowing to the [carefully fostered but system-destroying] populist gawking at [ie: admiration for] the milions awarded to high-ranking individuals, the authorities are rightly focusing on how pay is determined...
[Wal, wouldn't that be "You scratch my back, I scratch yours"? - This is in the badnews section because of what they're going to find out, and how hard it's going to be to correct unless they reverse the deepening general labor surplus by resuming the 100-year reduction of the workweek and controlling the population variables (imports, immigrants, outsourcings and births). Not to mention how much trouble the 'authorities' are going to have pursuing this corrective course not only from the corrupt bankers who want coverup as long as possible but also from the suicidally dumb, gawking-admiring public. In other words, the crowd that back in the 80s and even into the 90s used to say, "I don't begrudge Bill Gates one penny of his $100 billion!" - as if he earned it instead of 'borrowing' it from CP/M (DOS), Bell Labs (Windows), and Netscape (browser).
]
Bernanke [Fed chairman] urges attention to deficit, Bloomberg News via Boston Globe, B8.
[Didn't Walter Mondale get laughed off the stump in 1984 when his eyes watered 'urging attention to the deficit'?]
...The central bank sees risks of a relapse into financial turmoil even as credit markets show signs of stability...
[It's not that economic turmoil has paused - only the wealthy's attention on it, acknowledgement of it (vs. denial and coverup) and consequent reporting of it in their concentrated-ownership media. So how effective is Merely-Going-Through-the-Motions Ben Bernanke? -]
Plan to help banks clear their books is halted - Selling bad assets would also lead to booking big losses, by Edmund Andrews, NYT, B3.
[And this clown (Bernanke) has been instrumental in covering up those losses, cuz they are sooo000OOO big. We're being force to spread the vanishing work (unless we want a permanent parasite class - OK, let's call them human 'pets' - as Aviva Chomsky (5/27/2009 Somerville News p.1) seems to be recommending with her Population Equals Prosperity and Population Equals Jobs myth, rationalizing more immigration in terms of 'more consumers create more jobs' before any hint of where their spending money is going to come from - the influx of rural population into China's cities certainly did NOT create more jobs - it created over 200 million unemployed. What a pity the wife of the great Noam Chomsky has taken up the one agenda that probably drives more people to the political right than any other.]
WASHINGTON - The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation [FDIC] indefinitely postponed a central element [the $1B Legacy Loans Program] of the Obama administration's bank rescue plan on Wednesday, acknowledging that it could not persuade enough banks to sell off their bad assets...
[I guess this was another attempt to get the rich to pay themselves back without wartime levels of graduated income and estate taxes cuz there's no one else who can do it now that they've pauperized their employment and consumer bases. Now does this kaybosh the glimmer of hope that Bill Black ("The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One") held out in his April 3 interview with Bill Moyers - that the deposit insurance still works and could still stave off the general run on banks if bankers came clean and quit trying to maintain public confidence by lying to us? And lest you think there's still hope apart from a new solidarity-generating sharing system (flexibly sharing worktime is the only thing big enough), two last little zingers...]
Slump pushing cost of drugs out of reach,
NYT, A1.
A political message amid the movie trailers, NYT, B3.
[...demonstrating the depths of desperation jobless people have sunk to in an era when the wealthy have grabbed so unlimitedly much that the American Dream has become hitting the lottery or...suing the deep (or not so deep) pocket - see also #5 (American litigiousness) in our Realms of Modern Makework.]
Howard Weiss and Kelly Reed, whose pool supply store was sued by a woman who had fallen. [photo caption]
Mike Carter, whose gasket business in Louisiana is grappling with 100 asbestos lawsuits. [photo caption]

6/03/2009 Wednesday (archives) –
TIMESIZING instead of downsizing in the news (archives) - Google News Search newsclips of what the world is doing that's on the right track - the core solution is so obvious, nobody's noticing it - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and it's reinvented thousands of times every day in every downturn despite *dismissal by the 'experts' -
Pleas to preserve Little Rock Cannery in Hernando get attention, by Barbara Behrendt, St.Petersburg Times via Tampabay.com - St. Petersburg,FL,USA.
...The committee recommended that the commission consider furloughs to cut down on payroll costs. Staff estimated that 14 furlough days a year for employees working for the county departments would save about $545,000.... Committee member Greg Myers didn't want to stop at considering only furloughs. He asked staff for information about savings if county facilities were to close one weekday and have employees work a 32-hour week...
- see whole article under today's date.
49 furloughed at Maui Prince, Makena Resort, by Harry Eagar, MauiNews.com - Wailuku,HI,USA.
...Kennison said that among his members, the immediate problem "is not so much layoffs but reductions in work opportunities" - shorter hours... - see whole article under today's date.
[So shorter hours are happening anyway, but not in the best way.]

LESS-STRATEGIC GOOD NEWS (archives) -
Merkel suggested the European Central Bank and its US and UK peers..., Wall St Journal, A1 pointer to...A1 !
... may be laying the groundwork for the next financial crisis.
[That's German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin - and she's right. At last someone mainstream is SAYING it! Transferring unimaginably more of the national income and wealth to the top tiny fraction of the population, when that is the core of the problem in the first place, is accelerating and aggravating the self-destruction of prevailing 'downsizing capitalism.' Not only do 'robots not buy cars,' but the wealthy do not spend the huge percentages of their income that the rest of the population spends, so squeezing more and more of the national income into the topmost income brackets is cannibalizing our consumer base, while downsizing instead of timesizing is shrinking the employment base on which our consumer base depends. Brilliant. Can we destroy ourselves much faster?]

doom du jourtm = today's headlines from helltm (archives) – face the bad news here in the context of the waiting solution...
CONTINUING DEATHSPIRAL (archives) - reversed only by dumb war or smart timesizing -
US car sales sank in May..., Wall Street Journal, A1 pointer to B1.
...but showed some signs of firming...
[Dream on - the robots that are making the cars today don't buy them, and if we don't employ our own customers and customers' customers, who do we think is going to employ them? This is the fatal blindspot in the downsizing-oriented thinking of today's CEOs, economists and B-schools. It can only be corrected by full employment (and markets!) via fluctuating adjustment of the workweek against under-employment (or market weakness).]
Devising a pitch for consumers who don't intend to spend a lot, NYT, B1 pointer to B3.
[Here we go again. Back in the 1920s when all the talk was about quitting the strain to fill long workweeks for everyone and just grow the weekend, control-freak CEOs invented the Gospel of Consumption and driving people nuts with advertising from Madison Avenue.]
Trying to pitch products to the savers, by Stuart Elliot, NYT, B3.
...The reluctance of consumers to spend - coupled with a sudden rise in the savings rate - has left even the savviest marketers scrambling to reconsider their strategies...
[They still don't get it. The majority of people are not saving. THEY DON'T HAVE ANY MONEY. The appearance of saving is being created by the unlimited redistribution of income and wealth to the top 0.01% (according to Krugman, Feb.2006) - who can't possibly spend it, there's way waaay too much. They just don't have the time or interest, let alone the need (ha!). They were already spending all they cared to before they got the last $20 million. They're just looking for huge sustainable investments to put it all in, and there aren't any, because they have vacuumed the spending money out of the markets for the productivity they NEED to invest in!]
Gold runs back toward $1,000 an ounce -
Rising global [gold-]buying and inflation fears make a mockery of analysts' forecasts; an end in sight?,
Wall Street Journal, C2.
Big banks have pulled in at least $85 billion..., WSJ, A1 pointer to C1.
...in just the past month through selling shares to investors and other fund-raising.
["Fund-raising"? What are we doin' here, a CHARITY DRIVE? Ye gods, when banking has turned into a series of charity appeals, it is truly the end of "free market forces" taking care of business with evermore corruption and coverup, and everless regulation and openness. Where's George Soros and his 'open society' now?
And as for the $85 billion, that's PEANUTS compared to the $2 trillion more that Geithner admitted the banks needed and the $7-8 trillion others estimate.]
The sum leaves most of the lenders holding considerably more capital than US regulators have required them to amass as part of 'stress tests.'
['Stress tests' run by the very clowns that created this ginormous fraud and theft from the taxpayer? - oh please!]
New [websites] put crime stats on the map, WSJ, D1.
...CrimeMapping.com, CrimeReports.com, EveryBlock.com...
[And - no cause&effect OF COURSE! denydenydeny - but there's a purty tight 'corelation' between unemployment and crime - and unemployment is soaring, no end in sight.]
Police add assault rifles across Massachusetts - Officials point to terror concerns, Boston Globe, A1.
[Oh please, they still floggin' the old "TERRORISM!!!" manip? Let's cut the dramatics and refocus on all the garden-variety crime we're cultivating by making it harder and harder for people to support themselves with downsizing instead of timesizing capitalism.]
In Europe, are 'active' managers worth it? - Norway has dropped 16 of 22 firms that manage its fixed-income investing, WSJ, C2.
[In Anywhere, are 'active' managers worth it during the final Goetterdaemmerung of downsizing capitalism? We either switch to timesizing capitalism and stop talkin' growth while walkin' shrinkage, or we're third-world or right back to the caves.]
[And in other news...]
In online slip, nuclear sites make rounds, by William Broad, NYT, A1.
The federal government mistakenly made public a 266-page report, its pages marked "highly confidential," that gives detailed information about hundreds of the nation's civilian nuclear sites and programs, including maps showing the precise locations of stockpiles of fuel for nuclear weapons.
[Ah, what was that we were saying about homeland "security," LOL!]
The publication of the document was revealed Monday in an online newsletter devoted to iissues of federal secrecy. That set off a debate among nuclear experts about what dangers, if any, the disclosures posed...
[How about a debate among the neighbors of these stockpiles about their higher-than-normal cancer rates, and the debate among the public at large about why we're still stockpiling all this highly toxic crap all around the country?]

6/02/2009 Tuesday (archives) –
TIMESIZING instead of downsizing in the news (archives) - Google News Search newsclips of what the world is doing that's on the right track - the core solution is so obvious, nobody's noticing it - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and it's reinvented thousands of times every day in every downturn despite *dismissal by the 'experts' -
Layoffs – a Last Resort, Community Blog via SearchPooch.com.
...Consider instituting shorter hours on a rolling basis – four-day weeks are proving popular in some places...
- see whole article under today's date.
Lima library cuts hours, staff, by Hannah Poturalski, 6/01 LimaOhio.com - OH.
...The staff that continues work at the library will see a reduction of 2.5 hours in their workweek. Stark said the reduction of the workweek by 2.5 hours will save about $150,000 a year... - see whole article under today's date.
[So shorter hours are happening anyway, but not in the best way.]

doom du jourtm = today's headlines from helltm (archives) – face the bad news here in the context of the waiting solution...
BANKRUPTCY tsunami (archives) in the news - staunched only by risky war or safe timesizing -
General Motors collapses into government's arms [Chapter 11] - Second-largest industrial bankruptcy in history;
Obama defends intervention as CEO [Rick Wagoner] asks public for 'another chance',
Wall Street Journal, A1.
A saga of decline and denial, WSJ, A1.
...'might have to sell Hummer brand [but] rest of company safe'..Rick Wagoner [July 10, 2008]...
[So why on earth should we give him a second chance?!! Obama is crazy, Let these companies and incompetent CEOs fail and restore full employment by work sharing however short a workweek it may require.]
GM filing alters the landscape - Massachusetts could lose 2,000 jobs in restructuring;
Obama says US ownership stake vital to automaker's future, Boston Globe, A1.
[GM does not have a future - because 'robots do not buy cars' and we're still trying to fill the pre-robotics eight-hour day five times a week for everyone. Natural, private-sector employment is getting concentrated on smaller and smaller percentages of the population, and the rest have less spending money and more insecurity. This is a system in cascading collapse, until we implement fluctuating adjustment of the workweek against under-employment and market weakness.]

CONTINUING DEATHSPIRAL (archives) - reversed only by dumb war or smart timesizing -
Pound's rally accelerates, but end seen - For a currency that's soaring, the British pound has surprisingly few fans...,
WSJ, C1.

6/01/2009 Monday (archives) –
TIMESIZING instead of downsizing in the news (archives) - Google News Search newsclips of what the world is doing that's on the right track - the core solution is so obvious, nobody's noticing it - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and it's reinvented thousands of times every day in every downturn despite *dismissal by the 'experts' -
San Francisco's budget casualties barely beginning, by Heather Knight, San Francisco Chronicle via sfgate.com - CA, USA.
...Human services: Shortened workweek for 1,200 people, including social workers and case managers...-
see whole article under today's date.
Calera residents, employees concerned about possible city cutbacks - Calera Mayor George Roy says no decision has been made about possible pay cuts or reduced hours, Posted by Scottie Vickery, blog.al.com - Birmingham,AL,USA.
..."If we cut city jobs, people aren't going to move here. We aren't going to continue to grow." Going to the 32-hour work week for all hourly city employees is one of many possibilities city leaders are considering... - see whole article under today's date.
[So shorter hours are happening anyway, but not in the best way.]

doom du jourtm = today's headlines from helltm (archives) – face the bad news here in the context of the waiting solution...
CONTINUING DEATHSPIRAL (archives) - reversed only by dumb war or smart timesizing -
Lawmakers keep expenses off-line, by Farnam & Radnofsky & Williamson, WSJ, A1.
WASHINGTON - Lawmakers have demanded greater openness from companies receiving government bailouts but have yet to release online or electronic versions of their own office expenditures - including taxpayer-funded tabs for leased cars and staff retreats at hotels...
The IMF's No.2 said he doesn't expect unemployment to decline..., WSJ, A1 pointer to A10.
...in wealthy nations until well into next year.
Obama makes his big move on GM - Automaker to seek protection today (Boston Globe, A1)
- - - wait - for - it - - -

5/31/2009 sunday (archives) –
TIMESIZING instead of downsizing in the news (archives) - Google News Search newsclips of what the world is doing that's on the right track - the core solution is so obvious, nobody's noticing it - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and it's reinvented thousands of times every day in every downturn despite *dismissal by the 'experts' -
Collier community development agency cutting back to 4-day work week, By I.M. STACKEL, Naples Daily News via naplesnews.com - Naples,FL,USA.
...Citing serious cutbacks, Joe Schmitt, the administrator of the Community Development and Environmental Services Division, said that he is implementing a 4-day/32-hour work week for some employees working out of the agency’s North Horseshoe Drive building... - see whole article under today's date.
What's wrong with a 30-hour work week? By Don Fitz, 5/30 Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal - Sydney,NSW,Australia.
...German Volkswagen employees accepted a 10% pay cut to achieve a 28.8 hour work week.
The Digital corporation had 530 employees who opted for a 4-day week... - see whole article under today's date.
University College of the Caribbean cutting staff hours and laying off, radiojamaica.com - Jamaica.
...Their 40 hour work week will be cut to 20 hours for a period not exceeding 3 months. Effective June 8, administrative staff may also be required to work 20 to 25 hours per week including teaching hours for full time academic employees...
- see whole article under today's date.
[So shorter hours are happening anyway, but not in the best way.]

LESS-STRATEGIC GOOD NEWS (archives) -
'Can't talk now' - More firms are banning employees from driving [while] using cellphones -
Some companies are taking the strictest approach: banning all electronic devices - hands-free or not - while driving,
Boston Sunday Globe, G1,G5.

doom du jourtm = today's headlines from helltm (archives) – face the bad news here in the context of the waiting solution...
MAKEWORK in the news (archives) - always too little too late, & unnecessary with full employment via timesizing -
The downward spiral of progress - Why companies keep ruining your favorite products -
The satisfied customer can be dispensed with, by Tom Scocca, Boston Sunday Globe, K1,K3.
...Consumer capitalism is..a disappointment at the thing it's supposed to be good at: the ordinary buying and using of stuff...when the market decides to improve something that customers didn't want improved...analog TV...Coca-Cola...
- see more of this article under today's date.
[And many 'improvements' force us, e.g., to replace our TV, our record collection, our slower and smaller memory and hard-drive PC... which in turn 'creates jobs,' regardless of waste and disposability-impact on the environment.]
ERODING RETIREMENT in the news (archives) - no problem with short-time full employment via timesizing -
End of the 401(k) match leaves workers in the lurch, Boston Sunday Globe, G1.
[When workers fight for higher pay instead of shorter hours, they wind up with neither, because they're fighting market forces instead of harnessing them to raise wages as the labor surplus shrinks. One after another, their benefits will be taken from them.]
CONTINUING DEATHSPIRAL (archives) - reversed only by dumb war or smart timesizing -
Financial advisers don't foresee quick rebound, Boston Sunday Globe, G7.
[At least they're being honest for a change.]

5/30/2009 saturday (archives) –
TIMESIZING instead of downsizing in the news (archives) - Google News Search newsclips of what the world is doing that's on the right track - the core solution is so obvious, nobody's noticing it - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and it's reinvented thousands of times every day in every downturn despite *dismissal by the 'experts' -
Milwaukee County - Walker calls for freezing all county salaries through 2010, By Steve Schultze of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel via JSonline.com - Milwaukee,WI,USA.
...But as with other ideas he's broached - most notably a 35-hour work week and accompanying pay cuts - the county executive ran into immediate resistance and accusations he's playing politics with people's lives...
- see whole article under today's date.
[Well, the better alternative is presumably to restore World War II levels of high taxes on the rich - do we hear any proposals along those lines from any of you cowards?]
UK - Alan Johnson must act by August 1 or wards will close and people will die, warns top medic, By John Black, President Of The Royal College Of Surgeons, DailyMail.co.uk - UK.
On August 1 all employees in Britain will be bound by the European Working Time Directive (EWTD) to work for no more than an average of 48 hours per week - and that includes everybody in the National Health Service....
Great, you might think. There will be no more tired, exploited junior doctors making mistakes. Everyone will be fresh as a daisy.,, - see whole article under today's date.
[So shorter hours are happening anyway, but not in the best way.]
[Germany -] The Opel rescue plan: Who is being rescued? By Ulrich Rippert, 5/29 World Socialist Web Site - Oak Park,MI,USA.
...Just last February, the trade unions at Vauxhall agreed to cut the workweek from 38 to 30 hours,
with a corresponding cut in pay... - see whole article under today's date.
[If unions can just get one of their traditional goals and it's higher pay, they wind up with neither cuz they're just pinning a higher pricetag on a surplus commodity, themselves, but it they can just get one goal and it's shorter hours, they wind up with both cuz they're cutting their own surplus and harnessing market forces to raise pay in response.]

LESS-STRATEGIC GOOD NEWS (archives) -
EU plans fresh strike on Microsoft [and its naive system-corroding monopolistic practices],
Wall Street Journal, A1.

doom du jourtm = today's headlines from helltm ( archives) – face the bad news here in the context of the waiting solution...
BANKRUPTCY tsunami (archives) in the news - staunched only by risky war or safe timesizing -
R.H. Donnelley seeks bankruptcy protection, Bloomberg via New York Times, B2.
...The publisher of 600 directories including telephone yellow pages...based in Carey, NC, had assets of $11.2B and debt of $12.4B as of Dec.31...
HOMELESSNESS IN AMERICA (archives) - sooo unnecessary with full employment via timesizing -
On the street and on Facebook: The homeless stay wired - Mr. [Charles] Pitts lacks a mailing address but he's got a computer and a web forum, by Phred Dvorak, WSJ, A1.
SAN FRANCISCO -...The tough part is managing this digital lifestyle from his residence under a highway bridge.... New York City has put 42 computers in five of the nine shelters it operates and plans to wire the other four this year...
[Disgusting - these cities should be refereeing the workweek level and getting it down to somewhere appropriate for our high levels of technology so all city residents can have a piece of the vanishing natural market-demanded employment and support themselves and have homes, instead of cities pissing around with meaningless technological trendiness that brushes aside the real needs of the homeless to glorify Silicon Valley in a truly obscene and callous way.]
CONTINUING DEATHSPIRAL (archives) - reversed only by dumb war or smart timesizing -
Troubled bank loans hit a record high - The overall quality of loans is reported to be deteriorating at the fastest pace ever, NYT, B3.
[So they're dribbling out the ginormous bad news so we the public don't panic? - or so they can keep their jobs and keep robbing us taxpayers? Bill Black ("The Best Way to Rob a Bank [or a Gov't] Is to Own One") was right.]
Dollar hits a 2009 nadir against euro,
WSJ, B3.
Canada - Budget deficit [Can.$2.06B] doubles forecast of 4 months ago, WSJ news roundup, A9.
...and the first shortfall since 1996-97...
Where did all the rich go? - Financial crisis cuts UK millionaires' ranks..., WSJ, B4.

5/29/2009 friday (archives) –
TIMESIZING instead of downsizing in the news (archives) - Google News Search newsclips of what the world is doing that's on the right track - the core solution is so obvious, nobody's noticing it - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and it's reinvented thousands of times every day in every downturn despite *dismissal by the 'experts' -
Reviving the Economy...of Lauderhill FL, Nightly Business Report via NBR Transcripts via pbs.org - Miami,FL,USA.
...With tax revenues shrinking, Lauderhill has cut its budget and city workers recently switched to a four-day work week. - see whole article under today's date.
County officials looking at options to save budget, by Ed Gebert, Van Wert Times Bulletin - Van Wert,OH,USA.
...During the meeting, a twist on the idea was presented. Instead of a one-day furlough every two weeks, the suggestion was to close as many county offices as possible half-days every Friday. County leaders expressed the notion that this would provide consistency between departments and offer county employees a longer weekend in exchange for the sacrifice of a portion of their pay... - see whole article under today's date.
[So shorter hours are happening anyway, but not in the best way.]

LESS-STRATEGIC GOOD NEWS (archives) -
Israel must completely halt settlements..., news squib, Wall Street Journal, A1.
...on land that Palestinians claim as part of a future state, [Sec.of State Hillary] Clinton said. Palestinian President Abbas will meet with Obama today.

doom du jourtm = today's headlines from helltm ( archives) –
face the bad news here in the context of the waiting solution...
BANKRUPTCY tsunami (archives) in the news - staunched only by risky war or safe timesizing -
[Michigan] Auto parts makers file for Chapter 11, New York Times, B5.
...Visteon is the largest supplier to..Ford... Metaldyne's biggest customer is Chrysler...

PRISONS (archives) in the news -
"Last Word" - Inmates Go Green, Nightly Business Report via NBR Transcripts via pbs.org - Miami,FL,USA.
[See whole article under today's date.]

CONTINUING DEATHSPIRAL (archives) - reversed only by dumb war or smart timesizing -
Unemployed driving up foreclosures,
NYT, B5.
Declining book sales cast gloom at an expo, NYT, B4.
...BookExpo America [in NYC] which runs through Sunday...attendance is down 14% from about 35,000 wh attended in 2007, the last time the convention was held in New York..\..
Publishers sold 3.08B copies in 2008, down 1.5% from the 3.13B copies sold the previous year, according to Book Industry Trends... Borders Group announced Tuesday that 1Q09 sales dropped 12%...
Married with bankruptcy - The link between recession and divorce, op ed by Andrew Cherlin, NYT, A23.
...In the long run, the Depression weakened American families.... [The 25% drop in the divorce rate in the early Depression only meant that] with incomes plummeting and insecure jobs, unhappy couples often couldn't afford to divorce...
Credit relief may not last long, by Floyd Norris, NYT, B1.
...Allowing a person to breathe may not be enough to restore him to health. In that regard, 2009 is starting to feel like a little like 1980. ...Improvement came, but it did not last long...
[Well, what is it based on? Transferring massive amounts of additional money from everyone else to the small superwealthy population, when the overconcentration of the money supply was the basic problem in the first place? Until we understand the Great Leak Upward, we won't even begin to start plugging it. Until we understand the Black Hole Economy, we won't even begin to start centrifuging it. In fact, we'll probably keep worsening it, as we've been doing so far. Let the fraud and corruption take its natural course, distrust and retrenchment - all we're doing at the moment is delaying that moment, delaying the inevitable by trying to generate trust by lying - trying to restore public trust by lying to the public. Not smart. Not effective.]
Another rescue? editorial, NYT, A22.
...States and localities are [now] asking for federal aid for another financial trouble child [besides subprime mortgages & credit default swaps & collateralized debt obligations]: the VRDO..(rhymes with weirdo).\.or the variable rate demand obligation...
[Another megadose of a lethally flawed assumption: tax the poor to enrich the rich cuz the poor are infinite and the rich are finite. And speaking of weird -]
Grimace and bear it, editorial, NYT, A22.
...This era of ultrasecurity has motor vehicle officials in four states banning open-faced smiles on photo identification licenses.... Ark., Ind., Nev., and Va. insist [on poses] with 'neutral facial expressions...
The big inflation scare - Crying fire, fire in Noah's flood, op ed by Paul Krugman, NYT, A23.
[In the immediate term, it is deflation we need to worry about. But the wealthy are used to targeting inflation - it's been so good to them - they can even attack sacred Growth in the name of fighting inflation (by raising interest rates, discouraging business borrowing-hiring-expansion, and scaring employees out of asking for raises or switching to better jobs) - and so bad for everyone else - bad but disempowering. But as for lon inflation worries in the longer term, check out Orlov's Five Stages of Collapse for the swing from deflation to inflation as clueless politicians try to restore the tens of millions in the employment base and the hundreds of millions in the consumer base by further empoverishing them in favor of the tens of thousands in the financial annex.]

5/28/2009 thursday (archives) –
TIMESIZING instead of downsizing in the news (archives) - Google News Search newsclips of what the world is doing that's on the right track - the core solution is so obvious, nobody's noticing it - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and it's reinvented thousands of times every day in every downturn despite *dismissal by the 'experts' -
Springdale Budget Memo Gives Details, By Doug Thompson, The Morning News via NWAonline.net - Springdale,AR,USA.
...City departments would cut hours. Animal Services would have to "adjust the hours of operation" under the proposal. The city attorney would reduce the work week by four hours each for two employees and two hours each for the remaining five members of the staff... - see whole article under today's date.
[This is getting pretty elaborate. But few of these local experiments are aware that their general approach, if systematized, would provide full employment, higher pay (by cutting the pay-depressing surplus of job seekers), and reverse the downturn in their city, state, region, or nationally.]
GateHouse plans temporary salary reductions in Massachusetts, By Jon Chesto, GateHouse News Service via MetroWestDailyNews.com - Framingham,MA,USA.
...GateHouse cut its New England work force by about 10.5 percent since the start of the year through a mix of layoffs, voluntary buyouts, attrition and work-week reductions... - see whole article under today's date.
[So shorter hours are happening anyway, but not in a coordinated systemic way that would reduce the labor surplus, harness market forces in maintaining or increasing jobs and wages and markets, and centrifuge the black hole of income and wealth in the top 0.01%, and re-establish a balance between investably marketable productivity and concentrated investable funds. And if more media people like John Chesta would get on board with this, we could get this into the mainstream and sustainably reverse the downturn within a year. Johnny Diaz wrote the Boston Globe's version (p.B7) of this article today and totally missed this angle.]

LESS-STRATEGIC GOOD NEWS (archives) -
Israel must completely halt settlements..., news squib, Wall Street Journal, A1.
...on land that Palestinians claim as part of a future state, [Sec.of State Hillary] Clinton said. Palestinian President Abbas will meet with Obama today.

doom du jourtm = today's headlines from helltm ( archives) –
face the bad news here in the context of the waiting solution...
CONTINUING DEATHSPIRAL (archives) - reversed only by dumb war or smart timesizing -
Rise in rates jolts markets - Fed's effort to revive economy is complicated by fresh jump in borrowing costs, WSJ, A1.
[And then the same thing with a slightly different spin -]
Markets fall on worries of inflation, NYTimes, B1.
The Federal Reserve is spending more than $1 trillion to keep interest rates low and help credit flow,
[and keep the full extent of our financial system's bankruptcy covered up,]
but investors are getting worried that those efforts are starting to falter. The specter that government spending may stoke inflation and push up borrowing costs rattled Wall Street Wednesday, on concerns that Washington is issuing more bonds to finance the economic recovery than investors are willing to buy...
[You can't solve the overconcentration of the money supply in the richest tiny fraction of the population by transferring billions more to that tiny fraction without cannibalizing your employment base and starving your consumer base - and triggering hyperinflation.]
Costs snarling health overhaul - Study finds more are struggling to pay - Gains at risk in [Massacusetts'] foray into insurance, Boston Globe, B6.
NEW YORK - Between 65% and 75% of US home loans that are reworked to avert foreclosure may end up defaulting again after12 months, Fitch Ratings said yesterday.
[Only the dummies in the Massachusetts legislature would pass a law requiring everyone to have health insurance and call it 'universal health insurance.']

5/27/2009 wednesday (archives) –
TIMESIZING instead of downsizing in the news (archives) - Google News Search newsclips of what the world is doing that's on the right track - the core solution is so obvious, nobody's noticing it - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and it's reinvented thousands of times every day in every downturn despite *dismissal by the 'experts' -
Health System responds to economic downturn, 5/26 Beaufort Observer Online Edition via beaufortobserver.net - Washington,NC,USA.
...employee's hours will be cut by 5% to help reduce expenses. This essentially means that employees will go from a 40 hour workweek to a 38 hour workweek... - see whole article under today's date.
Economic Scene: Careers That Work for Families, By David Leonhardt, Source: New York Times, B1.
...On almost every aspect of work-life balance, finance and consulting look pretty bad. People who take time off in those fields suffer large penalties, both in terms of money and career opportunities, once they return to full-time work. And part-time jobs are hard to come by, which often forces people to make a choice between working a 70-hour week and leaving a job entirely.....
[Here's a long-hours field that people are leaving, The recession is the main reason but probably the long hours are playing a role. Finance is going in the wrong direction (backwards in time to the seven 10-hour-day workweeks of the 1860s), but at least the issue is getting some mainstream media coverage.]
German debt surge ups pressure on private borrowers, By Dave Graham, Reuters via guardian.co.uk - UK.
..."So firms are doubly under pressure -- that's why they're switching to shorter hours like crazy," said Treier of the state-subsidized programme to support ... - see whole article under today's date.
[So shorter hours are happening anyway, but not in a coordinated systemic way that would reduce the labor surplus, harness market forces in maintaining or increasing jobs and wages and markets, and centrifuge the black hole of income and wealth in the top 0.01%, and re-establish a balance between investably marketable productivity and concentrated investable funds.]

LESS-STRATEGIC GOOD NEWS (archives) -
Big oil warms to ethanol - As demand grows, major firms embrace biofuel start-ups, NYT, B1.
[Of course, this could be 'the embrace of death,' as GM did to public transportation, high-tech steam locomotives, dramatically fuel-efficient cars...]
A Hispanic pick for high court [Judge Sonia Sotomayor] - Cases, talks offer hints to her views, Boston Globe, A1.
[Here's hoping Judge Sotomayor remembers why she's there = to provide some real system feedback for this cushioned court from directions they seldom notice. And here's hoping this effort for diversity and political correctness works out better than Canada's current governess general, who has disgraced the nation by submitting to bullying from the current atavistic prime minister and unconstitutionally shutting down Parliament without consulting the Queen whom she's supposedly representing. And now, fouling further her record -]
Canadian official makes point with seal heart, AP via Boston Globe, A3.
Rankin Inlet, Nunavut - Canada's governor general ate a slaughtered seal's raw heart in a show of support for the country's seal hunters, a display that a European Union spokeswoman yesterday ccalled "too bizarre to acknowledge." Governor General Michaelle Jean, the [Haitian-descent] representative of...Queen Elizabeth II as Canada's head of state, gutted the seal and swallowed a slice [of] its organ Monday after an EU vote this month to ban seal products on grounds that the hunt is cruel...
[If this is really the Queen's representative, perhaps it's time the Queen herself stepped in to depose this embarrassing incompetent if terminally polite Canadians don't have the sense to do it, and request a more qualified, dignified, constitutionallly informed, bullying-proof and diplomatic representative. Clearly, the sacrifice of competence and qualfication for the sake of diversity and political correctness has gone too far when a person plunges centuries into the controversial past while owing her position to modern (over?-)sensibilities and (over?-)sensitivities. Michaelle Jean doesn't have the common sense of a 2-by-4. We must remember, the world is not primarily different geographic zones - it is different time frames, and this applies even within countries and even within individuals.]
Charter school busing cut draws ire, by James Vaznis, Boston Globe, B1.
Hundreds of students are ferried to charter schools across Boston each day in bright yellow buses, courtesy [i.e., at the expense of] the very school district that their families have rejected. But now Superintendent Carol Johnson wants to end the ride for many of those students...ending citywide busing...and only busing them if they live within the same geographic region as the school, saving $668,000...
[Sounds fair to us, whereas the 'ire' of charter school leaders sounds self-serving and dumb-parasitic, and the illegality claim from state education leaders sounds like either a stretch or an urgent need to redefine 'legality' in a fairer direction. Don't like your school district? Improve it or move, but don't bleed it to death.]

doom du jourtm = today's headlines from helltm ( archives) –
face the bad news here in the context of the waiting solution...
CONTINUING DEATHSPIRAL (archives) - reversed only by dumb war or smart timesizing -
How to offset the current deflation while preparing for inflation in the future, by John Wasik, Boston Globe, B9.
[This is a financial columnist citing Niall Ferguson's book, "The Ascent of Money," but he could non-financially cite Dmytry Orlov's web article *The Five Stages of Collapse, where prior to the second stage, the 'commercial collapse,' merchants can't get enough of your money, but after the commercial collapse and the accompanying hyper-inflation, merchants don't want your now-worthless money, they want barter.]
Reworked mortgages still face default, Bloomberg News via Boston Globe, B6.
NEW YORK - Between 65% and 75% of US home loans that are reworked to avert foreclosure may end up defaulting again after12 months, Fitch Ratings said yesterday.
The projection is based on 'shrinking disposable income, escalating job losses and possibly some deceptive practices on the part of the borrowers themselves'...
[Pointing again to the underlying problem, cutting the workforce instead of just cutting the workweek and keeping the jobs and - as the labor surplus shrinks - the wages. And since we're still downsizing instead of 'timesizing,' we're still goin' down. So it ain't over yet, and the worst ain't over yet. And btw, most borrowers were deceptive only because lenders encouraged them to be. That's where we got the phrases, liars' loans, toxic assets, and NINJA loans = no Income check and no Job or Assets check. Source: Bill Black ("The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One") on Bill Moyers' program, 4/03/2009.]
Home prices declined again in March as banks sold more foreclosed properties, NYT, B3.
[= the continuing deflation of the latest bubble in our current "Bubble Capitalism."]
Recession imperils [student] loan forgiveness programs,
NYT, B1.
Genetics-based products stir concerns - Scientists worry about promises, by Carolyn Johnson, Boston Globe, A1.
...that companies are making...before the [genetic science] is mature enough to meet public expectations...
[Not to mention the public's long-term survival when the 'science,' hustled by job desperation, is devoid of very long-term environmental-impact testing!]
Historian Aviva Chomsky debunks immigration myths, by Meghan Frederico, Somerville News, page 1.
[Thus pushing even more centrists, shaking their heads in disbelief, toward the political right. Full disclosure: I am an immigrant myself, a legal immigrant, and many many of my fellow immigrants feel as I do = you can't save the world by moving everyone here - Aviva counters immigration myths with population myths such as Population Equals Prosperity and Jobs, ignoring China's experience and incidentally supporting regressive sales taxes and violation of our immigration laws on grounds of bleeding-heart emotions and political correctness. Ecological "Limits to Growth" and overpopulation concerns have gone right past her. This is just as bad as the political right's unwillingness to set limits on money concentration and free trade. Such a depressing focus for the wife of the great Noam Chomsky.]
See more of Aviva article under today's date.
South Africa: Data show a recession, Celia Dugger, NYT, A10.
...its first in 17 years....
[South Africa probably has a very forgiving definition of 'recession' - like ours.]
The nation's economy contracted by 6.4% in the first quarter of this year, following a 1.8% decline in the last quarter of 2008. Mining and manufacturing were particularly hard hit, as global demand fell.

5/26/2009 tuesday (archives) –
TIMESIZING instead of downsizing in the news (archives) - Google News Search newsclips of what the world is doing that's on the right track - the core solution is so obvious, nobody's noticing it - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and it's reinvented thousands of times every day in every downturn despite *dismissal by the 'experts' -
Shorter Work Week for Mary Baldwin College this Summer, Reporter: Philip Townsend, Email Address: ptownsend@whsv.com, WHSV via whsv.com - Harrisonburg,VA,USA.
Staunton, Va. -...Officials also say the four day week will allow commuters to cut down on gas spending for the summer... - see whole article under today's date.
Government projections show retiring workers will leave BC very short, By Terri Theodore – The Canadian Press via google.com/hostednews/canadianpress.
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada —...The government is offering a four-day work week to about half of its 30,000 employees as part of a pilot project this summer... - see whole article under today's date.
[Hey, maybe the *Work Less Party of British Columbia is actually having some effect!]

doom du jourtm = today's headlines from helltm ( archives) –
face the bad news here in the context of the waiting solution...
BANKRUPTCY tsunami (archives) in the news - staunched only by risky war or safe timesizing -
Auto troubles touch many corners - Bankruptcy for G.M., would tax experts, New York Times, B1.
[Maybe that's cuz we have so many idiot-savants who can't think for themselves.]
CONTINUING DEATHSPIRAL (archives) - reversed only by dumb war or smart timesizing -
Investors' faith falls in financial firms, Wall Street Journal, D1 pointer to D2.
[Good... good... - they're starting to actually feel that maybe there's something improvable about the system that's been pretty good to them. Something in the area of healthcare for instance -]
More small firms drop health care,
WSJ, B1.
Europe feels strain of protecting workers and plants, NYT, B1.
[Ah, couldn't we rephrase that as, "European CEOs experience the discipline of employing their own markets"?! - and wouldn't the 'strain' fast turn to 'pain' if they didn't?!!]
Dollar vexes Asian central banks - Currency purchases seek to keep exports from becoming more expensive, WSJ, C1.
...To combat dollar's decline central banks in S.Korea, Thailand, Taiwan, Singapore, and India are believed to have sold their currencies and bought dollars in recent weeks...
[Wonderful how ready these folks are to prolong our suicidal tendencies and get us to import everything for as long as our consumer base can outlast our employment base.]

5/25/2009 monday (archives) –
TIMESIZING instead of downsizing in the news (archives) - Google News Search newsclips of what the world is doing that's on the right track - the core solution is so obvious, nobody's noticing it - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and it's reinvented thousands of times every day in every downturn despite *dismissal by the 'experts' -
Rising unemployment endangers once-solid mortgages, Boston Globe, B1 pointer to B7.
Once-safe mortgages endangered by job losses,
by Goodman & Healy, NYT via Boston Globe, B7.
..."That loss of jobs and loss of overtime hours and being forced from a full-time to part-time job is resulting in defaults. They're coast to coast"...
- see whole article under today's date.
[So again, worktime per person is being cut anyway, but not in the best way.]

doom du jourtm = today's headlines from helltm ( archives) –
face the bad news here in the context of the waiting solution...

CONTINUING DEATHSPIRAL (archives) - reversed only by dumb war or smart timesizing -
Business owners in northern Massachusetts worry..., Boston Globe, A1 pointer to B1.
...that the Mass. Legislature's vote to raise the sales tax will drive more shoppers into New Hampshire.
[And it will. Until law-making cowards stop taxing sales and spending - whose fall defines downturn - and start taxing the rich who have more money than they can spend, this whole juggernaut, including the rich, will just keep going down. As Milton Friedman said, you get more of whatever you subsidize and less of whatever you tax. So, Massachusetts legislators, if you want less sales and a deeper recession, then you're doing the right thing.]

5/24/2009 sunday (archives) –
TIMESIZING instead of downsizing in the news (archives) - Google News Search newsclips of what the world is doing that's on the right track - the core solution is so obvious, nobody's noticing it - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and it's reinvented thousands of times every day in every downturn despite *dismissal by the 'experts' -
County budget plan: No new taxes, By Steve Herring, Goldsboro News Argus via newsargus.com - Goldsboro,NC,USA.
...Utility savings have been realized through the county's four-day workweek that has been in effect since last August...
- see whole article under today's date.
The California Scare Campaign, by Matt Welch, Reason Online via reason.com - Los Angeles,CA,USA.
...Printing shops may lose business as courts and other government operations shorten their workweek...
- see whole article under today's date.
[Workweek reduction is happening anyway, but not in the best way.]

LESS-STRATEGIC GOOD NEWS (archives) -
Winthrop MA - Voters OK eight of 10 [tax cap] overrides,
Boston Sunday Globe, NO1.

doom du jourtm – today's headlines from helltm (archives) –
ECONOMY-KILLING DOWNSIZING in the news (archives) - all quickly reversible by substituting timesizing -
It's time to rethink financial 'wisdom' - Some of the old rules no longer apply, while others are not practical for people struggling with job losses, by Dave Copeland, Boston Sunday Globe, G1.
[e.g.,] mortgage debt is good debt... [Compare...]
Trapped by homeownership?
Boston Sunday Globe, C1 pointer to editorial on C8.

BANKRUPTCY tsunami (archives) in the news - staunched only by risky war or safe timesizing -
Last markdown for Filene's Basement - Downtown closing sparked spiral, by Jean Abelson, Boston Sunday Globe, A1.
In August 2007...the metal grates came down on Filene's Basement in Downtown Crossing.... It was a dark day in the history of the storied merchant [where] shoppers had discovered the best bargains in Boston MA, making this location the most successful in the chain. Shuttering the flagship store, even temporarily as part of a redevelopment project, didn't seem right. But management [dumb as ever] promised that Filene's Basement would return better than ever in 2009....
But instead of a grand reopening, the question today is whether Filene's Basement will survive this year...
Malden MA - Nursing home set to close - City-owned facility loses funding vote, Boston Sunday Globe, NO1.
McFadden Memorial Manor, the financially ailing nursing home, is prepared to close after the City Council voted not to spend $1.2m and allow a new public authority to take over the city-owned facility on Forest Street. The council's 7-4 vote last week saddened McFadden supporters, many of whom have fought for years to save it from closing...
[Thus, closing by closing, the insulation and isolation of the richest and most powerful in the population destroy the empire their ancestors built. They robotically direct more and more of the national income to themselves, Krugman estimates they are essentially only 30,000 Americans (0.01% of the population) and they cut their own taxes and charitable donations again and again and again ... till finally there's nothing left outside their gated communities except a wasteland of poverty and violence. It's happened again and again in history - the decline of the Roman Empire is just the most famous example. Here in the nursing home example (and there are hundreds of similar nursing home closures in the once-great USA every month - maybe every week), the cushioned plutocrats decline to even care for their own senior age cohort - so we return to old-age poverty. America is finished. The super-wealthy super-insulated and isolated decision-makers have become more and more efficient as dumb parasites = parasites that kill their host or in this case, at corroding the system that supports...themselves. And yet the long-neglected solution is so easy, but has been spun by the mainstream as a *failure for so long despite its over- 100 years of success and the thousands of successful small-scale working models today. But as long as we're still downsizing instead of timesizing, we're still goin' down.]

CONTINUING DEATHSPIRAL (archives) - reversed only by dumb war or smart timesizing -
Economic meltdown takes the funding out of festivals, Boston Sunday Globe, A11.
...Cash-strapped Philadelphis says it can no longer waive the costs of city services for festival organizers \so for\ the "Sunday Out"...event's sponsor, Equality Forum...a new bill arrived later: $17,000 for police, street cleaning, and ambulance services that for years the city had provided for free...
- In New York, officials aren't accepting new applications for multiblock or multiday events because of police overtime costs...
[Hey, maybe we can use this excuse in Boston to get rid of the rest of the ridiculous police overtime due to HAVING TO have a cop present at every road construction site!?!]
- In Boston, the city says the organizers of the Sail Boston tall ships event must pay nearly $1 million in public safety costs in advance because the city can no longer afford it.
[And why should ordinary taxpayers be forced to give charity to these indulgences of the wealthy, who spend what tiny percentage they do spend of their huge wealth on trying often successfully seeking to pay as few and as minimal taxes as possible? And if the cuts further erode social coherence given the widening income gap with, even in the superficially "best of times" during the past decade, hundreds of new millionaires (but tens of thousands of new poverty cases)?]
- In Detroit, Gov. Jennifer Granholm plans to end state funding for the Michigan State Fair after this year...
- In New Jersey, the popular Appel Farm outdoor music festival in Elmer was canceled.... Other towns are canceling or shortening fireworks shows....
Without festivals...community pride can go down...
[But "don't worry, be happy" -]
Phoenix sees signs of rebirth in bust - Foreclosures fuel a low-end boom, Boston Sunday Globe, A11.
[There were plenty of such "booms" throughout the 11 years of the Great Depression - CHECK whether by our loose standards today (= 3 straight quarters of growth?) the Depression was actually ended by the workweek reduction of 1938-40!]
Politics in public pension funds raises concern \-\ $2.3m windfall for middleman, inside header + frontpage subhead, Boston Sunday Globe, A11, A1.
["When Will They Ever Learn" Dept. - The has-been failed state of the once-great 'leader of the free world' is dissolving in corruption. "I just want MY SHARE" = that is, ALL I can grab, never mind the silenced question about the existence of a point of diminishing returns in the concentration of the national income and wealth where the concentration turns self-undermining. And self-styled "conservatives" do nothing or look the other way, citing "free market forces" while their entire system corrodes around them, when they should be asking how we reverse this concentration on a market basis - we suggest full employment by design, no matter how short a workweek it takes.]

5/23/2009 saturday (archives) –
TIMESIZING instead of downsizing in the news (archives) - Google News Search newsclips of what the world is doing that's on the right track - the core solution is so obvious, nobody's noticing it - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and it's reinvented thousands of times every day in every downturn despite *dismissal by the 'experts' -
Four-day work week proposal for city workers poses more than a few hurdles — COLUMN -...Status quo works,
Posted By DOUG MILLROY, SaultStar.com - Sault Ste-Marie,Ontario,Canada.
...Fratesi told councillors during budget deliberations that the four-day work week is a nice concept but a reduced work week will mean a cut in services... - see whole article under today's date.
Shorter hours bid to cut job losses, ThisIsLincolnshire.co.uk.
Lincoln manufacturing firm Bifrangi (UK) has announced another 33 job cuts on top of the 48 redundancies announced last month. But staff are being consulted on proposals for a shorter working week which could reduce the number of jobs which are culled... - see whole article under today's date.
[Workweek reduction is happening anyway, but not in the best way.]

LESS-STRATEGIC GOOD NEWS (archives) -
SEC slaps trade ban on staff - Rules follow investments by 2 agency lawyers...,
Wall Street Journal, A1.
[You mean there wasn't a ban before?!]

doom du jourtm – today's headlines from helltm (archives) –
ECONOMY-KILLING DOWNSIZING in the news (archives) - all quickly reversible by substituting timesizing -
U.S. jobless rate likely to pass Europe's - So much for the idea that flexibility to hire and fire produces more jobs, NY Times, B3.
[Yeah, and so much for all our criticism that Europe's inflexibility to hire and fire produces less jobs.]
California led in job losses in April, cutting 63,700 - Only six states escaped as layoffs continue to spread, NY Times, B2.

BANKRUPTCY tsunami (archives) in the news - staunched only by risky war or safe timesizing -
Two Illinois banks are seized, bringing total to 36, NY Times, B2.
Strategic Capital Bank and Citizens National bank...

CONTINUING DEATHSPIRAL (archives) - reversed only by dumb war or smart timesizing -
Putting your house in order [1], letter to editor by Tim Wade of Marlborough Wiltshire, Economist magazine, 20.
[Sound familiar to Americans and Canadians? -]
...Parliamentary democracy as we have known it is slipping away, and with it the utility of Parliament itself. ...MPs [Members of Parliament] are now career politicians [not truly elected, changing, ever relevant representatives]. ...An increasingly large chunk of legislation affecting Britain now comes from the EU. It is not hard to see MPs as ornaments who distract voters as their democratic institutions fade away. The British government has an ever-decreasing relevance and our MPs [or Congressmen] are mere flies buzzing around the carcass of Westminster [or Washington or Ottawa] power. The electorate has noticed.
[But since no real choice is being offered.... The next letter hammers the point home -]
Putting your house in order [2], letter to editor by Robert Tyrell in Bettona Italy, Economist magazine, 20.
...The expenses scandal is only the latest and most obvious symptom of the sickness of our system of unrepresentative government. MPs [or Congressmen] have more in common with each other than with the people they supposedly represent. Most go straight from school, university or trade unions [in USA it's just law school] into the breeding tanks of the politicial parties, then into the aquarium of Westminster [or Washington]. They are a privileged caste, claiming to serve others when their principal concern is to perpetuate their own power, preferences and prestige.
Our...constitution is a shameful sham. Party oligarchs manipulate the absurd first-past-the-post electoral system, which puts governments into power with more votes against them than for them.
[In the US it's done with voting machines designed and manufactured by one party, and even if the other party swamps the rigging and wins, their choice of 'problems' and 'solutions' is preset and irrelevantly distracting or downright destructive.]
They are not motivated to change the system they are dependent upon and profit from....
[Therefore it's a huge system with no negative=change-motivating feedback and therefore no changibility = adaptability - and therefore no sustainability.]
Both they and the electorate become more and more cynical, and Britain [and U.S. and Canada...] comes to resemble more and more the political casino of Italy.
[A casino might be fun. We'd say robbers' cave.]
Job fight: Immigrants vs. locals - Tennessee residents compete for work they once scorned; An all-night wait for slaughterhouse shifts, Wall Street Journal, A1.
[Can't save the world by moving it here (but can sure clobber your own living standards and minority wages!).]
Dollar, Treasurys get buffeted as Dow slips, WSJ, B1.
As dollars pile up, uneasy traders lower the currency's value, NY Times, B1.
[At last, the once-great U.S. dollar is finding its own true level = crap.]
Morgan Stanley raises senior officers' salaries, Reuters via NY Times, B2.
Morgan Stanley boosts salaries as its bonuses are limited, WSJ, B1.
[In a depression they spurred? When will they ever learn?]
GM gets $4 billion in new U.S. funds, WSJ, B1.
[When will they eeeee-ver learn? - The American Revolution was triggered by taxation without representation. This is colossal THEFT without representation. Where are the targeted referendums, or even empowered public-opinion polls?]
Coming: the other side's story, NY Times, A1.
Several members of the Bush administration...are readying memoirs to tell their side of the story.
[Ah, isn't that what we exclusively heard from these monsters for the last eight horrible years?! The whole Bush regime should be thrown into solitary confinement and left to rot.]

5/22/2009 friday (archives) –
TIMESIZING instead of downsizing in the news (archives) - Google News Search newsclips of what the world is doing that's on the right track - the core solution is so obvious, nobody's noticing it - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and it's reinvented thousands of times every day in every downturn despite *dismissal by the 'experts' -
Chesapeake schools to cut summer hours, teacher prep, By Alicia P.Q. Wittmeyer, The Virginian-Pilot via HamptonRoads.com - Norfolk,VA,USA.
...The $397 million budget includes some changes to the one that the board sent to the City Council, including savings on electricity from a four-day work week... - see whole article under today's date.
WorkShare helping workers and employers, By Benjamin N. Gedan, RI News via Providence Journal via projo.com - Providence,RI,USA.
...The manufacturing workweek has been particularly squeezed. Over the past year, factory workers still lucky enough to get shifts lost on average six-tenths of an hour of work, according to state data... - see whole article under today's date.
[Workweek reduction is happening anyway, but not in the best way.]

doom du jourtm – today's headlines from helltm (archives) –
ECONOMY-KILLING DOWNSIZING in the news (archives) - all quickly reversible by substituting timesizing -
Momentive [Performance Materials Inc.] says it will shift [25 of its 1000] jobs from area [ie: Waterford NY],
Albany Times Union, C1.
...to Indiana, China and Germany...

GOVERNMENT MAKEWORK in the news (archives) - always too little too late, & unnecessary with full employment via timesizing -
Military-industrial redux, editorial, NY Times, A28.
The Pentagon has been rightly shamed by reports that 96 major new weapons programs are running almost $300 billion over estimates and averaging 22 months behind delivery. As Congress took aim this week at this sorry performance, defense officials rushed to announce that they would be hiring 20,000 new managers and engineers during the next five years to ride herd over weapons development...
[See realm #1 of our Realms of Modern Makework = yet another chunk of evidence that any talk of "efficiency" is a joke in an economy where the workweek has been frozen at a pre-technology level.]

BANKRUPTCY tsunami (archives) in the news - staunched only by risky war or safe timesizing -
S&K Menswear will close its remaining stores...Chapter 11, Albany Times Union, C1.
...105 stores in 26 states...

CONTINUING DEATHSPIRAL (archives) - reversed only by dumb war or smart timesizing -
Recession turns malls into ghost towns, Wall Street Journal, A1.
[eg:] Eastland Mall in Charlotte NC...
Local jobless rate [6.7%] remains at a [2-decade] high, Albany Times Union, A1 pointer to C1.
...for fourth month in a row but below the state rate [7.5%]
Unemployment rate still grim, Albany Times Union, C1.

5/21/2009 thursday (archives) –
TIMESIZING instead of downsizing in the news (archives) - Google News Search newsclips of what the world is doing that's on the right track - the core solution is so obvious, nobody's noticing it - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and it's reinvented thousands of times every day in every downturn despite *dismissal by the 'experts' -
How to avoid laying off your staff, by Karen Kroll, Bankrate.com - USA.
...Without getting into dollar figures, he let them know how the business was doing and offered options: layoffs, or switching everyone to a four-day workweek... - see whole article under today's date.
[There's the smart - here - and the stupid = next article. Unfortunately the stupid are in what passes for our healthcare system.]
Shorter hours for medical residents could be costly, AHIP Solutions SmartBrief.com.
[But staying with 80-hour workweeks could be costlier.]
A new study found that allowing medical residents to work fewer hours and have longer naps during shifts could cost teaching hospitals $1.6 billion annually, with no guarantees that the change would reduce medical errors or improve patient safety... - see whole article under today's date.
[They need guarantees after all the survey results to that effect?! These people are dangerously stupid.]

ECONOMY-KILLING DOWNSIZING in the news (archives) - all quickly reversible by substituting timesizing -
GM dealers take the hit - More than one third of dealerships will close Canada-wide, cutting up to 10,000 jobs,
Toronto Globe & Mail, A1.

CONTINUING DEATHSPIRAL (archives) - reversed only by dumb war or smart timesizing -
Sears Canada reeling from 85% Q1 drop,
Financial Times, FP1.
Tight times spell an end to the liquid lunch, Toronto Globe, B1.
[Well, this one has some positive aspects, I guess...]
Economist sees market recovery as 'a meandering creek', Ottawa Citizen, D1.
[Which economist? This article is so poorly written &/or headlined, it's impossible to say without doing a linguistic analysis.]

5/20/2009 wednesday (archives) –
TIMESIZING instead of downsizing in the news (archives) - Google News Search newsclips of what the world is doing that's on the right track - the core solution is so obvious, nobody's noticing it - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and it's reinvented thousands of times every day in every downturn despite *dismissal by the 'experts' -
Palmer battles cutbacks, By NANCY H. GONTER ngonter@repub.com, The Republican - MassLive.com - Springfield,MA,USA.
...She questioned the use of a four-day work week over the summer, saying some departments are already overburdened... - see whole article under today's date.
[Is there a choice?]
Recreation mission - Cutting hours and adding fees will limit access to city recreation opportunities for many local youngsters. editorial, Lawrence Journal World via LJWorld.com - Lawrence,KS,USA.
...It'sa sad situation, however, especially at the beginning of summer, for the city to be looking at increased fees or shorter hours, either of which could limit access to city facilities for local children... - see whole article under today's date.
Germany extends short-work benefits, AP via Forbes - NY,USA.
The German government decided Wednesday to extend benefits for people put on shorter working hours, expanding an arrangement that is being extensively used in the economic crisis... - see whole article under today's date.
[So it's happening anyway, all over the world. but not necessarily in the best way.]

LESS-STRATEGIC GOOD NEWS (archives) -
Credit card fees curbed - US Senate approves sweeping restrictions, House passage seen; limiting interest hikes,
Wall Street Journal, A1.

doom du jourtm – today's headlines from helltm (archives) –
CONTINUING DEATHSPIRAL (archives) - reversed only by dumb war or smart timesizing -
Fed's toxic assets plan, Financial Times, p.1 pointer to p.2.
The Federal Reserve will provide loans to finance bubble-era [as if it's over!] commercial mortgage-backed securities from July onwards in a move officials hope will stem a financial crisis in the commercial real-estate industry.
[It won't, because there's been no investigation of the extent of the toxic assets and the bubble, and the lunatics are still in charge of the asylum.]
Housing sector worsens - U.S. residential building fell to lowest level since 1959 last month,
Financial Times, p.1 pointer to p.22.
Housing starts hit a low in April, falling 12.8% from March..., WSJ, A1 pointer to A2.
[Ecology-wise (which is the only thing that counts long-term), this is good news. But it's bad news for a primitive, growth-dependent economic design like our current one.]
Banks are holding life-insurance policies on workers, with the firms as beneficiaries, a tactic to help pay executive bonuses and pensions, WSJ, A1 pointer.
[Great. This gives executives a motive to have workers murdered and so should be illegal. Haven't we given enough motive to murder by tolerating the cancerous growth of weapons manufacturers and their lobbyists?]

5/19/2009 tuesday (archives) –
TIMESIZING instead of downsizing in the news (archives) - Google News Search newsclips of what the world is doing that's on the right track - the core solution is so obvious, nobody's noticing it - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and it's reinvented thousands of times every day in every downturn despite *dismissal by the 'experts' -
Deschutes won't reduce services - Proposed 2009-10 budget eliminates about 30 jobs compared with prior year, By Hillary Borrud / The Bulletin via BendBulletin.com - Bend,OR,USA.
... Development Department reduced its hours by 10 percent, the Environmental Health Division had to fit the same amount of work into a shorter workweek. - see whole article under today's date.
Ingra plans to cut down the workweek, Makfax.com.mk - Skopije,Macedonia.
ZAGREB - Construction company Ingra is considering cutting down the workweek to four days, or 32 working hours, due to the global economic crisis, which especially hit the construction industry... Some European countries have already shortened the workweek. In Croatia, trade unions, employers, and the Government all propose it as a good anti-recession measure. - see whole article under today's date.
Russia's AvtoVAZ to slash work week in June, Reuters.com.
MOSCOW - AvtoVAZ (AVAZ.MM) will slash working hours starting in June, Russia's largest car maker said on Tuesday, less than two months after the government unveiled a massive bailout plan meant to keep auto workers employed... - see whole article under today's date.
[So it's happening anyway, all over the world. but not in the best way.]

doom du jourtm – today's headlines from helltm (archives) –
CONTINUING DEATHSPIRAL (archives) - reversed only by dumb war or smart timesizing -
Washington walks fine line with free trade - U.S. trade officials want to forge new deals [that further gut their own economy?] but protectionist sentiment is running high, Toronto Globe & Mail, B1.
[Economics has turned into a cold war between the 'experts' who come hardwired with suicidal True Beliefs installed - (don't confuse therm with facts about loss of control and jobs and consumers and domestic markets and sustainable investments!) - and all the rest of us (Quebecois "nous autres"), who have somehow retained the ability to see the obvious, especially when the 'experts' are pouring us hemlock cocktails and turning us into a Jonestown economy. (Don't try to run away or we'll shootchya in the back - can't stand unfavorable comparisons.)]
Central banking in a crisis - Once deemed a cure-all, inflation targeting is being called into question, Toronto Globe & Mail, B1 pointer to B3.
[Which it wouldn't if it hadn't completely forgotten about its other founding concern, employment. And then there's the consideration that its 'tool chest' contains only ONE anti-inflation tool, and that tool clobbers our overall economic Sacred Goal = Growth - by raising interest rates and making it hard for businesses to borrow and GROW - because, oh horror! that might mean hiring more people and giving unhappy employees options that could help them get higher pay - never mind that that would create stronger markets and productivity and investments and never mind there is a much more positive way to control inflation, hitherto completely ignored.]
Madagascar at crossroads - Second political crisis in 11 years leaves nation's economy reeling, Toronto Globe & Mail, B1 pointer to B13.
[Ohoh. 'Bad for economy' might be bad for all Madagascar's fun animals, as in the movie - ah what WAS its name?!? mmmmph - oh yeah = "Madagascar" - all them cute lemurs and lorises and aye-ayes and tarsiers and sifakas.]

5/18/2009 monday (archives) –
TIMESIZING instead of downsizing in the news (archives) - Google News Search newsclips of what the world is doing that's on the right track - the core solution is so obvious, nobody's noticing it - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and it's reinvented thousands of times every day in every downturn despite *dismissal by the 'experts' -
More flexibility for bosses to cut costs and save jobs, By Kor Kian Beng,, StraitsTimes.com - Singapore.
...Some of the key changes include a shorter work week; introducing no-pay leave...
- see whole article under today's date.
Ford Workers Blast 4-Day Work Week, AP via The Moscow Times - Russia.
[Only half the labor movement has ever "got it" when it comes to avoiding wage-bashing labor surplus by cutting working hours. If the workers here have any alternative to suggest. it's not mentioned in the article. But then, isn't Russia the land where "employees pretend to work and employers pretend to pay them"?]
ST. PETERSBURG, Russia -...The plant's managers intend to cut the working week from June through October, said the plant's spokeswoman Yekaterina Kulinenko... - see more of article under today's date.

doom du jourtm – today's headlines from helltm (archives) –
BANKRUPTCY tsunami (archives) in the news - staunched only by risky war or safe timesizing -
..General Motors Corp. and its Canadian counterpart edge closer to the brink of bankruptcy..,
Ottawa Business Journal, cover story.

CONTINUING DEATHSPIRAL (archives) - reversed only by dumb war or smart timesizing -
Ups and downs whipsaw supply chain, by Phred Dvorak, Wall Street Journal, A1.
For a man who sells the chip "brains" that power milllions of TVs, cameras and other gadgets, Levy Gerzberg found himself surprisingly unplugged last fall. In just a few weeks, business virtually stopped.
He still marvels at the speed of the collapse. The reasons are now starting to become clear. The world's complex "just in time" [JIT] manufacturing supply chain...
[Well well well. Here's my first and defining example of specific, lower-level design-generation dissonance. I've long suspected that the naive CEOs and cushioned decision-makers who run our economic system have been assuming a much more advanced macroeconomic design than we have - one where the employment base, consumer base and investment annex can take a lot more abuse than our current ones can. But here we have the revelation that one of the manufacturing 'advances' pioneered by Japan in the 1980s, JIT manufacturing, assumes, presupposes and prerequires a stability of demand that our current self-cannibalizing downsizing capitalism just can't deliver. Well well well. So uncool to talk about 'employment' - yecch - the Fed has dropped it to focus exclusively on inflation (regardless of DEflation) - but apparently we've been ignoring it to our cost in many many dimensions.]
Advertising - Networks pitch in an uncertain climate, by Elliott & Carter, New York Times, B1.
Each May, the big broadcast television networks invite advertisers, agency executives and affiliates to
peek at their schedules for the coming season. But the awful economy threatens to spoil the party
before it begins on Monday...
Help out low-wage earners: group, by Tracey Tong, Ottawa Metro, 1A.
POVERTY - As a single parent who immigrated to Canada, Michelle Walrond said..."Minimum-wage workers are working full time, and they're only bringing home $840 a month." \She\ is a leader with Assoc. of Community Organizations for Reform Now [(ACORN), speaking] at the launch of ACORN's living wage campaign Thursday... "If you work full time, you should be able to make a living wage," said Rob Rainer, exec. dir. of Canada Without Poverty...
[How sad that after all these years and all this experience, progressives and idealists and reformers STILL have not learned the effective strategy for progress = labor always had two historic goals: higher pay and shorter hours, and when they could only get one and it was higher pay, they wound up with neither because they were fighting natural market forces and just pinning a higher pricetag on a surplus commodity, labor hours, but when they could just get one goal and it was shorter hours, they wound up with both because they were reducing the surplus of labor hours and harnessing natural market forces in getting employers to bid against one another for good help, so pay went up by itself, no minimum wage laws were needed and no living wage campaigns either (in fact, the very existence of living wage campaigns is evidence of the ineffectuality of the whole "raise pay!" approach). If we learned from our own history, we raised pay during World War II by reducing the surplus of labor (in the worst possible way = dressing workers up as soldiers and sending them overseas to get killed) and that raised pay so strongly that the government set up a "wage and price control board" to check pay raises (spinning them as "inflation"), but employers got around wage controls by inventing "benefits." So what should all these ineffectual progressive groups be doing instead of focusing on getting self-defeating higher wages? They should be focusing on getting self-reinforcing shorter working hours by: (1) flexing up the definition of "full time" that's been frozen at 40 hours a week for over 50 years, (1a) fighting for a shorter workweek (Timesizing Phase 4) and (1b) an earlier start to "overtime" each week, and meanwhile (2) getting enforcement of the present 40-hour dinosaur workweek that's widely unenforced and (2a) fighting for legislation to convert overtime (OT) smoothly and automatically into OT-targeted JOBS - and (2b) OT-targeted TRAINING if qualified candidates aren't immediately available. This is what the Timesizing program's Phase 2 and Phase 3 accomplish.]
Return of the five-finger discount \-\ Petty theft on the rise...- Shoplifters are fighting the system and economic woes, but it's not just the professionals - Websites and Facebook groups are teaching the average Joe how to thieve,
Carly Weeks reports, Toronto Globe & Mail, p. L4.
[Our cushioned decision-makers are paying a high price for not implementing fluctuating adjustment of the workweek against underemployment DECADES AGO.]
Pakistan is seen rapidly adding nuclear arms - Security fears raised - U.S. worries that aid might be used to build arsenal, NYTimes, A1.
[Well well well. Our good buddy and ally Pakistan, dictatorship notwithstanding, was goin' nuclear while the Bushies were obsessed with hallucinatin' WMDs in Iraq and Iran. What are the murderous morons managing our weapons industry (and our foreign policy) gonna do now? Well well well.]

5/17/2009 sunday (archives) –
TIMESIZING instead of downsizing in the news (archives) - Google News Search newsclips of what the world is doing that's on the right track - the core solution is so obvious, nobody's noticing it - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and it's reinvented thousands of times every day in every downturn despite *dismissal by the 'experts' -
Airline Ticket Prices Need To Go Up, By Henry Blodget, BusinessInsider.com.
...Better training; Shorter work hours; Better pay (which will attract better talent); Better monitoring of real-time performance (regular reviews of pilot decisions and habits during routine flights, so we don't need to wait for disasters... - see whole article under today's date.
The state of coal - As steelmakers cut production, and coal stockpiles increase, Alabama miners are nervous about the future, By Patrick Rupinski, 5/16 TuscaloosaNews.com.
...But in neighboring Jefferson County, another major coal company, Drummond Coal, recently laid off 56 miners at its underground Shoal Creek mine as it moved to a four-day workweek, Dewberry said... - see whole article under today's date.

doom du jourtm – today's headlines from helltm (archives) –
CONTINUING DEATHSPIRAL (archives) - reversed only by dumb war or smart timesizing -
A chef moves down market - Daniel Boulud is opening the diner-inspired DBGB in New York just as the city's high-end restaurants have been devastated by the recession,
New York Times, A1 pointer to B1.
Avoid F.D.R.'s mistakes, by Alan Blinder, NYT, B6.
[Dollars to donuts Blinder has been blind to FDR's biggest mistake (admitted in 1935, partially corrected in 1938) = his blockage of the 30-hour workweek bill of 1933 after it had passed the US Senate 53-30 - he regretted it two years later when he'd had a chance to learn that if you don't make the private sector hire its own disposable employees, it downsizes its own markets and drags government into the too-little too-late roles of employer and charity of last resort = not a tax-reducing plan. And then the makework spills over from the public to the private sector and we get tens of thousands more diesel trucks instead of just hundreds more freight trains, and even in the inner sanctum of efficiency, high tech, we get four&counting cold wars dba makework - spam mailers and spam filters, virus writers and virus checkers, adware poppers and adware blockers, spyware planters and spyware extractors... - efficiency is a joke in the frozen-workweek economic design that still prevails.]

5/16/2009 saturday (archives) –
TIMESIZING instead of downsizing in the news (archives) - Google News Search newsclips of what the world is doing that's on the right track - the core solution is so obvious, nobody's noticing it - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and it's reinvented thousands of times every day in every downturn despite *dismissal by the 'experts' -
Posts from an Insane Healthcare System - A Skewed View of Happiness, by Doc Gurley, DocGurley.com.
...The happiest countries are the Northern European ones. The reasons Forbes gives for this achievement include a higher per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP),a shorter work-week (37 hours), and low unemployment (4% versus the U.S.’s 9%). Only in passing was a sense of community mentioned... - see whole article under today's date.
State to seek 5% cut in school, local aid, By Steven Walters, Amy Hetzner and Larry Sandler of the Journal Sentinel, 5/15 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel via jsonline.com - Milwaukee,WI,USA.
...Walker said the governor's comments justified moves Walker made Thursday, when he ordered at least 2,500 of the county's nearly 5,000 workers to cut back to a 35-hour work week. Those cuts would last throughout the rest of this year, unless the economy rebounds, Walker said... - see whole article under today's date.

LESS-STRATEGIC GOOD NEWS (archives) -
Judge blocks robo calls selling car warranties, AP via Boston Globe, B1.
[Phew, these pests were calling us on our cell phones, using us expensive message units and using alarmist tactics like 'your car insurance is about to expire - this is your second warning' = another warped initiative due to our expanding job desperation - all of which would vanish if we'd pressure for full employment via unemployment-controlled workweeks and overtime-to-training&hiring conversion.]

doom du jourtm – today's headlines from helltm (archives) –
ECONOMY-KILLING DOWNSIZING in the news (archives) - all quickly reversible by substituting timesizing -
Betrayed - Nearly half of Canadian executives chopped from their jobs were taken by surprise, Toronto Globe, B1.
Free Viagra keeps spirits up - Pfizer is offering free medications - including the erectile dysfunction drug [for a year] - to uninsured Americans who lost their jobs, Toronto Globe, A1 pointer to B1.

CONTINUING DEATHSPIRAL (archives) - reversed only by dumb war or smart timesizing -
Factories post surprising drop in sales, Ottawa Citizen, H1.
[Why are they surprised? They've laid off all their customers and their customers'customers. Where do they think they're going to get sales - the easter bunny? the tooth fairy? poorer countries overseas where they've sent the jobs? Nothing can come from nothing and upsizing dba 'growth' can't come from downsizing - but it can come from timesizing.]
Young workers feeling pain - A drop in the economy means students are having hard time finding jobs this summer, Ottawa Citizen, H1.

5/15/2009 friday (archives) –
TIMESIZING instead of downsizing in the news (archives) - Google News Search newsclips of what the world is doing that's on the right track - the core solution is so obvious, nobody's noticing it - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and it's reinvented thousands of times every day in every downturn despite *dismissal by the 'experts' -
Flexible Work Arrangements: A Smart Strategy In Troubled Times - Formalizing flextime may benefit companies, their employees and take the stigma out of asking for time off, by Sylvia Ann Hewlett, Forbes.com - NY,USA.
...The options include: A four-day workweek and a 20% reduction in base pay; a four- to 12-week sabbatical with a 30% reduction in base pay; a combination of the two options, or sticking with the status quo...
- see whole article under today's date.
BASF to bring short-time work program in Ludwigshafen, fibre2fashion.com/news.
..in 20 production plants and associated service units... Most of the 1,000 employees will start working short time in June and July; a smaller number will follow in August and September...
- see whole article under today's date.
Scania to run four-day work week from June, Reuters.com - USA.
Stockholm, Sweden - Truckmaker Scania (SCVb.ST) said on Friday it would introduce a four-day working week and related pay cut for 12,000 employees next month in its Swedish operations as it seeks to adjust to the plunge in market demand... - see whole article under today's date.

doom du jourtm – today's headlines from helltm (archives) –
ECONOMY-KILLING DOWNSIZING in the news (archives) - all quickly reversible by substituting timesizing -
Chrysler ax falls across U.S. - Auto maker marks 789 dealerships for closing; GM set to target 1000 Friday, Wall Street Journal, A1.

CONTINUING DEATHSPIRAL (archives) - reversed only by dumb war or smart timesizing -
Treasuries end flat at 3.107%, as rally ends, WSJ, C1 pointer to C7.

5/14/2009 thursday (archives) –
TIMESIZING instead of downsizing in the news (archives) - Google News Search newsclips of what the world is doing that's on the right track - the core solution is so obvious, nobody's noticing it - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and it's reinvented thousands of times every day in every downturn despite *dismissal by the 'experts' -
CV employees face pay cut, furlough or elimination of jobs,
By Jerry Herrmann, 5/13 PrescottDailyCourier.com via Sun Shopper - Prescott,AZ,USA.
...She said if the council decides on a pay cut, it must decide if the standard workweek is going to remain at 40 hours or go down to 36 hours... - see whole article under today's date.
[Here's what happens when you lose track of time and your CEO doesn't -]
Stressed workers have unused vacation days - Untaken time worth $6.03 billion,
By Kim Covert, Canwest News Service via Ottawa Citizen, D1.
...Nearly 25% of Canadians aren't taking the full number of vacation days they have been allotted...
- see whole article under today's date.
[Work extra hours and screw yourself - and it ain't just Canada+U.S. ...]
Short on bonuses and high on stress, By JOYCE HOOI, AsiaOne.com - Singapore.
...65% of respondents here spend a daily average of 30 minutes or more on work emails after work hours, against the global average of 57%... - see whole article under today's date.

doom du jourtm – today's headlines from helltm (archives) –
ECONOMY-KILLING DOWNSIZING in the news (archives) - all quickly reversible by substituting timesizing -
End of the line - As the last truck leaves GM's truck plant in Oshawa ON CANADA today, decades of big cars and big ambitions come to a close, Toronto Globe, B1.
Portfolios not keeping pace with 'recovery', Ottawa Citizen, D1.
Fiat plan would cut 4,800 jobs in Naples, Ottawa Citizen, D1.

CONTINUING DEATHSPIRAL (archives) - reversed only by dumb war or smart timesizing -
In about-face, Obama wants abuse photos to remain secret - President reverses pledges of transparency, citing security concerns..., Toronto Globe, A1.
[Same ol', same ol' - 'president' still better than the people who elect and pay him - double standard - secret government - rule by weapons industry CEOs.]

5/13/2009 wednesday (archives) –
TIMESIZING instead of downsizing in the news (archives) - Google News Search newsclips of what the world is doing that's on the right track - the core solution is so obvious, nobody's noticing it - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and it's reinvented thousands of times every day in every downturn despite *dismissal by the 'experts' -
Mason City cement company cuts work week, AP via ChicagoTribune.com - United States.
...Their work week was cut to 32 hours on Monday. Jeff Sieg of the company's parent company, Lehigh Hanson Inc. of Texas, says the reduction is temporary and workers will return to normal working schedules as production increases...
- see whole article under today's date.
$1 million not enough for county - Commissioners deem savings from proposed 4-day week too small, By MEREDITH SOMERS, SoMdNews.com - Waldorf,MD,USA.
...During a public hearing on the bill in early April, some county employees expressed their support for the adjusted schedule, saying they would prefer a shortened work week to having fellow staff members cut from the payroll...
- see whole article under today's date.
[Win some, lose some. Some people in some situations just don't get it. You can't keep injecting worksaving technology against a frozen 1940 workweek and still maintain employment and spending and markets.]
Bigger isn't better -- A return to booming economic growth would put the world back on the path to disaster -- it's time for a radical rethinking, By Peter A. Victor, OttawaCitizen.com.
...The ingredients for success include a shorter work year to reduce unemployment yet retain the advantages of technological progress.... With more free time at our disposal we would educate ourselves and our children for life not just work... - see whole article under today's date.

LESS-STRATEGIC GOOD NEWS (archives) -
Toyota too is likely to cut costs, by Micheline Maynard, NY Times, B1.
...Instead of spending $16,000 to hire a contractor to build a conveyor belt for delivering bins of parts to a section of the assembly line, workers designed and installed their own, for $700...

doom du jourtm – today's headlines from helltm (archives) –
CONTINUING DEATHSPIRAL (archives) - reversed only by dumb war or smart timesizing -
THEME - is the recession really over???
Recession adds to fiscal peril of U.S. benefits - Social Security fund - Geithner says curbing health costs can help Medicare, New York Times, A1.
[The longer Geithner is kept in his job, the longer the coverup and worsening will go on.]
Staff shortages in labs may put patients at risk, WSJ, D1.
[Or is it actually training shortages - due to lack of overtime-to-training conversion.]
USDA sees more high grocery bills,
Wall Street Journal, C1 pointer to C14.
Heard on the Street - Is the recession running off track?, WSJ, A1 pointer to A18.
Risk in market's one-track mind, WSJ, A18.
...U.S. railroad freight traffic is running about one fifth lower than a year ago...
[How about U.S. truck freight traffic - most of which should be on the rails (see realm #13 of modern American makework) except then we'd have to resume the reduction of the 'full-time' workweek to avoid a much faster downspiral via mega-unemployment.]
Cargo ships treading water off Singapore, waiting for work, NYT, B1.

5/12/2009 tuesday (archives) –
TIMESIZING instead of downsizing in the news (archives) - newsclips of what the world is doing that's ON THE RIGHT TRACK - the core solution is so obvious, nobody's noticing it - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and it's reinvented thousands of times every day in every downturn despite *dismissal by the 'experts' -
Lincoln Elec Experiences Global Decline In Welding-Product Sales, Dow Jones via Wall Street Journal via online.wsj.com - USA.
...When sales dropped, Lincoln management reduced the work week for hourly workers to 32 hours, from the 40 to 45 hours employees previously worked, Petrella said, an action possible because Lincoln plants aren't unionized. "The ability to reduce work hours was one of the most powerful tools" in adjusting production to demand, he said... - see whole article under today's date.
[Lincoln Electric has been jerking around its workweek instead of its workforce ever since 1959 and as a result, it has the highest pay, highest morale, highest productivity, highest competitiveness and highest survivability in the American rust belt.]
ArcelorMittal workers attack HQ, By AOIFE WHITE, The Associated Press via WashingtonPost.com - United States.
...The European steel federation says that one in six steel workers in the region have lost their jobs or are working shorter hours since the start of the recession... - see whole article under today's date.
[Nucor Steel in the USA is our other big case study of a company belittling its workweek instead of its workforce.]

LESS-STRATEGIC GOOD NEWS (archives) -
Quebec minister blocks Robert-Guertin Arena deal, by Dave Rogers, Ottawa Citizen, C1.
Quebec Minister of Municipal Affairs Nathalie Normandeau has vetoed a deal between the City of Gatineau and the Gatineau Olympiques to renovate and expand the Arena.... [Hey, maybe the world would be better if women ran it (tho the Boston University School of Nursing wasn't that much better back in the 80s when I worked there and women ran it).]
Councillor Frank Therien said..."This deal was negotiated between Mayor Marc Bureau and the Olympiques." .\. The city would be responsible for the $28-million construction cost plus maintenance for 25 years, while the team would earn[?] all the profits.... [This type of crap is going on all over the continent = skuzzballs trying to saddle taxpayers with the bills for their new stadiums (or other minority hobbies) with no payback from profits - here it is in "nous autres" Quebec, but somehow they have provided for a higher-level of government to block it = something dozens of US cities and states could learn from?!! Gee, Marc Bureau wouldn't be 'on the take' would he? He's SUCH a nice guy. Nevertheless, just to be safe, I guess we better dump him, even if there's only a cocinelle (ladybug) runnin' against him - anything to get someone who has the common sense to avoid even just the appearance of corruption - cuz even if there's just the appearance, usually "where there's smoke, there's fire."]
Councillor Frank Therien said the decision is a victory for Gatineau taxpayers because no one knew whether the city could have negotiated a better deal with another contractor....
[Sheesh, this is jest like all them unbid contracts in Iraq, where $30-40 billion has...just disappeared!]
"I regard this decision as a victory for the people of Gatineau...."
[Well, here's one "people of Gatineau" who agrees with you, Frank - btw, you runnin' for mayor next time? - you're the kinda mayor we need (if we can't get Nathalie Normandeau) - at least for as long as it takes for the plain envelopes full of cash to penetrate your integrity.]

doom du jourtm – today's headlines from helltm (archives) –
CONTINUING DEATHSPIRAL (archives) - reversed only by dumb war or smart timesizing -
The letters of the recession - L dive and flatline... V big dive, quick rebound (recession likely already too long for this)... U big dive, long recession, strong rebound... W double dip; recovery cut off by complications such as debt overhang = possible scenario if stimulus-induced rebound sputters, Financial Post, FP1.
[And what foundation is there - such as a growing employment base and thence a growing consumer base - to allow a topdown stimulus-induced 'rebound' to do anything but 'sputter'? The "double dip" W, for example, is just a euphemism for a cascade with no bottom in sight.]
Credit markets regain record pace - Taking advantage of open markets, companies rich and poor are selling debt - whether they need to or not, Toronto Globe, B1.
[ie: the Mummy is still alive - the big pyramid scheme is back from the dead...]
Nortel sales continue freefall - Quarterly sales plunge 37%, losses hit $507M, Ottawa Citizen, D1.
As losses mount, Nortel plays for time, Toronto Globe, B1.
[Sounds like a good microeconomic metaphor for this recession/'recovery.' But -]
Nortel top gun's spin job tough to swallow - Zafirovski fails to connect with firm's Q1 slide,
Ottawa Citizen, A1.
Obama ousts top general as war plan escalates, Toronto Globe, A1.
...a casualty of Pres. Barack Obama's massive expansion of the war that will inject tens of thousands of troops into Taliban-infested areas in southern Afghanistan...
[So Obama is just as war-hooked/hawked as Bush - if you can't employ your fellow Americans at 40 hours a week or share the employment with a shorter workweek, you can at least militarize them, send them overseas, and hope that a lot of them get killed. Dumb-a dumbdumb.]

5/11/2009 monday (archives) –
TIMESIZING instead of downsizing in the news(archives) - newsclips of what the world is doing that's ON THE RIGHT TRACK - the core solution is so obvious, nobody's noticing it - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and it's reinvented thousands of times every day in every downturn despite *dismissal by the 'experts' -
Layoffs or furloughs? - Shedding some light on the layoff versus furlough debate, By Edward Russell, FinanceAsia - Hong Kong. ...Varying in style from voluntary or mandatory unpaid leave to a reduced work-week -- of course coupled with a pro rata pay cut -- they allow an organisation to cut costs without necessarily reducing headcount... - see whole article under today's date.
[Here's a perfect example of the self-destructiveness of the labor movement caught by the subtitle of
*Ben Hunnicutt's wonderful worktime history of the Great Depression,
"Work Without End: Abandoning Shorter Hours for the Right to Work" (1988) -]
Qantas workers cop longer hours, by Daniel Hurst, BrisbaneTimes.com - Brisbane,Queensland,Australia.
More than 500 Qantas heavy maintenance workers in Brisbane have accepted they will have to work longer hours in return for job security, the union says...- see whole article under today's date.
[And since there's only more job insecurity in the general surplus of labor that longer hours creates, and lower wages, and weaker spending and weaker consumer markets, these 500 Qantas heavy maintenance workers have just pushed the Australian and world economies a little closer to meltdown and their union is worse than useless - it is suicidal.]

LESS-STRATEGIC GOOD NEWS (archives) -
Admin [Obama's] will strengthen antitrust rules - Reversing Bush policy, NY Times, A1.

doom du jourtm – today's headlines from helltm (archives) –
ECONOMY-KILLING DOWNSIZING in the news (archives) - all quickly reversible by substituting timesizing -
Where's the bull? Amid layoffs and downsizing, Human Resource managers look for the best in a bad situation, Ottawa HR magazine, cover story.

CONTINUING DEATHSPIRAL (archives) - reversed only by dumb war or smart timesizing -
World [=the most cushioned among us] regains taste for risk [risking our money and security - And sure enough...] stocks, currencies in emerging markets sour, Wall St Journal, A1.
Darker times for solar-power industry,
Wall St Journal, B1.
Pipe dreams \-\ "We have rejected the protectionism that could deepen this crisis...", Toronto Globe, B1.
[On the contrary, it could give us the control we need to stop our own crisis from deepening.]
..."History tells us that turning inward can help turn a downturn into a depression." Barack Obama...Apr.2, 2009.
[No, history tells us that tariffs make downturns curable by national governments, which is the only effective level of government we have at this time.]
...Despite Obama's anti-protectionism rhetoric, Canadian manufacturers are finding themselves suddenly cut off from U.S. markets as his $800-billion stimulated plan takes effect.
[Good. Favoring our export-import industries at the expense of our overall domestic economy via our jobs, wages and consumers that it weakens, and the control over our own economy that it eliminates, is centuries premature in terms of the primitive economic design of world economies and the "global economy" of our times. We call ourselves "advanced." We're not. We're still jerking people around by the livelihood, controlling inflation by fostering unemployment and clobbering growth (despite our lip service to it) and settling for far less than full employment, wage-financed markets, marketable productivity, and sustainable investments. The Timesizing program sets the five-phase pattern for correcting every one of these decidedly unadvanced attributes.]

5/10/2009 (archives) –
TIMESIZING instead of downsizing in the news (archives) - newsclips of what the world is doing that's ON THE RIGHT TRACK- the core solution is so obvious, nobody's noticing it - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and it's reinvented thousands of times every day in every downturn despite *dismissal by the 'experts' -
Cut hours, not employees, By Tim Holt – 5/08 The Christian Science Monitor via news.yahoo.com, via blogger 1cooldude, 5/10 The Lounge, Zeropaid Forums via zeropaid.com/bbs.
One of the more intriguing chapters in labor history involves a decision by the Kellogg Company in 1930 to cut workers' hours from a 40- to a 30-hour week. We could learn a thing or two from this example... - see whole article under today's date.
City of Toledo seeks pay cuts of 15% from 5 unions - Mayor slashes 'double dipper' salaries 40%, By JC REINDL and IGNAZIO MESSINA, ToledoBlade.com - Toledo,OH,USA.
...It also would not apply to the nonunion employees who this month began a 32-hour work week, the equivalent of a 20 percent pay cut... - see whole article under today's date.

doom du jourtm – today's headlines from helltm (archives) –
CONTINUING DEATHSPIRAL (archives) - reversed only by dumb war or smart timesizing -
Global hoteliers look east as recession bites, By Tamara Walid, Reuters via uk.reuters.com.
Global hoteliers are pinning their hopes on the east's underserved leisure markets to offset falling revenue as holidaymakers and business travelers cut back to save money in the global downturn.... "Worldwide, our major locations right now where most of the growth is, are China, India and the Middle East," Ed Fuller, president and managing director of Marriott Lodging International told Reuters last week at a travel industry event in Dubai...
Australia May Face Debt Crisis From Grants to Young Home Buyers, Bloomberg.com.
...A surge in defaults in America was a key trigger for the financial crisis that pushed the global economy into its worst recession since World War II...

5/09/2009 saturday (archives) –
TIMESIZING instead of downsizing in the news (archives) - newsclips of what the world is doing that's ON THE RIGHT TRACK- the core solution is so obvious, nobody's noticing it - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and it's reinvented thousands of times every day in every downturn despite *dismissal by the 'experts' -
Graduate nurses must be kept on, says report, by EITHNE DONNELLAN, IrishTimes.com - Dublin,Ireland.
...In this way she said all nurses could get a shorter working week, which they have been campaigning for since they took industrial action in 2007... - see whole article under today's date.
Why free-range kids are on the rise - Amid recession, there are signs the status-obsessed helicopter parent is under threat, by Andrea Gordon, TORONTO STAR, Toronto,ONT,Canada.
...Researchers like Michael Ungar, author of Too Safe For Their Own Good and an expert on resilience, continue to warn that kids are deprived of learning and independence by bubble-wrapped childhoods and that they need freedom and time to take risks and make mistakes... - see whole article under today's date.
10 Questions on How to Improve NS's Genuine Progress Index [GPI] - Halifax Group questions party leaders, by Geoff Agombar, Spectator, 5/08 novanewsnow.com, County of Annapolis,NovaScotia, Canada.
...1. GPI Atlantic has estimated that illness and crime attributable to unemployment cost Nova Scotia more than $200 million in 2006. Given the high social costs of unemployment, what specific actions would your government take to avoid layoffs during this economic downturn and instead encourage shorter work hours and a redistribution of work time?..
- see whole article under today's date.
Green curriculum at UK preschool, By Jennifer Chait, 5/08 Blisstree.com, England,UnitedKingdom.
...Kids spend hours and hours sitting at desks and outdoor play time is cut shorter each year. Farley Nursery School in Wiltshire allows kids to spend much of their day outside instead of cooped up inside at desks...
[= Cutting the workday and starting the fight against workaholism at the nursery school level?]
- see whole article under today's date.

LESS-STRATEGIC GOOD NEWS (archives) -
[Canada] 35,900: Jobs added to the economy - 'Glimmers of hope': Some find work, others work for themselves - Bolstered by a surge in self-employment, the job market stabilized in April at 8% unemployment, Toronto Globe, B1.
[But then, what good is 'self-employment' with no clients? And what good are 'glimmers' to the 8% unemployed? It's time to cut this unnecessary insult to human intelligence and guarantee full employment, no matter how short a workweek it takes. And the spread of deflationary incentive will block runaway inflation without (unlike our current inflation control of raising interest rates) also blocking growth.]

doom du jourtm – today's headlines from helltm (archives) –
ECONOMY-KILLING DOWNSIZING in the news (archives) - all quickly reversible by substituting timesizing -
Jobless rate rises to 8.9%..., Wall St Journal, A1.
[A point nine always makes you suspect it's been doctored a bit - here it's really probably a TERRIBLE 9.0%.]
The curse of the class of 2009 - For college grads lucky enough to get work this year, low wages are likely to haunt them for a decade or more, Wall St Journal, A1.
[And exactly HOW is that supposed to add up to a recovery next year???]
At 8.9%, unemployment still rises, but pace slows [whoopeedoo] - 539,000 jobs were lost in April, but some economists say worst may be over, New York Times, A1.
[They ain't "economists" - they're happyface backup singers.]
Layoff threat looms at [Canada's] National Gallery, Ottawa Citizen, A1.

CONTINUING DEATHSPIRAL (archives) - reversed only by dumb war or smart timesizing -
Across U.S., slump revives town-gown divide, NYT, A1.
[Well if our 'smart' people and universities can't do any better than this...]
Faces of the crisis: Portraits of workers from here and elsewhere, Gatineau Droit, front page.
[trans. of] Les visages de la crise: Portraits de travailleurs d'ici et d'ailleurs
Toll rises as Iraq slows surge, Wall St Journal, A1.

5/08/2009 friday (archives) –
TIMESIZING instead of downsizing in the news (archives) - newsclips of what the world is doing that's ON THE RIGHT TRACK - the core solution is so obvious, nobody's noticing it - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and it's reinvented thousands of times every day in every downturn despite *dismissal by the 'experts' -
Rogers Corp. To Cut 20 Jobs In State, By DIANE LEVICK, The Hartford Courant via Courant.com - United States.
...Rogers' plant in Woodstock, which had been cut back to a three-day work week, increased to a four-day work week in late March... - see whole article under today's date.
[So it's happening spontaneously all over the private sector anyway = the workweek is being jerked around, shrunk & unshrunk, instead of the workforce and dependent consumer spending.]
Jobless rate jumps to 8.9% even as job losses throttle back - Nonfarm payrolls drop by 539,000; average hourly pay grows just 1 cent, By Rex Nutting, MarketWatch.com - USA.
...The average workweek was steady at a record-low 33.2 hours. Average hourly earnings rose 1 cent to $18.51 an hour, the smallest increase in three years... - see whole article under today's date.
[So it's happening anyway = the workweek IS reducing by market forces - this is actually GOOD NEWS about the efficiency and productivity of our technology. However, since we have not cut the official definition of "full time" to match reality, or cut it further to reduce the surplus labor who are bidding down wages and slowing the rise of average hourly earnings, we have turned good news into bad news. So do we really have a "free market" economy when we have a definition of "full time" employment that's rigidly controlled and has been frozen for 69 years at a level appropriate for our technological efficiency back then? - I don't think so.]
Swiss Unemployment Rises to a Three-Year High, by Geng Chen, DailyFX Research via DailyFX.com - New York,NY,USA.
...As in neighbouring Germany, more and more companies are putting their work force on shorter hours (Kurzarbeit), which can only...be a temporary solution if one assumes that demand will pick up again... - see whole article under today's date.
[(a) That's a big assumption when other companies are still downsizing and (b) not if demand "picks up again" from a much lower level!]

doom du jourtm – today's headlines from helltm(archives) –
CONTINUING DEATHSPIRAL (archives) - reversed only by dumb war or smart timesizing -
Fed sees up to $599 billion in bank losses, Wall St Journal, A1.
[So it's true: The only purpose of the so-called "stress test" on big banks was to dribble out to the public in nearly unnoticeable doses the truly horrifying news that their financial system has been completely looted and is totally bankrupt - "but DON'T PANIC!!!" (and now the public - as taxpayer - is being astronomically looted further and the real cure/investigation hasn't even started yet because the lunatics, like Geithner, are still in charge of the asylum). How bad is it? Well, now SIPC's in trouble -]
>Brokerage insurance firm ailing - Upheavals of '08 [if ONLY they weren't also '09!] leave $1.7B fund vulnerable, by Michael Kranish, Boston Globe, A1.
WASHINGTON - Until recently, the little-known Securities Investor Protection Corp. [SIPC] was flying high [like all the other high rollers seemed to be doing], confident its $1.7 billion fund was more than enough to insure investors against brokerage failures and fraud for years to come.
[So...like all the other high rollers, they let their guard down...]
For a decade, the agency did not raise how much it charged brokerage[s] for insurance. only $150 a year to insure every account for up to $500,000 whether it was...a small-time broker or admitted Ponzi-scheme operator Bernard Madoff.
Then came the financial collapse [starting in] 2008, which included Madoff's $65 billion swindle [small potatoes compared to the corruption of the whole system based on liars' loans and toxic assets!]
The cost of the claims in the Madoff case [alone] is expected to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars [conservatively] - and could wipe out the fund's assets....
[I think we can take that as a given since Madoff is just the tip of the tip of the iceberg.]
SIPC officials, who for years have said the fund could withstand the most severe economic shocks [yeah, right!], now acknowledge that it is in danger of dropping far below adequate levels... [They're still in denial, still trying to cover up and keep us calm! It ain't 'vulnerable' - it's BUSTED, just like the Pension Guaranty Corp., the Federal Reserve and the whole detached self-important self-obsessed system - but it's all the wealthy's doing, and they're holding all the IOU's anyway, so they can just pay themselves back - leave us taxpayers alone!]
Chairman of NY Fed quits amid questions, Wall St Journal, A1.
[The rats are trying to leave the sinking ship. But where can they go?]

5/07/2009 thursday (archives) –
TIMESIZING instead of downsizing in the news (archives) - newsclips of what the world is doing that's ON THE RIGHT TRACK - the core solution is so obvious, nobody's noticing it - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and it's reinvented thousands of times every day in every downturn despite *dismissal by the 'experts' -
EU calls for shorter work week to create jobs, Agence France-Presse via www.google.com/hostednews/afp.
PRAGUE — EU leaders on Thursday called for a shorter working week and extra state-funded retraining programmes as recession threatens millions of jobs... - see whole article under today's date.
[Hey it's happening spontaneously all over the private sector anyway, but not in the best systemic way. Case in point -]
Lanxess AG books 1Q net loss of euro14 million, By GEORGE FREY, AP via Forbes.com - NY,USA.
GERMANY -...The "Challenge 09" program will reduce working hours and compensation for employees, and combined with other production and technical measures, aims to cut costs by about euro250 million through 2010. In January, the company announced it was cutting back hours and pay for 5,000 German employees. It said at the time it would strike bonuses and reduce the work week for non-managerial employees to 35 hours from 37.5... - see whole article under today's date.
Globe union faces cuts, furloughs - Approval called crucial for paper's future, by Gavin & O'Brien, Boston Globe, p.A1.
...The proposal, described as the company's final offer to the Boston Newspaper Guild, includes 2 measures that roughly amount to a 10% reduction in wages: an 8.3% wagecut & 5 days of unpaid furlough... - see whole article under today's date.
[We're cutting worktime aaany waaay, but not the best waaay.]

LESS-STRATEGIC GOOD NEWS (archives) -
Business travel, New York Times, p.A1 news squib pointing to F1.
Corporate jets have been sold, business trips have become less frequent, first-class tickets have been traded in for seats in coach, and hotel suites are being exchanged for single rooms. It's the year of the downgrade.
[As E.F. Schuhmacher said, Small Is Beautiful. And btw, welcome back to the larger Rest of the World.]
is it high noon at the GOP corral?
letters to the editor, NY Times, A26.
By Deborah Leavy of Haverford PA - .\.David Brooks in "The Long Voyage Home" (Column, May 5)...posits that Republicans are in trouble because they are "the party of untrammeled freedom and maximum individual choice."
Huh?
Republicans favor government intrusions into such fundamental individual choices as reproductive health, marriage, adoption and death...
By Ann N. Greene of Philadelphia PA - David Brooks's excellent column struck a real chord with this cradle Republican.
I don't recognize the people who have taken over the party my family served for 150 years. The Republicans I grew up among believed in democratic capitalism, not a feudal society of gated communities for themselves served by an ill-housed, ill-nourished, ill-educated, un-doctored servant population.
They were veterans and had learned in war that everyone is expendable. They did not have utter contempt for working people. Even amid the social upheaval of the '60s, they were not the callous, precious, entitled people currently calling themselves "Republicans."
By Susan Hall Remacle of Canaan NH - I take exception to David Brooks's assertion that one of Republicans' core themes is "moral clarity"...
Does the Republican position of disregard for a policy of health care for all show moral clarity? What moral? Indifference?
Does the Republican position of tax the poor and middle class and give tax breaks to the rich show moral clarity? What moral? Selfishness?
How about the Republican position on global climate change? What moral? Ignorance?
What does the Republican' beloved trumpeting of individualism boil down to many times? Greed.
This self-held belief that the Republicans still cling to, that they are the party of moral clarity and family values, is delusional. The veil has been pulled down, and a majority of Americans see Republican policies and political tactics for what they are. Immoral.
[As Robbie Burns said, "The gift of god, the gift tae gie us, tae see airsels as ithers see us."]

doom du jourtm – today's headlines from helltm (archives) –
ECONOMY-KILLING DOWNSIZING in the news (archives) - all quickly reversible by substituting timesizing -
U.S., Europe are ocean apart on human toll of joblessness, Wall St Journal, A1.
...which helps explain why Europe and the U.S. can't agree on how to attack the global recession. The U.S. is spending hundreds of billions of dollars - including [very little] increased assistance to the unemployed - to prop up the economy [no, the hyperconcentration of wealth], and wants Europe to follow suit.
[The U.S. doesn't want an unfavorable comparison to emerge - misery (and failure) love company.]
But most of Western Europe already has a strong, if costly [to the rich who can afford it], social safety net, so governments feel less pressure to spend their way out of trouble.
[Impossible when we're just loading more gold bars in the crow's nest anyway.]
The irony is that for years, Europe tried [or tried to make US think they were trying] to rein in its own worker protections - long considered [by the US] a drag on growth in good times - to emulate the faster-growing [with carefully selected and cooked figures] US economy.
[U.S. likes the illusion that it's The Best and The Leader of the Free World - ha!]
Now the U.S. is moving toward a more European system...
For small employers, rounds of shedding workers and tears, NYT, A1.
...Ram Tool of Grafton WI...laid off 26 workers since Sept... [photo caption]
...Shuqualak Lumber in Shuqualak MS "had" [our quotes] to dismiss nearly a quarter of his work force, which used to number 160 employees, at the end of Oct. He also dismissed a handful of workers in Jan...
[What should he have done? -]
instead of a stressful 25% staff cut (40 jobs lost) as Shuqualak Lumber tries to survive by cutting its own best customers and everyone's markets, simply a restful trimming of 25% of its workweek (to 30 hours a week, or five 6-hour days for everyone, including top execs), re-investing overtime savings in overtime-targeted training & hiring, & keeping everyone together working, earning & buying 75% as much building material as before

CONTINUING DEATHSPIRAL (archives) - reversed only by dumb war or smart timesizing -
Some big banks are seen in need of more capital , NYT, A1.
[No kiddin! We're still covering up the horrendous depth and corruption of the bankruptcy of the U.S. financial system - by bankrupting the government and the millions of middle and small taxpayers for the benefit of the mere thousands in the topmost income brackets, some of whom pay no taxes atall, just legions of tax lawyers to push the burden onto others. More -]
Banks need at least $65 billion in capital, WSJ, A1.
[Uh, weren't these the same ones that Geithner told us were 'fully capitalized"? (- while out of the other side of his mouth he was telling us they'd need another two trillion!)]
Gay issues in view, Obama is pressed to engage, NYT, A1.
[Have we learned NOTHING from the way Bill Clinton blew his political capital on gays in the military and lost the chance to give us universal health care? It's time for gays to put their personal lifestyle issues second to the wellbeing of the entire population. It will be a lot easier for diversity issues to 'get legs' once we've stopped jerking people around by the livelihood and redesigned our economic core for full employment, however short a workweek that may take.]
Girls on our streets - How do we free the 14-year-olds controlled by pimps? op ed by Nicholas Kristof, NYT, A27.
[Answer: Full employment, no matter how short a workweek it takes.]

5/06/2009 wednesday (archives) –
TIMESIZING instead of downsizing in the news (archives) - newsclips of what the world is doing that's ON THE RIGHT TRACK - the core solution is so obvious, nobody's noticing it - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and it's reinvented thousands of times every day in every downturn despite *dismissal by the 'experts' -
The Ripple Effect In A Stormy Economy - Boat Dealer's Woes Highlight Financial Interconnectedness, by Kelly Cobiella, CBS Evening News via cbsnews.com - New York,NY,USA.
HOMOSASSA FL (!) -..."My managers got a 20% cut, I'm working a four day work week with the people that I have… - see whole article under today's date.
Mexico chugs back to life after flu shutdown, By Mica Rosenberg, Reuters via WashingtonPost.com - United States.
...Cinemas had to leave two seats empty between customers, & restaurants had to limit their hours & could not seat more than four people at a table. "This is a return to normal but only in a manner of speaking," said Eduardo Corte, a cafe manager. "Of 24 tables, I've only got half of them available and the hours are shorter..." - see whole article under today's date.
[So even the swine flu is pointing the way out of this economic downturn!]

doom du jourtm – today's headlines from helltm (archives) –
CONTINUING DEATHSPIRAL (archives) - reversed only by dumb war or smart timesizing -
U.S. telling Bank of America it needs $34 billion cushion, NYT, A1.
[This ain't no 'cushion' - it's a clamber outa corruption and bankruptcy!]
Brokers abandon Wall Street, WSJ, A1.
[cuz there's no money in it any more? hey wait a minit - maybe this is GOOD news?!!! = the steep recession has turned a flamethrower on these parasites! - let'em suck the sap outa some other scam fer a change...]
King Cotton's fall - In Mississippi, the recession has quickened a [pre-existing] downturn, NYT, B1.

\
5/5/2009 tuesday (archives) –
TIMESIZING instead of downsizing in the news(archives) - newsclips of what the world is doing that's ON THE RIGHT TRACK - the core solution is so obvious, nobody's noticing it - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and it's reinvented thousands of times every day in every downturn despite *dismissal by the 'experts' -
Giving internships a post-college try - With jobs scarce, recent grads look to make the most of part-time gigs, by Toddi Gutner, WSJ, D4.
[So workweek reduction is happening anyway, but not in the best way, which would be to redefine 'full time' downward to carry downward with it all full-time benefits and stop further impoverishment of the workforce and consumer base and further deceleration of our currency circulation (bye-bye economic 'dynamism') and further shrinkage in marketable productivity and sustainable investments therein.]
Nora Cook has her dream job.... But Ms. Cook's job isn't the sort of full-time gig a recent college grad would be lucky to find in this economy. Rather, it's a nine-month, 20-hour-a-week internship that she hopes will help her land a full-time position... - see whole article under today's date.
[It's time we woke up to the fact that "full time" is an entirely arbitrary concept, an historical accident. As such it is completely manipulable - and must be in any robotized economy, because as Reuther retorted when Ford said, "Let's see you unionize these robots!" - "Let's see YOU sell them cars."]
Area manufacturers show signs of recovery, By Harold Brubaker, Philadelphia Inquirer via philly.com - Philadelphia,PA,USA.
...HS Martin, which employs 17, went to a four-day workweek in January, but has seen enough new business to consider going to five days one week per month... - see whole article under today's date.
Work-Sharing Program: A Great Cost-Saving Tool for a Reduced Work Week, LinexLegal.com.
...The *Service Canada Work-Sharing Program is one such cost-saving tool for employers. - see reference under today's date.
Times union takes a pay cut, AP via Boston Globe, A15.
...Employees are receiving 10 days' paid vacation in return for \conceding to\ a 5% paycut through the end of the year... - see whole article under today's date.
[So not only workweek reduction is happening anyway but not in the best way - workyear reduction dba vacation lengthening is also happening anyway - though of course a once-a-year adjustment is only 1/52 as effective at spreading the vanishing, yet-unrobotized private-sector employment as a once-a-week adjustment.]
Hymer Motor-Home Demand to Falter Through 2010, Force Job Cuts, By Claudia Rach in Berlin,Germany -- Bloomberg.com.
...A third of factory employees are working shorter hours... - see whole article under today's date.

LESS-STRATEGIC GOOD NEWS (archives) -
[Danish] wind-power giant keeps to its course, WSJ, B10.
...Vestas Wind Systems A/S...
Obama asks curb on use of havens to reduce taxes - Offshore breaks eyed - $210 billion in revenue is sought - Sharp fight is expected, NYT, A1.
The number of seniors getting psychotropic drugs doubles in 10 years, WSJ, D1 pointer to D5.
...including antipsychotic and dementia drugs...between 1996 and 2006...
[= Hope for decriminalization of all drugs? - or do we still need all that makework in victimless crime control for our law enforcement sector and that huge slush-fund goldmine for the CIA?]

doom du jourtm – today's headlines from helltm (archives) –
ECONOMY-KILLING DOWNSIZING in the news (archives) - all quickly reversible by substituting timesizing -
Harley[-Davidson]'s skid spills uneasy riders - Tumbling demand spells [1400-1500] layoffs..., WSJ, B10.
Beth Israel [Deaconess Medical Center in Boston] lays off 70 employees, Boston Globe, B6.
33% staff cut (200 jobs lost) on top of 16% cut last year as Amylin Pharmaceuticals tries to save money by dooming another chunk of its workforce and everyone's markets, instead of non-disruptively trimming 33% of their workweek (to 26.66 hours, or four 6-hour-40-minute days for everyone, including top execs), re-investing overtime savings in overtime-targeted training & hiring, & keeping everyone together working, earning & buying 2/3 as many pharmaceuticals as before (WSJ, p.B2)

BANKRUPTCY tsunami (archives) in the news - staunched only by risky war or safe timesizing -
Filene's Basement seeks Chapter 11, Wall St Journal, B1.
Chrysler forecasts profit...in 2012 - Auto maker lost about $17 billion in 2008..., WSJ, B1.
[And defeating even that less-than-rosy forecast -]
Cutting back on car insurance, by Jonathan Welsh, WSJ, D5.
More drivers are saving money by keeping and maintaining their cars instead of buying new ones. Now, the economic downturn has them looking to save more by tuning up their aging cars' insurance...

ERODING RETIREMENT in the news (archives) - no problem with short-time full employment via timesizing -
Chrysler retirees may face cuts, WSJ, B2.
401(k)s hit by withdrawal freezes - Investors cry foul as some funds close exits; Perils of distressed markets, WSJ, C1.

CONTINUING DEATHSPIRAL (archives) - reversed only by dumb war or smart timesizing -
More banks will need capital - Stress tests identify about ten; Bank of America, Citigroup face order to refill coffers, Wall St Journal, A1.
[Oh, so the real purpose of the bank 'stress tests' is just to release to the public in unalarming small doses the total bankruptcy of their banking system thanks to the suicidal stupidity and robotic acquisitiveness of their banking 'professionals'! In other words, exactly what Bill Black ("The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One") told us all in one fell swoop in his interview with Bill Moyers on Apr.3.]
[A real symbol of human stupidity that will never happen once we move on to timesizing-guaranteed full employment -]
How to take a difficult-to-sell house off the market, photo title, WSJ, A1 pointer to A3.
[Photo shows a big powershovel scraping down halfway through a two-storey house.]
A Texas bank [name??] decided to demolish 16 new and partially built houses in Southern California that it acquired through foreclosure rather than put them up for sale in the region's depressed home market.
[Now consider the thousands of homeless in our cities, even our capital cities. Now consider the vacuity of "Say's Law", still taken as gospel by many economists, which says that "Markets Clear!!!" meaning "if you build it, it will sell" ...never mind how much lower the price than the cost or how much you may have to pay a guard till it does sell or how much you may be liable for if you leave it unguarded. What better proof that we're still primitive humanoids in the caves of jerking one another around by the livelihood! And so unnecessary now that we've got a design for full employment on the world's nervous system, the Internet, a la Timesizing. The main article =]
No sale: Bank wrecks new houses - Demolition costs less than finishing, selling So.Calif. properties, by Michael Corkery, WSJ, A3.
...Guaranty Bank of Austin TX...in Victorville CA. a high-desert city about 85 northeast of L.A..\..to provide a "safe environment" for neighbors of the abandoned housing tract.... The bank also faced escalating city fines as vandals and squatters took over the sprawling housing project...
[America the has-been - we got a whole country filled with half-finished stuff - and legions of minimally legal, minimally skilled people dependent on compulsive building and development regardless of demand or eco-impact = the pathetic Goetterdaemmerung of frozen-workweek, downsizing capitalism. But so easy to fix if we just Stop Straining for enough bogus job creation to fill a 1940-level frozen workweek and just share the vanishing, yet-unautomated-or-outsourced market-demanded employment. Make it easier for people to support themselves so taxpayers don't have to. Get government OUT of the role of employer and charity of last resort - or megajailer = make it easier for people to earn an Honest living so they don't slide into the alternative.]
Small banks face hits on commercial real-estate, WSJ, C1.
Massachusetts' sector-leading medical device industry slumping, Boston Globe, B1 pointer to B5.
[And even so...]
Pace of coralling cost data strains health-bill schedule, WSJ, A2.
[I shake my head, I roll my eyes, which are watering up - I don't know how Amy Goodman deals with the bad news day after day on Democracy Now without breaking down cuz I can hardly do it when I spend half my life exploring and inventing the language of the next generation of economic designs where the top huge present layer of human suicidal stupidity is history.]
Citizens Bank gets $300m [from overseas owner Royal Bank] as loan losses grow, by Beth Healy, Boston Globe, B5.
...it wrote off $451 million in bad loans.\.in the first quarter of this year and its operations, predominantly in New England, lost $98.7 million...

5/04/2009 monday (archives) –
TIMESIZING instead of downsizing in the news (archives) - newsclips of what the world is doing that's ON THE RIGHT TRACK- the core solution is so obvious, nobody's noticing it - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and it's reinvented thousands of times every day in every downturn despite *dismissal by the 'experts' -
Furloughs and unpaid time off create wage-and-hour problems, By Jonathan Hyman of Kohrman Jackson & Krantz PLL of Cleveland, Ohio (216) 736-7226 www.KJK.com, jth@kjk.com, BusinessManagementDaily.com - Falls Church,VA,USA.
[Problems that we've got over 100 years' experience in solving as we cut the American workweek from over 80 hours a week to 40, 1840-1940 - see Roediger & Foner's history, Our Own Time.]
It may mean a four-day workweek, one week off per month or other mandatory days off. Employees work something less than a full workweek... - see whole article under today's date.
[So it's happening anyway, often in the worst way. But if we did it systematically, wages would be supported by market forces in response to the reduction of the labor surplus. And we could help out low-wage workers from the unemployment insurance fund that was being spared by supporting employment by work sharing, however short a workweek that may take.]
BP Solar starts cutbacks early, by Rebecca McClay, Business Gazette via gazette.net - Gaithersburg,MD,USA.
...The closure allows for a transition to a new work-week schedule that will run Monday through Friday, instead of the current round-the-clock, seven-day work week... - see whole article under today's date.
How do i ask for shorter hours at work? by Adam J, Yahoo! Answers via answers.yahoo.com.
im workin 30 hours a week a spart time and want 20-25. how do i explain to my boss i want shorter hours?- see whole 'article' under today's date.

LESS-STRATEGIC GOOD NEWS (archives) -
Firms face new tax curbs - Obama plan aims to limit use of offshore havens by multinationals and the wealthy, WSJ, A1.
[Curbing the dumb parasitism (dumb parasites harm their host, for example, "Banks tougher on credit line provisions" (WSJ, A1) thus making it harder for businesses to borrow and get us all out of this recession).]

doom du jourtm – today's headlines from helltm (archives) –
ECONOMY-KILLING DOWNSIZING in the news (archives) - all quickly reversible by substituting timesizing -
Jobless rate may be at 25-year high, Boston Globe, B6.
...in the United States...showing the labor market will be one of the last areas to emerge from the worst recession in at least 50 years, economists said.
[Now when you think about it, the job market has to be the first area to emerge from recessions, because it provides security and spending power to the consumer base, which translate into consumer confidence and consumer purchases, which accelerate the circulation of the money supply and invoke the multiplier effect. So the question is, what do 'economists' think are the first areas to recover from recessions? And how can they be so wrong? By what contorted theory of economics could you possibly put anything before employment? -
Colleague Kate has the answer - 3 contortions: the definition of 'recovery' (1) ignores employment and (2) quietly starts from much lower levels that are much easier to exceed in subsequent months and be spun as 'recovery,' and (3) employers simply overwork existing employees, and the definition of 'recovery' obviously ignores increased employment hours on demand in the labor market because it even ignores increased employed bodies along with the whole area of employment from the gitgo.]
According to the median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey ahead of a Labor Dept. report that is due Friday..\..the jobless rate jumped to 8.9% last month from 8.5% in March and employers cut at least 600,000 workers from payrolls for a 5th straight time....
[Note that as written, the first half of this sentence looked like a simple declaration of fact - so we put the second half first to make clear that it was only an estimate - but lots of people don't have the time or concentration to do that - hence our assessment of: Bad Writing.
Note also the bail-out metaphor in the economic crisis. In what real-life marine disaster would you ever really try bailing masses of water out of a ship without ever fixing the leaks OR EVEN LOOKING FOR THEM?]
Companies may keep trimming staff and spending in a bid to shore up profits until sales show sustained gains, something economists say is unlikely to happen for months.
[How on earth could sales possibly 'show gains,' let alone 'sustained gains,' when companies are still deactivating consumers (and thereby damping sales) by 'trimming staff' (instead of workweeks). And if companies do this 'in a bid to shore up profits,' why are they exclusively interested in sustained sales gains but not in sustained profit gains? In short, why the partition, the extra unbridged gap, between profits and sales? Why don't we forget profits for the moment and focus on sales? Then maybe it wouldn't be such a huge challenge for these geniuses to connect the dots between their employees and their customers' customers.]
[Then only at the end do we have only an inferrable acknowledgement of the necessity of consumer spending to recovery and the necessity of 'eased job losses' (is that all?! - HA!) to 'any sustained strength in consumer spending' - in short, the chain of cause and effect we started with -]
It's "hard to fathom any sustained strength in consumer spending" until the job losses ease.\.said Michael Gregory, a senior economist at BMO Capital Markets in Toronto....
[So, yet another contorted and misleading pronouncement from someone whose guiding underlying metaphor is that the financial markets are the foundation and groundwork of economies, and not the consumer base and its foundation, the *employment base - which phrase I'm making up because, perversely, it is totally * = unattested in current mainstream discussions, a high-priority example of a major linguistic tool for 'operating on your own retinas' or redesigning your own socioeconomy from within. Compare senior:junior::seniority:*juniority.]

ERODING RETIREMENT in the news (archives) - no problem with short-time full employment via timesizing -
When safe places no longer feel so safe - For risk-averse 401(k) participants, the usual havens of money-market, stable-value and short-term bond funds pose new risks..., WSJ, R1.

CONTINUING DEATHSPIRAL (archives) - reversed only by dumb war or smart timesizing -
As foreclosures surge..., editorial, NYT, A18.
12 Senate Democrats joined 39 Senate Republicans to block a vote on an amendment that would have allowed bankruptcy judges to modify troubled mortgages.... Nearly 14 million homeowners are 'under water' - they owe more on their mortgages than their houses are worth....
Worries rise on the size of U.S. debt - Borrowing costs, while low by historical standards, are rising, WSJ, B1, B8.
...Already, in the first six months of this fiscal year, the federal deficit is running at $956.8 billion, or nearly one seventh of GDP - levels not seen since World War II, according to Wrightson ICAP, a research firm. Debt held by the public is projected by the Congressional Budget Office [CBO] to rise from 41% of GDP in 2008 to 51% in 2009.... For all of 2009, the administration probably needs to borrow about $2 trillion. ...The Congressionally mandated debt ceiling of $12.1 trillion will most likely be breached inthe second half of this year. [Meanwhile,] tax revenues [are] 'collapsing' by 14% in the first half of the fiscal year.... The CBO expects interest payments to more than quadruple in the next decade as Washington borrows and spends, to $806 billion by 2019 from $172 billion next year. "You're just paying more and more interest and having to borrow more and more money to pay the interest," said Charles Konigsberg, chief budget counsel for the Concord Coalition, which advocates lower deficits....
Fed keeps its helping hand on economy, WSJ. C1.
[Nursed by Typhoid Mary! - That should give us a quick coup de grace.]
Buffett plays down hoopla, hope, WSJ. C1.
[But Pollyannas proliferate -]
Investors see silver lining as bad news clouds outlook, WSJ. C1.
[(Can't get people back on the straight and narrow if they haven't yet realized they're lost.)]
[And economists contradict each other - one fears deflation, another fears inflation -]
Falling wage syndrome - Will deflation blight those green shoots?, op ed by Paul Krugman, NYT, A19.
Inflation nation - The Fed is neglecting the economy's biggest problem, op ed by Allan Meltzer, NYT, A19.
[Of course, Dmitry "The Five Stages of Collapse" Orlov may be right: after the financial collapse (#1 not counting the employment collapse) merchants can't get enough of our money cuz nobody 'cept the top 0.01% has any, but after the commercial collapse (#2) merchants don't want money cuz it's inflating too fast to be worth anything - now they want barter.]

5/03/2009 sunday (archives) –
TIMESIZING instead of downsizing in the news (archives) - newsclips of what the world is doing that's ON THE RIGHT TRACK - the core solution is so obvious, nobody's noticing it - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and it's reinvented thousands of times every day in every downturn despite *dismissal by the 'experts' -
Surge in child support modifications - As unemployment rises, so does the number of cases being reassessed - Collections are up as the state garnishees more unemployment checks, and more from the middle class are seeking the state's help, By Molly Hennessy-Fiske, Los Angeles Times via latimes.com - CA,USA.
...He came to ask for a reduction after his workweek was reduced to two days, lowering his weekly pay to $160. "I earn very little and I have to eat and buy gas,"... - see whole article under today's date.
[So it's happening anyway, often in the worst way. But if we did it systematically, wages would be supported by market forces in response to the reduction of the labor surplus. And we could help out low-wage workers from the unemployment insurance fund that was being spared by supporting employment by work sharing, however short a workweek that may take.]
Singapore's strategy: Sops for cos to prevent lay-offs - Employees encouraged to upgrade skills during downturn, by Preeti Mehra, TheHinduBusinessLine.com - Chennai,India.
[Ah, 'sops' is not the word the word they're looking for. How about 'incentives' or 'subsidies' or 'compensation' or just 'help.' 'Sops' is too dismissive - of both the companies and the incentives themselves,]
...For instance, companies that used to work six days a week are now making the workweek four or five days, with staff taking a 50% cut in idle day salary or utilising the time for upgrading skills or retraining for another or additional jobs... - see whole article under today's date.

LESS-STRATEGIC GOOD NEWS (archives) -
Wal-Mart gets run for its money, Boston Sunday Globe, G4.
...The nation's dollar stores are suddenly getting hot...
[Maybe healthy little, higher-employment dollar stores can stop the dumb parasitism of Wal-Mart. (In biology, a smart parasite is one that lets its host survive or prosper. A dumb parasite slowly or quickly kills its host, just the way Wal-Mart moves into a town and kills off all its small businesses and associated jobs and customer service and local spending.)]

doom du jourtm – today's headlines from helltm (archives) –
ERODING RETIREMENT in the news (archives) - no problem with short-time full employment via timesizing -
[Eroding for us, bloating for them -]
Pension boost aids [Massachusetts] lawmakers - Loophole may cost taxpayers an extra $3m, Boston Sunday Globe, A1.

CONTINUING DEATHSPIRAL (archives) - reversed only by dumb war or smart timesizing -
Accidental deaths plaguing US in Iraq, Boston Globe, A1.
The 130,000 American troops 'serving' [our quotes] in Iraq are more likely to die in accidents, from natural causes, or in other 'nonhostile' incidents than at the hands of freedom fighters, oops, insurgents, according to Defense Dept. statistics for the past eight months...
[7 out of the last 8 months, accidents have matched or beaten the number of Yanks killed by the 'enemies' their weapons industries so carefully created. The NYT-owned Globe tries to spin this as highighting...]
...the dramatic reduction of violence in Iraq over the past year, but also underscore a challenge that has bedeviled US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan since hostilities began: A steady stream of soldiers and Marines are losing their lives in circumstances that are often preventable...
[or in short, 'also underscore' sucidal American stupidity - or is it the US economic csars still trying to create enough of a US labor shortage to get that wonderful Wartime Prosperity that downsizing capitalism needs so desperately to raise wages and consumer spending, so easy to attain when they could get lots and lots of poor Americans killed and maimed back in 1917-18 and 1941-45, so elusive today with all their missiles and robot observation planes and highspeed air attacks and satellite photographs are just too safe - so in a great historical tradition that goes back at least to Napoleon's attempt to quell the Haitian Revolution in the 1790s, and the Crimean War, and the US Civil War, and the US crushing of the Philippines in the 1890s, Vietnam, etc.etc., they're just gonna have to rely on disease to create that magic labor scarcity. Or we could do it the intelligent way and just cut the workweek and convert overtime into jobs and training.]
Survival of the fittest - Success in an economic slump demands dedication coupled with flexibility, NYT, A1.
[Yeah yeah yeah - flexibility for everything EXCEPT the workweek, which has been carefully frozen solid at the pretechnology, 40-hour level since 1940. So our cushioned decision-makers downsize downsize downsize and act surprised at the arrival of an economic slump, when the only surprise is that it took so long for them to wake up to it.]
Silence of the hams - Swine flu fears lead to mass pig slaughter, NY Daily News, cover headline pointing to p.4.
...Egyptian government plans to kill all 250,000 pigs in Egypt...
[Never mind that humans supposedly don't catch it from pigs - as today's Garrison Keillor show points out, we should be calling it People Flu - but hey, Egypt was purty hard on them Israelites too. And let's not forget the three totally innocent wild pigs in the Baghdad zoo that were butchered by 'brave,' 'intelligent' human beings.]

5/02/2009 saturday (archives) –
TIMESIZING instead of downsizing in the news (archives) - newsclips of what the world is doing that's ON THE RIGHT TRACK - the core solution is so obvious, nobody's noticing it - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and it's reinvented thousands of times every day in every downturn despite *dismissal by the 'experts' -
Why Americans Should Work Less and Vacation More, by David Silverberg, DigitalJournal.com - Toronto,Ontario,Canada.
[Doncha luvvit! Gettin lectured-to by Canucks! Oh wait, I guess they're quotin a Seattler -]
...John de Graaf: ..By getting more and more stressed, people will have greater health problems, more health costs. It would be far better for people to demand that layoffs be reduced by shortening and sharing working hours as President Obama suggested in his inaugural address... - see whole article under today's date.
Keene State Works To Retain Students, Cut Costs - [Shorter work week for staff,] Sports Event Cuts...Under Consideration, WMUR.com - Manchester,NH,USA.
...The college also continues working to control costs and is considering more than 100 suggestions, including non-faculty furloughs, a shorter work week for staff, cutting some sports events and laying off administrators. - see whole article under today's date.

LESS-STRATEGIC GOOD NEWS (archives) -
The US is set to close caves and former mines..., news squib, WSJ, A1.
...in 33 states in a bid to control a fungus that has killed about 500,000 bats.
[= our flying cousins. Besides, it's always nice to have a few bats around to harbinge death, even one's own - it's... it's TRADITION!]

doom du jourtm – today's headlines from helltm (archives) –
ECONOMY-KILLING DOWNSIZING in the news (archives) - all quickly reversible by substituting timesizing -
Bank cuts - Sovereign Bank plans to shed 950 jobs..., Boston Globe, B1 pointer to B5.
...including 265 in Mass., in an effort to reduce expenses
Europeans fanned out by the hundreds of thousands across the Continent..., WSJ, A1 pointer to A7.
...in May Day demonstrations protesting job..losses.
Japan unemployment rose in March..., WSJ, A1 pointer to A5.
...a blow to a country where workers have grown accustomed to lifetime jobs.
[Ah, wasn't that over in the early 90s? - ergo Japan's labor surplus and recession ever since!]

ERODING RETIREMENT in the news (archives) - no problem with short-time full employment via timesizing -
The probe into alleged pay-to-play pension schemes broadened..., WSJ, A1 pointer to B3.
...as 36 state attorneys general joined New York to share information.

BANKRUPTCY tsunami (archives) in the news - staunched only by risky war or safe timesizing -
Key cog in South, Silverton Bank fails [and smaller Citizens Community Bank in Ridgewood, NJ], WSJ, B1.
...Silverton's condition was so poor that the FDIC couldn't find a buyer..\.. Regulators are trying to limit the Silverton closure's impact on 1,400 banks it did business with throughout the US.... With $4.1 billion in assets, Silverton is the fifth-largest bank to fail since the financial crisis intensified in 2008. The bank provides services to one of every five banks in the country, and its customers, depositors and investors are all banks.... The FDIC said loan losses caused Silverton's failure, as charge-offs for bad loans [as in "toxic assets" dba "liars' loans" nee "NINJA loans" meaning "No Income check, No Job check, no Asset check ergo"] went from $4 million in 2007 to $69 million in 2008....
Now there are 31
...total [bank] failures in 2009...
[Yeehaaa, it's 1930 reruns cuz we forgot our own history. And never really figured it out till Ben Hunnicutt's 1988 "Work Without End" - of which most are still unaware.]
The FDIC created a bridge bank ...Silverton Bridge Bank, to manage Silverton. Bridge banks are used rarely and typically only occur when a government decides a bank's collapse would be too disruptive.
[Ah, maybe we should call them parachute banks instead, cuz there's no shore on some 'other side' for them to bridge to.
And maybe we need some of that disruption to get it through people's heads where we're coming from after Bush & his gang, cuz right across the page is more evidence, if needed, that investors are still 'rearranging deckchairs'... -]
Dow's gain is its 7th in 8 weeks, WSJ, B1.
[Maybe part of the problem is...]
Same data, different forecasts, NYT, B1.
[Pollyanna rules!]
Sales plunge adds to Chrysler's misery, NYT, B1.
[Who wants to buy Plymouths any more if Chrysler is finally fading? Government and taxpayers should never have started down this bailout garbagechute back in '79 with mendicant Iacocca. It is not government's role or taxpayers' charge to be the employer, charity or lender of last resort. It is not government's role to save jobs or to create jobs. Start down that slope and you gradually become the lender, then employer, then charity of first resort. And it's a complete distraction from government's real first role, almost totally undiscussed and unrecognized, to referee the centrifuge and sharing system of the age, the integrating paradigm, the definition of the social unit, in pursuit of its role to define, design, and maintain a stable minimum of liberating generalized regulations/game rules. And the sharing system of the age solves the problem of threatened or lost jobs in a forgotten but sustainable (and soon-to-be-remembered-or-else) way: it IS governmen't role to design and implement the sharing and spreading of natural market-demanded employment hours regardless of how few working hours per person per week that requires and regardless of how fluid that requires we make (=design&implement) skill transfer. Compare Monday headline -]
Despite Obama's talk, little bump for Chrysler sales, 5/04 WSJ, B1.

CONTINUING DEATHSPIRAL (archives) - reversed only by dumb war or smart timesizing -
Global need, graph caption, WSJ, A5.
Japan [at c.15%] is among the leading nations with the highest poverty rate....
Note: The poverty rate is the ratio of the number of people who fall below the poverty line and the total population.
Source: OECD (2005 data)
[Wait just a minute - the U.S. is ABOVE Japan on this graph! - and the Wall St Journal isn't even mentioning that! Japan has the 4th highest poverty rate but the US has the third highest! Looks like #1 Mexico has about 18.1%, #2 Turkey has about 17.5%, and the US has about 17.4%! - & this data is already FOUR YEARS OLD! Hey, this needs a headline, even if we have to create it -]
USA world's third-poorest 'leading nation' with poverty rate of 17.4% in 2005, likely much worse today
[Our concentrated media ownership shouts the teeniest good news and whispers or ignores the biggest bad news cuz 'it would be too disruptive' - ergo, a huge system with no negative feedback, the only kind that counts cuz the only kind that tells you when and how to CHANGE and ADAPT. And soooo easy with Timesizing...]
Citi[group] said to need up to $10 billion - Bank disputes 'stress test' result; US to let lenders convert loans to common stock, Wall St Journal, A1.
[But...but...didn't Geithner recently say all our banks were sound and fully capitalized?! And now secure bonds are shaky stocks? Banksters to Obama-Geithner, 'Sugar. we're horny.' Obama-Geithner, 'Bend over, everybody!']
Mass. firm to produce solar panels in China, Boston Globe, B5.
...Evergreen Solar Inc., a solar panel manufacturer with a factory in Devens...
[= Another US firm takes the sledgehammer to the US economy - and a would-be green firm at that! Evidently their concern for sustainability does not extend back from ecology to their own eroding economy or their concern for the environment back to their own struggling neighbors. In a well-designed economy, they'd have to sell their solar panels in China too = Want access to markets provided by US employment? then employ US. Globalization? = no controls, no sustainability - until we at least have global work&skill sharing.]
The US death toll rose to 18 in Iraq for April..., news squib, WSJ, A1.
Insurgents killed three US and two NATO soldiers in eastern Afghanistan..., news squib, WSJ, A1.
[Damn, these wars of choice just ain't killin enough poor Merkins to git them World War levels of labor shortage, without which alone capitalism jess don't seem to centrifuge enuffada national income to pervide thet wunnerful Wartime Prosperity!]
US may revive Guantanamo military courts, NYT, A1.
[More evidence that the Obama administration is nowhere...]
The Obama administration is moving toward reviving the military commission system for prosecuting Guantanamo detainees, which was the target of critics during the Bush administration, including Mr. Obama himself...
[And who's going to prosecute the 'military' commission system for imprisoning all these civilians for years with torture but without trial or counsel? And by the way, who's going to prosecute our corrupt financiers, our corrupt Bush regime, and our corrupt lobbyists...]
Israel lobbying case dies, NYT, A1 pointer to A11.
The case against officials of a major pro-Israel lobbying group who were accused of illegally trafficking in national security information has collapsed.
[This is just like the start of the Clinton administration in 1992, when the Clintons didn't have the guts to continue the three major investigations of crud that happened under the first Bush regime, which if continued would have prevented the possibility of the much worse SECOND Bush regime. "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity." (Yeats, 1921: "The Second Coming"). Can you imagine pondscum like Newt Gingrich not deigning to vote for himself a la precious Al Gore at the beginning of that Michael Moore movie (Fahrenheit 9/11?).]

5/01/2009 friday(archives) –
TIMESIZING instead of downsizing in the news (archives) - newsclips of what the world is doing that's ON THE RIGHT TRACK - the core solution is so obvious, nobody's noticing it - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and it's reinvented thousands of times every day in every downturn despite *dismissal by the 'experts' -
Obama, reform and the role of the left, by Sam Webb, People's Weekly World via pww.org - USA.
...Political conditions could mature over time to the point where more advanced solutions – such as military conversion to peacetime and green production, a shorter work week, a “war” on poverty and inequality, public democratic ownership of critical economic sectors, and, depending on the dialectics of struggle, socialism – come to the fore of the people’s agenda... - see whole article under today's date.
[Oh spare us the tired ineffectual lefty rhetoric. What's our definition? The right is no controls and no jobs (behold the present). The left is any controls and makework, resulting in ecohostile overproduction and overconsumption and a burgeoning maximum of stifling detailed controls. Our candidate? Timesizing, which is a stable minimum of liberating generalized controls, theoretically just one - but we've got it down to two anyway = (1) automatically limit the workweek according to either (A) the underemployment rate or (B) the GDP or (C) sales, for example, if sales are too low, TRIM THE WORKWEEK to spread the vanishing yet-unautomated market-demanded employment around to reactivate more potential but currently un/under-employed/waged consumers - keep government/taxpayers OUT of being the employer-charity-corporaterescuer of last resort and restore markets for the vast robotized productivity that investors need to invest in sustainably - and (2) automatically convert overtime and overwork into hiring and if necessary, training.]
Alcoa’s Quebec Workers Agree to Reduce Working Hours, by Delaney & Tomesco, Bloomberg.com - USA.
...The contract will be voided and workers will revert to a 40-hour work week if market conditions worsen and Alcoa is forced to shut the production line... - see whole article under today's date.

LESS-STRATEGIC GOOD NEWS (archives) -
Asia and Europe finish April on a high note..., WSJ, C2.
[Why wouldn't they? Europe has shorter workweeks, longer vacations & universal healthcare. And Asia has so much overpopulation & job desperation & overscheduling, it can cook its figures as much as it likes and there's no watchdogs to object.]
...Mexico City and Toronto stumble
[Canada better lose PM Harper fast or it's gonna be in the tank with the Yanks. Let's GO, Iggy - WHAT are you waiting for???]

doom du jourtm – today's headlines from helltm (archives) –
BANKRUPTCY tsunami (archives) in the news - staunched only by risky war or safe timesizing -
Chrysler files for bankruptcy; UAW (United Auto Workers) and Fiat to take control, NYT, A1.
[Employee ownership, GOOD. Union ownership? Who knows?? There are some pretty stupid unions, like according to today's revelations on Democracy Now, the SEIU has been borrowing big money from the bank it's targeting for criticism.]
Slump, debt dashed bid to turn around a U.S. icon, WSJ, A1.
[If we were really capitalists instead of corporate socialists, Chrysler would have been gone in 1990 instead of getting a taxpayer loan back then. Government's role is to referee the great sharing systems - like one person one vote (on which it's doing a louzy job), safe workplaces, fair workplace treatment across genders ages races (on which it's doing a louzy job), and soon, a fair share of the natural market-demanded employment however low a workweek that requires. Its job is NOT to be the employer and charity of last resort, NOR the corporate rescuer of last resort. NOTHING is too big too fail in a truly capitalist worksharing economy because the save-the-jobs argument has lost all traction. And a worksharing economy does not need socialism because it makes it much MUCH easier for people to support themselves so government/taxpayers don't have to. So let's GET there - to the worksharing economy - as fast as we can and undistort and clear all this unsustainable makework we've built up especially since 1970 when we restored the labor surplus of the Great Depression. And a GREAT little headline -]
Surveying Chrysler as wheels fall off, WSJ, C10.

CONTINUING DEATHSPIRAL (archives) - reversed only by dumb war or smart timesizing -
Procter & Gamble (P&G), Colgate hit by consumer thrift - Household product makers see sales weakening, raise prices to keep quarterly profits from plunging, WSJ, B1.
[That's gonna backfire bigtime cuz it ain't a matter of consumer 'thrift' - it's consumer job insecurity or downright joblessness and lack of money now that the top 0.01% (according to Krugman) has vacuumed the spending power out of the markets for the productivity that they themselves NEED to invest in. Until P&G and the others start EMPLOYING THEIR OWN MARKETS, capitalism is not going to work. And as long as they are downsizing and laying off their own markets, capitalism is not going to work. They mechanized agriculture and cut the workweek to the 10-hour day but we still had to run to manufacturing for sufficient jobs. Then they automated manufacturing and cut to the 8-hour day but we still had to run to services for sufficient jobs. Each time we ran to a new sector, our jobs were less urgently demanded and more vulnerable to downswings. Now they've frozen the 40-hour workweek and begun robotizing services, and guess what...the great convection current of money has been interrupted, cuz with a pre-robotics workweek, there's NO WAY they can employ all the markets they need to make all this productivity marketable, and as we're all finding out, plain productivity without marketability is meaningless - it don't count - it's "Say's Law" which is actually Say's Fallacy = "if we produce it, it will sell" - yeah sure - btw, I gotta nice bridge here in Brooklyn to sell ya. Case in point...]
Inventory size doesn't matter if no one buys, Wall St Journal, C1.
[Big size, no buys, lotsa cries.]
[And then there's the morons at the Fed and their vain hopes -]
Fed hopes 5-year TALF loans will help real-estate market, WSJ, B1.
[Looks kinda like the famed Five-Year Plans of the old Soviet Union, huh? Looks kinda like the Soviets lost the economic + propaganda battle but won the war bigtime! And how in the world worsening the black hole of money-supply (M1) over-concentration in the top brackets is supposed to help the real-estate market or any other market is beyond mere common sense to fathom. Moving more money to the top tiny fraction of the population just worsens the underbalance of money circulating with fast velocity in the consumer base, already too bled to support the astronomically top-heavy redistribution of M1 to the top 0.01%, the top 30,000 most-suicidal Merkin morons.]

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For more details on the work-sharing approach, see our layman's guide Timesizing, Not Downsizing which is available at bookstores in Harvard Square, Cambridge, Mass. or from *Amazon.com online.
Questions, comments, feedback? Phone 617-623-8080 (Boston) or email us.

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