October 2010 dooms du jour

Timesizing® Associates - Homepage

hopes/dooms du jour,
October 1-30, 2010
[Commentary] ©2010 Phil Hyde, The Timesizing Wire, Box 117, Harvard Sq PO, Cambridge MA 02238 USA (617) 623-8080 - HOMEPAGE

fri-sat,

10/29-30/2010

::: triweekly updates (archives)
- updating today from the cluttered kitchen in Kalamazoo, oops, Somerville, Mass. -

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 - usually it's just one item on a list - few yet realize it's the ink & paper of the list itself - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and despite *dismissal by the 'experts,' it's reinvented thousands of times a day in every downturn by businesses & governments, for ex.,*Washington State's video on replacing downsizing with timesizing alias 'shared work'

-
[editor's comments in square brackets] (editor= Phil Hyde, timesizing@aol.com) -

How Washington could create jobs - Congress has the means to spur job growth, economists say, if it can find the will, 10/29 MarketWatch.com
WASHINGTON, D.C. - ..[Dean] Baker said work-sharing programs, in which the government encourages firms to reduce hours, rather than layoff workers, are effective. “You are keeping someone in touch with the labor force,” Baker said. The president [Obama] likes the idea of work-sharing policies, Goolsbee said... - see whole article under today's date.
[Go, Dean! And remember REPUBLICAN Pres. Herbert Hoover's wise words in the summer of 1932, "Shorter hours is the quickest way to create jobs." (See Work Without End by Ben Hunnicutt.)]

Because of state cuts, North Canton library reduced staff, hours, materials, 10/30 Canton Repository via cantonrep.com
NORTH CANTON, Ohio - ..Due to state funding cuts, our library in the past 18 months has laid off staff, cut hours and reduced spending for materials... - see whole article under today's date.

Shorter hours are happening anyway, but not the best way. The argument that work is infinite because human desires are infinite ignores the absence of infinite money to satisfy those desires or pay for that work and the increasing scarcity of good 40-hr/wk jobs to maintain wages and spending in the age of robotics. Thus, shorter hours is a strategy that is being reinvented hundreds of times a day across the U.S. in this recession and thousands of times a day across the world in both public & private sectors, in every industry, and in a variety of ways. Many countries and U.S. states already have worksharing programs to cushion the transition to permanently shorter workweeks that automatically adjust to our rising levels of productive technology in the Age of Robotics. These programs currently are designed to be temporary. Here's what their permanent program will look like when they finally succumb to the inevitable.

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

growth-choking DOWNSIZING in the news (archives) - all reversible by a shift to timesizing -

Pontiac, 84, dies of indifference - GM pulls plug on brand that invented muscle cars, 10/30 NYT, B1.

too little, too late, too artificial, too arbitrary, too military, too eco-stressing MAKEWORK in the news (archives) - all unnecessary with full employment via temporary worksharing & permanent timesizing -

The U.S. spends $80 billion a year on "intelligence"... [our quotes],
10/29 Wall Street Journal, A1 squib.
[A one-word oxymoron if ever there was one.]

The Obama administration awarded $2.4 billion to advance passenger-rail projects in 23 states, with about [a billion, ie:] $901 million going to California, 10/29 WSJ, A1 pointer to A10.
[Railfan though I be, I have to admit that such megasubsidies would go much further and create much more economic dynamism if socked into natural market-reinforcing worksharing and timesizing rather than any arbitrary artificial market-neutral job creation, however well-meant or strategic-sounding.]

cascading ECONOMIC COLLAPSE via $$ funnel-up (archives) - solved by war, or smarter, timesizing -

The economy remained mired in a sluggish [or non-?!] recovery..., 10/30 Wall Street Journal, A1 pointer to A3.
[...still making the most use of the brief upticks in our diagonally downward spiral...]

The Dow Industrials [under 3M pressure (C1)] fell a second straight day, shedding 12.33 points, or 0.1%, to 11113.9..., 10/29 WSJ, A1 pointer to C5.

Stocks, dollars in rare [inverse] sync - Unusual mirror-image moves come as markets await Fed's easing measures, 10/30 WSJ, B1.
[This mirror image thing recalls stagflation, when the unemployment-inflation seesaw breaks and both unemployment and inflation rise simultaneously. It's a function of the USA going further into a three-way split between a slightly bigger but still tiny population of super-rich, a huge but shrinking population of overworked and underpaid who still have jobs, and a smaller but burgeoning population of desperately un(der)employed, welfare cases, " disabled," incarcerated, homeless and suicidal...]

Title insurers won't require lenders to provide a blanket shield from claims caused by flawed foreclosures 10/29 WSJ, A1 pointer to C3.
[They'll be sooor-ryyy.]

U.S. hears echos of Japan's woes; Striking parallels seen in economic slump - The great deflation; Studying past blunders, 10/30 NYT, A1.
[but apparently learning nothing from them so doomed to repeat them...]

The microlending movement that was supposed to help lift millions in India out of poverty has in recent weeks fallen into chaos, 10/29 WSJ, A1 pointer to C1.
[Financial wizardry is impotent, even microlending, when transitional worksharing and sustainable timesizing are needed.]

wed-thu, 10/27-28/2010 ::: triweekly updates (archives)
- updating today from the cluttered kitchen in Kalamazoo, oops, Somerville, Mass. -
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 - usually it's just one item on a list - few yet realize it's the ink & paper of the list itself - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and despite *dismissal by the 'experts,' it's reinvented thousands of times a day in every downturn by businesses & governments, for ex.,*Washington State's video on replacing downsizing with timesizing alias 'shared work' -
[editor's comments in square brackets] (editor= Phil Hyde, timesizing@aol.com) -

Jobs data vindicate Germany's work plan, 10/28 Wall Street Journal, A13.
[Did you ever think you'd see this headline in the Wall St. Journal, considering "Germany's work plan" is worksharing (German Kurz-arbeit), in direct contravention of the "Lump of Labor Fallacy" sneer from mainstream economists and all the denial and resistance from business schools?! Where now, for example, is Lester Thurow with his dismissive "It's been tried and not worked!" ? I always wondered what situation(s) he could possibly be referring to in that circa 1982 reply to my question at a public lecture in Boston University's Morse Auditorium...]
FRANKFURT, Germany - ..The statistics offer the strongest affirmation yet that the government's strategy of keeping workers in their jobs during the crisis [whatever reduction in working hours it requires,] through generous subsidies to business has worked... "Immediately after the crisis it was just very good policy" that kept unemployment down, says Andreas Rees, economist at lender UniCredit in Munich. He was referring to a government subsidy program, known as Kurzarbeit that allowed companies to keep workers on payroll at reduced hours... - see whole article under today's date.
[Here's the frontpage pointer -]
German unemployment hit its lowest level in nearly 20 years, the latest sign that Europe's biggest economy [and the world's biggest worksharing economy] continues to power ahead, 10/28 WSJ, A1 pointer to A13.
[But predictably, an anglophone journalist in Germany doesn't "get it" - let alone the prospect of unwashed non-English-speaking people pulling ahead of the (increasingly self-destructive) anglophone world - misery loves company and hates to be "shown up" -]

Germany's Jobs Miracle is 'Wobbly', 10/28 Spiegel Online
BERLIN, Germany - ..What's kept the German economy from hemorrhaging jobs over the last two years is a "short-time" work program that encourages firms to keep workers even if they have to cut back hours (say, to one-third, of the usual week)... - see whole article under today's date.
[Funny how few people have realized that "the usual week" is history in the context of robotization, and only an adjustable workweek that automatically fluctuates, mostly DOWNWARD as far as it takes to maintain full employment and markets, is going to survive the next 50 years. We have entire systems of factories in New England with NO employees, ALL robots - this spreading development is called "lights-out manufacturing." One guy drives around once a week to, what, read the gauges? squirt oil on the robots? Whatever it is, if it's routine, it too can be robotized. This is actually good news, because it gives people more free time, but it's also funny how few people have realized that the most basic kind of freedom is...free time. Does "the devil make work for idle hands to do"? Not when it's financially secure leisure instead of unemployment and the devil has to compete with burgeoning leisure industries...]

Jobs of the Future - Should we all work less? 10/27 NPR Marketplace via marketplace.publicradio.org
NEW YORK, N.Y. - For some economists, less working hours may be just the thing to lower the unemployment rate. Marketplace's Adriene Hill weighs the pros and cons of this idea... - see whole article under today's date.

Shorter hours and worksharing are happening anyway, but not the best way. The argument that work is infinite because human desires are infinite ignores the absence of infinite money to satisfy those desires or pay for that work and the increasing scarcity of good 40-hr/wk jobs to maintain wages and spending in the age of robotics. Thus, shorter hours is a strategy that is being reinvented hundreds of times a day across the U.S. in this recession and thousands of times a day across the world in both public & private sectors, in every industry, and in a variety of ways. Many countries and U.S. states already have worksharing programs to cushion the transition to permanently shorter workweeks that automatically adjust to our rising levels of productive technology in the Age of Robotics. These programs currently are designed to be temporary. Here's what their permanent program will look like when they finally succumb to the inevitable.

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

looting- and layoff-triggering MERGERS in the news (archives) -
Mergers&acquisitions (M&As) provide a last resort for incompetent CEOs and a highway to monopoly - Management's
economy-shrinking merger skills need replacement by economy-growing workspreading skills - Real CEOs don't do 'M&As' -

[Sleazard, oops, Lizard, oops,] Lazard profit jumps 71% as merger fees rise,
10/28 WSJ, C3.

Big fund to make deeper staff cuts, by Cassell Bryan-Low, 10/28 WSJ, C1.
LONDON, U.K. - Man Group PLC, the world's largest listed hedge-fund firm, plans to eliminate as many as 200 staff positions and consultants..following its acquisition of GLG Partners this month...
growth-choking DOWNSIZING in the news (archives) - all reversible by a shift to timesizing -

Big fund to make deeper staff cuts, by Cassell Bryan-Low, 10/28 WSJ, C1.
Man Group PLC..plans to eliminate as many as 200 staff positions and consultants over the next six months..following its acquisition of GLG Partners this month... The combined firm has about 1,800 employees...
[So 200/1800= an 11% downsizing which should have been done with an 11% timesizing = roughly a cut of almost an hour a day to a 35.2-hour workweek for the whole company including top executives, to keep everyone employed and buying hedge-fund shares and other financial products instead of going into "consumer shock" and deepening the ditches across the path of the "stumbling recovery."]

Job losses outweigh successes - The stalled recovery has weakened Obama's image, 10/27 NYT, B1.
[He just hasn't dropped everything else and got behind emergency worksharing and long-term timesizing. Hasn't learned from Pres. Roosevelt in 1935: "I should have got behind the Thirty Hour Work Week Bill and pushed it through Congress when I had the chance (in 1933)." (Quoted in Ben Hunnicutt's Work Without End.) And on the other side we have -]
Can't keep a bad idea down - All that's missing [from GOP ideas] is the important stuff, op ed by Thomas Friedman, 10/27 NYT, A23.
I confess, I find it dispiriting to read the polls and see candidates, mostly Republicans, leading in various midterm races while promoting many of the very same ideas that got us into this mess... Let's have more tax cuts, unlinked to any specific spending cuts and while we're still fighting two "wars" [our quotes] - because that worked so well during the Bush years to make our economy strong and our deficit small. [Similarly,] let's immediately cut government spending... roll back financial regulation... have no limits on corporate campaign spending...

cascading ECONOMIC COLLAPSE via $$ funnel-up (archives) - solved by war, or smarter, timesizing -

Treasury: No systemic risk, 10/28 WSJ, C7.
[With sleazy Geithner still in charge? "Methinks the lady doth protest too much!" Corruption is widespread throughout U.S. finance. Here's another slice of the pervasive sleaze as we behold from our ringside seats the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire à l'américain -]

Loose covenants creep back in - Apollo-owned firms seize on investors' hunger for yield, by Michael Ankiro, 10/28 WSJ, C7.
In a sign of growing [suicidal] clout for corporate borrowers, Momentive Performance Materials persuaded investors to buy bonds banked by assets that are currently pledged to other creditors...
[So this would qualify as a kind of "double dealing"? - and the fact that investors are getting suckered into it signals a kind of investment desperation parallel to job desperation in a situation of a gross and growing money-supply coagulation, due to a gross and growing labor surplus, due to waves of worksaving technology crashing into a frozen pre-computer workweek. Here's another sleazza slice - a story of system dysfunction due to lack of feedback indicating necessary change and adaptation. The kind of feedback with this critical role in long-term survival is negative feedback, and many hominids today, even in the "advanced" economies, are still too primitive to tolerate it -]

Bearish calls: Two analysts get shunned over views, by John Jannarone, 10/28 WSJ, C1.
Regulatory overhauls have aimed to make Wall Street research fair [or rather, accurate truthful], but stock analysts who speak their minds still have a lot to lose. Two research analysts who cover Forest Laboratories Inc. recently say they have been shunned by the drug company after alerting investors of potential risks in owning Forest shares. In both cases, Forest's CFO..Francis Perier Jr...who couldn't be reached.\.sent letters saying the company no longer wanted to engage with them [see clarification below], the analysts say... A Forest spokesman declined to comment..\..
The analysts - Oppenheimer&Co.'s John Newman and CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets' David Maris - had published critical research notes and say they have been shut out by the company.
[Cut the "they say" crap, Jannarone, and just quote the letters, to wit -]
..Oppenheimer's..Newman..received a letter..asking him to drop coverage altogether. The letter accused Mr. Newman's note of being "inflammatory," he says [jesus, Jannarone, hasn't Newman shown you the letter?!], and requested a retraction of the research piece.
[This is like when contractors tell clients their deadlines are unrealistic and get accused of "insufficient commitment." Thus, Forest Labs has "turned coverup," so sell, sell, sell Forest Laboratories Inc. (but not their products, if any).]
Oppenheimer refused to budge.
[So buy, buy buy Oppenheimer & Co.]
Mr. Newman has continued to cover Forest and says he tried to contact the company since then, but he says his calls haven't been returned...
[That's all he has to alert investors to, and any investor with half a brain will sell these coverup artists and shun them back.]
Forest shares fell 2.4% to $27.80 on Aug.6, the day Mr. Newman's note was published..\..
[Good. Shares of any company that behaves like this should be valueless and dropped from the exchanges until its executive staff grows up. Executives who foster over-ripe corporate culture should be demoted to "janitor" until they graduate at least in the Political Age where humans learned to share partial disagreement.]
Forest's apparent freezing out of the bearish analysts could be [no, IS] a red flag for investors as it shines a light of an under-the-radar area of Wall Street stock coverage: Some companies still pressure analysts to have upbeat opinions about stocks. More broadly, investors in a wide range of companies who rely on bullish analysts should be wary of potentially being misled, former analysts say...
[Love to hear why these analysts are "former"...]

Stock prices swung wildly before the Dow industrials closed down 43.18 points, or 0.4%, at 11126.28.., 10/28 Wall Street Journal, A1 pointer to C1.

Steelmakers surrender ground in the third quarter, suffering losses or profit declines
10/27 WSJ, A1 pointer to B1.

Home prices appear to be weakening..,
10/27 WSJ, A1 pointer to B1.

Sales of new homes continue to languish, 10/28 WSJ, A1 graph caption.
[...But could be good news for the environment?]

Fed gears up for "stimulus" [our quotes] - Eyes gradual bond buying of several hundred billion dollars; Doubts linger, 10/27 WSJ, A1.
[Doubts? No kidding! It's going to take Americans some time to realize it ain't about moving hundreds of billion-dollar clumps billions around within the financial markets; it's about leaching that money out of the relatively lethargic financial markets and getting it back via the non-financial business markets into the mind-bogglingly dynamic consumer markets. The only market-oriented way of doing this without war or plague? Engineer a perceived labor "shortage" by automatic overtime2training&hiring conversion and lowering the weekly onset of overtime as much as it takes to restore and maintain full employment and markets. Wage levels will rise as the current flood of resumes dries up, and state worksharing can help any wagecuts during the transition...]

Doubts hit Japan's big banks - Exposure to consumer-lending losses raises specter of repayment[-of-illegally-high-interest] claims, 10/28 WSJ, C3.

sun-mon-tue, 10/24-25-26/2010 ::: triweekly updates (archives)
- updating today from the cluttered kitchen in Kalamazoo, oops, Somerville, Mass. -
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 - usually it's just one item on a list - few yet realize it's the ink & paper of the list itself - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and despite *dismissal by the 'experts,' it's reinvented thousands of times a day in every downturn by businesses & governments, for ex.,*Washington State's video on replacing downsizing with timesizing alias 'shared work' -
[editor's comments in square brackets] (editor= Phil Hyde, timesizing@aol.com) -

Battling Poverty in the Golden State - Recommendations for the California Statewide Poverty Commission, 10/25 American Progress Action Fund via americanprogressaction.org
SACRAMENTO, Calif. - ..Other steps mostly “off budget” can help families when state coffers aren’t full. California, for example, has led the nation in implementing “work share,” an important means to avert layoffs. Under this program, when employees’ hours are reduced, unemployment insurance can help fill in for the fewer hours. Fewer than 20 states operate such programs despite their effectiveness.... - see whole article under today's date.

Voice of the Day - Charlie Norr: Strides made while serving 137th District, 10/24 News-Leader.com
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. - ..Two particular measures, which stand out that I co-sponsored and passed into law along with my colleagues, were the establishment of health insurance coverage for individuals diagnosed with autism and increased eligibility for shared work benefits under the Shared Work Unemployment Compensation Program... - see whole article under today's date.

Does Germany need a 45-hour working week? 10/26 Deutsche Welle via dw-world.de
[Barely off shorter hours and these morons already want longer hours? The truth is, everyone needs a fluctuating workweek, but downward until full employment to sustain investments is achieved and maintained.]
BERLIN, Germany - ..One of the reasons why so many companies across the country were willing to sign up to Kurzarbeit was that the alternative would have meant letting their skilled staff go... - see whole article under today's date.

Shorter hours and worksharing are happening anyway, but not the best way. The argument that work is infinite because human desires are infinite ignores the absence of infinite money to satisfy those desires or pay for that work and the increasing scarcity of good 40-hr/wk jobs to maintain wages and spending in the age of robotics. Thus, shorter hours is a strategy that is being reinvented hundreds of times a day across the U.S. in this recession and thousands of times a day across the world in both public & private sectors, in every industry, and in a variety of ways. Many countries and U.S. states already have worksharing programs to cushion the transition to permanently shorter workweeks that automatically adjust to our rising levels of productive technology in the Age of Robotics. These programs currently are designed to be temporary. Here's what their permanent program will look like when they finally succumb to the inevitable.

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

cascading ECONOMIC COLLAPSE via $$ funnel-up (archives) - solved by war, or smarter, timesizing -

The mortgage morass, editorial, 10/26 NYT, A24.
..just keeps getting messier...
[because it never got cleaned up, and the foxes are still guarding (and covering-up) the henhouse: Fed's Bernanke and Treasury's Geithner; e.g: -]

Treasury hid AIG loss, report says,
10/27 NYT, B1.

Loan adjustment efforts yield inconsistent results, by Streitfeld & Appelbaum, 10/26 NYT, B1.
Even as banks, borrowers and regulators battle over how much faulty documentation by lenders should impede foreclosures [how about ANY?!], fresh evidence came Monday that the housing market remained very wobbly. Only 28,000 defaulting borrowers received permanent loan modifications in September...the lowest number since last fall when the program to help struggling homeowners stay in their homes was just getting started...

The dollar fell broadly, hitting the 15-year low against the yen,.. 10/26 Wall Street Journal, A1 pointer to C5.
..as the G-20 agreement left investors to focus on an anticipated round of "quantitative easing" by the Fed [our quotes].

The corrosion of America - Our sad infrastructure reflects our lack of will,
op ed by Bob Herbert, 10/26 NYT, A25.

G-20 nations are pursuing an accord to end battles over currencies that relies on goodwill and peer pressure rather than enforceable sanctions..., 10/25 WSJ, A1 pointer to A8.
[Good luck with that! This smacks of socialism's "need for all men to be angels."]

Bank of America for the first time acknowledges finding some mistakes in foreclosure files as it begins a review of 102,000 cases, 10/25 WSJ, A1 pointer to C3.

A combination of low interest rates and growing fears of rising prices [LOL] enabled the U.S. to sell inflation-protected Treasury bonds with a negative yield for the first time ever. 10/26 WSJ, A1 pointer to C1.
[Compare Dahlberg's second book advocating depreciating currency to spur spending.]

Japanese firms are transfering more of their manufacturing abroad as the yen's strength hastens a restructuring of Japan's economy, 10/25 WSJ, A1 pointer to B1.
["Restructuring" or "destructuring"? Welcome to economic suicide, American style!]

Florida farmers say that lots abandoned by would-be developers have become a source of a plague killing thousands of orange trees, 10/26 WSJ, A1 pointer to C1.

With no uniforms and lax oversight, contractors menaced all sides in [Iraq] war, 10/24 NYT, A1.
..Blackwater USA...
[and what about Halliburton... and Bechtel... and Cheney himself, still running around loose?
and what about the billions that totally disappeared??
and what about Wackenhut back home???
and is this all really past tense...]

fri-sat 10/22-23/2010 ::: triweekly updates (archives)
- updating today from The Pub in Springfield, Mass. (382 Dwight)
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 - usually it's just one item on a list - few yet realize it's the ink & paper of the list itself - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and despite *dismissal by the 'experts,' it's reinvented thousands of times a day in every downturn by businesses & governments, for ex.,*Washington State's video on replacing downsizing with timesizing alias 'shared work' -
[editor's comments in square brackets] (editor= Phil Hyde, timesizing@aol.com) -

Recreation Conference Planned for Nov. 4-5, 10/22 SUNY Cortland News via www2.cortland.edu
CORTLAND, N.Y. - Benjamin Hunnicutt, who has focused his research and writing on an historical mystery in America, “The End of Shorter Hours,” will deliver the prestigious Metcalf Endowment Lecture at this year’s 60th annual SUNY Cortland Recreation Conference from Nov. 4-5 at the College... - see whole article under today's date.

42BELOW® Vodka Celebrates 40-Hour Workweek Day - New Zealand Vodka Encourages Americans to Unplug, Log Off and Libate, 10/22 PR Newswire (press release) via prnewswire.com
CORAL GABLES, Fla. -- It's no secret that the 40-hour workweek is an endangered species [for the diminishing number of Americans who still have full-time jobs]; in fact it's safe to say it's all but extinct... In honor of the day the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 went into effect [with a 44-hr workweek to be cut two hrs/yr for the next two years], on Sunday, Oct. 24, 42BELOW vodka celebrates 40-Hour Workweek Day... 42BELOW felt compelled to make a 40-Hour Workweek Day cocktail to honor the hard working folks who would really like to screen calls, ignore e-mails and punch out early... - see whole article under today's date.

Triathletes Find TrekDesk A Way to Stay Limber Throughout the Day, 10/23 San Francisco Chronicle via Vocus via sfgate.com
PHOENIX, Ariz. - Bill Elm, a business owner and triathlete with a keen eye for technology and innovations offering a competitive edge was challenged by his long work hours and triathlon training regimens... He found the solution to his problems in the form of an innovation that lets him move continuously throughout his work day: the TrekDesk Treadmill Desk.... - see whole article under today's date.
["TREADMILL Desk"? - how inviting, not!]

Shorter hours and worksharing are happening anyway, but not the best way. The argument that work is infinite because human desires are infinite ignores the absence of infinite money to satisfy those desires or pay for that work and the increasing scarcity of good 40-hr/wk jobs to maintain wages and spending in the age of robotics. Thus, shorter hours is a strategy that is being reinvented hundreds of times a day across the U.S. in this recession and thousands of times a day across the world in both public & private sectors, in every industry, and in a variety of ways. Many countries and U.S. states already have worksharing programs to cushion the transition to permanently shorter workweeks that automatically adjust to our rising levels of productive technology in the Age of Robotics. These programs currently are designed to be temporary. Here's what their permanent program will look like when they finally succumb to the inevitable.

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

growth-choking DOWNSIZING in the news (archives) - all reversible by a shift to timesizing -

Nokia's new CEO to cut 1,800 jobs, 10/22 WSJ, B1 pointer to B3.

cascading ECONOMIC COLLAPSE via $$ funnel-up (archives) - solved by war, or smarter, timesizing -

Propping up Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac will cost taxpayers $154 billion under the most likely scenario for home prices.., 10/22 WSJ, A1 pointer to A3.
..the mortgage giants' regulator said. But the bill could go much higher if grimmer projections prevail adn the economy slides back into recession.

The number of workers filing new jobless-benefit claims fell last week, but remains at a level that suggests businesses are doing little hiring, 10/22 WSJ, A1 pointer to A2.

Temperatures are rising in the Arctic and the extent of sea ice is falling, 10/22 WSJ, A1 news squib.
..an international climate report said.

wed-thu 10/20-21/2010 ::: triweekly updates (archives)
- updating today from The Pub in Springfield, Mass. (382 Dwight)
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 - usually it's just one item on a list - few yet realize it's the ink & paper of the list itself - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and despite *dismissal by the 'experts,' it's reinvented thousands of times a day in every downturn by businesses & governments, for ex.,*Washington State's video on replacing downsizing with timesizing alias 'shared work' -
[editor's comments in square brackets] (editor= Phil Hyde, timesizing@aol.com) -

Iowa amends its rules on various topics, 10/21 CCH via hr.cch.com
DES MOINES, Iowa - ..Voluntary shared work program. The duration of a voluntary shared work program by an employer has been extended to 52 weeks (previously, 26 weeks)... - see whole article under today's date.

Call to overhaul of security industry, 10/20 AsiaOne via news.asiaone.com
SINGAPORE - ..Changes suggested include having management processes which are more in line with those of other industries; pushing for shorter working hours; and using technology so that staff could be better deployed... - see whole article under today's date.

Shorter hours and worksharing are happening anyway, but not the best way. The argument that work is infinite because human desires are infinite ignores the absence of infinite money to satisfy those desires or pay for that work and the increasing scarcity of good 40-hr/wk jobs to maintain wages and spending in the age of robotics. Thus, shorter hours is a strategy that is being reinvented hundreds of times a day across the U.S. in this recession and thousands of times a day across the world in both public & private sectors, in every industry, and in a variety of ways. Many countries and U.S. states already have worksharing programs to cushion the transition to permanently shorter workweeks that automatically adjust to our rising levels of productive technology in the Age of Robotics. These programs currently are designed to be temporary. Here's what their permanent program will look like when they finally succumb to the inevitable.

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

cascading ECONOMIC COLLAPSE via $$ funnel-up (archives) - solved by war, or smarter, timesizing -

China sparks a wide sell-off - Sudden [interest] rate hike sparks fear of drop in giant's growth; Emerging currencies pull back, 10/20 WSJ, A1.
..China growth..has been a key driver of the global economy...
[No, China growth has been a key driver of global investors' desperate search for happytalk, however unfounded, and a key downsizer of everyone else's wages and currency bases and employment "basements."]

Stocks registered their biggest loss in more than two months as China's move to slow its economy collided with concerns about the foreclosure crisis, 10/20 WSJ, A1:1 pointer to A1:3, C16, C17.
The Dow industrials finished down 165.07 points, or 1.5%, to 11000 for the first time since Oct.7...

Big legal clash on foreclosure is taking shape - Faulty documentation - Flood of cases possible as lenders restart repossessions, 10/21 NYT, A1.

Efforts to prosecute Blackwater are collapsing - Contractors accused of killing Iraqis and Afghans,
10/21 NYT, A1.

Keynes who? Europe avoids his approach, 10/21 NYT, A1.
[Fine if you're Germany and doing share-work alias Kurz-arbeit instead of make-work.
Not fine if you're U.K. and doing no-work instead of share-work or make-work.]
Proposed cuts in Britain strike at heart of Keynesians' view of deficit spending, inside header, 10/21 NYT, A6.
[Tell you another one? -]
Britain announced an 8% cut in its military budget.., 10/20 WSJ, A1 pointer to A15.
..its biggest one-time defense reduction since World War II. [And they're going to replace those jobs with...nothing?]
Britain plans deepest cuts to spending in 60 years - Trims to welfare and public-sector jobs, 10/21 NYT, A6.
[Britain also screwed itself back around 1930 when they tried to jump from currency float back to gold standard at the pre-war level and basically clocked their economy and doubled their depression. English-speaking economists aren't too swift when it comes to depressions. They never ask the critical question, is there a point at which the coagulation of the money supply in the top tiny fraction of the population starts to undermine itself? (cuz the super-rich spend such a tiny percentage of their megaloot). And how do we reverse that with a minimum of government meddling? (Hint: maybe by engineering a perceived labor shortage with workweek reduction now that war and plague aren't doin' the job?)]

Foreclosures profit some equity firms,
10/21 NYT, B1.
[but -]
BofA takes a big hit on write-down - Bank posts $7.3 billion Q3b loss as fee revenue tumbles; Effects of regulatory overhaul, [So basically they were declaring $7.3B in bogus revenues? Hey, maybe this is GOOD news...]

Obama program meant to help homeowners actually sends many into foreclosure, 10/20 Vermont Seven Days, p.16.
[Actually, their big example involves a second company that refuses to honor the almost $600 payment reduction a mortgagee got from the first company before it went bankrupt. So is it really the Obamaprogram's fault??]

As dollar's value falls, currency conflicts rise, 10/21 NYT, B1.
[Background from frontpage intro -]
Currency battles on the rise, 10/21 NYT, A1 pointer to B1.
It seems as if every nation for itself in the currency markets.
["MY currency's lower, buy MY exports!" "No, MY currency's lower, buy MY exports!"
This is getting as stupid as every state vying to have the first primary, so soon we'll be having primaries before the previous election!]

Slow start to BP fund puzzles Gulf,
10/20 WSJ, A1.

The fury failure - Anger is so September,
by Gail Collins, 10/21 NYT A31.
[If true, could seriously cripple the "Tea Party"!]

Three of London's iconic luxury hotels are being sucked into Ireland's banking crisis.., 10/20 WSJ, A1 pointer to C3.
..showing how the impact of the country's problems is spreading.

sun-mon-tue 10/17-18-19/2010 ::: triweekly updates (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 - usually it's just one item on a list - few yet realize it's the ink & paper of the list itself - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and despite *dismissal by the 'experts,' it's reinvented thousands of times a day in every downturn by businesses & governments, for ex.,*Washington State's video on replacing downsizing with timesizing alias 'shared work' -
[editor's comments in square brackets] (editor= Phil Hyde, timesizing@aol.com) -

Your Town, Texas: Granbury, 10/.18 KERA via publicbroadcasting.net
DALLAS, Tex. - ..Davis: I've had to cut hours. We've lost a couple of employees, servers and they don't make enough money to stay.
Bleeker: Two years ago, compared to today, we saw a drop off on some dates as much as 50%. You have to divide the hours up as best you can between those staff... - see whole article under today's date.

Law call amid hard time for women, 10/17 (10/18 cuz dateline) The Standard
HONG KONG, P.R.C. - ..A recent survey by the union found nearly two-thirds of 562 women work between 41 and 60 hours a week, while 11% work more than 60 hours... - see whole article under today's date.
[Like we said, on the economywide level, if shorter hours meant less pay and longer hours meant more pay, the Chinese would be the highest paid in the world, but they work megahours for peanuts cuz they're a gross labor surplus, and economywide pay goes by supply and demand, not hours or productivity.]

BONUS clip - Few men at DOH avail [selves] of workshare scheme, 10/19 Irish Medical Times via imt.ie
DUBLIN, Eire - Some 93% of Department of Health staff availing [=taking advantage] of the Civil Service Worksharing Scheme are female, it emerged in the Dáil [Parliament] last week (Thursday)...

Auto industry puts faith in electric cars -
[At last!]
- But after initial burst of buying, customers will be scarce, some predict, 10/18 Toronto Globe & Mail, B15.
[Cuz they're so expensive, and CEOs want to divert so much of the 'take' to their trophy rooms, where that money will just not exactly experience rapid circulation. But cut the workweek, spread the wages around and restore spending and circulation, and faith will be justified by sales.]

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

vanishing RETIREMENT in the news (archives) - no problem with short-time full employment via timesizing -

Protests snarl French roads, rails - As gas pumps run dry, government says it will not back down on pension "reforms" [our quotes], 10/19 Toronto Globe, B15.

too little, too late, too artificial, too arbitrary, too eco-stressing MAKEWORK in the news (archives) - all unnecessary with full employment via temporary worksharing & permanent timesizing -

Universities turning out graduates with wrong skills, by retired founding CEO Gwyn Morgan [M] of EnCana Corp, 10/18 Toronto Globe & Mail, B2.
[That's because they've become makework campaigns functioning to PLEASE keep young people OUT of the frozen 40-hour job market as long as possible while we careen deeper into the age of robotics mumbling, "Technology creates more jobs than it destroys, technology creates more jobs than it destroys,.."]

cascading ECONOMIC COLLAPSE via $$ funnel-up (archives) - solved by war, or smarter, timesizing -

Japan goes from dynamic to disheartened - Asian giant's retrenchment offers a warning to the West, 10/17 NYT, A1.
[Phil Hyde gave his business card and website address to the Japanese ambassador to Canada the previous evening at a Japanese film screening in Ottawa - will the ambassador pass it along to the economic stewards in Japan that Deming related to? If he does, and Japan becomes a model of worksharing or even Timesizing ahead of Germany, US academics will be writing mgmt books about Japan again, as they did in the 1980s. Japan needs another Deming? Phil's cell is 617-620-6851. If not, more and more of -]
..the great deflation... coping with decline...

Fed can't rescue U.S. economy on its own, by Brian Milner, bmilner(at)globeandmail.com, 10/18 Toronto Globe & Mail, B1.
[That's for sure. In fact, it "can't rescue US economy" at all, just paper over the problems temporarily to fool investors. To rescue any economy these days, you gotta stop downsizing everything but the workweek, create a perceived, wartime-level of labor shortage and by harnessing market forces to flexibly raise wages, you will centrifuge the national income and wealth out of the black hole in the top tiny fraction of the population and get it back into circulation. And maybe get the wealthy out of their "golden jails" (phrase passed along by Michel Grondin of Gatineau).]

Discounted - On the verge of quantitative easing [eg: printing more money], many are having a hard time believing the Fed's second round of stimulus - no matter how big - will help kick-start demand, 10/18 Toronto Globe, B10.
[And rightly so, cuz us plebs are all maxxed out on our credit lines and sooner or later the wealthy are going to have to pay themselves back cuz they're the only ones with that kind of dough - UNLESS...they adjust the workweek down to levels more appropriate in the Age of Robotization and stop sacrificing their consumer base and employment basement for mere pecking order.]

The lookahead..- The plight of the [Can.] economy - With the economy struggling for traction, Bank of Canada Gov. Mark Carney won't raise interest rates Tuesday - Or will he?, 10/18 Toronto Globe, B3.
[A trivial and irrelevant question, because ironically, this time it's not a matter of "struggling" or "traction" but of relaxing into a shorter workweek that spreads the natural market-demanded employment across the maximum number of potential consumers. How short? As short as it takes to get full employment and full markets. We design the problem to automatically solve itself in every other field except economics. Today we're being forced to apply that design principle to the economy too, because our double-edged previous "solutions" (war and plague) are no longer providing that magic perceived labor shortage (actually labor-employment balance) that alone makes capitalism an ideal system by harnessing market forces to centrifuge the national income and wealth and unleash maximum marketable productivity - the big (dumb) boys are currently in the process of discovering that productivity alone is meaningless. Ya gotta sell it. And if nobody's got the money to buy it because the big boys have downsized so many potential consumers out of their jobs and wages, the buying part ain't gonna happen. "Details, details!"]
Carney: 'When you don't know, you don't take chances', inside header, B4.
[Funny how it never dawned on these guys that downsizing their own markets was 'taking chances' bigtime.]
"He's making a valiant effort at conveying a very complex message" - Prof. Chris Ragan of McGill dba leader of C.D.Howe Institute's research on monetary policy, inside subhead, B4.
[More like a valiant effort to coverup his own impotence, ignorance and lack of imagination - wait, you don't even need imagination because we DID IT for over 100 years - cut the workweek in half from over 80 hours to 40, and it worked. Doubt it? Then imagine - raising it back to 80 hours/week and see how many more of your markets you get to downsize, frantically spinning it as "rightsizing" or "smartsizing." (Funny we don't hear those popular 1990 terms much any more.)]

Luxury goods - Recovery may be faltering but the big spenders are back, by Christina Passariello PARIS, 10/18 Toronto Globe, B8.
[Maybe they are in France, but it has maximized consumer spending by trimming their nationwide workweek at least down to the 35-hour level, despite Sarkozy's ignorant efforts to sabotage it via overtime non-enforcement... and besides, we're only talking about luxury goods here, and the luxury-goods industry is only a small percentage of domestic consumption.]

Angela Merkel says the unsayable, by Margaret Wente, 10/19 Toronto Globe via theglobeandmail.com
A few years ago, when I visited some of the Turkish neighbourhoods of Berlin, it was obvious that the German experiment with multiculturalism was in trouble. Many of Germany’s four million Turks lived in a parallel society. The kids were doing badly in school and jobless rates were high. Girls were ruled by their patriarchal families. Muslim immigrants had become increasingly religious. A brisk trade in brides and grooms from backward parts of the old country ensured that nothing was likely to change soon. Yet few officials dared to raise these awkward facts in public. And the German political class has gone out of its way to avoid a serious debate on immigration.
[You don't blithely import people from a previous timeframe in human evolution to exploit them for cheap labor without major dissonance. The world is not just different geographic zones. It is, much more significantly, different time frames, and there are populations around the world strung out in every past stage of human evolution, with NO IDEA what the West is talking about in words like "democracy" and even "multicullturalism." It's time we shed our naive attempts to "help" people with whom we cannot communicate the important features of our society, and even before that, it's time we brought to consciousness those features and the long and painful history of how they, and we, evolved them. Original headline -]
Multiculturalism in Germany 'utterly failed', Merkel says, by Melissa Eddy, 10/17 Toronto Globe via theglobeandmail.com
Chancellor Angela Merkel's declaration that Germany's attempts to build a multicultural society had “utterly failed” is feeding a growing debate over how to deal with the millions of foreigners who call the country home.
Ms. Merkel told a meeting of young members of her conservative Christian Democratic Union on Saturday that while immigrants are welcome in Germany, they must learn the language and accept the country's cultural norms — sounding a note heard increasingly across Europe as it battles an economic slump and worries about homegrown terrorism...
Germany and other European countries have grappled with the idea of themselves as immigration countries and Ms. Merkel has long been skeptical. But her latest comments come against the backdrop of a fresh debate that the failure to integrate Muslims is feeding terrorism...

fri -sat 10/15-16/2010 ::: triweekly updates (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 - usually it's just one item on a list - few yet realize it's the ink & paper of the list itself - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and despite *dismissal by the 'experts,' it's reinvented thousands of times a day in every downturn by businesses & governments, for ex.,*Washington State's video on replacing downsizing with timesizing alias 'shared work' -
[editor's comments in square brackets] (editor= Phil Hyde, timesizing@aol.com) -

Germany Now Forecast To Have The Best Job Creation Since Unification, Sustainable Growth, And A Falling Deficit, 10/15 The Business Insider via businessinsider.com
BERLIN, Germany - .."Unemployment is expected to drop below 3 million next year for the first time since reunification two decades ago..." This is misleading. Germany has a system called "kurzarbeit" or job sharing [actually work sharing, more flexible than jobsharing that preserves the 40-hour workweek and merely splits it in half] that is funded by the taxpayers. - see whole article under today's date.
[Yeah, a little, but less and less misleading as companies come off worksharing, more every day. Meanwhile, the 30 US states and numerous countries that don't have worksharing are still downsizing their consumer base via their employment basement...]

Lack of funding means bumpy roads are ahead for public transit, 10/16 Kalamazoo Gazette via MLive.com
KALAMAZOO, Mich. - ..Clark Harder, executive director of the MPTA, told members of the local news media Friday that public transportation agencies across the state may be forced to cut hours, modify routes and delay purchasing new vehicles if new sources of funding aren’t established... - see whole article under today's date.

BONUS clip - Good health = better productivity - Wellness and fitness initiatives help companies manage their benefits expenses, 10/15 Toronto Globe, E1, E4.
TORONTO, Ont., Canada - ..Bruce Powell, managing partner..of IQ Partners Inc..suggests that lifestyle perks that save employees time, make their lives easier or improve their quality of life go a long way to entrench loyalty and focus productivity... "Pre-prepared take-home meals or on-call daycare are a boon to time-starved employees with young families and committed time off for personal development is attractive for both [marrieds and singles]... I admire companies that offer things like free personal time for charity work [or] extra time off for personal needs..\.. Bioware, an electronic games company based in Edmonton [offers] standard time off [of] three weeks vacation a year, and on top of that, it provides as much time as it can around the Christmas holidays...

Small firms weathered recession - [RBC] poll, 10/15 Financial Post, FP6.
[But it ain't over except in specially tailored academic definitions...]

Canada bests U.S. at the stores [but...], by Hollie Shaw, 10/15 Financial Post, FP12.
Canada's largest retailers have had 3-4% higher retail sales growth than the U.S. in the past few years [but] that..was funded in part by a significant rise in consumer debt levels [ratio of household debt to disposable income, which] is now in line with the U.S.\.according to a new report from Moody's Investor Service Inc... "Although the degree of outperformance has begun to fade, Canada's lower levels of unemployment, stronger banking environment and relatively buoyant housing market support our view that the Canadian retail environment will remain favourable, as compared to the U.S.," said Darren Kirk..at Moody's...
[Yeah, well, Canada has generally been 10-15 years behind the U.S. in general self-destruction... and NOW, in a stunning upset, we've bested our mites Down Undah! -]

Loonie sneaks past aussie.., 10/15 Financial Post, FP1.
[And TD (TORONTO Dominion) signs are popping up all over New England, eg: blocks from the Vermont Statehouse (in Montpelier) and on the Boston Garden (TD OWNS it and recently dropped the "- Bank North" from the name.]

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

cascading ECONOMIC COLLAPSE via $$ funnel-up (archives) - solved by war, or smarter, timesizing -

Mortgage damage spreads - Big bank stocks hit again as "modern" finance [our quotes] collides with the legal system, 10/16 WSJ, A1.
[though of course, "modern" finance is above the law and that's how it's "committing suicide, everyone else first."]

Averting currency war tops G20 agenda - Exchange rate upheaval to dominate next week's meetings, with host South Korea acting to bridge rift between U.S. and China,
10/15 Toronto Globe & Mail, A1.

U.S. home seizures reach record, Washington Post via 10/15 Toronto Star, B4.
More than 100,000 homes were seized by lenders in September...
102,134 U.S. homes were repossessed in September, the first time bank take-backs cross the 100,000 mark since the housing crisis took hold - Mortgage mess in U.S. begins[?] to take toll - Bank shares hit,
10/15 Financial Post, FP1.
Foreclosure fears stall Wall St., 10/15 Financial Post of Canada, FP8.
..An index of bank stocks fell nearly 3%... "..The market hates uncertainty and this is a big one..," said Joe Saluzzi..at Themis Trading in Chatham NJ...
U.S. mortgage rates hit fresh record lows, new Freddy Mac survey shows,
10/15 Financial Post, FP3.
Political pressure mounting on lenders,
10/15 Financial Post, FP3.
Wall St. blames borrowers in foreclosure fiasco [yeah, sure] - 50-state probe - 'If you didn't pay your mortgage, you shouldn't be in your house',
10/15 Financial Post, FP3.
[Yeah sure, borrowers have sooo much money to hire the thousands of lawyers and advisors that Wall St. has to protect them from pressure and manipulation.]
"We're not evicting people who deserve to stay in their house," Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase CEO says.
[Oh yes you are! - ]
History's No.1 Fraud - "Several [U.S.] banks seem to have decided to fabricate false documents", by Assoc. Researcher David Descoteaux of *Montreal Economic Institute, 10/15 Ottawa Metro, p.23.
Imagine the scene. Unemployed for months, you must now hand over your house keys to the bank.
Not one, but three different banks representatives knock on your door. Each of them has in hand a deed for your house. After verification, the three documents are ... fake! And no one knows who owns your house.
We thought we'd seen it all from Wall Street bankers [who are incentivizing more of these practices by paying themselves millions]. But foreclosuregate might just set a new record for financial fraud - and plunge us all into a brand new crisis.
From 2004 to 2007..even a cleaning lady earning $10 an hour could get a $500,000 shanty on credit... The banks..created their own computer system (called MERS) to register the sales and purchases...
There's just one problem: the MERS registrations contain few details and are worthless in the eyes of several judges who authorize foreclosures. To reclaim the houses, banks must present notarized deeds. Unable to find the original documents, destroyed or lost - several banks seem to have decided to fabricate false documents. And had them authorized without scruples (one of whom admitted to authorizing 10,000 in a single month).
The result: A total mess from coast to coast.,,
It gets worse. ..The banks created the MERS system..to resell on the sly - to investors like your pension plan - tons of fraudulent mortgages... We're talking about a major countrywide fraud... American taxpayers will never agree to bail out bankers again... Such incompetence, [even without being] coupled with criminal intent, deserves only one thing: That those banks be allowed to fail - in an orderly fashion.
[Look at the pussyfooting language here. How about "That those banks be duly foreclosed and their executives and boards dispossessed to repay defrauded pensioners and taxpayers and sentenced to life imprisonment (with Kevorkian option) so they NEVER have a chance to pull this kind of stunt again." Here's Krugman's take -]
The mortgage morass - It's much worse than you think, by Paul Krugman, 10/15 NY Times, A23.
[and frontpage Section B -]
Calculating the cost of the mortgage mess, by Nelson Schwartz, 10/15 NYT, B1.
One billion dollars? Six billion? Ten billion? More?...
[David Descoteaux above says financial expert Janet Tavakoli talks about a possible $700-billion bill.]
Investors got out their calculators Thursday..and set bank stocks plunging... The share price of Bank of America fell 5.2%, while shares of JPMorganChase sank almost 2.8%. "The market never likes uncertainty, and it seems like every day we're adding to the list of things we need to worry about..," said Jason Goldberg, an analyst with Barclay's Capitol. "The industry needs to work quickly to put this issue behind."...
[Ah, isn't that what we let them do in 2008? Now the rest of us need to work slowly to investigate and clean up the whole morass, and basically replace most of the top personnel of our banking system, including Bernanke and Geithner, the foxes who are still in charge of the henhouse. Here's the editorial -]
The foreclosure crises [eg: A & B], editorial, 10/15 NYT, A22.
Attorneys general in all 50 states have pledged a coordinated investigation into chaotic foreclosure practices by some of the nation's largest banks...
[Seems that if they were "too big to fail," they were also too big to regulate or keep honest. So now they're prime movers in dragging America down off its Last Remaining Superpower pedestal and possibly plunging it into Third World poverty and rampant corruption and violence... The federal and state governments need to gather their courage and regulate their size or let them get or stay too big and gather more courage to regulate all the details of keeping them honest. What chance of that when there's no talk of regulating the individuals behind them who are too rich to bring to justice, or whether it's too much money or too much work that needs to get the homeostatic design treatment first? We start with work, because if you take money from rich A to give to poor B, you just make B dependent and make no currently obvious compensation for A, but if you take working hours from overworked A to give to un(der)employed B, you turn B into a self-supporting participant and "give a life" to A.]
..6.2 million [homes are] already lost..\.. 4,2 million homes are now in or near foreclosure. An estimated 3.5 million [more?] homes will be lost by the end of 2012 [= 13.9m = ??% of ??total]..\..threatening the recovery...
[Funny how they keep talking about "the recovery." How stupid do they think we are?]
Major banks - including Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Ally Bank [huh?] which is owned by GMAC - have suspended foreclosures after admitting they had submitted tens of thousands of affidavits to the courts, attesting to facts about the defaulted loans that had not been verified..\..
[Can you imagine? Seizing 10000s of people's homes without checking your facts?!]
What we've already learned [above=A] is chilling [but] the problems [below=B] may go far deeper.
["May"?? Such editorial cowardice.]
The banks' procedures for keeping track of mortgages may also be seriously flawed...
["May be"?? Gotta cushion the Most Cushioned who "may" be reading this editorial... (and by cushioning them lessen our chances of effective corrective action... ) ]

'Fear index' comes to Canada [on 10/18] - Volatility measure, by Barbara Shecter, 10/15 Financial Post, FP6.
..offers a window into investor expectations of stock market volatility [aka unpredictability, instability]..for the coming 30-day period.\. the S&P/TSX 60 VIX... Volatility has historically had a negative correlation to the stock market...

Push to remove barriers to jobs rattles Greece, 10/15 NYT, A1.
..Pharmacies..must be at least 820 feet apart and have a likely market of 1,500 residents. To break into the business, an aspiring pharmacist generally has to buy a license from a retiring one. That often costs upward of $400,000...
[Greece has suffocated its economy with detailed regulations addressing individual skills. Better far to protect jobs on the most general level with workweek adjustment to maintain full employment and markets, and the most gradual and market-oriented approach is sustainable Timesizing, with optional preliminary worksharing.]

Israel authorized construction of more homes in "Jewish areas of" East Jerusalem [our quotes - there are no Jewish areas there; E.Jerusalem is all Palestinian], dealing a blow to the Middle East talks, 10/16 WSJ, A1.
[Great news for the weapons industry!]

wed-thu 10/13-14/2010 ::: triweekly updates (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 - usually it's just one item on a list - few yet realize it's the ink & paper of the list itself - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and despite *dismissal by the 'experts,' it's reinvented thousands of times a day in every downturn by businesses & governments, for ex.,*Washington State's video on replacing downsizing with timesizing alias 'shared work' -
[editor's comments in square brackets] (editor= Phil Hyde, timesizing@aol.com) -

Betsey Stevenson Answers Your Questions, 10/13 New York Times (blog) via freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com
WASHINGTON, U.S.A. - ..Q. How can the DOL create a job? Could the DOL mandate a shorter work week, such as 35 hours, to help job creation? – Greg
A. ..Work-sharing also makes it easy for firms to ramp up when business improves. Even better, it's cheap. Because work sharing is instituted in place of layoffs, the benefits being paid out to workers whose hours are cut is offset by the fact we avoided a full layoff... - see whole article under today's date.

14% of firms to increase jobs, 10/13 Insideireland.ie
DUBLIN, Ireland - ..The Q3 2010 survey also shows a steady decline in the number of firms placing employees on lay off or short time working when compared to 12 months ago. Over the next 3 months, 9% of companies plan to introduce short-time working (a decrease of 5% on Q2 2010)... 62% will not introduce further short time working... - see whole article under today's date.

Lee suggests flexible working hours to help create jobs, 10/14 Yonhap News via english.yonhapnews.co.kr
SEOUL, South Korea - .."When it comes to the job creation issue, a fundamental paradigm shift is needed," Lee said while presiding over a government-civilian meeting on ways to create jobs held at Bucheon University, west of Seoul...
[Pres. Lee sounds like a guy who really "gets" it!]
The president said that..private companies should consider employing more people through the adjustment of working hours. Lee pointed out that the working hours in South Korea are longer than in other member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a club of the world's 30 richest nations. He said this was not "something to boast about."... - see whole article under today's date.

Working too hard for romance? We're on the job, Chief insists, 10/14 (10/15 over dateline) TheStandard.com.hk
HONG KONG, P.R.C. - ..Tsang promised the government will introduce a law setting standard working hours - but only after reaching a consensus. Setting standard hours could help improve quality of life, he said. "To enhance the competitiveness of the city, citizens need to have more time for life-long learning. It also allows youngsters to have more time for dating."... - see whole article under today's date.

Drug violence spurs Cemex to action - In Monterrey, northern Mexico's business capital, cement giant takes on role in battle against narcotics cartels, 10/14 WSJ, B8.
[A giant corporation vs. a bunch of violent cartels - stay tuned for some exciting coliseum action!]

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

looting- and layoff-triggering MERGERS in the news (archives) -
Mergers&acquisitions (M&As) provide a last resort for incompetent CEOs and a highway to monopoly - Management's
economy-shrinking merger skills need replacement by economy-growing workspreading skills - Real CEOs don't do 'M&As' -

Dividend rock: Firms reward buyout bosses, 10/14 WSJ, C1.
[Let's see - how else can U.S. firms commit suicide?]

vanishing RETIREMENT in the news (archives) - no problem with short-time full employment via timesizing -

New York [State] taxpayers facing $200 billion in retiree [healthcare] costs, 10/13 NYT, B1.
[Wall Street taxpayers alone could do this without blinking - since they engineered the crash and the bailout, and have been profiting the most from it (see yesterday's WSJ headline, "Wall Street pay is on pace to rise 4% from 2008 to a record $144 billion") - but of course they always squeal and moan like it's the end of the world though it's their hoarding that's likely to trigger it.]

BANKRUPTCY tsunami in the news (archives) - staunched only by risky war or safe timesizing -

A home builder's new lease - Trip through bankruptcy court leaves WCI with less debt, more flexibility, 10/14 Wall St Journal, B1.
[And no suppliers? Aside from that, sounds wonderful! Let's ALL do it! From TV Nation to Bankrupt Nation!]

cascading ECONOMIC COLLAPSE via $$ funnel-up (archives) - solved by war, or smarter, timesizing -

Across the U.S., a long recovery looks much like a recession, 10/13 NYT, A1.
[Nice that the happy-talkin' NY Times finally gets this close to reality, but this headline should read,
"Across the U.S., a long 'recovery' looks much like a continuing recession"...
Here are more signs of U.S. slippage -]

In the future, already behind - Silicon Valley's solar innovators retool to catch up to China,
10/13 NYT, B1.

Discount stores crop up in Manhattan's elite neighborhoods, 10/13 NYT, B1.
[Only when the pain creeps onto Wall Street will we see serious corrective action. Still not convinced we need it? Check this out -]

GMAC Mortgage expands review of its foreclosures [from 23 to all 50 states - Why? Because] attorneys general plan an investigation of home lenders [of which GMAC Mtg is one of the largest], 10/13 NYT, B9.
[and]

J.P.Morgan widened a review of its foreclosures [from 23] to 41 states, 10/14 WSJ, A1 pointer to C1.
The bank's profit rose 23% as it set aside less for future loan losses.
[U.S. banks, termite-riddled, have gone in for radical window dressing.]

Foreclosure mess could be taxing for mortgage investors, 10/14 WSJ, C12.
[No kiddin'! Then there's the latest on that pernicious cancer -]

Wal-Mart is planning to open dozens of small stores in the nation's cities, 10/14 WSJ, A1 pointer to B1.
in an effort to push back against the dollar chains and other competitors that are nibbling at its customers.
[Oooo, that tickles!]

Businesses put up for sale smack into harsh reality, 10/14 WSJ, B1.
[Lemme guess - no buyers? Yep -]
..have to settle for a lot less than planned...

sun-mon-tue 10/10-11-12/2010 ::: triweekly updates (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 - usually it's just one item on a list - few yet realize it's the ink & paper of the list itself - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and despite *dismissal by the 'experts,' it's reinvented thousands of times a day in every downturn by businesses & governments, for ex.,*Washington State's video on replacing downsizing with timesizing alias 'shared work' -
[editor's comments in square brackets] (editor= Phil Hyde, timesizing@aol.com) -

Two proposals received to run the Manske public library, 10/12 Dallas Morning News via farmersbranchblog.dallasnews.com
FARMERS BRANCH, Tex. - ..Others have suggested shorter hours and work furloughs for library staff--measures instituted by the city of Dallas... - see whole article under today's date.
[Shorter hours are happening anyway, but in the worst way.]

To be young, educated and unemployed, 10/12 (good.is) SkyValleyChronicle.com
CHANTILLY, Va. - ..He is living with his mother and, since January, working for 35 hours a week at $10 an hour for a home-electronics chain... - see whole article under today's date.
[But, but - we see France as so RADICAL because of its nationwide 35-hour workweek!]

Fed Minutes: Economic Growth Continues to Slow, More Easing Expected, 10/12 Benzinga.com
WASHINGTON, D.C. - ..Private businesses increased employment modestly in August, but the length of the workweek was unchanged and the unemployment rate remained elevated... - see whole article under today's date.
[Maybe if we lowered the totally arbitrary length of the pre-computer workweek instead of ignoring and freezing it forever, we'd lower the 'elevated' unemployment rate...]

Pfleiderer shuts down plant in Germany, 10/11 IHB.de
GESCHWEND, Germany - ..Pfleiderer already adjusted its production capacity at the Gschwend plant to significantly weaker demand more than a year ago. All of the remaining 93 employees there have been on short-time work since then. The management immediately commenced consultations with the local employee council to jointly search for ways of reducing personnel in a socially acceptable manner. In this context, the establishment of a qualification and employment company will also be discussed... - see whole article under today's date.
[Germany has it soooo together, even when market demand just ain't there, while the United States is still mutilating itself, killing its consumer base with a thousand cuts - on its employment basement.]

Shorter hours and worksharing are happening anyway, but not the best way. The argument that work is infinite because human desires are infinite ignores the absence of infinite money to satisfy those desires or pay for that work and the increasing scarcity of good 40-hr/wk jobs to maintain wages and spending in the age of robotics. Thus, shorter hours is a strategy that is being reinvented hundreds of times a day across the U.S. in this recession and thousands of times a day across the world in both public & private sectors, in every industry, and in a variety of ways. Many countries and U.S. states already have worksharing programs to cushion the transition to permanently shorter workweeks that automatically adjust to our rising levels of productive technology in the Age of Robotics. These programs currently are designed to be temporary. Here's what their permanent program will look like when they finally succumb to the inevitable.

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

too little, too late, too artificial, too arbitrary, too eco-stressing MAKEWORK in the news (archives) - all unnecessary with full employment via temporary worksharing & permanent timesizing -

'Scrapers' [like Nielson Co.] dig deep for data on Web, by Angwin & Stecklow, 10/12 WSJ, A1.
..copying every single message off [eg:] PatientLikeMe's private online forums, [eg: about] personal drugs...
[Job Desperation rampant...]

cascading ECONOMIC COLLAPSE via $$ funnel-up (archives) - solved by war, or smarter, timesizing -

The OECD said the global economy appears to be slowing,,, 10/12 WSJ, A1 pointer to A14.
[NO, you DON'T say! However -]

Wall Street pay is on pace to rise 4% from 2008 to a record $144 billion, with the compensation-to-revenue ratio flat at 32.1%..., 10/12 WSJ, A1 pointer to C1.

The diverging performance of financial stocks and the broader market is causing some to reassess the sector's role as a market driver, 10/11 WSJ, A1 pointer to C1.
["Market driver" - LOL! The financial market is a second derivative of the consumer market (b2c) via the business market (b2b). The only reason financial stocks are going up is that there's NO OTHER PLACE to put the megatrillions that are being funneled, by default, to the top tiny percentage of the population thanks to the labor surplus resulting from waves of worksaving technology crashing against a frozen pre-computer workweek, despite 100 years ( 1840-1940) of sensible workweek reduction and a THIRTY-HOUR WORKWEEK that passed the US Senate in 1933...]

Thousands of students flee home districts - 60% more opt for other towns' schools - More Massachusetts parents look beyond town lines for better schools - Critics say exodus is hurting low-income districts, 10/10 Boston Sunday Globe, A1,A14.
[Get your time arrangements wrong, and all kindsa stuff goes wrong...]

fri-sat 10/08-09/2010 ::: triweekly updates (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 - usually it's just one item on a list - few yet realize it's the ink & paper of the list itself - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and despite *dismissal by the 'experts,' it's reinvented thousands of times a day in every downturn by businesses & governments, for ex.,*Washington State's video on replacing downsizing with timesizing alias 'shared work' -
[editor's comments in square brackets] (editor= Phil Hyde, timesizing@aol.com) -

Thirty years ago 96% of a JCB [backhoe loader] was made in Britain - Today it is just 36% - Why? by JCB chairman Sir Anthony Bamford, 10/09 DailyMail.co.uk
ROCESTER, Staffs., U.K. - ..Maybe Britain would be enjoying the same recovery in economic growth that Germany is going through right now. When the global financial crisis struck, the response of German policymakers was inspirational. Faced with a steep drop in the industrial order book and the prospect of a huge number of engineers, technicians and production-line operatives having to be laid off, what did they do? They found a way of retaining these valuable skills. They introduced short-time working, with the German government paying employees for hours not worked due to the downturn so that their employers could keep them on the payroll. JCB employees in Germany benefited from this forward-looking approach. However, our British employees didn't benefit, because no such short-time working policy existed in this country... - see whole article under today's date.

Swindon Borough Council budget cuts approved - Budget cuts totalling £5m have been approved by Swindon borough councillors, 10/08 BBC News via bbc.co.uk
SWINDON, Wilts., U.K. - ..Mr Bluh said: "We have hundreds and thousands of pensioners... people are on fixed incomes, lots of people are on short-time working, lots of people are struggling... - see whole article under today's date.

Shorter hours and worksharing are happening anyway, but not the best way. The argument that work is infinite because human desires are infinite ignores the absence of infinite money to satisfy those desires or pay for that work and the increasing scarcity of good 40-hr/wk jobs to maintain wages and spending in the age of robotics. Thus, shorter hours is a strategy that is being reinvented hundreds of times a day across the U.S. in this recession and thousands of times a day across the world in both public & private sectors, in every industry, and in a variety of ways. Many countries and U.S. states already have worksharing programs to cushion the transition to permanently shorter workweeks that automatically adjust to our rising levels of productive technology in the Age of Robotics. These programs currently are designed to be temporary. Here's what their permanent program will look like when they finally succumb to the inevitable.

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

cascading ECONOMIC COLLAPSE via $$ funnel-up (archives) - solved by war, or smarter, timesizing -

Some $18 million in federal stimulus payments went to people who were dead.., 10/08 Boston Globe, A1 pointer to A2.
..and $4.3 million more was given to prison inmates, the government reported.
72,000 dead people received stimulus payments - Inspector says little more than half returned - The checks were part of one of President Obama's top domestic priorities, 10/08 Boston Globe, target article, A2.

Weak economy fueling fears
a currency war may loom,
[If it does, America's fate
will certainly trend t'wards Doom...]
10/08 Boston Globe, B9.
[Hail, Poetrie, thou Heav'n-borne maid!]

Fewer layoffs, more job postings, but it's still an uphill climb - Some economists expect the jobless rate to top 10% by the end of the year, 10/08 Boston Globe, B8.

wed-thu 10/06-07/2010 ::: triweekly updates (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 - usually it's just one item on a list - few yet realize it's the ink & paper of the list itself - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and despite *dismissal by the 'experts,' it's reinvented thousands of times a day in every downturn by businesses & governments, for ex.,*Washington State's video on replacing downsizing with timesizing alias 'shared work' -
[editor's comments in square brackets] (editor= Phil Hyde, timesizing@aol.com) -

American overwork and German “short work”, 10/06 Grist Magazine via grist.org
SEATTLE, Ore. -- John de Graaf has a fascinating post on AlterNet about the American culture of overwork and the German policy of Kurzarbeit, or "short work" -- encouraging employers to reduce hours rather than lay workers off when business is slow. In a country with both a worn-out workforce and a major unemployment problem, that seems worth considering...- see whole article under today's date.

Give us weekly offs, fixed working hours: Meru drivers, 10/07 Daily News & Analysis via DNAindia.com/mumbai
MUMBAI, India - ..In a meeting next week, union leader Vinayak Raut will raise the union's earlier demands of regulating the Meru cab drivers' working hours..and setting up..an independent and efficient maintenance facility for the taxis. Raut said, “We will ask the management to provide the Meru drivers with a weekly off, fixed working hours as well as an efficient maintenance and repair facility... - see whole article under today's date.
[Some unions are still struggling for sane and predictable working hours - ALL unions need to get back on this, their POWER ISSUE = shorter hours to engineer a reduced labor surplus, instead of defeating themselves by whining for artificially higher pay for a surplus commodity, themselves on a frozen, pre-technology 40-hour workweek that has not been adjusted for 70 years, that is, for over two generations of humans and thousands of generations of worksaving robots.]

Shorter hours and worksharing are happening anyway, but not the best way. The argument that work is infinite because human desires are infinite ignores the absence of infinite money to satisfy those desires or pay for that work and the increasing scarcity of good 40-hr/wk jobs to maintain wages and spending in the age of robotics. Thus, shorter hours is a strategy that is being reinvented hundreds of times a day across the U.S. in this recession and thousands of times a day across the world in both public & private sectors, in every industry, and in a variety of ways. Many countries and U.S. states already have worksharing programs to cushion the transition to permanently shorter workweeks that automatically adjust to our rising levels of productive technology in the Age of Robotics. These programs currently are designed to be temporary. Here's what their permanent program will look like when they finally succumb to the inevitable.

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

cascading ECONOMIC COLLAPSE via $$ funnel-up (archives) - solved by war, or smarter, timesizing -

Report: Jobs fell most since January - A loss of jobs raises the risk that consumer spending, the largest part of the economy, will retrench and halt the recovery, 10/07 Bloomberg via Boston Globe, B8.
WASHINGTON, U.S.A. - ..Employment decreased by 39,000, the biggest drop since January, after a revised 10,000 rise in August, according to figures from [private firm] ADP Employer Services...
[This is not a recovery. It's merely the top of an up-arc in a pretty consistent, diagonally downward spiral. And consumer spending has been retrenching ever since wages plateaued and started sinking in the 1970s after the then-grown-up babyboomers started entering the job market and replacing the labor surplus of the Great Depression. And the only market-oriented way to reverse this big downspiral is immediate worksharing and long-term timesizing, however short a workweek it takes to restore full employment and consumer spending.]

Uneasy news about jobs holds back stocks, 10/07 Boston Globe, B10.

Foreclosure furor rises; Many call for a freeze, 10/06 NYT, B1.
Amid 'blind stamping,' foreclosures are halted, 10/06 Philadelphia Enquirer, C1.
Processors did not read thousands of documents before signing them. Reviews of paperwork and procedures were ordered of seven of the largest U.S. lenders.

U.S. offers mortgage aid to the jobless 10/06 Boston Globe, A1.
[ANYthing but a job -]

Dim outlook for holiday jobs - Few retailers plan to increase hiring of seasonal workers, 10/06 NYT, B1.
Workers over 55 are targeted at Bucks [County] job fair - "You have to have faith ... someone will latch on to you," said one job applicant, 10/06 Philadelphia Enquirer, C1.
[Yeah, ri-i-ight. Well, Timesizing is all about JOBS - the easy way - quit waiting for the private sector to increase hiring without increased markets and just SHARE the vanishing work by trimming the 70-year-frozen workweek as much as it takes to restore wartime levels of full employment and markets - pay will paradoxically increase because you've absorbed the surplus of desperate jobseekers underbidding one another.]

Stocks leapt to a five-month high..- Gold struck [another] record..., 10/06 Wall Street Journal, A1 pointer to C1,C5.
[The next puff into the next stock bubble inflates apace - with even fewer fundamentals than the last ones. And the one constant is the Pathetic Piling into Gold, the crisis "investment." Inside (C1 pointer to C16) there's more on this: 'Barbarous times call for gold' quoting Keynes via Steve Keen. And something else that's getting repetitive -]
and the dollar tumbled...
[The once-mighty greenback turns into Confederate money as the "last remaining superpower" (LOL) lurches into the Third World with lots and lotsa money but all in the hands of the top two guys... Does each crisis of overconcentration have its own creativity ceiling? You bet -]

Slim odds for inventors - More companies solicit ideas online; Success eludes most, 10/06 WSJ, B12.
[Inventors, investors - wutsa diff when we urgently need a new money centrifuge an' a return of the money supply from a split between MASSIVE investing power and some spending power, to some investing power and MASSIVE spending power? -]

Mortgage investors are set for more pain, 10/06 WSJ, C1.
[Note quote in gold reprise -]

Gold price goes on a print run, 10/06 WSJ, C12.
..So much debt has been taken on relative to income that consumers have to pay it down, or have it written off, before they take on more... Despite a decline from its peak [which was what, when?], combined public and private debt still stands at 34.4% of GDP... And this excludes the government's entitlement obligations, which [are] more than double that number.\.under some estimates... To create inflation against that backdrop looks likely to require far more aggressive stimulus than has been used, say gold bulls...
[Hey, that has a nice ring. I'm not a doomsayer, I'm a gold bull !]
If money printing or "quantitative easing" [our quotes] goes far enough in the U.S., it could stoke serious hard-asset price inflation, even if consumer prices lag.
[What we used to call, back in the '70s, "stagflation," cuz consumer prices only lag cuz consumers don't have any money cuz consumers don't have any jobs...]
It could also further depress the greenback, pushing up dollar-denominated gold prices...

Rogue French trader sentenced to 3 years - Jerome Kerviel..ordered to repay Societe Generale $6.7 billn., 10/06 WSJ, C1.
[No one is safe when individuals are in a position to throw around this kind of dough. Market forces the most efficient allocator? Not when the market has this kind of power gradient between employees and employers - employees trash, employers priceless radioactive radium. Most market-oriented remedy? Engineer full employment, a maximal consumer base and maximum velocity of currency circulation (aiias "economic dynamism") by bandaid worksharing and permanent timesizing, however short or intermittent a workweek it takes.]

Is it time for a third political party? letters to the editor, 10/06 NYT, A26.
[Definitely, but the established hegemonic Only-Two have made it almost impossible for a third party to emerge let alone continue = another push in America's accelerating self-destruction due to insufficient negative feedback, the important kind that indicates necessary adaptation to shifting circumstances.]

In capitalism, Sun's co-founder sees a pathway to help the poor, by Vikas Bajaj, 10/06 NYT, B1.
[Anybody find anything in here about JOBS? The inside photo shows one poor woman, Ramila Chawda, using her loan from Ujjivan microfinance in Bangalore to school her children but, betcha the timing there will be off. This article sortof asks The Big Question, but the last paragraph doesn't offer much hope -]
"I am relatively negative on most NGOs and their effectiveness," [Vinod Khosla] said. "I am not negative on their intentions."
[The same might be said - IS being said - about Khosla and his fellow well-intentioned billionaires.]
.\.Forbes now estimates that India has 69 billionaires, up from seven in 2000 - but only a few have set up large charities, endowments or venture capital funds. "It surprises me that in India there is not a tradition of large-scale giving and helping to solve social problems and set a social model," Mr. Khosla said.
["Any system that relies on charity (capricious) for vital functions (like money circulation) is lethally flawed."]
Mr. Khosla is not alone in worrying about the state of Indian philanthropy. Bill Gates..said Thursday that he and [Warren] Buffett might go to India as part of their campaign to get the very rich to give away half their wealth...
[That won't do it. Getting some economies to model temporary worksharing and sustainable timesizing for job creation- full employment- strong consumer spending- marketable productivity- sustainable investments by using billions for advertising and public education about the somewhat paradoxical "worktime economics" ("You can get MORE PAY by CUTTING HOURS?!!") would be much more efficient and lasting and self-enhancing - and spreading timesizing beyond them- coordinating timesizing economies into non-mutually-destructive trade zones (unlike today's "Free Trade")- and moving on to income balancing - under income balancing, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett would reinvest more and more of their income in overincome-targeted training and hiring - there would be a cascade of JOBS coming out of them instead of a flood of dependents...]

For those living nearby, that miserable hum of clean energy, by Tom Zeller Jr., 10/06 NYT, A1.
VINALHAVEN ISLAND, Maine - ..The industrial whoosh-and-whoop of the 123-foot blades is making life in this otherwise tranquil corner of the island unbearable...
[Renewable-energy advocates are going to screw themselves if they don't get to work on this noise problem. They need quieter wind turbines or much less populated windfarm locations. And why the heck would put these too large machines on a too small island where residents HAVE NO ESCAPE?! There are two equally important considerations in siting beside wind availability = noise pollution and neighbors.]

sun-mon-tue 10/03-04-05/2010 ::: triweekly updates (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 - usually it's just one item on a list - few yet realize it's the ink & paper of the list itself - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and despite *dismissal by the 'experts,' it's reinvented thousands of times a day in every downturn by businesses & governments, for ex.,*Washington State's video on replacing downsizing with timesizing alias 'shared work' -
[editor's comments in square brackets] (editor= Phil Hyde, timesizing@aol.com) -

U.S. economy won't grow without lower unemployment, 10/04 Corpus Christi Caller Times via caller.com
CORPUS CHRISTI, Tex. — Q. As a self employed independent contractor the recession reduced my work hours to 32 hours a week... - see whole article under today's date.

Overworked Britons struggle to find time for themselves, 10/03 The Guardian via guardian.co.uk
MANCHESTER, England, England, Acrosst the Atlahntic Sea, And I'm a genius genius - I believe in Gaaaaaawd, And I believe that Gaaaude, Believes in Claaaude - That's me! That's me! (from the musical "Hair")
- ..And despite an official fall in working hours, Britons are struggling more than ever to find time for themselves, according to new research... - see whole article under today's date.

If you're feeling down, stop doing and start being - Depression is hitting men earlier than ever, but you can beat the blues, 10/05 CITY A.M. via cityam.com
LONDON, England - ..30% believed shorter working hours would help them get on better with relatives... “..It can be easy to lose touch with the other things that give life value.” In the City, this is exacerbated by long hours and the imperative to be contactable at all hours of the day... - see whole article under today's date.

So shorter hours and worksharing are happening anyway, but not the best way. The argument that work is infinite because human desires are infinite ignores the absence of infinite money to satisfy those desires or pay for that work and the increasing scarcity of good 40-hr/wk jobs to maintain wages and spending in the age of robotics. Thus, shorter hours is a strategy that is being reinvented hundreds of times a day across the U.S. in this recession and thousands of times a day across the world in both public & private sectors, in every industry, and in a variety of ways. Many countries and U.S. states already have worksharing programs to cushion the transition to permanently shorter workweeks that automatically adjust to our rising levels of productive technology in the Age of Robotics. These programs currently are designed to be temporary. Here's what their permanent program will look like when they finally succumb to the inevitable.

less strategic GOOD NEWS (archives) -

Americans sour on trade - Majority [53%] say free-trade pacts have hurt U.S.; Legislation issue in some races, 10/04 Wall Street Journal, A1.
[Finally the light begins to dawn against the true Free Trade believers.]

The Bill Gates income tax, by Arthur "Laffer Curve" Laffer, 10/05 WSJ, A23.
..If Washington [State's] most famous billionaires are really worried about their state's finances, they'd write personal checks to the government and leave everyone else alone...
[Sounds like a plan!]

A welfare shift in Britain, 10/05 New York Times, A1 pointer to A4.
Revising its welfare system, the British government will end child-benefit payments to middle-class families.
[In other words, a little Means Test? (And it might even stop subsidizing reproduction in the age of global overpopulation!) Maybe we could use some of that here on Social Security benefits for millionaires...]

Military orders less dependence on fossil fuels - Costly convoys at issue - As tankers are burned, solar power is tested in Afghanistan, 10/05 NYT, A1.
[Hey, maybe the dopeboys, oops, doughboys are gettin' smarter! But how about less dependence on fossil wartime prosperity policies across depopulated mountain ranges on the other side of the world? "Make worksharing, not war!"]
doom du jourtm = today's headlines from helltm (archives)
– face the bad news here in the context of a sustainable solution (above):

BANKRUPTCY tsunami in the news (archives) - staunched only by risky war or safe timesizing -
[So, hey, what's happenin' to the Americans who actually produce something that hurts if you drop it on your foot? -]

From factory floor, a message for Washington, by Dennis Berman, 10/05 Wall St Journal, C1.
For three painful decades, American manufacturing has been in decline. Since the Lehman Bros. crack-up, that decline has steepened at an alarming rate. The most recent statistics show businesses shuttering nearly 20% more manufacturing plants than they open. That came after four years when the number of U.S. factories actually held steady [background music: "wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles..."]. All the padlocks and pathos mean that today there are roughly as many factories in this country as there were in 1972. It somehow sounds comforting, until you realize there were 100 million fewer Americans back then. Can anything be done to slow the decline?...
[How about to reverse the decline?! Number One would be, Maximize the velocity and amount of the surviving economic dynamism dba the remaining currency circulation by sharing the vanishing natural market-demanded employment, that is, worksharing, or as the compared-to-us super-prosperous Germans call it, Kurz-arbeit. Then convert temporary worksharing based on the unemployment insurance fund to permanent timesizing based on something like a tax on chronic overtime with an exemption for OT-targeted training and hiring. Then redefine "full time" employment from a pre-computer workweek of 40 hours to something a little more suitable for the age of robotics. With a good design, it should all be automatic, no political messing-around-and-messing-it-up...]

cascading ECONOMIC COLLAPSE via $$ funnel-up (archives) - solved by war, or smarter, timesizing -

What have they learned? editorial, 10/05 NYT, A26.
The six-month federal moratorium on deep-water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico is scheduled to end on Nov.30. Complaining of job losses, politicians in the Gulf and many in industry are demanding that it be lifted now...
[You don't suppose job desperation is the biggest obstacle on our path into the Age of Ecology and just plain survival??? That would make an easy full-employment policy like Timesizing the cutting edge of the ecological agenda. Too bad so may environmentalists are still dinking around with Twelve Things YOU As An Individual Can Do To Save The World... Why "easy"? Because you quit straining to create enough 40hr/wk jobs to employ everyone as automation takes over and just... share the vanishing work and stable profits - IF there is a stable consumer population - instead of funneling them all up to the topmost tiny fraction of the income ladder.]

Dow declines the most in nearly a month [78.41 or 0.7% down to 10751.27], 10/05 Boston Globe, B11.
..as rating cuts on Microsoft, Macy's and others triggered caution before earnings season starts...

Yield hunt leads to currency debt, by Frangos & Gongloff, 10/05 WSJ, C1.
The global rush for yield is "driving" investors [our quotes] to buy emerging-market debt issued in local currency, adding foreign-exchange fluctuations to the list of risks bondholders face...
[Hm, never mind too few employees to support retiring babyboomers, sounds like right now there are too many otherwise-idle "investors" waiting for too few actually productive workers to provide Yield for their vastly oversized Black Hole of money, way out of proportion to the amount of consumer spending required to ultimately support it.]
Foreign investors as of the end of July held 27% of Indonesia's local currency government debt compared to 16% a year ago. In Malaysia through June, it was 18% compared to 10% a year ago... Most believe that trend only accelerated in Q3...
[So the unproductive money-shufflers have vacuumed-in, decelerated and converted to increasingly-on-hold investing power far too much of American spending power to stably support their investments, and now they're working on the rest of the world. So the risk of a global megamongocrash are getting bigger, and the ways of stopping it are getting smaller now that they've grotesquely indebted every government on the planet. Brilliant, not.]

Cities in debt turn to states, adding strain, 10/05 NYT, A1.
[At least banks are altering course -]

Banks pile into safer bets [thank God!] - Regulatory shifts are upending business models.., 10/05 WSJ, A1.
[Business models like We Loot Our Milchcows, oops, Too-Big-Too-Fail-Banks & You Bail Us Out ?.. No wonder that -]

Investors cut stock trading in the third quarter, sending volumes down 25% from the second quarter, 10/04 WSJ, A1 pointer to C1.
[So the topmost brackets have finally gone beyond just vacuuming the money out of the consumer base and the business markets, and started on the outskirts of their own financial markets. Soon they'll be all alone - in a big desperate (and probably angry) Third World economy.]

Shift to wealthier clientele puts life insurers in a bind, 10/04 WSJ, A1.
[Duh, what did they expect?! This is about the longstanding tax exemption for insurance payouts that was always excused with -]
.."We protect widows and orphans"...
[in other words, insurance payouts have a -]
..special social function... But..unnoticed...life-insurance companies gradually shifted away from their broad historical base of middle-class households. Instead..an increasing portion of insurers' business consists of sellign large policies to wealthier Americans... [So] tax benefits..go..to the well-off...
[So why keep them - they're just worsening the transformation of our monetary circulation system into a gigantic cerebral embolism or moneyclot.]

Easy borrowing by corporations spurs few jobs - Stockpiling the cash - Caution [or suicidal prudence] by businesses is stalling efforts to perk up economy, 10/04 NYT, A1.
[Same as we went thru in the '30s and started out of by establishing a maximum workweek and cutting it two hours a year 1938-1940. Speaking of stockpiling the cash -]

Top executives in Massachusetts continued to receive huge payouts.., 10/03 Boston Sunday Globe, A1 pointer to G1.
..even as workers took cuts or lost their jobs in the recession.
[So what? So, among much other collateral damage, the following -]

The office-space market is no longer in free fall but a strong recovery could be years away.., 10/05 WSJ, A1 pointer to A10.
[and -]

Las Vegas is in its deepest rut since the rise of casinos in the 1940s.., 10/03 Boston Sunday Globe, A1 pointer to A15.
..with plunging gambling revenue and a collapsing construction industry.
[The semi-conscious money-vacuumers in the topmost brackets are finally sucking away the last longshot hope of generally available retirement "pension" = winning at gambling. At least they're also inadvertently stopping more insane construction in the desert. And the only forces that can reverse this are market forces, but the market must be reframed from a steepening power gradient in favor of employers to a level playing field between employers and employees, which today's totally spoiled employers will perceive as an acute labor shortage. How to engineer this vital labor "shortage" without war or plague? Deregulate and thaw the 70-year frozen workweek and resume our 1840-1940 workweek reduction, for example by continuing our 1938-40 two-hours-a-year reduction until sustainable investment is restored, via marketable productivity, via general markets and high-velocity currency circulation, via reactivated consumers, via rehired disemployed.]

Bernanke warns of threat from deficit, 10/05 Boston Globe, B9.
[but] said the government shouldn't raise taxes or slash spending now. [photo caption]
[What can it do now? Quit straining to create enough 40-hour workweek jobs for everyone and just cut the workweek and share the vanishing work. It doesn't matter how short the workweek is. It only matters how many consumers we have and how much they get paid if we turn them into a valuable scarce commodity instead of leaving them as a dirt-cheap common-as-dirt surplus, and getting commoner and cheaper with every new downsizing. "Ridiculous"? "There's an infinite amount of work to be done"? Then where is it, and specifically, where's the money to pay for more people to do it instead of just loading it on surviving employees at minimum pay?]

fri-sat 10/01-02/2010 ::: triweekly updates (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 - usually it's just one item on a list - few yet realize it's the ink & paper of the list itself - it's our closest candidate to a single all-sufficient control and despite *dismissal by the 'experts,' it's reinvented thousands of times a day in every downturn by businesses & governments, for ex.,*Washington State's video on replacing downsizing with timesizing alias 'shared work' -
[editor's comments in square brackets] (editor= Phil Hyde, timesizing@aol.com) -

German Unemployment Rate Down to 7.2 Percent after Peaking at 8.7 Percent; Can We Learn Anything? 10/01 International Business Times via ibtimes.com
..Even at the height of the economic crisis, a government-subsidized short-time work plan that allowed employers to reduce production without cutting employees kept the jobless rate in check... [Now after the height of the crisis] the labor agency estimated that, in July -- the latest month for which it has figures -- 288,000 people were in the short-work program, 111,000 fewer than in June and down nearly four-fifths from its peak in May 2009... - see whole article under today's date.
[This is the most sarcastic, angry article we've seen about the "Suicide, Everyone Else First"' policies of the American power elite, and we're glad to see that Americans are beginning to wake up and get beyond Tea Party yelling.]

UN warns of unemployment unrest, 10/02 AmericanThinker.com (blog)
..Active labour market policies including work-sharing that target vulnerable groups such as young people, and training... - see whole article under today's date.

U.S. military is secretly [LOL] shifting aerial drones and weaponry from the Afghan battlefront to help the CIA expand its war on militants in Pakistani havens, 10/02 Wall St Journal, A1:1 pointer to A1:2.
CIA escalates in Pakistan - Pentagon diverts drones from Afghanistan to bolster U.S. campaign next door, 10/02 WSJ, A1:2 target article.
[Never mind the sovereignty of allies or the sole right of Congress to wage war... The insatiable hunger of the US military industry is paramount... Makework forever!]

Accounts raided in global hack, 10/01 Wall St Journal, A1.
More than 100 people have been arrested or charged in the U.S. and the U.K. as part of an alleged global cybercrime ring using computer viruses to steal bank-account information and loot money from unsuspecting victims...
[Again, our computer-software design has outstripped our economic "software" design: By injecting technology against a frozen pre-technology workweek, we've made it so hard to get a job and earn an honest living that it's easier for many to try the alternative and make a dishonest living...]

Flash crash is pinned on one [multi-billion-dollar] trade.., 10/02 WSJ, A1.
[So nice we've come up with such an easy answer to this. Or have we...]
How a trader's algorithm went awry - ..'Hot potato' effect from same positions passed back and forth
[Can't protect against all possibilities as long as our core economic design spreads job desperation...]

cascading ECONOMIC COLLAPSE via $$ funnel-up (archives) - solved by war, or smarter, timesizing -

With the "recovery" [our quotes] largely stuck in neutral, the president of the Fed Reserve Bank of New York signaled the Fed was preparing actions aimed at boosting growth, 10/02 WSJ, A1 pointer to B2.
[Not that the NY Fed has any power to do anything but apply some mascara to the deep-structure-irrelevant financial industry based in NY... They have no special powers to restore the consumer base via the employment basement. That's a matter for Congress and the Presidency in the direction of enacting automatic workweek regulation to maintain full employment and markets, however short a workweek it takes. And dthe consumer base needs it -]

Gingerly, retailers try to pass along higher costs - Pivot point: Can companies raise prices as Americans live paycheck to paycheck? 10/02 WSJ, B1.
[Never mind the mounting numbers who don't have a paycheck...]

These families shop when [and only when] aid arrives, by Miguel Bustillo, 10/02 WSJ, B1.
HOUSTON, Tex. - ..Scene unfolds at many Wal-Mart Stores..that underscores the deep financial strains that many low-income American consumers still [read 'increasingly'] face..at midnight, when the government replenishes their electronic-benefit accounts with their monthly allotment of food stamps, nutritional grants for mothers with babies or other aid for needy families...
[So, keep going with breeding a bigger and bigger population of dependents and charity cases or, adjust the frozen low-tech workweek to the realities of the high-tech age and SHARE THE VANISHING WORK that's not yet turned over to automation and robotics (let alone outsourcing and imports).

The bond 'bubble' - Are some investors taking on too big a bet? by Jason Zweig, 10/02n WSJ, B1.
[And their alternative to another stock bubble would be??]

'HIIC' nations are acting like backwaters, by Kelly Evans, 9/30 WSJ, B1.
U.S., Europe, the U.K. and Japan...the heavily indebted industrial countries [HIIC, are] displaying the kinds of investment risks traditionally associated with global backwaters. "Developed[-country financial] markets are basically behaving like emerging ones..."
[as in emerging-country financial markets that are unsupported and unstabilized by proportionally strong domestic consumption? So fickle boundary-dissing investors are shifting their trillions to the "emerging" countries. However...]
..A big question is whether emerging markets can still shine as the developed world slows...
[Why would they? They depend on the developed world's shrinking consumer base - except then investors can conceal their massive overconcentration and deceleration of global M1 (money supply) by the fact that there will be weaker "developed" comparisons to make the "emerging" markets look so undeveloped. Maybe we should have more honest names; "emerging" markets should be "undeveloped" markets (no anchoring domestic consumer base) and "developed" markets should be "shrinking" markets (having their consumer spending power funnelled to the topmost tiny brackets and coagulated into pollyanna investing power - as the undeveloped markets have already had).]

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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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