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Miscellaneous Good News, October 2003
[Commentary] ©2003 Phil Hyde, The Timesizing Wire, Box 622, Cambridge MA 02140 USA (617) 623-8080

10/31/2003   headlines from heaven - glimmers of intelligence -

1. Economy records speediest growth since the mid-80s, NYT, front page.
   • In big picture, winter misery faded quickly
     [But winter's just starting.]
   • 3rd-quarter data [good] - But surge in spending, helped by rebates, may not persist.
   [Note Krugman's bigger "but" -]
   A big quarter - Putting the 'gee' in G.D.P., op ed by Paul Krugman, NYT, A23.
   The Commerce Dept. announces very good growth during the previous quarter. Many observers declare the economy's troubles are over. And the administration's supporters claim that the economy's turnaround validates [their] policies.
   
   • That's what happened 18 months ago, when a preliminary estimate put 1Q02 growth at 5.8%. That was later revised down to 5.0. More important, growth in the next quarter slumped to 1.3% [and] the nation proceeded to lose another 600,000 jobs [and associated confident consumers].
   • The same story unfolded in 3Q02 when growth rose to 4% and the economy actually gained 200,000 jobs. But [then] growth slipped back down to 1.4% and job losses resumed....
   ...There are still some reasons to wonder whether the economy has really turned the corner.
   • ...The bulk of last quarter's growth came from a huge [27%] surge in consumer spending with a further [20%] boost from housing.... This can't go on [because] in the long run, consumer spending can't outpace the growth in consumer income....
     
   • Despite all that growth in Q3, the number of jobs actually fell. And new claims for unemployment insurance, a leading indicator for the job market, still show no sign of a hiring boom. And unless we start to see serious job growth -...increases in payroll of more than 200,000 a month - consumer spending will eventually slide, and bring growth down with it.
   ...It would be quite a trick to run the biggest [supposedly job creating] budget deficit in the history of the planet and still end a presidential term with fewer jobs than when you started, [but] despite yesterday's good news, [it's] a trick Mr. Bush still seems likely to pull off.

1. [more commitment to make united Europe work -]
   French intend to become more European - Union is bringing about a series of changes, by John Tagliabue, NYT, A8.
   [Guess the French don't want to rely on a nation as unstable as the U.S. under neo-con artist dirigisme.]
   • ...language study would be extended to all primary schools, where pupils would be required to learn at least two EU languages, including French.
     [Contrast vanishing language courses in U.S. as school districts cut budgets and curricula - see our general gloom page today, 10/30/2003.]
   • At 18, all French youths would receive a handbook explaining their rights as citizens of the Union.
   • ...The measures would also require schools to display maps of the EU in classrooms
   • and the text of the EU Constitution....
     [All 800 pages?]
   • At sporting events, schools would be urged to display the union's distinctive blue flag with gold stars alongside the French flag [le tricouleur].... The EU flag is [already] prominently displayed on public buildings in most nations alongside the national flag....
   In France, preschool children have for years learned songs like one that now begins, "Fifteen little Europeans, united under one flag."
   [i.e., "Quinze petits Europeens, unis sous un drapea"?]
   ..\..The Minister for European Affairs, Noelle Lenoir [no leration to August Renoir], said..."Europe cannot grow without its citizens taking part."...

2. [despite all, intelligence keeps reasserting its inconvenient head in Sharon's military -]
   Israel's chief of staff denounces policies against Palestinians, by Greg Myre, NYT, A5.
   JERUSALEM...- Israel's top-ranking soldier said that current hard-line policies against the Palestinians were working against Israel's "strategic interest" and had contributed to the downfall of the previous Palestinian prime minister, Israeli news organizations reported on Wednesday [10/29]. PM Ariel Sharon was described as "furious" about the comments, attributed to Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon, the military's chief of staff, Israeli TV stations reported later in the day.
   [Another heroic Israeli stands up to the suicidal stupidity and Judaism-disgracing policies of Sharon.]
   ...[He] made the remarks to Israeli journalists at a background briefing on Tuesday [10/28].... [He said] comprehensive travel restrictions and curfews imposed on Palestinians were actually harming Israel's overall security. "It increases hatred for Israel and strengthens the terror organizations"....
   General Yaalon also said that Israel should have eased punitive measures to bolster the fortunes of the former Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, who resigned on Sept. 6 after only four months on the job. Mr. Abbas expressed frustration that Mr. Sharon never took concrete steps to convince Palestinians that the Middle East peace plan, initiated in June, would bring about any real improvements in their lives.
   "There is no hope, no expectations for the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, nor in Bethlehem and Jericho,"..\..Nahum Barnea, a leading Israeli columnist with the daily Yediot Ahronot...quoted the "military official" as saying. "In our tactical decisions, we are operating contrary to our strategic interest."...
   [Gee, just like the Bush administration on Iraq! "Birds of a featherbrain, flock together insane." We repeat, the first side that adopts Gandhi's active non-violence will win, in two years max.]

3. [eventually the truth will out - speaking of Bush in Iraq, we have a rightwinger in the WSJ 'doing the flip' today -]
   It's a real war and it's not going well, op ed by Albert Hunt, WSJ, A17.
   "It became necessary to destroy the town in order to save it." - US Army major, Vietnam 1968.
   "The more successful we are on the ground, the more these killers will react." - Bush this week explaining why the surge of violence in Iraq actually is a sign of American success.
   The Iraq war is going badly and the rationalizations are even worse.
   First, let's face up to reality.... The press should cease referring to this as the postwar stage.
   [Only following Bush's lead, Al. Holbrooke's slip at the UN is trivial by comparison.]
   The Bush administration's mistakes and misrepresentations - since May 1 - continue unabated.
   [OK, so quit blaming the press.]
   There's the pretense the war is over, that the press is hiding all the good stuff, and the region and the world are safer and more secure.
   [Whoa, there's a big admission from a Bush brain!]
   The pResident's [our mixed casing] rare Tuesday news conference was embarrassing.
   ...Paul Bremer, the civilian czar of Baghdad,
   [that pretty well pegs Bush as acting like the Russkis in Afghanistan - czar of Baghdad indeed - guess it's better than coming clean and admitting he's the thief of Baghdad]
   insisted at the White House this week that Iraq is going well -
   [and Dufus Bush believed him!]
   "The good days outnumber the bad days."
   That's debatable but irrelevant. "This is classic guerilla warfare," notes Sandy Berger, the national security chief in the Clinton administration. "...The guerillas choose the time and place of conflict \though\ most of the country [may] look fine...." One clear lesson of Vietnam is that success is not measured by comparing the number of good days to bad days.
   [But degree of erosion of the idiotic neo-cons' position is demoed by a WSJ bloviator like Al Hunt comparing Iraq to Vietnam!]
   Then there's the administration's new favorite refrain these days, that the problem is [that] the press isn't reporting the good news, like the opening of many schools.
   But Newsweek mag, in a devastating coverstory this week, headlined, "Bush's $87 Billion Mess ... Waste, Chaos and Cronyism: The Real Cost of Rebuilding Iraq," reports a number of these schools don't have textbooks, desks or blackboards....
   Two articles of faith of the administration's warhawks were that toppling Saddam would deal a blow to terrorists everywhere and send a powerful message to the region [ie: the Palestinians].... Yet not only is terrorism on the ascendancy, but tragically America may be the best recruiting tool.... Rather than an incentive to cooperate, the effect of the Bush pre-emptive doctrine on Iran and North Korea, the other members of [Bush's fatuously labeled] infamous 'axis of evil, clearly has been to expedite accumulation of weapons of mass destruction. The Israeli-Palestinian situation has deteriorated since the Iraqi invasion.
   Some American business executives say that although their operations are more global than ever, in recent months they are traveling less - to Asia as well as the Middle East - because of growing terrorist threats against Americans.
   In Iraq itself...some Iraqis...insist on elections to select the drafters \of\ a constitution for the country.... But Mr. Bremer says that would be too messy and take too long.... Bottom line: We toppled Saddam to create democracy, as long as the masses don't participate.
   [Same as in America!]
   "We can't have both democracy and control," observes Sandy Berger.
   [And the USA itself will be losing its democracy in 2004 and the neo-con artists do anything they "have to" to retain control.]
   At this week's Democrat-oriented national security conference...widespread areas of agreement, including one that would have been rejected, even ridiculed, 5 months ago when Geo.W.Bush, in his flyboy jacket, dramatically landed on that aircraft carrier: Iraq and national security may well be the Achilles heel for this pResident's re-election.
   [We said on this website 2 years ago that Bush was a threat to our own national security. Note also the NYT counterpart article today -]
   The bad news is good news for Democrats, by Christopher Marquis, NYT, A12.
   WASHINGTON...- Iraq is a mess, the world resents America and its debt-burdened economy is an international embarrassment. That was the Democratic perspective voiced at a conference that ended here on Wed. [10/29], that things could hardly be more grim....
   [Interesting sidelight -]
   "I'm a liberal," [Richard Holbrooke] thundered, "and I'm proud of it."...
   [Hey the Dems are just ricocheting back to old-fashioned liberalism instead of breaking out to a Third Way, but at least they're starting, just starting, to provide an actual, different choice again. The Times today gives Dubya another well-deserved whack in -]
   Eyes wide shut - Baghdad Bob, Crawford[-Ranch] George, op ed by Maureen Dowd, A29.
   ..."Baghdad Bob"...assured reporters, even as American tanks rumbled in[to Baghdad], "There are no American infidels in Baghdad. Never!" and, "We are winning this war, and we will win the war.... This is for sure."
   Now Crawford[-Ranch] George is morphing into Baghdad Bob, [arguing that] the worse things get in Iraq, the better news it is. "The more successful we are on the ground, the more these killers will react," he said. In the Panglossian Potomac, calamities happen for the best ["in this best of all possible worlds."]
   [Maureen then quotes the same US Army major in Vietnam as Al Hunt also started with.]
   ...No juxtaposition is too absurd to stop Bush officials from insisting nothing is wrong....
   [It's the "Mad Mag administration"! Geo. "Alfred E. Newman" Bush intoning interminably, "What me worry? What me worry?" as America's once-smart CEOs keep clobbering America's once-solid consumer-market demand with one after another "last" downsizing.]

1. ["good, but" -]
   Homeownership builds to record: [Commerce Dept.] - Low interest rates help boost number to 68.4%; Some say it has hit roof, by Patrick Barta, WSJ, A2.
   [But, one would like an examination of any figures from the Bush administration - preferably by a whole-systems, ecological economist like Herman Daly. This is 68.4% of "households" for example, and just how do they define "household" and how many of the poor do they manage to - quite innocently of course - exclude? Barta also repeats another skepticism-inviting stat -]
   ...Economists attributed the increase to low interest rates and the fact that incomes continue to climb despite a weak job market....
   [Are they climbing for the unemployed, welfarees, disabled, homeless, incarcerated, force-retired, forced-keep-working, forced-part-time, forced self-employed...? Or are many of these conveniently externalized from the measure?]

2. [Kenya gets smart -]
   Kenya: Foreigners' jobs in peril, by Marc Lacey, NYT, A9.
   Kenya's labor minister said the government would not renew the work permits for about 16,000 foreigners, mostly Europeans, in an attempt to provide positions for the more than 2m jobless Kenyans. "I believe that there are enough qualified Kenyans, who are currently languishing in poverty yet they can earn a living by taking up those jobs," the minister, Ali Mwakwere, told Agence France-Presse.
   [Let the Euros worsen their own job markets back home.]

1. [1 UPsizing]
   JetBlue Airways - Net profit more than doubles; Plan is set to expand capacity, WSJ, B8.
   ...JetBlue, which has prospered with its cheap fares and low expenses, plans to boost capacity 35-37% next year - higher than the 5% growth most major carriers are planning. JetBlue also plans to expand to one or two additional destinations during 20034....
   [Unspecified new or reclaimed jobs.]

2. Thailand sets path to a better economy - Loan payoff to IMF and 'Thaksinomics', by Wayne Arnold, NYT, W1.
   ..."Today we paid off the last batch of IMF loans, lifting the commitment to the IMF [and its free-market gospel] from our shoulders," [PM] Thaksin told the nation....
   [Another small nation experiences the well-intentioned(?) road to hell of the US-dominated International "Typhoid Mary" Monetary Fund. But this small nation escapes alive. Quite a feat after being forced to take off all your clothes and wear a "Rape me" sign. Guess the big boys didn't particularly notice little Siam.]

3. Bookmarks - ...Little People, by Dan Kennedy, reviewed by Russ Smith, WSJ, W8.
   [It's offset at the start of the second paragraph, but it's soooo nice to see a first paragraph that presents the other side in the Wall Street Journal for a change -]
   Dan Kennedy is a liberal media critic for a weekly newspaper, the Boston Phoenix. In his telling,
   • pResident Bush is a moron,
   • a right-wing cabal controls the country,
   • and Rupert Murdoch is the philistine who has sullied worldwide media....
   [The book title, surprisingly, does not refer to the Bush administration but to Dan Kennedy's -]
   extraordinary...heartfelt yet not maudlin story of the achondroplasia - dwarfism - of [his] young daughter [which includes] a brief history of "little people," the preferred term for dwarfs[/dwarves] these days....
   ["Dwarf" is a very old word in English that goes back to the time before /f/ and /v/ were separate letters, and were pronounced depending on whether they were followed by a voiced letter (which got the also-voiced /v/ sound) or not. Others are life, wife, roof, loaf, oaf... and deeper archeology reveals linguistic fossils like woof (as in woof & web) and weave - they're fun to collect. Strangest is the different /th/s in earth and earthen. Americans preserve similar, still-unseparated potential letters in the diphthongs (slide vowels) of height and hide, and Philadelphians and Canadians add the diphthongs in clout and cloud, or house and houses. Clout and house have the one with the famed "out and about" Canadian-trademark vowel.]

4. [and whilst we're on about reviews -]
   Privilege and treachery, review by Dorothy Rabinowitz of Jamie Johnson's documentary film "Born Rich," WSJ, W13C.
   [which, though it is castigated for not remembering that -]
   ...depth is more important than diversity....
   [is still to be praised for taking on the -]
   taboo about discussing so elementary a fact of life..\..
   [as being born rich. We might almost define real human progress, in distinction to more mere technological whizbang, as overcoming the accident of birth, whether its extreme disadvantages or its extreme supposed advantages. Jamie Johnson is -]
   the heir to the Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical fortune....

1. [1 UPsizing]
   Spain: More peacekeepers, by Dale Fuchs, NYT, A8.
   PM Jose Azmar announced a $54m spending increase to add troops for the Civil Guard, a militarized police corps, and other law-enforcement bodies, noting the Guard's increased role in international peacekeeping missions....
   [Unspecified new "militarized police" jobs. Compare 10/04-06/2003 #1 below.]

2. [at last, some vital accountability -]
   Brace yourself for another monthly bill - To combat shortages of water, government moves to make apartment renters pay for it, by Ray Smith, WSJ, D1.
   [Generally a positive development, particularly for the mushrooming, unsustainable populations in the desert Southwest with its heavy water-subsidy parasitism on the Northeast, but of course, the bills should not be limited to apartment renters, and should fall particularly heavily on household lawn watering and household swimming pools.]
   About 33m households are likely to see a new bill turn up in their mailboxes soon: a water bill. The EPA, as part of efforts to promote water conservation, is seeking a rule change that would encourage landlords to charge tenants for every drop of water they use.
   [Of course, this could also just be another Bush initiative to soak the poor (or in this case, leave them high {=stranded} and dry).]
   The agency says people will think twice about taking those long hot showers if they realize their money is flowing down the drain along with the suds.
   [Fine. Bring back baths. If they were good enough for Churchill.... But don't forget all those sprinklers on timers that we see in the Northeast, watering lawns while it's raining, or the household swimming pools just a few blocks from a community swimming pool or a river/lake/ocean.]
   The price of water has been climbing steadily nationwide in the past few years, but the vast majority of the country's renters would never know it. That's because only about 2m of the nation's roughly 35m rental households are currently paying a separate bill for their water.
   Several factors have contributed to the run-up in water prices....
   • increasing demand, thanks to population and industry growth.
     [Advocates of the "move them all here whether via legal or illegal immigration" solution to world problems take note, and also advocates of the infinite indiscriminate (not "more with less") growth model for industry and the economy, take note.]
   • parts of the Pacific Northwest, the Plains and Southwest are suffering "severe to extreme" drought....
   Some cities have been hit particularly hard by the recent price surge....
   • Roanoke VA...32%
   • Binghamton NY...26.7%
   • Seatlle, 23.8%
   • Fort Smith, Ark., 15.6%
   • Boston, 13.7%
   • and Detroit, 13%....

3. Productivity isn't everything, pointer digest (to C2), NYT, C1.
   [At LAAAST, a Blinding Glimpse of the Obvious!]
   Productivity growth does not get much blame for the "jobless recovery," while criticizing foreign trade [ie: "free" trade] is an age-old pastime. Each, though, allows you to produce more with less.
   [That is, both, especially productivity growth due to technological leaps, allow you to produce more goods and services with less worktime, and if you take that "less worktime" in the form of workforce cuts and executive megapay, instead of workweek cuts and stable workforce pay, well, wonder of wonders, you're soon asking, "Where are my markets?!" Recall the old Ford-Reuther Paradox: Ford, "Let's see you unionize these robots!" Reuther, "Let's see you sell them cars." As long as we're downsizing instead of timesizing and hearing only about "jobless recovery," we guarantee only a gradually deepening depression, which will be a continuing challenge to the shortsighted pollyannas to spin as a positive. Unfortunately, in the indicated article, Hal Varian, a mgmt prof at UCal/Berkeley, just spoons out the usual simple-minded pap that criticizing technological "progress" is downright un-American, not to say Luddite, regardless of kneejerk downsizing instead of timesizing, and the controversy is really about who will capture its benefits and bear its costs, never mind the obvious answer in the context of downsizing, and never mind the ultimate self-contradiction of downsizing in terms of that embarrassing connection between downsizing employees and downsizing consumers = employees and their dependents. And never mind the marginal utility of concentrated spending power. In an aside, Varian claims that outsourcing is not as bad as technological labor-savings because "those dollars sent abroad eventually come back to purchase American products" = another example of his pollyannoidal naivete when "those dollars" go to Chinese or Indian employees who cannot afford American products. Our own top-priority focus on technology is based on the easy correctibility of outsourcing with tariffs and other ways of enforcing the principle that, "You contribute to the employment base under our consumer base or you don't get the use of the consumer base." For all his talk about technology and its work savings, Varian's brain is still firmly in the 18th century before the industrial revolution because he's still talking, in his second-last sentence, about a "labor-scarce economy" - and we don't think this is a mistake for "employment-scarce economy." Does he foresee global multilateral neutron-bombing? The constant harping of management types on labor scarcity/labor shortage in the Age of Robotics is mystifying. And their incapability of connecting the dots between employees and consumers, employment and consumption, or connecting their own marginal-utility principle to anything relevant - like the concentration of national income for instance - and the consequent weakening of consumer demand with subsequent deflation. He wraps with -]
   But if these gains from technology and trade are to be politically palatable [no mention of "economically sustainable"!], we have to find a way to make sure that all can benefit from the increased opportunities they offer for consumption and leisure.
   [Note he offers no suggestions as to HOW to find a way (except an earlier, admittedly "not a policy proposal" thought experiment about outsourcing via individual employees who retain their positions, instead of via top executives who eliminate the employees' positions - and their continued role as confident consumers - a flight of fancy that is reminiscent of the corporate in-house, entrepreneurializing effects of individual-employee reinvestment in overwork-targeted training&hiring in the context of a steep overwork tax from which such reinvestment would provide total exemption - see Timesizing Phase 3 and Chapter 8 of Timesizing, Not Downsizing). We gather that such condescending sentiments on Varian's part are crafted to cull approval from wealthy guilt-twinged Democrats and others who assume this is only about lifestyle options or moral niceties. Varian and his fellow status-quo proppers will be lip-servicing such kind sentiments forever with no action in sight until we or someone who understands what we're trying to say gets around to translating Timesizing into 'mathematics as a second language' and gets some figures on the huge sustainable consumer markets (and coat-tailing financial markets!) that are currently foregone and sacrificed to the extreme, often alienating, feedback-blocking, health-sapping and largely wasted concentrations of employment, skills, income and wealth that we now, mostly without a thought, tolerate.]

• Doonesbury, by G.B. Trudeau, Boston Globe, cartoonsection 1.
  [Sunday's strip is mostly one character yelling -]
  "There is NO evidence of a link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11!  NONE!  Even the White House admits it!"
  [- as a 'public service message to an incredible 69% of Americans.'   Duke's bonus 'fun fact' -]
  "15 of the 19 hijackers were SAUDI, not Iraqi!"

1. [just when you think you've seen it all -
   1 UPsizing?? -]
   Safeway Inc., Dow Jones...WSJ, B8.
   ...reported a 28% decline in net income for its fiscal Q3.... A labor battle...also weighs.... Safeway...trained and hired 14,000 workers to help counteract the effects of the strike...by about 70,000 United Food & Commercial Workers Union members..\..at 289 of its grocery stores in California....
   [bearing in mind that, parsed as a 'nation', Calif. is the 6th-biggest economy in the world, after US, Japan, Germany, UK and France and before China. At any rate, not an upsizing to regard as permanent or to rejoice over muchly, when it's 14,000 strike-breakers aka 'scabs'.]

2. [this one and the next two are more directly 'from heaven' -]
   Japan-Mexico free trade talks falter - Agricultural sector pressures Tokyo, by James Brooke, NYT, W1.
   [Pathetic. Everyone wants someone else to do the impossible = provide the markets and give up the jobs. Compare -]
   Bolivia's poor proclaim abiding distrust of globalization - Two decades of free-market 'reform' [oru quotes] leave many resentful, NYT, A3.
   Thousands of Bolivian demonstators marched yesterday through La Paz, the capital, opposing a plan to export natural gas to the U.S. [Agence France-Presse photo caption]

3. [John] Reed said, pointer blurb (to C9), WSJ, front page.
   ...he sees no place for Wall Street executives on the NYSE board and wants a majority of independent directors.

4. Bush's bad currency - ...Exchange-rate politics could backfire on his own re-election, editorial, WSJ, A10.
   [We can only hope. Dufus Dubya wants to paint himself as a free trader so everyone else is supposed to manipulate their currency etc. to give him tariff-equivalents??]

1. The public mood - Taxpayers are restless over Iraq aid, NYT, A12.
   [The light begins to dawn?]

2. [and so guess what -]
   Tax-cut fever has cooled decidedly in Congress, WSJ, D2.

1. [UPsizing #1]
   Ford [& affiliate] Mazda plan big increase in car production in Thailand, by Shawn Crispin, WSJ, A18, //NYT, W1.
   ...$500m in equipment at their...Auto Alliance joint venture..\..during the next several years...will create nearly 1,000 new jobs for Thai workers....

2. [UPsizing #2]
   Cellular giant plans to expand, pointer digest (to W1), NYT, C1.
   NTT DoCoMo, Japan's cellphone leader, is negotiating with several companies to bring its i-mode mobile phone Internet service to Britain....
   [Unspecified new jobs.]

1. [1 UPsizing]
   10/11   AMR Corp. - American Airlines to recall 390 flight attendants on furlough, WSJ, A9.

2. [a glimmer of insight -]
   10/13   The Vision Thing, cover picture, New Yorker magazine.
   [Cover depicts Geo.W.Bush dressed as a cowboy wearing blinders, charging ahead on a scared-looking, backward-glancing white steed galloping full-tilt through Monument Valley. (Noticed on 11/10 on one of coffee tables at Harvard Dental School during what turned into a walk-in root canal with the wonderful Grace Wu. If anyone can give your root canal {except for the painful bits} the feeling of a delicate Chinese tea ceremony, she can.)]

3. 10/13   South Korean chief puts job to vote, by Samuel Len, NYT, A8.
   SEOUL, South Korea...- Pres. Roh Moo Hyun...said he would like to hold..\..a national referendum to see [if] he receives a vote of no confidence \due to\ a faltering economy, a corruption scandal involving a former aide and declining support from the public....
   [Good for him, says we. Wish to God that Dubya would follow suit - and Blair. The closest thing in the public sector to Friedman et al.'s "Let the Market decide!" is "Let the public decide!" - as directly as possible, and that means expanding the system of direct democracy via binding public referendums Compare the California recall option.]

• Skilled workers mount opposition to free trade, swaying politicians, by Michael Schroeder & Timothy Aeppel, WSJ, front page.
  A new anti-free-trade movement.... highly skilled workers who figured they would be big winners in the globalized economy
  [ah, don't they mean, "believed management's assurances they would be big winners in the globalized economy"?!]
  but now see their white-collar jobs moving overseas in growing numbers....
  [Make it here and maintain these markets with your employees, or you don't get to sell to these markets.]

1. [UPsizing #1]
   As it tries to cut costs, Wall Street looks to India, by Saritha Rai, NYT, W1.
   ...J.P. Morgan, the investment banking arm of J.P. Morgan Chase, plans to hire a few dozen researchers in Bombay by the end of the year....
   [Estimate 3 dozen = 36 new low-wage jobs.]

2. [UPsizing #2]
   As it tries to cut costs, Wall Street looks to India, by Saritha Rai, NYT, W1.
   ...Morgan Stanley, which already has investment banking and mutual fund operations in India, will employ a similar number of researchers [a few dozen] this year, also in Bombay....
   [Estimate 3 dozen = 36 new low-wage jobs.]

3. [UPsizing #3]
   Department stores embrace toy chains as holiday lure, by Amy Merrick & Joseph Pereira, WSJ, B1.
   Sears, Roebuck & Co. [will] open temporary KB Toys shops in 600 of its stores for the holiday season....
   [Unspecified temporary jobs.]

1. [UPsizing #1]
   Ford to expand Mexican plant for production of new sedan, by Norihiko Shirouzu with David Luhnow, WSJ, D5 (//NYT, C4).
   ...The move is expected to add as many as 2,000 new jobs at the plant [in] Hermosillo..\.. Ford plans to add...flexible manufacturing [that can build] 8 different models off 2 basic chassis platforms....[So, only jobs for robots after this.]

2. [UPsizing #2]
   Advertising, ...Miscellany, by Nat Ives, NYT, C10.
   ...The Chicago office of PR21, part of Daniel Edelman Inc., opened a practice focused on marketing to women...called Speaking Female....
   [Unspecified new jobs.]

3. World Bank faults tight regulation - Study to argue fewest rules foster strongest economies; Goal is to promote changes, by Schroeder & Roth, WSJ, A2.
   ...a new survey....
   [The question, then, is, what are the fewest possible rules to prevent economies from cannibalizing their own workforce-cum-consumer base? The World Bank, as do most researchers, stops short of the most interesting questions: how close can we come to a single all-sufficient rule (which is very similar to Noam Chomsky's description of the best grammar as the one with the fewest rules that still account for all the data) and what are some candidates for that "Holy Grail" of economic designers? Market-oriented answer: substituting timesizing for downsizing and controlling inflation with overtime&overwork-to-training&hiring conversion and thereby designing the homeostasis (self-balancing) of inflationary (just in it for the money) with deflationary ("I love this job") incentives, instead of controlling inflation by fostering unemployment a la Fed's only slightly rusty NAIRU (non-accelerating-inflation rate of unemployment).]

1. [1 UPsizing equivalent -]
   10/04  Spain: A few good perks, by Dale Fuchs, NYT, A4.
   The Defense Ministry is trying to lure young people into the armed forces by offering a 20% salary increase, a $620 signing bonus and other perks. Since the country's obligatory military service [draft] ended last year, recruiters have managed to fill only 800 of 12,000 available posts.
   [Guess nobody's rushing to die for the PM's dumb support of Bush's Iraq invasion & occupation now revealed as justified only by "faith-based intelligence."]

2. 10/06  Medicare plan raises the cost for the affluent, by Robert Pear, NYT, front page.
   WASHINGTON...- With unexpected[?] support from some Democrats, Republican[?!] negotiators from the House and the Senate say they are seriously considering a change in Medicare that would require elderly people with high incomes to pay higher premiums than other beneficiaries.
   [So that would be like a graduated income tax, proving that Will Rogers was right - regardless of party, who are they going to get the money from when push finally comes to shove? - "The rich, cuz they're the only ones who've got any."]

3. [meanwhile -]
   10/06  U.S. life expectancy rose, news blurb, WSJ, front page.
   ...to a high of 77.2 years during 2001, and the gap between blacks and whites narrowed....[But that does put more pressure on retirement, or if converted to disability, on the job market, and makes it all the more urgent to implement fluctuating adjustment of the workweek against un(der)employment - before we lay off all our workforce-consumer base.]

4. 10/06  Israeli airstrike in Syria triggers wide criticism, WSJ, A14.

• Poll shows drop in confidence on Bush skill in handling crises - Country on the wrong track, according to a solid majority, by Purdum & Elder, NYT, front page.
  [Right on schedule.]
  ...the latest NYT/CBS News Poll.... overall...found Americans are for the first time more critical than not of Mr. Bush's ability to handle both foreign and domestic problems, and a majority say the pResident does not share their priorities. Thirteen months [unlucky # for the Dubya-talker] before the 2004 election, a solid majority of Americans say the country is seriously on the wrong track....
  [Compare -]
  Shaking the house of cards - Laying bare the character of the administration, op ed by Bob Herbert, NYT, A27.
  No wonder the sky-high poll numbers for pResident Bush have collapsed. The fiasco in Iraq is only part of the story. The news on one substantive issue after another could hardly be worse. It's almost as if the pResident had a team in the White House that was feeding his credibility into a giant shredder....