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©2004-09 Phil Hyde, ecdesignr@yahoo.ca, The Timesizing Wire™, Box 117, Harvard Sq PO, Cambridge MA 02238 USA 617-623-8080

past hope/doom du jour’s
- underlying stories, if hotlinked, are still available under their individual dates -

fri-sat

8/27-28/2010

::: 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) -

Holland provides valuable lesson on temp workforce - Under the Dutch system, temporary doesn't equal disposable, 8/27 JapanTimes.co.jp
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (alias Holland) - ..But despite working four days a week, van Welsenes holds the same status as a regular worker and makes the same hourly pay, though it's for 32 hours a week instead of 40. She gets every benefit full-time workers receive. Regardless of working part time, full time or on a temporary basis, workers in the Netherlands feel secure and protected by the social safety net even during a recession, she said, thanks to the laws that guarantee equal treatment. Some labor policy experts say Japan, where nonregular workers have to work in unstable conditions, can learn from the Dutch approach called "flexicurity," a combination of flexibility and security. Numerous companies ln the Netherlands utilize the system, considering it a mechanism to stay competitive... While Japanese companies hire temp workers to reduce costs, Struik said that is not the case in the Netherlands. "It's expensive to hire temporary workers" because they are protected by Dutch law, he said. "Cheap labor is difficult in Holland. [Why? You actually value one another?] We have to do it differently" [why "have to" - what's the compulsion? your historic "man against the sea"?] to stay competitive with factories in Japan, the U.S. and China. What the company tries to do instead is enhance internal flexibility, Struik said. "..Keeping skilled people keeps a firm competitive"... - see whole article under today's date.
[The prevailing idea in many other countries that you can treat like disposable surplus alias garbage the very fount and source of your business, people - whom you hope will all buy from you, is crashing. Holland has found an unusual solution = beef up part-time (bottom up). Timesizing simply redefines full-time downward and requires conversion of overtime into jobs (top down). So Anders Hayden's generalities about the Netherlands years ago were true. Thanks again, Anders! (Folks, buy his book, *Sharing the Work, Sparing the Planet.)]

Finally, the housing meltdown makes sense, 8/27 msnbc.com via lifeinc.msnbc.msn.com
Slowdowns in the market causing employers to cut hours and jobs took people living paycheck to paycheck over the cliff into default on mortgages that they had no business receiving in the first place... - 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.

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 -

Economy slows; a 2d slump is feared, 8/28 Boston Globe, A1.
[or maybe just another big down-arc in our diagonally downward deathspiral... - unless we resume cutting the workweek and quit cutting our workforce and our consumer base... How short should the workweek be? As short as it takes to get low enough unemployment to raise wages and restore markets. Note that high unemployment lowers wages, regardless of working hours, because for every 5 job openings you get 5000 resumes, each underbidding the rest.]

Number of home foreclosures drops, but risk of deliquency deepens - Mortgage defaults are being driven by stubbornly high unemployment, 8/27? NYT? B1?
[Our wealthy pets are sooo entitled that unemployment is not something they themselves have worsened by spending decades gobbling up stocks of every company that downsizes. Oh no, unemployment is stubborn and wilful! "How DARE it defy us and remain high!" Now they've creeped themselves out so much, even when unemployment eases a bit, they suspect (rightly) that it's evanescent -]

Shares slide despite decline in jobless claims,
8/27 NYT, B6.

This is not a recovery - And it's time to do something, op ed by Paul Krugman, A19.
[Krugman hasn't noticed we HAVE been doing something? - a LOT of somethings - a lot of the WRONG somethings! And he wants to do more of the same:
= more of the same impotent monetary masturbation: Fed should buy more long-term (LT) & private debt (& presumably print more money to do it), counter resulting upward pressures on LT interest by keeping ST interest low, motivate spending now by raising its MT inflation target.
= put money in the hands of troubled homeowners by using Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac to facilitate mortgage refi's in aid of lowering mortgage payments (or even in order to get home equity loans to buy groceries despite deeper debt?). Ah, haven't we been doing this and it's been a drop in the bucket and it has not and does not inspire consumer spending-type confidence?
= pressure China to stop using currency manipulation and our own (and Krugman's!) suicidal but sacrosanct Free Trade dogma to kill off any leftover American manufacturing jobs with floods of cheap imports.
This is all sooo superficial. Krugman is trapped in the economic version of Chomsky's "surface structure" and still hasn't a clue of the depth of the structural "situation" we're in. Paul, baby, in the age of robotics there are waaay too few pre-computer Forty Hour jobs. And as Reuther retorted to Ford's "Let's see you unionize these robots" - "Let's see you sell'em jobs."
For this type of conventional superficiality, Krugman got a million bucks from the Nobel Prize committee? But then, nothing's "broke" for them personally, so why actuallly fix anything?]

Struggling cities shut firehouses in budget crisis - Sacrosanct no longer, 8/27 New York Times, A1.
[This isn't a budget crisis - it's a wealthy seize-up crisis. Insulated and isolated American decision-makers are getting more and more suicidal. They've fostered overwork and labor surplus, cut wages and made healthcare expensive, as if epidemics are going to stop outside their gated communities. Now they're cutting firehouses as if conflagrations are going to stop outside their gates. Every 70 years or so the wealthy have an attack of the stupids - it's called the Kondratieff Wave.]

wed-thu 8/25-26/2010 ::: 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) -

"Were You Born on the Wrong Continent?": America's misguided culture of overwork - Germany's workers have higher productivity, shorter hours and greater quality of life. How did we get it so wrong? 8/25 Salon.com
CHICAGO, Illin. - ..According to Thomas Geoghegan, a labor lawyer..and author of *"Were You Born on the Wrong Continent?: How the European Model Can Help You Get a Life", European social democracy – particularly Germany’s – offers some tantalizing solutions to our overworked age... - see whole article under today's date.

Oklahoma amends its UI law regarding the Shared Work Unemployment Compensation Program, 8/25 CCH via hr.cch.com
OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla. - ..“Participating employee” means an employee who works a reduced number of hours under a shared work plan. “Participating employer” means an employer who has a shared work plan in effect... - see whole article under today's date.

Our View: Legislators' self-rewarding vote distasteful, 8/26 Auburn Citizen,NY via auburnpub.com
AUBURN, N.Y. - ..The whole mess goes back to July, when the Legislature's Ways and Means Committee OK'd a plan to shorten the workweek of members of the Legislature from 35 to 30... - see whole article under today's date.
[Well, as Grannie Hyde used to say: "What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander." If a 30-hour workweek is good enough for Cayuga County legislators, why isn't it good enough for Cayuga County citizens - and everyone else for that matter as we enter the Age of Robotics? Our burgeoning population of single parents would kill for a 30-hour workweek with full-time benefits!]

Bridge closes, businesses suffer.. - Port Wentworth merchants report fewer customers, dwindling sales as construction on Ga. 25 lingers, 8/25 Savannah Morning News via savannahnow.com
PORT WENTWORTH, Ga. - ..Former Mayor Tim Holbrook, who owns the Deli Mart, said sales at the diner have been down more than 50 percent. He opened a second location in Garden City to soften the blow, but he's cut hours that equate to two full-time employees... - see whole article under today's date.

Massey cleaners' hours cut, 8/25 Manawatu Standard via stuff.co.nz
WELLINGTON, New Zealand - ..They must accept reduced hours or lose their jobs after a new contractor gave them the ultimatum... Based on cut hours, the average worker's wage could drop from $526 to $329 a week... - see whole article under today's date.
[If that's the way employers talk to employees in New Zealand, looks like NZ has let itself slip into a wage-depressing (and respect-losing) labor surplus there too. The irony is that when done on a systemwide basis, hourscuts mean wage raises, not drops, because the wage-depressing labor surplus gets reduced.]

Bondholders face a push to impose bank bail-ins, 8/25 Wall St Journal, C2.
LONDON, England - ..The Financial Stability Board, a grouping of finance ministers, central bankers and regulators from around the world..\..are weighing the merits of establishing a system that would impose losses on bondholders of failing banks before taxpayers "have to" [our quotes] rescue them - a concept known as a creditor bail-in...
[They don't do this ALREADY?? What a piece of suicidal socialism for the wealthy, which just worsens the unsustainable surplus of investing power relative to spending power, marketable productivity and sustainable investments in the economy. Until the wealthy realize that forcing millions of skinny dog-paddlers to "rescue" thousands of fatties marooned on luxuriously appointed icebergs will just melt the 'bergs faster. the economy's diagonal downspiral will keep gaining steam. This story offers a gleam of hope. The wealthy have converted far more than a sustainable chunk of the money supply into investing power and left an insufficient amount in the consumer base as spending power. No one can pay off all the notes they hold but themselves. Note this nonsense -]
Bill Gross: U.S. role in housing a 'necessity', , 8/25 WSJ, C14.
[Only when you clobber your wage levels and consumer spending by introducing decades of worksaving innovations against a frozen neanderthal workweek,]

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 -

Closure definite - The worst scenario was concretized, yesterday, for the 300-odd employees of the factory in Gatineau - AbitibiBowater affirms that the chances of reopening the factory are "non-existant" , 8/25 Le Droit de Gatineau, page 1.

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

Weakness in durable-goods orders and drop in new-home sales to historic lows offered more signs that the economy is losing momentum, 8/26 WSJ, A1 pointer to A7.
[No, it's gaining momentum - downward.]

Global economic woes roiled financial markets world-wide, 8/25 WSJ, A1 pointer to C1,C2,C14.
The Dow industrials dropped 133.96 points or 1.3%, to 10040.45. Japan's Nikkei fell 1.3% [too], pulling the index into bear-market territory. An auction of two-year Treasury notes settled at the lowest yield ever as investors loaded up on safe-haven assets.
Dow industrials fall to 7-week low - Global economic fears push investors out of stocks, commodities and into the safety [LOL] of U.S. debt, 8/25 WSJ, target article C1.
Europe, Asia fall broadly; materials pace declines, 8/25 WSJ, C2 target.
Dollar falls broadly; Swiss franc hits high on euro, 8/25 WSJ, target article C2.
[The German mark would be astronomical if it was still separate.]
S&P lowers Ireland rating, 8/25 WSJ, C2.
Japan's yen fuels bear market - Nikkei stands down 20.7% from recent peak.., 8/25 WSJ, C2 target.
Plunge in home sales stokes economy fears, 8/25 WSJ, A1.
["Bay Street Journal's" version -]
Recovery hopes slip as U.S. home sales tumble - Demand dropping even as mortgage rates fall, 8/25 Toronto Globe & Mail, A1,A2.
With houses changing hands at the slowest pace in 15 years, 27% drop in July confirms that end of government incentives would kill sector's resurgence

After "bold" moves [our quotes] to cure a crisis, central banks hit the caution button, 8/25 Toronto Globe, B1.
Central bankers..pushed the boundaries of monetary policy in their fight against the financial crisis...
[There are no bold moves in monetary policy. They are all alike superficial and impotent in reversing an overconcentration of a nation's money supply (M1). Only a labor shortage thanks to a world war, a great plague, or timely workweek reduction have historically been able to do the job.]

Canada - BMO's surprise chills outlook for banks, 8/25 Toronto Globe, B1.
- First major bank to report profits surprises with weak results
- Plunge in trading revenue weighs on BMO's investment banking division
- Shares of other banks fall as investors expect problems are sector-wide

sun-mon-tue 8/22-23-24/2010 ::: 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) -

While China Hits No. 2, Opportunity in America is Shrinking, 8/23 HuffingtonPost.com (blog)
WORLD BANK, Italy - ..Germany is doing well for two related reasons. First, the export sector is very healthy. And that is the result of the fact that over the last decade Germany has gone through a major restructuring of its economy in which workers traded some income for more job security, greater flexibility of hiring and firing was allowed, and work-sharing (kurzarbeit) instead of layoffs during the downturn has enabled key companies to retain skilled workers so they can get back on track quickly as demand rises. All of these reforms have put German companies in a more competitive position... - see whole article under today's date.

Canada PM Pumps Work Share at Michelin Plant, 8/24 TireReview.com
WATERVILLE, N.S., Canada - ..Harper's visit was arranged to show off the results Canada's state run “Work-Sharing Program” can achieve. The Canadian government describes Work-Sharing [as] an adjustment program designed to help employers and employees avoid temporary layoffs when a reduction in the normal level of business activity that is beyond the control of the employer occurs... - see whole article under today's date.
[Kinda wordy but nice to hear somebody else describe it.]

Sugar firm employees' hopes dashed, 8/22 Daily Nation via nation.co.ke
NAIROBI, Kenya - A judge has dashed the hopes of West Kenya Sugar Company employees to have their working hours reduced to 44 a week... - see whole article under today's date.
[More or less guaranteeing that Kenya is going to stay in the Third World...]

Public libraries: enablers of Americans' dreams, 8/22 Seattle Times via seattletimes.nwsource.com
SEATTLE, Wash. - ..More than 55 percent of [America's] urban libraries are reporting budget cuts, and a quarter have felt obliged to cut hours or close branches... - 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.

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 -

Recovery hopes slip as U.S. home sales tumble - Demand dropping even as mortgage rates fall, 8/25 Toronto Globe, A1,A2.
With houses changing hands at the slowest pace in 15 years, 27% drop in July confirms that end of government incentives would kill sector's resurgence

Canada - [Bank of Montreal -] BMO's surprise chills outlook for banks, 8/25 Toronto Globe, B1.
- First major bank to report profits surprises with weak results
- Plunge in trading revenue weighs on BMO's investment banking division
- Shares of other banks fall as investors expect problems are sector-wide

sun-mon-tue 8/22-23-24/2010 ::: 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) -

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' -

Cash-flush companies stalk takeover targets, 8/24 Toronto Globe, B1.
[This is a big feature of wage-depressing labor surpluses and frozen-workweek job shortages. CEOs can't grow their companies the honest way with more markets cuz the consumer-base markets are so weakened by the sinking wages of the 500 resumes looking for every 5 job openings and underbidding one another. So what do CEOs do instead of reinvesting in their markets via their own employees? They do takeovers, then notice overlap, and then lay off the "overlap" aka downsizing aka rightsizing aka smartsizing (LOL) alias "creative destruction" (Schumpeter's great rationalization for failure to grow), and steepen our diagonal downspiral...]

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 -

Bumpy economic road? Truck drivers don't think so, 8/23 Toronto Globe, B1.
[Why would they? They've got hundreds of lobbyists in Washington fighting to protect their jobs, jobs that keep tens of thousands of individual long-distance locomotive engineers pulling one freightcar apiece, all of which should be on railways instead of wasting the planet's fossil fuel, polluting the nation's air, and costing taxpayers by tearing up the roads - but who cares about taxpayers when your job's at stake, right? And yet truckdrivers turn around and cut their own jobs by driving bigger and longer trucks - thus alarming more and more people and creating more and more enemies. Another suicide pill for the once-great USofA brought to you by...our frozen precomputer workweek. (And you don't want to know about truckers' accident rates during overtime.)]

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

In striking shift, investors, investors flee stock market - Wary of another fall - Americans see risks even as companies have "recovered" [our quotes], 8/22 NYT, A1.
[Yeah, maybe the self-inflating pyramid-scheming financial companies that own the media have "recovered"... But then, they hail every up-arc in our diagonally downward spiral as a recovery, even though it amounts to nothing more than another bubble for investors. So down we go, bounce-plopping on a spiral staircase of bubbles and pops. Better full employment however short a workweek it takes, no flood of resumes to push down pay, and rising marketable productivity to provide sustainable investments so we can replace bubbles and pops with "bubble and squeak" (British for fried eggs and sausages) for everyone.]

Debt's deadly grip - In this climate, how can consumers dig their way out? 8/22 NYT, Sun.Bus.1.
[They can't, until all 50 states enact worksharing so there are jobs, and we take it federal and switch it to sustainable funding.]

Defusing a population bomb - By trying to slow birthrates, several initiatives in India are trying to curb a rapidly growing population that threatens to become a crippling burden, 8/22 NYT, A1 pointer to A6.
[It isn't already? And didn't India already go through this in the 1920s. According to Prof. Paul Rosenstein-Rodan in his history of economics course in the 1980s, India had a decent 5% economic growthrate in the '20s but exponential population growth swamped it and impoverished everyone. Capitalism just doesn't run well with a labor surplus - there's nothing to centrifuge the national income and wealth. Capitalism only runs well on a labor shortage (ergo actually a labor-employment balance despite the bleating of employers) as during World Wars I and II last century = "wartime prosperity" and most plague years last millennium = "plaguetime prosperity." Cutting the workweek is merely a way to get that magic wage-hiking labor shortage without killing off a chunk of your consumer markets along with that chunk of your workforce that you're sacrificing to war or plague. Wars aren't working anymore cuz we just aren't killing enuf Americans and our weapons have gotten too robotized. Plagues aren't working anymore cuz our medicine has gotten too good. Gee, maybe we're being FORCED to do it intelligently at last! Here's the Timesizing Program's targeted population phase.]

fri-sat 8/20-21/2010 ::: 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) -

Winning an overtime lawsuit but recovering less based on fluctuating workweek, 8/20 (8/16) Lexology.com
CHICAGO, Illin. - ..On August 4, 2010, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit affirmed the Court’s use of the fluctuating workweek (“FWW”) rule, even though the employer was found to have willfully violated the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”). Urnikis-Negro v. American Family Property Services, (No. 06 C 6014)... - see whole article under today's date.

Libraries in Meck took bigger cuts than many, 8/21 CharlotteObserver.com
CHARLOTTE, N.C. - Since getting hit by budget cuts last month, the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library system permanently closed three branches, cut hours at others and laid off workers. But across the region, it's a different story... - see whole article under today's date.

Economy and markets - ..Commodities tumbled as disappointing U.S. jobless claims and manufacturing data cast doubt that economic "recovery" [our quotes] would spur demand for raw materials, 8/20 Toronto Globe, B11 graph caption.
Crude oil futures fell 1.3%, aluminum declined 2% and copper was down 1%. [Gold up U$2.25 to 1232.25/troy ounce.]

Bonds - Canadian bonds climbed Thursday, as discouraging U.S. data fuelled fears of a sputtering recovery and sent investors clambering for the safety of government securities, 8/20 Toronto Globe, B11 graph caption.
[OK, another euphemism for deepening depression to add to our collection: "sputtering recovery" joins "stumbling recovery," "nascent recovery" and most oxymoronic and impossible, "jobless recovery."]

Currencies - The Canadian dollar ended sharply lower against its U.S. counterpart as a spate of disappointing economic data pushed investors out of the currency, 8/20 Toronto Globe, B11 graph caption.
The loonie closed at 96.23 cents (U.S.), down 0,98 cent. The yen and Swiss franc strengthened against the greenback.

The euro & the crisis, by George Soros, 8/19 New York Review of Books, p.28.
..Let me start my analysis with the previous crisis, the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers. In the week following Sept.15, 2008, global financial markets actually broke down [= no matter to the foundational consumer markets and actually healthy for the subfoundational employment markets] and by the end of the week they "had to" [our quotes] be put on artificial life support. [No they didn't.] The life support consisted of substituting sovereign credit - backed by the financial resources of the state [ie: the taxpayer = consumer base and employment basement] - for the credit of financial institutions that had ceased to be acceptable to counterparties [ie: other financial institutions]...
[This worsened the situation and set up the next crisis, because the wealthy, already having diverted far too big a percentage of M1, the money supply, to their own relatively few pockets than could be sustained by MARKETABLE productivity given the amount they had diverted from the non-financial markets (employment, consumer, business-industrial markets), were just diverting EVEN MORE of the money supply to their own few pockets. The real solution that we now really have to do? - the current extreme overconcentration of the money supply in the relatively tiny percentage of the population in the topmost income brackets can only be reversed (and their own credit alias confidence restored) by an artificial labor shortage however short a workweek it may require, NOT by "artificial life support" = continuation of the extreme overconcentration of M1 in the topmost tiny population = merely allowing it to intensify and further de-sustainabilize. Soros, being superwealthy himself, is incapable of perceiving that SUPERWEALTH IS THE PROBLEM, because it has gone far beyond spendability, and is now beyond sustainable investibility, given the deceleration of currency as it is redistributed up the income/wealth scale. Wake up, George. Cut the lengthy but irrelevant lecturing and get behind the only general, market-oriented correction strategy (now that war and plague no longer work to create that magic PLS = perceived labor shortage); namely, transitional worksharing and permanent timesizing. Meanwhile, the euro for all its finetuning incapabilities is fundamentally stronger than the dollar or the yen because more sub-euro economies have shorter workweeks and longer vacations, meaning "scarcer," better-paid labor and fuller employment and greater consumption per capita, than the USA or Japan. So keep selling off the euro, surface-scanning dunces, you're just hastening its dominance despite its flaws. Europe is valuing its human capital while the U.S. and Japan are devaluing it. Europe is far more technologized (eg: railways) than the self-underemploying and job-desperation-spreading USA and far more diverse and creative than copycat Japan. If Europe ever figures out what it's doing right (cutting worktime per person to gain full employment and markets) and automates the process, everyone else will be jealously attacking much much more than Germany's current primitive Kurz-arbeit. (And hopefully a lot more U.S. states will enact worksharing programs than the current twenty. And btw, remember our warning about this little oil "spill" in the Gulf of Mexico, relative to potential spread to the rest of the Caribbean and Atlantic and... Well, despite the premature sighs of relief, mostly from BP, it ain't over -]

Beneath the Gulf of Mexico lurks an invisible plume of oil - Officials claim oil 'gone' but the disaster is not over, 8/20 Toronto Globe & Mail, front page (A1).
..A new study says the 35-km underwater plume may be a result of spraying chemical dispersants on the water's surface to break apart the initial slick. (illustration-series caption)
["The solution to pollution is dilution." Or is it?]

8/18-19/2010 wed-thu - 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) -

Raymond [Corp.] to Add Jobs, 8/18 WBNG-TV News via wbng.com
GREENE, N.Y. - A year and a half ago, a company [which designs and manufactures fork lifts] in Chenango County was on the verge of laying off 100 workers. Now, it's looking to rapidly expand... A year and half ago, Raymond took part in the state's Shared Work program, which allows employers to avoid laying off workers by reducing their hours... - see whole article under today's date.

Cotter city staff resumes 40-hour work week, 8/19 BaxterBulletin.com,MountainHome,Ark.
COTTER, Ark. — City employees resumed 40-hour weekly shifts last week since the three-month long shortened work week was effective in cutting costs, Mayor Steven Raines told The Bulletin Wednesday... - see whole article under today's date.

Prime minister tours Michelin plant, 8/18 NovaNewsNow.com
WATERVILLE, N.S., Canada - ..In early 2009, Michelin North America president Dick Wilkerson said, “to put it politely, the North American tire market had cratered..." Michelin negotiated with Service Canada to start the Work-Sharing Program: 578 plant staff volunteered for reduced hours, with Employment Insurance adding income support for the difference in their paycheques. Wilkerson said the program helped Waterville avoid 95 lay-offs... - see whole article under today's date.

Vestas 2010 Guidance Slashed, Shares Sharply Lower, 8/18 Wall Street Journal via online.wsj.com
STOCKHOLM, Denmark - ..Vestas said it will lay off 300 employees in Denmark and introduce work-sharing schemes at some factories in Europe, but the company still expects to grow its workforce by nearly 3,000 employees in 2010... - see whole article under today's date.

O Frau Merkel, How Does Your Garden Grow? - A cheap euro, plus the “short work” plan, allowed the Germans to make lemonade from lemons - But tomorrow may be sour, by Scott Moore, 8/18 Miller-McCune.com
Compensation schemes like Kurzarbeit are too expensive to keep in place for years on end, so Germany needed some sort of upswing this year to make its plan... - see whole article under today's date.
[Another American commentator and media outlet crying sour grapes cuz they didn't think of cutting their workweeks instead of their workforce (and consumer markets).]

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.

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 -

Jobs hope after Realtime Worlds collapse - More than 20 [of the 157] staff made redundant last week by video games firm Realtime Worlds have been given their jobs back, 8/19 bbc.co.uk
Bafta-winning Realtime went into administration on Tuesday with the loss of 157 jobs at the company's headquarters in Dundee [Scotland]. The redundancies came on top of 60 announced last week, but 23 people will now go back to Realtime...
[Talk about shouting teeny goodnews and whispering huge badnews!]

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

Business Bankruptcies Fall [17% in 1H10 relative to 1H09] While Consumer Filings Soar [15% to 781,150], by Eric Morath, 8/18 Blogs.WSJ.com
..Businesses are finding ways to address their debt outside of court while consumers, up against a still turbulent economy, are increasing turning to bankruptcy, said Samuel Gerdano, exec.dir of the American Bankruptcy Institute in suburban Washington... Gerdano said some banks are “kicking the can down the road” and not enforcing defaults that could push companies into bankruptcy in hopes that the economy will improve in the near future. “That can’t go on forever,” he said...

More UK Tour Operators Expected To Face Insolvency, by Angus McDowall, DOW JONES NEWSWIRES, 8/18 Wall Street Journal via online.wsj.com
LONDON--More U.K. budget travel companies are facing insolvency after a combination of the economic downturn, volcanic ash, bad weather and strikes resulted in a sharp fall in holiday bookings this year... 33 travel companies out of business last year... 17 so far this year...

JOB- OR JOBLOSS-RELATED SUICIDE in the news (archives) -

Hon Hai to Boost China Work Force to One Million This Year, by Lorraine Luk, 8/18 online.WSJ.com
SHENZHEN, China—Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., the world's biggest contract manufacturer of electronics products, said Wednesday...that 12 of its employees had committed suicide this year and another two had attempted suicide...
[And now this is the world's second biggest economy.]

Foxconn workers rally to boost morale, 8/19 sify news via sify.com
SHENZHEN, China—Thousands of workers of electronic giant Foxconn took part in a rally to boost the morale of the employees of the firm which witnessed a spate of suicides by its workers at its south China plant. The motivational rally titled 'Love Your Life, Love Your Family' was attended by 50,000 workers from the company's plants across the country, including the main unit of Shenzhen in Guangdong province, Xinhua reported. The company, which manufactures products for top brands, including the Apple iPhones, came under fire after more than 10 workers committed suicide since 2009. The suicides were blamed on the company's strict management. Terry Cheng, vice president of the Foxconn Group, said Wednesday that the company will not leave Shenzhen City...
[Doesn't think it's jinxed?]

8/15-16-17/2010 sun-mon-tue - 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) -

Labour markets - Save this job, 8/15 The Economist (blog) via economist.com/blogs
WASHINGTON, D.C. - ..Indeed, one of the great virtues of a work-sharing plan is that by reducing uncertainty and job loss it would have moderated the decline in [U.S.] consumer demand... - see whole article under today's date.

Germany: On a roll, by Daniel Schaefer, 8/15 Financial Times via ft.com
FRANKFURT, Germany - ..Many businesses held on to their core staff during the crisis, helped by their own flexibility measures as well as a government-sponsored short-time working scheme where the state chips in for as much as two-thirds of wages lost when working hours are reduced... - see whole article under today's date.

Same Output + Fewer [Man]Hours = Economic Crisis? - Today’s economic crisis is less about the quantity of output than the distribution of income and leisure, 8/17 Dollars & Sense via dollarsandsense.org
SOMERVILLE, Mass. - ..The increase in productivity over the last few years, however, has not been matched by an increase in demand for goods... - see whole article under today's date.

Man Sues Over BlackBerry Overtime, from CANVAS STAFF REPORTS, 8/16 MyFox Washington DC via myfoxdc.com
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Many workers check their BlackBerrys outside work hours and log in to check emails and complete tasks. But one police sergeant is suing the city of Chicago for two years of overtime back pay because he had to continue working on his BlackBerry well after finished his shift... - 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.

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' -

Dell reached a deal to buy data-storage company 3PAR for $1.15 billion, 8/17 Wall St Journal, A1 pointer to B3.

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

Stocks declined for fifth straight session - The Dow industrials slipped 1.14 points to 10302.01 on the lightest trading day of the year, 8/17 WSJ, A1 pointer to C1.

Volatility watch - Choppy markets have put investors grasping for signs of stability in Canadian inflation [LOL] data and U.S. housing starts, 8/16 Toronto Globe, B7.
[Investors have far too much of the money supply so there's no stability in the way-inflated financial markets, but since there's too little of the money supply everywhere else, there's nothing but deflation - a more split "two-tiered economy" than when we first say the phrase in the 90s. If there was general inflation, we'd hear talk of stagflation = inflating prices with stagnant employment. What we've got is "2&1" = inflated investments and unemployment, and deflated general prices.]

Double dip? A tipping point may be near, by Jeff Somers, 8/15 NYT, SunBus4.
[Another 'prozac economist' who's just seeing what's been going on for years...]

'Another day older and deeper in debt' - What the bulls refuse to see is that we are in an entirely new paradigm and that the old rules of thumb are rarely, or [n]ever, going to be able to be relied upon.., 8/16 Toronto Globe [Canada's WSJ], B7.
["Entirely new" except for during every previous depression when we overtapped our consumer base, shrank marketable productivity needed for sustainable investment and concentrated the money supply past the point of sustainable investability...]

Big banks loosen lending standards 8/17 WSJ, A1.
[Getting desperate a-ga-ain??]
..for the first time since late 2006...
[and we all know what happened after that...]

Government has poured billions into Fannie, Freddie to cover foreclosures, 8/16 Toronto Globe, B4.
[Free market capitalism? Now the USSR is gone, we're oozing into their ecological niche...]

Nobel-winning economist warns Canada not immune to slowdown - Household debt relative to income is very high here - ..Paul Krugman, 8/16 Toronto Globe, B1.

Economic double vision - Canada [with its underused worksharing program] is outperforming most of the world [but not Germany with its fully deployed worksharing (Kurzarbeit)] with consumers spending and businesses hiring - But will continuing U.S. woes drag us down? 8/16 Toronto Globe, B2.
..The pessimistic view: the first half of the year was a blip, and the second half is give-back time - in jobs and growth. Topping the concerns..are near-record household debt levels and sinking housing market...

China's economy overtakes Japan [for second place, at $1.339-trillion vs. Japan's $1.286T], 8/16 Toronto Globe, B9.

8/13-14/2010 fri-sat - 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) -

Defying Others, Germany Finds Economic Success, 8/13 New York Times via nytimes.com
BERLIN, Germany - ..They extended the “Kurz-arbeit” or “short work” program to encourage companies to furlough workers or give them fewer hours instead of firing them, making up lost wages out of a fund filled in good times through payroll deductions and company contributions... - see whole article under today's date.

Minersville library, others get creative to deal with budget cuts, 8/14 Republican & Herald via republicanherald.com
MINERSVILLE, Penn. -..Minerville Public Library Director Mary Grigalonis said in a recent letter to The Republican-Herald, "After the 2009 funding cut we were forced to close one whole day of operation along with cutting staff hours. Once again in 2010 we faced even further cuts and now must deal again with cutting more hours"... - 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.

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 -

Banker builds a candy business in bits and pieces - ..Needs to sell about 150 bags a week to break even, a goal hit only once so far, by Christina Lewis, 8/14 Wall St Journal, A17.
..Anita Zeldin..spent nearly 25 years in banking and business development for Merrill Lynch, Citigroup and others. In 2009, a combination of calamities, a serious illness, the financial crisis, her mother's death and a divorce left Ms. Zeldin unemployed and at sea. ..Unlike on Wall Street, Ms. Zeldin now has no support. She is her company's only full-time employee, which means she is the delivery person, the order taker, the janitor, even the ribbon tie-er...
[i.e., still at sea? A pre-computer workweek in an age of robotics equals a pathetic nation of candymakers, tatooists, and hairstylists - but they depend on non-essential purchases that get dropped as more people lose their jobs... "Hey, Kate, I found a book on how to do home haircuts!"]

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

Paralysis at the Fed - How's that 'maximum employment' thing going? op ed by Paul Krugman, 8/13 NYT, A19.
..The Fed - which is required by statute to promote "maximum employment" - isn't doing its job...
[sur-pri-i-ise!]

Luxury '$uite' deals - Feds back condo mortgages for wealthy, by D.Gregorian & P. Tharp, 8/14 New York Post, p.11.
NEW YORK, N.Y. - ..insuring mortgages at luxury Manhattan condos... Intended to spur low-to-moderate-income home ownership, relaxed regulations by the FHA have buildings in TriBeCa, Midtown, Battery Park and on the upper East and West sides turning to the agency "for help" [our quotes] selling their swanky condos...
[They have a list of eight -]
Swanky Manhattan condos that have FHA-insured backing:
[starting with]
Tempo Condominium, 300 W. 23rd St...

8/11-12/2010 wed-thu - 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) -

How Work-Sharing Can Help Businesses, Boost the US Economy, and Save Jobs, 8/11 BNET.com/blog/financial-business
NEW YORK, N.Y. - ..Yet in 20 states around the country, there’s a third option: work-sharing. The approach is saving jobs domestically and abroad. And with the U.S. economy slowing and unemployment edging up, it’s high time that Congress and the White House take action to encourage work-sharing nationwide... This would get us back to full employment in two years, rather than five or six, as is currently projected. Two bills — H.R. 4135 and S. 2831 — are circulating in Congress that would expand state work-sharing programs. Members of the Obama administration have expressed support for the concept. What are we waiting for? - see whole article under today's date.

Why Don't Americans Have Longer Vacations? - Explaining the gap between Europe and the U.S., for better or worse, 8/11 nytimes.com/roomfordebate
CHICAGO, Illin. - ..The Paris-based O.E.C.D...put us Americans at 1,841 “average” hours a year and the Germans at 1,473 hours in 2000 – and then put us at 1,804 hours a year and the Germans at 1,436 hours in 2006. But the International Labor Organization had a different count... No matter who does the count, by whatever methodology, they all find a huge disparity... - see whole article under today's date.

BevMo Employees Say Hours, Benefits Being Slashed, 8/12 CBS 5 via cbs.com
OAKLAND, Calif. - ..Employees at BevMo say shorter hours and slashed benefits are pretty tough to swallow in this economy, but the company says it is getting a bad rap... - see whole article under today's date.

Markets swoon on fears - Stocks pummeled on signs of global slowdown; Many flee to dollar and yen, 8/12 Wall St Journal, A1:3 target.
..the euro suffered its worst sell-off in nearly two years...
[Ironic, cuz with shorter hours and longer vacations, Europe has more wealth-centrifugation and consumption per capita than US or Japan - ergo more long-term sustainability...]
Investors dumped stocks, commodities and riskier [euro??] currencies in a worldwide flight to safety [dream on!] amid worries over slowing growth.., 8/12 WSJ, A1:1 pointer to A1:3,C1,C2.
..The Dow industrials fell 265.42 points, or 2.5%, to 10378.83 as all three major U.S. stock benchmarks moved into the red for the year. Traditional investor havens, like the dollar, yen, Treasurys and gold strengthened...

Fed sees recovery [what recovery?] slowing - Central bank, concerned about economic vigor, won't shrink securities portfolio, 8/10 WSJ, A1 pointer to A2.
[Securities portfolios are irrelevant unless we put some "beef" into them by backing transitional worksharing and permanent timesizing instead of downsizing.]

8/08-09-10/2010 sun-mon-tue - 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) -

Oklahoma Passes Shared Work Program, 8/10 shrm.org
OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla. - Senate Bill 1970 creates the Shared Work Unemployment Compensation Program. Oklahoma is now the 18th [or rather, 20th] state to offer such a program, which allows employers to reduce the work hours of their full-time employees and the employees to collect partial unemployment benefits to replace some of their lost wages... - see whole article under today's date.

Employers warn of 'jobless recovery', 8/10 Financial Times via ft.com
LONDON, England - ..Four-day week was key for manufacturer - Stuart Fell, chairman and majority owner of West Bromwich-based Metal Assemblies, thinks a four-day week may have saved his company... - see whole article under today's date.

Oz in bid to lure 'bored workers', 8/09 The U.K. Press Association via google.com/hostednews/ukpress
ADELAIDE, South Australia - ..The South Australian Government has launched a new campaign to poach stressed and bored Brits, advertising a range of jobs "in stark contrast to the UK's long working hours, high taxes and increasing retirement age". It is hoping to tempt 18 to 30-year-olds with the promise of the the "ultimate work-life balance"... - see whole article under today's date.

Pay and the FLSA: Avoiding 3 legal pitfalls, 8/09 HRmorning.com
WASHINGTON, D.C. - ..OT-eligible employees must always be paid one and one-half times their regular hourly wages for all hours worked beyond 40 in a workweek... - see whole article under today's date.

Sluggish productivity flashes warnings, 8/10 WSJ, C1.
[Warnings that weren't already being flashed by sluggish sales? Why not just quit wasting breath on "productivity" and start talking about "marketable productivity"?! And here's the backstory -]

Personal incomes fell across the U.S. last year..., 8/10 WSJ, A1 pointer to A2.
..except in areas with a high concentration of federal government and military jobs.
[In other words, except in areas of government makework, whether civilian or military. And haven't they omitted the areas with a high concentration of gated communities?!]

At least 36 of the 100 largest U.S. money-market funds "had" [our quotes] to be propped up [by taxpayers?] in order to survive [but why should they?] the financial crisis, 8/10 WSJ, A1 pointer to C1.
[And where was all the praise for Schumpeter's "creative destruction" in these cases? Remember "creative destruction" = the phrase they always trot out to justify downsizing the workforce, even though downsizing isn't exactly synonomous with upsizing, as Growth is. Never mind that downsizing the workforce downsizes the consumer base which downsizes marketable productivity and sustainable investment...]
'Breaking the buck' was close for many, 8/10 WSJ, C1 target article.
[And if market forces demanded it, why was it artificially stopped? Where was the belief in the the superiority of the Market in this case? The whole of prevailing economic "science" is sounding like "heads I win, tails you lose" - except that the many "you's" who keep losing happen to be the sustaining foundation of the few "I's" who keep arranging to "win" - and therefore these few cheating "winners" are damaging themselves via everyone else. So less and less sustainable investment and more and more financial bubbles.]

Some firms struggle to hire despite high unemployment [poor babies], 8/09 WSJ, A1.
In Bloomington IL, machine shop Mechanical Devices can't find the [trained] workers it "needs" [our quotes] to handle a sharp jump in business...
[Gee, could it be that they're too spoiled by the overwhelming labor surplus - 5000 desperate resumes for every 5 job openings - to bother with TRAINING any more? We suggest their would-be customers take their business to Germany where there are plenty of trained machinists because German companies have apprenticeship programs to make sure of that. Here's a different variation on CEOs whining about a labor "shortage" -]

The oil industry faces a shortage of experienced workers for offshore drilling rigs, 8/09 WSJ, A1 pointer to A4.
[Well, maybe if oil CEOs would stop killing their experienced workers with their total disregard for safety, à la BP and the Deepwater Horizon...]

8/06-07/2010 fri-sat (on thu-fri news) - 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) -

USPS posts $3.5 billion third quarter loss, 8/06 (8/05) Government Executive via govexec.com
WASHINGTON, D.C. - The U.S. Postal Service on Thursday reported a $3.5 billion loss in the third quarter of fiscal 2010, despite continued reductions in employee work hours and other cost-savings measures... Salaries and benefits account for 80 percent of the Postal Service's expenses, he said, adding the agency will continue to cut back on work hours. During the first three quarters of fiscal 2010, USPS cut [an annual] 63 million work hours, or the equivalent of 36,000 full-time [35-hr/wk] jobs... - see whole article under today's date.
[All of which could have been avoided by cutting the workweek of the entire Post Office staff to a 25- or 30-hour week more appropriate to the Age of Robotics.]

Crow Tribe hit by budget shortfall, 8/06 BillingsGazette.com
BILLINGS, Mont. - ..It has included cutting back a majority of the tribe's work force to 32 hours a week... - see whole article under today's date.

Residents need to wake up, 8/07 Fulton Valley News via valleynewsonline.com
FULTON, N.Y. - ..Many agencies in the county work 35 hrs/wk for 40-hour pay.\. Government at all levels has become too large with many perks to be paid for by the already over burdened tax payer... - see whole article under today's date.
[This teapartier doesn't understand why county workhours are down to 35 hours/week in the first place. Nice that he thinks at least one county government (Oswego) in the USA is still too large - all the others have been cast adrift by the federal government and wealthy taxpayers and had their budgets cut to the bone. Some dumbadumb 'Merkins are going to be parroting this partyline even when there's no government left...]

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.

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 switching to timesizing -

Jobless claims increased last week to their highest level since mid-April,
8/06 Wall Street Journal, A1 pointer to A6.

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 -

Ford [!] received a federal loan guarantee to help boost export sales in Canada and Mexico, 8/06 WSJ, A1 pointer to B3.
[So now the hitherto righteous Ford Motor Co. is joining the ranks of The Suicidal Corporation (see Paul Weaver's book) sucking succour from taxpayers suckered by their vampire senators and "representatives" - thus 70-80% of gov't is makework, making up for failure to adjust the workweek downward from its pre-computer level of 40 hrs/.wk despite waves of worksaving technology.]

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

Ravenswood Bank [of Chicago] becomes 109th to fail this year., 8/07 NY Times, page B2.
..The FDIC..updated its estimates of the cost of bank failures and now expects a $60 billion hit to its insurance fund from 2010 through 2014.
[Peanuts for the Gateses "billionaires' band," but will they ever get this responsible for the institutions that essentially their money-funneling and coagulation has bankrupted? Their technique? Ye good ol' "Foster a Employee Surplus and an Employer Shortage." How? Simple. Inject wave after wave of worksaving technology but freeze the workweek at precomputer levels. Then spin downsizing as rightsizing, smartsizing or Schumpeter's good ol' "creative destruction," never mind the results which are heavy on the destruction and light on the creation. Keep praising Growth, but as a wealthy decision-maker, you're essentially diminishing yourself, everyone else first. The antidote? Easy. Timesizing, not downsizing = cut the workweek, not the workforce (and the consumer base and markets that get shrunk along with the workforce). The overall population is the ideal entropy dump during our lifetimes with entropy in the form of financially secure free time. The ideal entropy dump of our lifetime is not the topmost tiny fraction of the population with entropy in the form of an unlimited proportion of M1, the money supply (money being symbolic accountable time alias symbolic working hours). Why not? (1) Because funneling any amount of the money supply, however large, to any fraction of the population, however small, destroys the cybernetic function of the overall system since now the fewer&fewer richer&richer decision-makers are isolated and insulated from more&more of the overall system and are sugarcoated with the illusion that the system is working - so why fix it? - adaptation to changing circumstances (like rising human pressures on ecological limits) slows to a halt. And (2), because money changes function from spending power to investment power as the wealthy redistribute it up the income brackets toward themselves in perfect communist fashion - where they are the tiny but very effective and stifling commune - and since these people with the most have far far far more than they can spend, and eventually (by now we're way beyond this) more than they can even invest sustainably (because they've vacuumed so much of the money supply out of their consumer base via their labor-surplused employment basement, "cb&eb"), they start destroying their own foundations (cb&eb), "amputating their own legs" and cutting themselves down to size - not necessarily a timesizing-like gentle and market-oriented process (as we're seeing). (By vacuuming in more and giving back less, the super-rich pass off the costs to those who have less - like their consumer base - and also slough off what used to be employment which then gets transformed into unpaid labor by consumers - examples? now we have to pump our own gas, do our own travel-agenting, do our own bank-tellering, cashier our own groceries - all "optional" of course, until they start cutting the cashier etc. jobs - we de happy slaves o' de 1850s! and now heavily advertised government lotteries are even making taxes "optional" - we de happy self-taxers! - see last 'collapse' story on 7/09-10/2010, "Come all ye gullible - Lotteries are a bad bet, but everybody loves them." Let's see now, how ELSE can we destroy ourselves?!)]

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

The Dow industrials slipped 5.45 points to 10674.98 as traders braced for Friday's jobs report, 8/06 WSJ, A1 pointer to C1.
..The Nasdaq fell 0.5%.
[And then after traders heard Friday's jobs report -]

The Dow declined 21.42 points, or 0.2%, to 10653.56..., 8/07 WSJ, A1 pointer to B1.
[And what was that jobs report you ask? -]

U.S. job market loses steam, by Sudeep Reddy, 8/07 WSJ, A1.
[WHAT steam??]
- with 14.6 million Americans still searching for work...
[WHAT work?? - work that has been given over to automation and computers while freezing the pre-computer 40-hr workweek?]
..the economy shed 131,000 jobs, as 143,000 temporary Census workers fell off federal payrolls.
Private-sector employment grew by 71,000 in July after a downwardly revised 31,000 in June...
The unemployment rate.."steady" [our quotes] at 9.5%...
The private sector has added 90,000 jobs a month so far this year, well below the 125,000 needed just to keep up with population growth...
[U.S. population growth is 125,000 A MONTH??? This country's population growth is out of control, no way sustainable in the Ecological Age.]

Vital [or morbid?] signs - Americans are spending less time behind the wheel... 248 billion miles a month in the year ending May [2010, versus] 252 billion miles a month in 2007, 8/06 WSJ, A1 graph caption.
..While soaring gas prices first curtailed driving, now it is the loss of jobs [AND losing the car?!]...that keeps many off the road.
[Gee, maybe we can SAVE on road repairs!]

AIG swung to a $2.7 billion loss for the second quarter..., 8/07 WSJ, A1 pointer to B1.
[Swung TO a loss? Isn't that where they started in the financial crisis before they stole billions for bailout from taxpayers? Why is this zombie company still in existence?]

Berkshire's net fell 40% as last year's derivative gains turned into losses, 8/07 WSJ. A1 pointer to B3.
Operating earnings rose 73%.
[Ya gotta have some pretty lousy management skills to turn a 73% earning gain into a 40% net loss, and Berkshire's reckless fooling with derivatives bespeaks some pretty lousy management. Warren Buffett take notice! But then, who needs mgmt skills when the insulated super-rich decision makers have fostered such a labor surplus that "mgmt skill" consists merely in firing "costly" higher paid employees and hiring 20-somethings at minimum wage (and minimum consumption per capita). The policy amounts to Suicide, Everyone Else First.]

8/04-05/2010 wed-thu (on tue-wed news) - 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) -

USPS posts $3.5 billion third quarter loss, 8/05 Government Executive via govexec.com
WASHINGTON, D.C. - The U.S. Postal Service on Thursday reported a $3.5 billion loss in the third quarter of fiscal 2010, despite continued reductions in employee work hours and other cost-savings measures... During the first three quarters of fiscal 2010, USPS cut [an annual] 63 million work hours, or the equivalent of 36,000 full-time [35-hr/wk] jobs... - see whole article under today's date.

Capps Shoe gets military contract, recalls workers, 8/05 AP via WashingtonExaminer.com
GRETNA, Va. — ..Capps laid off 40 of the facility's 170 workers in June and reduced the workweek from five days to four days after the government delayed awarding the five-year military contract... - see whole article under today's date.

German recovery - Making short work of things, 8/04 The Economist (blog) via economist.com/blog
WASHINGTON, U.S.A. - ..Germany's economy suffered a steep decline in the recent recession, thanks largely to the impact of a crash in world trade volumes on its export-dependent businesses. Yet its unemployment rate never rose as high as America's, and for most of 2009 it declined steadily. The disconnect has generally been attributed to Germany's kurz-arbeit [short-work] programme, in which firms are encouraged to reduce labour usage by trimming hours rather than jobs, while the government subsidises the wages of workers placed on reduced workweeks... - see whole article under today's date.

BONUS excerpt - USPS posts $3.5 billion third quarter loss, by Emily Long elong@govexec.com, 8/05 Government Executive via govexec.com
WASHINGTON, D.C. - The U.S. Postal Service on Thursday reported a $3.5 billion loss in the third quarter of fiscal 2010, despite continued reductions in employee work hours and other cost-savings measures...

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.

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' -

Google purchase - Google has acquired Slide, a start-up that makes applications for social networking websites, for $228 million, 8/05 New York Times, B2.

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

Due diligence from afar [LOL] - Cost-conscious [and market-careless] companies are outsourcing legal work [to India!], 8/05 Wall St Journal, B1.
[The only good news here is that now outsourcing is hurting lawyers, maybe they'll wake up to the possibility that less jobs, less consumers, less markets, less clients... Offshore outsourcing is just another way of downsizing your own economy - and downsizing is the OPPOSITE of upsizing alias Growth. Do you really want economic Growth or don't you?]

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 -

GOP senators released a report citing 100 stimulus projects they called wasteful, 8/04 WSJ, A1 pointer to A6.

JOB- OR JOBLOSS-RELATED MAYHEM AND SUICIDE in the news (archives) -

A truck driver facing possible dismissal from a Connecticut beer and wine distributor shot and killed eight co-workers before killing himself, 8/04 WSJ, A1 pointer to A3.

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

Billionaires pledge half of funds to charity, 8/05 USA Today, 1A pointer to 1B.
[Any system that relies for vital functions [like currency circulation] on charity aka capriciousness is lethally flawed. These money-blindered "geniuses" are so far out on their own planet that they can't even imagine engineering a systemic change like Timesizing that would harness market forces to deconcentrate the MASSIVE black hole of money in the tiny topmost brackets and reverse "the great leak upward."]
Band of billionaires pledges to give - Buffet, Gateses call on wealthy to donate up to half of their fortunes, 8/05 USA Today, 1B target article.
..a band of 40 American billionaires...
[presumably this is supposed to evoke "a band of brothers"? - or Robin Hood's Merry Men? - yeah, sure...]
including Ted Turner...Larry Ellison...George Lucas...
[You cannot sustainably redistribute money first. You must redistribute work first, in the form of working hours (and skills where needed). Why? Because if you take money from rich A to give to poor B, you just turn B into a dependent. But if you take work from overworked A to give to un(der)employed B, you turn B into a self-supporting and confident consumer (and you give A a life).]

The Dow industrials fell 38 points to 10636.38 as disappointing earnings and economic reports deepened doubts over "the recovery", 8/04 WSJ, A1 pointer to C1.
[And what "recovery" would that be?]

AOL reports a $1 billion loss, mostly in writedowns - Ad revenue slips as the Internet company strives to turn around, 8/05 NYT, B7.

Proctor & Gamble's profit fell 12% after a fourth quarter filled with lowered prices and heavy promotions, 8/04 WSJ, A1.

And now the spill's cost comes into focus.. - The economic cost - Lost jobs, declining incomes and a troubled oil industry, 8/03 USA Today, 1A, 2A.
[Oh sure ecology costs jobs, sure SURE it does, duh yup-yup - present-day economics doesn't cost jobs, nope, no it DON'T, nope-nope-nope.]

8/01-02-03/2010 sun-mon-tue (on sat-sun-mon news) - 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) -

In Germany, a Broad Recovery Is Under Way, 8/03 NYTimes.com
FRANKFURT, Germany - ..The country’s unemployment rate is 7.6 percent, almost at the pre-crisis level, and down from 9.1 percent in January... For example, Trumpf, a machine-tool maker in the south German city of Ditzingen, managed to get through the recession without laying off any of its 4,000 German workers. In the United States, Trumpf laid off 90 of the 650 workers. Why the difference? Part of the answer is that, in Germany, Trumpf could take advantage of government incentives to reduce worker hours rather than lay off people, a system known as short work. In the program, the government gives workers partial compensation for the lost wages... “We wanted to keep our well-trained people on board,” the Trumpf chief executive, Nicola Leibinger-Kammüller, wrote in an e-mail. “Short work [Kurz-arbeit] helped a lot”... - see whole article under today's date.

Germany's recovery a 'minor miracle'' - Unique scheme to bail out its work force has made the country the envy of its neighbours, 8/01 Toronto Globe via TheGlobeAndMail.com
LUDWIGSFELDE, Germany — ..In a system known as kurz-arbeit , or “short-time work,” the German government pays up to two-thirds of the salary of employees who would otherwise be laid off... “We [Mercedes] did not fire a single person. Not one."... - see whole article under today's date.

Working hours grow longer, 8/02 Thomson's Online Benefits via thomsons.com
LONDON, England - Flexible benefits that allow a greater work-life balance may be the need of the hour as working hours are found to be on the rise... - see whole article under today's date.

British holidaymakers face travel chaos as Spanish air traffic controllers threaten strike, 8/03 Telegraph.co.uk
MADRID, Spain - Hundreds of thousands of British holidaymakers face travel chaos after Spanish air traffic controllers voted to strike in a row over pay and working hours... A government decree passed last week outlined changes to controllers’ working hours and reductions in overtime pay, prompting anger from union members... - see whole article under today's date.
[Looks like Spain is joining Italy in going backwards on working hours - you'd think they'd learn from Germany and France.]

It's crunch time for austerity and budget bills, 8/02 (/03 dateline) SaipanTribune.com
SAIPAN, Northern Mariana Is. (CNMI) - With less than two months to go before the end of Fiscal Year 2010 on Sept. 30, the CNMI Legislature has yet to pass the contentious austerity bill that will cut work hours from 80 to 72 per pay period, and the FY 2011 budget of $132 million... - see whole article under today's date.

The U.S. deported a record number of criminal aliens so far this year, reflecting a White House strategy shift, 8/03 Wall St Journal, A1 pointer to A5.
[But then, aren't all illegal entrants criminals? Click here for the Timesizing Program's approach to population variables, including immigration.]

Market indicators appear to be signaling the unwinding of the 'death cross', 8/03 WSJ, C1 pointer to C5.
[but stay tuned - all kinds of vain hope is possible when there are absolutely no fundamentals unless we switch from downsizing and megadebt government charity, to transitional worksharing and sustainable timesizing. To have full markets, we need full employment, however short a workweek that may take in the Age of Robotics.]

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' -

Kinross Gold agreed to acquire Red Rock Mining in a $7.1 billion deal...,
8/03 Wall St Journal, A1 pointer to B1.

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

Many workers are still waiting for their employers to restore 401(k) matches, roughly a year after the economic "expansion" [our quotes], 8/03 WSJ, A1 pointer to C1.

Stressed states are forcing workers to retire later before retiring with a full pension, or have increased penalties for early retirement, 8/02 WSJ, A1.

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 -

Making a run for the money - Incentives like the ones that lured [video game company 38 Stduios LLC] to Rhode Island don't always pay off for the states offering them, 8/01 Boston Globe, G1.
[Especially when there's almost never any accountability. They make a promise, they get taxpayers' money, and nobody tracks it.]
..Rhode Island put together a $75 million loan guarantee that persuaded..the company, which has not yet launched its first game [but has] promised to employ 450 people in Rhode Is. by the end of 2012.\. to leave Massachusetts [Maynard MA]...
[Good riddance! The company was founded by former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling who is a Libertarian - except when he has a chance to parasitize on taxpayer money like the most socialist Democrat. Remember Fidelity 5-6 years ago? Promised to add 800? jobs in Mass. and wound up subtracting them instead. Then there's -]
Connecticut..offers at least $160 million in tax breaks, grants and infrastructure improvements to attract a Pfizer Inc. research facility to New London. In 2009, the..company announce[d] it plan[ned] to shutter the $300m facility, which has since been sold to Electric Boat..for $55m. [from sidebar]

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

What's wrong with economics, review of Philip Mirowski's article in Hedgehog Review Summer 2010 by Christopher Shea (brainiac.email@gmail.com), 8/01 Boston Globe, C3.
..The rot at the core of the field [goes] largely unexamined: a lack of connection between economic models and "the specifics of actual existing economies."
"This is what happens when you banish history..." from economics training, Mirowski writes...
[And ignore history and you're doomed to repeat it.]

Fed mulls symbolic shift - Officials to consider putting more money into bond market as recovery wavers, 8/03 WSJ, A1.
[Amusing to watch the financial whizkids play shellgames, assuming they represent the economic foundations, never mind the consumer base and the employment basement.]

Growth in factory activity slowed in many major economies in July underscoring concerns about the global recovery's strength, 8/03 WSJ, A1 pointer to A4.

Big investors fear deflation, 8/02 WSJ, C1.
[And deflation is the hallmark of depression.]
..'It's happening'...
[Big investors including -]
..Bill Gross [Pimco]...Jeremy Grantham...David Tepper...Alan Fournier...

Scientists estimate that 62,000 barrels of oil a day - or a total of 4.9 million bbls - leaked into the Gulf, 8/03 A1 pointer to A6.

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before April 30/99

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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