Saturday, January 29, 2011
Paul Krugman asks, Can Europe really be saved?
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
We are turning a bit Eurocentric here,, chaps, It started with seeing The Queen, a 2006 movie with Helen Murren, who as Elizabeth II overcame a family prejudice at Princess Diana’s funeral; progressing to the 2010, and seeing Colin Firth as George VI overcoming pride to learn how to stop stuttering and lead a nation; and finally with The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde’s elegant comedy of social manners at the Roundabout (a bastion of civilization), where a masterful Brian Bedford, in a skirts role as the commanding Lady Bracknell, overcomes pretense with sheer practicality, further strengthening the image of Britain holding on forever on the strength of its rational women and responsive social system.
All this was leading up to my building up nerve to the task of parsing the question of “Can Europe Be Saved” asked by Paul Krugman in his NYT Magazine’s tightly argued long essay of January 16; here I am trying to overcome his gloomy scenario with my own prejudices, realism, and mostly, facts.
The crisis grew from the truly humanitarian effort of building a united Europe, started in 1950 by France’s Robert Schuman by bringing his country and Germany into a European Coal and Steel Community, and to make any future wars between these millennial rivals unthinkable and impossible.It Grew to the European Union and the Euro, uniform currency.
The Euro organization, the noble effort of unity, allowed its weak links Ireland, Greece, Portugal and Spain to join and , through lax bond issuance policies, undermine the currency. Originally the Euro, deemed a stable competitor to the dollar as the world’s stabilizing currency, with low 1 to 2 percent interest rates, became threatened, with the weak countries forcing Germany and France into supporting them, threatening a worst case scenario of eventually potentially sinking the union.. Why does this risk not threaten the weak states in US like Nevada, overbuilt with failing real estate and hospitality the main industry? Well, an American state going down economically does not have to support its older inhabitants, the nowadays bad-mouthed’ socialist big-government, federal Medicare and Social Security laws protect them, ditto FannyMae and FreddyMac, when they overbuild. When Nevadans lose jobs, they can migrate in search of employment, because they will not encounter any language, social, nationalist or cultural barriers, such as Greek immigrants would in France. Eventually, the cheap bankrupt NV real estate will eventually attract retirees with fixed out of state incomes. EU is not like the US, a federally ruled republic with strong constitutional central government and with federally defined social benefits for inhabitants of its independently defined states protected by a federal constitution.
So what will happen when a European state loses investor confidence and runs out of the protection of World Bank, IMF, European Central Bank (a new institution, with not much strength),.and can no longer sell bonds, government or private? At worst, it will do a “full Argentina,” a country that was pegged to the US dollar; it broke the US link, defaulted to its creditors, eventually paying 35 cents to the dollar, got rid of corrupt governments (remember Peronistas, the generals, death squads) and rebuilt its economy of beef and agriculture. Remember that the world’s population is growing, and some agricultural economies in are getting hurt (sub-Saharan Africa, Haiti, even Russia and China), and food surplus producers, like US, unable to compete with low labor costs in emerging industrial countries, will have to strengthen their economic comeback not only on increased competitiveness, education, new technology , as President Obama will ask in his upcoming State of Union address, but also on agriculture , mineral and energy resources. Of the huge US GDP only 15 percent comes from industry, our exports are worth about half of our imports, and we live on taking in each other’s washing. Those NYC retirees to Nevada’s great climate will have to accept a lower standard of living, less gasoline consumption and less European vacations, and base their cultural life on community, TV and Internet, and practice communicating with distant family members via Skype picture telephone. Yep, and also expect less retirement and health benefits because US has a budget deficit.
Back to Europe, there’s also what I would call the partial Argentina, negotiated restructuring of debt, with reduced repayments, and cuts in pay. One guesses that in the absence of recapture of industrial production, European future looks bleak.
But what about those European countries with really low industrial production, huge social benefits, early retirement and no flexibility? Some, former colonizers, like Belgium, Netherlands, Portugal Spain, UK and France, are not all following the XIX century David Ricardo’s principle of comparative advantage, keeping a step ahead of the new industrialist nations with new technology inventions . Their populations cannot take salary cuts, they revolt and burn police cars and government buildings! Some observers like Gregory Karabell (ex-Fred Alger Funds president) and Gordon Brown (ex-British PM, anti-Euro for UK) see new technology and education as the comparative advantage solution. Karabell sees China as industry builder, much demand on US for its health and willing to pay for it; Russia, and Venezuela as industry- negligent, living on oil exports to China; Japan as industry subcontractor for China. The world is really flat; the turbines built by GE for India that President Obama announced will have parts from a dozen countries before Americans assemble them.
Some countries, like the ex-USSR captives, are opting for what Krugman calls “toughing it out,” taking cuts in pay, 15 percent in Latvia (conversion to Euro has been stopped with a drop in local currency value) and 10 in Estonia. It appears that Latvian government employees actually took up to 50 percent salary cuts, and some families are saved by the retirement benefits from their former USSR employers. This may be the way.
We are turning a bit Eurocentric here,, chaps, It started with seeing The Queen, a 2006 movie with Helen Murren, who as Elizabeth II overcame a family prejudice at Princess Diana’s funeral; progressing to the 2010, and seeing Colin Firth as George VI overcoming pride to learn how to stop stuttering and lead a nation; and finally with The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde’s elegant comedy of social manners at the Roundabout (a bastion of civilization), where a masterful Brian Bedford, in a skirts role as the commanding Lady Bracknell, overcomes pretense with sheer practicality, further strengthening the image of Britain holding on forever on the strength of its rational women and responsive social system.
All this was leading up to my building up nerve to the task of parsing the question of “Can Europe Be Saved” asked by Paul Krugman in his NYT Magazine’s tightly argued long essay of January 16; here I am trying to overcome his gloomy scenario with my own prejudices, realism, and mostly, facts.
The crisis grew from the truly humanitarian effort of building a united Europe, started in 1950 by France’s Robert Schuman by bringing his country and Germany into a European Coal and Steel Community, and to make any future wars between these millennial rivals unthinkable and impossible.It Grew to the European Union and the Euro, uniform currency.
The Euro organization, the noble effort of unity, allowed its weak links Ireland, Greece, Portugal and Spain to join and , through lax bond issuance policies, undermine the currency. Originally the Euro, deemed a stable competitor to the dollar as the world’s stabilizing currency, with low 1 to 2 percent interest rates, became threatened, with the weak countries forcing Germany and France into supporting them, threatening a worst case scenario of eventually potentially sinking the union.. Why does this risk not threaten the weak states in US like Nevada, overbuilt with failing real estate and hospitality the main industry? Well, an American state going down economically does not have to support its older inhabitants, the nowadays bad-mouthed’ socialist big-government, federal Medicare and Social Security laws protect them, ditto FannyMae and FreddyMac, when they overbuild. When Nevadans lose jobs, they can migrate in search of employment, because they will not encounter any language, social, nationalist or cultural barriers, such as Greek immigrants would in France. Eventually, the cheap bankrupt NV real estate will eventually attract retirees with fixed out of state incomes. EU is not like the US, a federally ruled republic with strong constitutional central government and with federally defined social benefits for inhabitants of its independently defined states protected by a federal constitution.
So what will happen when a European state loses investor confidence and runs out of the protection of World Bank, IMF, European Central Bank (a new institution, with not much strength),.and can no longer sell bonds, government or private? At worst, it will do a “full Argentina,” a country that was pegged to the US dollar; it broke the US link, defaulted to its creditors, eventually paying 35 cents to the dollar, got rid of corrupt governments (remember Peronistas, the generals, death squads) and rebuilt its economy of beef and agriculture. Remember that the world’s population is growing, and some agricultural economies in are getting hurt (sub-Saharan Africa, Haiti, even Russia and China), and food surplus producers, like US, unable to compete with low labor costs in emerging industrial countries, will have to strengthen their economic comeback not only on increased competitiveness, education, new technology , as President Obama will ask in his upcoming State of Union address, but also on agriculture , mineral and energy resources. Of the huge US GDP only 15 percent comes from industry, our exports are worth about half of our imports, and we live on taking in each other’s washing. Those NYC retirees to Nevada’s great climate will have to accept a lower standard of living, less gasoline consumption and less European vacations, and base their cultural life on community, TV and Internet, and practice communicating with distant family members via Skype picture telephone. Yep, and also expect less retirement and health benefits because US has a budget deficit.
Back to Europe, there’s also what I would call the partial Argentina, negotiated restructuring of debt, with reduced repayments, and cuts in pay. One guesses that in the absence of recapture of industrial production, European future looks bleak.
But what about those European countries with really low industrial production, huge social benefits, early retirement and no flexibility? Some, former colonizers, like Belgium, Netherlands, Portugal Spain, UK and France, are not all following the XIX century David Ricardo’s principle of comparative advantage, keeping a step ahead of the new industrialist nations with new technology inventions . Their populations cannot take salary cuts, they revolt and burn police cars and government buildings! Some observers like Gregory Karabell (ex-Fred Alger Funds president) and Gordon Brown (ex-British PM, anti-Euro for UK) see new technology and education as the comparative advantage solution. Karabell sees China as industry builder, much demand on US for its health and willing to pay for it; Russia, and Venezuela as industry- negligent, living on oil exports to China; Japan as industry subcontractor for China. The world is really flat; the turbines built by GE for India that President Obama announced will have parts from a dozen countries before Americans assemble them.
Some countries, like the ex-USSR captives, are opting for what Krugman calls “toughing it out,” taking cuts in pay, 15 percent in Latvia (conversion to Euro has been stopped with a drop in local currency value) and 10 in Estonia. It appears that Latvian government employees actually took up to 50 percent salary cuts, and some families are saved by the retirement benefits from their former USSR employers. This may be the way.
Labels: David Ricardo, Gordon Brown, Immelt, Karabell, krugman
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Expanded version: Paul Krugman asks: Can Europe really be saved?
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
We are turning a bit Eurocentric here,, chaps, It started with seeing The Queen, a 2006 movie with Helen Murren, who as Elizabeth II overcame a family prejudice at Princess Diana’s funeral; progressing to the 2010, with Colin Firth as George VI overcoming pride to learn how to stop stuttering and lead a nation; and finally with The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde’s elegant comedy of social manners at the Roundabout (a bastion of civilization), where a masterful Brian Bedford, in a skirts role as the commanding Lady Bracknell, overcomes pretense with sheer practicality, further strengthening the image of Britain holding on forever on the strength of its rational women and responsive social system.
All this was leading up to my building up nerve to the task of parsing the question of “Can Europe Be Saved” asked by Paul Krugman in his NYT Magazine’s tightly argued long essay of January 16; I am trying to overcome his gloomy scenario with my own prejudices, realism, and mostly, facts.
The crisis grew from the truly humanitarian effort of building a united Europe, started in 1950 by France’s Robert Schuman by bringing his country and Germany into a European Coal and Steel Community, and to make any future wars between these millennial rivals unthinkable and impossible.. It grew to a customs union, European Economic Community and EU, growing from 6, then 15, to 27 members, mostly since 2004, with more applicants and candidates in waiting. In 1952, the original members were the Benelux, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, plus Italy France, West Germany. It caught on, a customs union, European Economic Community (Denmark, Ireland, UK in 1973, Greece, Portugal, Spain to 1986, Austria, Finland Sweden in 1995, with several candidates. As EU it added 12 since 2004: Cyprus, Estonia, Czech Republic, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia, in 2007 Bulgaria and Romania. Further applicants and candidates include Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Morocco and Turkey.
Euro arrived by stages; the 1992 treaty of Maastricht now has 12 original Eurozome members (Austria, Belgium, Finland France, Greece Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain), the 2004 additions to EU . scheduled to change currency in 2007 Cyprus, Estonia, Lithuania, Slovenia; in 2008 Latvia, Malta ,Slovakia; in 2009 Czech Republic, Poland; in 2010 Hungary; current status not sure, they use Euro in quoting hotels internationally, but get paid in native currency); Non EU members using Euro are Vatican City, Monaco, San Marino, also Kosovo, Andorra and Montenegro and some French overseas territories. EU members not using Euro are UK, Sweden, and Denmark.
The Euro organization, the noble effort of unity, allowed its weak links Ireland, Greece, Portugal and Spain to join and , through lax bond issuance policies, undermine the currency. Originally the Euro, deemed a stable competitor to the dollar as the world’s stabilizing currency, with low 1 to 2 percent interest rates, became threatened, with the weak countries forcing Germany and France into supporting them, threatening a worst case scenario of eventually potentially sinking the union. Greece was unable to collect taxes, Spain and Portugal overbuilt (12 percent of labor forces in construction!); Ireland speculated (as did Iceland, a non-EU country); besides, there’s lack of industry, though Portugal had VW factories.. Why does this risk scenario not threaten the weak states in US like Nevada, overbuilt with failing real estate and hospitality the main industry? Well, an American state going down economically does not have to support its older inhabitants, the nowadays bad-mouthed’ socialist big-government, federal Medicare and Social Security laws protect them, ditto FannyMae and FreddyMac, when they overbuild. When Nevadans lose jobs, they can migrate in search of employment, because they will not encounter any language, social, nationalist or cultural barriers, such as Greek immigrants would in France. Eventually, the cheap bankrupt NV real estate will eventually attract retirees with fixed out of state incomes. EU is not like the US, a federally ruled republic with strong constitutional central government and with federally defined social benefits for inhabitants of its independently defined states protected by a federal constitution.
So what will happen when a European state loses investor confidence and runs out of the protection of World Bank, IMF, European Central Bank (a new institution, with not much strength),.and can no longer sell bonds, government or private? At worst, it will do a “full Argentina,” a country that was pegged to the US dollar; it broke the US link, defaulted to its creditors, eventually paying 35 cents to the dollar, got rid of corrupt governments (remember Peronistas, the generals, death squads) and rebuilt its economy of beef and agriculture. Remember that the world’s population is growing, and some agricultural economies in are getting hurt (sub-Saharan Africa, Haiti, even Russia and China), and food surplus producers, like US, unable to compete with low labor costs in emerging industrial countries, will have to strengthen their economic comeback not only on increased competitiveness, education, new technology , as President Obama will ask in his upcoming State of Union address, but also on agriculture , mineral and energy resources. Of the huge US GDP only 15 percent comes from industry, our exports are worth about half of our imports, and we live on taking in each other’s washing. Those NYC retirees to Nevada’s great climate will have to accept a lower standard of living, less gasoline consumption and less European vacations, and base their cultural life on community, TV and Internet, and practice communicating with distant family members via Skype picture telephone. Yep, and also expect less retirement and health benefits because US has a budget deficit.
Back to Europe, there’s also what I would call the partial Argentina, negotiated restructuring of debt, with reduced repayments, and cuts in pay. One guesses that in the absence of recapture of industrial production, European future looks bleak.
But what about those European countries with really low industrial production, huge social benefits, early retirement and no flexibility? Some, former colonizers, like Belgium, Netherlands, Portugal Spain, UK and France, are not all following the XIX century David Ricardo’s principle of comparative advantage, keeping a step ahead of the new industrialist nations with new technology inventions . Their populations cannot take salary cuts, they revolt and burn police cars and government buildings! Some observers like Gregory Karabell (ex-Fred Alger Funds president) and Gordon Brown (ex-British PM, anti-Euro prophet for UK, who swayed PM Tony Blair away from it) see new technology and education as the comparative advantage solution. Karabell sees China as industry builder, much demand on US for its health and willing to pay for it; Russia, and Venezuela as industry- negligent, living on oil exports to China; Japan as industry subcontractor for China. The world is really flat; the turbines built by GE for India that President Obama announced will have parts from a dozen countries before Americans assemble them.
Some countries, like the ex-USSR captives, are opting for what Krugman calls “toughing it out,” taking cuts in pay, 15 percent in Latvia (conversion to Euro has been stopped with a drop in local currency value) and 10 in Estonia. It appears that Latvian government employees actually took up to 50 percent salary cuts, and some families are saved by the retirement benefits from their former USSR employers. This may be the way.
For an expanded version of this article, with more EU data, open http://dobelisfile.blogspot.com and tap link (left column ) to most recent Archive.
Bad news – Evergreen Solar panel firm quits US
The need for US and the Chinese tyo work hand in hand may be given attention on the government leve; in the rough competitive world, prices win.
Evergreen Solar, a Massachusetts panel maker, third largest in the US by now, was given $47M three yerars ago, and grew.But in March they will close the Devens MA factory, let go 800 employees and move to Wuhan, China, says CEO Michael El-Hillow, who has to pay double-digit loan interest in the US. In China two banks are providing loans with no principal nor interest (4.8 percent) due until 2025, obviously government-supported, while US sits still. In China monthly worker costs are $300 instead of $5;400, and panel unit that will sell at $1 a watt, instead of $3.39 , recently reduced to $1.90. Evergreen has a new thechnology, and will compete in the US with No. 2 1n1 makers, ailing native Solyndra (despite a US $535M loan guarantee), and First Solar who mostly manufactures abroad .
President Obama’s promised competitive fight cannot win jobs in the energy product, the cost numbers prove it. Competition in US traditionally has involved firing the labor force and offshorting or upping the tech component or both. The President’s new Economic Recovery Advisory Board’s chair CEO Jeffrey Immelt’s GE makes most of its money manufacturing abroad, its turbines sale to India can raise some US jobs. , nevertheless, China is the world’s champion wind turbine maker, since just 2010. Please somebody concentrate on getting jobs for Americans!
We are turning a bit Eurocentric here,, chaps, It started with seeing The Queen, a 2006 movie with Helen Murren, who as Elizabeth II overcame a family prejudice at Princess Diana’s funeral; progressing to the 2010, with Colin Firth as George VI overcoming pride to learn how to stop stuttering and lead a nation; and finally with The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde’s elegant comedy of social manners at the Roundabout (a bastion of civilization), where a masterful Brian Bedford, in a skirts role as the commanding Lady Bracknell, overcomes pretense with sheer practicality, further strengthening the image of Britain holding on forever on the strength of its rational women and responsive social system.
All this was leading up to my building up nerve to the task of parsing the question of “Can Europe Be Saved” asked by Paul Krugman in his NYT Magazine’s tightly argued long essay of January 16; I am trying to overcome his gloomy scenario with my own prejudices, realism, and mostly, facts.
The crisis grew from the truly humanitarian effort of building a united Europe, started in 1950 by France’s Robert Schuman by bringing his country and Germany into a European Coal and Steel Community, and to make any future wars between these millennial rivals unthinkable and impossible.. It grew to a customs union, European Economic Community and EU, growing from 6, then 15, to 27 members, mostly since 2004, with more applicants and candidates in waiting. In 1952, the original members were the Benelux, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, plus Italy France, West Germany. It caught on, a customs union, European Economic Community (Denmark, Ireland, UK in 1973, Greece, Portugal, Spain to 1986, Austria, Finland Sweden in 1995, with several candidates. As EU it added 12 since 2004: Cyprus, Estonia, Czech Republic, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia, in 2007 Bulgaria and Romania. Further applicants and candidates include Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Morocco and Turkey.
Euro arrived by stages; the 1992 treaty of Maastricht now has 12 original Eurozome members (Austria, Belgium, Finland France, Greece Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain), the 2004 additions to EU . scheduled to change currency in 2007 Cyprus, Estonia, Lithuania, Slovenia; in 2008 Latvia, Malta ,Slovakia; in 2009 Czech Republic, Poland; in 2010 Hungary; current status not sure, they use Euro in quoting hotels internationally, but get paid in native currency); Non EU members using Euro are Vatican City, Monaco, San Marino, also Kosovo, Andorra and Montenegro and some French overseas territories. EU members not using Euro are UK, Sweden, and Denmark.
The Euro organization, the noble effort of unity, allowed its weak links Ireland, Greece, Portugal and Spain to join and , through lax bond issuance policies, undermine the currency. Originally the Euro, deemed a stable competitor to the dollar as the world’s stabilizing currency, with low 1 to 2 percent interest rates, became threatened, with the weak countries forcing Germany and France into supporting them, threatening a worst case scenario of eventually potentially sinking the union. Greece was unable to collect taxes, Spain and Portugal overbuilt (12 percent of labor forces in construction!); Ireland speculated (as did Iceland, a non-EU country); besides, there’s lack of industry, though Portugal had VW factories.. Why does this risk scenario not threaten the weak states in US like Nevada, overbuilt with failing real estate and hospitality the main industry? Well, an American state going down economically does not have to support its older inhabitants, the nowadays bad-mouthed’ socialist big-government, federal Medicare and Social Security laws protect them, ditto FannyMae and FreddyMac, when they overbuild. When Nevadans lose jobs, they can migrate in search of employment, because they will not encounter any language, social, nationalist or cultural barriers, such as Greek immigrants would in France. Eventually, the cheap bankrupt NV real estate will eventually attract retirees with fixed out of state incomes. EU is not like the US, a federally ruled republic with strong constitutional central government and with federally defined social benefits for inhabitants of its independently defined states protected by a federal constitution.
So what will happen when a European state loses investor confidence and runs out of the protection of World Bank, IMF, European Central Bank (a new institution, with not much strength),.and can no longer sell bonds, government or private? At worst, it will do a “full Argentina,” a country that was pegged to the US dollar; it broke the US link, defaulted to its creditors, eventually paying 35 cents to the dollar, got rid of corrupt governments (remember Peronistas, the generals, death squads) and rebuilt its economy of beef and agriculture. Remember that the world’s population is growing, and some agricultural economies in are getting hurt (sub-Saharan Africa, Haiti, even Russia and China), and food surplus producers, like US, unable to compete with low labor costs in emerging industrial countries, will have to strengthen their economic comeback not only on increased competitiveness, education, new technology , as President Obama will ask in his upcoming State of Union address, but also on agriculture , mineral and energy resources. Of the huge US GDP only 15 percent comes from industry, our exports are worth about half of our imports, and we live on taking in each other’s washing. Those NYC retirees to Nevada’s great climate will have to accept a lower standard of living, less gasoline consumption and less European vacations, and base their cultural life on community, TV and Internet, and practice communicating with distant family members via Skype picture telephone. Yep, and also expect less retirement and health benefits because US has a budget deficit.
Back to Europe, there’s also what I would call the partial Argentina, negotiated restructuring of debt, with reduced repayments, and cuts in pay. One guesses that in the absence of recapture of industrial production, European future looks bleak.
But what about those European countries with really low industrial production, huge social benefits, early retirement and no flexibility? Some, former colonizers, like Belgium, Netherlands, Portugal Spain, UK and France, are not all following the XIX century David Ricardo’s principle of comparative advantage, keeping a step ahead of the new industrialist nations with new technology inventions . Their populations cannot take salary cuts, they revolt and burn police cars and government buildings! Some observers like Gregory Karabell (ex-Fred Alger Funds president) and Gordon Brown (ex-British PM, anti-Euro prophet for UK, who swayed PM Tony Blair away from it) see new technology and education as the comparative advantage solution. Karabell sees China as industry builder, much demand on US for its health and willing to pay for it; Russia, and Venezuela as industry- negligent, living on oil exports to China; Japan as industry subcontractor for China. The world is really flat; the turbines built by GE for India that President Obama announced will have parts from a dozen countries before Americans assemble them.
Some countries, like the ex-USSR captives, are opting for what Krugman calls “toughing it out,” taking cuts in pay, 15 percent in Latvia (conversion to Euro has been stopped with a drop in local currency value) and 10 in Estonia. It appears that Latvian government employees actually took up to 50 percent salary cuts, and some families are saved by the retirement benefits from their former USSR employers. This may be the way.
For an expanded version of this article, with more EU data, open http://dobelisfile.blogspot.com and tap link (left column ) to most recent Archive.
Bad news – Evergreen Solar panel firm quits US
The need for US and the Chinese tyo work hand in hand may be given attention on the government leve; in the rough competitive world, prices win.
Evergreen Solar, a Massachusetts panel maker, third largest in the US by now, was given $47M three yerars ago, and grew.But in March they will close the Devens MA factory, let go 800 employees and move to Wuhan, China, says CEO Michael El-Hillow, who has to pay double-digit loan interest in the US. In China two banks are providing loans with no principal nor interest (4.8 percent) due until 2025, obviously government-supported, while US sits still. In China monthly worker costs are $300 instead of $5;400, and panel unit that will sell at $1 a watt, instead of $3.39 , recently reduced to $1.90. Evergreen has a new thechnology, and will compete in the US with No. 2 1n1 makers, ailing native Solyndra (despite a US $535M loan guarantee), and First Solar who mostly manufactures abroad .
President Obama’s promised competitive fight cannot win jobs in the energy product, the cost numbers prove it. Competition in US traditionally has involved firing the labor force and offshorting or upping the tech component or both. The President’s new Economic Recovery Advisory Board’s chair CEO Jeffrey Immelt’s GE makes most of its money manufacturing abroad, its turbines sale to India can raise some US jobs. , nevertheless, China is the world’s champion wind turbine maker, since just 2010. Please somebody concentrate on getting jobs for Americans!
Labels: EU, Euro, Gordon Brown, Jeffrey Immelt, Karabell, krugman
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Why the Tucson murders?
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
The senseless murders in Tucson, AZ, by a demented 22-year old psychopath immediately raise the thought of possible political connections. In reality, as stated by President Obama, the national tragedy elevates this event far above a political murder. Actually, it has been the speeded-up life of the past decades that has confused the values of disaffected adolescents of all ages.
Dissident youths and latent adolescents have been the subjects of parental fears since Adam and Eve. In Britain, adolescent idealists like George Gordon Byron went to fight for Greek insurgents, against Turks, and Richard Burton put on native garb to explore Africa, and the younger scions of good families, deprived of inheritance by primogeniture laws, went into military and colonial service to found an Empire. In the US some of the dissatisfied adolescents, young or older, went West, or joined the Army and fought Indians, or built railroads.
In our late XX-early XXI century era, the adolescents of all ages have been exposed to an incredibly large variety of social influences that might account for both antisocial and socially benevolent varieties of juvenile revolts. Alas, some of them go beyond high school shootings and entail monstrous senseless murders, as seen in recent Arizona.
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So, why are the adolescent revolts different in the current generations? To begin, there was the resurgence of murder as a political weapon, possibly noted from WWII murder squads, various forms of genocide and Holocaust, WWII and Cold War assassinations (WWI deaths were from largely trench warfare). Our generations have seen the assassinations of President J. F. Kennedy in 1963, his brother and Presidential candidate Robert in June, 1968, and Martin Luther King two months earlier. Nation of Islam’s leader Malcolm X was also assassinated, in 1965. We can also add the shooting of John Lennon (1980) and attempts on Presidents Reagan and Ford.
As part of the Civil Rights struggle and protest against Vietnam, Black Panthers of late 1968 engaged in bombings, and armed militias of patriots prepared for an internal revolt. The sexual revolution of the 1960s contributed to the generational struggles. Student riots of 1969 were less bloody, while the Weathermen, a heavily Marxist outgrowth of the SDS, advocated a revolution and a proletarian government. Three of its founders blew themselves up while making bombs for a Fort Dix event. “The only reason they were not guilty of mass murder was mere incompetence, “per expert Harvey Klehr. Some survivors have, post incarceration, seemingly accepted mainstream lives.
A distraction from the social heaving was the November 1978 Jonestown suicide in Guiana, of 913 followers of sectarian Christian prophet Jim Jones, by being forced to drink poisoned Kool-Aid.
Fast forward to Waco, TX, February 1993, where the Feds tried to arrest David Koresh, prophet of the Branch Darvidian sect, for kidnapping young women, and the resulting firefight killed 78 suicidal sect members and four agents. Two years later in Oklahoma City, Timothy McVeigh, a militia member, blew up a federal building, killing 168 clerks and injuring hundreds, in an anti-government action, to revenge for Waco.
If anything, the latter three massacres were the preludes for Arizona 2011. But let’s go on. Closer to us, there ate the annual Anarchist anti-G8/G20 convergences, and you can view the flames bursting through a bank window from the June 2010 Toronto conference on MyTube. The demonstration was announced on the Community Solidarity Network as an anti-capitalist, anti-authoritarian, colonist, racist, patriarchy, ableist and queer-positive event. Very affirmative, for every flavor of discontent.
Departing from the blood and bone events, the fictional conflict between the real and mythical also feeds discontent. The idealistic Harry Potter series are just a lure to realistic mind-boggling wizards and witches narratives. We are no longer in Kansas with Dorothy, and there is no sweet Jeannie or six-foot rabbit named Harvey; today there are mean and scary doings in the apparitions world. We now have avatars wandering around us, and popular movies like Inception. The title has given new meaning to the word, and it now means, for many, the planting of ideas through dreams; perhaps, by government, in Tucson, AZ?
Lines of private property and public goods also have become confused; starting with such free downloads as Napster. You can also lie with impunity, and use an assumed name, in posting on Internet, under the First Amendment; stealing private correspondence, whether government, commercial or individual, is thought to be protected, as in WikiLeaks. The latter is protected by Anonymous, an organization of hackers who use Operation Payback a Denial of Service attack on Amazon, Facebook and Twitter, to revenge for WikiLeaks having been denied a base by these organizations.
Confusion between entitlement and privilege is not unusual in the college environment, in 1976 CUNY students rioted after free tuition was ended, for budget reasons. Now, New Yorkers have matured; as tuition is raised, concerned students file court papers.
One more culprit: the social network environment, an artificial community providing acceptance and approval for whatever harebrained issues an author may develop, helps the maniacal among us in finding a base. Starting with Friendster and MySpace in the early 2000s, then MyTube and eventually Facebook and Twitter, the users find that no strange thoughts are rejected.
To summarize, we have confounded our people’s minds with bloody wars, social revolts, student riots, belligerent religious sects and militia, confusion of property vs. public rights, technology that mixes real and fictional resources and artificial gossip communities. Our social contract is fuzzed over; what do we really believe in?
In perspective, we are all right. There are much, much worse parts of the world, ideologically and physically. A blow to the head like the Tucson murders should clear the minds wonderfully.
The senseless murders in Tucson, AZ, by a demented 22-year old psychopath immediately raise the thought of possible political connections. In reality, as stated by President Obama, the national tragedy elevates this event far above a political murder. Actually, it has been the speeded-up life of the past decades that has confused the values of disaffected adolescents of all ages.
Dissident youths and latent adolescents have been the subjects of parental fears since Adam and Eve. In Britain, adolescent idealists like George Gordon Byron went to fight for Greek insurgents, against Turks, and Richard Burton put on native garb to explore Africa, and the younger scions of good families, deprived of inheritance by primogeniture laws, went into military and colonial service to found an Empire. In the US some of the dissatisfied adolescents, young or older, went West, or joined the Army and fought Indians, or built railroads.
In our late XX-early XXI century era, the adolescents of all ages have been exposed to an incredibly large variety of social influences that might account for both antisocial and socially benevolent varieties of juvenile revolts. Alas, some of them go beyond high school shootings and entail monstrous senseless murders, as seen in recent Arizona.
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So, why are the adolescent revolts different in the current generations? To begin, there was the resurgence of murder as a political weapon, possibly noted from WWII murder squads, various forms of genocide and Holocaust, WWII and Cold War assassinations (WWI deaths were from largely trench warfare). Our generations have seen the assassinations of President J. F. Kennedy in 1963, his brother and Presidential candidate Robert in June, 1968, and Martin Luther King two months earlier. Nation of Islam’s leader Malcolm X was also assassinated, in 1965. We can also add the shooting of John Lennon (1980) and attempts on Presidents Reagan and Ford.
As part of the Civil Rights struggle and protest against Vietnam, Black Panthers of late 1968 engaged in bombings, and armed militias of patriots prepared for an internal revolt. The sexual revolution of the 1960s contributed to the generational struggles. Student riots of 1969 were less bloody, while the Weathermen, a heavily Marxist outgrowth of the SDS, advocated a revolution and a proletarian government. Three of its founders blew themselves up while making bombs for a Fort Dix event. “The only reason they were not guilty of mass murder was mere incompetence, “per expert Harvey Klehr. Some survivors have, post incarceration, seemingly accepted mainstream lives.
A distraction from the social heaving was the November 1978 Jonestown suicide in Guiana, of 913 followers of sectarian Christian prophet Jim Jones, by being forced to drink poisoned Kool-Aid.
Fast forward to Waco, TX, February 1993, where the Feds tried to arrest David Koresh, prophet of the Branch Darvidian sect, for kidnapping young women, and the resulting firefight killed 78 suicidal sect members and four agents. Two years later in Oklahoma City, Timothy McVeigh, a militia member, blew up a federal building, killing 168 clerks and injuring hundreds, in an anti-government action, to revenge for Waco.
If anything, the latter three massacres were the preludes for Arizona 2011. But let’s go on. Closer to us, there ate the annual Anarchist anti-G8/G20 convergences, and you can view the flames bursting through a bank window from the June 2010 Toronto conference on MyTube. The demonstration was announced on the Community Solidarity Network as an anti-capitalist, anti-authoritarian, colonist, racist, patriarchy, ableist and queer-positive event. Very affirmative, for every flavor of discontent.
Departing from the blood and bone events, the fictional conflict between the real and mythical also feeds discontent. The idealistic Harry Potter series are just a lure to realistic mind-boggling wizards and witches narratives. We are no longer in Kansas with Dorothy, and there is no sweet Jeannie or six-foot rabbit named Harvey; today there are mean and scary doings in the apparitions world. We now have avatars wandering around us, and popular movies like Inception. The title has given new meaning to the word, and it now means, for many, the planting of ideas through dreams; perhaps, by government, in Tucson, AZ?
Lines of private property and public goods also have become confused; starting with such free downloads as Napster. You can also lie with impunity, and use an assumed name, in posting on Internet, under the First Amendment; stealing private correspondence, whether government, commercial or individual, is thought to be protected, as in WikiLeaks. The latter is protected by Anonymous, an organization of hackers who use Operation Payback a Denial of Service attack on Amazon, Facebook and Twitter, to revenge for WikiLeaks having been denied a base by these organizations.
Confusion between entitlement and privilege is not unusual in the college environment, in 1976 CUNY students rioted after free tuition was ended, for budget reasons. Now, New Yorkers have matured; as tuition is raised, concerned students file court papers.
One more culprit: the social network environment, an artificial community providing acceptance and approval for whatever harebrained issues an author may develop, helps the maniacal among us in finding a base. Starting with Friendster and MySpace in the early 2000s, then MyTube and eventually Facebook and Twitter, the users find that no strange thoughts are rejected.
To summarize, we have confounded our people’s minds with bloody wars, social revolts, student riots, belligerent religious sects and militia, confusion of property vs. public rights, technology that mixes real and fictional resources and artificial gossip communities. Our social contract is fuzzed over; what do we really believe in?
In perspective, we are all right. There are much, much worse parts of the world, ideologically and physically. A blow to the head like the Tucson murders should clear the minds wonderfully.
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Only the paranoid can survive without going crazy: Are jobs still the priority?
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
The changes of regime in Albany and Washington have come with an emphasis on cost savings that threatens the No One priority, jobs.
Governor Andrew Cuomo has announced an ambitious program that will cut the costs of state and local government agencies and authorities by 20 percent, and guess how? If you said by terminating employment, you were right. This doe not mean he’s not right, the agencies are bloated, and the probable cost of unfunded retirement and medical benefits guaranteed for NYS government employees by vote hungry politicians may be in the high $billions, money that New York cannot possibly raise over the life span time involved. He is right, businesses and qualified people are leaving NYS, to go to lower cost and better opportunities, as taxes – real estate and income, highest in the nation – need be cut severely, to make the business environment viable. Commerce has no mercy, and nowadays can go wherever the cost is less, SC or Mexico or China, and if your products are overpriced because of excessive costs, the business will not survive, and its employees will join the army of the unemployed.
To interject national thinking, the recently reported great industrial profits and market values for US corporations are heavily weighted by global business. GM and others are making more money abroad than domestically, with no impact for American workers. The 103,00 new jobs in December 2010 , reducing unemployment to 9.4 percent, were 4/5ths in health care and hospitality, still leaving 15M Americans jobless. The 1990-01 and 2000 recessions took 23 and 38 months to recover, and those figures may extend to 72 to 90 months for the present situation, as a NYTimes survey shows.
Returning to NYS, that brings up the need for creating new opportunities in our state of dwindling population (we lost two Congressional seats, remember?). Wind power farms have started to create low cost energy, desirable because gasoline costs are predicted to reach reaching the $5 a gallon cost in our lifetime. The demand for oil is high, because more countries are industrializing, and the Gulf of Mexico production has been curtailed since the BP disaster. On Jan. 3 the Obama administration cleared the path for resumption of deep-water drilling, but that will take time. NYS unfortunately has miles of fallow land op north, and the noisy and unsightly electricity-producing windmills, out of sight and sound and radiation impact (that bugaboo, is it real?) may be one resource, better than the NYS water supply-impacting drilling for natural gas. Attracting new industries to NYS is difficult; we have the education and people to accommodate the requirements, but the costs! Anyway, we have to keep thinking.
Cutting Medicaid costs by $2 billion is another Cuomo solution. Is the savings gained by removing abuses, or will the state costs be shifted? In any event, it will result in reduced care for the needy, and public assistance cost increases. However... a $10B budget gap is ahead of us in the next year’s $136B budget and needs to be solved, else it will be $14B the next year, and increasing amounts thereafter, so…
Cuomo also wants to create three commissions to implement the necessary changes, and will spend $250M to consolidate local government services for the 10,000 municipalities and NYS agencies (state banking, insurance and consumer protection agencies will be consolidated), and another $250M for
combining and improving school districts.
The changes in NYS legislature, returning the Senate leadership to the Republicans also threatens the rent control legislation, particularly affecting our Stuyvesant Town/Peter Cooper Village community, as highlighted in Steven Sanders’s article last week. This column reiterates his call for community support for Assemblyman Brian Kavanagh, who will lead the fight in the legislature, to extend and protect the tenant/landlord laws, and to Al Doyle’s Tenants Association. The discourse will be more difficult this year, in view of the budget struggles and the Republican takeover of the NYS Senate. It is by no means a certainty that Governor Andrew Cuomo, in view of his declared intent to work for a viable NYS economy, cutting government expenses and increasing income, can be expected to be a wholehearted advocate for rent control as we know it. This may well be a subject for compromises that need be thought out, on three or even six levels of alternatives. International politics is not the ultimate in negotiations, we have the potential right here in River City.
As to my favorite topic of books, the bad state of Borders puts some considerable doubt on that company’s ability to take over our neighbor, Barnes and Noble. Shucks! If the great financiers cannot save the simple industries supporting knowledge, judgment and wisdom; maybe we the people will have to do it. Books are still wonderful gifts to yourself and to friends.
The changes of regime in Albany and Washington have come with an emphasis on cost savings that threatens the No One priority, jobs.
Governor Andrew Cuomo has announced an ambitious program that will cut the costs of state and local government agencies and authorities by 20 percent, and guess how? If you said by terminating employment, you were right. This doe not mean he’s not right, the agencies are bloated, and the probable cost of unfunded retirement and medical benefits guaranteed for NYS government employees by vote hungry politicians may be in the high $billions, money that New York cannot possibly raise over the life span time involved. He is right, businesses and qualified people are leaving NYS, to go to lower cost and better opportunities, as taxes – real estate and income, highest in the nation – need be cut severely, to make the business environment viable. Commerce has no mercy, and nowadays can go wherever the cost is less, SC or Mexico or China, and if your products are overpriced because of excessive costs, the business will not survive, and its employees will join the army of the unemployed.
To interject national thinking, the recently reported great industrial profits and market values for US corporations are heavily weighted by global business. GM and others are making more money abroad than domestically, with no impact for American workers. The 103,00 new jobs in December 2010 , reducing unemployment to 9.4 percent, were 4/5ths in health care and hospitality, still leaving 15M Americans jobless. The 1990-01 and 2000 recessions took 23 and 38 months to recover, and those figures may extend to 72 to 90 months for the present situation, as a NYTimes survey shows.
Returning to NYS, that brings up the need for creating new opportunities in our state of dwindling population (we lost two Congressional seats, remember?). Wind power farms have started to create low cost energy, desirable because gasoline costs are predicted to reach reaching the $5 a gallon cost in our lifetime. The demand for oil is high, because more countries are industrializing, and the Gulf of Mexico production has been curtailed since the BP disaster. On Jan. 3 the Obama administration cleared the path for resumption of deep-water drilling, but that will take time. NYS unfortunately has miles of fallow land op north, and the noisy and unsightly electricity-producing windmills, out of sight and sound and radiation impact (that bugaboo, is it real?) may be one resource, better than the NYS water supply-impacting drilling for natural gas. Attracting new industries to NYS is difficult; we have the education and people to accommodate the requirements, but the costs! Anyway, we have to keep thinking.
Cutting Medicaid costs by $2 billion is another Cuomo solution. Is the savings gained by removing abuses, or will the state costs be shifted? In any event, it will result in reduced care for the needy, and public assistance cost increases. However... a $10B budget gap is ahead of us in the next year’s $136B budget and needs to be solved, else it will be $14B the next year, and increasing amounts thereafter, so…
Cuomo also wants to create three commissions to implement the necessary changes, and will spend $250M to consolidate local government services for the 10,000 municipalities and NYS agencies (state banking, insurance and consumer protection agencies will be consolidated), and another $250M for
combining and improving school districts.
The changes in NYS legislature, returning the Senate leadership to the Republicans also threatens the rent control legislation, particularly affecting our Stuyvesant Town/Peter Cooper Village community, as highlighted in Steven Sanders’s article last week. This column reiterates his call for community support for Assemblyman Brian Kavanagh, who will lead the fight in the legislature, to extend and protect the tenant/landlord laws, and to Al Doyle’s Tenants Association. The discourse will be more difficult this year, in view of the budget struggles and the Republican takeover of the NYS Senate. It is by no means a certainty that Governor Andrew Cuomo, in view of his declared intent to work for a viable NYS economy, cutting government expenses and increasing income, can be expected to be a wholehearted advocate for rent control as we know it. This may well be a subject for compromises that need be thought out, on three or even six levels of alternatives. International politics is not the ultimate in negotiations, we have the potential right here in River City.
As to my favorite topic of books, the bad state of Borders puts some considerable doubt on that company’s ability to take over our neighbor, Barnes and Noble. Shucks! If the great financiers cannot save the simple industries supporting knowledge, judgment and wisdom; maybe we the people will have to do it. Books are still wonderful gifts to yourself and to friends.
Labels: only the paranoid can survive without going crazy
