Jim Manis on Most Anything

Jim Manis can formulate an opinion about a good many things, including those about which he has little knowledge. (And some dude named "Lazlo.") Visit The MagicFactory.

Sunday, November 30, 2008

How Things Have Changed:

It used to be that the local car dealer was considered one of the biggest crooks in town. Selling cars was a license to steal. The dealer got the cars on consignment from Detroit, with little or nothing down, and then sold them to you for more than they were worth. You knew this because if you tried to turn around and sell the car you'd have to take a substantial loss. In addition, you'd have to pay cash for the car or arrange financing yourself at the local bank, whose president seemed a medieval lord with you as just another serf. The only person held in greater disrepute than the new car dealer was the used car dealer, who would sometimes end up in court or even jail for some misdeed in connection with selling faulty merchandise or being involved with stolen vehicles.

Clifford Krauss, writing in today's New York Times, presents a different image of the new car dealer, a man and a company at the center of the economy, whose well-being effects the whole community. So you have to ask yourself, partner, what does this tell us about the direction America has followed in the past fifty years?

What Kind of Presidential News Conference Would It Be?

Maureen Dowd writes in today's New York Times' Op-Ed pages, about a California newspaper that has "off-shored" its writing staff to India. She's wondering if this is the wave of the future. You have to love the irony of a woman in India reporting on the Rose Bowl parade as she watches it via Webcast on her cell phone.

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Saturday, November 29, 2008

A Peek at the Publishing Industry:

Those of us who love books can benefit from as much understanding of the publishing world as is made available to us. Motoko Rich reveals a bit of what's going on in this week's "Books" section of The New York Times. While the eBook phenomenon and the Internet have garnered most of the press space over the past several years, the business of turning publishing into cash streams for conglomerates that began over a quarter of a century ago is still the most dominant force.

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Friday, November 28, 2008

Black Friday Update:

As authorities in India try to figure out who was behind the recent terrorist attacks, Americans, The New York Times reports, "are less interested in consuming than at any other time in the past four decades." In the meantime, a "Wal-Mart Employee [was] Trampled to Death by Customers."

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Conspicuous Consumption:

Back in the late 1960s, the term entered (or perhaps "re-entered") the American lexicon as baby boomers came of age and the hard working, disciplined "greatest generation" began to enjoy the wealth the country was developing after two decades of post world war industry.

Having been one of those boomers, I can tell you that one of the first things my parents did was to open a savings account for me, and as a small child, one of my most prized possessions was a piggy bank.

By the end of the Sixties, I had served my country with sufficient distinction to earn a letter of commendation and had returned to civilian life and the job I'd left after having been drafted to help defeat international communism by playing war games in the Black Forest. One of the first things I did was to buy a new car.

One day shortly thereafter, I stopped in the local diner, and as I was paying my bill before leaving, Mrs. Fox—she and her husband owned the place—asked if the new car parked out front (where everyone was sure to see it and me getting in and out of it) was mine. I nodded, and she arched a brow in the way only the most contemptuous of the elderly can and uttered that phrase, "Conspicuous consumption," while depositing my cash in her till and summarily dismissing me. That hurt.

Naturally, I had sought to be admired. Worse, I was already considerably worried about my ability to pay off the loan I'd taken on the new car, the price of which was about 80 percent of the income I expected to receive that year.

But these were good times, especially if you were young and willing to work hard. As it turned out, I was not only able to keep up with my payments but also to earn at least 20 percent more that year than I'd anticipated. I was helping to build the Interstate highway system, and there was enough work to keep a willing and unfettered young man busy for the next five years. Throughout that period I not only worked steadily but also often 60 to 80 hours per week. This provided me with a good income, and limited my consumption. When you're at work that much, there just isn't much time to shop.

I did manage two more splashy purchases during those years: at one point, I was the proud owner of a 23-foot cabin cruiser and a 40-foot house boat. But after owning these two toys for a year, I realized I wasn't really a waterman, and I sold them, managing to recover most of my investment in both instances.

By 1973, I had managed to save the equivalent of three and a half years of normal income, and I decided to strike out in a new direction. I headed west, and conspicuous consumption was no longer the vogue. By this point, even rich kids were wearing worn out jeans, flannel and the proverbial Tennessee Tux (a colored T-shirt with a pocket). Even owning a car made you suspect as someone who might just value personal possessions too much.

Now flash forward thirty-five years. The boomers and the generation that followed have turned that perspective inside out. Stephen Roach, in today's New York Times, chronicles the shift from a country that produces and saves to one that simply consumes in "Dying of Consumption."

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Thursday, November 27, 2008

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Wednesday, November 26, 2008

The Age of Greed:

Are we witnessing the end of the age of greed? Thomas Friedman, at The New York Times, wants us to read Michael Lewis's essay at Portfolio.com, "The End," in trying to determine the answer to this question. Naturally, the answer, as always, is that only time will tell. Lewis is the author of the 1989 classic tell-all, Liar's Poker.

By the way, don't miss The New York Times' story about the mom who has to forgo buying herself designer jeans so she can buy her daughter all of the latest toys for Christmas. Times are tough all over.

Priming the Pump:

The federal government plans to "deploy up to $800 billion" so that Americans can start borrowing money again. (See The Washington Post story.) If you've got kids who need a college loan, this should be good news, but it's certainly different from any sort of public works program that could fuel the economy.

In the Meantime:

Americans' food stamp use nears all-time high.

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Monday, November 24, 2008

Who Is Citigroup?

The Feds are about to offer a bailout to Citigroup, another of the giant banking/financial organizations that have contributed to the current financial meltdown. Most of us know the name from the distinctive logo and many of us carry one or more of their credit cards, but who or what is Citigroup? Washington Post writers Neil Irwin and David Cho provide some explanation in today's edition, with some curious background. Apparently, the shoddy financial behavior in speculation is nothing new. Buying, packaging, and reselling bad debt is a strategy that's been around for a while.

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Can Obama Green America:

Washington Post writer Lori Montgomery examins President-elect Obama's plans to make America greener in both environment and pocketbook. Obama's ambitious plan is to "create or preserve 2.5 million jobs, at least some of which would work towards improving the environment or at least cut into America's dependency on foreign energy. The big question is, of course, can such a plan actually come close to succeeding in the current world-wide economic downturn.

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Saturday, November 22, 2008

How Come When You Fire This Guy You Can't Get Rid of Him?

Pundits are crawling out of the woodwork to shove the Bush administration aside as quickly as possible, but Bush/Cheney still have time to wreak havoc before saying so long and retiring to their respective ranches.

Gail Collins joins the ranks of the I-can't-wait-ers in today's New York Times as she contemplates just where to rank W in the pantheon of the miserable leaders category: "If Bush gives up doing nothing by giving up his job, it’s possible that someday history might elevate him to the ranks of the below average. Better than Franklin Pierce! Smarter than Warren Harding! And healthier than William Henry Harrison!"

But there's still work to do for the Bush administration. Currently, they are filling the ranks of the government's non-political jobs in positions where they can still screw up the gears, as related in today's Washington Post. If you can't hold a political appointment, you can still gain a position as a key man in a position for which you are even less qualified, with your business or political science degree from a no name college, as long as you have been a fervent Bushy at some point in the past five years.

It seems you can't even vote these guys out of office, and we are doomed to a culture of imbecility after all.

The Dude exercises the politician's prerogative of double-speak: "I had a cordial meeting at the meeting last night. We greeted each other cordially" — after a meeting with German Chancellor Schroeder, Nov. 21, 2002.

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Thursday, November 20, 2008

First, the Good News:

I paid less than two dollars per gallon of gas today, and the price of oil has dropped below $50 a barrel, the lowest it's been since May 2005.

The bad news: Unemployment hit a sixteen-year high, and it's only expected to get worse. Great! Just when the kids are getting out of college and loans have to be paid back.

In other news, the long range forecast is for a milder winter than usual. Kind of warms my heart as I watch snow flakes the size of silver dollars falling outside my window.

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Thursday, November 13, 2008

Toothless Bailout Oversight:

When the bailout was proposed, congress postured with a lot of talk about oversight. Today's Washington Post reports a congressional aide as saying, "It's sort of a joke in terms of oversight." There is a board that includes Treasury Secretary Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke, but the five member Financial Stability Oversight Board has no staff. In other words, it's like having a prosecutor with no police department. You can't send any crooks to jail if there's no one to catch them.

It Ain't Sci-Fi:

"A noxious cocktail of soot, smog and toxic chemicals is blotting out the sun, fouling the lungs of millions of people and altering weather patterns in large parts of Asia, according to a report released Thursday by the United Nations" The New York Times reported in today's late edition.

It might sound like the latest Steven King thriller, straight from a Hollywood back lot, but it's a description of what's going on in Asia. According to the report, a brown layer of haze is sometimes more than a mile thick and has drifted at times as far as California.

Such clouds of pollution sometimes emanate from the U.S., Latin America, and Africa as well, but none of this bodes well for the planet, regardless of where they derive from.

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Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Was That a Flush We Just Heard?

After billions of bailout money, Fannie and AIG are still struggling, as reported in today's Washington Post. Fannie lost $29 billion over the past three months, while AIG reported a $24.5 billion loss in the same period. As a certain senator from Illinois once said, "A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you'll be talking about real money."

Oil Continues to Drop:

Are is it "drip"? In any event the news is good for most of us, because we still have to get back and forth to work and heat our houses. In Ohio, the price of gas dropped below $1.90 per gallon. More good news, people are still restricting their driving. Back when gasoline hit the four dollar mark this summer, folks suddenly decided it might be a good idea to drive less or use vehicles that got better mileage. That behavior still seems to be dominating, which is good news for the environment. (See The New York Times story.)

California Homes Not Worth What Their Owners Owe:

Mountain House, California, according to The New York Times, is the worst place in America to own a home, based on market value. Some 90 percent of the homes in this community are worth, on average, less than $122,000 what's owed on them. Ouch! That certainly doesn't smell so good.

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Saturday, November 08, 2008

What Else Is New?

Jobless rate continues to grow, reaching a 14-year low. (See The New York Times story.) Back in 1994, the Gingrich free trade revolution was sweeping into Washington, D.C., and we were about to discover the technology bubble. Windows 95 and the World Wide Web were a number of months in the offing. The economy was on the upswing. By January of 2001, the new Bush administration, after orchestrating a theft of the White House by way of Florida and the Supreme Court, would inherit a flourishing economy and a balanced budget. George W. Bush swore he had no interest in "nation building," and history would prove this correct. The mission of the free trade advocates has never been "nation building," their interests are in nation destruction. (In the tenth consecutive month of job losses, another 240,000 have disappeared.)

This Day in History:

Forty-eight years ago today, John F. Kennedy was pronounced the winner of the 1960 presidential election, which was likely stolen from Richard Nixon by the mayor of Chicago, Richard Daley, the same mayor who would eight years later unleash a police riot against demonstrators during the Democratic National Convention.

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Thursday, November 06, 2008

They call it a balloon because

it keeps expanding the more (hot) air you put into it. Every kid learns that you can only blow the balloon up so far before it bursts. In the U.S., the economic balloon may not have burst, but it has slipped out of our hands and is now flying around the room with the air rushing out of it.

One of the key indicators of how our economy has been doing over the past several decades has been the steady increase in worker productivity. (The amount an employee produces for every hour at work.) The nasty secret—if you can call it a secret—has been that productivity has had a phony factor known as simply requiring employees to work more hours without pay.

I'm not just talking about places like Wal-Mart who lock their employees in and make them work off the clock. Nor am I talking about employers who who hire illegals to work and then keep them off the books so that they are not counted in worker productivity. We've all been asked to produce more, both on and off the books, for minuscule wage increases and sometime no increases at all in our weekly wages or actual decreases in our wages, especially with inflation factored in.

Considering the current collapse of the economy, it is a miracle that worker productivity has increased at all, but believe it or not, it has continued to grow, as reported in today's New York Times, by 1.1 percent.

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The Hangover:

Now that America has shown it can do the right thing, we can go back to worrying about how to keep the ship from sinking. Let's hope that the election did not simply achieve—as Gail Collins put it today, that "American children are going to grow up unaware that there’s anything novel in an African-American president or a woman running for the White House"—, but rather that a master campaign strategist can actually guide us out of the morass we are all in.

What Obama represents for this country is the American notion that through hard work, dedication, persistence and a modicum of common decency we can overcome incredible odds to achieve success. No one knows better than Black men and women that this doesn't always turn out to be the case.

Oil Continues to Slide:

The price of oil dropped below $65 per barrel today. The last time I filled up my car gasoline was at $2.29.9 per gallon.

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Sunday, November 02, 2008

Class in America:

Back in the 1960s "middle class" was a dirty word. The Republicans had to create a new term so that those who aspired to middle-class values wouldn't have to hide their faces in shame: "The Silent Majority."

By the 1980s, that had changed. Reagan had led the charge in re-invigorating the middle class. Before his first term was up, very nearly everyone claimed to be middle class. That is, you were either a member of the middle class or you aspired to be.

You do remember the 1980s, right? That was the era known for its selfishness, as opposed to the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, which were known as eras of selflessness, periods of time when folks worked and sacrificed for the greater good of family, community and country. (The 1970s were a period of time, like the 1920s, when American culture was in an upheaval and probably will be referred to as a "lost generation.")

Before the 1980s, you could tell a person's class by how he talked and dressed, much the same way you could in other countries, by how much education he had and whether he had inherited wealth or needed to work for a living, by what kind of job he did, blue collar or white. Did a person get his hands dirty, or were his hands callous free?

Education and a changing work environment has changed most of that. Class today is mostly a matter of aspirations and income. Everyone claims to be a member of the middle class now, even when we don't fit into any known definition of it.

The great irony, of course, is that to believe that one is middle class is to assume other classes exist.

Eduordo Porter reflects on what it means to be middle class in America in today's New York Times. He attempts to break it down according to income, a definition that worked in the past as a short hand method. But during the past several decades labor and education have been taken out of the equation, along with birth.

Question: If we're all middle class, does that make us communists?

The Dude explains it all: "I saw a poll that said the right track/wrong track in Iraq was better than here in America. It's pretty darn strong. I mean, the people see a better future." — George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., 2004. (Don't ask.)

Count Down:

The Washington Post reports today that the latest polls show Sen. Obama leading in states whose electoral votes total nearly 300, which, if correct, would place him easily into the White House. Currently, it appears that he leads in all the states that John Kerry won in 2004, which would give him 252 electoral votes, while 270 are needed to win, and he is leading in the polling in a number of other states that Bush won during that election.

The election, of course, is not a baseball season, with a team slowly accruing victories over a period of months. There is only one game, and it takes place on Tuesday.

Have you seen the lines forming for early voting? Makes you wonder if anyone will show up on Tuesday.

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Saturday, November 01, 2008

The "vicious circle of deepening malaise":

Just when you thought the economy couldn't get any worse, economists are now terrified that prices are … gulp!falling! While Joe (he's not really Joe) the Plumber (he's not even a plumber) is terrified that he might make so much money that he'll have to actually pay his back taxes, our nation's leading economic fantasizers are dreading the onset of deflation. (The economic condition during which the prices of goods and services actually become cheaper. (See today's New York Times story.)

How do you cure this problem? Well, one way is to print more money and cause inflation. According to Kenneth S. Rogoff, formerly of the now infamous International Monetary Fund (IMF) and currently a Harvard professor, “A significant financial crisis has been allowed to morph into a full-fledged global panic. It’s a very dangerous situation. The danger is that instead of having a few bad years, we’ll have another lost decade.”

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