Good News:  Exporting of IT Jobs to Slow

Analysts predict that by 2022 IT jobs will have reached a stasis in terms of outsourcing. That is, the situation will have stabilized.

Unfortunately, this has no bearing on low end, nontechnical jobs,in other words the kinds of work high school dropouts seek. At this point, nearly one out of four students who enter high school never finish. (See the TechRepublic story.)

Oil Companies Continue To Record Massive Profits:

Responding to pointed questions about record setting profits, big oil has stated that American retirement plans own large shares of the companies.

Royal Dutch Shell and Exxon Mobil are big winners, showing profits up nearly double from last year. According to The New York Times, their profit margins are up. In case the terminology confuses you, that means they're buying crude oil for less but not passing the savings along to the consumer. Hmmm, where have I heard that before?

More on income inequality:

The Washington Post quotes Erin Currier, project manager with the Pew Charitable Trusts' Economic Mobility Project on the matter today: "The amount of growth of the top 1 percent is shocking. But the piece that is missing is income mobility, and what we see there does not reflect the American dream. We're not seeing equality of opportunity."

The Flat Tax Is the Answer to All Our Problems, Right?

During the past thirty years, the tax on the wealthiest Americans, the top 1 percent, has steadily been reduced. Wealth, Ronny Rayguns promised us, would trickle down.

The truth is that over the past thirty years is that the top 1 percent has seen their wealth double, while the rest of us are still earning the same amount of money. (Thus the key to American productivity: The rich earn more while the workers work harder and earn less.)

(See The New York Times' "Top Earners Doubled share of Nation's Income, Study Finds" explaining the latest report from the Congressional Budget Office.)

And, oh, yes, the flat tax—all the flat tax proposals would result in the richest Americans receiving another tax cut. But that's only fair; they're creating all the wealth, right?

Must Read:

The world is about to reach the 7 billion mark in population (or maybe it already has; it's impossible to know for sure), and the ramifications of the massive population growth witnessed over the past two hundred years can no longer reasonably be ignored.

Mathematical biologist, Joel E. Cohen, head of the Laboratory of Populations at Rockefeller University and Columbia University, presents the problems we'll face before this century is out in today's New York Times. This is a must read for anyone who believes we should actually have our eyes open.

For an additional story, see Juliet Eilperin's "Population growth taxing planet's resources" in today's Washington Post.

Henry Blodget Explains the OWS:

CEO and Editor-in-Chief of Business Insider, Henry Blodget, posted four interesting charts in an attempt to explain what the Occupy Wall Street folks are angry about:

1. Unemployment is at the highest level since the Great Depression



2. At the same time, corporate profits are at an all-time high





3. Wages as a percent of the economy are at an all-time low.




4. Income and wealth inequality in the US economy is near an all-time high

Oil Profits Should Hit Record Highs:

The price of a barrel of oil has dropped to $84, which should mean that gasoline at the pump should cost you less than $3 a gallon, but the price at the pump in most places is still around $3.50, and where I live it is above $3.65. (See The Washington Post article.)

Traditionally, the price at the pump has been tied to the price of a barrel of crude, but the major companies have seemed to realize that the average person has no idea about this relationship. And let's face it, the oil companies have congress in their back pockets.

When Warren Buffett Speaks …

We should all listen. Carefully.

Buffett wants to pay more in taxes. He wants most of us to pay less. In plain English, one of the world's richest, most financially successful men lays out the case for a more sensible tax structure in today's New York Times. Is anyone listening? Or are we all waiting for the "Texas miracle" to cure our ills? (See Paul Krugman's op-ed.)

$14 Trillion in Debt: How could this happen? What does it mean?

Zachary Goldfarb puts the situation in clear terms in today's Washington Post. The real problem is greed and stupidity.

The country has enough wealth to make this debt ludicrously small. To start with, the biggest portion of that money is simply owed to ourselves. Trillions are locked up in the mountains of cash private companies posses, including trillions the rich hide or invest overseas in order to avoid paying taxes.

What Recession?

With unemployment steadily around 9 percent and the number of underemployed around 20 percent, American workers know we're in a deep recession with no end in sight. Government seems oblivious with its focus on debt reduction and elected officials only concerned about being re-elected in in 2012.

So how's business?

The corporate sector, as it turns out, is flush with cash, so much so that it's wildly speculating in all sorts of technology ventures. If you've got a flashy idea about social networking, you can "go public" and get millions.

In addition to the oceans of cash, corporate earnings, overall, are beating expectations, increasing the amount of cash available. But don't bother looking for a job. They're not hiring, just investing.

The dragon finds a horde of gold and sits on it. (See The Washington Post story.)

Now Here's Something You Don't See Everyday:

"Goldman Sachs Reports Disappointing Profit of $1.05 Billion"

That's a headline from this afternoon's edition of The New York Times. It seems that while Goldman Sachs has doubled its profits from last year the analysts were expecting much more. Well, so was I, gosh darn it! I mean, what can we expect from this economy anyhow? I'll bet there isn't an out of work or underemployed American in the country who doesn't feel for this venerable company. We should just rush to give 'em a new tax break, don't you think?

Hang 'Em High!

At last! Someone is finally going to jail for helping to create and profit from the world-wide financial crisis. The Washington Post reports this morning that one of the thieves may receive life imprisonment for his part.

Still, we're not likely to see the real culprits pay—the Wall Street bankers and their political lackeys in the Bush administration.


And in other crime news:

We now know that Massey Energy knew their mine was unsafe and coerced their workers to create fake reports to mislead the Feds about the safety issues in West Virginia. If this were an episode of Law & Order, the mine owner would be going on trial for the murder of 29 miners in April of 2010, but this is real life, and Massey has major political punch with bought and paid for U. S. senators. (See The Washington Post story.)

"Outsourcing Comes Home"

Looking for a job? Indian companies that specialized in the outsourcing boom are beginning to relocate to the U.S. and other countries, moving their employees and hiring local employees, to man the phones in cities closer to their customers. What goes around … and so forth. (See The Washington Post story.)

The Myth of Capitalism:

Private run businesses are always more efficient than public run services, right? That's capitalisms great myth. Government workers have no profit motive to drive them toward efficiency.

Well, think again. One of the big scams of recent decades has been that privately run prisons are more efficient than publicly run ones. The truth is that this is simply not true. The only thing that private prisons are efficient at doing is redistributing the public wealth by funneling it into a few private hands.

In Arizona, a beacon of Republican mythology about capitalism, studies show that housing a prisoner in a private facility costs the same as doing so in a public one at best and sometimes as much as $1,600 per year more (Richard Oppel).

The truth is that those who advocate privatization of traditionally publicly run services have no interest in efficiently running these programs. Their sole interest is in moving taxpayer dollars into private pockets.

How America Shot Itself in the Foot:

"The nation’s unnerving descent into debt began a decade ago with a choice, not a crisis." - Lori Montgomery.

That's right. The Bush tax cuts, extended by Obama, account for most of the indebtedness. And then there are those two unnecessary and unpaid for wars, one of which was begun with fabricated information.

Back in 2000, the nation's economy was booming and the outlook was rosy beyond imagining today. Of course, an economy that was based on a housing bubble and credit default swaps was bound to bust anyway, but it needn't have been so painful.

So why did Republicans work so hard to bring the nation to this state? Easy, Republicans find their base among those who want weak government. For them, "government" plays no part in a definition of what it means to be American.

Keep in mind that the top 10 percent of Americans remain rich. The problems with the economy haven't harmed them any more than rampant inflation ever hurt the wealthy elite in Latin American economies. When politicians like Nuke Getrich start talking about Americans needing to make sacrifices, they are not talking about themselves and the wealthy elite who own the political parties. They are talking about the bottom 90 percent.

American Demagoguery:

Mark Oppenheimer sheds some light on the so called "Christian Right" in a New York Times' column, "'Christian Economics' Meets the Antiunion Movement." It seems a character named Gary North has a strong influence on many of the far right's attitudes about something called "Christian economics."

As someone who has studied this matter for years, I can vouch for the fact that Christian economics can be stated in one short sentence: Give everything away to the poor. That's it, folks.

Oh, yeah, there is that part about rendering unto Caesar. Whatever anyone tells you about economics with a Christian label that doesn't fit within these quadrants …, well, he's lying. You'd better check your back pocket, because you can be sure you'll find his hand in it, and he ain't hardly poor, although he might be a Caesar wanna be.

The National Budget Proposal That No One Talks About:

The People's Budget: Paul Krugman wonders why no one talks about it. The answer? American's prefer our reality served up by Disney—lots of sugary fakery. It's medicine if it masks the symptoms.

The State of the Union:

"One out of every five American children lives in poverty. Yet the most consuming issue in Washington—according to members of Congress, Hill staffers, lobbyists and Treasury officials—is determining how to slice up the $16 billion debit-card swipe fee pie for corporations" (The Washington Post "Wonkbook").

More than 100 ex-government officials serve as lobbyist for the all consuming banking industry, fighting to keep bank fees high. And you don't believe in vampires?

Keep Your Filthy Gov't Hands Off My Medicare!

Americans are disgusted by America's indebtedness, but they have no idea what to do about it.

Polls show that Americans, by wide majorities, oppose significant cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and military spending. They do favor, by slightly smaller majorities, taxing the rich, as long as that doesn't include them. (See The Washington Post story.)

Standard & Poor Manipulates Stock Market:

The S&P announced a poor outlook for stock prices based on concern over the federal budget, thus causing the price of stocks to be depressed. This means more bang for the buck for speculators who can now purchase more stocks at lowered prices and thereby make greater profits when the price of stocks rebounds in the near future.

While speculators will win over the long run, conservative players in the market, including retirees will be gouged as usual or chased out of the market altogether.