David Horsey on the Economy: a pictures speaks a thousand words.
Let Sleeping Preschoolers Lie: Remember last month we learned that too little sleep may be causing behavior and/or learning problems at school? Funny, nobody thought to ask how many of these problems might be cured by making sure the kids consistently get a good night’s sleep. It turns out that younger kids may also not be getting enough sleep.
Psst, Buddy, Wanna Buy a House? When the housing market slows down, it may cost the economy 800,000 skilled jobs. That does not include support services, such as mobile food services or sales of work clothes. Please note that these predictions are in the event of a “slowdown,” not a “bubble bursting.”
There Go 30,000 More Manufacturing Jobs: Ford may cut 30,000 more jobs. Merry Christmas. That’s on top of GM’s 30,000 announced layoffs. But those people get 95% of the pay they would get if they were working. (I don’t understand how GM hopes to save a lot of money this way.) According to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, there were over 99,000 announced layoffs in November. and December is off to a big start. Keep these numbers in mind when the “job creation” numbers come out next.
Security Update: On this day when a man apparently trying to flee an airplane was shot dead by an Air Marshall, it might interest you to know that 30,000 people discovered they were erroneously put on a Federal terrorist watchlist. An unknown number of people may simply not know they are mistakenly on such a list. Of course, the watchlists are a waste of time and money anyway. In other security news, Gilmore Vs. Gonzales is finally going to Appeals Court. This case is about a lot of very important things, the most pressing of which are whether you need to show an ID card in order to travel, and whether the government can hold us to “secret laws.”