Brother, can you spare a Yen?

“For the first time in 14 years, the American workforce has in effect gotten an across-the-board pay cut,” the Los Angeles Times reports, adding that not only are wages rising slower than inflation, but more healthcare costs have been shifted to employees.

Add to this that the tech industry is slashing jobs — you remember, those good paying high tech jobs that we were all told was the future of our economy? Another 60,000 of them went away in the first quarter of 2005 alone. And you can’t blame it all on outsourcing. Part of the problem is “good-enough computing,” a problem (a problem for hardware and software vendors, anyway) where companies simply say “what I have works fine, why do I need more?” Many companies over-bought and over-hired, either in the Y2K buildup or in the Dot-Com boom. They are still working through the hangover capacity. They see no compelling reason to upgrade, no compelling new products that will clearly pay for themselves. They aren’t fixing anything that ain’t broke.

How sad it is that coporate earnings growth is slowing! Why, the S&P 500’s earnings are only expected to rise 9.5% That’s still faster than double the growth of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and the Consumer Price Index (CPI, the official inflation rate) combined.

One very big factor contributing to the effective pay cut for the American worker and the “slow” profit growth of American companies and the high price of oil and the record price of gasoline and the record trade deficit is very simply the price of dollars. The United States has allowed the value of dollars to slide sharply over the last 3 years in what I believe to be a giant game of chicken designed to make American goods cheaper overseas, force China to de-link their currency from ours, and (hey as long as we are at it) make a whole lot of money for big oil and oil services companies like Halliburton.

There is the potential for things to get worse. Asian nations have been propping up the dollar, mostly by buying our bonds and financing our debts, because they cannot afford to let their goods get too expensive for Americans to buy. Americans buy a lot of Asian goods, and it would be bad for their economies if we stopped. Imagine if the price of a Honda or Toyota went up 25%. Look around the shelves of any discount store or fashion retailer and imagine if the asian products were 25% more expensive. If Asian products went up 10% in price, you would notice. What happens now — whether the American economy and prospects for the dollar get better or worse — depends on whether or not everybody continues to play the game.

In the end, either they stop the car, we get out of the middle of the road, or everybody gets hurt.

Nauseating News

It would have been easy to miss this news item today. The United States military has freed 2 Iraqi women, a 60 year old and her adult daughter. A Lt. Col. Clifford Kent denies that they were hostages intended to force family members to turn themselves in. Please pay no attention the note left in the family home reading “Be a man Muhammad Mukhlif and give yourself up and then we will release your sisters. Otherwise they will spend a long time in detention.” Also please pay no attention to the phone number on the note that, when a Reuter’s reporter dialed it, was answered by American soldiers. Kent added that Americans don’t take hostages or “blackmail” people into surrendering. Bull! American forces have been doing that kind of nonsense for 2 years, and it’s still an outrage. Amnesty International points out that such tactics are against international law.

So the next time there are new casualties in Iraq, the next time there is news of an insurgent attack, the next time you are told they “hate us for our freedoms” or the freedoms we are supposedly bringing the region, remember this. This story is not likely to be an isolated incident. Maybe it isn’t our freedoms they hate after all.

Don’t get me wrong, there is some good news coming out of Iraq — including getting a new President — but that is despite American actions, not because of them.

It’s About the Money

To listen to various Bush Administration representatives, everything is fine with the economy. Granted, Friday we found out that 110,000 jobs were created in March — less than half what the experts expected, and less than what is required to absorb new entries to the job market, more than the 86,396 announced layoffs — but that’s “good” because it means there is less inflationary pressure and therefore Agent Greenspan will be able to keep interest rates low, low, low. Of course the international currency markets think interest rates are going up. The parade of bad economic news continues, and Bloomberg is nice enough to summarize for us: personal spending rose faster than personal income; first time unemployment claims “unexpectedly rose to 350,000”; factory orders did not meet the levels forecast in February; gas prices keep rising; disposable income up, but not as much as it was down the previous month; oh, and that may only be because of tax refund checks. It might also have to do with the fact that consumer debt outstanding rose $7.5 thousand million, and $11.5 thousand million the previous month.

Here are figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics This page may be updated with new information in the future, so let me give you some of the meaty bits. There are officially 7.7 million unemployed people by the narrow, Department of Labor definition, 21.5% of whom have been unemployed at least half a year. This does not count the 1.6 million people who are “marginally attached to the labor force.” The number of employed people, 140.5 million, remained unchanged despite our growing population. Although the official average hourly wage was $15.95 — a figure which is distorted by small numbers of high wage individuals — the average weekly wages were $537.32. That’s a typical workweek of 33.7 hours.

So wages aren’t changing much, employment is barely keeping pace with layoffs let alone new workers. Expenses are rising. Oil has been over $50 per barrel for a while now, and even Greenspan is concerned about the effect that will have on the energy markets and the economy as a whole. Inflation isn’t a risk; it is here. Gas prices are at a new high at a time when Americans are spending at least 20 minutes getting to work. So much for saving money by living farther from work.

That house “a little farther out” may still be at the outer reaches of the family budget, making the gas prices a far bigger deal. Mortgage companies have been bending over backwards to make home-ownership happen for people who can barely afford it. Some of the tools they have been offering, in particular Adjustable Rate Mortgages (ARMs) and “interest-only” loans, are going to bite these people in the wallet in the next few years. Here’s two takes on the subject, from the L.A. Times and The Christian Science Monitor. For goodness sake, if you have an ARM call your mortgage company today about locking in a permanent rate!

Between the mortgages preparing to implode and the fact that personal debt is rising by billions of dollars a month, that bankruptcy reform bill will be a real disaster for the working class if it passes.

In closing, I’d like to say something to my Texan readers. Your junior Senator went on record as saying something so jaw-droppingly mind-bendingly stupid that you cannot and should not ignore it. You remember Tom DeLay saying the judges involved in upholding the Constitution (to say nothing of doing what most Americans thought they should) would “answer for their behavior”? And do you remember Senator Lautenberg politely reminding Mr. DeLay that threatening a judge is a federal offense? Now Senator Cornyn of Texas has said, in veiled language, that violence against judges is their own darn fault because they make bad decisions. That Federal Judge in Illinois who came home to find her family slaughtered? She was asking for it (by putting bad guys in jail)! If that’s true, then we are all doomed. Texans, this guy is a first termer. Replace him before he gets any kind of seniority. The nation depends on it.

And I thought Phil Gramm said stupid things.

Three Things That Matter To You

Maybe they call them “judges” because they use “judgment.”

Today’s LA Times has an item called “Judges Say Overhaul Would Weaken Bankruptcy System.” Here’s the no registration required version. In short, a lot of bankruptcy judges — the guys who actually deal with debtors and creditors all day long and try to Get Stuff Done — say the bankruptcy overhaul passed by the Senate and under consideration by the House is a Bad Idea that will do more harm than good. The article is long, but meaty. Here’s a bit from near the end, emphasis mine:

Practically, they warn, debtors who would no longer qualify for Chapter 7 and fail to complete Chapter 13 repayment plans would either have to keep paying creditors indefinitely or drop out.

“If you’re confronted with a mountain of debt and have no hope of getting out from under it, you’re either going to go underground or turn to crime,” said Kenneth N. Klee, a former Republican congressional staffer who was one of the chief authors of the last major bankruptcy law change in 1978 and now teaches law at UCLA.

Yes, a Republican who has been a bankruptcy expert for 30 years says this thing is bad and he tells you why. It is not too late to write your Representative and tell him/her what you think.

Of course my favorite devilish detail is that this bill will drive up the costs to file bankruptcy. Brilliant. So it will be entirely possible to be too broke to go bankrupt.

Security Theatre Act VII: Insecure Flight

The latest version of CAPPS, known officially as “Secure Flight” is set to be implemented in 4 months despite the fact that it only meets 10% of required goals. Some of the little things that aren’t quite worked out yet include “developing redress procedures for passengers to correct erroneous information if they’ve been unfairly or incorrectly singled out for scrutiny on a watch list; conducting tests to measure the accuracy and efficacy of data used to screen passengers; establishing oversight policies for who can access data and how they can use it; ensuring that data is secure from outside intrusions or manipulation; and establishing privacy safeguards to preserve passengers’ rights.” No biggie, right? And experts say this is no surprise.

Of course it was just last week we found that the TSA lied about its use of information on 12 million air passengers. You can find top notch commentary and a link to the actual GAO document on Secure Flight in this post by security expert Bruce Schneier.

Get Out of My Bedroom!

Today’s big personal health news is that most people sleep poorly. I personally suspect that a lot of people simply don’t allow enough time for a “good night’s sleep” in the first place. Furthermore, half of Americans are at risk for sleep disorders and many are ahem too tired for intimate relations.

Speaking of intimate relations, I have something to say to the pharmacists who refuse to fill valid prescriptions for birth control on “moral grounds”: find a job that doesn’t conflict with your morals! Your job is to fill prescriptions. If you think there is a medical reason not to fill a prescription, take it up with the doctor. If you have moral problems with doing your job, you must quit. Today. Otherwise, you are saying your morals only matter when they inconvenience others. A vegan waitress knows she will have to serve meat unless she works in a vegetarian restaurant; a recovering alcoholic realizes he should probably not go to bartender’s school; pacifists normally don’t enlist in the armed forces. What is your excuse?

Maybe it’s time we all took a nap.

Let me make sure I have this right.

I really don’t intend to bore the world with yet another essay about Terri Schiavo. All I will say about her case directly is this: contrary to what some people think, she is not “someone who just needs some help to eat.” She needs help to eat because she is beyond knowing what a spoon is, beyond knowing what food is, beyond knowing how to chew and swallow. A newborn baby can cry when it is hungry; this woman cannot. Every one of the 19 judges who has examined the medical evidence has come to the conclusion that she isn’t “in there” anymore. There’s a pretty good roundup of opinions both right and left over at The Moderate Voice (gee, whoda thought?) But it seems like the thing most people can agree on is that at this point, fifteen years and 19 judges later, Congress has no business getting involved. Judge #20 agrees, and now it is before Judges #21-23.

But the thing that absolutely horrifies me about this case is the circumstances behind the “unanimous” Senate vote that pushed the case into the Federal court system. “Unanimous,” in this case, meant 3 votes. There was no quorum (def. 2). There wasn’t even a minyan. When all was said and done, they didn’t even manage to get together half of of the House of Representatives. This brings me to a scary question:

If 3 guys can get together on the Senate floor and pass any darn thing they want, what exactly is there to stop them from getting 3 guys to do the same on the House floor and ram though any darn thing the President wants?

And that, esteemed reader, is why “activist judges” are so important.

Because All Our Problems Are Solved

You would never know there were any real problems in this nation to look at the Congress the last few days.

First, a House committee decided to investigate steroid use in pro baseball. If they are investigating this from the standpoint of employers abusing their employees, perhaps they should remember that the employees in question are a bunch of college educated millionaires. If Congress cares so much about workplace conditions, maybe they should look to the conditions that average American workers endure. If, rather, the argument is that teenage athletes are emulating the dangerous behavior of the pros, I would like to remind Congress that every teenage athlete has parents. It is Mom and/or Dad’s job to be clued in enough to say “These pills are dangerous and you will not be using them.” (Just like it’s Mom and/or Dad’s job to control what kids watch on the TV, not some “organization,” not the cable company, not the FCC. But that’s another story.)

As if this were not a big enough waste of Congress’s time and our tax dollars, they now want to subpoena a brain-dead woman to testify about…. uh, something. This is by Bill Frist’s own admission nothing more than a scheme to prevent her feeding tube from being removed, despite multiple court orders allowing it. In the time it has taken to write this post, yet another court has ordered the feeding tube removal take place.

Will they hold her in contempt of Congress for refusing to talk?

Never mind Social Security, the Federal Budget, the War in Iraq, the War on Terror, the misuse of Federal funds to produce propaganda designed to look like news, the fact that a gigolo was allowed within meters of the President of the United States on a regular basis with a daily press pass under a fake name, the fact that corrupt and unqualified judicial candidates may be rammed through the Senate, the fact that the CIA is allowed to outsource torture, ethics problems within the House, or any of the other things Congress could be addressing right now. Please, pay attention to the Congressional testimony of the millionaire drug users.

The Bank that Cried Wolfowitz

One thing that struck me about the attack on the World Trade Center was the number of financial firms whose offices were destroyed. Granted, the towers were walking distance from the NYSE (Maria Bartiromo ran the distance backwards in heels so as to not miss anything. Now that’s a serious reporter). When I heard that the International Monetary fund and the World Bank had offices there, I thought surely that was the real reason for the attacks: disrupt the global bankers; disruption to the American economy was bonus. If you think this is preposterous, then you don’t understand how many people think that the World Bank and the IMF do more harm than good.

Fast forward to today’s news that Bush’s pick for head of the World Bank is none other than Iraq campaign “architect” Paul Wolfowitz. Please be so kind as to ignore last week’s news that he wasn’t even in the running, that maybe they would support someone like incompetent ex-CEO Carly Fiorina. Maybe they had to find someone whose lack of qualifications was more subtle.

This is not a done deal, however. Apparently — although the President of the United States traditionally gets his way — there are 24 directors who have to arrive at some kind of consensus. And Reuters is willing to make a headline out of the truth that Wolfowitz is a “magnet for criticism.” That is an understatement.

Oh, and why is that? For good reason! Bottom line, he made Iraq into a bigger mess than it already was, and now we want to make him head of the World Bank. Given his record — here are four biographies — I wouldn’t hire him as the shift manager in a Dairy Queen. I certainly wouldn’t buy a used car from him.

As this comes on the heels of appointing a UN Ambassador who has publicly called for the disbandment of the UN, I am forced to wonder what President Bush is thinking: That America is so powerful as to force its will upon the world? That the European Union really ought to have more influence in the world? Or maybe that it just doesn’t matter, since the Apocalypse is coming any day now.

Or, is this a smoke bomb designed to make us look away from all the truly insidious things happening in our nation’s capital these days?

Hit List

This morning, the Senate passed the steaming pile of excrement known as bankruptcy reform legislation. The votes of individual Senators can be found right here. I am willing to cut Ms. Clinton of New York a bit of slack for not voting only because her husband is in the hospital. Notice that not a single Republican voted against this gift to the credit card industry at the expense of taxpayers. Then notice the number of “Yea” votes that came from people with a “D” after their name. These people will henceforth be known as Democrats In Name Only, or DINOs. And just like DINOsaurs, they need to be on the lookout for mass extinction.

Make no mistake, this thing is bad, bad, bad. It means that if a judge thinks a person filing bankruptcy can come up with $100 per month, he will be paying most of the mountain of debt that he is buried under. It makes no difference whether he racked up those debts because he was called up to National Guard active duty in Iraq and therefore wasn’t working his regular job despite the fact that his family had their regular bills. It makes no difference whether he had a catastrophic illness that limited his ability to work and drained his bank account. It makes no difference that he is one of the many people who have been unemployed for over six months. It makes no difference that thanks to the magic of compound interest, he has paid several times what he charged on his credit cards and still owes as much as he charged. It makes no difference that she is a single mom working 2 jobs, worrying about reliable childcare, and unable to afford a lawyer to go after the deadbeat ex-husband who hates her more than he loves his own kids. It makes no difference that he lost a lot of money trying to start a business that would have given jobs to people in his community if only it had succeeded.

Oh, none of this applies if you are wealthy enough to set up an asset protection trust.

Yes, there are a lot of bankruptcies in this country. A Senate that really wanted to lower that number would be thinking about regulating credit card interest and creating more quality, good paying jobs (the kind that include health insurance for the whole family).

Shame, shame on every one of the 74 Senators who voted for this stain on the American Dream.

But back to the DINOs, the most shameful of the bunch. I have a message for them: Don’t think that the “New Democrats” over at the DLC will save you. And don’t sit back and smugly remark that it will take more than a couple of bloggers to bring you down. The guy you need to worry about is the head of the Democratic Party. I finished reading Howard Dean’s book earlier this week, along about the time you voted to stop debate on amendments. It’s a little fluffy — if you are pressed for time, flip to chapter 6 — but it had some really good points, the best of which is that everybody in the Democratic Party needs to remember the people. Here’s a little quote from page 170:

For one thing, there is no reason not to pose primary challenges to Democratic incumbents who vote with the Republicans on critical Democratic priorities.

Biden and company, you’ve got almost a year to straighten up and try to get the target off your back. Not even Lieberman voted for this dog. We The People don’t care how much money the credit card companies gave you, the fact is they can’t vote.

“I’m from the Government; I’m here to help”

Maybe I am feeling cynical today, but I just have to wonder what SEC Chairman William Donaldson is up to. What’s his angle?

He is calling for a “markets overhaul,” including investigation of mutual fund fees and credit rating agencies. Now, he is not talking about the folks like Experian who keep track of whether you are a good credit risk, but rather companies like Moody’s and Standard & Poor (the folks who come up with the S&P 500) who come up with corporate credit ratings. These ratings control the rates at which companies can issue corporate bonds.

In an administration that wants to get rid of “unnecessary regulation” he wants to issue a whole bunch of new regulations.

But, Mr. Donaldson warns, there’s only so much he can do unless Congress gets involved. Ah, now it becomes clear. He would like to crack down on market timing schemes and excessive fees and ways to make sure the traders get the best available prices, and for some reason corporate bond ratings, but he just doesn’t have enough raw power.

Strangely enough, Eliot Spitzer seems to have plenty of authority to deal with most of this stuff. Except the corporate credit rating guys, and frankly I seem to be missing the part where it’s a problem.

Follow up items: Government Official Admits there is No Social Security Crisis: seriously think about the pending bankruptcy reform bill before deciding it is a Bad Thing.

Steamroller

Our elected officials sometimes forget one important fact: people vote. Unions and special interest groups and churches do not vote, but their members do. Manufacturers and banks and stores do not vote, but their employees and customers do. Today I would like to focus on just a few instances where our “elected” lawmakers are actively working against the best interests of the citizens who put them where they are.

Since certain provisions of the controversial PATRIOT Act are set to expire, the push to make Congress renew and expand the whole darn thing is on. Yes, the man who brought us the torture memos, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, feels that despite the fact that the law “makes it easier for law-enforcement authorities to eavesdrop and to seize business and personal records,” it just doesn’t go far enough. I particularly like this article for saying “Gonzales said he was not aware of a single civil rights violation connected to the Patriot Act,” and then going on to discuss Jose Padilla — who might be a very bad man with an impossible plan to blow up multiple apartment complexes — saying “Gonzales conceded that the government might have a tough time making a criminal case against Padilla because of the way evidence against him was gathered.”

So we didn’t violate his civil rights, just his Constitutional ones.

Then we have the pending bankruptcy “reform” legislation being considered by the Senate as I write this. This bill is just plain bad. Even conservative sources like Newsday call this stinker a “gift to the rich, burden to the poor.” What, you don’t think Kenny Lay or Bernie Ebbers will have to give up their multi-million dollar houses if they file for bankruptcy to get out of paying damages from shareholder lawsuits, do you? US News and World Report does a nice job of just presenting the facts, harsh as they may be. Here’s The Phladelphia Enquirer and part of an ongoing series by the LA Times. Here’s an item from Elizabeth Warren, probably the one person who knows more about bankruptcy in this country that anybody else. Two flawed attempts to add a hike in the minimum wage to this stinker have been defeated. But in the end, guess what might really bring down this steaming pile of a bill: a provision about whether or not “violent anti-abortion protesters” would have to pay fines and penalties incurred while breaking the law.

I haven’t even discussed Social Security (Republicans who support private/personal accounts won’t even answer direct questions about how that “fixes” the expected shortfall), or any of the other tenets of the “Ownership Society.”

Seems more like a pwnership society to me.

On the state level, you have multiple states in a race to the bottom making special tax deals to attract one large employer, Intel. The Pheonix Business Journal puts it very honestly: ” Semiconductor kingpin Intel Corp. is sending a not-so-subtle ultimatum to state lawmakers: Give the company a tax break or risk losing out on the chance for a $4 billion production expansion.” At the same time, Intel is trying to strongarm Oregon into a huge tax break.

I am generally against tax gifts for big entities. First of all, they say loudly and clearly that if you are big enough, you are above the law. How then can we act surprised when they violate other laws? Second, they discount the costs involved in keeping that big employer around: road maintenance, infrastructure improvements, and (in the case of certain employers) state services to employees. Yes, they will give jobs to taxpayers, but at what net cost? Third, it is unfair to smaller employers who also provide jobs to taxpayers, but must compete while paying higher expenses. And finally, there is really no guaranty that the big employer will stay around one second longer than is legally required. Unfortunately, nobody has the guts to say “No, you will play by the rules like everybody else.”

In closing, I bring you two things: the National Security Archives, and having an affair with an employee is always “bad judgment.”