12/6/10
12/4/10
12/3/10
12/2/10
You Can Quote Me On That
We're tinkering with the steering wheel when the engine needs repair...
All of the printing of money with Quantitative Easing, Treasury Bond purchasing, tax schemes and budget cutting, extending unemployment benefits, mortgage work-out plans, social programs, ad nauseam, cannot resolve our overall economic problems unless two underlying factors are realistically addressed:
1. High unemployment due to mismatch of the skills of many job-seekers and what employers need now and will need in the future. This requires people becoming cutting-edge skilled, free-agents and/or self-employed. Eight million jobs aren't coming back because they aren't needed any more, we should be preparing for what is and will be needed. The economy can only be stimulated with significant earned income
2. The foreclosure and indebtedness problem of individuals, organizations and government. How the lenders reconcile what people owe and how much houses are worth and deal with uncollateralized debt and collect it, is still an open question that must be resolved, in order for any across-the-board financial restructuring to occur. If a large segment of the population has no earned income due to unemployment, how do they repay the debt?
All of the printing of money with Quantitative Easing, Treasury Bond purchasing, tax schemes and budget cutting, extending unemployment benefits, mortgage work-out plans, social programs, ad nauseam, cannot resolve our overall economic problems unless two underlying factors are realistically addressed:
1. High unemployment due to mismatch of the skills of many job-seekers and what employers need now and will need in the future. This requires people becoming cutting-edge skilled, free-agents and/or self-employed. Eight million jobs aren't coming back because they aren't needed any more, we should be preparing for what is and will be needed. The economy can only be stimulated with significant earned income
2. The foreclosure and indebtedness problem of individuals, organizations and government. How the lenders reconcile what people owe and how much houses are worth and deal with uncollateralized debt and collect it, is still an open question that must be resolved, in order for any across-the-board financial restructuring to occur. If a large segment of the population has no earned income due to unemployment, how do they repay the debt?
12/1/10
Only In America
Ten reasons to believe in Americans...
We're culturally and racially diverse but more alike than different.
1. America is a large continent spanning from one ocean to another, rich with natural resources. Although sometimes exploited and under-utilized, they're still available to us and we're capable of using them wisely.
2. We're innovators, especially in the areas of the arts, science and technology. We figure out new ways to do old things and create new things the rest of the world admires and uses.
3. We are easily mobile and can move around the country because we are an educated work force and technologically savvy. Opportunity is available to most people who seek it.
4. English is the dominant language and literacy is high allowing us to communicate among each other well. We have a sophisticated communications system.
5. Millions of Americans are still hard-working (or want to be), motivated and the entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well. We will rise above economic crisis no matter how hard or long it takes.
6. Legal immigration. Immigrants have always brought to this country a desire to succeed and do better for themselves, revitalizing everyone. They bring their dreams, enriching us all.
7. The Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution and our form of government. Although currently racked with failure by a Political Class of two seemingly entrenched parties, they still do not own the system.
8. The Second Amendment. Millions of Americans legally own guns and we can defend ourselves against our government if we are forced to. Most likely we won't have to because of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.
9. Freedom of speech and the press being overtaken by the internet, which is making self-publishing, creative endeavors and the spreading of ideas wide open to everyone.
10. Reinvention of self. There are dozens of ways to break from our personal past and begin a new life for ourselves if we have the will, utilize our resources and are willing to start over.
We're culturally and racially diverse but more alike than different.
1. America is a large continent spanning from one ocean to another, rich with natural resources. Although sometimes exploited and under-utilized, they're still available to us and we're capable of using them wisely.
2. We're innovators, especially in the areas of the arts, science and technology. We figure out new ways to do old things and create new things the rest of the world admires and uses.
3. We are easily mobile and can move around the country because we are an educated work force and technologically savvy. Opportunity is available to most people who seek it.
4. English is the dominant language and literacy is high allowing us to communicate among each other well. We have a sophisticated communications system.
5. Millions of Americans are still hard-working (or want to be), motivated and the entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well. We will rise above economic crisis no matter how hard or long it takes.
6. Legal immigration. Immigrants have always brought to this country a desire to succeed and do better for themselves, revitalizing everyone. They bring their dreams, enriching us all.
7. The Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution and our form of government. Although currently racked with failure by a Political Class of two seemingly entrenched parties, they still do not own the system.
8. The Second Amendment. Millions of Americans legally own guns and we can defend ourselves against our government if we are forced to. Most likely we won't have to because of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.
9. Freedom of speech and the press being overtaken by the internet, which is making self-publishing, creative endeavors and the spreading of ideas wide open to everyone.
10. Reinvention of self. There are dozens of ways to break from our personal past and begin a new life for ourselves if we have the will, utilize our resources and are willing to start over.
11/30/10
Thinking Out Loud
Shifting winds bring sea change...
At the turn of the last century, around this time, the powers of the world were pretty content with themselves and the balance of power they had set up. They were pleased with the old order of things, monarchy, aristocracy, merchant, peasant or translated into more modern terms of the day, dynasty, privileged class, merchant-industrialists, labor. This was particularly true in Europe, Great Britain, Russia and the Ottoman Empire which dominated the world for the most part, with the outstanding exception of the United States of America.
Great Britain, France and Italy, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia and the Turks had struck a balance of power that was tenuous based on an old order of the previous century that had been meant to preserve the past into the future. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert had contributed to this by their nine children and 42 grandchildren married across Europe to bind the empires by family ties.
What no one counted on was the technological change brought on by the railroad, telegraph and telephone, electricity, automobiles and industry. These were the tools of disruption that changed everything and in a sense ultimately World War I.
In August of 1914, waiting for the Guns of August (apologies to Barbara Tuchman), knowledgeable people waited on the beach after the assassination of the Grand Duke Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, to see what would happen. Their world was not just at the brink of a calamitous war all over Europe and it's empires, but on the edge of the world as they knew it.
It occurs to me that we are the frontier of such a time one hundred years later. The old order is no longer effective although scrambling to still piece it all together while perceptive and discerning people are waiting for the bubbles to burst. This time the main technological event is the science, technology and the internet from which most of our innovation now emanates. That's not to suggest we are heading towards a traditional world war but that we are at a boundary of time when the world is changed forever due to a change in the balance of international powers. It is precipitated by technological change born out by history and the world in an ever-repeating cycle of necessary change.
Although no guns may be fired, although that is quite possible with recent militaristic rumblings across the sphere, we are at a minimum on the front of an economic world war. The economic ties of the European Union are collapsing, China and Asia are struggling with the balance of capitalism and socialism, Mexico is crumbling in a full-scale drug war and the economic tensions of the Middle East are legion. The entire world is mired in debt and insolvency and it would be wise to reflect on history and recognize what any upset in balance of power usually brings globally.
At the turn of the last century, around this time, the powers of the world were pretty content with themselves and the balance of power they had set up. They were pleased with the old order of things, monarchy, aristocracy, merchant, peasant or translated into more modern terms of the day, dynasty, privileged class, merchant-industrialists, labor. This was particularly true in Europe, Great Britain, Russia and the Ottoman Empire which dominated the world for the most part, with the outstanding exception of the United States of America.
Great Britain, France and Italy, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia and the Turks had struck a balance of power that was tenuous based on an old order of the previous century that had been meant to preserve the past into the future. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert had contributed to this by their nine children and 42 grandchildren married across Europe to bind the empires by family ties.
What no one counted on was the technological change brought on by the railroad, telegraph and telephone, electricity, automobiles and industry. These were the tools of disruption that changed everything and in a sense ultimately World War I.
In August of 1914, waiting for the Guns of August (apologies to Barbara Tuchman), knowledgeable people waited on the beach after the assassination of the Grand Duke Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, to see what would happen. Their world was not just at the brink of a calamitous war all over Europe and it's empires, but on the edge of the world as they knew it.
It occurs to me that we are the frontier of such a time one hundred years later. The old order is no longer effective although scrambling to still piece it all together while perceptive and discerning people are waiting for the bubbles to burst. This time the main technological event is the science, technology and the internet from which most of our innovation now emanates. That's not to suggest we are heading towards a traditional world war but that we are at a boundary of time when the world is changed forever due to a change in the balance of international powers. It is precipitated by technological change born out by history and the world in an ever-repeating cycle of necessary change.
Although no guns may be fired, although that is quite possible with recent militaristic rumblings across the sphere, we are at a minimum on the front of an economic world war. The economic ties of the European Union are collapsing, China and Asia are struggling with the balance of capitalism and socialism, Mexico is crumbling in a full-scale drug war and the economic tensions of the Middle East are legion. The entire world is mired in debt and insolvency and it would be wise to reflect on history and recognize what any upset in balance of power usually brings globally.
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