Morning Audibles 8.6.10

"PORK BELLIES... I knew it!" (Winthorpe - Trading Places 1982)

I know, CV is just being moronic this morning (a phenomenon which is often unavoidable)... But, you know, you have to SEIZE THE DAY and there's nothing much to really SEIZE these days (based on my understanding of the word "seize")...



seize   [seez]
–verb (used with object)
1.
to take hold of suddenly or forcibly; grasp: to seize a weapon.
2.
to grasp mentally; understand clearly and completely: to seize an idea.
3.
to take possession of by force or at will: to seize enemy ships.
4.
to take possession or control of as if by suddenly laying hold: Panic seized the crowd.
5.
to take possession of by legal authority; confiscate: to seize smuggled goods.

Looking at the markets and the economy these days, one ban begin to understand why (although the latter two definitions ought to arrive at out doorstep at some point or another)...

So since there is not much to seize, let's get back to the subject of PORK BELLIES...

Romer To Leave White House

http://hotlineoncall.nationaljournal.com/archives/2010/08/romer_to_leave.php

So I guess "Chicks Can't Do Math" (Larry Summers) was really the man, behind the woman, behind the man, after all... When interviewed about the truth to such speculation, Summers leaned over and replied...

I fart in opposite your general direction

Why is it that the only two that are smiling in what "looks" to be a police interrogation room, are the first ones who are abandoning spaceship Obama?

Why would anyone one want to leave in the middle of this blistering RECOVERY? I mean, surely accolades & awards for such an enormous feat of accomplishment should be just around the corner... Right? I mean, there are Nobel Prize awards just a few months away... You should be standing in line to receive yours like this guy...

Stiglitz Says U.S. Faces `Anemic Recovery,' Needs More Stimulus

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-05/stiglitz-says-anemic-u-s-recovery-means-obama-should-seek-more-stimulus.html

“It’s absolutely clear that you need a second round of stimulus,” Stiglitz said. “It needs to be better designed. It needs to be focused more on returns on investment, education, infrastructure, technology. And if you do those kinds of high- powered investments, the long-term national debt will be actually lower and the growth in the future will be higher.”

“Unfortunately, with savings going up to 5, 6, 7 percent, aggregate demand is going to be weak,” he said. “The only thing to fill it is government.”

Let's see... CV was just commenting yesterday about the ROI (return on investment) on education...

CV said...

@anon

Worse than that is the HIDDEN INFLATION of tuition...

meaning: The ROI of what someone paid for tuition in, say, 1980 and eventual wages & salaries pocketed

VERSUS

What you pay today, and what one might expect the ROI on eventual wages & salaries, going forward, to be (and the amount they will be TAXED on those wages - the SOCIAL SECURITY deduction & the idea that they will probably never receive the social security payment when all is said & done)...

August 5, 2010 11:23 AM 

CV said...

I've JOKINGLY said before that if someone has a "college age" teenage daughter (and she's attractive)...

If your goal is a real dollar return... a better ROI might be to buy her a pole and some dancing lessons rather than pay 4 years of college tuition...

In the end - both probably bring about the same atmosphere...

In one scenario she leaves with a pile of loot

In the other she leaves with a mountain of debt (then to pay off that debt has to basically go pole dancing in the business world anyway to get ahead)...

Of course I'm just JOKING here...

We know colleges and businesses are upstanding and reputable places that produce worthy graduates of scholar...

August 5, 2010 11:29 AM 

Of course I should be booted from the blogosphere for making what would appear (on the surface) to be a sexist comment (just as anyone who criticizes Obama's economic policies is clearly a racist)...

But lo and behold, last night I find this article...

Stripper Finds Degree Profitable for Goldman Wasn't Worth It

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-05/stripper-s-college-degree-profitable-for-goldman-finds-70-000-was-wasted.html

Excerpt:

"Her bachelor’s degree in game art and design cost $70,000 in tuition and fees. After she graduated in December 2007, she found a job that paid $12 an hour recruiting employees for video game companies. She lost that job a year later when her department was shuttered."

"These days, Howard, 26, makes her living in a way that doesn’t require a college diploma: by stripping at the Lido Cabaret, a topless club in Cocoa Beach, Florida. “I didn’t know what else to do,” she says. “I’ve got a worthless degree. It’s like I didn’t attend school at all.”"

Maybe CV should be a guidance counselor?

So whatever... people... I now return you to your CAPITALISTIC endeavors (which include watching the government shred documents announce reports, and all the red and green candles that that produces)...

Meanwhile... Regardless if the NFP report looks bad/good or sugarcoated, you can go into the weekend and sleep soundly knowing that since Romer is returning to Berkeley, that's considered a "new position" in academia is ANOTHER JOB SAVED BY THE STIMULUS...



F411 "knew it" all along (just like our friend Winthorpe)...