DontLickJesus writes "According to the AP, technology has been the least hardest hit by the U.S.'s recent economic downturn. Quote: '"Overall technology employment is up in America and the wages associated with it are up," said John McCarthy, a vice president with Forrester Research.' The article goes on to say that companies realize the worth of their [IT] staff. This paired along with a recent article regarding the value of data centers when selling a company leads one to believe that the business world, while historically not fond of IT workers, is showing its true opinion of the sector."
Perhaps because during 2001-2003 they sliced back so much IT staff that they still have not finished catching up? Also many IT people went into other fields or back to school during that time, reducing the supply, meaning there is less chance of oversupply this time around.
Perhaps because during 2001-2003 they sliced back so much IT staff that they still have not finished catching up? Also many IT people went into other fields or back to school during that time, reducing the supply, meaning there is less chance of oversupply this time around.
Most likely because in a downturn*, 'IT' is the cheapeast way to increase productivity, especially if you have to fire people.
*Because there is increased pressure to create/find efficiencies, not because IT is somehow cheaper during a downturn than during an upturn.
Most likely because in a downturn*, 'IT' is the cheapeast way to increase productivity, especially if you have to fire people.
*Because there is increased pressure to create/find efficiencies, not because IT is somehow cheaper during a downturn than during an upturn.
I think it's a bit of both. Obviously people are looking for efficiencies when times get tight. Investing in technical solutions is one way to do that.
But I also think the dot-com bust helped as well. There are far fewer people in tech jobs than there used to be. Those that survived the bust are most likely more qualified as well (at least compared to those who were only in it to make a buck in the late 90's).
So, it comes down to supply and demand. At least, I've noticed this where I live. Business is very good right now, and doesn't seem to be slowing up.
Most likely because in a downturn*, 'IT' is the cheapeast way to increase productivity, especially if you have to fire people.
During the dot-com downturn, most businesses just let the existing software run as-is, without adding features. Thus, they only had to pay for skeleton-crew maintenance, not new features. Whether this is the best strategy or not profit-wise, I couldn't say. But it's what companies actually did regardless of merit.
Note that new features generally takes some up-front investment, and if you are in financial hot-water, you don't spend for such projects because the company may not survive long enough to see the up-front investment pay off.
Smarter companies would sock some cash away so that they could get new technology while techies are cheaper. Instead they usually wait until the middle of a boom and then whine to congress that they need H1B's.
It's not that other people are getting 'free money' that's on his nerves. It's where this 'free money' is coming from - guess what, it's coming out of his ass in the form of an extra $5,000 worth of income taxes next April 15th. Mine too. Yours too.
If the government gives me $100 in 'free money' - as you say that really doesn't concern you personally. Unless they dip right into your checking account and take it right out of your pocket to give it to me. Then it's something for you to get pissed about.
It's not a loan. I haven't seen the details, but the idea I get is that it'll be a blank check from Congress to the Secretary of the Treasury to buy up to $700,000,000,000 of securities that no one trusts. This means that the US government would own those assets, and might make or lose money on them. (Ironic how the "free-market" republicans are advocating socialism in this case) The government backing is supposed to alleviate the fears of the investors/speculators and stabilize the markets, allowing comp
The government will literally be buying up debt. They'll take ownership of various mortgage related securities. Ok, well this means that what they get depends on what happens with a mortgage. If the person defaults and doesn't pay anything, well then the government is going to lose money, especially if the property isn't able to be sold for much. If they pay off the mortgage, the government will make money.
You have to remember that it isn't as though all these mortgages are going to default, or that the property underlying them will suddenly become totally worthless.
So I certainly wouldn't expect the US government to come out with a net gain on this (though it'd be amusing if they did), but the net loss is going to be far less than the upfront cost.
This is just the start of it. It's way too early to crow.
Our end of the boat may not be taking on water yet but the ship is sinking, the brass band is playing and politicians are fighting over the deck chairs.
The politicians aren't fighting over the deck chairs, they're lined up calmly at the lifeboats and telling us to all go back down to steerage, because there's nothing to worry about.
Companies are delaying/canceling IT projects all over the place. My company had a client last week, whine about needing a server upgrade, but cant do it because we actually charge for that shit. Says, if we would be willing to do the work for free, we can make it up on follow-on work next time around. We don't work for free, so his org will pound sand, or find some starving IT workers on Craiglist to do the work for Top Ramen. Fuck em. (yeah you, asshole, I KNOW you read Slashdot. Don't call me when your cheap-ass SATA-driven MOSS server goes tits up, baby.)
Nobody is willing to spend any money, which will only cost them down the road. IT requires investment in systems, people and maintenance. Skip on one, pay double for the others later.
IT is not just employees. Consultants are taking it in the shorts too.
This paired along with a recent article regarding the value of data centers when selling a company leads one to believe that the business world, while historically not fond of IT workers, is showing its true opinion of the sector.
The reason IT is being the least hit is because it has been the primary target for so long. IT has been viewed as fat, as so trimmed, for so long that there is precious little left.
The "true opinion" is that all the expendable IT jobs are now outside the company.
After outsourcing and offshoring as many jobs as possible, there are few expendable positions left in companies. Many of the positions that are being cut are jobs waiting for backfill and contract jobs.
We must not allow the Treasure Secretary to receive $700 billion to spend with no oversight whatsoever. The current plan creates a gigantic moral hazard, is inflationary, rewards reckless risk-taking by CEOs, and still results in common people being foreclosed upon. We need to re-institute the Glass-Steagall act, allow highly leveraged firms to fail, insulate common people from the effects of these failing institutions, and regulate the market to prevent this catastrophe from happening again.
and still results in common people being foreclosed upon.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but no one put a gun to anyone's head and made them sign a mortgage they couldn't afford. I'm sick of paying for the mistakes of the stupid / greedy, whether they're Wall Street execs or "common people" who can't / won't pay their mortgage. The "common people" you refer to are just as guilty as the Wall Streeters, and that it's even being considered to *reset* their mortgage principals is blatantly shocking. Where's the handout for those of us who follow the rules and live within our means?
We can agree that these mortgages shouldn't have been created in the first place. But history has shown that threat of foreclosure just isn't a good enough deterrent for lots of people. That's a shame, but it's true. If we want to avoid another bubble, we need to ensure that banks don't lend at these irresistible terms anymore. That requires regulation. If you have a better idea, go ahead and argue for it.
If you want to assign blame, sure, some part of it rests with homeowners. You should know that a zero-down adjustable rate mortgage with a five-year teaser is a seriously bad idea. But being suckered into one of these is understandable, especially given the seriously deceptive advertising during the height of the housing bubble targeted at our most ignorant and vulnerable citizens.
On the other hand, we have the brokers who received massive commissions on mortgages they knew their clients couldn't afford. We have the banks who collected mortgages they knew couldn't be repaid into big packages, and we have credit raters who rated these steaming piles of bad mortgages as AAA-investment-grade-super-plus-plus-good like some kind of retarded eBay user.
While homeowners may be guilty of ignorance and shortsightedness, the financial industry in its unfathomable greed knew perfectly well what would happen and manipulated the market anyway; that's a far greater crime. Equitably, in a bailout, the financial industry should bear the greatest burden and the common homeowner the least. Both are unfair to those of us who lived within our means, but bailing out homeowners is less unfair, and better for our society as a whole.
Ahhh, but the government *mandated* that the banks had to make mortgages available to low-income people after the Jesse Jacksons and Al Sharptons of the country screamed racism years ago, and forced the financial institutions to change the rules to make credit available for these folks. Now, they're screaming racism again when the "homeowners" (they're not really homeowners as they never had any equity in the real estate in the first place) inevitably defaulted. Here in Baltimore, the city is suing Wells Fargo for $5 million for "unfairly" targeting blacks to take these loans. No one wants to talk about why these people were even eligible in the first place, but a lot of the original blame rests on "advocates" like Jackson lobbying for credit for people would couldn't pay. And of course, fucking greedy Wall Street and the stupid and / or greedy borrowers (yes -- the borrowers, like the single mom with four kids running her home daycare center out of "her" $545k house on the front page of the Baltimore Sun [baltimoresun.com] -- fuck her and take her house). What should really happen is that the banks be allowed to fail and the execs be thrown in jail, and people learn some responsibility by going back to living in an apartment for awhile. The reason this shit keeps happening is because the government keeps stepping in and removing the consequences of peoples' decisions, and then sticks us responsible folks with the bill. FUCK THAT. No more.
Seriously, if you sign a mortgage and don't understand what you're signing, you're a fucking idiot, and I have absolutely no sympathy for you. We have a 30 year fixed mortgage and still hired a lawyer to look everything over before doing the deal.
Just because technology companies are not hit as hard by this economic downturn, that does not mean technology workers (programmers, engineers, network admins, system admins) are equivalently immune. One problem here is the Labor department is classifying things badly. When the payroll of a technology company goes up, they interpret it as benefiting technology workers. It could be they are just hiring more sales people (I've seen it done). And a huge amount of IT is done in non-technology companies, including financial companies. And even if these companies consider their data centers to be of value, the IT workers own none of it, and few of them would be considered vital employees.
The reason we're "cushioned" from the financial nonsense is because there isn't much room to go lower. Wages are crap, yet the nation is inextricably dependent on IT services. They can't pay us any less, and they can't fire us - they've already outsourced all the jobs they could.
The title may as well be "Wage slaves cushioned from US economy downturn". The only reason an IT guy gets a raise is because his supervisor's been getting too many phone calls checking references.
Actually, wages are not crap. We're just frigging greedy. WE're in a field that expects to pay us the same coming out of "Chumb MCSE school" the same rate that a frigging doctor makes coming out of medical school. I guarantee you that, on average, IT workers make more money on average than just about every other position, every field, in every other country on the planet earth. If you want more money, you need to own a business, rather than be an indentured servant for someone elses.
Whenever I listen to international news, they refer to the U.S. economy as in recession. The U.S. media, however, always call it an "economic downturn" or "slow economy" or some other silly thing that basically means recession.
Spare a thought for us who don't work in IT though, we're still feeling the pinch. My company is laying off an entire 10% of the employee base over the next few months.
Because our economy appears to be driven by bubbles after the 1970's, different recessions seem to sock different professions. Programmers got hit in the 2001-2003 poppage. This time finance people are getting smacked by bubblenomics.
Well, help desk technicians are worth about $12/hour, honestly.
"Help Desk" is the low-end of the IT totem pole. It's a job that requires few qualifications beyond "Knows how to install software and update drivers".
I think the bigger fear that people with IT careers (myself included) is the inevitable deployment of high-speed fiber networks. For MANY businesses, having nothing but "terminals" that run apps on remote servers (which would probably be running under VMs) would be a huge cost savings, and probably more reliable, too.
It costs a lot of money to have a really reliable network, and the staff to maintain it. Why not pay some other company to do all that, and enjoy the economies of scale that they can offer?
For MANY businesses, having nothing but "terminals" that run apps on remote servers (which would probably be running under VMs) would be a huge cost savings, and probably more reliable, too.
But most special apps are not designed to work this way. We find that Cytrix is still buggy technology. Graphics-intensive apps are also poor ran remotely. It's a great dream, but we are not there yet.
Software licenses aren't ready for thin clients either in a lot of software. In a computing environment where most of the software is expensive non-office type applications, thin clients will never be deployed widely or effectively.
As more large financial firms and non-technology companies fail for financial reasons, the small and medium companies will dominate what type of computer systems are required. Most of these companies cannot afford the infrastructure requirements of thin clients.
Helpdesk has nothing to do with it, on the base. You forgot that cost of living varies drastically across the entire country.
$12/hr might be survivable in Virginia or Texas, but in Chicago people have a hard time surviving on $18-20/hr.
When the cheapest food to survive a day runs around 1-2$ (thus about 4-6$ a day foodwise) and gas runs almost 4$, trust me that 12$/hr helpdesk job will not keep people afloat, even if it was $12/hr cash.
Don't forget that employers employ people to make a profit, not a loss; thus $12/hr is probably turning about$20-50/hr profit.
Helpdesk itself varies from company to company. I know on mine some ofo the employees are borderline retarded and helpdesk has to show them anything more complex than what a mouse is.
Why pay another company? Well, ever heard of Unisys? Lets just say you pay for what you get. Those suckers can barely speak english, and about 1 in 20 of them are competent. Their managers are good IT helpdesk. The rest don't understand you, don't listen, don't know how to do their job, and good luck understanding them.
Guess how many companies offshore to unisys? Tons.
It costs a lot of money to have a really reliable network, and the staff to maintain it. Why not pay some other company to do all that, and enjoy the economies of scale that they can offer?
Because inevitably when you take something that your business relies on and outsource to the lowest bidder, it gets done badly and your business suffers (sometimes irreparably). Take it from someone who works on a system that was outsourced, then insourced again long before outsourcing became trendy.
Well, help desk technicians are worth about $12/hour, honestly.
"Help Desk" is the low-end of the IT totem pole. It's a job that requires few qualifications beyond "Knows how to install software and update drivers".
I disagree, even working first line tech support requires a lot more knowledge than that, and in most places (outside of the typical IT "hot spots" like San Francisco) there is enough competition for IT jobs that a lot of first line techs for ISPs will have a lot more knowledge than what is required to do their jobs but will still come off as dimwitted when talking to users since management doesn't give a crap about supplying them with information,
I've experienced an ISP changing the type of CPE they use and not providing tech support with any information about this until customers started calling in about it and the tech support team complained and asked for information about the new CPEs. And even then the only information given for several months was "Yeah, it's a xxx brand converter, model yyy", detailed technical information (and pictures and sample units) wasn't given until almost six months after the introduction, and by then we'd pretty much figured out everything by the answers given by higher-level techs in tickets and just keeping track of what information we could get from the customers.
This btw, was not an isolated incident, many companies simply don't supply their tech support departments (or outsourced tech support) with enough information to do their jobs properly, and then when something goes wrong they blame it on incompetence from tech support. I don't know how many scheduled outages (maintenance) I've seen reported to the NOC only to have someone from upper management send a department-wide email essentially telling all the techs that they're idiots for not knowing about the planned outage even though no information about the outage was given, or when upper management refuses to put information about any outages on the ISPs website because that would be admitting that there's a problem...
A lot of what one does when working tech support or helpdesk is to constantly try to figure out how things work since no one bothers to tell you anything (and why would they, everyone knows that tech support is just a bunch of high school dropouts, err, what? most of you guys are college educated? That can't be... LIES! I will not let reality interfere with my preconceived notions! Shut up or you're all fired! Also, keep smiling, here at MajorISP Inc we all like our jobs! It's company policy damnit!).
Yes, I'm bitter, I've had way too much contact with endusers and unreasonable management over the last couple of years, and not just in one company either, it seems to be an industry-wide trend.
IT professionals have been hit very hard and nowhere is this more evident than in Phoenix, where I live.
That's a great anecdote. Now how about you show us some information which proves your one data point reflects the entire US economy. You know, something tangible to refute the Labor Dept and TFA's quote from the VP & Principal Analyst of Forrester Research.
To be fair that is only one area out of a huge country and it might not even be true of that whole area as I assume you don't go door to door and poll ever IT worker.
Secondly, working the help desk is fairly easily stuff. Anyone can do it. In fact, the latest trend in IT is to train monkeys to do help desk work. It's even cheaper than out sourcing, keeps wages in the country and there is little difference between the monkey's performance and any other help desk technician.
This is the problem with "IT." It encompasses too many positions. IMHO, a help desk tech really isn't IT anymore. That's a common job many teenagers nowadays can do with a little training out of school.
Now, if you want to talk about 'professionals' like skilled developers or engineers I think for the most part they are doing fine (or at least better than average since the economy is pretty crappy atm). For example, my company has a hiring freeze on right now, except for my team. We're trying to find more mid-level software developers. I'm about ready to give up since it seems like no one can actually do anything they say on their resume./sigh
What's a bit different than anything I've gone through is that I had to go through every position on my department and explain what they do and why we need that person.
Well this is just good business and something you should be doing every so often anyways. I find that companies hiring in excess during boom times which makes the cut backs that much harder when times get lean again.
I think they are not looking for much, except for:
10 years of Guru level Java expert experience with AJAX, Java Beans, Hibernate, Spring, SCJP
With Minimum 10 years of Oracle 10g (yes) experience with DBA skills to match the development skills working on Oracle RAC, Data warehousing and ETL
with great Linux/Unix skills with 15 years of socket programming, general admin knowledge, backup expertise with strong emphasis on korn, bash and C shell scripting
at least 8 years of Perl, Python and 5 (yes) years of Ruby on Rails
Yes, this is a made up requirement, but not too far from what I have seen in last 4 months on job boards when I was looking for a decent mid level development job.
We have the smart people. We just need to find a way to encourage them to go to school, if they haven't already. But when people look at their older more experienced peers losing jobs, and salary levels staying flat or going down, they look for other career paths when they are at that age where the choices are easy. If over the next N years, all those older peers were hired back and a true shortage of people came to exist (as opposed to the fake ones being promoted by certain big companies to sway Congress to allow them to hire cheaper workers from overseas), then younger people would be seeing technology as a rewarding career path. It's all about confidence in the future, and businesses are not putting that in IT right now.
McCain tried to warn us all about four of five years ago that the two FM's were headed for disaster but many Democrats and Republicans headed him off at the pass.
That is an absolute lie.
John McCain has been nothing but a cheerleader for the Reaganomics that has caused this debacle. He's been for privatization, deregulation and tax cuts. In fact, there's a video going around on YouTube the last few days where John McCain is giving very energetic (as much as he can be energetic) support for the privatization of Social Security.
Even someone as far conservative as George Will today has said that John McCain has just been an utter failure on economic issues and has done nothing but sputter and froth when we really need someone who's going to be a little more thoughtful. If you don't believe me, go watch the video of today's This Week on ABC. Listen closely to what George Will says.
Sarah Palin has become little more than a circus sideshow. She's actually become the candidate (out of the main four) with the LEAST approval. She slid 10 points in public approval in just three days last week. There is evidence that having her on the ticket is losing votes for McCain in more than one swing state. His Hail Mary Pass has fallen incomplete. Now that the convention "bump" after the RNC Crystal Night has passed, all the polls are trending Obama, including the most important electoral college numbers.
My only fear is that the only Hail Mary pass that the GOP has left requires a body count.
By the way, did you know that on Sept 18, just a few days ago, George Bush extended the national state of emergency that he put in place on Sept 23, 2001 for another year? Go to whitehouse.gov and look at the daily press releases and executive orders for Sept 18. There it is, big as life. Who even knew that we have been under a state of emergency since 9/11?
John McCain has been nothing but a cheerleader for the Reaganomics that has caused this debacle. He's been for privatization, deregulation and tax cuts. In fact, there's a video going around on YouTube the last few days where John McCain is giving very energetic (as much as he can be energetic) support for the privatization of Social Security.
Yeah, a bunch of banks have failed and some people are losing their homes that they couldn't afford, but:
a) The commodities sectors are doing well. If you work in farming, oil, coal, iron, copper or gold, then, those sectors are all doing very well. Even the moribund alternate fuels sector is shaping up in spots. Biodiesel maker Nova Biosource Fuels is actually running its Seneca refinery profitably and if it gets some financing, this penny stock is going to absolutely kick ass. b) Now we find out that IT workers are doing well. In fact, it looks that like that Lehman's data center is going to be purchased by Barclay's more or less intact. Not only that, but Intel and Microsoft, both industry leaders, are not only making record revenues, but Intel is actually paying dividends. c) If we turn to the housing situation, we find, shockingly, that more people in the USA actually own their own homes than ever before. In short, despite the banking losses and the bankruptcies, at the end of the day, a bipartisan policy designed to encourage lending to put as many people into homes as possible actually WORKED.
The tell tale sign of a real recession or economic downturn is high unemployment and falling commodities prices. Neither has taken place. Instead, what we have is moderate unemployment and high commodities prices and this suggests that demand is high, rather than low.
Now, I don't doubt that some people are hurting in this economy but those people tend to be concentrated in blue states that have been stupidly run for way too long. Michigan's government has basically made it all but impossible to do business in that state and Ohio is as nearly as incompetent and corrupt, particularly in the manufacturing centers and Democratic bastions of Cleveland, Toledo, Akron and Youngstown. Red states, on the other hand, big producers of food and fuel, are doing rather well.
Bottom line is, this economy isn't falling apart, and never has been. Instead, wealth is shifting from those who make raw materials and products from those who make up financial services around them. WE have lived a lie that said that a bunch of paper is more important than the coal that it represents and it simply isn't true. Bush's economic policies have worked, free trade has worked, and if the market has decided that a program that does something with a car is not as valuable as the steel that makes it well, you are just on the wrong side of reality.
The irony is that Obama's policies are actually going to shift this economic advantage to red states any more. Bush's economic policies, at the essence, have allowed the market to refocus on the basics of materials and manufacturing as the value drivers of the economy. When Obama goes and enacts all sorts of environmental legislation, he's only going create even more scarcity. Suddenly, that old copper mine in Arizona or dying oil well the gulf are going to be even more valuable than it is today, when you can't get permits any more for a new one, and yes, those states that push back more against the Obama administration are those states that are going to have the biggest advantage, economically. They will make more, while the blue states make less, and as a consequence, they will wind up with more money. The future is passing from Chicago where the corn is traded, to the belts where the corn is made, from New York where the cars are traded, to the south where the cars are made.
It took a few minutes to find but I found what the previous poster is rabid about and pasted it here. It is a bit disconcerting that while most Americans consider the U.S.A. to be a stable country, unlike the ones that are constantly declaring states of emergency in order to keep their autocratic, dictatorial, fucktards in power, now we discover that we (yes, U.S. citizen here) are doing the same thing.
Not to keep George "Fucktard" Bush in power longer, of course, since the Constitution does not allow that, but just to give him more power while he's there. I'm not necessarily in favor of it, unless it is necessary in helping certain parties to understand (such as with a bullet to the brain) that it is not considered socially acceptable to blow up Mariotts in Pakistan.
Anyway, here it is.
For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
September 18, 2008
Notice: Continuation Of The National Emergency With Respect To Persons Who Commit, Threaten To Commit, Or Support Terrorism
RSS Feed White House News
On September 23, 2001, by Executive Order 13224, I declared a national emergency with respect to persons who commit, threaten to commit, or support terrorism, pursuant to the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. 1701-1706). I took this action to deal with the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States constituted by the grave acts of terrorism and threats of terrorism committed by foreign terrorists, including the terrorist attacks in New York, in Pennsylvania, and against the Pentagon committed on September 11, 2001, and the continuing and immediate threat of further attacks against United States nationals or the United States. Because the actions of these persons who commit, threaten to commit, or support terrorism continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the United States, the national emergency declared on September 23, 2001, and the measures adopted on that date to deal with that emergency, must continue in effect beyond September 23, 2008. Therefore, in accordance with section 202(d) of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1622(d)), I am continuing for 1 year the national emergency with respect to persons who commit, threaten to commit, or support terrorism.
This notice shall be published in the Federal Register and transmitted to the Congress.
The only problem is that the financial crisis we see today is the result of the exact opposite of hands-off Reganomics.
One can make a cogent argument that too much government regulation is bad, and you might even be able to make a fair argument that the current crisis was not caused by too little regulation, but there is no reasonable argument that can conclude that the current crisis has been caused by too much regulation.
CRA is being trotted out in a last ditch attempt by Republicans to salvage this fucking disaster of 8 years and blame this on Democrats.
Excuse me, but who has been in control of the house and senate for the past four years?
Beyond that bit of obvious fact that has eluded you, note that I blamed both feckless Democrats AND Republicans who could have both acted long ago (or more like, never acted to start with). There were some Democrats with similar concerns as well, but since they were in power they bear mo
This crap has been a long time coming. It is a direct result from basically two sources. 1. Easy credit for everyone! Our imaginary money economy was bound to implode at some point due to the unbelievable irresponsibility in both consumers and the companies that were trying to get rich quick by extending risky credit to everyone that would sign on the line. The housing market is imploding because a $500,000 mortgage (multiplied out) has a much larger impact than the same people multiplying out 10-30k i
(Quick history check...go look up that form of government that involves the government owning all the businesses...they are definitely earning their colors as the Red Party
So Close
Time for a cow analogy
Communism
You have two cows,
the government takes both and gives you some milk.
Fascism
You have two cows,
the government takes both and sells you some milk.
A few phrases that should never be uttered again in American public life:
"Free Markets"
"Deregulation"
"Privatization"
And the name "Milton Friedman" should be never be spoken in business schools again, except to show just how wrong someone can be. Turns out "Free Markets" were nothing more than a mechanism for squeezing wealth out of the lower 95% of the population and pouring it into the pockets of the top 5%.
It's amazing how suddenly socialism looks good when rich guys are looking at losing a lot of money.
I truly hope that whatever bailout package gets approved includes some very punitive measures for the Wall Street CEOs and CFOs who got into this mess. Anybody who stands to gain from this bailout should be forced to go to the same credit counseling classes that regular people who file bankruptcy must attend. Also, several hundred hours of community service would also be appropriate.
Do you know that the executives from Lehman Brothers and AIG are still going to take home multi-million dollar bonus packages this year?
Yes, I'm talking about Class Warfare. As Warren Buffet famously said: "There's Class Warfare, and my side is winning." In fact, it was the rich and the GOP who declared class war on the rest of us back when Ronald Reagan took office. Well, now it's time to show them what it feels like to be in a war.
The problems we're experiencing today are NOT because of "free markets" at all.
The problems are because of govt. interference and manipulation of the markets for their own motives!
The USA has spent decades in a scenario people keep labeling a "free market", yet in reality, we REALLY have a situation that's just a bastardized version of the concept. A truly free marketplace requires a government that won't pass legislation simply because congressmen or senators have been "bought out" by big corporations.
Certain businesses have gotten ahead of the competition NOT through any normal means as defined by a "free market economy", but rather, by influencing government to give them a guaranteed legal advantage!
As we move more and more to a "global economy", it's also becoming clear that our government's standard tactics to control inflation and regulate economic growth are failing to work as well as they used to. There are probably just too many variables to the equations now. I believe Alan Greenspan made some comments to that effect right after he retired. He admitted that near the end, govt. was really just taking a lot of chances, hoping raising or lowering the interest rates or printing a little more or less money would have the desired effect. They felt they were slowly losing their ability to get a desired result from a specific action.
What debate? Here on this side we have science, and over on this side, unfounded conjecture based on a 2000yr old book that is little more than a documented game of telephone because i heard it from a guy who heard it from a guy who was there I swear. There is no debate, one is science, one is not. Pure and simple.
There is a british scientist that has a video floating around that shows the progression from light sensing to eyeball very well with example critters all along the way. So that irreducible complexity bullshit is a complete joke. In fact, Ken Miller has an amazing 2hr presentation on the whole Intellitent Design where he absolutely eviscerates their silly arguments, and is a Roman Catholic, so it science and intelligence goes beyond religion.
The God discussion belongs in religion and philosophy classes, not science classes. The evidence for "poof magic" is 0, so even though evolution can't trace the exact path for every critter that walks the earth, it at least has evidence.
What she and every other creationist wants is creationist bullshit treated like it is even remotely equal to scientific theory. They tout the "its just a theory" crap because they don't understand the definition of a scientific theory. Even if most kids laugh it off, the fact that they put that shit in the class causes the assumption that there is anything more to it than silly superstition and intellectual laziness.
I'm sorry, but my version of "God" is a hell of a lot more complex than rolling up some playdough snakes and saying "Bamf" its done.
Wait, Palin is a libertarian now? I know that she and McCain are constantly changing their positions on issues, but that's just crazy. How does one go from being a Bush Republican to a libertarian in just a month?
No more changing than any other politican including Obama (e.g. to drill or not to drill). The question is, how do you determine whether they changed their opinion on issues to get votes or whether they legimiately received new information which changes their view on an issue and then telling the public about it? People do change their minds. The question is whether they really changed them or they just said they do.
Lingering Effects of 2001-2003? (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps because during 2001-2003 they sliced back so much IT staff that they still have not finished catching up? Also many IT people went into other fields or back to school during that time, reducing the supply, meaning there is less chance of oversupply this time around.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps because during 2001-2003 they sliced back so much IT staff that they still have not finished catching up? Also many IT people went into other fields or back to school during that time, reducing the supply, meaning there is less chance of oversupply this time around.
Most likely because in a downturn*, 'IT' is the cheapeast way to increase productivity, especially if you have to fire people.
*Because there is increased pressure to create/find efficiencies, not because IT is somehow cheaper during a downturn than during an upturn.
Re:Lingering Effects of 2001-2003? (Score:4, Insightful)
Most likely because in a downturn*, 'IT' is the cheapeast way to increase productivity, especially if you have to fire people.
*Because there is increased pressure to create/find efficiencies, not because IT is somehow cheaper during a downturn than during an upturn.
I think it's a bit of both. Obviously people are looking for efficiencies when times get tight. Investing in technical solutions is one way to do that.
But I also think the dot-com bust helped as well. There are far fewer people in tech jobs than there used to be. Those that survived the bust are most likely more qualified as well (at least compared to those who were only in it to make a buck in the late 90's).
So, it comes down to supply and demand. At least, I've noticed this where I live. Business is very good right now, and doesn't seem to be slowing up.
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Re:Lingering Effects of 2001-2003? (Score:5, Interesting)
During the dot-com downturn, most businesses just let the existing software run as-is, without adding features. Thus, they only had to pay for skeleton-crew maintenance, not new features. Whether this is the best strategy or not profit-wise, I couldn't say. But it's what companies actually did regardless of merit.
Note that new features generally takes some up-front investment, and if you are in financial hot-water, you don't spend for such projects because the company may not survive long enough to see the up-front investment pay off.
Smarter companies would sock some cash away so that they could get new technology while techies are cheaper. Instead they usually wait until the middle of a boom and then whine to congress that they need H1B's.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, IT workers will be OK through this downturn.
Just not American IT workers.
Didn't I just see that HP laid off 26,000 workers last week? And now Carly Fiorina is one of John McCain's advisors. He knows how to pick 'em, no?
Cusioned? (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think that you're cusioned until the government bails you out with $700,000,000,000.
Sorry, I don't appreciate being forced to work for a living with unpaid overtime, while someone else gets free money.
Re:Cusioned? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not that other people are getting 'free money' that's on his nerves. It's where this 'free money' is coming from - guess what, it's coming out of his ass in the form of an extra $5,000 worth of income taxes next April 15th. Mine too. Yours too.
If the government gives me $100 in 'free money' - as you say that really doesn't concern you personally. Unless they dip right into your checking account and take it right out of your pocket to give it to me. Then it's something for you to get pissed about.
Make sense now?
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The government backing is supposed to alleviate the fears of the investors/speculators and stabilize the markets, allowing comp
Of course thigns will be paid back (Score:4, Informative)
The government will literally be buying up debt. They'll take ownership of various mortgage related securities. Ok, well this means that what they get depends on what happens with a mortgage. If the person defaults and doesn't pay anything, well then the government is going to lose money, especially if the property isn't able to be sold for much. If they pay off the mortgage, the government will make money.
You have to remember that it isn't as though all these mortgages are going to default, or that the property underlying them will suddenly become totally worthless.
So I certainly wouldn't expect the US government to come out with a net gain on this (though it'd be amusing if they did), but the net loss is going to be far less than the upfront cost.
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It's too early to say (Score:5, Insightful)
This is just the start of it. It's way too early to crow.
Our end of the boat may not be taking on water yet but the ship is sinking, the brass band is playing and politicians are fighting over the deck chairs.
Re:It's too early to say (Score:5, Insightful)
The politicians aren't fighting over the deck chairs, they're lined up calmly at the lifeboats and telling us to all go back down to steerage, because there's nothing to worry about.
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Do I see a plural there? (Score:3, Funny)
That's good news for both of them!
*Cough/BULLSHIT/Cough* (Score:4, Informative)
Companies are delaying/canceling IT projects all over the place. My company had a client last week, whine about needing a server upgrade, but cant do it because we actually charge for that shit. Says, if we would be willing to do the work for free, we can make it up on follow-on work next time around. We don't work for free, so his org will pound sand, or find some starving IT workers on Craiglist to do the work for Top Ramen. Fuck em. (yeah you, asshole, I KNOW you read Slashdot. Don't call me when your cheap-ass SATA-driven MOSS server goes tits up, baby.)
Nobody is willing to spend any money, which will only cost them down the road. IT requires investment in systems, people and maintenance. Skip on one, pay double for the others later.
IT is not just employees. Consultants are taking it in the shorts too.
Bad conclusion (Score:4, Insightful)
The reason IT is being the least hit is because it has been the primary target for so long. IT has been viewed as fat, as so trimmed, for so long that there is precious little left.
The "true opinion" is that all the expendable IT jobs are now outside the company.
After outsourcing and offshoring as many jobs as possible, there are few expendable positions left in companies. Many of the positions that are being cut are jobs waiting for backfill and contract jobs.
Bailout (Score:5, Insightful)
We must not allow the Treasure Secretary to receive $700 billion to spend with no oversight whatsoever. The current plan creates a gigantic moral hazard, is inflationary, rewards reckless risk-taking by CEOs, and still results in common people being foreclosed upon. We need to re-institute the Glass-Steagall act, allow highly leveraged firms to fail, insulate common people from the effects of these failing institutions, and regulate the market to prevent this catastrophe from happening again.
Re:Bailout (Score:5, Insightful)
and still results in common people being foreclosed upon.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but no one put a gun to anyone's head and made them sign a mortgage they couldn't afford. I'm sick of paying for the mistakes of the stupid / greedy, whether they're Wall Street execs or "common people" who can't / won't pay their mortgage. The "common people" you refer to are just as guilty as the Wall Streeters, and that it's even being considered to *reset* their mortgage principals is blatantly shocking. Where's the handout for those of us who follow the rules and live within our means?
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Re:Bailout (Score:4, Informative)
We can agree that these mortgages shouldn't have been created in the first place. But history has shown that threat of foreclosure just isn't a good enough deterrent for lots of people. That's a shame, but it's true. If we want to avoid another bubble, we need to ensure that banks don't lend at these irresistible terms anymore. That requires regulation. If you have a better idea, go ahead and argue for it.
If you want to assign blame, sure, some part of it rests with homeowners. You should know that a zero-down adjustable rate mortgage with a five-year teaser is a seriously bad idea. But being suckered into one of these is understandable, especially given the seriously deceptive advertising during the height of the housing bubble targeted at our most ignorant and vulnerable citizens.
On the other hand, we have the brokers who received massive commissions on mortgages they knew their clients couldn't afford. We have the banks who collected mortgages they knew couldn't be repaid into big packages, and we have credit raters who rated these steaming piles of bad mortgages as AAA-investment-grade-super-plus-plus-good like some kind of retarded eBay user.
While homeowners may be guilty of ignorance and shortsightedness, the financial industry in its unfathomable greed knew perfectly well what would happen and manipulated the market anyway; that's a far greater crime. Equitably, in a bailout, the financial industry should bear the greatest burden and the common homeowner the least. Both are unfair to those of us who lived within our means, but bailing out homeowners is less unfair, and better for our society as a whole.
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Re:Bailout (Score:4, Insightful)
Ahhh, but the government *mandated* that the banks had to make mortgages available to low-income people after the Jesse Jacksons and Al Sharptons of the country screamed racism years ago, and forced the financial institutions to change the rules to make credit available for these folks. Now, they're screaming racism again when the "homeowners" (they're not really homeowners as they never had any equity in the real estate in the first place) inevitably defaulted. Here in Baltimore, the city is suing Wells Fargo for $5 million for "unfairly" targeting blacks to take these loans. No one wants to talk about why these people were even eligible in the first place, but a lot of the original blame rests on "advocates" like Jackson lobbying for credit for people would couldn't pay. And of course, fucking greedy Wall Street and the stupid and / or greedy borrowers (yes -- the borrowers, like the single mom with four kids running her home daycare center out of "her" $545k house on the front page of the Baltimore Sun [baltimoresun.com] -- fuck her and take her house). What should really happen is that the banks be allowed to fail and the execs be thrown in jail, and people learn some responsibility by going back to living in an apartment for awhile. The reason this shit keeps happening is because the government keeps stepping in and removing the consequences of peoples' decisions, and then sticks us responsible folks with the bill. FUCK THAT. No more.
Seriously, if you sign a mortgage and don't understand what you're signing, you're a fucking idiot, and I have absolutely no sympathy for you. We have a 30 year fixed mortgage and still hired a lawyer to look everything over before doing the deal.
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Tech companies != tech workers (Score:5, Insightful)
Just because technology companies are not hit as hard by this economic downturn, that does not mean technology workers (programmers, engineers, network admins, system admins) are equivalently immune. One problem here is the Labor department is classifying things badly. When the payroll of a technology company goes up, they interpret it as benefiting technology workers. It could be they are just hiring more sales people (I've seen it done). And a huge amount of IT is done in non-technology companies, including financial companies. And even if these companies consider their data centers to be of value, the IT workers own none of it, and few of them would be considered vital employees.
Tech just can't go any lower (Score:4, Insightful)
The reason we're "cushioned" from the financial nonsense is because there isn't much room to go lower. Wages are crap, yet the nation is inextricably dependent on IT services. They can't pay us any less, and they can't fire us - they've already outsourced all the jobs they could.
The title may as well be "Wage slaves cushioned from US economy downturn". The only reason an IT guy gets a raise is because his supervisor's been getting too many phone calls checking references.
Tell that to a truck driver. (Score:3, Insightful)
. Wages are crap,
Actually, wages are not crap. We're just frigging greedy. WE're in a field that expects to pay us the same coming out of "Chumb MCSE school" the same rate that a frigging doctor makes coming out of medical school. I guarantee you that, on average, IT workers make more money on average than just about every other position, every field, in every other country on the planet earth. If you want more money, you need to own a business, rather than be an indentured servant for someone elses.
"economic downturn" and other silly euphanisms (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's just call it what it is: a recession.
Whenever I listen to international news, they refer to the U.S. economy as in recession. The U.S. media, however, always call it an "economic downturn" or "slow economy" or some other silly thing that basically means recession.
Bubblenomics (Score:5, Interesting)
Because our economy appears to be driven by bubbles after the 1970's, different recessions seem to sock different professions. Programmers got hit in the 2001-2003 poppage. This time finance people are getting smacked by bubblenomics.
We all get our turn.
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Re:Bubblenomics (Score:5, Funny)
Please please pretty please (with cherries on top and extra sugar) let it be the lawyers next!
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Re:Great! about time... (Score:4, Insightful)
Good luck to all still trying to make a living completely unappreciated - worse than plumbers but just as necessary.
At least the plumbers can't be outsourced.
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Re:I disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, help desk technicians are worth about $12/hour, honestly.
"Help Desk" is the low-end of the IT totem pole. It's a job that requires few qualifications beyond "Knows how to install software and update drivers".
I think the bigger fear that people with IT careers (myself included) is the inevitable deployment of high-speed fiber networks. For MANY businesses, having nothing but "terminals" that run apps on remote servers (which would probably be running under VMs) would be a huge cost savings, and probably more reliable, too.
It costs a lot of money to have a really reliable network, and the staff to maintain it. Why not pay some other company to do all that, and enjoy the economies of scale that they can offer?
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
But most special apps are not designed to work this way. We find that Cytrix is still buggy technology. Graphics-intensive apps are also poor ran remotely. It's a great dream, but we are not there yet.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
As more large financial firms and non-technology companies fail for financial reasons, the small and medium companies will dominate what type of computer systems are required. Most of these companies cannot afford the infrastructure requirements of thin clients.
I disagree as well (Score:4, Interesting)
I disagree with you.
Helpdesk has nothing to do with it, on the base. You forgot that cost of living varies drastically across the entire country.
$12/hr might be survivable in Virginia or Texas, but in Chicago people have a hard time surviving on $18-20/hr.
When the cheapest food to survive a day runs around 1-2$ (thus about 4-6$ a day foodwise) and gas runs almost 4$, trust me that 12$/hr helpdesk job will not keep people afloat, even if it was $12/hr cash.
Don't forget that employers employ people to make a profit, not a loss; thus $12/hr is probably turning about$20-50/hr profit.
Helpdesk itself varies from company to company. I know on mine some ofo the employees are borderline retarded and helpdesk has to show them anything more complex than what a mouse is.
Why pay another company? Well, ever heard of Unisys? Lets just say you pay for what you get. Those suckers can barely speak english, and about 1 in 20 of them are competent. Their managers are good IT helpdesk. The rest don't understand you, don't listen, don't know how to do their job, and good luck understanding them.
Guess how many companies offshore to unisys? Tons.
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Re:I disagree (Score:5, Informative)
It costs a lot of money to have a really reliable network, and the staff to maintain it. Why not pay some other company to do all that, and enjoy the economies of scale that they can offer?
Because inevitably when you take something that your business relies on and outsource to the lowest bidder, it gets done badly and your business suffers (sometimes irreparably). Take it from someone who works on a system that was outsourced, then insourced again long before outsourcing became trendy.
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Re:I disagree (Score:4, Informative)
I disagree, even working first line tech support requires a lot more knowledge than that, and in most places (outside of the typical IT "hot spots" like San Francisco) there is enough competition for IT jobs that a lot of first line techs for ISPs will have a lot more knowledge than what is required to do their jobs but will still come off as dimwitted when talking to users since management doesn't give a crap about supplying them with information,
I've experienced an ISP changing the type of CPE they use and not providing tech support with any information about this until customers started calling in about it and the tech support team complained and asked for information about the new CPEs. And even then the only information given for several months was "Yeah, it's a xxx brand converter, model yyy", detailed technical information (and pictures and sample units) wasn't given until almost six months after the introduction, and by then we'd pretty much figured out everything by the answers given by higher-level techs in tickets and just keeping track of what information we could get from the customers.
This btw, was not an isolated incident, many companies simply don't supply their tech support departments (or outsourced tech support) with enough information to do their jobs properly, and then when something goes wrong they blame it on incompetence from tech support. I don't know how many scheduled outages (maintenance) I've seen reported to the NOC only to have someone from upper management send a department-wide email essentially telling all the techs that they're idiots for not knowing about the planned outage even though no information about the outage was given, or when upper management refuses to put information about any outages on the ISPs website because that would be admitting that there's a problem...
A lot of what one does when working tech support or helpdesk is to constantly try to figure out how things work since no one bothers to tell you anything (and why would they, everyone knows that tech support is just a bunch of high school dropouts, err, what? most of you guys are college educated? That can't be... LIES! I will not let reality interfere with my preconceived notions! Shut up or you're all fired! Also, keep smiling, here at MajorISP Inc we all like our jobs! It's company policy damnit!).
Yes, I'm bitter, I've had way too much contact with endusers and unreasonable management over the last couple of years, and not just in one company either, it seems to be an industry-wide trend.
/Mikael
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Re:I disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
IT professionals have been hit very hard and nowhere is this more evident than in Phoenix, where I live.
That's a great anecdote.
Now how about you show us some information which proves your one data point reflects the entire US economy.
You know, something tangible to refute the Labor Dept and TFA's quote from the VP & Principal Analyst of Forrester Research.
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Re:I disagree (Score:4, Funny)
Secondly, working the help desk is fairly easily stuff. Anyone can do it. In fact, the latest trend in IT is to train monkeys to do help desk work. It's even cheaper than out sourcing, keeps wages in the country and there is little difference between the monkey's performance and any other help desk technician.
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Re:I disagree (Score:4, Insightful)
This is the problem with "IT." It encompasses too many positions. IMHO, a help desk tech really isn't IT anymore. That's a common job many teenagers nowadays can do with a little training out of school.
Now, if you want to talk about 'professionals' like skilled developers or engineers I think for the most part they are doing fine (or at least better than average since the economy is pretty crappy atm). For example, my company has a hiring freeze on right now, except for my team. We're trying to find more mid-level software developers. I'm about ready to give up since it seems like no one can actually do anything they say on their resume. /sigh
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Re:I disagree (Score:4, Insightful)
Well this is just good business and something you should be doing every so often anyways. I find that companies hiring in excess during boom times which makes the cut backs that much harder when times get lean again.
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Re:I disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
10 years of Guru level Java expert experience with AJAX, Java Beans, Hibernate, Spring, SCJP
With Minimum 10 years of Oracle 10g (yes) experience with DBA skills to match the development skills working on Oracle RAC, Data warehousing and ETL
with great Linux/Unix skills with 15 years of socket programming, general admin knowledge, backup expertise with strong emphasis on korn, bash and C shell scripting
at least 8 years of Perl, Python and 5 (yes) years of Ruby on Rails
Yes, this is a made up requirement, but not too far from what I have seen in last 4 months on job boards when I was looking for a decent mid level development job.
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Re:I've been wondering (Score:5, Funny)
...I am still blowing $300 a week on weed...
I've been wondering why I feel insulated from this thing...
Maybe because you're HIGH, moron.
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Re:The future of America is in tech education (Score:4, Interesting)
We have the smart people. We just need to find a way to encourage them to go to school, if they haven't already. But when people look at their older more experienced peers losing jobs, and salary levels staying flat or going down, they look for other career paths when they are at that age where the choices are easy. If over the next N years, all those older peers were hired back and a true shortage of people came to exist (as opposed to the fake ones being promoted by certain big companies to sway Congress to allow them to hire cheaper workers from overseas), then younger people would be seeing technology as a rewarding career path. It's all about confidence in the future, and businesses are not putting that in IT right now.
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Re:Experience brought us where we are today (Score:5, Interesting)
That is an absolute lie.
John McCain has been nothing but a cheerleader for the Reaganomics that has caused this debacle. He's been for privatization, deregulation and tax cuts. In fact, there's a video going around on YouTube the last few days where John McCain is giving very energetic (as much as he can be energetic) support for the privatization of Social Security.
Even someone as far conservative as George Will today has said that John McCain has just been an utter failure on economic issues and has done nothing but sputter and froth when we really need someone who's going to be a little more thoughtful. If you don't believe me, go watch the video of today's This Week on ABC. Listen closely to what George Will says.
Sarah Palin has become little more than a circus sideshow. She's actually become the candidate (out of the main four) with the LEAST approval. She slid 10 points in public approval in just three days last week. There is evidence that having her on the ticket is losing votes for McCain in more than one swing state. His Hail Mary Pass has fallen incomplete. Now that the convention "bump" after the RNC Crystal Night has passed, all the polls are trending Obama, including the most important electoral college numbers.
My only fear is that the only Hail Mary pass that the GOP has left requires a body count.
By the way, did you know that on Sept 18, just a few days ago, George Bush extended the national state of emergency that he put in place on Sept 23, 2001 for another year? Go to whitehouse.gov and look at the daily press releases and executive orders for Sept 18. There it is, big as life. Who even knew that we have been under a state of emergency since 9/11?
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What debacle? (Score:4, Interesting)
John McCain has been nothing but a cheerleader for the Reaganomics that has caused this debacle. He's been for privatization, deregulation and tax cuts. In fact, there's a video going around on YouTube the last few days where John McCain is giving very energetic (as much as he can be energetic) support for the privatization of Social Security.
Yeah, a bunch of banks have failed and some people are losing their homes that they couldn't afford, but:
a) The commodities sectors are doing well. If you work in farming, oil, coal, iron, copper or gold, then, those sectors are all doing very well. Even the moribund alternate fuels sector is shaping up in spots. Biodiesel maker Nova Biosource Fuels is actually running its Seneca refinery profitably and if it gets some financing, this penny stock is going to absolutely kick ass.
b) Now we find out that IT workers are doing well. In fact, it looks that like that Lehman's data center is going to be purchased by Barclay's more or less intact. Not only that, but Intel and Microsoft, both industry leaders, are not only making record revenues, but Intel is actually paying dividends.
c) If we turn to the housing situation, we find, shockingly, that more people in the USA actually own their own homes than ever before. In short, despite the banking losses and the bankruptcies, at the end of the day, a bipartisan policy designed to encourage lending to put as many people into homes as possible actually WORKED.
The tell tale sign of a real recession or economic downturn is high unemployment and falling commodities prices. Neither has taken place. Instead, what we have is moderate unemployment and high commodities prices and this suggests that demand is high, rather than low.
Now, I don't doubt that some people are hurting in this economy but those people tend to be concentrated in blue states that have been stupidly run for way too long. Michigan's government has basically made it all but impossible to do business in that state and Ohio is as nearly as incompetent and corrupt, particularly in the manufacturing centers and Democratic bastions of Cleveland, Toledo, Akron and Youngstown. Red states, on the other hand, big producers of food and fuel, are doing rather well.
Bottom line is, this economy isn't falling apart, and never has been. Instead, wealth is shifting from those who make raw materials and products from those who make up financial services around them. WE have lived a lie that said that a bunch of paper is more important than the coal that it represents and it simply isn't true. Bush's economic policies have worked, free trade has worked, and if the market has decided that a program that does something with a car is not as valuable as the steel that makes it well, you are just on the wrong side of reality.
The irony is that Obama's policies are actually going to shift this economic advantage to red states any more. Bush's economic policies, at the essence, have allowed the market to refocus on the basics of materials and manufacturing as the value drivers of the economy. When Obama goes and enacts all sorts of environmental legislation, he's only going create even more scarcity. Suddenly, that old copper mine in Arizona or dying oil well the gulf are going to be even more valuable than it is today, when you can't get permits any more for a new one, and yes, those states that push back more against the Obama administration are those states that are going to have the biggest advantage, economically. They will make more, while the blue states make less, and as a consequence, they will wind up with more money. The future is passing from Chicago where the corn is traded, to the belts where the corn is made, from New York where the cars are traded, to the south where the cars are made.
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Re:Experience brought us where we are today (Score:5, Informative)
Not to keep George "Fucktard" Bush in power longer, of course, since the Constitution does not allow that, but just to give him more power while he's there. I'm not necessarily in favor of it, unless it is necessary in helping certain parties to understand (such as with a bullet to the brain) that it is not considered socially acceptable to blow up Mariotts in Pakistan.
Anyway, here it is.
For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
September 18, 2008
Notice: Continuation Of The National Emergency With Respect To Persons Who Commit, Threaten To Commit, Or Support Terrorism
RSS Feed White House News
On September 23, 2001, by Executive Order 13224, I declared a national emergency with respect to persons who commit, threaten to commit, or support terrorism, pursuant to the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. 1701-1706). I took this action to deal with the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States constituted by the grave acts of terrorism and threats of terrorism committed by foreign terrorists, including the terrorist attacks in New York, in Pennsylvania, and against the Pentagon committed on September 11, 2001, and the continuing and immediate threat of further attacks against United States nationals or the United States. Because the actions of these persons who commit, threaten to commit, or support terrorism continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the United States, the national emergency declared on September 23, 2001, and the measures adopted on that date to deal with that emergency, must continue in effect beyond September 23, 2008. Therefore, in accordance with section 202(d) of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1622(d)), I am continuing for 1 year the national emergency with respect to persons who commit, threaten to commit, or support terrorism.
This notice shall be published in the Federal Register and transmitted to the Congress.
GEORGE W. BUSH
THE WHITE HOUSE,
September 18, 2008.
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Re:Experience brought us where we are today (Score:4, Informative)
One can make a cogent argument that too much government regulation is bad, and you might even be able to make a fair argument that the current crisis was not caused by too little regulation, but there is no reasonable argument that can conclude that the current crisis has been caused by too much regulation.
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Read again confused one - Democrat and Republican (Score:3, Insightful)
CRA is being trotted out in a last ditch attempt by Republicans to salvage this fucking disaster of 8 years and blame this on Democrats.
Excuse me, but who has been in control of the house and senate for the past four years?
Beyond that bit of obvious fact that has eluded you, note that I blamed both feckless Democrats AND Republicans who could have both acted long ago (or more like, never acted to start with). There were some Democrats with similar concerns as well, but since they were in power they bear mo
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Read again confused one - Democrat and Republic (Score:5, Funny)
So Close
Time for a cow analogy
Communism
You have two cows,
the government takes both and gives you some milk.
Fascism
You have two cows,
the government takes both and sells you some milk.
Which one is more accurate.
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Re:Read again confused one - Democrat and Republic (Score:5, Funny)
I prefer Surrealism:
You have two giraffes,
the government requires you to take harmonica lessons.
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Re:Experience brought us where we are today (Score:5, Interesting)
A few phrases that should never be uttered again in American public life:
"Free Markets"
"Deregulation"
"Privatization"
And the name "Milton Friedman" should be never be spoken in business schools again, except to show just how wrong someone can be. Turns out "Free Markets" were nothing more than a mechanism for squeezing wealth out of the lower 95% of the population and pouring it into the pockets of the top 5%.
It's amazing how suddenly socialism looks good when rich guys are looking at losing a lot of money.
I truly hope that whatever bailout package gets approved includes some very punitive measures for the Wall Street CEOs and CFOs who got into this mess. Anybody who stands to gain from this bailout should be forced to go to the same credit counseling classes that regular people who file bankruptcy must attend. Also, several hundred hours of community service would also be appropriate.
Do you know that the executives from Lehman Brothers and AIG are still going to take home multi-million dollar bonus packages this year?
Yes, I'm talking about Class Warfare. As Warren Buffet famously said: "There's Class Warfare, and my side is winning." In fact, it was the rich and the GOP who declared class war on the rest of us back when Ronald Reagan took office. Well, now it's time to show them what it feels like to be in a war.
Parent
Bullshit..... (Score:5, Informative)
The problems we're experiencing today are NOT because of "free markets" at all.
The problems are because of govt. interference and manipulation of the markets for their own motives!
The USA has spent decades in a scenario people keep labeling a "free market", yet in reality, we REALLY have a situation that's just a bastardized version of the concept. A truly free marketplace requires a government that won't pass legislation simply because congressmen or senators have been "bought out" by big corporations.
Certain businesses have gotten ahead of the competition NOT through any normal means as defined by a "free market economy", but rather, by influencing government to give them a guaranteed legal advantage!
As we move more and more to a "global economy", it's also becoming clear that our government's standard tactics to control inflation and regulate economic growth are failing to work as well as they used to. There are probably just too many variables to the equations now. I believe Alan Greenspan made some comments to that effect right after he retired. He admitted that near the end, govt. was really just taking a lot of chances, hoping raising or lowering the interest rates or printing a little more or less money would have the desired effect. They felt they were slowly losing their ability to get a desired result from a specific action.
Parent
Re:Experience brought us where we are today (Score:5, Interesting)
There is a british scientist that has a video floating around that shows the progression from light sensing to eyeball very well with example critters all along the way. So that irreducible complexity bullshit is a complete joke. In fact, Ken Miller has an amazing 2hr presentation on the whole Intellitent Design where he absolutely eviscerates their silly arguments, and is a Roman Catholic, so it science and intelligence goes beyond religion.
The God discussion belongs in religion and philosophy classes, not science classes. The evidence for "poof magic" is 0, so even though evolution can't trace the exact path for every critter that walks the earth, it at least has evidence.
What she and every other creationist wants is creationist bullshit treated like it is even remotely equal to scientific theory. They tout the "its just a theory" crap because they don't understand the definition of a scientific theory. Even if most kids laugh it off, the fact that they put that shit in the class causes the assumption that there is anything more to it than silly superstition and intellectual laziness.
I'm sorry, but my version of "God" is a hell of a lot more complex than rolling up some playdough snakes and saying "Bamf" its done.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Wait, Palin is a libertarian now? I know that she and McCain are constantly changing their positions on issues, but that's just crazy. How does one go from being a Bush Republican to a libertarian in just a month?
No more changing than any other politican including Obama (e.g. to drill or not to drill). The question is, how do you determine whether they changed their opinion on issues to get votes or whether they legimiately received new information which changes their view on an issue and then telling the public about it? People do change their minds. The question is whether they really changed them or they just said they do.