Showing posts with label economy. Show all posts

Monday, August 17, 2009

Making Unions Successful and Relevant in the New Economy

A Recipe for the Teacher's Unions

Judging by the public discourse during the auto industry meltdown, a large segment of the population prefers handing over tax dollars to investment banks over giving even more modest sums to struggling auto companies. There are many different motivations to this, lefties don't want to reward the auto companies for building gas guzzlers and shitboxes, but the larger block seems driven more by anti union sentiment, and that's a shame. Although they have largely been immune to this sentiment, even the teachers unions find themselves facing increasing increasing anti-union sentiment. With continued, drastic school budget shortfalls, the teachers unions will soon be in a more perilous position than the UAW, and that takes some doing. The UAW only has to negotiate with the manufacturers they serve, the teachers have to negotiate with the public, and a positive perception of the union is required for their survival. Even in the progressive and relatively wealthy town where I live, the teachers union is loosing the support of the normally sympathetic parents, and that's not good.
What can the teachers union do to ensure the survival of unionized teachers? More...
Well, in my view, there are basically two different types of unions; labor unions and trade unions. A labor union is one where, in general, the workers are not united by trade, but rather by industry. The auto workers for example are a labor union, they don't all have the same skills (some are electrical workers, some are welders, some are upholsterers etc.).
The Carpenters Union is an example of a trade union, they are all carpenters (more or less). For the Teachers Union to succeed and thrive, they NEED to stop acting like a labor union and start acting like a trade union. Promoting quality, consistency and convenience are the keys to success. The Carpenters and Electricians have been selling this for years and it really works. Trade unions essentially act as certification organizations, much like Universities do when awarding MBA degrees, it indicates that the worker has the skills and knowledge required for their profession. To the employer, this provides the benefit of knowing what you are getting from a technical training perspective. Teaching on the other hand is a different animal, all the education in the world can't guarantee a good teacher, there are too many intangibles. What if being in the union guaranteed a good teacher? If the Teacher's Union was self policing and worked with the school administration to root out poor performers and help improve overall performance? Certainly the parents would favor this arrangement, and it would save the administration a lot of labor and headaches. Teacher's work conditions on the whole are undeniably tough and could be improved, but in order to get the community to fork out the extra dough to improve things for the teachers, there needs to be a something in it for the community. That something can really only be one thing, better quality teachers- give the public a reason to prefer unionized schools.

Saturday, March 14, 2009

Great Michael Lewis Article on the mishegoss in Iceland

Wall Street on the Tundra

Iceland’s de facto bankruptcy—its currency (the krona) is kaput, its debt is 850 percent of G.D.P., its people are hoarding food and cash and blowing up their new Range Rovers for the insurance—resulted from a stunning collective madness. What led a tiny fishing nation, population 300,000, to decide, around 2003, to re-invent itself as a global financial power? In Reykjavík, where men are men, and the women seem to have completely given up on them, the author follows the peculiarly Icelandic logic behind the meltdown.

by MICHAEL LEWISApril 2009

Friday, March 13, 2009

John Stewart with Mad Money's Jim Cramer

Wow, Stewart is in rare form in this segment, it's the best

indictment of the financial industry I've seen since the meltdown

started. I give Cramer props for keeping himself composed in

the face of whithering criticism.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Jim Cramer Pt. 2

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things w/ Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Jim Cramer

Thursday, February 19, 2009

3000 cars abandoned in Dubai Airport

SOURCE : N. RAGHU RAMAN - DNA

Indians flee Dubai as dreams crash

Mumbai/DUBAI - JAN 14: It's the great escape by Indians who've hit the dead-end in Dubai.

Local police have found at least 3,000 automobiles -- sedans, SUVs, regulars -- abandoned outside Dubai International Airport in the last four months. Police say most of the vehicles had keys in the ignition, a clear sign they were left behind by owners in a hurry to take flight.

The global economic crisis has brought Dubai's economic progress, mirrored by its soaring towers and luxurious resorts, to a stuttering halt. Several people have been laid off in the past months after the realty boom started unraveling.

On the night of December 31, 2008 alone more than 80 vehicles were found at the airport. "Sixty cars were seized on the first day of this year," director general of Airport Security, Mohammed Bin Thani, told DNA over the phone. On the same day, deputy director of traffic, colonel Saif Mohair Al Mazroui, said they seized 22 cars abandoned at a prohibited area in the airport.

Faced with a cash crunch and a bleak future ahead, there were no goodbyes for the migrants -- overwhelmingly South Asians, mostly Indians - just a quiet abandoning of the family car at the airport and other places.

While 2,500 vehicles have been found dumped in the past four months outside Terminal III, which caters to all global airlines, Terminal II, which is only used by Emirates Airlines, had 160 cars during the same period.

"The construction and real estate industry has been hit following the global slowdown and the direct fallout is that professionals working in the realty industry are rapidly losing their jobs," said a senior media professional, in-charge of a realty supplement in Dubai. "In fact, my weekly real estate supplement usually had 60% advertisement and ran into 300-odd pages. In the last seven weeks, it's down to 80 pages and with fewer advertisments," he added.

Mumbai resident D Nair (name changed) had been living in a plush highrise in Sharjah for the past four years. However, the script went horribly wrong when his contract was terminated. Nair used all his credit cards to their maximum limit, shopping for people back home. He then discarded his Honda Accord before returning to India for good. Nair, who stays in a rented apartment in Navi Mumbai today, has a Rs15 lakh loan with a Dubai bank.

Another such victim of the meltdown said he bid goodbye to his car in a small bylane near the airport and hailed a cab. "I was scared because a number of us were doing the same and did not want to be questioned by the police. There was no way I could afford to pay the EMI of 1100 Dhirams for my Ford Focus," he told DNA on condition of anonymity.

When contacted, the dealer for Asgar Ali cars in Sharjah said, "We are helpless and do not know how to tackle this issue. A large number of such owners are from Indian, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and other South Asian countries."

Heading home

3.62 million expatriates in Dubai

864,000 nationals

8% population decline predicted this year, as expatriates leave

1,500 visas cancelled every day in Dubai

62% of homes occupied by expatriates 60% fall in property values predicted

50% slump in the price of luxury apartments on Palm Jumeirah

25% reduction in luxury spending among UAE expatriates

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Good article that I HOPE is right

http://www.thestreet.com/story/10464211/1/kass-fear-and-loathing-on-wall-street.html

Saturday, February 7, 2009

Good Lord, What a ClusterFrak

Click Thru for Larger

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Blimey I've been made redundant

In other words Laid Off or Furloughed if you prefer.

Personally I prefer neither, but non the less I joined the ranks of the unemployed.

Needless to say, I am none to pleased, what a Buzz Kill after the inauguration.

Scathing Editorial from Financial Times

Bush damage can be undone - Financial Times

Published: January 18 2009 18:57 | Last updated: January 18 2009 18:57

George W. Bush, who barely scraped into office but ran a presidency marked by executive hubris, imperial overreach and epic incompetence, leaves the stage on Tuesday to a national and global sigh of relief. The “decider” and self-styled “war president” who relied on his gut got many things terribly wrong, even if it is fair to say he did face some extraordinary challenges.

With his preternatural ebullience, fathomless lack of curiosity and disdain for empirical reality, Mr Bush compromised America’s reputation as a power that stands by the rule of law – giving real succour to an enemy he helped multiply.

After offering himself to voters as a conciliatory and compassionate conservative, he deliberately polarised US politics in search of a durable new Republican majority. After preaching humility in foreign policy, he preferred unilateralism and superficial muscularity.

The attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon in 2001 would have tested the mettle of the greatest statesman. Mr Bush was not that. But he was right – and widely supported – in going into Afghanistan to deal with Osama bin Laden and his followers, a long-standing problem he has left unresolved.

But his war of choice on Iraq, and the very concept of the global war on terror, misidentified the nature of the strategic threat facing the US and the liberal international order of which it is the lead custodian. The late Roman republic was once badly defeated by the Parthians, who ruled most of today’s Iraq and Iran. But no historian records that the Romans thereafter declared a global war on the Parthian shot.

Iraq was the Bush administration’s single worst error of judgment. The invasion and subsequent occupation broke a state, dissolved a society and created a new incubator of jihadi extremism far worse than the Afghanistan of the Taliban, as well as uncorking a Sunni-Shia sectarian rift from the Levant to the Indian subcontinent.

As Anthony Cordesman, a strategist in favour of the invasion, ruefully summarised three years into the occupation, “We essentially used a bull to liberate a china shop.”

The stain of Abu Ghraib and the lawlessness of Guantánamo; the idea you can bomb people into moderation from high altitude; and the loss of nerve on Arab democracy and the “freedom agenda” – all this is a terrible setback for the ideas and values that have so long made America a beacon for the world. The security gains of the troops “surge”, moreover, are still too fragile and reversible for us to know if Iraq can be put back together again.

Domestically, the Bush team, led by the overmighty vice-president, Dick Cheney, sought to expand executive power and dismantle checks and balances. Torture and rendition abroad were accompanied by warrantless snooping at home.

Loyalty and ideological zeal rather than competence were the path to preferment. That exacerbated already difficult challenges.

Social security reform sank without trace. The response to Hurricane Katrina was bungled as Mr Bush sunnily acclaimed a “heck of a job”. From a team that manufactured the case for war, it was unsurprising when officials with no scientific training doctored administration climate research to play down the link between fossil fuel emissions and global warming. Mr Bush’s real achievements in aid to Africa look less impressive once one realises it is a principal victim of the climate change he long denied and has done so little to address.

He showed a surer touch in Asia: with China, after the tricky start of the Hainan island spy-plane crisis; and with India, although his consecration of Delhi as a new, nuclear-armed power and counterweight to Beijing is itself a gamble as well as a blow to nuclear non-proliferation.

Mr Bush cannot be cast as the principal villain for the financial meltdown and recession that resulted in good part from the loose monetary policies and regulation of the Alan Greenspan era spanning several presidencies. But the US would clearly have been in better shape to confront it had President Bush not spent like President Johnson while cutting taxes like President Reagan. This most fiscally incontinent of presidents took a wrecking ball to the public finances.

This economic crisis will be extremely difficult to resolve. Conflicts such as Afghanistan and the Middle East are intractable for any president, even if the Bush approach has made them more so.

George W. Bush did enormous damage to America’s standing in the world and its strength at home. Yet the vitality of the US system resurfaced, and American voters have chosen in Barack Obama a man of vision and statesmanship. It now falls to him to renew the confidence and restore the reputation of the American republic.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009