From HousingWire:
Fannie Mae: Consumer confidence in housing market fell in October
Consumers’ feelings towards the housing market were weaker in the month of October than they were in September, as some consumers displayed hesitancy to commit to the long-term financial obligation of buying a home, a new survey from Fannie Mae showed.
Released Monday, Fannie Mae’s Home Purchase Sentiment Index for October 2015 decreased slightly to 83.2 in October as consumers’ volatile outlook on both household income improvement and mortgage interest rates kept housing sentiment relatively flat.
…
In October, the HPSI Household Income component fell 4 points on net this month and the Good Time to Buy and Good Time to Sell components fell 2 and 6 points, respectively, after picking up in September.While those number fell in October, signifying weakening confidence in the housing market, the survey results showed that consumers appeared to be less worried about job loss, with the net figure nearing the most favorable reading in the five-year history of Fannie Mae’s National Housing Survey.
Additionally, the share of consumers who think mortgage interest rates will go down increased by 4 points on net in October.
“The income growth necessary for renewed momentum in housing market sentiment remains elusive, even though consumers’ confidence in their job security continues to strengthen,” said Doug Duncan, senior vice president and chief economist at Fannie Mae.
“Consumers’ net view on whether their household income has improved over the last year is down once again this month,” Duncan continued.
“Some consumers may be hesitant or unwilling to commit to buying or selling a home without seeing meaningful improvement in their wages and salaries,” Duncan added. “Still, the HPSI remains close to its near all-time high level of the past four years and, given the strong October jobs report, suggests that any cooling in near-term activity, if it occurs, should be moderate.”
Overall, Fannie Mae’s October 2015 Home Purchase Sentiment Index decreased 0.6 percentage points to 83.2 in October following a 3-point increase last month to near its peak level.
…
The net share of respondents who say they are not concerned with losing their job rose 2 percentage points to 71%, and has risen each month since July. The percent of respondents who are not concerned about losing their job reached an all-time high of 85%.
Thinking about self-driving cars in a little more detail – is this really any different from a bus?
From the Star Ledger:
Feds award leases for offshore wind farms in S. Jersey
Two companies are the successful bidders for a tract of federal waters off the South Jersey coast where wind energy will be developed, the U.S. Department of the Interior announced Monday.
About 344,000 acres of ocean, stretching in an arc about seven miles off the coast in Cape May and Atlantic counties, were broken into northern and southern areas. Monday’s bidding was announced in September.
RES America Developments, which has U.S. offices in Colorado, Texas and Minnesota, submitted the successful bid of $880,715 for a little less than half the area. US Wind Inc. purchased the lease for the remaining area, about 183,000 acres, for a little over $1 million, Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management said. Fishermen’s Energy of Cape May also bid but was not offered a lease.
The BOEM cited a study showing that wind in the area could generate up to 3,400 megawatts of electricity, or enough to power 1.2 million homes.
“Today’s auction underscores the emerging market demand for renewable energy and marks another major step in standing up a sustainable offshore wind program for Atlantic coast communities,” said U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell. “Through extensive outreach and public engagement, we reduced potential use conflicts while moving the country closer to harnessing the enormous potential of wind energy along the Atlantic coast.”
From the NYT:
Large Companies Game H-1B Visa Program, Leaving Smaller Ones in the Cold
Théo Négri, a young software engineer from France, had come up with so many novel ideas at his job at an Internet start-up in San Francisco that the American entrepreneur who hired him wanted to keep him on.
So he helped Mr. Négri apply for a three-year work visa for foreign professionals with college degrees and specialized skills, mainly in technology and science. With his master’s degree from a French university and advanced computer abilities, Mr. Négri seemed to fit the bill.
But his application for the H-1B visa was denied, and he had to leave the United States. Back in France, Mr. Négri used his data skills to figure out why.
The answer was simple: Many of the visas are given out through a lottery, and a small number of giant global outsourcing companies had flooded the system with applications, significantly increasing their chances of success. While he had one application in last year’s lottery and lost, one of the outsourcing companies applied for at least 14,000. The companies were squeezing out American employers like his boss.
…
Congress set up the H-1B program to help American companies hire foreigners with exceptional skills, to fill open jobs and to help their businesses grow. But the program has been failing many American employers who cannot get visas for foreigners with the special skills they need.
Instead, the outsourcing firms are increasingly dominating the program, federal records show. In recent years, they have obtained many thousands of the visas — which are limited to 85,000 a year — by learning to game the H-1B system without breaking the rules, researchers and lawyers said.
In some years, an American employer could snag one of these coveted visas at almost any time of the year. But recently, with the economy picking up, the outsourcing companies have sent in tens of thousands of visa requests right after the application window opens on April 1. Employers who apply after a week are out of luck.
…
Of the 20 companies that received the most H-1B visas in 2014, 13 were global outsourcing operations, according to an analysis of federal records by Professor Hira. The top 20 companies took nearly 40 percent of the visas available — about 32,000 — while more than 10,000 other employers received far fewer visas each. And about half of the applications in 2014 were rejected entirely because the quota had been met.
From the Record:
Opinion: Save New Jersey’s leadership role in life sciences
In spite of past success and the present wealth of resources and talent in the field, New Jersey continues to lose leadership and high-paying jobs to life sciences hubs elsewhere.
NEW JERSEY, long known as the “Medicine Chest of the Nation,” has a rich history of research and development that is unmatched by any other state, with many of the top global pharmaceutical companies based or operating here.
As World War II raged on, the government initiated collaborations among pharmaceutical companies to scale up production of penicillin to treat infections in wounded soldiers. With help from Selman Waksman from Rutgers University, Merck streamlined a process for penicillin production. By 1943, New Jersey-based companies, including Merck, Squib and Pfizer, started mass production of the drug, and by 1945 it was produced at a phenomenal rate of nearly 7 trillion units per month.
At the same time, malaria was killing off American troops in the South Pacific, whereby 1942 infections were a bigger threat than combat-related injuries. Once again, it was New Jersey-based companies that ensured a steady supply of the drug (atabrine) used to treat soldiers infected with malaria.
In a yet another example, onchocerciasis, commonly known as river blindness, a parasitic disease, once plagued millions of people in more than 35 countries around the globe. The drug ivermectin was discovered at New Jersey-based Merck as a highly effective treatment. In October 2015, Dr. William Campbell, currently at Drew University in Madison, was awarded the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for his early work on ivermectin.
…
In spite of past success and the present wealth of resources and talent in the field, New Jersey continues to lose leadership and high-paying jobs to life sciences hubs elsewhere. Compounding this problem is the continuing decline in funding of life sciences research by the National Institutes of Health. In the face of declining federal funding, local companies’ financial support of academic research became a key to continued growth in the field. Unfortunately, industry-level investment in academic research is declining as well, as many of the larger companies in the area undergo consolidations, move operations abroad and outsource their research and development programs.
The current fiscal environment necessitates implementing new business models to sustain life sciences programs and maintain the state’s position as a global leader in pharmaceutical research. Unfortunately, we are trailing other states in addressing the issue.
On a related note, from the WP:
What you will pay — but executives won’t — if Pfizer moves to Ireland
@PoliticalGroove:
Jeb Bush admits he would kill baby Hitler, but not until after he was born, keeping his pro life status.
Scum of the earth. They should be outlawed from conducting business in the United States because they are considered a “parasite”. Suck this country dry till there is nothing left. Then they will move on to the next victim. Nothing more than parasites. Don’t create anything, just suck it dry.
“The answer was simple: Many of the visas are given out through a lottery, and a small number of giant global outsourcing companies had flooded the system with applications, significantly increasing their chances of success. While he had one application in last year’s lottery and lost, one of the outsourcing companies applied for at least 14,000. The companies were squeezing out American employers like his boss.”
Let’s line them up and shoot them. Let’s go! These scumbags (executives)now have sucked all the workers dry and thrown the American taxpayer down the drain, now they are going after the only thing left, sucking the small time investors dry? Are they f.u.c.k.i.n.g. serious? There is no length they will go to chase profit, even if it means screwing every single person around them except for themselves. This can’t keep up, they are single handily destroying our economy and society. PARASITES!
grim says:
November 10, 2015 at 7:45 am
On a related note, from the WP:
What you will pay — but executives won’t — if Pfizer moves to Ireland
[1] grim:
1. bus stops frequently.
2. 10 people getting on the bus are held up by the 3rd person getting on either a.) adding money to their card (only cash can be added on a bus), or worse yet b.) paying in cash which is usually enough dimes and nickels to add up to $2.10.
This year instead of riding my bike both ways to work (about 9 miles each way), I ride my bike slightly in the wrong direction two miles in the morning (but almost completely down hill, so it only takes about 10 minutes, even on an MTB) and then put my bike on the front rack of the bus for the ride to work. This takes about 10 minutes longer than riding to work, but it is a net time gain because I don’t need a shower when I get there. I see the above and it drives me crazy to see poor and old people holding up the bus by paying cash because it not only wastes time, but they are paying 40% more per trip ($2.10 cash, $1.60 on a stored value card). Senior citizens can get a stored value card where it’s only 80 cents a trip. Think how much extra cat food they could buy!
Thinking about self-driving cars in a little more detail – is this really any different from a bus?
BTW, I poo-pooed the idea of self-driving cars until I considered the advantages of one that can really self-drive with no passenger. It could drop me off in the city, then go and park someplace free until I call it back with an app.
[9] quoted fares are for Boston.
EDITORIAL: Don’t blame it all on politicians
http://www.app.com/story/opinion/editorials/2015/11/07/new-jersey-voter-turnout/75316458/?from=global&sessionKey=&autologin=
For those of us who were disappointed that the Democrats — the party in Trenton that seems less willing to do something about confiscatory property taxes — picked up at least three more seats in the Legislature, there is just one place to point the finger of blame: New Jersey residents themselves.
Not only was voter turnout abysmal, but the level of ignorance about the election and what was at stake was appalling. A Rutgers-Eagleton poll taken just prior to last week’s vote found that three quarters of Garden State residents were completely unaware that elections were about to be held. Only 6 percent knew that Assembly seats were on the ballot. And even fewer were able to name even one state senator.
oter turnout last week hit an all-time low for a November election, with fewer than one in four registered voters casting ballots. More than one in six eligible voters failed to do so.
Last week’s dismal turnout continued a pattern of record-low turnouts in the past few election cycles. To some extent, the apathy is understandable given the lack of true competition, particularly in state legislative and congressional races, where redistricting has made a mockery of the democratic process.
In last year’s congressional elections, all 12 incumbents won handily. The narrowest margin of victory was Tom MacArthur’s 10.5 percentage margin in the 3rd District. Only one other race was decided by fewer than 17 percentage points.
Redistricting also has taken a heavy toll on competitiveness in state legislative races. Over the past eight years — four election cycles involving 320 individual races — only six incumbents have been defeated.
That is not a recipe for change in a state badly in need of it, particularly when it comes to tax policies, which continue to crush the middle class.
Our recent “Tax Crush” series called on the state’s legislators to sign a pledge committing themselves to taking steps when they return in November to reduce New Jersey’s highest-in-the-nation property taxes by 10 percent. Most of the Republicans in both the Senate and Assembly signed it. The majority of Democrats, including the two who matter the most — Senate President Steve Sweeney and Assembly Speaker Vincent Prieto — did not.
Rather, both have said that replenishing the Transportation Trust Fund will be the top priority when they return to Trenton this week after 18 weeks of legislative inactivity. That, of course, will likely involve raising the gasoline tax. Raising taxes is what Democrats in Trenton do best. And who’s going to stop them? Certainly not the 95 percent of New Jersey residents who aren’t paying enough attention to realize they might have been able to do something about it by voting on Election Day.
ASBURY PARK PRESS
EDITORIAL: Election 2015 post-mortem
Sweeney and Prieto, who last week were chosen by their caucuses to lead them again in the new legislative session, decide which bills advance. Virtually none of the bills introduced by Republicans in recent years that could help reduce taxes have even gotten a hearing in committee.
And this is the party that, after Tuesday’s election, will now enjoy at least a 51-28 advantage in the Assembly and maintain its 24-16 advantage in the Senate.
Is there any hope for property tax relief? This year, perhaps not. But if citizens start doing what citizens are supposed to do — staying informed, holding representatives accountable and getting involved — things can change in a hurry.
The entire Legislature will be up for election in 2017. By the middle of next year, gubernatorial hopefuls will begin making their push to succeed Gov. Chris Christie. Learn their names. Those courting votes on the Democratic side likely will include Sweeney, state Sen. Ray Lesniak, Assemblyman John Wisniewski, Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop and Philip Murphy of Middletown, former ambassador to Germany and a major Democratic fundraiser.
On the Republican side, Assembly Leader Jon Bramnick and Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno, Senate Republican Leader Tom Kean Jr. and Assemblyman Mike Doherty all are weighing their options.
It isn’t too soon to start contacting them and demanding property tax relief and initiative and referendum. Email them. Call them. Tell them your stories. Organize like-minded people. Contact like-minded groups in other parts of the state. Use the power of social media. Use the power granted you in a democracy.
Stay in their face. Then, maybe things will change.
“Medicine Chest” is a euphemism for Crack Ho?
NEW JERSEY, long known as the “Medicine Chest of the Nation,”
We’ve not lost our pharma competitiveness, it’s just shifted from Rx to Heroin, following market demand. Our Heroin industry is doing very well, thankyouverymuch. We’ve streamlined supply chain, cut out the middle man, architected what is a nearly ideal sales and distribution model…
“@PoliticalGroove:
Jeb Bush admits he would kill baby Hitler, but not until after he was born, keeping his pro life status.”
@Libturd: Hilary would allow baby Hitler to live with a sizable enough contribution to the Clinton Foundation.
Add it all up, and Goldman Sachs has directly contributed a minimum of $2.6 million to the Clinton political empire, while its top executives and alumni maintain close ties to the Clintons themselves. They’re definitely ready for Hillary. Are you?
Pumpkin and his proletariat buds need only address one question: if a certain cohort of society wants out, are they the problem or is it something in society?
Apparently some frogs are smart enough to hop out of the pot.
[18] Nom – September 2020 & 22 will be the likely graduation dates of our two daughters from Boston Latin (youngest just took the exam on Saturday). This school might be on the list(a new twist on “going back east for college”):
http://www.yale-nus.edu.sg/
Apparently some frogs are smart enough to hop out of the pot.
grim -your model has eliminated qa qc not to mention regulatory compliance.
It’s cheaper to deal with the resultant litigation through private settlement.
“…With help from Selman Waksman from Rutgers University, Merck streamlined a process for penicillin production. By 1943, New Jersey-based companies, including Merck….”
For historical accuracy let’s note that “NJ based Merck” was nothing of the such.
It was the US subsidiary of the oldest pharmaceutical company in the world, Merck KGaA, founded in the 1600s in Germany by Emmanuel Merck.
That is until the US nationalized the subsidiary without competition during WW1.
And for good measure the US made sure that the appropriated business had rights to the Merck’s name in the US, so that even to this day the original Merck cannot use its name here.
Go USA, yea.
without *compensation*
Hmmm…..ZQZ5 is looking like a December Fed rate hike is a lock, but proprietary indicators indicate otherwise. False flag?
I’m thinking:
1. Falling stock market leading up to the Fed meeting (with some excellent blue chip buying opportunities)
2. Santa Claus rally that gets ignited when the Fed fails to raise once again.
I’m in the wrong business……
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-09/lifeguards-get-pensions-at-age-45-they-do-in-atlantic-city
[24] Heh-heh. That “No More Monopoly” chart was cleverly named.
A self driving car is like a taxi, but with chips and sensors replacing the driver, and opening up an extra seat. Not like a bus that has to follow a predefined route.
In theory buses could also be self driving.
I think the biggest economic benefit would come from long haul trucking, where the labor cost for 10 years of drivers is much higher than the cost of the equipment, where accidents could be reduced, fuel efficiency could be increased (improving another important cost). The problem is dealing with the docking and loading operations, which would have to be pushed on to the shipping customers more completely.
Railroads would have even more benefits from self-driving vehicles, and even better, they operate on pretty much a closed circuit, having to deal with much fewer external obstacles. But one big barrier to that change is the rail labor unions (government passenger and private freight unions).
Grim just wants a 1982 Pontiac Firebird that has a snarlky computer voice, so he can wear his leather pants, and jump out of the t-tops.
Where I work this would be instant termination…..
http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2015/11/09/philadelphia-police-officers-sleeping-on-the-job-now-under-investigation/#.VkEbax4zxxY.twitter
From yesterday,
It’s coming. It will be disguised as something else. It can also come in a financially deniable form. It will be “phased in” a little at a time, yet increasing in intensity as it gains momentum. It will become socially acceptable. Another article from WP posted below- no S. Security or Medicare for these guys. Raise the age to collect, deny healthcare, add a pinch of stress, the burden of the 2 income household trap, job insecurity, and the ” grandfathering” of certain age groups that are more entitled than others (Rubio). I agree with Grim, give the Millennials a chance- the cretins running the show now certainly have not done a good job…..
Splat What Was He Thinking says:
November 9, 2015 at 6:56 am
Let’s put death panels back on the table.
the link
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/a-group-of-middle-aged-american-whites-is-dying-at-a-startling-rate/2015/11/02/47a63098-8172-11e5-8ba6-cec48b74b2a7_story.html
Since we are talking about Pharma today, much of the Metro Pharma industry benefitted from Salk and Sabian not patenting their Polio vaccines. They gave it away for the benefit of man. Much to the chagrin of Ragnar. Score one for Pumkin? Remember talking to guys making the vaccine, and the initial thought back in the 50’s was that Polio was transmitted by ice cream. The thought process was that Polio spiked in the summer months and what do kids do in the summer? eat ice cream. In reality Ive been told, it was the pools where the disease would spread.
The End Is Nigh (Millennial Drug Use Edition):
PATASKALA, Ohio — Police in central Ohio say an 8-year-old girl was caught trying to smoke marijuana by lighting a plastic baggie of it in a restroom at her elementary school, and they’re working to determine where she got it.
Police in Pataskala, east of Columbus, report the girl tried to discard the marijuana in a trash can and toilet when a school employee found her last week. Investigators recovered some of the discarded marijuana and a lighter, but no drug paraphernalia.
The girl was suspended, and children’s services officials got involved in the case.
Pataskala police Chief Bruce Brooks tells The Advocate newspaper in nearby Newark that it’s fortunate the girl didn’t really understand how to light and smoke the marijuana.
The superintendent says the school district is working with police.
30 – I guess their white privilege is killing them.
re # 30- old news…..
re # 29 – “It will become socially acceptable.”
Sarah Palin coined death panel too…..
ROFL!
The board of directors of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve has chosen Neel Kashkari to be its next president effective on Jan. 1. Kashkari, 42, worked for Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson in the run-up and aftermath of the financial crisis and later ran for governor of California as a Republican. Before joining the government, he worked at Goldman Sachs. He worked for Pimco after leaving Treasury. Kashkari will replace Narayana Kocherlakota, a leading dove on the U.S. central bank, who announced last year that he would leave the Minneapolis Fed when his term ended in early 2016. Kashkari will not be a voting member of the Fed policy committee until 2017.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/minneapolis-fed-names-ex-tarp-chief-kashkari-as-new-president-2015-11-10
Irony Alert!!!
From a BNA story on comment letters received by IRS in response to NPRMs for the Obamacare Cadillac Tax:
“In its comment letter, the OPM said that as the tax currently stands, administering it would likely lead to a reduction or elimination of benefits for employees in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program. The result would not only impact those employees in the program, but would also ‘affect the ability of the agencies to recruit and retain a world class workforce.'”
[36] Juice,
Was it that expensive to change the initials “NK” on everything?
Dollar-Euro parity almost at hand. I think I will start putting some funny, colored paper in the safe in case I want to go to Europe this summer.
#3, H1B problem in a nutshell. We aren’t bringing over the top grads or even keeping grads from our top schools we are bringing over cannon fodder. H1B program brings over few exceptional candidates and mostly low level people who the slave shops can work to death with risk of deportation as a motivation to to work hard. I’m all for bringing in the top people and allowing them to work in this country but pretty much anyone working for Infosys, cognizant, etc are not top anything they are cheap labor who compete and take jobs away from US citizens.
[28] I saw this once in Boston, but it was even more blatant. It was a very hot July week day either in 2002 or 2003, probably about 95 degrees outside. Despite the heat, I took the baby out for a walk, but where? I decided the very shaded cemetery just down the street might be the best place for today. Way in the back of the hilly cemetery, not visible from anyplace external to this part of the cemetery, I stumbled on a running police cruiser, windows rolled up, A/C on. One cop sleeping across the front seat and the other sleeping across the back seat.
Where I work this would be instant termination…..
http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2015/11/09/philadelphia-police-officers-sleeping-on-the-job-now-under-investigation/#.VkEbax4zxxY.twitter
[41] expat,
It’s a huge problem nationally, made even more so by the very structure of police compensation schemes.
My father used to work “details” and “extras” that paid him very well, well above the hourly average for his regular shift. Cops also work a lot of overtime, especially during the window for calculating pensions.
So they work all these extra hours, meaning they are almost never home. When do they sleep? Well, you answered it. It’s one reason I almost never sweat it when I spot a cop in the median. It could be a speed trap or he could be catching 40 winks.
back to the salt mine but some NJ-based news that affects some of you who fly out NNJ
http://www.cnbc.com/2015/11/10/us-government-seeks-to-block-united-airlines-from-acquiring-newark-slots.html
It doesn’t always have to be about money, but unfortunately, money takes over most people. If they were like the capitalists filled with greed, who knows how much it would have cost for a polio vaccine, and how many lives lost for no other reason than greed. Just think what we do with food. There is more than enough food for the whole population, unfortunately, money talks and bs walks. So people without the resources watch their kids die due to starvation.
Sometimes, economics makes no sense, it’s based on bs principles. When there are enough resources like food to go around, yet millions are starving, how are the laws of scarcity in economics working efficiently? It’s giving a ton of extra resources (food) to a population that wastes it for no other good reason besides they have the money to waste it. That makes a whole lot of sense.
Good ol supply and demand doing a horrible job of allocating resources to the general public. Isn’t that the purpose of supply and demand, to provide resources in an efficient manner based on scarcity? Always, under this model, too much goes to the top where it’s wasted, while the bottom gets almost nothing. That’s some amazing model based on efficiency, let me tell you. Something efficient would not result in waste.
walking bye says:
November 10, 2015 at 11:53 am
Since we are talking about Pharma today, much of the Metro Pharma industry benefitted from Salk and Sabian not patenting their Polio vaccines. They gave it away for the benefit of man. Much to the chagrin of Ragnar. Score one for Pumkin? Remember talking to guys making the vaccine, and the initial thought back in the 50′s was that Polio was transmitted by ice cream. The thought process was that Polio spiked in the summer months and what do kids do in the summer? eat ice cream. In reality Ive been told, it was the pools where the disease would spread
To be honest Philly PD has been studied for this same issue.
Study: Forty percent of cops, including Philly officers, have a sleep disorder
By Carolyn Beeler
A new study shows that forty percent of police officers have a sleep disorder, at least double the rate estimated among the general public. Those with trouble sleeping were more likely to suffer from heart disease, diabetes, and depression.
One-third of the more than 600 Philadelphia police officers who participated in the survey had obstructive sleep apnea, the most common of the sleep disorders.
“From the public’s point of view, one of the findings that concerned us most was that those who had a sleep disorder had a much higher rate, about 25 percent higher, of expressing uncontrolled anger toward suspects or citizens,” said Dr. Charles Czeisler, an author of the study and chief of the Division of Sleep Medicine at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. “And 35 percent higher odds of having a citizen complaint filed against them.”
Nationwide, one in four police officers reported falling asleep behind the wheel at least one time per month.
The study tracked nearly 5,000 police officers in the U.S. and Canada from 2005 to 2007. Sleep apnea rates among Philadelphia’s police officers were similar to the national average.
In Massachussets, where state police have paid time off to work out and must pass fitness tests, rates of sleep apnea were much lower than average.
Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey said the results of the study did not surprise him.
“Until criminals take normal hours we won’t be able to do that either,” Ramsey said. “I certainly can’t say we’re going to put everybody on straight days with weekends off.”
Ramsey said he wants to bolster the department’s wellness program, encouraging exercise and healthier eating to reduce obesity rates. Being overweight is a primary cause of sleep apnea.
Czeisler said the Fraternal Order of Police in Philadelphia has been at the forefront of addressing the sleep needs of its members, a focus dating back to the 1980s when Czeisler worked with the FOP to modify and eventually do away with what he called a “grueling” shift rotation schedule.
Thinking about self-driving cars..
http://fortune.com/2015/11/09/tesla-autopilot-backseat-driver/
Yup, if cops want to work a 2nd job privately… feel free. But if it affects the performance of your primary job, one must quit or be first (ha ha on the latter).
And the setup where departments run the private OT through the department officially is crazy. Is the cop on duty or off duty? (cops are “always” on duty) Do they have their full police powers in a private security setting? Are they truly working for the public or the private company?
Etc etc etc
Comrade Nom Deplume, the anon-tidote says:
November 10, 2015 at 1:31 pm
[41] expat,
It’s a huge problem nationally, made even more so by the very structure of police compensation schemes.
My father used to work “details” and “extras” that paid him very well, well above the hourly average for his regular shift.
That’s the bottom line, this is not helping the American population, it is hurt the majority except for the few that benefit from paying the low wages. Everyone else is worse off from this, from the workers that have to compete for lower wages to the small businessmen that have customers with less money in their pocket to spend on goods. All suffer except the few that benefit from paying the low wages.
jcer says:
November 10, 2015 at 1:00 pm
#3, H1B problem in a nutshell. We aren’t bringing over the top grads or even keeping grads from our top schools we are bringing over cannon fodder. H1B program brings over few exceptional candidates and mostly low level people who the slave shops can work to death with risk of deportation as a motivation to to work hard. I’m all for bringing in the top people and allowing them to work in this country but pretty much anyone working for Infosys, cognizant, etc are not top anything they are cheap labor who compete and take jobs away from US citizens.
Everybody send Neel Kashkari a congrats on LinkedIn for his new job yet?
The Supreme Court ruled Monday that officers are immune from lawsuits unless it is “beyond debate” that a shooting was unjustified and clearly unreasonable.
http://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/high-court-makes-it-harder-to-sue-police-for-using-deadly-force-in-chases/
wouldn’t be a bad thing if these a-holes in robes drove off a cliff in the near future
tweet from Kash n Karry.
Neel Kashkari (@neelkashkari)
Apr 5, 2013
Sorry Japan, printing money is morphine. makes u feel better but doesn’t cure. BOJ Unveils Bold Bid to End Deflation
Say what they will publicly, they all know kicking the can down the road is the only game allowed.
Now that’s funny coming from this guy. Let’s see if he feels the same way after a year in his new position.
Juice Box says:
November 10, 2015 at 2:02 pm
tweet from Kash n Karry.
Neel Kashkari (@neelkashkari)
Apr 5, 2013
Sorry Japan, printing money is morphine. makes u feel better but doesn’t cure. BOJ Unveils Bold Bid to End Deflation
Who wants to be CC’s neighbor?
http://www.nj.com/entertainment/celebrities/index.ssf/2015/11/chris_christie_home_for_sale_mendham.html#incart_river
Two married Indians working here on H1 are still doing better than 90% of US citizens. Last year, I replaced an Indian guy from a big H1 consulting shop who ended up at a new job in JC. Just bought 900k home in Berkley Heights. Two good earning slaves still beat one US worker with SAHW. Understand the cultural shift going on. Jersey City is filled with middle office and back office H1 people. That works very well when the tech-dev teams are in India. It is a cultural win-win. Same language, religion, desperate to please attitude. I wager better opportunities exist for Indians on H1 than average white male in Hudson County.
55, that’s because Indians by and large are racist, it may be a cultural shift but that’s not my experience. I’ve had to fight with Indian management who just wants to hire an Indian over a clearly more qualified African American developer(because the Caste system is alive and well among Indians). I have friends who tried to get H1B’s for qualified people who were from Europe just like the article in NYTIMES, masters in CS from accredited universities in Europe who could not, they lost their best employees. I don’t dislike Indians and have many Indian friends and coworkers who are good at what they do but the narrative in my mind is that on H1B there are more bad than good coming from India. Also it isn’t eager to please, it is always say yes even when you mean no.
The thing is the demand for tech personnel means high wages especially in a high cost area like NY, most non H1B’s take home 30-50% more in salary for a comparable job and are not required to work as many hours. It’s all about the lure of cheap offshore labor and the people needed onshore to make it work. It’s not terribly effective in any sense and damaging to the US economy. The program needs to be ended immediately and replaced with a program that grants work visa’s solely based on pay, if you have a job that pays more than X you get a visa. I’d say in the major metro area’s int he US if you set the minimum at 150k base salary it would be fair, it’s a little more than 20% higher than the average developer salary. That to me says you are above average which is what we should be taking.
The H-1B visa madness has reached epidemic proportions. I walk through our buildings and feel like I’m walking through India. Virtually all the American workers have been wiped out over the last 5-8 years.
Very few politicians (as in, less than 10 nationally) understand the problem — either because they’re bribed, or are simply morons. Hillary Clinton, Rubio, Ted Cruz, Obama, all of them want to increase foreign workers using H-1B visas exponentially.
These are high-paying American jobs of $100,000 or more, being deliberately and systematically wiped out, and no one is doing a thing to stop it.
My firm have some Indians that we sponsored for green cards after they went to grad school in the US, and they have been irreplaceably good. Did things that native born people failed to do.
The world economy is globally competitive. The best people, they can beat you here, and at least contribute to the success of US firms, Or they can beat you from abroad, helping your foreign competitors.
I know which alternative I prefer.
I prefer to allow anyone into the US who will work to support themselves. Because people working to produce useful goods and services is what expands economies.
Oh Ragnar, you are incredible!!
For you, even primates understand what you can’t
https://youtu.be/meiU6TxysCg
So Ragnar, that is how the rioting will start, usually ending up with someone’s head in the Guillotines.
“Good ol supply and demand doing a horrible job of allocating resources to the general public”
Horrible versus your imaginary perfect allocation of resources managed by your gestapo? See Cuba, N. Korea, Venezuela, and the old USSR for your alternative allocation system. When is the last time you’ve dealt with a shortage or rations?
“much of the Metro Pharma industry benefitted from Salk and Sabian not patenting their Polio vaccines. They gave it away for the benefit of man. Much to the chagrin of Ragnar.”
And they did benefit man, thanks to private companies taking those ideas and investing money in production plants, people, and distribution, and selling the vaccine, basically ending the disease. Look around the world where curable diseases fail to be eradicated, because the government is in charge of the job.
It’s always amusing to see Americans blame private enterprise for anything that doesn’t live up to their non-commercial imagined fantasy lands.
I remember about 15 years ago interviewing for Satyam an outsourcing firm. They had one caucasian IBMer and needed a couple more for the sales pitch. But man alive. I felt sleezy as hell just considering the nature of the work. I never bit and the stock climbed and eventually imploded in spectacular fashion. Ah good times.
Driver less taxi
Tesla will challenge Uber soon, says Morgan Stanley
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/tesla-will-challenge-uber-soon-says-morgan-stanley-2015-11-10?dist=afterbell
“BTW, I poo-pooed the idea of self-driving cars until I considered the advantages of one that can really self-drive with no passenger. It could drop me off in the city, then go and park someplace free until I call it back with an app.”
Body cam allegedly shows driver’s hands up when La. cops fatally shoot 6-year-old
The officers are being held on $1M bond
Yesterday at 12:54 PM
By Michael Kunzelman
Associated Press
MARKSVILLE, La. — A police body camera recorded the father of a 6-year-old autistic boy with his hands up and posing no threat as police fired into his car, severely wounding the motorist and killing his son, the man’s lawyer said Monday.
Derrick Stafford, 32, of Mansura, and Norris Greenhouse Jr., 23, of Marksville, were ordered held on $1 million bonds Monday on second-degree murder and attempted second-degree murder charges, Jeansonne said.
Louisiana’s state police chief, Col. Mike Edmonson, said Friday that “it’s the most disturbing thing I’ve seen — and I will leave it at that.”
63,
That Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas sniffs the seat of the Tesla when Musk gets up out of it. He’s clearly angling to be the Blodget 2.0 for Tesla. Lord knows they will need bankers given their cash burn and their perpetually missed financial/operational promises.
Rags, come on, you can’t be this naive in your understanding of economics. Globalization is a bunch of bs. It’s totally inefficient and a total waste of resources. A 100 years from now, the history books will laugh at the capitalists wasting energy on producing bottles to put water in and waste even more energy on shipping it around the world. Capitalism sure leads to some amazing things like totally pissing away fossil fuels for a quick buck. Profit solves all, huh? No waste whatsoever, huh rags?
Ragnar says:
November 10, 2015 at 4:02 pm
My firm have some Indians that we sponsored for green cards after they went to grad school in the US, and they have been irreplaceably good. Did things that native born people failed to do.
The world economy is globally competitive. The best people, they can beat you here, and at least contribute to the success of US firms, Or they can beat you from abroad, helping your foreign competitors.
I know which alternative I prefer.
I prefer to allow anyone into the US who will work to support themselves. Because people working to produce useful goods and services is what expands economies.
Put it this way, globalization will always lead to waste. It also will always lead to someone always being exploited in the race to the bottom. There will always be a country filled with people desperate enough to do it for less. How is that good for anyone? Gotta love races to the bottom.
67- So just as fast as globalized capitalism has improved the world’s living standard, is just how fast globalized capitalism will lead to a lower living standard for the majority. What do you think is happening? Massive income inequality is basically nothing more than the lowering of the living standard for the majority so that the few can have a lot more.
Oh come on already, stop using dictatorships aka military gangs as examples for your arguments. Horrible examples. They took everything for themselves, and left the people of their countries to share a very limited amount of resources. Just enough to keep them alive, but desperate and weak. This is how you control a population as a dictator. You don’t make their life easy, you make them scared for their life. So why you use these countries as examples of social!sm is beyond me. Social!st aspects of govt are for the greater good, not for the greater harm.
And your second argument below makes no sense. So you are saying they discovered the vaccine for polio, gave it away for free, and these other dudes decided to take the free gift and make money off everyone else?
Ragnar says:
November 10, 2015 at 4:46 pm
“Good ol supply and demand doing a horrible job of allocating resources to the general public”
Horrible versus your imaginary perfect allocation of resources managed by your gestapo? See Cuba, N. Korea, Venezuela, and the old USSR for your alternative allocation system. When is the last time you’ve dealt with a shortage or rations?
“much of the Metro Pharma industry benefitted from Salk and Sabian not patenting their Polio vaccines. They gave it away for the benefit of man. Much to the chagrin of Ragnar.”
And they did benefit man, thanks to private companies taking those ideas and investing money in production plants, people, and distribution, and selling the vaccine, basically ending the disease. Look around the world where curable diseases fail to be eradicated, because the government is in charge of the job.
It’s always amusing to see Americans blame private enterprise for anything that doesn’t live up to their non-commercial imagined fantasy lands.
Two monkeys paid equal wages could type more sense than pumps.
Rags, I’m not here to throw punches. I changed my stance on global warming and the Abbott districts, tell me why I’m wrong about globalization.
Ragnar says:
November 10, 2015 at 8:30 pm
Two monkeys paid equal wages could type more sense than pumps.
Globalization is good for economies with lowers costs of labor than those with higher costs of labor.
Pretty good read.
“8. With the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, globalization leads to huge US balance of trade deficits and other imbalances.
With increased globalization and the rising price of oil since 2002, the US trade deficit has soared (Figure 10). Adding together amounts from Figure 10, the cumulative US deficit for the period 1980 through 2011 is $8.6 trillion. By the end of 2012, the cumulative deficit since 1980 is probably a little over 9 trillion.
A major reason for the large US trade deficit is the fact that the US dollar is the world’s “reserve currency.” While the mechanism is too complicated to explain here, the result is that the US can run deficits year after year, and the rest of the world will take their surpluses, and use it to buy US debt. With this arrangement, the rest of the world funds the United States’ continued overspending. It is fairly clear the system was not put together with the thought that it would work in a fully globalized world–it simply leads to too great an advantage for the United States relative to other countries. Erik Townsend recently wrote an article called Why Peak Oil Threatens the International Monetary System, in which he talks about the possibility of high oil prices bringing an end to the current arrangement.
At this point, high oil prices together with globalization have led to huge US deficit spending since 2008. This has occurred partly because a smaller portion of the population is working (and thus paying taxes), and partly because US spending for unemployment benefits and stimulus has risen. The result is a mismatch between government income and spending (Figure 11, below).
Thanks to the mismatch described in the last paragraph, the federal deficit in recent years has been far greater than the balance of payment deficit. As a result, some other source of funding for the additional US debt has been needed, in addition to what is provided by the reserve currency arrangement. The Federal Reserve has been using Quantitative Easing to buy up federal debt since late 2008. This has provided a buyer for additional debt and also keeps US interest rates low (hoping to attract some investment back to the US, and keeping US debt payments affordable). The current situation is unsustainable, however. Continued overspending and printing money to pay debt is not a long-term solution to huge imbalances among countries and lack of cheap oil–situations that do not “go away” by themselves”
http://ourfiniteworld.com/2013/02/22/twelve-reasons-why-globalization-is-a-huge-problem/
The comments section of that article is also superb. This is a comment describing what I posted in #68 about how globalization raising the living standards quickly and then dropping it just as quickly. Our resident Clot is prob dead on when he says we will be walking the wilderness in the not too distant future.
“I’m afraid that your analysis is that of a One-Issue observer, true up to a point. We are discussing a much more complex situation than the mere ‘elimination of poverty’.
Another word for this perspective of yours is, I’m afraid, tunnel-vision. People talked like this in the 19thc when they contemplated the benfits of industrialism: you might try reading some of that literature, so full of somewhat naive excitement and hope, backed by statistics – it’s salutory. They missed the environmental calaculation, too. ‘People are being fed, clothed, have gas light, trains to travel on, how wonderful!’ They also said things like: ‘We are so interdependent now (c 1900) it would be irrational to go to war……’
Yes, many people are leading what seem to be objectively better lives. But you could also look at it like this: a rich friend with whom I was at College invites me to a top-class restaurant in the smartest district of town. Feeling rather shabby, I borrow some money to buy some smarter town clothes. I feel safe in doing this, as business is, if modest, good, based on clients who themselves live off credit but who are reasnably confident. Their limousine picks me up at the station and I am wafted to the restaurant. The meal is superb, sourced from all over the world; we relax with post-prandial cognacs, the world seem rosey. This is where one should be, this is modern life! We think of our peasant grandmothers and toast them: if only they could see us!!
The next week, my modest business goes bust and I can’t meet my debt obligation, incurred for a few hours of pleasure, as my clients get swept up in a sudden financial collapse. My rich friend goes bust as he didn’t believe such a thing possible and made no practical preparations feling rich enough to face anything. Instead of fine wines, we now drink water of doubtful quality and colour from an intermittent supply, and stand in line at a food bank, our good clothes are inappropriate to the new situation…..
And the point is, that is where modern life led us, directly; to a position no better than or even worse than that of our peasant grandmothers.
Many people in the world have been invited to a feast which will seem like a dream or fantasy when they awake, rather abruptly. We are perhaps at the tail-end of a great Delusion which has lasted some 200 years.”
74- This is the comment that he is responding to.
Xabier,
“How is this process of enrichment being fuelled?” About the same as in the US in the 1920s, with an adjustment for population size and density. Not perfect, but successful.
The elimination of poverty isn’t just an admirable idea; it is in the works, and while it may never be 100% finished, the progress is stunning. We are experiencing, right now, the greatest increase in standards of living, for the most people on earth, at any time in human history.
Go back and read that last sentence again.
• Billions of farmers have become factory workers, and their children can expect to go to school, and maybe find a job working with their brains, rather than their backs.
• Cheap and readily available global communication is now possible in places barely connected with neighboring villages only a few decades ago.
• Women are slowly winning the right to own their own property, to make their own decisions about marriage and work and to expect to see their children grow, learn and live a better life.
• Most important of all, through the poverty eradicating power of globalization we are making it much harder to reverse our way back into protectionism, confrontation and war.
Worldwide, the number of people living below the poverty line is today 500 million fewer than it was 30 years ago. Much more impressive is that this represents a decline from one-half of the global population to one-quarter.
In India, the share living in poverty has declined from 60% in the 1980s to barely 40% today. In China, there are 650 million fewer people in poverty, an absolute decline of more than 78%.
We are winning the war on poverty, but we don’t seem to acknowledge it. Because of 24-hour news and the always–on internet we know much more about greater portions of the world.
We see the problems more clearly, and so they seem larger. But, the fact is that we have turned the corner, and peoples lives are changing, for the better.
Gail Tverberg,
Jobs aren’t disappearing; rather, they are appearing in places where they are sorely needed. Remember, workers are workers, regardless of race, nationality or location
David,
The elimination of poverty isn’t just an admirable idea; it is in the works, and while it may never be 100% finished, the progress is stunning. We are experiencing, right now, the greatest increase in standards of living, for the most people on earth, at any time in human history.
I’m as eager as you or anyone else to see the reduction, and if possible the elimination, of global poverty. It’s for pragmatic as well as moral reasons: higher standards of living and opportunities for women, in particular, seem to be the only benign way to curb population growth. The alternative is genocide. That has undesirable side effects.
I’m less sanguine than you about the extent or durability of the gains in recent decades. I think some statistical measures would support your case, but those measures are dominated by GDP growth in China and handful of other rapidly developing nations. Growth in GDP does not necessarily translate to a better quality of life for average citizens. The 90/10 rule of thumb applies: 90% of the gains go to 10% of the population.
It’s also ironic to see China being cited as support for globalization, free trade, and open borders. China is far from that. If you want to do business in China, you will have to partner with a Chinese company, and the deal you strike will be structured to benefit that partner. If you want to build a factory to make products that will be sold primarily to foreign markets, approvals are easy. If you want to sell products made outside of China into the domestic Chinese market, good luck.
I don’t fault China for its policies. They make sense for China. But they aim to create exactly the sort of protected environment that I said was necessary in order to support endogenous economic growth. They exploit openness and lack of trade restrictions in the nations to which they export, but it is not a two-way street. It is almost the antithesis of globalization for the domestic Chinese market.
One other point worth mentioning: recall the pre-revolutionary China was long the victim of the type of exploitative forced globalization that I lamented in a prior comment. You probably know about the opium wars and the Boxer Rebellion, but anyone who doesn’t should look them up.
All of this is peripheral to the deeper economic issues of job creation in a time of rapidly increasing automation, or the collision between economic growth and finite resources that Gail writes about. I’d love to get into those, but it’s far too much for one comment.
popped in to see what was up after the devs game. chr1st, nine of the last 11. good night.
Gail Tverberg says:
February 27, 2013 at 11:16 am
If there are limits in total, globalization helps us reach them more quickly.
Jobs disappearing being replaced by a cheaper source aren’t necessarily replaced either. Richer countries find themselves going downhill quickly.
Xabier says:
February 28, 2013 at 6:21 am
The trend in the US, Britain, Japan, and Europe in general is for the majority of people to find new jobs at much lower wages, and often under-employed. The unskilled, the older workers, never find anything.
There is a steady and unremitting deterioration in progress.
These peopls and their families are then very vulnerable to the next economic shock, have fewer resources to prepare with, and so on.
In Argentina, skilled workers and managers became taxi drivers and storemen after the Crisis, then those jobs ceased to pay, and the growing generation turned increasingly to crime to survive, and drugs to assuage the pain of collapse: a cycle of about 10 years.
Now, does the creation of factory slave jobs in China really seem a hopeful development when this proces of destruction is occuring in the West (and indeed in Japan)?
Gail Tverberg says:
March 1, 2013 at 1:16 pm
It is sad, the way things are going. It becomes difficult for the older generation to depend on the younger generation, because the younger generation is having so much difficulty finding good-paying jobs.
“More fundamental than issues of “free markets” vs. protectionism, however, is the cultural dead end in which we’ve trapped ourselves. The celebration of competition and “winner take all” mentality can work in a world with unlimited capacity for growth. In a finite world, it’s a recipe for disaster.”
Read up on David Ricardo and comparative advantage. Global trade is good for the same reason interstate trade and intercity trade is good. Constraint of global trade was a key precursor to the great depression.
Ragnar, your pretty intelligent. I bet you have done well in the market. You think like a smart man.
‘Portlandia: Season Two’ : “Portlandia” is always that an all in one bit having to do with a phenomenon.and to Combining going to be the talents regarding “Saturday Night Live” cast member Fred Armisen and and Sleater-Kinney Wild Flag guitarist-singer Carrie Brownstein,a resource box possess surpassed all are expectations to explore communicate an incredibly in dimensions audience.as well as Building off to do with an all in one strong before anything else season,the show