I think emplotment is far from bottoming, just based on my own observations. The third-level knock-on effects are just starting to hit. Suppliers of suppliers of resilient industries are starting to go down.
This has not been a recovery, but a stabilization at current levels. Should we get another dip, it might be a decade until we recover the nominal levels of economic activity we had in 2006.
.....notice the Percent Job Losses Since WWII Recessions chart?........We're digging the longest, deepest hole we've ever dug for ourselves..........AND, we haven't reached the bottom of the hole YET!
This has not been a recovery, but a stabilization at current levels.
I wouldn't even go that far. Look at the employment graphs again. Tax revenue will continue to fall, entitlement costs will continue to rise. Economic activity will continue to decrease. You'll know things are picking up when companies start hiring. Any improvement before then might be a good sign, but nothing can be confirmed until employment stabilizes.
To be fair: this site is focused on real estate. Most of the damage has already been done to that sector and while it may fall a little further, we can begin to think in terms of a real estate recovery -- when the rest of the economy has stabilized. The problem is that the drop in employment and income has not played out in the other sectors of the economy, especially global trade. The next wave of bad news will come from outside the real estate area but still result in more turbulence in house prices.
To be fair: this site is focused on real estate. Most of the damage has already been done to that sector and while it may fall a little further, we can begin to think in terms of a real estate recovery
So, you think commercial RE is about as bad as it's going to get?
I don't know about that. I see the charts of delinquencies in residential real estate and they make me think there's much more damage to come. If FHA blows up, it'll be scary.
CRE depends on the 'available credit' of consumers for the retailers' storefront part of CRE and retail spending also depends (obviously) on consumers employment situation...the waves of bad news in retailing will be terrible for the 'Happy New Year'...undoubtedly
commercial RE is about as bad as it's going to get?
The damage has been done; people aren't putting up new hotels, malls and office buildings. Counting the cost to the banks will take four years or more. The loans are already underwater, it is just a matter of when (should I say if) they recognize that on their balance sheets.
The damage has been done; people aren't putting up new hotels, malls and office buildings. Counting the cost to the banks will take four years or more. The loans are already underwater, it is just a matter of when (should I say if) they recognize that on their balance sheets.
The damage has been done to the banks and the construction industry. But a lot of the owners of existing CRE have yet to go bankrupt. Then the distress sales can get going, and CRE should bottom.
The "initial" damage maybe; the "collateral" damage has only begun.
Yup. As I mentioned at the top, the collateral damage is just now hitting the most resilient - those companies that were in stable industries and not over-leveraged. Another round of layoffs coming.
Here's a funny one: for the last couple of months, a few calls and email have been trickling in from body shops, hoping that I could take a few bodies off their hands. Then last week, an email comes in with a new tactic:
Your competitors are hiring!!!11!! Better grab some bodies now before the good ones are gone!!
Yeah, right. Headhunters are taking a page from the Realtor's book.
How soon will we start getting a decent picture of what Christmas sales are going to be like? Are there any interim reports in November or December from which we can extrapolate? It seems this 4th quarter is pretty make or break for the "recovery".
How soon will we start getting a decent picture of what Christmas sales are going to be like?
Too bad CR doesn't have a chart of the canceled credit card accounts. If the information was available, it would probably look like the Delinquencies chart. Not a good sign for the holidays.
Usually the first meaningful holiday sales report comes the weekend after Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving.
Over-reliance upon debt is our fundamental problem, both at the government and the personal level. Public reliance upon bonds, and private reliance upon credit, have indentured us (both individuals and governments) to the banks. In turn we have created economic policies that rely upon inflation to provide debt relief. Until we curtail future spending, by generating real revenue that can cover our spending, we will be at the mercy of the banking system. The discussion from the last thread focusing on taxation and services brought to mind that asset values are now disconnected from the underlying REAL wealth of the market participants.
As an example: I am a state employee that is priced out of home ownership in California because excessive debt has inflated the cost of housing beyond the level that a revenue (wage) based budget could service. As has been observed on this blog for years, asset prices are disconnected from the underlying wealth of the market participants. Asset prices are no longer tied to real wealth, but are instead tied to debt. In this situation, if I am to then participate in the home buying market, i must either swallow the debt poison pill, or increase my real compensation from my employer (or multiple employers) to make it possible to participate in the market with real wealth. Competing in this market with real wealth is an unlikely scenario given the multiplier that debt leveraged buying provides its participants.
This is the same problem confronted by governments. Lets go back to my earlier example: Being that my employer is the state government, if I were to somehow push for higher compensation, I am pushing my dilemma onto the state, as they are going to have a higher payroll cost. The government must decide to either take on additional debt through bonds, or increase taxes to support higher payroll costs. Given that governments have been making the same poor choices that J6P is making, our governments have taken on increased debts, and debt servicing becomes an ever larger portion of government's costs (just as housing has become an ever larger percentage of individual monthly expenditures).
The fundamental problem is NOT that government is providing too much in the way services (the libertarian argument). Quite the opposite really, when you compare what we pay in the US for the poor level of services we receive compared to our European relatives. The problem is that the costs to provide those services have been distorted in the US due to the banks and associated politicians running a ponzi-debt based economy that can only continue forward with ever increasing debt and inflation. This is not sustainable economics, but as long as the taxpayers, consumers of inflated assets, and foreign central banks are the bagholders, we'll keep the system pumping right along. A return to a real wealth based economy, with debt far restricted, would create a more balanced economy, reduce asset prices and service costs. But to downshift from where we are to that would require a depression of epic proportions...lovely.
So the "solution", in short, is Eat More Debt! Until there's none left to eat.
A dose of reality. My position is that this will all take time to mend. Those that look for the next Q'rly fix will be disappointed.
Lets review tis in 3-5 years when things become some what normal. Till then its 10-12% unemployment, more ruin in the financial markets, slower or less social services and near but not always neg. GDP growth for the USA..
As an example: I am a state employee that is priced out of home ownership in California because excessive debt has inflated the cost of housing beyond the level that a revenue (wage) based budget could service.
Sorry. No. Just no. The "suffering State employee meme" just plain old don't go nowhere no more. The days of modest salary in exchange for security and benefits and retirement are long gone. State employees are uniformly over (total) compensated for the results produced.
My position is that this will all take time to mend.
Same here... if TPTB would do their jobs correctly. Unfortunately they're pushing us out of the frying pan and into the fire, and we won't get that time.
CR, you are like hedge fund manager John Paulson, who says that he is neither a bull nor a bear, but, instead, a realist. Society needs more realists, and fewer of the so-called "analysts" who are nothing more than shills, which analysts are as independent and impartial as the 3 guilded rating services.
Sometimes people say I'm too negative - but there are a few positive reports this month.
best wishes
CR- You are a Cornucopian Optimist, wedded to a BAU world.
That is why I visit this site, to see what main stream thinkers are up to.
It s a valuable perspective, and I appreciate your good work.
Dollars stores are so yesterday. I saw an new 99 cent store open up; the sign indicated that lots of items were just 69 cents. I didn't go in to see if it was true.
Sorry. No. Just no. The "suffering State employee meme" just plain old don't go nowhere no more.
I didn't take it that he was whining that state employees aren't compensated well enough. I think he was saying the average wage earner can't afford inflated home prices. I don't really see that as objectionable.
It is rather difficult to see how things could be increasing on a national level while they are still decreasing in an overwhelming number of states, including all the largest ones.
There sure are a lot of stats out lately that just don't jibe.
On the Employment Job Losses chart, we have just surpassed the previous post-WWII record holder, the recession of 1948 for the % of jobs lost, which was from an era when the economy was structurally very different, the manufacturing capacity of the rest of the world was in shambles, and there was bountiful, cheap energy...this time, things are different.
For the first time since the 1948 recession, personal income less government social benefits to persons has gone negative: energyecon: Yep, its that bad
And the job losses for the population as a whole as measured by EMRATIO are occurring at an accelerating pace on a year over year basis over a year and half into this recession: energyecon: EMRATIO - return to cliff diving?
CRE is going to go from outrageous valuations (from a very recent historical perspective) that are crushing the local & regional banking industry to pennies on the dollar...big investors are waiting for the Big Drop in values coming...Icahn concurs a CRE Crash is on the horizon...
"This is 3.6 percent (±10.2%)* below the revised August rate of 417,000 and is 7.8 percent (±12.0%)* below the September 2008 estimate of 436,000."
Numbers with double digit confidence bands are ,IMO, essentially useless especially when always revised from "better" to "worse" which shows bias. Stat 101 instructs that the way to reduce the band is to increase n - the sample size. Of course this would increase cost but what use is 3% +/- 10% which could equally be 13%==> (7%) (recall the midpoint of the range is NOT more likely than the tails - all points within the band are equally likely.
CalculatedRisk wrote:
Sometimes people say I'm too negative - but there are a few positive reports this month.
best wishes
CR- You are a Cornucopian Optimist, wedded to a BAU world.
That is why I visit this site, to see what main stream thinkers are up to.
It s a valuable perspective, and I appreciate your good work.
People who lack critical thinking skills believe that reporting bad news is the same as being negative. It's not. Bill - I can't tell if you take great pains to maintain neutrality or if you're just an even-keel kind of guy. Either way, you consistently provide an agenda-free news source in an age where egregious spin is the norm. If it were up to me, I'd award you a Pulitzer Prize for outstanding journalism.
Outsider, yes that was exactly my point. I'm nit whining about compensation at all. Rob Dawgs funademntal biases can't allow him to have a real conversation with people because as soon as he sees a trigger word he flies into his boiler plate anti govt rhetoric.
NOTE: I wasn't complaining about compensation. I was complaining that wages are no longer enough to compete for and aquire assets. Not until our overdendence upon debt is reduced.
From Bob Herbert, the NYTimes writer, nice edit on the grim reality for new grads. Notes that the vogue for "unpaid internships" effectively closes the door to many industries to grads without parents wealthy enough to support them in expensive cities like DC and NY, while the children of the rich are able to work for free, at least getting on-the-job experience and contacts. For the other 95%, welcome to the jobless future.
And check out the 500+ comments....bitterness, resignation, and plenty of advice that the best and the brightest out to leave the country and start their lives elsewhere.
absolutely Feckless,positive demeanor at all times,
and on the plus side, did you all know that Zecco trading is offering stock trades @ only $4.50per trade???
Lay off the Dawg, guys - not that he needs anyone coming to his defense. His anti-government worker meme is not personal. It's based on services received for taxes paid. I'm a government ee and I agree with him. We taxpayers pay plenty and we deserve good services in return.
Oh, a comment to the last thread. A thousand years ago I went
to Catholic school and a small class was 51; a big one was 55.
Yet we did manage to learn to read and write and do simple arithmetic.
I'm not sure I would have benefitted by smaller classes. The teachers
would have been forced to notice that i was reading my own book
behind the book we were supposed to be working on.
I went from a large public school in the Denver suburbs to a small one in the country. We had 30+ kids in the rooms all the way through and it didn't seem to be a particular burden either. Class size is often a red herring.
I know what you mean LL, I graduated HS from a Private School up in BC, that had a large class of 5. Really hard to fake it.
Barely got through after public.
SEC investigated Madoff and found all complaints were referred appropriately for investigation except one and it appeared there wouldn't be a follow-up because the complaint was 'non-specific' and 'anonymous.'
Other findings -
-Madoff Attempted To Impress and Intimidate Examiners. (pg. 200)
-Questions About Trade Executions and Clearance Were Never Resolved. (pg. 223)
-Madoff Failed To Produce Correspondence, E-mails, and Other Documents Requested by the Examiners. (pg. 201) Blacked Out http://www.sec.gov/news/studies/2009/oig-509.pdfPublic Version
I've been reading this blog for a long time and some of Dawgs comments can be spot on and somtimes even human. But he gets stuck in his filters too much.
The point I was trying to make is that debt is really distorting everything, not just house prices. In a way, the wage inflation for state workers is part and parcel of the same problem. I appreciate my salary and health care, though given my age, I don't expect to have a pension (that's worth anything) when I retire (gen X). The problem is that housing in my area is still 8-10 times the median family income (state and private incomes). Can't do that without debt. We're savers. But we just can't compete with that. Oh...and Rent Is 2k for a 2 bed.
Asian countries with school systems that rank highly all have pretty huge class sizes. Not sure when Americans decided that small class size is the route to better learning.
Electric calculators showed up for the masses in the mid 1970's, and then we stopped having to calculate math problems in the classroom, using our computers upstairs...
Computer advances upon us since then have dulled young minds much further~
jd
i had a problem with algebra,when i finally got to it, i didnt know how to use my calulator.told professor he should give classes in how to use the stupid thing.
I agree with Dawg.Those of us who have paid many years of premium taxes have grown tired to the fabricated poor me statement from public workers. Taxes, wages, benefits are totally out of whack with reality just like house prices are. They all have to be corrected.
listening to "the Ascent of money" very good going to listen to again.
one thing we need now is a historical ecnomicist. we ve done all this before, and just keep doing it over and over.
Computer advances upon us since then have dulled young minds much further
.
...LOL.......ask any high schooler nowadays to recite his multiplication tables.........he'll look at you like you're from outer space and then he'll get this fear of gawd "I've been caught" look on his sheepish face. And, some of our future leaders of America will instead of learning from the embarrassment, make the appropriate "Futch you Dood" or "Go Die Out, Old Man" comment, before walking off in the self-important "IB Bad" teenage strut.
SEC investigators were suspicious of Madoff throughout their investigation link cited above
-Madoff's Options Trading Was Not A Focus of the Examination (pg. 191)
-Madoff's Fee Structure Was Not A Focus of the Examination (pg. 192)
-The SEC Examined Madoff's Fee Structure Solely by Asking Madoff About It and Relying on His Response (pg. 192)
-Examiners Were Still Suspicious of Madoff's Unusually Consistent Returns at the End of the Examination (pg 190)
-The Account Numbers Madoff Produced Were Suspicious to Examiners (pg. 229)
We learned them up to 10 and also 12.
I was informed that my elders learned them up to ummmm, 15 or something.
While walking 5 miles to school uphill both ways in the sleet and snow,
varied only by 100 degree heat.
And there really was no a/c in grade or hs either. For real. We had
these big fans. . . . I wanna tell you it gets hot in the late spring and
early fall in Baltimore.
rif
used flash cards to teach my daughter
liz
walked to school in sandstorms funny thing about them just blew over and after school. and we always started the school After Labor day!
edit that should be before instead of over.
" Electric calculators showed up for the masses in the mid 1970's, and then we stopped having to calculate math problems in the classroom, using our computers upstairs...
Computer advances upon us since then have dulled young minds much further~ "
Son went to a maritime academy in 1981, which required a computer. I thought he should also be instructed in slide rule and navigation but was told that was passe. He is now a chief engineer, doing well, and can still do calculations without a computer. We still need people who can calculate the old fashioned way. Computers are great but if they fail someone needs to be able to use calculations that will steer the ship.
just another lurker
ive been hearing stories about a new new math,please tell me it isnt so. that was the worst thing poor kids couldnt even make change. business frowned upon that.
As bad as CR's employment graph looks, it looks much worse if you graph job losses as % of total employed. You can find that graph ( number 19) in a seriously pessimistic artile on "The Oil Drum" called "An Interview With Stoneleigh - the Case for Deflation" The Oil Drum: Europe | An interview with Stoneleigh - the case for deflation. I find Jenszen's arguments for inflation more compelling, but the article has some good points.
gabyjan (profile) wrote (in reply to...) on Sat, 10/31/2009 - 8:27 pm
rif
used flash cards to teach my daughter
Nothing better IMHO. That and spelling drills are the only way to really learn. I guess I'm old-fashioned. We also didn't learn "touch math" or spell-like-it-sounds sorts of trendy Ed.D. inspired nonsense. Math drills and phonics (rural midwest, late 80s and early 90s).
The Raven by memory was a requirement in Freshman English at the Jesuit HS I attended, lliz...an interesting experience as a non-Catholic and non-Christian...being unbaptized but earnestly engaged in discussions with the Frosh chaplain earned me the handle "Paganus Amistosus" (sp?)
"Good morning, good morning!" the General said,
When we met him last week on the way to the line.
Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of 'em dead,
And we're cursing his staff for incompetent swine.
"He's a cheery old card" grunted Harry to Jack,
As they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack.
But he did for them both with his plan of attack.
Part of the problem in the US is the % of kids acting out/just not ready to be in school in the lower grades & as you go up in grade, kids that just don't want to be in school or that particular class, are too high or too hungry or whatever to learn the material. The highschool I attended, due to the hiring of an idiot new school superintendent, got rid of its AP course equivalents as I started highschool (this is the tail end of the supposedly wonderful babyboom years). So my "good" classes were: (1) good teachers who also (2) made life miserable for the kids who didn't want to do the work so they either left or did the work. The other classes, either the teacher was horrible, or the teacher ended up teaching for the low achievers, for example, in junior year/11th grade English, working on vocabulary prep for the SAT for the students reading at 8th grade levels. The rest of us just got to be bored/amuse ourselves/figure out how to cut the class w/out suffering ill consquences.
If you are familiar with EMRATIO (civilian employment:population ratio), it is declining at an accelerating rate almost two years into the recession: energyecon: EMRATIO - return to cliff diving?
resistanceis feudal
i never got phonics.either they had just had it before i got there or they were going to have it when i left.
to this day i do not know how i taught my daughter to read when she was around 3. but we did the drills,spelling(write each word 10 times use it in a sentence correctly etc. we started on times tables
then she went to school and found out they didnt use them and never no more.
We had elderly teachers trying to explain set theory and base eight to second and third graders. It would have been utter chaos except that they also snuck in the old rote stuff at the end of the school year. I'm fine at making change, but that may be the influence of my Mother(who finished high school during the depression.)
We did do Venn diagrams in 8th grade and I still mentally use them
when reasoning. The hub tells me they are part of some sort of higher
math he was forced into and was very abstract at Hopkins.
The stories I used to hear about some of them . . . . slamming heads of misbehaving kids into blackboards, etc. Really seemed to depend on which Catholic school kids went to though--there were at least 3 of them in about a 15 mile radius of where I lived for 8th grade & highschool, plus a Quaker school, plus a Lutheran highschool and at least one rich kids' school of indeterminate religion if any. The Quaker & Lutheran schools were supposed to be pretty good. Parents didn't have enough money to send both of their children to private school though or they probably would've.
Here is EMRATIO from the St. Louis Fed FRED data: http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/EMRATIO/
.
Dang, we are at about 1982 levels of employment to population, with quite a few more people in the mix...
Yeah, the nuns were mean, but none were physically abusive.
I heard lots of tales from parents of rulers slammed on knuckles,
and someone told me the Christian brothers were really good at
throwing chalk at miscreants who thought they weren't being
observed.
This SEC Report is really interesting...
'The failure of SEC to uncover BM's ponzi scheme' cited above
-Examiner's Were Skeptical of Madoff's Claim to Time the Market Using His 'Gut Feel' (pg. 230)
-Madoff's Statements Were as 'Clear As Mud' (pg. 251)
-Examiners Did not Contact the Feeder Funds Madoff Disclosed (pg. 233)
-Examiners Thought Madoff Had Lied to Them (pg. 238)
Not so sure of this. Even the dumb kids with the redneck or uninvolved parents
learned to read and write and figure. You repeat something enough and most will get it and I will be reading a book while they do--to my own tastes.
gabyjan (profile) wrote (in reply to...) on Sat, 10/31/2009 - 8:42 pm
i never got phonics.either they had just had it before i got there or they were going to have it when i left.
to this day i do not know how i taught my daughter to read when she was around 3.
Yeah, I had a stay-at-home mom and learned to read around that time, largely thanks to her patiently reading to me and letting me memorize and recite the books, I'd guess.
*energyecon (homepage, profile) wrote on Sat, 10/31/2009 - 9:48 pm is EMRATIO from the St. Louis Fed FRED data:
St. Louis Fed: Series: EMRATIO, Civilian Employment-Population Ratio
*
I'm not sure what adjustment she used on the employment graph in the Oil Drum article - it looks like CR's graph with a separate line for each recession, but the current one looks much worse than any previous one since the '70's.
energyecon
oh no no the teachers hated me,i did the unthinkable,i taught my daughter to read,write and do simple math and to spell much better than i do.
Learned about that concept in elementary school, liked it, still use it for certain types of thinking (no idea it was logic, have never taken a course in logic). I think we learned some set theory too, although I didn't realize it at the time. Kids can learn anything, no problem, w/good teachers. I don't remember having any difficulty w/Venn diagrams, et al. Moved to a different school district when I was a little order (4th grade) in time to learn times tables, stuff like that. Spelling tests every Friday. In gym had to learn how to do double-dutch jump rope. Can't remember if the boys had to learn too or just the girls.
re: unpaid internships... I was looking at internships with the EPA. They require that you have your own health insurance before you can even apply! This is insane. I will be lucky to get a skilled job in my field.
The nuns told my mother not to teach me to read, I asked and they
said I would be bored. Well as I've posted I went to first grade for
a few months and then my subconscious got it and I had a sort of
first grade mental orgasm and then I could read. Didn't happen with
anything else. The teacher said to try to follow the Lord's Prayer, but
not to worry if we didn't understand the words, and by the end of the
Prayer, I could read and that was that.. And I have been reading steadily
for the next 57 years.
liz are you talking about then or now.
if it now no they are not doing it not reading and since they cant read they are not able to do any of the other things. had a friend who son was always promoted every year until the 9th grade. then they told him that was it.no more promotions. he was left behind.
now we have "no child left behind"
and the teachers are teaching a test, it is pitiful. we never learn. never
lawyerliz (profile) wrote on Sat, 10/31/2009 - 8:55 pm
Well as I've posted I went to first grade for
a few months and then my subconscious got it and I had a sort of
first grade mental orgasm and then I could read. Didn't happen with
anything else.
LOL... We didn't have an AP program when I went through HS, but senior year we had pre-calculus and in the accelerated class we went into "real" calc... I was blitzed out on braingasm, smiling like an idiot doing integration problems and babbling about it being like a game!
liz
love to read,but its also listening to audio books,unbridged audio books.my daughter reads,my sister does some,my grand daughter says she does. to be honest with you i taught my daugher to read so she would leave me alone and let me read my book.
Got a teaching credential some years back. Taught a little, gave it up; wasn't for me. But one of the books I read made the case that math ed in America is bass-ackwards. We train kids in individual math skills and operations in a vacuum, and they don't retain it; they don't learn actual problem-solving skills. Remember the kids' complaint, "What's math for?" American schools don't teach that. They do in other countries; start with a problem, not a technique; tell the kids to attack the problem any way they can, show them the cool tools they can use to make it easier and better.
My neighbor at the time was a 30-something Brit, and I asked him how he'd been trained in math. He'd been trained the way I described. He was no math brain, had gone over to voc ed at 15; but he said, "I can do most arithmetic problems in my head, and so can my British friends; but the Americans we know usually have to reach for a calculator."
I would argue that the calculator didn't dumb down American math education; it simply covers for the extent to which it has become debased and ineffective.
Have you k noticed that some books are great on audio, like Amy Tan,
and I tried to listen to Jane Austin, which I had liked and absolutely
couldn't bear it.
It's a matter of focus, really... 'Traditional' education evolved before cheap and small electronic memory and calculation aids and meant developing the skills to hone that ability in the ol' noggin we carry with us. 'Modern' education is more about drilling on and teaching efficient tool use... they don't use less mental capacity exactly, it's just specialized differently through repetition. Better? That's for history to decide.
LL - opportunity cost is everything... if only I'd understood that at an earlier age - then again I was and am a generalist, so maybe I did ok after all
My daughter said to me, oh, mother, calculus is SO easy.
Good Lord, the first time I have ever heard that sentence.
I had a traditional Scottish education, replete with ruler across the knuckles, and giant scary men in robes with fearsome tawse, with which you could be 'belted'.
Typical day, one or two hours of everything, then a few hours chasing haggis across the mountain before collapsing into bed.
the narrator has a lot to do with it, i love ray bradberry,but could not listen to him. his voice to me was naIls down a backboard. i love patrick o'brian but have to make sure i get narrated by simon vance. Ascent of money was narrated by simon prebble,
i have let audio sit unlistened too for the entire lender period because like you i could'nt stand it.
Having learned arithmetic the rote way, I have no opinion on
other ways. But I can calculate in my head like the Brits.
Did I mention they don't even teach rote multiplication tables anymore? They teach "math facts:" not the same thing at all.
Just because it's rote doesn't mean it's not a useful problem-solving tool. Once I had the tables in my head, I figured out how to slice and dice number problems in my head fairly easily.
Just for the hell of it, I tried to do 211 * 14 in my head. Got it, too. I'm sure many of you can do as well or better, but just try the average 18-year-old.
Well I cheated, I'm still here. My daughter is much, much smarter than
me. She played bumper pool for the first time last weekend and was
instantly better than me. Architect. All those angles. . .
We had come around a bend. Not far away was a gray wooden hall. Stag antlers hung from the side and front of the building. It may have been painted once. I wasn't sure. If it had been, it must have been a long, long time ago. In the field next to it four horses, all off white and need of grooming grazed. It looked more like West Virginia then Valhalla to me.
Freya's breath sounded labored. I figured it was a good time to ask her the big question. "So where does Jesus fit in here?" She stopped dead in her tracks, a long shuddering breath racked her body. She slowly turned to face me. I involuntarily took a step back. Her eyes were huge, blue and fiery. Her face was all hard planes with spots of red anger highlighting her sharp cheek bones accented by her fair skin. She slowly let out a deep breath.
Good news, my twenty-three year old wandered through the room to share a joke. He did the calculation in his head in six seconds. Then he told me I could use Google to do calculations. His generation is redeemed.
Being a generalist rocks, though it can be tough to get 'cred' working with boatloads of technical types...quantitative and critical reasoning skills are crucial plus some 'classical liberal education' (in the oldest sense of the term)
'pologies lliz, had to run out to the drugstore - appearantly I mistook your post as measuring educational attainment in a binary fashion - they could read and figure, period.
Wow.
Love the hockey stick in the delinquencies graph.
I think emplotment is far from bottoming, just based on my own observations. The third-level knock-on effects are just starting to hit. Suppliers of suppliers of resilient industries are starting to go down.
CR, king of chart porn! Thanks. Obviously, we are on our way to a strong recovery!
And I left some out ... I suppose I could have put in one of those "read more" links - so people could find the comment link!
Sometimes people say I'm too negative - but there are a few positive reports this month.
best wishes
In summary:
CalculatedRisk wrote:
I say you're an optimist.
CalculatedRisk wrote:
The numbers speak for themselves.
"sometimes"! More often - at least in the comments - people say I'm too positive. There were plenty of negative reports in October!
best wishes
GEEZ CR!!! Put down the Red Bull and back slowly away...
Doom, still more doom.
This has not been a recovery, but a stabilization at current levels. Should we get another dip, it might be a decade until we recover the nominal levels of economic activity we had in 2006.
Someday this war's gonna end...
Well, off to the movies and dinner to avoid the little monsters tonight.
Later!
Citizen AllenM wrote:
There's no "should" about it. IMHO we're in for another leg down that'll absolutely shock people already used to bad news.
**Galtistan news: Mexican farm leader, 14 others killed in mass shooting **
Lovely folks living in anarchy.
Someday this war's gonna end...
"Well, off to the movies and dinner to avoid the little monsters tonight."
At least you're contributing to GDP.
.....notice the Percent Job Losses Since WWII Recessions chart?........We're digging the longest, deepest hole we've ever dug for ourselves..........AND, we haven't reached the bottom of the hole YET!
Citizen AllenM wrote:
I wouldn't even go that far. Look at the employment graphs again. Tax revenue will continue to fall, entitlement costs will continue to rise. Economic activity will continue to decrease. You'll know things are picking up when companies start hiring. Any improvement before then might be a good sign, but nothing can be confirmed until employment stabilizes.
To be fair: this site is focused on real estate. Most of the damage has already been done to that sector and while it may fall a little further, we can begin to think in terms of a real estate recovery -- when the rest of the economy has stabilized. The problem is that the drop in employment and income has not played out in the other sectors of the economy, especially global trade. The next wave of bad news will come from outside the real estate area but still result in more turbulence in house prices.
The FNM SFH 'delinquency rate' chart has a scary curve but it's still only less than 5% of conventional single family home loans...that's not bad...
Rajesh wrote:
So, you think commercial RE is about as bad as it's going to get?
Mostly tricks as far as I can see. And the few "treats" have probably been tainted in some manner that will leave you sorry if you partake . . .
"The FNM SFH 'delinquency rate' chart has a scary curve but it's still only less than 5% of conventional single family home loans...that's not bad..."
What kind of Merchant of Fear are you?
I don't know about that. I see the charts of delinquencies in residential real estate and they make me think there's much more damage to come. If FHA blows up, it'll be scary.
A new day in America! A beautiful day!
Guess I got out too early. Ah well, ramp the dollar and I'll be satisfied.
C
FDIC to be more liberal (extend n pretend) with CRE.
New FDIC rules on real estate write-offs are very liberal -- for banks -- DailyFinance
Clearly things have improved (or not).
CRE depends on the 'available credit' of consumers for the retailers' storefront part of CRE and retail spending also depends (obviously) on consumers employment situation...the waves of bad news in retailing will be terrible for the 'Happy New Year'...undoubtedly
"A new day in America! A beautiful day!"
That would be in Tokyo? It's after sunset here on the right coast.
I find the most interesting graph is the unemployment.... it's not even slowing down...
~splat
Rajesh wrote:
Um, not even close, although it certainly is one of CR's strongest suits.
pavel,
Just trying to be optimistic on occasion...to counter all the 'merchants of fear' out there...
pavel.chichikov wrote:
And the clocks change again tonight. Don't forget: Fall Back.
Except In Arizona. One thing AZ got right. Don't mess with the darn clocks.
sm_landlord wrote:
The damage has been done; people aren't putting up new hotels, malls and office buildings. Counting the cost to the banks will take four years or more. The loans are already underwater, it is just a matter of when (should I say if) they recognize that on their balance sheets.
Rajesh wrote:
The damage has been done to the banks and the construction industry. But a lot of the owners of existing CRE have yet to go bankrupt. Then the distress sales can get going, and CRE should bottom.
Rajesh wrote:
That's the second time I've seen that statement in the past couple hours. The "initial" damage maybe; the "collateral" damage has only begun.
TJ and The Bear wrote:
Yup. As I mentioned at the top, the collateral damage is just now hitting the most resilient - those companies that were in stable industries and not over-leveraged. Another round of layoffs coming.
Here's a funny one: for the last couple of months, a few calls and email have been trickling in from body shops, hoping that I could take a few bodies off their hands. Then last week, an email comes in with a new tactic:
Your competitors are hiring!!!11!! Better grab some bodies now before the good ones are gone!!
Yeah, right. Headhunters are taking a page from the Realtor's book.
How soon will we start getting a decent picture of what Christmas sales are going to be like? Are there any interim reports in November or December from which we can extrapolate? It seems this 4th quarter is pretty make or break for the "recovery".
The September Employment Comparing Recessions chart never fails to impress.
CR, it would be nice to see some of the other indices put in the same historical perspective.
Oxtail wrote:
Too bad CR doesn't have a chart of the canceled credit card accounts. If the information was available, it would probably look like the Delinquencies chart. Not a good sign for the holidays.
Usually the first meaningful holiday sales report comes the weekend after Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving.
sm:
What industry are you in?
Several. You can guess one from my handle, and the others from the fact that I'm based in SoCal.
sm_landlord wrote:
Porn?
LOL. Actually, there was this one consulting gig back in the early 80's...
heh heh, S&M_landlord...
C
Over-reliance upon debt is our fundamental problem, both at the government and the personal level. Public reliance upon bonds, and private reliance upon credit, have indentured us (both individuals and governments) to the banks. In turn we have created economic policies that rely upon inflation to provide debt relief. Until we curtail future spending, by generating real revenue that can cover our spending, we will be at the mercy of the banking system. The discussion from the last thread focusing on taxation and services brought to mind that asset values are now disconnected from the underlying REAL wealth of the market participants.
As an example: I am a state employee that is priced out of home ownership in California because excessive debt has inflated the cost of housing beyond the level that a revenue (wage) based budget could service. As has been observed on this blog for years, asset prices are disconnected from the underlying wealth of the market participants. Asset prices are no longer tied to real wealth, but are instead tied to debt. In this situation, if I am to then participate in the home buying market, i must either swallow the debt poison pill, or increase my real compensation from my employer (or multiple employers) to make it possible to participate in the market with real wealth. Competing in this market with real wealth is an unlikely scenario given the multiplier that debt leveraged buying provides its participants.
This is the same problem confronted by governments. Lets go back to my earlier example: Being that my employer is the state government, if I were to somehow push for higher compensation, I am pushing my dilemma onto the state, as they are going to have a higher payroll cost. The government must decide to either take on additional debt through bonds, or increase taxes to support higher payroll costs. Given that governments have been making the same poor choices that J6P is making, our governments have taken on increased debts, and debt servicing becomes an ever larger portion of government's costs (just as housing has become an ever larger percentage of individual monthly expenditures).
The fundamental problem is NOT that government is providing too much in the way services (the libertarian argument). Quite the opposite really, when you compare what we pay in the US for the poor level of services we receive compared to our European relatives. The problem is that the costs to provide those services have been distorted in the US due to the banks and associated politicians running a ponzi-debt based economy that can only continue forward with ever increasing debt and inflation. This is not sustainable economics, but as long as the taxpayers, consumers of inflated assets, and foreign central banks are the bagholders, we'll keep the system pumping right along. A return to a real wealth based economy, with debt far restricted, would create a more balanced economy, reduce asset prices and service costs. But to downshift from where we are to that would require a depression of epic proportions...lovely.
So the "solution", in short, is Eat More Debt! Until there's none left to eat.
These days in SoCal they are all S&M Landlords.
A dose of reality. My position is that this will all take time to mend. Those that look for the next Q'rly fix will be disappointed.
Lets review tis in 3-5 years when things become some what normal. Till then its 10-12% unemployment, more ruin in the financial markets, slower or less social services and near but not always neg. GDP growth for the USA..
This is the inflexion point!
Happy Haloween.
Vetch wrote:
Sorry. No. Just no. The "suffering State employee meme" just plain old don't go nowhere no more. The days of modest salary in exchange for security and benefits and retirement are long gone. State employees are uniformly over (total) compensated for the results produced.
Rob Dawg wrote:
Extreme violation in regards to Dawg-win's Rule too?
Barley wrote:
Same here... if TPTB would do their jobs correctly. Unfortunately they're pushing us out of the frying pan and into the fire, and we won't get that time.
CR, you are like hedge fund manager John Paulson, who says that he is neither a bull nor a bear, but, instead, a realist. Society needs more realists, and fewer of the so-called "analysts" who are nothing more than shills, which analysts are as independent and impartial as the 3 guilded rating services.
its going to be a groundhog year!
Big Players('money managers') like to talk down the market so they can do their vulture thing in CRE more quickly...
'Investors Stalk the Wounded of Wall St.'
Investors Stalk The Wounded Of Wall Street - NY Times
'The Bottom-Feeder King'
How Wilbur Ross Jr. Makes Billions
Night of the Living Dead is on. How apropos of the credit crisis.
Almost right....
It's a new dawn on America i.e that was the message in 1969 that perhaps we're finally seeing in 2009 as more people suck wind
YouTube - Jefferson Airplane - Saturday Afternoon - Woodstock
yagij wrote:
I'll make an exception because government employees in California are so far removed from reality it transcends the rules.
Rob Dawg wrote:
So much FAIL that they can't FAIL? TMFTF?
yeah i think hes an optimist too
CalculatedRisk wrote:
CR- You are a Cornucopian Optimist, wedded to a BAU world.
That is why I visit this site, to see what main stream thinkers are up to.
It s a valuable perspective, and I appreciate your good work.
Reality is generally viewed as negative.
Dollars stores are so yesterday. I saw an new 99 cent store open up; the sign indicated that lots of items were just 69 cents. I didn't go in to see if it was true.
Sorry. No. Just no. The "suffering State employee meme" just plain old don't go nowhere no more.
I didn't take it that he was whining that state employees aren't compensated well enough. I think he was saying the average wage earner can't afford inflated home prices. I don't really see that as objectionable.
I have lost 3 out of 8!
With no delinquencies- but the closed lines were pretty unused- but the amount of credit closed was significant.
What is happening is the world is contracting, whether the feds like it or not.
Someday this war's gonna end...
It is rather difficult to see how things could be increasing on a national level while they are still decreasing in an overwhelming number of states, including all the largest ones.
There sure are a lot of stats out lately that just don't jibe.
On the Employment Job Losses chart, we have just surpassed the previous post-WWII record holder, the recession of 1948 for the % of jobs lost, which was from an era when the economy was structurally very different, the manufacturing capacity of the rest of the world was in shambles, and there was bountiful, cheap energy...this time, things are different.
For the first time since the 1948 recession, personal income less government social benefits to persons has gone negative:
energyecon: Yep, its that bad
And the job losses for the population as a whole as measured by EMRATIO are occurring at an accelerating pace on a year over year basis over a year and half into this recession:
energyecon: EMRATIO - return to cliff diving?
On the Too Much Fail To Fail
The Bugaloos
Liz inspired me to get new drapes in the master bedroom. Behold, the joy of nesting.
CRE is going to go from outrageous valuations (from a very recent historical perspective) that are crushing the local & regional banking industry to pennies on the dollar...big investors are waiting for the Big Drop in values coming...Icahn concurs a CRE Crash is on the horizon...
'Ross would use extreme caution before putting money into commercial real estate, especially office space because properties are losing tenants.'
FT Alphaville » Blog Archive » Ross, Icahn expect a commercial real estate crash
hi liz
Ironic. A masterbation discussion cut short by chart porn.
"This is 3.6 percent (±10.2%)* below the revised August rate of 417,000 and is 7.8 percent (±12.0%)* below the September 2008 estimate of 436,000."
Numbers with double digit confidence bands are ,IMO, essentially useless especially when always revised from "better" to "worse" which shows bias. Stat 101 instructs that the way to reduce the band is to increase n - the sample size. Of course this would increase cost but what use is 3% +/- 10% which could equally be 13%==> (7%) (recall the midpoint of the range is NOT more likely than the tails - all points within the band are equally likely.
Jim
bANK will single curtainedly save the economy.
adornosghost wrote:
People who lack critical thinking skills believe that reporting bad news is the same as being negative. It's not. Bill - I can't tell if you take great pains to maintain neutrality or if you're just an even-keel kind of guy. Either way, you consistently provide an agenda-free news source in an age where egregious spin is the norm. If it were up to me, I'd award you a Pulitzer Prize for outstanding journalism.
Outsider, yes that was exactly my point. I'm nit whining about compensation at all. Rob Dawgs funademntal biases can't allow him to have a real conversation with people because as soon as he sees a trigger word he flies into his boiler plate anti govt rhetoric.
NOTE: I wasn't complaining about compensation. I was complaining that wages are no longer enough to compete for and aquire assets. Not until our overdendence upon debt is reduced.
Down Dawg, Down!
From Bob Herbert, the NYTimes writer, nice edit on the grim reality for new grads. Notes that the vogue for "unpaid internships" effectively closes the door to many industries to grads without parents wealthy enough to support them in expensive cities like DC and NY, while the children of the rich are able to work for free, at least getting on-the-job experience and contacts. For the other 95%, welcome to the jobless future.
And check out the 500+ comments....bitterness, resignation, and plenty of advice that the best and the brightest out to leave the country and start their lives elsewhere.
OP-ED COLUMNIST; Constraining America's Brightest - NY Times
absolutely Feckless,positive demeanor at all times,
and on the plus side, did you all know that Zecco trading is offering stock trades @ only $4.50per trade???
I almost fell off my chair.
And considering the Dawg's background in the defense industry, you could say the Dawg's anti-government attitude is "biting the hand that fed him"
And leave the big Dawg alone. Don't have to agree with the man to appreciate his point of view.
In: Unpaid internships
Out: Paid jobs
Lay off the Dawg, guys - not that he needs anyone coming to his defense. His anti-government worker meme is not personal. It's based on services received for taxes paid. I'm a government ee and I agree with him. We taxpayers pay plenty and we deserve good services in return.
Oh, a comment to the last thread. A thousand years ago I went
to Catholic school and a small class was 51; a big one was 55.
Yet we did manage to learn to read and write and do simple arithmetic.
I'm not sure I would have benefitted by smaller classes. The teachers
would have been forced to notice that i was reading my own book
behind the book we were supposed to be working on.
I went from a large public school in the Denver suburbs to a small one in the country. We had 30+ kids in the rooms all the way through and it didn't seem to be a particular burden either. Class size is often a red herring.
TJ and The Bear wrote:
Didn't Monty Python have a red herring sketch? (scratches head)
I know what you mean LL, I graduated HS from a Private School up in BC, that had a large class of 5. Really hard to fake it.
Barely got through after public.
SEC investigated Madoff and found all complaints were referred appropriately for investigation except one and it appeared there wouldn't be a follow-up because the complaint was 'non-specific' and 'anonymous.'
Other findings -
-Madoff Attempted To Impress and Intimidate Examiners. (pg. 200)
-Questions About Trade Executions and Clearance Were Never Resolved. (pg. 223)
-Madoff Failed To Produce Correspondence, E-mails, and Other Documents Requested by the Examiners. (pg. 201) Blacked Out
http://www.sec.gov/news/studies/2009/oig-509.pdf Public Version
I've been reading this blog for a long time and some of Dawgs comments can be spot on and somtimes even human. But he gets stuck in his filters too much.
The point I was trying to make is that debt is really distorting everything, not just house prices. In a way, the wage inflation for state workers is part and parcel of the same problem. I appreciate my salary and health care, though given my age, I don't expect to have a pension (that's worth anything) when I retire (gen X). The problem is that housing in my area is still 8-10 times the median family income (state and private incomes). Can't do that without debt. We're savers. But we just can't compete with that. Oh...and Rent Is 2k for a 2 bed.
Asian countries with school systems that rank highly all have pretty huge class sizes. Not sure when Americans decided that small class size is the route to better learning.
Electric calculators showed up for the masses in the mid 1970's, and then we stopped having to calculate math problems in the classroom, using our computers upstairs...
Computer advances upon us since then have dulled young minds much further~
Never heard of the Bugaloos. Looks late 60s early 70s. How could I
have missed that?
oxtail
i think it was decided that small classes were the route to better teaching.
We all have filters, Vetch. It's just easier to see everyone else's than our own.
I think it was decided that smaller classes were the route to more (union) teaching jobs.
Feckless Ness wrote:
+10
Don't worry, prices in Cali will reach a low 7 times earnings pretty
soon. Maybe even 6!
the bagaloos much like the sid and marty croft offerings really pin down a segment that resembles myself.
jd
i had a problem with algebra,when i finally got to it, i didnt know how to use my calulator.told professor he should give classes in how to use the stupid thing.
bANK fAILURE wrote:
And does the carpet match the drapes?
didnt think about that rajesh, you know when they were unionized?
charcoal grey edit.
I agree with Dawg.Those of us who have paid many years of premium taxes have grown tired to the fabricated poor me statement from public workers. Taxes, wages, benefits are totally out of whack with reality just like house prices are. They all have to be corrected.
Feck!!!
Stiglitz Says U.S. Recession ‘Nowhere Near’ End After GDP Jump - Bloomberg.com
listening to "the Ascent of money" very good going to listen to again.
one thing we need now is a historical ecnomicist. we ve done all this before, and just keep doing it over and over.
.
...LOL.......ask any high schooler nowadays to recite his multiplication tables.........he'll look at you like you're from outer space and then he'll get this fear of gawd "I've been caught" look on his sheepish face. And, some of our future leaders of America will instead of learning from the embarrassment, make the appropriate "Futch you Dood" or "Go Die Out, Old Man" comment, before walking off in the self-important "IB Bad" teenage strut.
The IB Bad teenage strut is absolutely nothing new.
I did my share of strutting and/or swaying.
Off to the movies.
Ta ta!
That and those lousy kids won't stay off my lawn.
SEC investigators were suspicious of Madoff throughout their investigation link cited above
-Madoff's Options Trading Was Not A Focus of the Examination (pg. 191)
-Madoff's Fee Structure Was Not A Focus of the Examination (pg. 192)
-The SEC Examined Madoff's Fee Structure Solely by Asking Madoff About It and Relying on His Response (pg. 192)
-Examiners Were Still Suspicious of Madoff's Unusually Consistent Returns at the End of the Examination (pg 190)
-The Account Numbers Madoff Produced Were Suspicious to Examiners (pg. 229)
LOL......I never did.....my mommy said I was the best one of us four.......
bsr
i can still do the mulitiplication tables.... and high schooler!,we learned them in 4th,5th grades way back then.
Me too.
We learned them up to 10 and also 12.
I was informed that my elders learned them up to ummmm, 15 or something.
While walking 5 miles to school uphill both ways in the sleet and snow,
varied only by 100 degree heat.
And there really was no a/c in grade or hs either. For real. We had
these big fans. . . . I wanna tell you it gets hot in the late spring and
early fall in Baltimore.
liz i think we went to 12 too. you take geography?
I'm not that old, and we did multiplication tables (up to 10 only, I believe) as well as lots of flash card drills...
Feckless Ness wrote:
+10^6
sheeeeeit, unless you are still puking up the quadratic equation from memory...
Yeah, but nobody was very good at it.
rif
used flash cards to teach my daughter
liz
walked to school in sandstorms funny thing about them just blew over and after school. and we always started the school After Labor day!
edit that should be before instead of over.
We had to memorize awful poetry, as well as some not so bad stuff:
Blessings on thee little man,
Barefoot boy with cheek of tan.
With thy something something,
and thy umm merry pantaloons (??)
Quoth the raven, nevermore!
a squared + b squared == c squared.
Don't know how to make that
hat shaped thing.
liz
we had to do read shakespear out loud and we all had southern accents
very interesting.
Ahhhh.^, nope.
Yep, it looks different in the preview.
I'm at the tail end of the boomers, so I was ruined by "New math". Nevertheless, I can recall the times tables.
We had to memorize Portia's speech.
The quality of mercy is not strained.
I always wanted to memorize the Raven.
Irresistible rythmn, rythym? rithymn?
" Electric calculators showed up for the masses in the mid 1970's, and then we stopped having to calculate math problems in the classroom, using our computers upstairs...
Computer advances upon us since then have dulled young minds much further~ "
Son went to a maritime academy in 1981, which required a computer. I thought he should also be instructed in slide rule and navigation but was told that was passe. He is now a chief engineer, doing well, and can still do calculations without a computer. We still need people who can calculate the old fashioned way. Computers are great but if they fail someone needs to be able to use calculations that will steer the ship.
just another lurker
ive been hearing stories about a new new math,please tell me it isnt so. that was the worst thing poor kids couldnt even make change. business frowned upon that.
As bad as CR's employment graph looks, it looks much worse if you graph job losses as % of total employed. You can find that graph ( number 19) in a seriously pessimistic artile on "The Oil Drum" called "An Interview With Stoneleigh - the Case for Deflation" The Oil Drum: Europe | An interview with Stoneleigh - the case for deflation. I find Jenszen's arguments for inflation more compelling, but the article has some good points.
I hated my slide rule.
gabyjan (profile) wrote (in reply to...) on Sat, 10/31/2009 - 8:27 pm
rif
used flash cards to teach my daughter
Nothing better IMHO. That and spelling drills are the only way to really learn. I guess I'm old-fashioned. We also didn't learn "touch math" or spell-like-it-sounds sorts of trendy Ed.D. inspired nonsense. Math drills and phonics (rural midwest, late 80s and early 90s).
liz
rhythm
The Raven by memory was a requirement in Freshman English at the Jesuit HS I attended, lliz...an interesting experience as a non-Catholic and non-Christian...being unbaptized but earnestly engaged in discussions with the Frosh chaplain earned me the handle "Paganus Amistosus" (sp?)
At least one spelling drilll failed!
"Good morning, good morning!" the General said,
When we met him last week on the way to the line.
Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of 'em dead,
And we're cursing his staff for incompetent swine.
"He's a cheery old card" grunted Harry to Jack,
As they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack.
But he did for them both with his plan of attack.
Hey! That's the first time I've tried to post a link on the new Hoocoodanode and it's really easy! Kudos on the comment system!
And Trees, by Kilmer.
Yuck.
I think we did the ballad of Sam McGee.
It's the first time I've been warm.
Part of the problem in the US is the % of kids acting out/just not ready to be in school in the lower grades & as you go up in grade, kids that just don't want to be in school or that particular class, are too high or too hungry or whatever to learn the material. The highschool I attended, due to the hiring of an idiot new school superintendent, got rid of its AP course equivalents as I started highschool (this is the tail end of the supposedly wonderful babyboom years). So my "good" classes were: (1) good teachers who also (2) made life miserable for the kids who didn't want to do the work so they either left or did the work. The other classes, either the teacher was horrible, or the teacher ended up teaching for the low achievers, for example, in junior year/11th grade English, working on vocabulary prep for the SAT for the students reading at 8th grade levels. The rest of us just got to be bored/amuse ourselves/figure out how to cut the class w/out suffering ill consquences.
Several stanzas of Prologue to Canterbury Tales in HS (English Lit)... good God I still remember some of it!
Whan that Aprille with his shoures shoote,
The droughte of March hath perced to the roote...
You're a better man than I am Gunga Din!
If you are familiar with EMRATIO (civilian employment:population ratio), it is declining at an accelerating rate almost two years into the recession:
energyecon: EMRATIO - return to cliff diving?
The nuns didn't allow any of that. We didn't have a choice.
Service is a hoot, lliz
resistanceis feudal
i never got phonics.either they had just had it before i got there or they were going to have it when i left.
to this day i do not know how i taught my daughter to read when she was around 3. but we did the drills,spelling(write each word 10 times use it in a sentence correctly etc. we started on times tables
then she went to school and found out they didnt use them and never no more.
We had elderly teachers trying to explain set theory and base eight to second and third graders. It would have been utter chaos except that they also snuck in the old rote stuff at the end of the school year. I'm fine at making change, but that may be the influence of my Mother(who finished high school during the depression.)
We did do Venn diagrams in 8th grade and I still mentally use them
when reasoning. The hub tells me they are part of some sort of higher
math he was forced into and was very abstract at Hopkins.
Education outcomes are all about parental involvement - class size is a statistically significant correlate, but comes in far behind IIRC...
The stories I used to hear about some of them . . . . slamming heads of misbehaving kids into blackboards, etc. Really seemed to depend on which Catholic school kids went to though--there were at least 3 of them in about a 15 mile radius of where I lived for 8th grade & highschool, plus a Quaker school, plus a Lutheran highschool and at least one rich kids' school of indeterminate religion if any. The Quaker & Lutheran schools were supposed to be pretty good. Parents didn't have enough money to send both of their children to private school though or they probably would've.
Here is EMRATIO from the St. Louis Fed FRED data:
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/EMRATIO/
.
Dang, we are at about 1982 levels of employment to population, with quite a few more people in the mix...
LL - Venn diagrams are geometric interpretations of formal logic...
Yeah, the nuns were mean, but none were physically abusive.
I heard lots of tales from parents of rulers slammed on knuckles,
and someone told me the Christian brothers were really good at
throwing chalk at miscreants who thought they weren't being
observed.
Well I loved 'em.
This SEC Report is really interesting...
'The failure of SEC to uncover BM's ponzi scheme' cited above
-Examiner's Were Skeptical of Madoff's Claim to Time the Market Using His 'Gut Feel' (pg. 230)
-Madoff's Statements Were as 'Clear As Mud' (pg. 251)
-Examiners Did not Contact the Feeder Funds Madoff Disclosed (pg. 233)
-Examiners Thought Madoff Had Lied to Them (pg. 238)
I love the last one!
Not so sure of this. Even the dumb kids with the redneck or uninvolved parents
learned to read and write and figure. You repeat something enough and most will get it and I will be reading a book while they do--to my own tastes.
gabyjan (profile) wrote (in reply to...) on Sat, 10/31/2009 - 8:42 pm
i never got phonics.either they had just had it before i got there or they were going to have it when i left.
to this day i do not know how i taught my daughter to read when she was around 3.
Yeah, I had a stay-at-home mom and learned to read around that time, largely thanks to her patiently reading to me and letting me memorize and recite the books, I'd guess.
It's no wonder people have been losing faith in our regulators, administrators, and legislators.
*energyecon (homepage, profile) wrote on Sat, 10/31/2009 - 9:48 pm is EMRATIO from the St. Louis Fed FRED data:
St. Louis Fed: Series: EMRATIO, Civilian Employment-Population Ratio
*
I'm not sure what adjustment she used on the employment graph in the Oil Drum article - it looks like CR's graph with a separate line for each recession, but the current one looks much worse than any previous one since the '70's.
energyecon
oh no no the teachers hated me,i did the unthinkable,i taught my daughter to read,write and do simple math and to spell much better than i do.
Learned about that concept in elementary school, liked it, still use it for certain types of thinking (no idea it was logic, have never taken a course in logic). I think we learned some set theory too, although I didn't realize it at the time. Kids can learn anything, no problem, w/good teachers. I don't remember having any difficulty w/Venn diagrams, et al. Moved to a different school district when I was a little order (4th grade) in time to learn times tables, stuff like that. Spelling tests every Friday. In gym had to learn how to do double-dutch jump rope. Can't remember if the boys had to learn too or just the girls.
re: unpaid internships... I was looking at internships with the EPA. They require that you have your own health insurance before you can even apply! This is insane. I will be lucky to get a skilled job in my field.
The nuns told my mother not to teach me to read, I asked and they
said I would be bored. Well as I've posted I went to first grade for
a few months and then my subconscious got it and I had a sort of
first grade mental orgasm and then I could read. Didn't happen with
anything else. The teacher said to try to follow the Lord's Prayer, but
not to worry if we didn't understand the words, and by the end of the
Prayer, I could read and that was that.. And I have been reading steadily
for the next 57 years.
I took a logic course --sillygisms etc. in college.
We took a test in the beginning and the same test at the
end and I got one wrong both times, but a different one.
liz are you talking about then or now.
if it now no they are not doing it not reading and since they cant read they are not able to do any of the other things. had a friend who son was always promoted every year until the 9th grade. then they told him that was it.no more promotions. he was left behind.
now we have "no child left behind"
and the teachers are teaching a test, it is pitiful. we never learn. never
The last time around the women were much more home, where
they were doing arcane stuff like cooking and knitting.
Not this time.
lawyerliz (profile) wrote on Sat, 10/31/2009 - 8:55 pm
Well as I've posted I went to first grade for
a few months and then my subconscious got it and I had a sort of
first grade mental orgasm and then I could read. Didn't happen with
anything else.
LOL... We didn't have an AP program when I went through HS, but senior year we had pre-calculus and in the accelerated class we went into "real" calc... I was blitzed out on braingasm, smiling like an idiot doing integration problems and babbling about it being like a game!
and bath-ed evry vein in swish likur?
Then of course.
And nearly everybody did get promoted, and the social
promotion thing was there in public school. We seriously
took the threat of failure tho.
lliz,
If you are saying literacy is the measure of educational attainment we don't have the basis for discussion...Google some research if you like.
liz
love to read,but its also listening to audio books,unbridged audio books.my daughter reads,my sister does some,my grand daughter says she does. to be honest with you i taught my daugher to read so she would leave me alone and let me read my book.
no child left behind, though horrible in practice, is still better than no child left a dime.
We had 2 years of algebra (4 years) and 1 of geometry and 1 of trig.
I loved trig, but suffered thru calcu, did ok in diffy q, and then switched
to art. Each brain to its own ability.
Hunh, energy?
What am I to google?
Literacy is the minimum for educational attainment.
I like what I like read Plato for pleasure at 14. And Nancy Drew mystery
stories. And Scrooge McDuck.
Got a teaching credential some years back. Taught a little, gave it up; wasn't for me. But one of the books I read made the case that math ed in America is bass-ackwards. We train kids in individual math skills and operations in a vacuum, and they don't retain it; they don't learn actual problem-solving skills. Remember the kids' complaint, "What's math for?" American schools don't teach that. They do in other countries; start with a problem, not a technique; tell the kids to attack the problem any way they can, show them the cool tools they can use to make it easier and better.
My neighbor at the time was a 30-something Brit, and I asked him how he'd been trained in math. He'd been trained the way I described. He was no math brain, had gone over to voc ed at 15; but he said, "I can do most arithmetic problems in my head, and so can my British friends; but the Americans we know usually have to reach for a calculator."
I would argue that the calculator didn't dumb down American math education; it simply covers for the extent to which it has become debased and ineffective.
well, that's not quite right.
Pre and almost literate societies have high educational
achievement. I'm sure that memorizing all of Homer gave a
great education.
not getting promoted was up there with being put in jail.
Have you k noticed that some books are great on audio, like Amy Tan,
and I tried to listen to Jane Austin, which I had liked and absolutely
couldn't bear it.
It's a matter of focus, really... 'Traditional' education evolved before cheap and small electronic memory and calculation aids and meant developing the skills to hone that ability in the ol' noggin we carry with us. 'Modern' education is more about drilling on and teaching efficient tool use... they don't use less mental capacity exactly, it's just specialized differently through repetition. Better? That's for history to decide.
Yeah, when you're learning one thing you're not learning something
else.
LL - opportunity cost is everything... if only I'd understood that at an earlier age - then again I was and am a generalist, so maybe I did ok after all
Having learned arithmetic the rote way, I have no opinion on
other ways. But I can calculate in my head like the Brits.
My daughter said to me, oh, mother, calculus is SO easy.
Good Lord, the first time I have ever heard that sentence.
I had a traditional Scottish education, replete with ruler across the knuckles, and giant scary men in robes with fearsome tawse, with which you could be 'belted'.
Typical day, one or two hours of everything, then a few hours chasing haggis across the mountain before collapsing into bed.
the narrator has a lot to do with it, i love ray bradberry,but could not listen to him. his voice to me was naIls down a backboard. i love patrick o'brian but have to make sure i get narrated by simon vance. Ascent of money was narrated by simon prebble,
i have let audio sit unlistened too for the entire lender period because like you i could'nt stand it.
lawyerliz wrote:
Did I mention they don't even teach rote multiplication tables anymore? They teach "math facts:" not the same thing at all.
Just because it's rote doesn't mean it's not a useful problem-solving tool. Once I had the tables in my head, I figured out how to slice and dice number problems in my head fairly easily.
Just for the hell of it, I tried to do 211 * 14 in my head. Got it, too. I'm sure many of you can do as well or better, but just try the average 18-year-old.
Well I cheated, I'm still here. My daughter is much, much smarter than
me. She played bumper pool for the first time last weekend and was
instantly better than me. Architect. All those angles. . .
And I still don't understand energy's comment.
jonathan
why in the world are you chasing chittlings(almost the same thing as haggis)across the mountain?
I wrote some more, and I going asleep, about the aftermath of an American economic crash that features the homeless and a threadbare Norse goddess....
sample from American Apocalypse
We had come around a bend. Not far away was a gray wooden hall. Stag antlers hung from the side and front of the building. It may have been painted once. I wasn't sure. If it had been, it must have been a long, long time ago. In the field next to it four horses, all off white and need of grooming grazed. It looked more like West Virginia then Valhalla to me.
Freya's breath sounded labored. I figured it was a good time to ask her the big question. "So where does Jesus fit in here?" She stopped dead in her tracks, a long shuddering breath racked her body. She slowly turned to face me. I involuntarily took a step back. Her eyes were huge, blue and fiery. Her face was all hard planes with spots of red anger highlighting her sharp cheek bones accented by her fair skin. She slowly let out a deep breath.
Good news, my twenty-three year old wandered through the room to share a joke. He did the calculation in his head in six seconds. Then he told me I could use Google to do calculations. His generation is redeemed.
well, we had to get our exercise somehow.
jpnathan
well i guess you're right. but now days that might have meant cruelty to children or haggis or maybe both.
Being a generalist rocks, though it can be tough to get 'cred' working with boatloads of technical types...quantitative and critical reasoning skills are crucial plus some 'classical liberal education' (in the oldest sense of the term)
horror story - not being able to tell time on an analog clock - "I'm a digital girl"
'pologies lliz, had to run out to the drugstore - appearantly I mistook your post as measuring educational attainment in a binary fashion - they could read and figure, period.