How Solyndra would have worked, if it had worked

As you recall, Solyndra was a "green energy," Obama-led boondoggle that put the taxpayers in hock for more than $550 billion dollars. The company folded because it had no business plan worth the name, relied heavily (well, almost totally) on federal subsidies to begin with and, most importantly, did not have a marketable product (thin-film solar cells). That the failed companies were managed by Obama cronies - and they made millions no matter that the company flopped - is not beside the point. It is the point.

But let us suppose as a thought experiment that Solyndra had actually produced a useful product. How would it have gained a revenue stream? There is a real-world answer and it is provided by examining another famous government project, Goverment General Motors and its abortive attempt to produce a commercially viable hybrid auto, the Chevy Volt.

Commercial flop = government success

The Chevy Volt flops—Patrick Michaels - NYPOST.com:

By most accounts, “Government Motors” has stuck with the Volt mainly to please the Obama administration, which still owns a third of its stock in the wake of the 2009 government “rescue” of the company. But just how badly is the effort faring? Well, consider the 1,529 sold in December.

More than a third of those were fleet sales to corporations. None of these were the traditional large-fleet purchasers, i.e. Hertz, Avis and the other big rental companies. They were more like Verizon and General Electric — with GE having committed to buying 12,000 and having already purchased unspecified “hundreds,” with continued “daily” deliveries, as The Wall Street Journal reported recently.

Then there are the direct taxpayer buys. Fifty to New York City. The city of Deland, Fla., brags about buying five with an Energy Department grant. The federal General Services Administration has bought 101 so far, but President Obama has ordered it to procure only hybrid or high-mileage vehicles by 2015. (The taxpayers buy about 60,000 cars a year for GSA.

This is a textbook example of crony capitalism:

A. General Electric, of course, is Obama's pet corporation because its head, Jeffrey Immelt, is Obama's croniest of crony capitalists. So no wonder GE has "committed" to buying 12,000 Volts. They won't of course, but they'll find another way to scratch the backs of the robber barons in Washington.

B. "Then there are the direct taxpayer buys." I am sure you saw that municipal governments get federal money to buy Volts. Understand what this means: the government owns a third of GM, which makes it a truly major shareholder if not the largest shareholder. The government takes money (taxes) from you and me and then gives it to, say, Deland, Fla., so it can buy cars from a company the government controls. And Obama has ordered the GSA basically to buy nothing else until the end of his presumptive second term.

"Why didn't I think of that?"

Well, Obama said he wanted to spread the wealth around. The Mafia could not do it better.

But the whole "green" car racket is a scam, a gigantic corporate-welfare machine.

See also, "Buy A Honda, Kill a Polar Bear."

And today, this: "Bankrupt Solyndra seeking to pay bonuses."

Now seems an unlikely time for handing out bonuses at bankrupt Solyndra LLC, but that’s the plan of company attorneys intending to dole out up to a half-million dollars to persuade key employees to stay put.

Nearly two dozen Solyndra employees could receive bonuses ranging from $10,000 to $50,000 each under a proposal filed by Solyndra’s attorneys in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware.

That means that you and I are paying those bonuses. The looting continues.

Related: "Detroit unsure over the future of green cars." "But the economics are not attractive yet for the average consumer." What?

Why does Obama do the things he does?

Victor Davis Hanson on Barack Obama:

For Obama the great tragedy of a Solyndra was not the corruption of old-style fast-buck artists masking their greed through insider green lobbying with members of his administration, but rather that such scandals (along with Climategate and the implosion of Al Gore) have sidetracked the entire green philosophy that mandated more government unionized employees, government technocrats, and government tax collectors to reorder society itself.

The result of all this is a sort of unending but rarely expressed war. The business man does not know what his taxes are, only that they should go up, given his privilege. He is judged not by the good that he does but by the excessive money he makes. The corporation does not know what the rules of the game are, whether his energy is too polluting, his workers not unionized enough, or his product not regulated enough. None believe Obamacare, as promised, will reduce costs. None believe that government borrowing and massive new entitlements are reducing unemployment and raising GDP. None believe that wealth can be created by record deficits and aggregate debt. None believe that printing ever more money will not lead to inflation.

What we have, then, is a war on two ends: the better off are hesitant to work more, given their fears that additional profits will either be more difficult to come by or not remain their own; the poor are hesitant to work more, given their expectations that entitlements will be extended and will be easier to come by. They both expect more government and they both as a result are not so eager to take risks and seek greater income in the private sector.

The result of Obama’s war is the current three-year slowdown. Obama in response counts on two strategies to nevertheless be reelected: either at some point the private sector will conclude that it is not going to get any better, and thus it is preferable to shrug, take its medicine, and get back to work, and so the economy picks up a little in 2012; or, to the degree that Obama can blame the lengthy pause solely on the minority of the undeserving rich, he believes that an angry and fearful bare majority may agree.

The question is truly begged: If we stipulate that the effective destruction of America's economy is not an actual objective of a president whose political orientation is the most radically leftist of any figure to occupy the office (or most any office in Washington, for that matter), then: what would he be doing differently if that really was his objective? He would be doing hardly anything differently.

This administration is not so baffling perhaps, when viewed through this lens:



Bill Whittle explains in detail:

This what $5 Trillion has bought

Pepper spraying woman may sue Walmart

The woman who pepper sprayed other shoppers in a Walmart on Black Friday is considering a lawsuit again the giant retailer for failing to provide security.

It was widely reported that Elizabeth Macias, whose name was unknown at the time of the incident, had pepper sprayed other shoppers to move them out of her way so she could grab an item before it sold out. However, she says that she was trying to rescue her two children, who were being attacked by shoppers as they tried to obtain video games.

Elizabeth Macias, 32, said she fired the stinging spray after shoppers attacked her two teenage children as they tried to obtain X-Box video game consoles for purchase, attorney Michael Champ, Macias' lawyer, told CBS News' Los Angeles station KCBS Friday.

At one point, her son was on the ground, being punched by a man and her daughter also was being punched and kicked, Champ said.

The teens were traumatized, he said. ...

Det. Mike Fesperman of the Los Angeles Police Department told the Los Angeles Times it's possible that Macias used the pepper spray in self-defense.

"I'm not saying it was right. It could have been a situation that she was in fear for her safety, that she would be crushed," Fesperman said.

Seems like pre-emptive lawyering to me.

The "perfect storm" of bullishness - or not

By now everyone knows that market indices took off like bottle rockets this morning. The Dow, for example:

The reason is that the most important central banks in the world, including the US Fed, agreed to charge each other less interest in dollar swap lines beginning this coming Monday.

The U.S. Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank as well as the central banks of Canada, Britain, Japan and Switzerland agreed to lower the cost of existing dollar swap lines -- or reducing the cost of temporary dollar loans -- to banks by a half percentage point, starting December 5.

The central banks' actions was intended to ensure that starved European banks facing a credit crunch have enough funding as the euro zone's sovereign debt crisis worsens.

Also, China unexpectedly cut bank reserve requirements in hopes of boosting an economy running at its weakest pace since 2009.

Further encouraging investors, the latest economic data suggested the U.S. economy was moving more solidly toward recovery. The U.S. private sector added the most jobs in nearly a year in November, while business activity in the U.S. Midwest grew faster than expected in November surged.

Other data showed pending sales of existing U.S. homes surged in October by the most in nearly a year.

"There's a perfect storm of bullishness. PMI came out better than expected, plus what happened overseas, and ADP was well above consensus," said Donald Selkin, chief market strategist at National Securities in New York, with about $3 billion in assets under management.

It's true that the lates jobs report looks good. Even so, I think the surge will retreat - the move announced today has already weakened the dollar, resulting in higher prices of futures for oil, gold and silver, which are always priced internationally in dollars.

Furthermore, the other side of investment makers don't see what the big deal is:

S&P Equity Futures are up another 3 Percent, Bond Market Yawns

Global equities are sharply higher with this global coordinated action. S&P 500 futures are up another 3 percent and will gap higher.

Meanwhile Spanish 10-year bonds rallied (yields fell) a mere 7 basis points to 6.32%, Spanish 2-year bonds rallied a mere 8 basis points to 5.51%, Italian 10-year bonds rallied 10 basis points to 7.13%, and Italian 10-year bonds rallied 9 basis points to 7.00%.

Whatever the equity markets see, the bond market doesn't. A flight to safety of German bonds is back on, that China needs to cut reserve requirements is a huge sign of weakness (and no it will not stop a hard Chinese landing).

Also bear in mind that on September 15, there was coordinated swap-line action that did nothing.

Here is what happened to the ESI index after the September swap-line action:

The fact is that none of the underlying, weak fundamentals about the Eurozone's or America's economy have changed. The euro is as weak as ever and the dollar is weakening even more. Nothing about the PIIGS' situation is improved. So essentially, today's central banks' action place yet another temporary bandage on a suppurating wound. The markets are reacting to the news that something has been done, but by the beginning of next week, I think that the sane heads on Wall Street will understand that this something isn't amounting to much because basically, nothing has changed.

That's also the assessment of PIMCO's CEO, Mohamed El-Erian, who says that the indices moved so dramatically today because, "Risk markets love liquidity injections, real and perceived." Also,

First, these monetary institutions feel that, again, they have to move because other entities have continued to be too slow and too ineffective; and second, they feel that they cannot, and should not ignore an actual or anticipated need to relieve acute pressures within the banking system.

These two reasons were made even more pressing by last week’s dislocations in the functioning of European financial markets – most notably, the inversion of the Italian yield curve, pressure on government bond markets in core Europe, the growing fragility of the banking system, a drop in market liquidity, and growing hesitation by market participants to warehouse any risk.

The immediate impact on markets unambiguously favors risk assets across the world. The longer-term effect depends on the scale and scope of the follow through from others. This is particularly important as we count down to yet another European Summit on December 9.

The hope is that central banks are acting because, looking forward, they feel confident that other policymakers will finally catch up with a big and spreading debt crisis that has serious implications for growth, jobs and inequality. The fear is that they are acting because they feel that they must again pre-empt yet another set of potential disappointments.

The AP reports that all that happened today is that Europe has delayed "major debt decisions for 10 days." Will policymakers finally catch up to the markets and bankers? To think that is the triumph of hope over experience.

So: Near term: Party! Long term: Head for the hills!

Update, 1:45 p.m.: I predict that there will be a distinct pullback in the Dow by the time the NYSE closes at 4 p.m. today. At Close: Well, I called that the wrong way. The Dow actually closed at 12,029.56, up just under 474 points for the day. Things to look for: Yields on 10-year Italian bonds and the US Dollar Index. If the former drops about a point and the latter rises another three points or so, then the strong market indices will have a longer shelf life because together they will indicate that some sort of real response to the Eurozone's long-term issues has been adopted. But that is pretty problematical.

"It's hard to make things foolproof ...

... because fools are so ingenious."

Except that the managers of McDonald's, Inc. are not fools.

San Francisco's jackboot government has made it illegal, starting tomorrow, for Mickey D's or anyone else to sell a meal that includes a toy unless the meal complies with the city's draconian nutritional standards. That the city's school systems' meals do not meet those standards is ironic and typical of this kind of socialist authoritarianism, but that's another story, I guess.

The ordinance is directed squarely and specifically at McDonald's Happy Meals. The city's objective is to ban Happy Meals altogether because, you see, Happy Meals and nothing else are making S.F. kids obese.

So McDonald's will tomorrow stop selling Happy Meals there - at least, they will stop selling any kind of meal that includes a toy. You will still be able to buy the exact, same menu items in the exact, same Happy Meal box, at the same price. But it will not include a toy.

A toy will set you back another 10 cents, rung as a separate transaction. And if you want to buy a toy at all, you must buy the toyless Happy Meal to do so.

No, Mcdonald's' managers are not fools. But the dictati of San Francisco are.

Here's the link: Happy Meal Ban: McDonald's Outsmarts San Francisco

 

Employment good news

The National Employment Report says that seasonally-adjusted, non-farm payrolls increased by more than 200,000 from October to November. That figure includes the largest gain in construction jobs in five years. Link.

Brits: Prepare for riots in euro collapse

Prepare for riots in euro collapse, Foreign Office warns - Telegraph

British embassies in the eurozone have been told to draw up plans to help British expats through the collapse of the single currency, amid new fears for Italy and Spain. ...

If eurozone governments defaulted on their debts, the European banks that hold many of their bonds would risk collapse.

Some analysts say the shock waves of such an event would risk the collapse of the entire financial system, leaving banks unable to return money to retail depositors and destroying companies dependent on bank credit. ...

Some economists believe that at worst, the outright collapse of the euro could reduce GDP in its member-states by up to half and trigger mass unemployment.

Analysts at UBS, an investment bank earlier this year warned that the most extreme consequences of a break-up include risks to basic property rights and the threat of civil disorder.

“When the unemployment consequences are factored in, it is virtually impossible to consider a break-up scenario without some serious social consequences,” UBS said.

Markets move faster than politicians

Which is one big reason why the Euro crisis is not getting solved.

“Financial markets continue to move faster than politicians,” Mansoor Mohi-uddin, head of foreign exchange strategy for UBS, said. “Fixed income investors are betting that either Germany moves towards a fiscal union with its eurozone partners or that, without the ECB willing to buy unlimited amounts of sovereign bonds in the secondary markets, the eurozone will break apart.”

This gentleman also says that the end of the Euro as the single, unified European currency has already been priced into the markets. But I would add that the markets have not priced it in all the way.

However,

The EU process continues and the politicians clearly feel they have ample time on their hands.

EU monetary history is full of delays and Germany giving in to pressure. Merkel’s position is under pressure and the Bund Yield has become our barometer for pro-EU solutions – for now the trend is clear – we are on-route to Germany giving up and soon.

Europe: Apocalypse now?

Germany told to act to save Europe - FT.com:

Germany is the only country in Europe that can act to save the eurozone and the wider European Union from “a crisis of apocalyptic proportions”, the Polish foreign minister warned on Monday in a passionate call for more drastic action to prevent the collapse of the European monetary union.

The extraordinary appeal by Radoslaw Sikorski, delivered in the shadow of the Brandenburg Gate in the German capital, came as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development called on European leaders to provide “credible and large enough firepower” to halt the sell-off in the eurozone sovereign debt market, or risk a severe recession.

The OECD’s comments came as the organisation slashed its half-yearly forecasts for growth in the world’s richest countries, warning that economic activity in Europe would grind to a near-halt.

If Europe does reach a financial apocalypse and economic activity there grinds to a near halt, the US will topple right behind. A third of the United States' trade is with Europe. Think we can take that kind of hit without crashing ourselves?

More: OECD: euro collapse would have 'highly devastating outcomes' worldwide

The collapse of the euro could send the world's advanced economies into a severe recession, dragging emerging markets with them into the mire, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development warned on Monday. ... Pier Carlo Padoan, OECD chief economist, made plain in the body's latest six-monthly economic outlook that the greatest threat to global economic health comes from the eurozone rather than from the tax-and-spend gridlock in the US Congress. ... His comments came amidst evidence that the 17 eurozone countries are even wider apart on the measures required to staunch the exit of global investors and prevent a credit crunch on an even worse scale than in 2008-09.

This is Europe. The moment of verticality is only
days away. 

There simply is no good news from anyone writing about the Eurozone and its future. The SS Europe is sinking and everyone knows it. But the national governments cannot agree on how to stop it. There is some consensus that Germany has to "save Europe," but the fact is that Germany alone cannot do it.

They say that when a ship sinks and you find yourself in the water, you have to get away from the sinking vessel because the water rushing into the ship will drag you along with it. But there is no economy in the world that can "get away" from Europe's impending and by now almost certain collapse. The recession we entered in 2008 will be like a walk in the park to what is coming. It will be a true depression. Ironically, in the short term America's markets will benefit from an inflow of investors' cash as they run away from the collapsing Euro markets. But that won't last.

How long until the sinking European ship turns vertical? Perhaps less than two weeks.

It's going to get uglier

Quick embeds of three pieces at Business Insider that are more than merely disturbing. The trends are pretty ugly.







See also my earlier post, "The long decline is just beginning."

"Where do you see yourself in five years?"

Fortunately, I have never been asked this question by a job interviewer or personnel manager, but Graybeard has, and he gave the best answer I have heard of.

True story: I've mentioned before I work for a big company. Like the majority of the herd, we do annual performance reviews, which is a comparison of goals you submitted a year ago, goals you were scheduled to meet, with what you actually accomplished. This year they asked us to submit a development plan. The first question was, "What do you picture yourself doing in three to five years?". In my mind, I wrote, "In the best case, I'm retired, living someplace with dark skies, on 10 acres I own free and clear, with plenty of recreational opportunities, playing to my heart's content. In the worst case, I'm crouched in the rubble that used to be my house, wearing a loincloth that some animal I killed was wearing, and defending my wife and I with a rifle. With two bullets saved for when all other options are gone". Then I decided not to submit the form until they tell me I have to.

Ah, the pleasures of following back link referrals!

The long decline is just beginning

Here is a real bright ray of sunshine over at American Digest about The Ship of State:

The jobs are not coming back. To know that you need to get off the inter-states; off the scenic blue highways that lead to your summer beach retreats. You need to get into the towns that have been passed by; the towns whose main industry has become food stamps and "assistance." These towns are growing in number daily and will continue to grow.

There is no work in these towns. The factories that supported them are long dead or dying. They, like the people they supported, are carbon based life forms and the strange insects that govern us seem to be united in making sure they never return. The checks and the food stamps come, but that's not enough to paint the houses or put in the gardens or do much more than eat too many pizzas and drink too much watery beer. The young would leave but more and more there's no place to go. They spend their time instead deciding on what sort of new tattoo will go well with the previous twenty.

The building of new houses and malls and condos and other large construction projects are not coming back. And even if they did where would we find the workers trained to build them? Old carpenters have moved on to making a living at something other than construction. There's not enough work to bring young ones onto the job and help them to master the skills needed. When a nation stops building it stops having the jobs that can train the next generation of builders. Mexicans, working cheap and off the books, are still in some demand, but there's a limit to repainting and the kind of minor brickwork that makes for a pleasant garden.

The money isn't coming back except at something worth less with every passing day.

No, it is not, and here's the demographic-tsunami reason why.

There are 79 million baby boomers like me. The oldest boomers, born in 1946, have started turning 65 just this year and many are entering retirement. There are 17 years worth of boomers left to retire, on average, 4.3 million per year. (Actually, since boomer births did not peak until 1957, the number of boomers retiring will steadily rise by more than that average. Boomer births passed more than 4 million per year in 1954 and never fell below that number; 1965 was fewer than 4 million, but '65 was not a boomer birth year. See here.)

It will not be until 2025 when median boomer's age will be 70. But boomers' longevity will be years longer. That means that boomers' mortality rate will not start diminishing boomers' numbers significantly for several years, probably at least 10 years. Since for many years now the death rate per 1,000 population has been declining, the margin of error is wide in just when the number of boomers will start falling steeply, probably only when the median age has gone significantly higher than 70.

So: boomers are starting to retire and will do so in accelerating numbers for at least 18 more years - 1964's boomers (the last of the cohort) won't start to retire until 2029. We are living longer. And we are selfish people who are not very much inclined to leave a sizable estate to our kids. The huge wealth transfer we enjoyed from The Greatest Generation has been spent, boyo, because man, do we boomers love our lifestyles.

Don't expect a big inheritance from your boomer parents -- even if they are rich. Less than half of millionaire boomers say that leaving money for their kids is a priority for them, according to a 2011 U.S. Trust study. But 64% of boomers say they plan to use their money to travel and more than one in three say they want to use it to "have fun."

Now, where is all the money to pay for our retirement centers, medical care and vacations in Costa Rica going to come from? It will come from the equity investments we made before we retired. In short, we are going to sell stocks, bonds and mutual funds like crazy starting very soon. And because each successive year adds millions more to the retired ranks, the selloff will accelerate every year into the late 2030s and almost certainly well into the '40s.

The fate of traditional equity markets, beginning, oh,
next year. Found at Boomer Cafe.

The plain fact is that tens of trillions of dollars are going to disappear from the value of the DJIA and other stock indices over the next 20-30 years. And with each year, as the selloff accelerates, the decline in equity-companies' market value will drop even more - because each successive year, boomers will sell more equities than the year before, both as a group and individually, just to stay even.

In fact, if the near-term retiring boomers cash out only $1,500 of equities per month, starting with zero retired boomers and adding about 360,000 every month, then in only six months more than $3 trillion of sold-share value will be reached.

Read this slowly: Three. Trillion. Dollars. Sold off every six months. That's in addition to the previous semiannual's sum. That's $18 trillion of equities sold in just the first 18 months. And it only goes much higher from there. Folks, we are looking at possibly hundreds of trillions of dollars of equity sales over boomers' retirement years.

There are two huge problems with this. First, the total world market's valuation is only $37 trillion. So boomers' simply cannot cash out enough equities to maintain their standard of living because there is literally not enough money in the world to do it, assuming that boomers need only about $1,500 of sold principal per month to make up a shortfall of dividends and interest. Even if you halve the figure, the numbers can't be sustained.

So - we boomers simply are not, as a population group, going to enjoy in retirement the high standard of living we are accustomed to.

The second problem is that Generation X, boomers' successors, doesn't have nearly enough money to match as inflow into equities what we boomers are going to take out. Gen-X is the generation hit hardest by the multi-year Great Recession. Enormous numbers of them have already sold out just to stay afloat financially. And even before the recession hit, they were piling up debt like madmen.

The Gen Xers, generally defined as those born from 1965 through 1980 — now 27 to 43 years old — have even less assurance than the boomers of receiving company pensions and projected Social Security benefits.

In 1979, when the oldest Gen Xers were teenagers, the sole retirement plan for 62% of workers was a traditional pension, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI). By 2005, when most of the Gen Xers had joined the workforce, that number had flipped: 63% of employees found themselves covered only by voluntary 401(k) plans. So much for the corporate safety net.

On top of that, the Gen Xers' life expectancies, and thus their retirements, will likely exceed even the boomers'. They'll need to save more aggressively. Yet, burdened by high housing costs, stifling college debt, stagnating wages and outsize health insurance and gas prices, Gen Xers are saving too little for retirement, just as workplace benefits have shrunk.

According to the EBRI, more than one in three workers ages 35 to 44 aren't setting aside any money for retirement. Among those ages 25 to 34, 45% aren't saving.

In short, the traditional US equities markets - the Dow, the S & P and the NASDAQ - are heading over the falls and there is nothing they can do about it. Anyone younger than 50 today is going to get clobbered if they keep investing for retirement with the old "buy and hold" method of investing in funds or stocks.

The US economy is not coming back even to the 1980s level of performance, and as for that of the '90s and middle Oughts, only in your dreams.

What we boomers have done is left an incredibly bollixed up legacy to our children, and we captain the ship of state happily off the falls because, hey, we'll be dead by the time it crashes onto the rocks, so what's it matter? But our kids and grandkids will be crushed by what we have done. Fact is, we never grew up and we never will.

Grade inflation and higher education

The Volokh Conspiracy » Reforming Higher Education: Incentives, STEM Majors, and Liberal Arts Majors – the Education versus Credential Tradeoff.
The pernicious bubble in higher education is not the near-runaway attendance costs, but average undergraduate GPAs that approach 4.0.

Chart from gradeinflation.com

While there is no grade inflation in the technical courses (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, or STEM), it's shot through the roof in the humanities. Why one and not the other?
Basically, STEM schools or departments are in worldwide competition with each other, and their reputation rests on their top-performing graduates. Hence, introductory STEM courses are designed to weed out the poor and average performers, and that means the classes are conducted at a pace that students with merely above-average math skills can't keep up. (I also wonder whether STEM professors know they can't curve grades for people who might be designing long-span bridges, power plants or airliners.)

This is not to say, however. that STEM schools have been immune to grade inflation over time.

As for humanities departments, there is no inter-school competition. Harvard's history department does not compete with Oxford's, or for that matter with State U's. If a student wants to get a BA in history - or philosophy or English Lit, whatever - it really is not much relevant what the name of the school is. The reason is that humanities departments have become almost useless for graduating bachelor holders who are immediately employable in their major. So undergraduate humanities schools are really just prep schools for Master programs or law schools. 
That explains the grade inflation in humanities departments. Grade inflation has not corrupted the system, grade inflation is the system. And the more comparatively worthless a bachelors humanities degree is for postgraduate employment, the higher its average GPA is. That's how those departments justify their existence to the larger university and how they attract students to select those departments as majors. 
Grad schools don't care where their applicants matriculated. Grad schools consider nothing at all about a student except his/her GPA. A 4.0 at State Cow College in global civilization studies is far more credentialing for admission to a grad school than a 3.5 in physics from MIT. Grad schools don't care where the 4.0 came from or what its major was. They just want the high GPA. 
So a college student choosing a major should determine real quick whether he is grad school bound, and if so, select a major with the strongest record and reputation for grade inflation. That such a major is almost certainly going to be worthless for job seeking and will usually be free of intellectual content (like, oh, womyns studies) is irrelevant. Just get as close to a 4.0 GPA as possible. It's all that matters.
That's a short summary, of sorts, of prof. Volokh's assessment. But it's not altogether in line with a more in-depth study online here. However,

The author believes that the resurgence of grade inflation in the 1980s principally was caused by the emergence of a consumer-based culture in higher education. Students are paying more for a product every year, and increasingly they want and get the reward of a good grade for their purchase. In this culture, professors are not only compelled to grade easier, but also to water down course content. Both intellectual rigor and grading standards have weakened. The evidence for this is not merely anecdotal. Students are highly disengaged from learning, are studying less than ever, and are less literate. Yet grades continue to rise.

Then there's this:

To avoid getting an "incomplete" for the course, Ms. Zhou withdrew before the lab ended. Since switching majors she has earned almost straight A's instead of the B's and C's she took home in engineering.

Students who drop out of science majors and professors who study the phenomenon say that introductory courses are often difficult and abstract. Some students, like Ms. Zhou, say their high schools didn't prepare them for the level of rigor in the introductory courses.

Overall, only 45% of 2011 U.S. high-school graduates who took the ACT test were prepared for college-level math and only 30% of ACT-tested high-school graduates were ready for college-level science, according to a 2011 report by ACT Inc.

Say goodbye to the EU

The thing is that the European Union is doomed financially. And that means it is doomed politically. CNBC reports.

Christine Lagarde, head of the IMF, warned Europe's debt crisis risked plunging the global economy into a "lost decade," and said it was up to rich nations to shoulder the burden of restoring growth and confidence.

But the rich nations are only rich relatively, not absolutely. They are facing the same demographic and monetary challenges that the off-the-cliff countries have, but the rich nations are not as close to the cliff. But they are headed there and they know it. And there is no one to bail them out.

Christmas tree tax: About, face!

That Drudge man, he be powerful! When you get 100 million hits or so per month, you sway opinion whether you are trying to or not. Remmeber this morning's Christmas Tree Tax?

The administration has folded. Obama Administration to Delay New 15-Cent Christmas Tree Tax.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is going to delay implementation and revisit a proposed new 15 cent fee on fresh-cut Christmas trees, sources tell ABC News. The fee, requested by the National Christmas Tree Association in 2009, was first announced in the Federal Registry yesterday and has generated criticism of President Obama from conservative media outlets. ...

White House spokesman Matt Lehrich told ABC News that despite some media coverage, “I can tell you unequivocally that the Obama Administration is not taxing Christmas trees. What’s being talked about here is an industry group deciding to impose fees on itself to fund a promotional campaign, similar to how the dairy producers have created the ‘Got Milk?’ campaign.”

Nonetheless, the criticisms have apparently had an impact as the program is now being delayed.

“USDA is going to delay implementation and revisit this action,” Lehrich said.

If members of an industry group want to assess a 15-cent fee upon each item they sell, no problem. What I don't understand is why the federal government needs to be involved at all. Of course, that's a dumb question to ask when it concerns this administration.

Where is the ACLU when you need it?

Officially promoted by the Obama administration!

Heritage's blog, The Foundry: "Obama Couldn’t Wait: His New Christmas Tree Tax"

President Obama’s Agriculture Department today announced that it will impose a new 15-cent charge on all fresh Christmas trees—the Christmas Tree Tax—to support a new Federal program to improve the image and marketing of Christmas trees.

In the Federal Register of November 8, 2011, Acting Administrator of Agricultural Marketing David R. Shipman announced that the Secretary of Agriculture will appoint a Christmas Tree Promotion Board. The purpose of the Board is to run a “program of promotion, research, evaluation, and information designed to strengthen the Christmas tree industry’s position in the marketplace; maintain and expend existing markets for Christmas trees; and to carry out programs, plans, and projects designed to provide maximum benefits to the Christmas tree industry” (7 CFR 1214.46(n)). And the program of “information” is to include efforts to “enhance the image of Christmas trees and the Christmas tree industry in the United States” (7 CFR 1214.10).

To pay for the new Federal Christmas tree image improvement and marketing program, the Department of Agriculture imposed a 15-cent fee on all sales of fresh Christmas trees by sellers of more than 500 trees per year (7 CFR 1214.52). And, of course, the Christmas tree sellers are free to pass along the 15-cent Federal fee to consumers who buy their Christmas trees

But wait! It's not actually a tax, you see:

Acting Administrator Shipman had the temerity to say the 15-cent mandatory Christmas tree fee “is not a tax nor does it yield revenue for the Federal government” (76 CFR 69102).

The 15 cents, you see, goes to a board, established by the SecAg, that promotes Christmas trees by "carrying out the program established by" the SecAg. No wonder OTB headlines it, "A Christmas Tree Tax? No, Just Good Old Crony Capitalism."

The problem here isn’t that the Federal Government is imposing a “tax” on Christmas trees, but that it’s doing so to finance a program that it shouldn’t be implementing to begin with. The reason that the Christmas Tree growers want a program like this is because natural trees have been steadily losing market share to artificial trees in recent years. ... It’s a choice consumers are making in increasing numbers apparently, and the natural tree industry obviously doesn’t like it.So, they decided to get the government involved in “promoting” natural Christmas trees. ...

Why, then, do we need a government program to promote their sale?

We don’t, of course, and in reality the government shouldn’t be involved in product promotion of any kind. That’s not their job, it’s the job of the industry itself. If tree growers want to create a promotional campaign, then they can do so through their trade association. This simply isn’t something that the government should be doing, especially for a product that is sold primarily in a domestic market. Instead of doing that, though, they lobbied the government to create a program to do it for them.

What we’ve got here, then, is another example of crony capitalism, with the government putting its finger on the scale to benefit the natural tree industry at the presumed expense of the artificial tree industry and, most likely, the taxpayers (that 15 cent a tree fee is unlikely to be enough to fund the program completely). That’s crony capitalism, folks.

This administration hardly originated crony capitalism but Obama et. al. have perfected it to a high art.

However, clearly this program is unconstitutional because it violates the First Amendment! As we all know, the government with its partner, the ACLU, has been waging a War on Christmas Trees.

Okay, snark off. Actually, there are all manner of industries that use the government to promote their businesses and this sort of fee is by far from uncommon - as even DefendChristmas.com reports, "Akin to similar programs that promote milk, beef and cotton, the new Christmas tree program will impose on U.S. domestic producers and importers an initial fee of 15 cents per tree." However, it is still accurate to describe the fee as a tax because it is remission of revenue to the federal government by force of law, spent for purposes that are spelled out in law and regulation, carried out by an executive department.

The ACLU's web site is not terribly informative about its stance on Christmas trees per se. It does say that the government must not be in the business of promoting one religion over another or of promoting religion at all.

I hardly think that a program to strengthen the natural-tree growers is an endorsement of Christianity itself.  So no Constitutional line has been crossed. That doesn't mean that the program is wise or desirable. That no one in the government had a second thought about implementing it only shows how deeply rooted these back-scratching programs are in our polity. That's the problem, not 15 cents.

Wal-Mart math

Okay, first there was the Volvo dealer who thinks you discount cars by raising the price. Now Wal-Mart shows its corporate math and marketing skills:

I blame George W. Bush.

My flirtation with Obamaism

Remember when then-candidate Barack Obama told Joe "the Plumber" that he wanted "to spread the wealth around?"

No. Really. You're kidding me. Barack Obama actually told that Joe the Plumber guy that he wants to "spread the wealth around." What, did Obama just get done reading the Wikipedia entry on Huey "Share the Wealth" Long or something? Was he somehow channeling that left-wing populist from the Depression? Talk about playing into the most extreme stereotype of your party, that it is infested with socialists.

And that quote is from USNews, which supported Obama in 2008 (today, not so much).

On Monday I had my own flirtation with Obamaism and did not even realize what I had done until later in the day. That day my wife and daughter and I ate lunch at a Chinese buffet that we had never dined at before. The chow was fine and the young lady attending our table did a great job.

Now, here's the rub. I almost never under-tip. For me to leave less than the full tip (runs 15 percent or so around these part) happens maybe twice per year, and then for only truly terrible table service. I over-tip if the service is above average. This lady's service was.

So I go to the counter to pay the bill and ask for and receive a discount for being retired military, not an uncommon thing around here. Feeling generous, I added the discounted amount to the tip.

Then later in the afternoon it hit me: that was Obamaism in action. I basically took money from the restaurant's owner when I asked for the discount and gave it to one of his employees. So in fact, I sacrificed nothing and walked out feeling good about my generosity. But I was generous with OPM - and that is exactly what the entire political class of our country is doing to you and me.

I have learned a lesson here. But our government never does.

Endnote: Us Congressman Davy Crockett had something to say about this.

And here is the video with Joe the Plumber.



And just for the heck of it, here are the top 10 true facts about Davy Crockett. He makes Chuck Norris look like a pansy.

"Email: Job Hunting"

The young lady who posted her counter-OWS-protest photo has basically filled her blog with emails she has gotten in response. Some take her position, many don't. Of those who support her, the emails generally can be summarized, "ditto." Of those who don't support, few are as thoughtful or compelling as the one below.

For every apparent indolent layabout hefting signs on Wall Street or as clueless and as frankly stupid as this guy, there are hundreds of Americans who are this lady's situation. And the scorn being heaped upon Women's Studies majors who wonder why they are both unemployed and unemployable should not be transferred to the countless people like this woman. They get no news coverage. So I will help give them voice.

I think the only reason I haven't joined the protest . . is because I'm pretty sure that the only people who could actually do anything to help. . .feel the way you do about it. Which is unfortunate. I'm young. I have experience in retail, sales, cashiering, desk work, cleaning, and assembly line work. I'm friendly. I'm competent. I have good references.

I have turned in over 200 job applications in the past year. Everything from McDonalds to housekeeping to receptionist positions. I've applied to clean kennels at the animal shelter. I've applied to sell phones. Everything I can think of. I went to the mall Store Directory and applied to every. Store. They. Have.

I have called every single one of them. I have had one interview for a permanent position. I didn't get it.

The only jobs I've been able to get are temp jobs. Full time, minimum wage. Unreliable. It's not enough to pay the bills. I'm not in debt. I have a roommate. She works. We recycle, we don't waste anything. We reuse plastic dishes. We compost our fruits and vegetables to put in the soil, so we can grow food and vegetables at home. We do everything in our power to spend as little as possible.

My husband just returned from deployment. His military job filled his position while he was gone, and refused to hire him back. He's highly skilled - and can't find work.

Tomorrow I will be going to the local DHS office to beg for food stamps so I can feed my daughter. Because the other option is to buy groceries and lose . . .what? Electricity? Water? The place we're renting?

I know. "Internet". Because it's a luxury.

Except the bit where nearly every place of business requires . . what? Yeah, you have to go to their website and fill out an application. Online. They don't have paper applications any more. Most don't even have the computer you can sit down at in the store.

I have spent two hours, every day, at my computer. Filling out applications. Replying to CL job ads. Looking through CareerBuilder and Jobfinder and the state jobs listing.

I just . . I just hope you realize, in some deep part of your soul, that it really IS that bad. That people are trying. And losing hope. And giving up.

I'm not ready for that yet - if I weren't a mom, though, I probably would be. It's so hard to be rejected like that, over and over, when all you want to do is work. To earn enough to get by.

Your blog is your opinion. And it's your right. You don't have to care what I have to say here. I'm not asking you to completely rethink your position. I just needed to say, from one human being to another - they aren't all lazy hippies. Some just don't know what else to do at this point.

Jobs don't want them. Employees won't hire them. For one reason or another, their lives fell apart. And these protests, I believe, give them a sense of community, like. . .somehow, MAYBE, it might make a difference.