Robert Oak's blog

The Word

You might be wondering just how the BLS computes the unemployment rate. Well, from Comedy Central, Stephen Colbert in the Audacity of Hopelessness explains it all.

So, everyone get that, if you give up hope the economy improves. I would say that has been the Bush administration's overall policy for the United States middle class.

Job Market 2009

And now for some sarcasm with a ring of truth, brought to you by Screaming Frog Productions:

How many job ads for highly educated professionals are permatemp and have skills requirement lists as long as your arm?

This book, White Collar Sweatshop: The Deterioriation of Work and Its Rewards in Corporate America - Jill Andresky Fraser, published in 2001, goes into great detail on the labor arbitrage of professional careers into the United States.

Derivatives- Investment Vehicles No One Understands

When you bite down into that hamburger, do you know what's in it?   Well, the new mystery meat is the massive financial black box (what's inside is anyone's guess!) world of derivatives and credit default swaps.

Finally, the New York Times writes a detailed article, What Created This Monster, and exposes even world leading economists do not know what derivatives are or in most cases, the details of how they work.

These products are virtually hidden from investors, analysts and regulators, even though they have emerged as one of Wall Street’s most outsized profit engines. They don’t trade openly on public exchanges, and financial services firms disclose few details about them

Disaster Capitalism

If you ever noticed how magically no-bid contractors sprung up upon the decision to invade Iraq or how conveniently the residents of New Orleans were bused out after Hurricane Katrina and the 9th ward was never rebuilt...how that little something isn't quite right fly buzzes in the back of your brain while you returned to economic survival of your own, I have a must read book for you.

The Shock Doctrine - The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein.

Klein has identified a new corporate strategy of using natural and man made disasters to push through corporate profit driven privatization and other agendas while the general public are disoriented, confused and thus have no ability to resist.

She calls Disaster Capitalism the rapid-fire corporate reengineering of societies that are reeling from shock.

The Two Economies

Waiting for the Wall Street implosion that didn't materialize, I watched the financial news. What emerged was a discussion of the two economies.

Bloomberg: Ben S. Bernanke's interest-rate cuts have touched off a vicious circle of doom for the dollar

Guess what? Now there are two economies, one for the investors, super elites and the real one for the rest of us. We should not pay attention to the paper economy according to financial advisers, it's just the place where the super elites create investment vehicles, derivatives, hedge funds, bonds...and all of that stuff which is simply the trading of paper. Nope, the real economy is just fine. The trouble is this paper economy.

Winter Watch & Dr. Strangelove: Trial Ballooning More Disasters

While the markets rallied and folks cheered the Feds, proclaimed they saved the day, a dissenter emerges in the form of Winter Watch via Dr. Strangelove: Trial Ballooning More Disasters.

Today, the Fed announced a new liquidity plan.

the Fed announced a plan to resuscitate the ailing credit markets by lending $200 billion to battered financial firms in exchange for debt- or mortgage-backed securities. Starting March 27, the central bank is planning to offer weekly auctions, which could exceed $200 billion if there is sufficient demand, the Fed said.

I felt alone in the perception of an enabled ponzi subprime mortgage game continuing unabated, a shell game to push off this greedy disaster onto the taxpayer. Was I wrong? Did I just not understand? After all the market went up the highest 1 day rise in 5 years.

From Winters:

Site Changes - What's the latest?

This weekend I'm working on the format and some other features.

The site may change or you might see test posts periodically.

Over on the left bottom, you will see an up/down arrow. This is a voting module. By default all blog posts go to the front page. Any blog post receiving negative points(votes) can be removed from the front page by user consensus.

Any forum topic that receives enough positive points will be promoted to the front page. If a post receives enough negative votes(points) it will be unpublished.

Comments are also rated and with enough negative ratings will disappear from the site. Positive ratings over time will give that user more site privileges.

The idea here is to generate a front page that are the best writings and the most reasoned blogs. Registered fellow bloggers determine the content versus just myself as arbitrary dictator on high.

The Horizon Project

You have probably never heard of the Horizon Project or even Ralph Gomory and William Baumol and their book on Trade and Conflicting Interests..

But, these policy proposals are unique, innovative and deserve strong consideration and discussion.

The Horizon Project's Agenda:

Project members believe we need to act now - on economic & trade policy issues, education, health care and public infrastructure investment - to stave off the rosion of our competitive advantages and the loss of the nation's middle class base

What is WTO GATS Mode 4?

GATS stands for General Agreement on Trade and Services. This is a treaty under the control and part of the WTO .

The GATS defines four modes of trade in services. Mode 4 refers to the temporary migration of workers, to provide services or fulfill a service contract. Because the current framework of Mode 4 allows for only temporary movement of workers across borders to provide services, and their visa as well as their right to stay and work are tied to their original terms of employment or contract and to their employer.

The WTO is basically negotiating a global guest worker program.

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