- GOOD » Books Are the New Cars» – Another day, another imploding industry…
- Economist’s View: “Capitalist Fools” – Was there any single decision which, had it been reversed, would have changed the course of history? … The truth is most of the individual mistakes boil down to just one: a belief that markets are self-adjusting and that the role of government should be minimal. … The embrace by America—and much of the rest of the world—of this flawed economic philosophy made it inevitable that we would eventually arrive at the place we are today.
- Google Book Search: Google Book Search Now Includes Magazines – This is awesome, although everyone is likely searching for Playboy or Honcho.
- Two Methods to Measure Unemployment: 1948 – Nov 2008 at Visualizing Economics – Two unemployment series: U-3 the official unemployment rate in blue and U-6 the broadest definition of unemployment (includes marginally attached workers and people employed part-time for economic reasons) in orange.
- Recession Is Shaping Up to Be the Worst Since the 1940s – NYTimes.com – This recession, which officially began in December 2007, now appears virtually certain to be the longest downturn — and possibly most severe — since the end of World War II, as evidenced last week by a demoralizing rat-a-tat of grim reports on jobs, sales and public confidence. The reports signaled that even after 11 months, more than the entire length of the last two downturns, this recession has only now entered its fiercest phase, and economists say the pain will not end soon.
- Spectacular Christmas Lights from Around the World – Beautiful.
- The Newspaper Industry and the Arrival of the Glaciers – Boing Boing – By the turn of the century, anyone who didn't understand that the business model for newspapers was a wasting asset was caught up in nothing other than willful ignorance, so secure in their faith in the permanence of their business that they assumed that those glaciers would politely swerve at the last minute, which minute is looking increasingly like now.
- My Problems Are Real to Me: Five Sexist Trends the Advertising World Just Can’t Shake – The fact that these trends are so widespread is not the fault of the advertising world–these people are paid to appeal to our ids, they are often self-aware in their tendency to make the world harder for women, that's the life they've chosen. It is mainstream companies like BMW, Mitchum, Nikon, mainstream publications that host these images, and mainstream readers who use these products despite their appalling treatment of women that are truly to blame. The advertising world reacts to client demands and consumer activity–we have control over only one of those fields.
- Radio Shack Catalogs – Currently broken, but I'm sure it will be back…
- Wall Street: Profiles in Panic: About Us: vanityfair.com – With Wall Street hemorrhaging jobs and assets, even many of the wealthiest players are retrenching. Others, like the Lehman Brothers bankers who borrowed against their millions in stock, have lost everything. Hedge-fund managers try to sell their luxury homes, while trophy wives are hocking their jewelry. The pain is being felt on St. Barth’s and at Sotheby’s, on benefit-gala committees and at the East Hampton Airport, as the world of the Big Rich collapses, its culture in shock and its values in question.
- Get Your Google Profile Organized For Friend Connect | MakeUseOf.com – So in other words, Friend Connect personalises your site more. Gives it that human touch. But it also branches out further than that. If you click on someone’s icon and view their Google profile, you can potentially see their Google Reader shared articles, their favourite shared photos, their Blogger comments, their YouTube videos and much more (if they choose to share that information with you by having it on their profile). This is in direct contrast to Facebook where you have to be approved first by the person before viewing any information of theirs. Facebook is also very much “walled in” where everything is inside and can’t be taken out of the site. Friend Connect, by contrast, seems more “looser” and you can click from site to site. Nothing seems to be constrained.
- GM may rebuild Saturn rather than kill it – Autoblog – But GM can't simply close the Saturn shop. There are 425 Saturn dealerships, and one dealer-broker figured that GM would have to shell out $3-$4 million to each dealer if Saturn gets put down. That puts GM past the billion dollar mark even before any other cost is taken into account. And Saturn can't simply be sold either, except as a brand name and blueprints – it has no engineering nor manufacturing abilities outside of GM.
- Hullabaloo: Until He Turns Blue – Shelby is a traditional conservative — in the mode of Herbert Hoover. That tradition is one that's been out of fashion for about 80 years now and there's little reason to bring it back. If you want to relive the Hoover years, take Charleston lessons. Or read some F.Scott Fitzgerald and leave the economy to more modern thinkers.
- Op-Ed Columnist – The Brightest Are Not Always the Best – NYTimes.com – Few seem to recall that the phrase, in its original coinage, was meant to strike a sardonic, not a flattering, note. Perhaps even Doris Kearns Goodwin would agree that it’s time for Beltway reading groups to move on from “Team of Rivals” to Halberstam.
- Scholars and Rogues » The “dumbest generation”: sloppy thinking, maybe, but it’s put-up-or-shut-up time for Gen X – In the coming five years or so a massive number of Boomers are going to retire (the earliest Boomers hit retirement age this year, in fact) and early Xers are going to have to step in and step up. (For a lot of reasons, I don’t expect this transition to be a terribly pretty one.) The most prominent symbol of Gen X taking the reins right now is Barack Obama, who will soon become the first Xer president. Unless you’ve been off planet for a few years, you realize the massiveness and unfathomable complexity of the challenge he faces, and for better or worse it’s now time for my generation to step up and lead. You may think Xers are slackers and “the dumbest generation,” or you may prefer the Howe and Strauss narrative from 13th Gen, which credits us with a good deal of street smarts and a collective ingenuity born of necessity. Ultimately, though, it doesn’t matter. The time is now, and we’ll either get it done or we won’t.
- Firedoglake » Want Something Fixed? Make Sure Important People Have Skin In the Game – Principle: when elites are not effected by a problem they have a lot less incentive to fix the problem.
Solution: don't let elites opt out of things like military service and public schools if you want problems with both (illegal wars, not enough body armor, bad schools) to be dealt with properly and in a timely manner.
- Emptywheel » Dan Quayle and Cerberus Holding American Economy Hostage – But understand: GM acquiring Chrysler–which is the most discussed option–offers little benefit to GM. Sure, the merged company would get to sell either the Renaissance Center in downtown Detroit or Chrysler's fairly new digs up north; you could find efficiencies in headquarter structure (if you were a healthy company to begin with). But everyone agrees that two of GM's most urgent problems are that it has too many brands and too many dealerships. And you want to fix that by making it take on 3,300 more dealers and three more brands? This is Congress' idea of a really smart restructuring?
- IIHS: Ten Most Stolen Vehicles For 2008 – The most stolen cars, actually, are the ones American automakers are taking the most flack over: big trucks and SUVs. Vehicles like the Cadillac Escalade were popular with automakers because it was a cheap platform they could load with lots of expensive parts and make a hefty profit on. For the same reason it is popular with thieves. Add expensive audio equipment and rims, especially on cars like the Hummer H2 and Dodge Magnum, to the equation and you might as well paint "steal my car" on the side.
- Political Calculations: Detroit in Four Squares – With the U.S. automakers now in line for aid from the federal government, we thought it might be valuable to present the following four square chart, which depicts the typical historic interaction between the strength of the economy and how well Detroit satisfies consumers in the U.S. with the outcomes they produce for management, workers and the future of the auto industry
- Kop Busters | Never Get Busted Again – KopBusters rented a house in Odessa, Texas and began growing two small Christmas trees under a grow light similar to those used for growing marijuana. When faced with a suspected marijuana grow, the police usually use illegal FLIR cameras and/or lie on the search warrant affidavit claiming they have probable cause to raid the house. Instead of conducting a proper investigation which usually leads to no probable cause, the Kops lie on the affidavit claiming a confidential informant saw the plants and/or the police could smell marijuana coming from the suspected house.
- 5 Comic Superheroes Who Made a Real-World Difference – If you think superheroes do amazing things in comic books, you won’t believe what they can do off the page. For starters, Superman brought down the Ku Klux Klan, Donald Duck raised ships from the ocean floor, and Spider-Man transformed the American justice system.
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