which is it?

If I could only figure out if we're in austerity or growth, boom years or lean times. . .

. . . regardless, the birds are chirping outside at 7 a.m.

What are they saying?

"Hey, Teach, quit yapping and grade some more papers, why don't you?"

In a world where even the poor and on the go are no longer reaching past the dollar menu for the supersized fries, it's hard to believe business is as booming as the latest jobs figures suggest.

Did I mention that a gallon of milk is $3.97 at Wal-Mart in South Carolina?

A gallon of gas, we'll talk about another day.

you said that's a Prize for Peace?

I wasn't thinking of all the different points Tariq Ali makes in this interview, but in light of the current austerity in Greece and Spain and European Union's extremely high unemployment rate, I was surprised and confused when I heard the news that the E.U. has won the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize.

Mo Yan, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, is getting much stronger praise, at least from this expert in Chinese literature. Smith College's Sabina Knight says, "If you want to know why I love Mo Yan, just read anything by Mo Yan. His works seethe with a life force, and his grappling with human aggression transcends national borders. His works shed light on the dark depths of our psyches, a darkness on which China has no monopoly."

I like to think she wasn't speaking of my recent ice-cream intake when she notes that we all have darker depths than we care to recognize.

austerity triplex (conforming loans only, please)

And here's the "real news" from Germany where a political leader, representing the more marginalized citizens, states, and pardon my possible paraphrase, that "austerity is the ideology of the ruling class." As you might imagine, it's the poor who go with less or without under such policies, and the video considers how German businesses are also hurt when citizens in Greece and Spain have little to no spending power beyond that which will go to the most basic necessities.

Back home, a recent year's worth of Bureau of Labor Statistics jobs-growth reporting was revised upward by almost 400,000, and although that is but a small dent in the supposed 23 million without work, or without as much work as they'd like, it is somewhat ironic that the "year" reported on seems almost entirely contained within the period where there was intense gridlock and a blocked jobs bill in Congress. Here's an excerpt from the Forbes article:

The Bureau of Labor Statistics is out with its annual update to benchmark unemployment numbers (for the more cynical among you, the BLS does this every fall so this is not a number being ‘timed’ for the election), and the numbers reveal that 386,000 more non-farm jobs were actually created between March, 2011 and April 2012 than what had been originally reported.

The figures represent a variance from the previous data of 0.3 which sits right at the norm for annual benchmark adjustments which are typically up or down by 0.3 percent.

As a result of the revision, the Obama administration can now claim a net job increase of 125,000 rather than what had previously been believed to be a net loss of 261,000 jobs.

Of course, it remains a muddle, but it still feels like things are bad and not improving, or not improving fast enough, for millions and millions of workers throughout Europe and America. And, in some countries and counties, of course, they seem to be getting worse.

Austerity redux

Data shows second helpings, ice-cream sundaes, and extra cheese are all polling higher than economic austerity programs, particularly if said measures are linked to other countries' banks or governments. Krugman and the Palestinians are against austerity, too.

This guy, a law or economics professor somewhere in the middle of America, has some good ironic analysis on how ostensibly lefty Labor in England attempted to woo American finance with less regulation while some in the Republican party stateside are writing books attacking deregulatory policies.

Just when you think you have it all sorted out. . .

hard times

I read and watched, about Madrid and then Athens and then London. People all over the world are eating out of dumpsters; they need food. Donate if you can.

But I eat too much, and I know I could stand to lose a few or fifteen, and the Jewish New Year offered just such an opportunity.

For Yom Kippur, it was easy on Iran and Israel for me, but I cheated with liquids, milk in the coffee, orange juice, etc. before finally succumbing to a sandwich around 5 p.m. That's not fasting a full day, I know.

What's on your mind?