h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Oddly enough, the small businesses pay more taxes, percentage wise, than the mega corporations -- something like the way that middle class folks pay more taxes, percentage wise, than the very wealthy.

I always find those tax disclosure statements of presidential candidates very enlightening reading.

Well there you go, RBS a uk bank has just anounced losses of £24 Billion in 2008, a uk record for a single company!
The ex chief exec who caused a lot of those losses due to cock ups is now retired at 50 and getting a pension of £650,000 per year!
.
Hey, a nice little earner, screw up , lose billions and get a MASSIVE pension, crazy world huh?

Shifting away from the econ for a moment, (if that's allowed), I spent Saturday at a march in Phoenix against Sheriff Joe Arpaio's immigration raids. There's an article here:

http://www.azcentral.com/community/phoenix/articles/2009/02/28/20090228arpaioupdate-ON.html

That article mentions the lead singer for Rage Against the Machine showing up at the rally. I don't remember seeing him. But then, I wasn't right in front of the stage, I was sitting in the shade, getting ready to march.

Good on ya, Irv! How many were there?

Few thousand, I believe. I've seen varying estimates, but there were definitely thousands of protesters, and maybe a hundred counter-protesters. Many of the so-called "Minutemen," including a woman with a prominently displayed revolver on her hip.

As a condition of receiving its 4th huge pile of money, insurance giant AIG is being broken up.

Do you have a link HN?

http://www.forbes.com/2009/03/02/aig-treasury-fed-markets-equity_bailout_government_17.html

"By year end," he says of 2008, "investors of all stripes were bloodied and confused, much as if they were small birds that had strayed into a badminton game".

Warren Buffet waxing lyrical:

http://prwarrior.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/03/master-communicator-warren-buffett-continues-to-mesmerize.html

The unemployment figure for my county is 10.8%. Source, news a few minutes ago on radio station KOZT www.KOZT.com, which can be streamed.

GDZ, my source for the news on AIG was the broadcast that day on radio station KZYX, www.kzyx,org, also available for streaming.

By the way, these are two independent radio stations that are locally programmed and have actual live people in them, as opposed to all the other radio stations in the area, which are automated relay stations that belong to a mega-corporation.

Did everybody know about the Pennsylvania Hershey's plant closure but me? I just found out from my husband's monthly newsletter, which states, "This makes six plants shuttered on U.S. soil by Hershey."

Here's an online source:

http://www.postchronicle.com/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi?archive=121&num=209917

An interesting slant on the build-up to our economic problems at

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/3/24/thomas_geoghegan_on_infinite_debt_how

on video, streaming audio or downloadable MP3. You have to scroll down a bit, ignoring the first video to the buttons below the headline "Thomas Geoghegan on “Infinite Debt: How Unlimited Interest Rates Destroyed the Economy”. It's an inteview about an article in Harpers that you can't read without paying for it.

Geoghegan is an Illinois lawyer, but his points are relevant outside the US. He brings the thinking of Adam Smith and John Maynard Keynesto bear on our situation.

(I put this on the news thread, but think it's more fitting here).

I subscribe to Harper's and recommend the article (overall a rather depressing issue, however) about the rise of usury. There may be some very practical economic reasoning behind the disapproval of usury expressed in the Bible.

The article should become available for free as soon as next month's Harpers comes out.



Meanwhile, I should like to apologize to Canadians for the idiots on the Fox News show called "Red Eye".

And I'd like to apologize to the Canadians for people like Roomie, who live to watch "Red Eye" -- because it's "funny". If those people weren't watching, it wouldn't be on the air.

*returns from googling "Red Eye" and "Canada" and finding this:*

http://www.edmontonsun.com/Comment/Commentary/2009/03/26/8888176-sun.html

This is a great example of why I don't have television.



We got a briefing today at work, everyone in the company is going on 20% Work-Sharing.

Happy Nerd, it's good their not downsizing, but bad that your hours got cut. How does it work -- is it a 20% "furlough" or...?

They're, not their. contraction for They are...

It means instead of the company letting 20% of the staff go to cope with a 20% loss of business, we're all going to be working 32 hours per week rather than the usual 40, or 4 days rather than 5.

On a positive note, I really have no excuse not to finish that entry still hanging out in Peer Review.

The same thing has happened to me, Happy Nerd. Where I work, those of us with seniority in "key positions" were quietly informed that starting sometime next month, everyone's hours will be cut back from 40 per week to 32 for the next two or three fiscal quarters. The rest of the employees here will find out when we're closer to the actual change.

Luckily, we'll have access to unemployment insurance to make up for the income loss. But still, I've got my eye on the local job market; it wouldn't hurt to find a 10-hour-a-week job somewhere around here.

And me. My 25 hour per week job, which turned out to be only 20 hours, has been cut back to 10 hours. Hardly worth the cost of gasoline had it been 2 hours per day. I got them to agree to come in 2 days per week instead.