WHAT'S THAT "THE GIANT SUCKING SOUND"?

A good rule of thumb for determining the difference between a recession and a depression is to look at the changes in GNP. A depression is any economic downturn where real GDP declines by more than 10 percent. A recession is an economic downturn that is less severe.

Gotta be careful using this as your barometer, however, since government consumption & spending are a significant part of it

I believe a recession is when your neighbor loses his job and a depression is when you lose your job

I guess I was too optimistic in my forcast that things will really start in January:


Tech Companies, Long Insulated, Now Feel Slump

“It would be a tragic mistake for C.E.O.’s who did a great job fighting the last recession to think the same tactics will work this time,”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/15/technology/15tech.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

I was reading an article on this the other day and it seems there isn't an official definition for a depression.  See: http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/11/16/depression_2009_what_would_it_look_like/?page=full

Interestingly, they predict that people will get fat rather than go hungry - because they eat hot pockets and watch TV, the cheapest ways to eat and entertain oneself.

I also found it interesting that the description was pretty close to the sustainable lifestyle espoused by environmentalists to stop global warming - only they see it as a permanent state of affairs. 

I believe a recession is when your neighbor loses his job and a depression is when you lose your job

It's a DEPRESSION!   

We had a round of layoffs on Friday, fortunately I survived. If most of the rest of the companies are doing the same, that could mean a big new wave of foreclosures. 

I'm brewing 10 gallons of beer tonight (anchor steam clone), so the holidays can still be merry yet.   

We had a round of layoffs on Friday, fortunately I survived

Ditto here. We've now lost 30% of our staff since September. I guess I'm one of the lucky ones...so far.

The $700 Billion bailout is 20% of the entire 2007 national budget.

Since close to 80% of every budget is "allocated money".....
It means that the bailout has stripped our National Government all "disposable monies."

There is nothing in the treasury for infrastructure outside of already-allocated maintenance.

Consider that the Aswan Dam on the Nile River in Egypt cost $8-Billion to build.
Consider that the massive new Chinese Yangtze Dam cost $20 Billion to build.

These projects illustrate what the loss of $700 Billion MEANS to the vitality and development of this country....the things we could have done, but now cannot.

$700 Billion could build a nuclear generation plant in every city over 150,000 population, in the USA.    This would eliminate huge transmission and distribution losses of power.   It would supply ample power to ALL FIXED POWER USAGE REQUIREMENTS...(including all railroads)....leaving only "portable power" to be derived from petroleum burning. Simultaneously the reduced volume of petroleum consumption would eliminate the emmission of untellable BILLIONS OF TONS of greenhouse gas emission.....from.....that day......onward...!!!....It could easily "turn the greenhouse-effect" corner for us, and the rest of the world....slowly stop the melting of glaciers....halt the ocean-level rise...

But no.

Even if we had the national will to do that--???---we CANNOT do that----because this nation has no disposable income, now, or for any immediately- foreseeable future.

We Americans are in serious serious trouble.
Serious serious trouble.

We are in such serious trouble that The Press fears to dimension it...and doesn't.  

Not in it's full dimensions.    

Not in the dimensions I have touched on here.

Judd

Thanks Judd for putting it in Realistic layman's terms....

  That Really Sucks.......  Now I'm Depressed, but I still have a Job....

 They like to Keep Firemen around because in Civil strife they can strap on a Gun on Us too to Quell the Riots   

 But, If a Riot does Happen in Sacramento, I think I would head over to Arnold's House first and talk to his little Girly men about their short Comings........

 What a Mess....  and More too Surly Come.......

Budget what budget?!? We don't need no stickin budget! We print our own money and we are still doing better than the rest of the planet economically. It won't e easy but I think we will pull out of this in a few years and be WAY better off than we are now in terms of energy and infrastructure. Sadly it takes a collapse to get anything done in the government.

Budget what budget?!? We don't need no stickin budget! We print our own money and we are still doing better than the rest of the planet economically. It won't e easy but I think we will pull out of this in a few years and be WAY better off than we are now in terms of energy and infrastructure. Sadly it takes a collapse to get anything done in the government.

Thanks Bill, for the positive note. We need to be realistic about this mess, but you're right about our overall standing being not so bad in the whole scheme of things - and this coming from one of the "employment-challenged!"
Of course, it does look like things could get a lot worse before they get better... 
Too true:  Sadly it takes a collapse to get anything done in the government.

I'm brewing 10 gallons of beer tonight (anchor steam clone), so the holidays can still be merry yet.   

Yum! Good idea - we may have to get some folks to start trading recipes!  - although Anchor isn't my personal favorite (don't tell anyone in the City).

Hmmmmm.  I guess my prediction that China would wait until January to implode was overly optimistic.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/11/business/11yuan.html?hp

Unfortunately, any 'infrastructure' projects the new administration starts will still be in the EIR stage by the time things are already turning around.  Seriously, look at Caltrans projects.  It took them 6 years to build a carpool overpass from 237 to 880.  We don't know if we'll need stimulus in 6 years, so we should not sign on to extremely expensive long horizon programs to solve our current problems. I guess right now is a great opportunity to screw people over with eminent domain and take their property at bargain basement prices.

What I'd like to see is a significant portion of taxes indexed to GDP growth in a simple manner.  That'd provide much better negative feedback (negative feedback is a good thing for stability because it always pulls against the trend) to the market-place than letting the guys in congress bicker and fight about what to do every time things turn one way or the other.  Couple that with a limitation that spending can only be the (inflation adjusted) average revenues from the last 10 years so the good years tide us over the bad and things would run themselves pretty well.

PS,

Maybe you should be advising Arnold so our state won't face what it's facing now in the future.

More sucking-sounds.....

The California Air Board probably today, will impose a "clean air" requirement on diesel engines....which mandates $20,000/truck engine mods between now and the year 2020....and at that point outlaws all "old technology" diesel engines.

The Board is basing this draconion requirement, which will cost Californians billions of dollars and which will put all small trucking firms out of business, entirely on a "scientific paper" which alleges to demonstrate an increased-incidence correspondence between lung cancer and diesel-exhaust-inhalation of 1.4% (under worst-case atmospheric exposure conditions)....that's INCREASED INCIDENCE.....where ACTUAL INCIDENCE in the US population is .07%/year.

The "scientific paper" is defective in many respects. 

I offered the following testimony verbally and in writing.  It will be ignored.  The California Air Board has the bit in its teeth and science is of absolutely no concern to them, except as they can warp it, to make it seem that their action is taken to interdict a real health threat.

To bribe the Trucking Industry not to oppose them, they have offered $2-Billion (of Taxpayer Money) to them "to defray retrofitting engines."   The Trucking Industry Association, made up of the large trucking firms, has obtained assurances that that money will be funneled largely to them...leaving all individuals and small truckers unsupported-and-out-of-business.   In endorsing this "clean air" legislation the large trucking firms will broad-band eliminate 60% of their competition.   This will leave them with full management of trucking rates.   

The California Air Board is poised to pass legislation that will cost all Californians an fairly-immediate $2 Billion and billions more in the accumulation of elevated trucking rates.   Meanwhile, lung cancer rates in the general population will remain utterly unaltered.

==============================================

TALKING POINTS AND DISCUSSION OF:    A research paper titled...

"Lung Cancer and Vehicle Exhaust in Trucking Industry Workers"....which here-and-after will be referred to as "The Paper" and "The Garshick Paper"

The Garshick Paper is defective in the following scientific, structural, and statistical respects:

A)--DUST, a known agent in lung-cancer causation is NOT addressed by the paper s an agent that might "confound" any correlation of lung-cancer-incidence and diesel-exhaust exposure(s).    This is an extreme deficiency and can only be rectified by reconsideration of specific "geographic data-collection sites" as against the lung-cancer incidence thought to be produced by diesel exhaust within those sites, and as against carcinogens found in dust-samples from the entire work-region.

Failure to screen each data-site, fully compromises any conclusion that another particular agent, such as diesel exhaust, are causative.

A-1)  The Garshick Paper does not consider the carcinogenic effects of "dust" as a function of specific areas for which human health statistics are gathered.   Certain types of dust and dust-contents are closely related to extremely high rates of lung cancer.   

A-2)  The Paper does not consider that Dock and Freight-Handling areas, exactly because they are intensive vehicular traffic and heavy equipment movement venues, are atypical of all city streets, highways and freeways in which trucks and diesel motors operate. Dock areas may be presumed to subtend greatly increased exposure to all forms of particulate simply due to ambient surface agitation.

A-3)  The Garschik Paper does not consider that docks and ship-to-shore freight transfer zones through the USA are created on "filled soils" deposited near and against deep-water retaining walls exactly to create a venue and terrain structure(s) that favors rail/trucking/freight/storage/loading-and-unloading machinery commonplace to that function.   Composition of soil-fill is in many areas of the USA unregulated, and where regulated those regulations lack provision for inspection and compliance.   Fill material typically contains every kind of poisonous industrial substance from adjacent industrial "environmental cleanups" ranging from  silica dust and asbestos to hydrocarbon-sands from gas-station tank replacement(s).   Where such material is lifted from the surface as dust, workers would logically be exposed to influences profoundly confounding to any premise that resulting lung-cancer cases were owing to diesel exhaust.

A-4)  The Paper reports no consideration given to the nature of "freight-material" being handled.   The report does document and make firm, that in all freight, in the (multiple and different) areas where lung-cancer case-data were collected, only "containerized" freight was being handled.   If the case is otherwise, and one must assume this is so until the authors amend their work to specifically state that this is the case......if the case is otherwise, then the door is open to the possibility that every kind of "bulk-freight" might have been present.  Bulk freight is handled by augers, by blown-air, by scoops, and by continuous belts.   Bulk freight can subtend every known poison and cancerous agent as bulk-content or "micro-content."

B)---GEOGRAPHIC REGION.  Study "Sample Density" (the number of study-individuals) is not reported by geographic region. The Garschik Paper states only that numbers were generated from the work-records of seven freight companies, principally in the south and south-central United States with unspecified Western United States case-density.   The Paper does not specifically state case-density for California.   Failure to state where case-data were acquired, and failure to specify corresponding per-region-case-number-densities makes it impossible to evaluate what "risk-levels" the paper might be applying to California Ports.    The study states that it found reduced correspondence between "western cases" and lung cancer.   No independent evaluation can be made, whether the density of California case-information has the necessary statistical volume for validity.  Statistical volume is directly related to statistical reliability.    Additional unstudied and un-eliminated "confounders" are therefore potentially present:

NOTE:   "counfounder" is a term used to describe any element of a theory or premise which is contradictory to that premise.

B-1)---Temperature and Humidity for region(s) where data were gathered.  Temperature and humidity are relevant agents in dust born-transport of every carcinogenic agent...including carcinogenic diesel-exhaust elements....and especially with reference to carcinogenic organic compounds, known to attach or "ride" on/to inorganic carbon particles.  Elevated temperature and humidity promote "attachment" of the molecules of organic carcinogenic substances on in-organic carbon particles.  The paper does not study or mention these influences.

B-2)---   Wind.   Unlike all those Central US Continent inland locations from which data for the purpose of correlating diesel-exhaust and lung cancer ------- California is a 900-mile-long coastal state directly on the Pacific Ocean.  It is a significant detail.    It is not Georgia regulators, who are studying the issue of the dangers of diesel-exhaust---nor
Alabama regulators, nor Texas or Utah regulators.   THE ISSUE OF DIESEL-EXHAUST AS A LUNG-CANCER AGENT IS BEING CONSIDERED IN CALIFORNIA.......TO PROTECT CALIFORNIA CITIZENS......AT THE COST OF POTENTIALLY IMMENSE EXPENSE AND DEPRIVATION(S) TO INDIVIDUALS AND TO STATE FINANCE.  Any decision to require expensive and special controls on trucks is, then, uniquely a California decision and must be made on solid evidence valid for California, and take into adequate account any unique California exceptions.

Therefore it is no trivial irrelevancy, whether California's unique position on the Pacific Shore---with concomitant ocean winds---can allow data correlating diesel-exhaust and lung cancer cases where that data comes from humid locations in the continental interior where air-movement does not dilute and dissipate exhaust emissions in the same dimension as occurs in California, a relatively windy coastal shipyard environment. 
The Garschik paper is invalid for California application because it does not make any gesture toward study of concomitant "environmentals."


C)---The Garshick Paper" does not correlate "lung-cancer-cases" and "specific geographic sites" from which they are believe to have originated.   This failure leads any reader of the research to believe that the researchers did not encounter dramatic "hot spots" whose very intensity would cause any experienced scientific reviewer to question that such an elevated level of lung-cancer-cases.....could be solely caused......or caused at all.....by diesel exhaust contact.   It cannot be said that the researchers encountered such "hot spots."   It cannot be said that they did not.   Evenness of data-distribution, however, is a scientifically desirable property of good data and is one of the key proofs of data-validity.   When data distributions are eliminated from a paper, no reader of that paper can use the un-corrected, and un-amplified work, to demonstrate any point or as the basis of any action.   

D)---The Garschik Paper contains reportage of an anomaly, openly declared by the paper-authors, Garshick et-al. to be a "confounder" to The Paper's other "proofs" of a correlation between diesel-exhaust and lung cancer. 

The confounder:  That mechanics working in diesel truck garages, where trucks drive in, are idled, are run through service-cycling for prolonged periods, do not share any statistically increased incidence of lung cancer, even in the closed-building circumstance of a repair garage.   

This confounder is incompatible with all other results and demands explanation.

Garchik et-all however do not go back to their research venues and conduct exhaustive tests to "ring out" various explanatory notions or theories.   They simply posit that perhaps the trucks are not run much.   They posit that perhaps mechanics only come into volume-contact with Elemental Carbon Particles (as opposed to carbon particles with carcinogenic organic attachments).   They declare as an unsupported fact that of the two types of particle, the latter is much more carcinogenic than the former.   They offer no numbers.   The reader is invited to ignore this striking confounder to their conclusions on the strength of an unsupported assertion that somehow mechanics do not see...enough...of the virulent kind....of carcinogenic agent.

Judd Smith
1589 Campus Drive
Berkeley, CA 94708
js1589@berkeley.edu
510 548 1769