Sunday, August 30, 2009

All the Lonely People...

Japanese society never fails to amaze me. In an example of the land of the rising sun's strangeness, is a report that a large proportion of the nation's emerging petty criminals are originating from retired persons. According to Reuters, the elderly, in an attempt to invigorate their existence have begun to furtively swarm shopping centers across the nation and shoplift their miseries away.

Unfortunately, the article doesn't say what the most common items stolen are, but if I was to guess, I would predict that bobble-headed figurines of former Emperor Hirohito, stuffed animals that transform into giant pill dispensing robots, and quite possibly, trendy hari kari knives with extra cute Hello Kitty logos would be some of the more desirable items.

TOKYO (Reuters) - Tokyo police will try to rein in a wave of shoplifting by lonely elderly people by involving them in community service, a police spokesman said Thursday.

One out of four elderly shoplifters in the capital blamed their crime on loneliness, Japanese media quoted a police survey as saying. Another 8 percent said it was because they had "no reason to live."

More than half the elderly shoplifters said they had no friends and 40 percent of them lived alone, media said.

"Making shoplifters do volunteer work in the community is effective," the Tokyo Shimbun quoted J.F. Oberlin University professor Akihiro Sakai, head of a police research panel set up to tackle shoplifting, as saying.

"Instead of increased punishment, I hope we can rehabilitate shoplifters with special care." A police spokesman declined to confirm the details of the survey but said it would be released to the public soon.

Elderly shoplifting cases in Tokyo reached all-time highs last year, nearly catching up with the number of cases involving young offenders.

People 65 years or older accounted for 23 percent of the 17,800 known shoplifting cases in 2008, more than doubling in the past five years, media said.

An example cited in the Ministry of Justice's annual report on crime describes a 76-year-old woman who turned to shoplifting several years ago as a way to battle loneliness after her parents died.

Over 20 percent of Japan's population is aged 65 or over, with that figure set to double by 2050.

No sex for us please, we're Ants!

Ant has given up sex completely, report Texas researchers

Shared via AddThis

To the horror of every heterosexual male out there, scientists have discovered a species of ant, Mycocepurus smithii, that reproduces without fertilization and the absense of males altogether. Apparently nature has decided that in certain cases, males are just too much of a hassel to have around and need to be "laid" off!
Most social insects—the wasps, ants and bees—are relatively used to daily life without males. Their colonies are well run by swarms of sterile sisters lorded over by an egg-laying queen. But, eventually, all social insect species have the ability to produce a crop of males who go forth in the world to fertilize new queens and propagate.

"Animals that are completely asexual are relatively rare, which makes this is a very interesting ant," says Rabeling, an ecology, evolution and behavior graduate student at The University of Texas at Austin. "Asexual species don't mix their genes through recombination, so you expect harmful mutations to accumulate over time and for the species to go extinct more quickly than others. They don't generally persist for very long over evolutionary time."

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Ralph Nader: The Democrats have 'Punked' You!

Since the election of Barack Obama, liberal supporters have become extremely frustrated with him and the Democratic Party. Many have said that the Democrats and Mr. Obama's deference to the corporations and former Bush administration policies that led America to this economic precipice cannot continue. Bill Maher made it clear to America on his HBO show, "This is not what I voted for." Arianna Huffington who was one of Obama's greatest Internet promoters said, "He is demonstrating a preference for compromise and reconciliation even before the fight has been fought." Paul Krugman, makes the point that, "progressives increasingly feel that the administration is on the wrong side of [the] line." While Frank Rich of the NY Times, does not pull his punches and states clearly that he believes that Mr. Obama has "punked" him and liberal America with his bait n' switch policies.

The global economy lies broken and the once imperious financial intuitions that once towered over Battery Park in New York and in London’s Financial District have been reduced to eunuch’s beggaring for public welfare. Corporate criminality has never been more apparent, with the investments of workers and pensioners stolen to feed the addiction of casino-capitalism. And despite the obvious fact that there has hardly been a more auspicious time for transforming the relationship between corporations and the government in the public interest, the Democratic Party and their leader seem paralyzed to confront these Brooks Brothers wearing pirates.

Ralph Nader succinctly describes the current situation in America:

In short, the global corporations want Washington, D.C.; to continue being their massive deregulator and cash cow perpetuating the abandoning of American workers, the pillaging of the American taxpayer and the defrauding of the American consumer.

Forget about corporate law and order to restrain the corporate crime wave. The harmony, bipartisan President Obama and his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, have outsmarted themselves. What worked to defeat Hillary Clinton last year has succeeded in splitting the Congressional Democrats into progressives, corporate liberals and Blue Dog Conservatives. Republicans can scarcely believe their luck and are busy exploiting these schisms.

Rep. Steny Hoyer, the number two House Democrat, undermines his Speaker, Nancy Pelosi’s “public option” plan for health insurance. Senator Max Baucus—a closet Republican masquerading as the Democratic Chair of the Senate Finance Committee, is working hand-in-glove with right-wing Republicans and the White House to craft a weak “bi-partisan” bill that keeps getting weaker as the corporatist Republicans sniff increasing weakness in the White House.
President Obama, instead of merely fighting Republicans and entrenched corporate interests, has by alienating his base, now forced to manage a two prong internecine conflict within his own ranks. His heralded election machine that dispatched the poorly managed Clinton campaign in the primaries and John McCain in the November finals appears fractured, confused, and slipping erratically into paralysis. Unless he jettisons these useless and spineless corporate Democrats and follows through with his campaign promises for transparent and effective governance, the demise of the American experiment in democratic governance will be finalized.

Monday, August 24, 2009

Nader's Criticisms of the Democrats are Validated

Unlike the kid-glove treatment received by George W. Bush by the Democratic Party in 2004, the vitriol and contempt that was leveled against Ralph Nader was unprecedented. Liberal buffoons like Michael Moore, an erstwhile supporter of Nader during the 2000 election, pleaded with Americans to vote for John Kerry and ignore Nader's "egomaniac and Quixotic" candidacy. "Outside of Jerry Falwell, I can't think of anybody I have greater contempt for than Ralph Nader," said long-time Clinton acolyte James Carville on CNN's Crossfire. Legal teams from the Democratic Party were dispatched across the country to overturn and prevent Nader from being placed on ballots. Given how closely aligned the Democrats were to the same corporate interests that the Republican party were beholden to, it is quite understandable why the Democrats fought the presidential candidacy of Ralph Nader more vigorously than any of the Republicans in the past three presidential elections cycles.

It is my opinion, if Nader had been allowed into the election debates of 2008, his contrarian arguments as observed above, would have turned the tidal waves of young and naive evangelical "Yes we can!" voters into "What are we doing!" with these corporate/democratic party transvestites.

Chris Hedges, author, Pulitzer Prize winner, and former war correspondent, in his posting "Nader Was Right: Liberals are Going Nowhere with Obama" states the following:

The American empire has not altered under Barack Obama. It kills as brutally and indiscriminately in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan as it did under George W. Bush. It steals from the U.S. treasury to enrich the corporate elite as rapaciously. It will not give us universal health care, abolish the Bush secrecy laws, end torture or “extraordinary rendition,” restore habeas corpus or halt the warrantless wiretapping and monitoring of citizens. It will not push through significant environmental reform, regulate Wall Street or end our relationship with private contractors that provide mercenary armies to fight our imperial wars and produce useless and costly weapons systems.

What Democratic voters should have done instead of belittling Ralph Nader's candidacy and fawning for the 'chosen-one' is listen to Nader when he described the Democratic Party and Mr. Obama as indebted to the corporations and lobbyists of K-street, and in the end, would (as usual) not deliver on their campaign promises of change and reform.

In arena after arena -- government, workplace, marketplace, media, environment, education, science, technology-- the dominant players are large corporations. What countervailing forces that our society used to depend upon for some balance are not in retreat against the aggressive expansion of corporate influence far beyond its traditional mercantile boundaries?

The enlarged power that corporations deploy to further increase their revenues and socialize their costs comes from many sources-- old and new. Roughly eighty percent of the money contributed to federal candidates come from business interests. The mobility to export capital has given transnational companies major leverage against local, state and federal officials, not to mention against organized and unorganized labor. The swell of corporate welfare handouts has reached new depths. The contrived complexity of many financial and other services serves to confuse, deplete and daunt consumers who lose significant portions of their income in a manipulative marketplace. Alliances, joint ventures and other complex collaborations between should-be competitors have made a mockery of what is left of antitrust enforcement.

- Ralph Nader, Introduction to Mokhiber and Weissman's "Corporate Predators" 1999.

Corporate Socialism: Agribusiness Subsidies



Despite the loud and perennial denunciations of creeping socialism by right-wing protesters, for decades American agribusinesses have been receiving prodigious and what some would call obscene levels of subsidisation through legislative machinations. This is a bi-partisan effort, pursued by both Democrats and Republicans and executed across all regions of the nation, and meant to insure excess revenue for already large and very profitable corporations. In fact, agribusiness, after the military-industrial complex and most recently the bailed out banking industry, is the nation's largest recipient of corporate welfare. The implications are not trivial for they entail not just the gross misuse of public money, but result in excessive taxes levied on individual citizens, unfair competition for small farmers, and the nation's food supply and production being placed under the control of multi-national companies seeking less regulation, cheap labor, and ever larger annual profits.

These bills are sold to the public under labels like the "Farm Security Act" and the "Agriculture Conservation and Rural Enhancement Act" and are subject to heavy lobbing efforts. Despite the claim that these bills are meant to improve the status of rural family farmers, the reality is much different. According to the conservative Heritage Foundation,

two-thirds of all farm subsidies go to the top 10 percent of subsidy recipients while the bottom 80 percent of recipients receive less than one-sixth of farm subsidies. A full 60 percent of America's farmers do not qualify for any assistance. In 2000 alone, more than 57,500 farms received subsidies totaling over $100,000, and subsidies of at least 154 farms topped $1 million. Among these beneficiaries are fifteen Fortune 500 companies, including Westvaco, Chevron, and John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance, which receive as much as 58 times as much as the median annual subsidy of $935.

In what is described as a "plantation effect," family farms across the country are being bought out by corporations, which are converted into tenant farms. According to available statistics, 75% of the nation's rice farms are tenant farms and the ownership of other monoculture based farms is trending in the same direction.

The US is not alone in its trade protectionist and 'free trade' charade. The video above by Nobel Prize winning economist Joesph Stiglitz, provides a sliver of the hypocrisy conducted by all the major economic powers relating to farm subsidies. The EU as an example, provides "13 billion euros, about a quarter of the £47.5 billion spent under the EU's Common Agriculture Policy (CAP)... to big business and industry, not farmers." The Economist magazine evaluates the overall situation in the industrial world as of 2008:

The OECD estimates that its member countries spent $265 billion on farm subsidies in 2008. This was slightly more than a fifth of their farmers’ total earnings. Last year’s increase in food prices ensured that such payments were at their lowest level since records began in the mid-1980s. But handouts still made up more than three-fifths of farmers’ gross incomes in Norway and South Korea between 2006 and 2008. In contrast, they were less than 1% of farm incomes in New Zealand and under 10% in both Australia and America. But the size of America’s farm sector meant that it spent $23.3 billion on subsidies last year. The European Union was by far the biggest subsidiser, forking out $150.4 billion.

Agricultural practices conducted by corporate plantations and food conglomerates as portrayed in the recent documentary Food Inc., "are endangering health, allowing appalling cruelty to livestock and putting the food supply in a dangerously vulnerable position." For example, the number one subsidised crop in America is corn. In particular,

Corn syrup... is an ingredient in high-calorie, low-nutrition junk foods that have created the obesity epidemic. Corn is stuffed into animals that were not evolved to eat it, promoting the evolution of E. coli bacteria and requiring antibiotics that are passed on to unwitting consumers. Given that one fast-food hamburger may involve meat from literally thousands of cattle, the effects are inescapable.

Under the guise of providing supplemental income to family farmers, the US government has allowed corporatized feudalism to become the 'norm' in the agricultural industry and permitted the domestic population to become subservient to the rapacity of these multi-nationals, without a single bullet or invasion occurring. As always, beneficial socialism for the wealthy and fuck-you-very-much capitalism and for the rest of us.

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Fear and Loathing in Washington DC

“He who fears being conquered is sure of defeat.”
- Napoleon Bonaparte

“Military glory--that attractive rainbow, that rises in showers of blood--that serpent's eye, that charms to destroy..."
- Abraham Lincoln


In response to a drumhead to exact revenge of the killing of the four Blackwater mercenaries by the citizens of Fallujah, a political decision was made ordering US Marines to commence Operation Vigilant Resolve in April. The city of Fallujah was purged of its 70,000 citizens and American forces in the ensuing month long battle engaged in some of the heaviest urban combat of the war. It was reported that the rules of engagement were changed to allow US snipers to fire on unarmed civilians, including children, as well as firing on clearly marked ambulances in an attempt to inflict maximum damage on the recalcitrant and indigenous population. American casualties in April reached their highest peak with a total of 136 Americans dead, plus another 1214 declared wounded. The commander-in-chief had entered a battle his military officers had warned him not to pursue and it ended with him reversing orders, equally to the objections of his military chiefs of staff when the bodies started pilling up.

Domestically, the US economy was still faltering and deep concerns were emerging throughout the nation about the competency and re-electability of George W. Bush.

To ‘manufacture consent’ for their man in the White House, operatives within the federal government in the eighteen months preceding the 2004 presidential election, engaged in a remarkable campaign to instil both fear and terror into the American people. Tom Ridge, then Homeland Security Secretary, stated that he,
[was] never invited to sit in on National Security Council meetings; was "blindsided" by the FBI in morning Oval Office meetings because the agency withheld critical information from him; found his urgings to block Michael Brown from being named head of the emergency agency blamed for the Hurricane Katrina disaster ignored; and was pushed to raise the security alert on the eve of President Bush's re-election, something he saw as politically motivated and worth resigning over.
In a review of the 2004 election, Joshua Marshall in Time magazine (2006) reported that the terror warnings became synchronous with major societal and political events.
Warnings of terror attacks over the Christmas 2003 holidays, warnings over summer terror attacks at the 2004 political conventions, then a whole slew of warnings of terror attacks to disrupt the election itself. Even the timing of the alerts seemed to fall with odd regularity right on the heels of major political events. One of Department of Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge's terror warnings came two days after John Kerry picked John Edwards as his running mate; another came three days after the end of the Democratic convention.
The severity of this now confirmed internal policy only adds to the growing writ of crimes instituted by the Bush junta to manipulate and inject public fear for political advantages (the definition of terrorism). Apparently when swarthy unshaven foreigners engage in this behaviour a two trillion dollar war without end can be justified, but when public officials sworn to uphold the American constitution do otherwise, it’s a non-story.

When then Democratic Party presidential candidate Gov. Howard Dean (D-VT) questioned the timing of these terror alerts, not only was he attacked by Dick Cheney and Tom Ridge, but he was lambasted by his own party in the likes of that ‘ultimate loser’ John Kerry and the spineless glitterati of the punditry class, such as MSNBC’s Chris Matthews and Tucker Carlson.

Glenn Greenwald of Salon, says this of the Atlantic magazine’s Marc Ambinder,
[He] acknowledges that Bush critics were right that the terror alerts were being manipulated for political ends,... but still says journalists like himself were right to scorn such critics "because these folks based their assumption on gut hatred for President Bush, and not on any evaluation of the raw intelligence." As always: even when the dirty leftist hippies are proven right, they're still Shrill, unSerious Losers who every decent person and "journalist" scorns.
The corruption amongst the mainstream news media and both Democrats and Republicans is respectively beyond the scale of even Pravda and that of Latin Americian banana republics. Democracy in America (or the pretense of it) simply ceased to exist in any meaningful manner at this historic juncture.

Friday, August 21, 2009

Roubini: into the buzzsaw

Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass...
(T.S. Elliot, The Hollow Men)

I have long chided those who persistently have advocated that contrarian 'realists', to which I include Nouriel Roubini, were somehow less sophisticated and learned than the Svengali's of high commerce that opportunistically advertised and sold the benefits of casino-capitalism. Whether those persons were the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, the droves of market speculators, or propagandists in the business news departments, their understanding of the "free-market" and predictions have been proven to be at best abysmal and at worst criminal. It needs to be said and repeated frequently, that the world we were promised was the exact opposite to what we in fact received. Individual retirement accounts vaporized, long-term investments liquidated, businesses laid to waste, economies decimated, and in a few cases like Iceland, whole nation states brought to financial ruin.

So when Roubini, who constantly has been calling a spade a spade talks, I think everyone should listen. In yesterday's Globe and Mail (Canada) he summarized what he thought were the underlying weaknesses in the global economy that make the momentary upticks in growth irrelevant given the scope of future problems.

First, he outlines his reason for pessimism:

U.S. data – rising unemployment, falling household consumption, still declining industrial production, and a weak housing market – suggest America's recession is not yet over. A similar analysis of many other advanced economies suggests that, as in the United States, the bottom is quite close but has not yet been reached. Most emerging economies may be returning to growth, but they are performing well below their potential.

He then outlines four topics that will constrain future growth:
1. Individuals forced to save and re-capitalize themselves.
2. A financial system that remains both broken and inherently unstable
3. Business still face overcapacity, weak profits, and deflationary pressures
4. The re-leveraging of the public sector through large fiscal deficits and debt accumulation risks

He concludes that a double-dip recession is highly possible, given the existing uncertainties. Merely because one's position is unpopular does not make it any less factual or prescient. In that vein, I would also add that given the current retreat from globalization and the looming Malthusian resource threats (eg. water, commodity prices, & ecosystem instability) we should prepare ourselves for long-term stagnation and dismiss the boom-years as an artifact of irrational exuberance.

Thursday, August 13, 2009

Declining Oceans, Declining Life

On the front page of today's Globe and Mail (Canada), it is reported that the BC sockeye salmon population has "mysteriously" collapsed to a record low for the second summer in three, eliciting international concern among scientists that the species’ long-term survival is threatened. An estimated 10.6-13 million sockeye were expected to return to the Fraser Valley this summer. However, the official count according to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) is that only a paltry 1.7 million have returned.

Causes:

Ocean temperatures
have risen substantially over the past years and researchers state that, “Warm water can affect things like food availability for the fish... [whereas] sockeye are plankton feeders, and plankton of the west coast of B.C. tend to thrive when conditions are cold.” On Aug. 10, the Fraser River temperature was 18.8 C at Qualark Creek, BC, 1.1 degrees higher than the average for that date. As such, "water temperatures in this range may stress migrating sockeye and slow their upstream migration" the US-Canada Pacific Salmon Commission said.

Sea lice
that flourish near fish farms are another possible source of decline. "The parasites are known to latch onto young wild salmon heading into the sea and are suspected as a factor in the decline of other wild-salmon populations" along the BC coast.

Alexandra Morton, who several years ago correctly predicted a collapse of pink salmon runs in the Broughton Archipelago because of sea lice infestations, in March warned the same thing could happen to Fraser sockeye. She said researchers used genetic analyses to show Fraser sockeye smolts were getting infested with sea lice in Georgia Strait.

It is too early to ascertain if the current sockeye collapse will be repeated with other species that are expected to return this year; notably pink salmon which are projected to number 17 million.

Friday, August 7, 2009

Harvard, Harvard, Uber Alles!

The Harvard endowment fund was an institutional behemoth that at its peak was twice that of Yale University's endowment and historically was a proven winner. Between 1990 and 2008, Harvard’s endowment had an impressive average annual growth rate of 14.3%. The linked article by Vanity Fair, beyond providing another example of a big investing fund going bad in the Great Recession, illustrates some of the worst elements of greed, incompetence, and political correctness that have come to dominate academia.

Over-zealous expansion, bloated academic budgets, balkanized departments, jealousy emanating from both staff and alumni, and the upsetting of the cozy incestuous relationships that all large-scale institutions tend to favor, lead to an unprecedented $8 billion or 22% decline in the endowment fund. A risky investment strategy in the bubble days coupled with a revolving door of management has lead this once glorified university to fall into disarray.
Radical change is coming to Harvard. Fewer professors, for one thing. Fewer teaching assistants, janitors, and support staff. Shuttered libraries. Less money for research and travel and books. Cafe's replaced by vending machines. Junior-varsity sports teams downgraded to clubs. No raises. No bonuses. No fresh coats of paint or new carpets. Overflowing trash cans.
To address this systemic problem, they have elevated (after the Larry Summers "women are stupid" debacle) Dr. Drew Gilpin Faust, who was formally the dean of Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, as president. Her ambitions in the face of this game-changing event are to retreat from Summers once lofty goals of scientific and technological advancement and rededicate the school to the arts.

The article lists a hedge-fund manager, who has Harvard as one of his clients, succinctly describing the school as being completely fucked.” Having produced such heralded alumni as former AG Alberto "torture is acceptable" Gonzales from their law program and George W. Bush from their MBA program, their failure is now complete.

Thursday, August 6, 2009

The Drowning Pool: underwater mortgages


Deutsche Bank is predicting that nearly half of all mortgages across US will be "underwater" by 2011; meaning that in half of the current cases, the outstanding mortgage will be larger than the market value of the house. Analysts estimate that 41% of prime conforming loans will be underwater by the Q1 of 2011, up from 16% at the end of the Q1 2009. Even worst, 90% or more of loans in the city of Las Vegas and across parts of Florida and California are predicted to be underwater by 2011.

The drop in home prices is fueling a vicious cycle of foreclosures as it eliminates homeowner equity and gives borrowers an incentive to walk away from their mortgages. The more severe the negative equity, the more likely are defaults, since many borrowers believe prices will not recover enough.

Homeowners with the riskiest mortgages taken out during the housing boom have seen the greatest erosion in equity, in part because they were "affordability products" originated at the housing peak, Deutsche said. They include subprime loans, of which 69 percent will be underwater in 2011, up from 50 percent in March, Deutsche said.

The following table summarizes the overall situation.

Welcome to 'nightmare on main street' America.

When the history books are written, it won't be the Soviet Union, Fascist German industrialists, the Chinese, or immigrant Latinos who brought America to its knees. It will be recognized that the true enemy of the state were the high-rollers of casino-capitalism and their moneyed whores in Congress who sold 300 million Americans down the toilet for personal greed.

Saturday, August 1, 2009

Pushing the String: Understanding the Economic Data

Throughout the month of July, I attempted to evaluate a number of the more outlandish claims that were being circulated about the global economy and where we were are all heading. I focused on the failures of economists to predict and recognize the depth of the current recession; I summarized persisting structural problems specifically in the US market here; the rapacious greed and fraudulence exhibited by the investment banks here and here; and the role that China continues to play in this global debacle here.

Over the past couple of weeks, economists and headlines have been 'richly' stating that, "The economy is starting to grow again in the current quarter, setting up a long-awaited recovery." US commerce department is stating that in the Q2 that the economy contracted at a 1% rate, compared to the 6.4% rate in the previous quarter. The improvement is claimed to be due to an "11 per cent boost in federal government spending, along with a more modest decline in exports, down 7 per cent, compared with a 30 per cent drop in the first quarter."

The major stock markets experienced gains stemming from the continuing, "Stream of earnings reports that have come in ahead of analysts' estimates." Additionally, the number of US workers filing new claims for state jobless benefits rose last week; however, they remain below peak levels reached in the spring of this year.

Experts are contending that the worst is over for the US housing market too.

By every measure, except foreclosures, the housing market has stabilized and many areas are recovering, according to a spate of data released in the past two weeks. Nationwide, home resales in June are up 9 percent from January, on a seasonally adjusted basis. Sales of new homes have climbed 17 percent during the same period. And construction, while still anemic, has risen almost 20 percent since the beginning of the year.

All this should seem wonderful news to businesses and consumers across America; but it isn't.

The Q2 corporate profits and stock market surge are not based upon consumer demand of products and services, which remains sluggish, but on companies dramatically cutting costs and most notably, payroll cuts. As Robert Reich states, "If a firm cuts its costs enough, it can show a profit even if its sales are still in the basement." In this context, the profits are momentary and not subject to replication.

June jobless rate reached 9.5%, the highest since 1983. Additionally,

the rolls of the long-term unemployed are growing, with 29% of the jobless out of work for more than 26 weeks, the most since records began in 1948. A broader measure of underemployment that includes those who want full- time positions but work part-time has almost doubled over the past two years, to 16.5%." The U.S. consumer "clearly is not going to be the consumption animal that he was for the last 10 or 20 years," Joshua Shapiro, chief U.S. economist at MFR Inc. in New York, said in a July 6 interview with Bloomberg radio.

My post below by Floyd Norris, at the NY Times, clearly shows that suggestions of a housing upswing are in the making are misleading and not necessarily indicative of any long-term positive trends in the market.

The unfortunate reality is that economies and consumers are governed by irrationality, greed, and panic. The psychological determinant is also why governments constantly under-report the severity of an economic crisis. Hence, with that in mind, the announcements made in the past couple of weeks attempt to provide a glimmer of improvement to the public with the overt insinuation that they also represent indices of future prosperity. National Banks, federal governments, and investors eagerly wish that the consumer, instead of hoarding his or her cash, resumes spending; whether it is on homes, cars, or everyday consumables. These entities believe that by prodding "positive thinking" (through fact or fiction) this will instill confidence and public morale, thus leading to increased jobs and an improved economy.

While perceptions may fluctuate, flooding the market with agitprop and attempting to manufacture consent cannot change the harsh reality of this recession. Jobs will continue to be lost, the housing market will not rebound for years, and the real horrors of our leaders economic mismanagement will come to bare next year when the bailout funds disappear and interest rates increase.