Corporate financial guy: 'The West is finished'

Kind of a remarkable blatt from a corporate executive, saying something many eco and sustainability-minded people have been saying for a long time: The economies of the developed nations can't just keep expanding forever. In fact, he suggests we're at a sun-setting moment now.

"We suffer from no growth and we suffer from imported inflation -- that means we have negative real growth and societies fracture when you have negative real growth and quite simply our society faces fractures for trying to stick Europe back together again is not going to work with that underlying paradigm, unless you can create five percent growth to overcome that imported inflation," Murrin explained.

Murrin said that the East was depending less on the West and the rise of a consumer society was the first step in the expansion of an economic empire.

"If you look at the cycle of an empire system from regionalization to expansion to empire, the first phases of that catalyst are when you have a self fuelled consumer society and so actually that process of building your consumer base which is really what's going on in China, day by day their consumer base increases and the dependence on the West decreases," he said.

Murrin added that while China is by far the biggest emerging economy and would be at the center of a new economic order, other emerging nations were set to join the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China) and new political orders and alliances would come about as a result.

"This isn't just a BRIC story, this is the end of the Christian Western Empire versus the rise of the whole emerging world led by China as the foremost and most powerful," Murrin told CNBC.

Oh well! had to happen sometime!

And he's not even taking into account global warming and its catastrophic affects, which are in part the subject of this near-apocalyptic screed, on io9.com. So see, it's not just paranoid right-wingers who are sure the sky is falling. It's also depressed corporate types who see no chance for their 401Ks to recover, and futurist types, though that latter guy is probably a libertarian of the Scott Adams variety.

Adventures in the 21st century: Amazon warehouse a hellhole

This summer, an un-air-conditioned Amazon.com warehouse in Pennsylvania was so hot that the company stationed ambulances onsite to take workers stricken by the high temperatures to a local hospital. The hospital, for its part, was so alarmed at all the Amazon workers being dumped there that it complained directly to OSHA. Meanwhile, it seems the majority of the workers were $12-an-hour temps, and when one collapsed, there were always more to take his or her place. (I almost said "its" place.)

According to the local paper, the Allentown Morning Call:

Workers said they were forced to endure brutal heat inside the sprawling warehouse and were pushed to work at a pace many could not sustain. Employees were frequently reprimanded regarding their productivity and threatened with termination, workers said. The consequences of not meeting work expectations were regularly on display, as employees lost their jobs and got escorted out of the warehouse. Such sights encouraged some workers to conceal pain and push through injury lest they get fired as well, workers said.

During summer heat waves, Amazon arranged to have paramedics parked in ambulances outside, ready to treat any workers who dehydrated or suffered other forms of heat stress. Those who couldn't quickly cool off and return to work were sent home or taken out in stretchers and wheelchairs and transported to area hospitals. And new applicants were ready to begin work at any time.

An emergency room doctor in June called federal regulators to report an "unsafe environment" after he treated several Amazon warehouse workers for heat-related problems. The doctor's report was echoed by warehouse workers who also complained to regulators, including a security guard who reported seeing pregnant employees suffering in the heat.

In a better economy, not as many people would line up for jobs that pay $11 or $12 an hour moving inventory through a hot warehouse. But with job openings scarce, Amazon and Integrity Staffing Solutions, the temporary employment firm that is hiring workers for Amazon, have found eager applicants in the swollen ranks of the unemployed.

That's life in George Bush's America. Oh, you say Bush isn't President anymore? Well, he is -- anywhere workers are exploited and treated like firewood in a non-union workplace, where they are subjected to speed-ups and feel they can't even report injuries -- Bush is the President there.

On today's great reality show, 'The President and the Nutty Congress'

The main problem is that the Republican Party does not actually care very much about the deficit. It cares about, in order: Low taxes for high-income earners; reducing social spending, especially for the poor; protecting the defense budget; and low deficits. The Obama administration and many Democrats actually do care about the deficit and are willing to sacrifice their priorities in order to achieve it, a desire that was on full display during the health care reform debate. Republicans care about deficit reduction only to the extent that it can be undertaken without impeding upon other, higher priorities.

--Jonathan Chait on tnr.com

Warren Buffett also a collapsitarian?

Financial guru Warren Buffett, who in this generation fills the same niche as Billy Graham did in the 1960s and 1970s, this week issued an annual letter to shareholders of his company in which he said:

The prophets of doom have overlooked the all-important factor that is certain: Human potential is far from exhausted, and the American system for unleashing that potential -- a system that has worked wonders for over two centuries despite frequent interruptions for recessions and even a Civil War -- remains alive and effective. Now, as in 1776, 1861, 1932 and 1941, America's best day's lie ahead."

Oh, great. It's like he thinks everyone wiped their forehead in 1865 at the end of the Civil Way and said, "All right -- the system worked!" People in 1932 -- "The Dust Bowl and 40% unemployment? Is that all you got!? Happy days are here again!"

(Indeed, the song Happy Days Are Here Again -- written in 1929 -- appeared in no fewer than 19 films from 1930 to 1932, and was the theme for FDR's first presidential campaign. No doubt Buffett remembers it from that -- oh, he was only 2 at the time. But it's interesting to think that this happy little song, which is associated with American optimism in the depths of the Depression, might summarize Buffett's thinking.)

Does this make you feel optimistic about investing in the stock market? The company you invest in might be burned to the ground. And it isn't that far from what the dystopian collapsitarians are saying. (See my post from November, 'End Is Near' warning just as timely as it was a year ago!)

It's Bad Behavior Friday™! Bring Down JP Morgan edition

According to this blog entry -- on the "Vatic Project" blog which, you should be warned, is usually not only insane but anti-Semitic in the process -- someone has the bright idea that if everyone will just buy one ounce of silver today, it will fuck with JP Morgan bank's plan to make money shorting the precious metal. I have no idea whether this is based in anything like fact, but it's sort of a cool idea, and one example of the maxim that even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

Meg Whitman, thanks for the $140 million! signed, the California economy

Former Silicon Valley CEO and inveterate bully Meg Whitman is now badly trailing in polls in the California governor's race, despite the $140 million cash of her personal money she donated to her campaign.

Where's all that money go, anyway? I think mostly:

• Advertising media -- radio and TV stations, newspapers, websites, direct mail, printing companies.
• Transportation and hospitality -- Hotels, restaurants, bus companies, private jet companies, fuel.
• Consultants

Most of which will be staying in California. Hey, I bought stock in two different radio broadcasters more than six months ago, and it's up about 15%. Thanks for the dough, Meg! Now that's change I can believe in!

Angry desert rancher wants someone to bully

Awesome part-time job available in the high desert for some human doormat:

Ranch Hand Part Time (Joshua Tree, CA)

Ranch Hand to feed, water care for buffalo, goats, sheep, and pigs. Includes mucking stalls, helping with newborn care and births. Rough, heavy work in every kind of weather. Hot weather or rain, cold. The animals are spoiled and overfed. Their stalls cleaned either manually (rake, shovel, wheelbarrow or by tractor. Feeding them takes a long time and they have special feeding instructions for supplements and grains. We have weekend yardsales and if, u want to make a little extra money you can help sell. If, you can't drive a tractor we can teach you if you are eager to learn. The worse the weather the heavier the work. Rural lonely environment. Lazy folks looking for a place to stay -- need not apply! Must be able to lift 120 lbs. Welding skills help or we might teach you, if you are eager to learn. Auto mechanics skills are helpful. The ranch has a full shop with a lift on property. The pay is dependent on your availability and skills -- your contribution in labor and time is all flexible and negotiable. To apply you must write me why you would like to have this job. I don't care about your spelling or grammar. If, you prefer email me your phone number and I will call you.

I love the part about the "spoiled" animals with their "special" diets. I have the feeling he intends to treat them better than his ranch hand.

Clearly this rancher hasn't heard about the wonderful human resource called illegal immigration. They do the jobs we don't want!

His pleas for donations unsuccessful, manic Pentecostal admits 'I need a job'

John Burton, the manic Pentecostal preacher who often uses his blog to beg for money -- my favorite post being the one where he asserted that "believers live in an different economic system" and asked for dough so he could work on a book and spend the rest of the time in prayer -- has finally admitted: "I need a job."

I guess he found he didn't live in a "different economic system" after all.

Today's fake: Crazy people make up the best stories

There's this insane person-slash-scam artist on the East Coast who portrayed himself as a Rockefeller family member. He has been exposed, captured like a moth, and is now on trial for various weirdnesses. This paragraph from a Boston Globe story today contains awesomeness:

Clark Rockefeller's meticulous scheme to kidnap his 7-year-old daughter required months of painstaking planning. He bought a home in Baltimore under the fake identity of a Peruvian ship captain, hid his $800,000 divorce settlement in gold coins, lined up three getaway vehicles, and told tall tales to get unwitting accomplices involved in the effort, one of whom thought he was driving Rockefeller that Sunday to Newport, R.I., to go sailing with the son of Senator Chafee.

I love that on the one hand he is capable of forming a "meticulous scheme" and of carrying on his deceptions for years, while at the same time being absolutely fucking nuts. But even better is the creativity and insane imagination. Eight hundred thousand dollars in gold coins! That's like the fantasy of every right-wing paranoid these days, because they all think there is going to by hyperinflation in a few years and the value of their gold -- they all have some -- will go up geometrically.

Best of all -- it had to be a Peruvian ship captain. God, I wish I had an imagination like that.

technorati: THIS, THAT, TOTHER

Exec at lending firm fulfills wishes of many, kills himself

The chief financial officer at Freddie Mac, one of the mortgage lending firms caught up in the economic tornado, killed himself after questions arose about the $800,000 bonus he got last year. His boss said the dead man would be "be most remembered for his affability, his personal warmth, his sense of humor and his quick wit."

Somehow I doubt it.

technorati: Freddie Mac, suicide, lending

The new economic reality, part XVLII

To the pictures of shell-shocked laid-off workers add this story from the LA Times (courtesy Valleywag). The lede sums it up:

Sitting in a bare cubicle, with her reading glasses perched halfway down her nose and typing away on a laptop she'd brought from home, Lois Draegin looked a bit like the extra adult wedged in at the kids' table at Thanksgiving. This accomplished magazine editor lost her six-figure job at TV Guide last spring and is now, at 55, an unpaid intern at wowOwow.com, a fledgling website with columns and stories that target accomplished women older than 40.

Even more compelling is the picture that runs atop the article, showing an already-exhausted Draegin being helped, no doubt for the 68th time, by a patient, fetching young blond.

The telling detail in the lede is the "empty cube." For me it evokes every unwanted, dusty spare cubicle into which I've been plopped as a temp or a contractor -- that and the picture showing the spiral notebook next to the keyboard, in which the new intern has undoubtedly written at the top her username, password, and the first of several URLs and directory names where things are stored.

Of course, it's sadder not to have a job at all -- even that unpaid one.

technorati: eoncomy, retraining, workers

The corporate life: excitement division

One of the VPs at work sends around the news that management has taken to referring to "fiscal year 2010" as "FX." How annoying is that? Just a little less annoying than someone referring to 2010 as "oh-ten," which I've already been hearing.

In the same "newsletter" they're holding a contest to pick the new name for the internal document repository website. To generate excitement, "the person who submitted the winning name gets $100. Cash. In this economy, cash can be useful." Yes, but I thought the problem was that there's not enough credit. Whatever. You know what would be really exciting? Give another $100 to a random person who votes for the winner. Now that would inspire everyone to vote.

Finally, they offer the news that our division of the company will now be posting updates on Twitter, the better to "keep you abreast of product and customer news, expert commentary, bylined articles, podcasts, blog posts, speaking engagements, trade shows, and more." The only problem? Twitter is blocked throughout the company by IT.

technorati: twitter, companies

Like useless young men in a depression

MSNBC has a story about a woman who "went to work for weeks expecting to be laid off and felt relief when it finally happened."

It reminded me of the character Hungry Joe in Catch-22 who has fulfilled the number of bombing missions necessary to be sent back to the States, but lives in total terror. When Col. Cathcart raises the number of missions again, he's relieved, even though it means he'll have to go risk his life again over Italy.

In Yossarian's group there were only a mounting number of enlisted men and officers who found their way solemnly to Sergeant Towser to ask if the orders sending them home had come in. They were men who had finished their fifty missions. ... They worried and bit their nails. They were grotesque, like useless young men in a depression. They moved sideways, like crabs. They were waiting for orders sending them home to safety to return from Twenty-Seventh Air Force Headquarters in Italy, and while they waited they had nothing to do but worry and bite their nails and find their way solemnly to Sergeant Towser several times a day to ask if the orders sending them home to safety had come.

They were in a race and knew it, because they knew from bitter experience that Colonel Cathcart might raise the number of missions again at any time. They had nothing better to do than wait. Only Hungry Joe had something better to do each time he finished his missions. He had screaming nightmares and had fistfights with Huple's cat. ... Every time Colonel Cathcart increased the number of missions and returned Hungry Joe to combat duty, the nightmares stopped and Hungry Joe settled down into a normal state of terror with a smile of relief.

Focus on the Fundies: Give money so he can 'minister without hindrance'

For a few months I've been monitoring the ravings of a Pentacostal preacher who is madly trying to establish a nationwide "ministry" dedicated to ridding American cities of Satanic influence. I first noticed him when he made some passing comment about how the Colorado mountain tourist town of Manitou Springs is well-known as a Satanic base camp.* Since then, I've seen him move spastically around the country, from Kansas City to Detroit, attempting to gather followers.

Recently he's been begging openly for money, and a blog posting yesterday really takes the cake for shameless solicitation. Emphasis mine.

Biblically it's clear that believers live in a different economic system, and I'm convinced that the church is called to be financial forerunners -- we are called to lead the way by giving our way out of this recession.

We pray you would consider this to be fertile and good soil for your seed in 2009. In fact, we have many challenges right this very moment, and we'd like to invite you to give before the end of 2008. Your gifts are tax-deductible... Would you invest in this ministry of teaching, planting and revival? Your donation will help us as we... (m)inister in the cities of the earth without any financial hindrance. God has moved powerfully in Detroit and other places through the ministry in 2008. Due to a timely rumbling in this city, we will be ministering in Detroit 6 times (at least) in the first half of 2009 alone.

So he goes to economically devastated Detroit and invites followers to "Give our way out of this recession." And how will he use that money? To help the poor of Detroit? To retrain auto workers being thrown out of their jobs?

Your donation will help us as we... (d)evote ourselves to the time consuming yet deeply important ministries of prayer and study. It's common for full-time prayer missionaries to devote 6 hours or more to prayer each day. (And to)
Focus on our call to author prophetic materials. I've had a book burning in my spirit for over two years, yet have not had the time to start it.

Nice! He wants to spend hours of day in prayer, and the rest of the time writing a book. Me too, dude!

To top it all off, he illustrates his plea with a picture of his family. Is it a nice soft-toned picture of them wearing sweaters around a Christmas tree? No, they're all looking glumly into the camera with tape over their mouths with the word "LIFE" written on the tape. (A one-year-old baby is spared this discomfort; they stuck the LIFE label on its chest.) I guess the point is, If you don't send him money, it's the same thing as gagging him and his whole family.

If only it were so.

* cached web page

technorati: fundamentalists, Christianists, far-right, evangelicals, bipolar

Satire is dead, no 892134892: Praying with SUVs

A black church in Detroit blessed members who work in the nearly kaput auto industry as "three gleaming sport utility vehicles" shared the stage. In a nod to ecumenism, each car was from one of the Big 3 automakers.

Reinforcing the impression that these people are really stupid was a quotation from a church leader that "We have never seen as midnight an hour as we face this coming week," a sentence I had to read five times before I understood it. (In fairness, it was intended to be heard, not read. But I'm not sure the speaker knows, or cares, that "midnight" is not an adjective.)

technorati: bailout, auto industry, churchesa>, Pentacostals

Wal-Mart employee trampled as doors opened

A Wal-Mart employee was trampled to death, and four other people were taken to area hospitals, when the Long Island store opened this morning. Among the bargains at the store were a 50-inch plasma TV and a nice vacuum cleaner.

A giddy shopper in Atlanta, meanwhile, rejoiced over a bargain on a designer t-shirt, saying "We have to marinate in our deals." I wonder if that's quite what she meant.