Smart Programs of Capital Destruction

These days everything must be smart.  There are smart cities, smart grids, smart policies, smart TVs, smart cars, smartphones, smart watches, smart shoes, and smart glasses.  There’s even something called smart underwear.

Before long everything around us will be so smart we’ll no longer have to do one critically important thing.  We’ll no longer have to think; smart algorithms will think for us.  What’s more, the possibilities for not thinking are seemingly limitless.

Just this week, for instance, in an effort to sound smart, Chicago Fed President Charles Evans indirectly advised President elect Donald Trump that fiscal policy must be “smart.”  Presumably, what Evans means by this is that fiscal policy must not be “stoopid.”

Fortunately, New York Fed President William Dudley clarified how smart fiscal policy would work.  According to Dudley, smart fiscal policy would include spending programs that are automatically triggered by a recession.  Specifically, Dudley said “extensions of unemployment compensation and cuts in payroll taxes could be triggered by a downturn.” Continue reading

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Attaining Self-Destruct Velocity

Some Monday mornings are better than others.  Others are worse than some.  For one Amazon employee, this past Monday morning was particularly bad.

No doubt, the poor fellow would have been better off he’d called in sick to work.  Such a simple decision would have saved him from extreme agony.  But, unfortunately, he showed up to Amazon’s Seattle headquarters and put on a public and painful display of madness.

From what we gather, upon arrival, he blasted out an email to hundreds of coworkers, including Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos, outlining several reservations he had with the terms of his ‘Performance Improvement Plan.’  After that, he executed a flawless swan dive off Amazon’s 12-story Apollo building, presumably to his death.

Yet, somehow, he didn’t die.  He lived.  What now?

Quite frankly, we don’t quite know what this has to do with the economy by and large.  But we have an inkling there’s some relevance.  Perhaps it has something to do with an economy that’s approaching self-destruct velocity, where every action has a far more negative reaction. Continue reading

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Sinners and Saints

Ordinary ideals of Americana range as far and wide as the North American continent.  The valued conviction of one American vastly differs from that of another.  Joe from Santa Fe may have little connection with Joe in South Bend or Joe in South Boston.

One may celebrate adventures in mysticisms.  Another may find inspiration sitting in a college football grandstand.  While a third struggles to free himself of the orthodox hobgoblins that suffocate his soul.

Until Donald Trump came along, the story of the national struggle, as outlined by the discredited mainstream media, had been told with delicate regularity.  The news was professed from the locus of the two party political system…any diverging views were carefully sifted out.  What was reported was only what the story editors allowed to pass through their single micron particulate filters.

We were told a never ending Marxian tale of the evil rich exploiting the noble poor.  Even worse, we were told that Hillary Clinton was as upright as Saint Andrew.  Plus we were told over and over again that Bill – the former President – would be looking out for our best interest. Continue reading

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Putting an End to the Regulatory Industry

Corporate life in America these days is fraught with tedium.  First the MBAs imposed their silly six sigma processes and reduced workers to mere widgets.  Then the regulators went through and squashed out any fun that remained.

Gone are the days when shrewd eccentrics could get rich using technobabble to hawk the Turbo Encabulator.  Alas, there are rules and regulations stymieing all creativity.  In fact, as a matter of law, such restrictions are shoved in the worker’s face each morning as they fill up their morning cup of coffee.

By our rough calculation the break room metric currently indicates an economy that’s grossly overburdened by regulation.  The break room metric, if you’ve never heard of it, is the ratio of wall space in office break rooms that is utilized by mandatory federal and state regulatory postings.  Anything above 10 percent utilization represents gross regulatory overburden.

No doubt, office break rooms across America are nearly out of wall space.  Mandatory OSHA postings fill the voids. Continue reading

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