DOOM: It stays crunchy in milk!

It's a heck of a world that we're leaving our kids. The amount of debt we're saddling them with amounts to child-abuse, but you'll never hear anyone admit it.

Long live the Limited Liability Corporation (LLC)!

Empire State Fed's General Business Conditions index misses even the gloomy expectations of economists. It's yet another indicator that the economy is trending down rather than up.

Another reason why Europe is doomed.

You took a big pay cut this decade and probably weren't even aware of it.

Reality always wins. Always.

Has the dreaded double-dip begun? Things do seem to be getting worse rather than better.

What Schumpeter (of "Creative Destruction" fame) would say about the Occupy Wall Street people.

The man who has gone through a college or university easily becomes psychically unemployable in manual occupations without necessarily acquiring employability in, say, professional work. All those who are unemployed or unsatisfactorily employed or unemployable drift into the vocations in which standards are least definite. … They swell the host of intellectuals … whose numbers hence increase disproportionately. They enter it in a thoroughly discontented frame of mind. Discontent breeds resentment … righteous indignation about the wrongs of capitalism … Capitalism inevitably … educates and subsidizes a vested interest in social unrest.

Obama goes all in for the OWS socialists, but we shouldn't be surprised: he's an academic liberal who's never actually held a private-sector job. His antipathy to the business world is driven as much by ignorance as it is by ideological hostility.

Laying off tenured faculty? The horror! The horror!

Germany informs the rest of the world that the the check won't work unless they sign it, and they haven't signed it yet.

A certain smart military blog has some interesting stuff to say about the stinky hippies now infesting certain parts of Wall Street and points beyond -- specifically, that they happen to be overloaded with socialists, communists, and other unsavory types. Wall Street Communists. I hate Wall Street Communists!

The municipal bond meltdown predicted by Meredit Whitney has not yet come to pass, but I personally think that the financial pressures on American cities are only just beginning. Harrisburg, PA isn't an outlier; it's simply the vanguard.

Ending the discussion of "fair share".

Consider also that the Framers of the Constitution, with their views on the role of government, didn’t even include an income tax. The 16th Amendment came 125 years later. What would they say about a system that’s capable of taking over half of a citizen’s wages? Much is made about the Framers not abolishing slavery from the start, but we finally got it right. How many years will it take to abolish slavery to The State?

http://www.businessweek.com/finance/hope-for-american-manufacturingmdashand-maybe-jobs-10142011.html

This is a DOOM-oriented column, so stories that show the strengths of American manufacturing may seem to be out of place. However, do note: an strong American manufacturing sector does not necessarily equate to more jobs in that sector. Automation is the key, not more expensive labor.

Ireland is not Greece. Ireland isn't out of the woods yet by any means, but the Irish are showing a firmness of spirit and a willingness to sacrifice that their erstwhile Greek compatriots have not shown so far.

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.

The Jobs economy. The Steve Jobs economy, that is.

Speaking of the death of Steve Jobs, the anguish at his death sometimes seems rather overdone. Might it be that we fear that men like him will not come our way again any time soon?

Did feminism kill nursing? In Britain, perhaps, though there are other issues at play there. The socialized medicine model has proven to be quite adept at killing the tenderness and solicitude that many caregivers feel for their patients -- State-run healthcare systems do not reward the "human touch" in any meaningful way, so the caregivers gradually lose it.

Dorian Electra: My date with Keynes.

More "green shoots": Lowes and Gap to close US stores, Best Buy to cut square footage in use. This is very grim news going into the holiday season.

Deadbeat state: Illinois owes billions in unpaid bills. Which in turn is putting the hurt on many small businesses in that state. At some point the long-suffering businesses in that benighted state will simply haul stakes and head out for greener pastures, and then the corrupt Illinois Democrat machine can explain the resulting economic crash to the voters.

Economist explains to Californians why it's unwise to allow collective bargaining for public employees. Californians shrug, say "Whatever, dude," and take another long bong hit.

posted by Monty at 09:00 AM

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