Vicco, Kentucky August 16, 2013August 16, 2013 The real America. Enjoy. And on a more serious — but entirely compelling — note (if you are a human living on Earth), watch Chris Hayes’ climate change documentary, The Politics of Power, airing on MSNBC at 8pm tonight.
Can Women Save the World? August 15, 2013August 14, 2013 Well, this from the opinion pages of The Washington Post will make some of you a little crazy, but . . . Hillary Clinton Power In 2016 By Kathleen Parker Three years out and you’d think the deed was done: Madame President Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton. She’s everywhere these days because: (a) It’s August; (b) reporters are bored with President Obama; (c) reporters are bored with Joe Biden; (d) Clintons are never boring. Correct. Op-ed columns are filled with advice about what Hillary needs to do. She needs a narrative. A message. It can’t be that she’s a Clinton or a woman. It has to be . . . What? Here’s a thought: She can save the world. Yes, all right, perhaps that’s a trifle hyperbolic, but hear me out. And keep in mind that this works only as a long game. We may not live to see salvation but one has to start somewhere. Thus far invasions, bunker-busting mega-bombs and killer drones seem not to be having the desired effect. Let’s begin with a working (and provable) premise: Women, if allowed to be fully equal to men, will bring peace to the planet. This is not so far-fetched a notion. One, men have been at it for thousands of years, resulting in millions and millions of corpses. Two, countries where women are most oppressed and abused are also the least stable. Three, as women become more empowered, especially financially, countries become more stable. When women have money, they can feed their families, get health care, educate their children, start businesses and so on. The ripple effect is stronger families, stronger communities and ultimately saner nations. This fact, reinforced by numerous economic studies, has not escaped the attention of corporate America, which is investing heavily to reach women in developing countries. As Muhtar Kent, the CEO of Coca-Cola, put it: “Women are already the most dynamic and fastest-growing economic force in the world today.” What does this have to do with Hillary? Quite a bit. Rewinding the tape to 1995 at the U.N.’sFourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, then-first lady Hillary Clinton empowered women as never before with just a few words: “Human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights, once and for all.” Imagine that. Well, of course, we can imagine that. Our Founding Fathers created the instruments to codify this concept, even if it took a while to imprint on our psyches and to be reflected in our laws. But elsewhere, in places where women are tortured, abused, sold into slavery and disfigured, all to the “glory” of men, it was a trumpet blast from heaven’s gate that caused the earth to tremble: Women are human beings, too. How do you say “wow” in Lingala? At the time, it was a revolutionary statement and helps explain why Hillary is one of the most recognized and revered individuals in the world. While Americans obsess about Hillary’s hair and married life, others have been studying her for inspiration. To millions, she is a role model and a warrior for women’s right to self-determination. As secretary of state, she continued the work of predecessors Condoleezza Rice and Madeleine Albright, who first insisted that women’s rights be part of our foreign policy, and then pushed further. Under Hillary’s watch, Obama made permanent the Office of Global Women’s Issues and appointed longtime Hillary colleague Melanne Verveer as ambassador-at-large. These strides in soft diplomacy may get less ink than, say, John Kerry’s progress toward Middle East peace talks, but they are no less important in the longer term. Far newsier than yet another round of “peace talks,” necessary though they be, are the implications of the global explosion in women’s economic and, therefore, political power. Whether one likes or dislikes Hillary, few dispute that she has matured in her public role. Her résumé can be topped by few and the symbolic power of electing a woman president — especially this woman — can’t be overestimated. Many doubtless shudder at the prospect of Hillary Clinton as the most powerful person in the world, but we’ve done worse. For what it’s worth, many in the Bush White House said privately they hoped Hillary would win because they felt she was better prepared to handle international challenges. Whatever transpires during the next three years, we can be sure the world’s women are watching closely. In 2007 when I traveled through the Middle East with then-first lady Laura Bush, every woman I met was riveted by the U.S. presidential election and wanted to talk about only this question: Will Hillary win? In 2008, it seemed possible. In 2016, barring a Benghazi surprise, it seems probable. Read more from Kathleen Parker’s archive, follow her on Twitter or find her on Facebook.
Get Hip – Fly Sabena August 14, 2013August 13, 2013 TURNING WATER INTO COFFEE Speaking, as we did yesterday, about living light on the land — do you know how much water is required to make your morning latte? Two hundred liters! This clip surprised “even me.” BLOWING MOSQUITOES AWAY They don’t like a headwind. SAVING ON SURGERY In case you missed it in the New York Times a couple of Sundays ago, this is the story of how much less it costs to have high quality surgery done in places like Mexico and Belgium. Raising the questions: Why don’t foreign hospitals advertise for patients here? And why don’t US insurers offer patients cash to have surgeries abroad? “Yes, we’ll cover your hip replacement at your neighborhood hospital. But if you’ll let us fly you first-class to Brussels, we’ll also give you $10,000.” (Saving the insurer $40,000, in case you accept.) Airlines should start marketing this! Surgical tour packages. GET HIP – FLY SABENA!
Jambox August 13, 2013August 13, 2013 JAMBOX KILLER You could buy a Jambox — and even after reading this, you might still. And if you already have one, you probably won’t throw it out — as you know, you just plug in your iPhone or Android and suddenly have symphonic-quality sound. Or if not symphonic quality, certainly not bad for the size and convenience. But guess what I just learned? All you have to do is stick your phone in an empty glass (or small vase), and you get the same symphonic speaker effect. Try it! Experiment with different size and shape glasses and you’ll soon find one that fits the bill. You just saved $250! And having to recharge anything or having to remember where you put it or, eventually, having to discard it. Because every time we live a little lighter on the land, well . . . WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD Click here. Two minutes. David Attenborough. After 5 billion years to get to this point, can we please not screw it all up? LA TO NY IN AN HOUR Click here. I mean, if they can print you up a new bionic ear in four hours, why not this?
Money! August 12, 2013August 12, 2013 ASK LESS To those of you who wish I’d spend more time writing about personal finance and less about personal peeves (Home Depot on-line is so screwed up! and why does my iPhone keep changing the — not an uncommon word!!! — to T&E, whenever I mistype it?) . . . I say: Ask Less. He knows everything about personal finance and prudent investing. My speculations — to be made only with money you can truly afford to lose — make him blanch. A question here — will ordinarily elicit a quick answer on his blog. (Hence the little asterisk that’s been blinking on the right-hand side of this page for years. See it? Nearly 500 million blinks by now, if my math is right.) But while I have you . . . NPSP First suggested here at $6.65 and then again at $5.50 or so, it closed Friday at $22.59, for about a quadruple. I celebrated by taking some profits; yet Guru writes of the company’s wildly expensive drug ($295,000 a year): “There are probably 1,000 to 3,000 people in the US who could really benefit from Gattex. Could be more. That’s $300 million to $900 million in the US. They will launch in Europe where the market is similarly sized. For sure this is a $500 million in peak sales. Every year. For a long time. No competition. No one even trying to compete. This product could extend survival. Meanwhile, they have another product, for hypoparathyroidism — to supply the missing parathyroid hormone. Will file this year. Launch end of next year. Another $300 million potential market in the US. Then they get a royalty from Amgen of $100 million. The stock should hit 36 over the next year.” So I’ve kept some. NKTR Guru told us about this one in May at $10.30, suggesting it could be $15 or more fairly soon. Up 20% since then, he now writes: “NKTR reaffirmed that the arthritis trial — the focus of my interest — will be out ‘this summer.’ So: soon. I just don’t see how it doesn’t succeed. I think this drug, NKTR-181, and a second one — a short-acting pain drug , NKTR-192 — fully justify the current market cap. These should be easy approvals because they’re based on known effective drugs that have been chemically and permanently altered so that they reduce abusability and adverse events dramatically. They address a current market of $12-$15 billion. At the same time, NKTR has partnerships with AZN on the constipation side, with Baxter on an extended release hemophilia factor, and with Bayer on extended release antibiotics to treat hospitalized lung infections, so lots of ways to win here. It’s one of my favorite intermediate cap stocks.” So on I hang. ETRM Suggested here in February at 85 cents, it closed Friday at $1.11, which I suppose is good, up 30% in six months, but is really not the point. The point of this one, as stated then, is either to go to zero if its device fails to get approved or else to $10 or $20 if it does get approved (very possibly by the end of this year). Two smart people I know think there’s a better than even chance it gets approved. I am skeptical, as “the market” sure doesn’t seem to be assigning those same odds. But if there’s even a 20% chance the stock could hit $10 or $20 in the next year or two (say), that chance is worth approximately 20% of $10 or $20 — and so still this gamble appears cheap. Wish us luck. BOREF By contrast, I just don’t see Borealis going to zero. Why would a patented technology for a little motor powerful enough to drive a fully loaded commercial jet at 20 miles an hour — and all its other patents and even its iron ore — be worth zero? It could be, with sufficiently bad management and sufficiently bad luck. So this is, as always, a speculation to be made only with money YCTATL. But even if there is only a 10% chance that it will pan out — and by now I think the chances are higher, given their 11 signed airlines and their impressive production partners and the fact that their system has been shown to work — then it seems to me that a reasonable valuation for the company might be $200 million to $500 million, which is to say 10% of the $2 billion to $5 billion that success might be worth. I know these numbers are insanely large (the company would doubtless argue they are not nearly large enough, and that the chance of success is well north of 10%), but with 5 million shares outstanding, a $200 million market cap is $40 a share. So who is selling it at $12? I know who’s not buying it — anyone with a fiduciary responsibility to buy only S.E.C. regulated companies. (Did I mention that the company is headquartered in Gibraltar?) But in a way, if this thing ever does pan out, that’s an advantage for us: it’s kept demand low while we were buying. And I know one guy who sold 2,000 shares recently at $10 a share. “What were you thinking?” I asked him. It turned out, he was thinking he had to pay the landscapers. Hurricane Sandy had left him a big uninsured mess. But he was also thinking these were not his only shares — by a long shot — so he’d just take the profit on these, for the sake of the rhododendrons, and hope to do well with the rest. Who else is selling I don’t know. RUNNING OUT OF GAS I once got to test drive what was then the revolutionary new Mazda, with its Wankel rotary engine. I ran out of gas on the Saw Mill River Parkway. At night. With cars whizzing past and no paved “shoulder” — the charm of a parkway as opposed to a highway (or at least this is how I remember it 40 years later). It seemed like a big problem at the time; but imagine running out of gas on the approach to, say, Gatwick. Or Laguardia. This story about discount carrier Ryan Air reminds us what a bad idea it is to leave the gate with insufficient fuel. And because you can’t know before you push back how long you may be delayed on the tarmac, what a good idea it is to have enough extra fuel to allow for longer-than-usual delays, even if 90% of the time you won’t have them. Even though it’s generally unused, that extra fuel weighs hundreds of pounds; WheelTug makes it unnecessary, reducing the weight of the plane accordingly — which in turn lessens the amount of fuel required to thrust it 37,000 feet into the air. (How much extra fuel would you require to climb 3,000 flights of stairs with an extra, generally-unused barrel of jet fuel on your back?)
The President’s Speech August 9, 2013 COOLEST BILLBOARD IN THE WORLD Just one more reason to be inspired and hopeful for the future. Skip the ad and take 96 seconds to watch. But then don’t forget to come back! We have the President’s speech AND the King’s speech. Double-bonus Friday. $15 MINIMUM WAGE I argued Wednesday that the minimum wage is in a way the ultimate “collective bargain.” We the people, through our elected representatives, decide that — for a variety of reasons, both moral and self-interested — it would be a good thing to set a floor on wages. If you buy that (as only some do), then the question becomes: how much? As we’ve been discussing (here and here), $15 — though way higher than I first thought practical — might actually make a great deal of sense. WELL, OR AT LEAST $10.10 Friday, I asked . . . Have you watched or read the President’s Chattanooga speech? I plan to post the transcript Monday. But Monday I got distracted and Tuesday I got confused and Wednesday I forget what happened because I was so excited by CNBC, as described Thursday — but have you watched or read the President’s speech? The one he delivered at that gigantic Amazon fulfillment center? There’s so much good in it — not least that the President wants to raise the minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 an hour — that I wanted to post most of it here (with some bolding and “subheads” added for your convenience). These are crucial times we’re living through. Even on an August weekend, it’s worth paying attention: [PROGRESS WE’VE MADE] . . . [O]ver the past four and a half years, we’ve been fighting our way back from the worst recession since the Great Depression, and it cost millions of Americans their jobs and their homes and their savings. And part of what it did is it laid bare the long-term erosion that’s been happening when it comes to middle-class security. But because the American people are resilient, we bounced back. Together, we’ve righted the ship. We took on a broken health care system. We invested in new American technologies to reverse our addiction to foreign oil. Changed a tax code that had become tilted too much in favor of the wealthy at the expense of working families. Saved the auto industry, and thanks to GM and the UAW working together, we’re bringing jobs back here to America, including 1,800 autoworkers in Spring Hill. (Applause.) 1,800 workers in Spring Hill are on the job today where a plant was once closed. Today, our businesses have created 7.2 million new jobs over the last 40 months. This year, we’re off to our best private-sector jobs growth since 1999. We now sell more products made in America to the rest of the world than ever before. (Applause.) We produce more renewable energy than ever. We produce more natural gas than anybody else in the world. (Applause.) Health care costs are growing at the slowest rate in 50 years. Our deficits are falling at the fastest rate in 60 years. (Applause.) So thanks to hardworking folks like you, thanks to the grit and resilience of the American people, we’ve been able to clear away some of the rubble from the financial crisis. We’ve started to lay a new foundation for a stronger, more durable America — the kind of economic growth that’s broad-based, the foundation required to make this century another American century. [THE NEED FOR GOOD JOBS] But as I said last week, and as any middle-class family will tell you, we’re not there yet. Even before the financial crisis hit, we were going through a decade where a few at the top were doing better and better, but most families were working harder and harder just to get by. And reversing that trend should be Washington’s highest priority. (Applause.) It’s my highest priority. But so far, for most of this year, we’ve seen an endless parade of distractions and political posturing and phony scandals. And we keep on shifting our way — shifting our attention away from what we should be focused on, which is how do we strengthen the middle class and grow the economy for everybody. (Applause.) And as Washington heads towards yet another budget debate, the stakes couldn’t be higher. And that’s why I’m visiting cities and towns like this -– to lay out my ideas for how we can build on the cornerstone of what it means to be middle class in America: A good job with good wages. A good education. (Applause.) A home to call your own. (Applause.) Affordable health care that’s there for you when you get sick. (Applause.) A secure retirement even if you’re not rich. (Applause.) More chances for folks to earn their way into the middle class as long as they’re willing to work for it. And, most importantly, the chance to pass on a better future for our kids. (Applause.) So I’m doing a series of speeches over the next several weeks, but I came to Chattanooga today to talk about the first and most important cornerstone of middle-class security, and that’s a good job in a durable, growing industry. (Applause.) It’s hard to get the other stuff going if you don’t have a good job. And the truth is everything I’m going to be talking about over the next several weeks really is about jobs. Because preparing our children and our workers for the global competition they’ll face, that’s about jobs. A housing finance system that makes it easier and safer to buy and build new homes, that’s about jobs in the construction industry. Health care that frees you from the fear of losing everything after you’ve worked so hard, and then having the freedom to maybe start your own business because you know you’ll be able to get health care, that’s about jobs. And, obviously, retirement benefits speak to the quality of our jobs. And let me say this, it’s something everybody here understands: Jobs are about more than just paying the bills. Jobs are about more than just statistics. We’ve never just defined having a job as having a paycheck here in America. A job is a source of pride, is a source of dignity. It’s the way you look after your family. (Applause.) It’s proof that you’re doing the right things and meeting your responsibilities and contributing to the fabric of your community and helping to build the country. That’s what a job is all about. It’s not just about a paycheck. It’s not just about paying the bills. It’s also about knowing that what you’re doing is important, that it counts. So we should be doing everything we can as a country to create more good jobs that pay good wages. Period. (Applause.) [HOW TO GET THEM] Now, here’s the thing, Chattanooga, the problem is not that we don’t have ideas about how we could create even more jobs. We’ve got a lot of ideas out there. There are plenty of independent economists, plenty of business owners, people from both parties agree on some of the ingredients that we need for creating good jobs. And you’ve heard them debated again and again over these past few years. I proposed a lot of these ideas myself. Just two years ago, I announced the American Jobs Act — full of ideas that every independent economist said would create more jobs. Some were passed by Congress. But I got to admit, most of them weren’t. Sometimes there were ideas that historically had Republican support and for some reason suddenly Republicans didn’t want to support them anymore. Putting people back to work rebuilding America’s infrastructure. Equipping our kids and our workers with the best skills. Leading the world in scientific research that helps to pave the way for new jobs in new industries. Accelerating our clean energy and natural gas revolutions. Fixing a broken immigration system so that American workers aren’t undercut, undermined because some businesses are unscrupulous and hiring folks and not paying them decent wages. (Applause.) Independent economists say immigration reform would boost our economy by more than a trillion dollars. So we’ve got ideas out there we know can work. And if we don’t make these investments, if we don’t make these reforms, then we might as well be waving the white flag to the rest of the world, because they’re moving forward. They’re not slowing down. China, Germany, India — they’re going. And we can’t just sit by and do nothing. Doing nothing doesn’t help the middle class. (Applause.) So today, I came here to offer a framework that might help break through some of the political logjam in Washington and try to get Congress to start moving on some of these proven ideas. But let me briefly outline some of the areas I think we need to focus on if we want to create good jobs, with good wages, in durable industries -– areas that will fuel our future growth. [JOBS] Number one — jobs in American manufacturing. (Applause.) Over the past four years, for the first time since the 1990s, the number of manufacturing jobs in America hasn’t gone down, it’s actually gone up. (Applause.) So the trend lines are good; now we’ve got to build on that progress. I want to offer new incentives for manufacturers not to ship jobs overseas, but to bring them back here to America. (Applause.) I want new tax credits so communities hit hardest by plant closures can attract new investment. (Applause.) In my State of the Union address, I asked Congress to build on a successful pilot program we’ve set up. We want to create not just 15 manufacturing innovation institutes that connect businesses and universities and federal agencies to help communities left behind by global competition to become centers of high-tech jobs. Today, I’m asking Congress to build on this bipartisan support and triple that number from 15 to 45 — these hubs — where we’re getting businesses, universities, communities all to work together to develop centers of high-tech industries all throughout the United States that allow us to be at the forefront of the next revolution of manufacturing. I want it made here in the United States of America. I don’t want that happening overseas. (Applause.) Number two — jobs rebuilding our infrastructure. I look at this amazing facility and you guys, you don’t miss a beat. I mean, you’ve got these packages coming out. You’ve got dog food and Kindles and beard trimmers. (Laughter.) I mean, there’s all kinds of stuff around here. But once it’s packed up, it’s got to get to the customer. And how quickly and how dependably it gets to the customer depends on do we have good roads, do we have good bridges, do we have state-of-the-art airports. We’ve got about $2 trillion of deferred maintenance here in this country. So let’s put more construction workers back on the job doing the work America needs done. (Applause.) These are vital projects that Amazon needs, businesses all across the country need, like widening Route 27 here in Chattanooga — (applause) — deepening the Jacksonville Port that I visited last week. These are projects vital to our national pride. We’re going to be breaking ground this week at the St. Louis Arch. Congress should pass what I’ve called my “Fix-It-First” plan to put people to work immediately on our most urgent repairs, like the 100,000 bridges that are old enough to qualify for Medicare. That will create good middle-class jobs right now. (Applause.) And we should partner with the private sector to upgrade what businesses like Amazon need most. We should have a modern air traffic control system to keep planes running on time. We should have modern power grids and pipelines to survive a storm. We should have modern schools to prepare our kids for the jobs of tomorrow. (Applause.) Number three, we need to keep creating good jobs in energy — in wind and solar and natural gas. Those new energy sources are reducing energy costs. They’re reducing dangerous carbon pollution. They’re reducing our dependence on foreign oil. So now is not the time to gut investments in American technology. Now is the time to double down on renewable energy and biofuels and electric vehicles, and to put money into the research that will shift our cars and trucks off oil for good. (Applause.) And let me tell you, cheaper costs of natural gas is a huge boost to our businesses here in America, so we should develop it even more. We’ve got to do it in a way that protects our air and our water for our children and future generations. But we can do that. We’ve got the technology to do it. Number four, we’ve got to export more. We want to send American goods all around the world. (Applause.) A year ago, I signed a new trade agreement with Korea, because they were selling a lot of Hyundais here, but we weren’t selling a lot of GM cars over there. Since we signed that deal, our Big Three automakers are selling 18 percent more cars in Korea than they were. (Applause.) So now we’ve got to help more of our businesses do the same thing. I’m asking Congress for the authority to negotiate the best trade deals possible for our workers, and combine it with robust training and assistance measures to make sure our workers have the support and the skills they need for this new global competition. And we’re going to have to sharpen our competitive edge in the global job marketplace. Two years ago, we created something called SelectUSA. This is a coordinated effort to attract foreign companies looking to invest and create jobs here in the United States. And today I’m directing my Cabinet to expand these efforts. And this October, I’m going to bring business leaders from around the world, and I’m going to connect them to state leaders and local leaders like your mayor who are ready to prove there’s no better place to do business than right here in the United States of America. (Applause.) Number five — let’s do more to help the more than 4 million long-term unemployed Americans that are out there. (Applause.) One of the problems is a lot of folks, they lose their jobs during this really bad recession through no fault of their own. They’ve got what it takes to fill that job opening, but because they’ve been out of work so long employers won’t even give their application a fair look. (Applause.) So I’m challenging CEOs to do more to get these Americans back on their feet. And I’m going to bring together the CEOs and companies that are putting in place some of the best practices for recruiting and training and hiring workers who have been out of work for a long time, but want the chance to show that they’re ready to go back to work. (Applause.) And at the same time, I’m calling on our businesses to do more for their workers. (Applause.) Amazon is a great example of what’s possible. What you’re doing here at Amazon with your Career Choice Program pays 95 percent of the tuition for employees who want to earn skills in fields with high demand — not just, by the way, jobs here at Amazon, but jobs anywhere — computer-aided design or nursing. I talked to Jeff Bezos yesterday, and he was so proud of the fact that he wants to see every employee at Amazon continually upgrade their skills and improve. And if they’ve got a dream they want to pursue, Amazon wants to help them pursue it. (Applause.) That’s the kind of approach that we need from America’s businesses. Offering training programs, health care, retirement plans, paying better wages — that’s not just the right thing to do, it’s actually good for your bottom line. A recent study shows that when a company makes the list of the “100 Best Companies to Work for in America,” its share price outperforms its competitors, because the stock market and investors, they know if a company has employees that are motivated and happy, that business is more likely to succeed. (Applause.) That business is more likely to succeed. And because nobody who works full-time in America should have to live in poverty, I’m going to keep on making the case and fighting for the fact that we need to raise our minimum wage, because right now it’s in lower terms than it was when Ronald Reagan took office. (Applause.) When folks have more money in their pockets, that’s good for Amazon; it means your customers have a little more money. They can order a little more of that protein powder. (Laughter.) I noticed a lot of folks were ordering protein power. Everybody is trying to get bulked up. (Laughter.) So here’s — those are some of the ideas that we’re out there, we’re promoting. We’re not lacking for ideas, we’re just lacking action, especially out of Washington. (Applause.) For most of the past two years, Washington has just taken its eye off the ball when it comes to the middle class. And I’ll tell you — look, there are a growing number of — the good news is there are a growing number of Republican senators who are trying to work with Democrats to get some stuff done. (Applause.) That’s good news. [THE PROBLEM] The bad news is that rather than keep our focus on what should be our priority — which is growing our economy and creating good middle-class jobs — we’ve seen a certain faction of Republicans in Congress hurt a fragile recovery by saying that they wouldn’t pay the very bills that Congress racked up in the first place, threatening to shut down the people’s government if they can’t get rid of Obamacare. Instead of reducing our deficits with a scalpel to get rid of programs we don’t need, but keep vital investments that we do, this same group has kept in place this meat cleaver called the sequester that is just slashing all kinds of important investments in education and research and our military. All the things that are needed to make this country a magnet for good middle-class jobs, those things are being cut. And these moves don’t just hurt our economy in the long term; they hurt our middle class right now. The independent Congressional Budget Office estimates that the cuts that are being made right now in Washington will cost our economy 750,000 jobs this year; 900,000 fewer jobs next year. And a lot of the jobs at risk are at small businesses that contract with our military or our federal agencies. Over the past four years, another 700,000 workers at the federal, state, and local levels of government have lost their jobs. These are cops and firefighters, and about half of them are people who work in our schools. Those are real jobs. It doesn’t help a company like Amazon when a teacher or a cop or a firefighter loses their job. They don’t have money to place an order. That’s hundreds of thousands of customers who have less money to spend. If those layoffs had not happened, if public sector employees grew like they did in the past two recessions, the unemployment rate would be 6.5 percent instead of 7.5 percent. Our economy would be much better off, and the deficit would still be going down because we’d be getting more tax revenue. So the point is, if Washington spent as much time and energy these past two years figuring out how to grow our economy and grow our middle class as it’s spent manufacturing crises in pursuit of a cut-at-all-costs approach to deficits, we’d be much better off. We’d be much better off. (Applause.) And it’s not like we don’t have to cut our deficits. As a share of the economy, we’ve cut our deficits by nearly half since I took office. Half. And they’re projected to go down even further, but there’s a right way to do it and a wrong way to do it. And we should do it in a way that actually helps middle-class families instead of hurts them. (Applause.) I’ve told Republicans that if they’re serious about a balanced, long-term fiscal plan that replaces harmful budget cuts that would get serious about a long-term plan that prevents those 900,000 jobs from being lost, that helps grow the economy, that helps the middle class, I am ready to go. But we can’t lose sight of our North Star. We can’t allow an impasse over long-term fiscal challenges to distract us from what the middle class needs right now. So here’s the bottom line: If folks in Washington really want a grand bargain, how about a grand bargain for middle-class jobs? (Applause.) How about a grand bargain for middle-class jobs? [THE SOLUTION] I don’t want to go through the same old arguments where I propose an idea and the Republicans just say, no, because it’s my idea. (Applause.) So I’m going to try offering something that serious people in both parties should be able to support: a deal that simplifies the tax code for our businesses and creates good jobs with good wages for middle-class folks who work at those businesses. Right now, everybody knows this — our tax code is so riddled with loopholes and special interest tax breaks that a lot of companies who are doing the right thing and investing in America pay 35 percent in their taxes; corporations who have got fancy accountants and stash their money overseas, they pay little or nothing in taxes. That’s not fair, and it’s not good for the economy here. So I’m willing to simplify our tax code — closes those loopholes, ends incentives to ship jobs overseas, lowers the rate for businesses that are creating jobs right here in America, provides tax incentives for manufacturers that bring jobs home to the United States. Let’s simplify taxes for small business owners, give them incentives to invest so they can spend less time filling out complicated forms, more time expanding and hiring. I’m willing to do all that that should help businesses and help them grow. But if we’re going to give businesses a better deal, then we’re also going to have to give workers a better deal, too. (Applause.) I want to use some of the money that we save by closing these loopholes to create more good construction jobs with infrastructure initiatives that I already talked about. We can build a broader network of high-tech manufacturing hubs that leaders from both parties can support. We can help our community colleges arm our workers with the skills that a global economy demands. All these things would benefit the middle class right now and benefit our economy in the years to come. So, again, here’s the bottom line: I’m willing to work with Republicans on reforming our corporate tax code, as long as we use the money from transitioning to a simpler tax system for a significant investment in creating middle-class jobs. That’s the deal. (Applause.) And I’m just going to keep on throwing ideas out there to see if something takes. (Laughter.) I’m going to lay out my ideas to give the middle class a better shot. But now it’s time for Republicans to lay out their ideas. If they’ve got a better plan to bring back more manufacturing jobs here to Tennessee and around the country, then let them know — let me know. I want to hear them. If they’ve got a better plan to create jobs rebuilding our infrastructure or to help workers earn the high-tech skills that they need, then they should offer up these ideas. But I’ve got to tell you, just gutting our environmental protection, that’s not a jobs plan. Gutting investments in education, that’s not a jobs plan. They keep on talking about this — an oil pipeline coming down from Canada that’s estimated to create about 50 permanent jobs — that’s not a jobs plan. Wasting the country’s time by taking something like 40 meaningless votes to repeal Obamacare is not a jobs plan. That’s not a jobs plan. (Applause.) So let’s get serious. Look, I want to tell everybody here the truth. And you know, look, I know that the politics for Obama aren’t always great in Tennessee. I understand that. But I want everybody to just hear the honest truth. I’ve run my last campaign, so I don’t need to spin. (Applause.) And here’s the truth — there are no gimmicks that create jobs. There are no simple tricks to grow the economy. Growing the economy, making sure that the middle class is strong is like getting in shape. You can’t just go on the muffin and doughnut diet and the latest fad and lose weight. You’ve got to work out and you’ve got to eat better. Well, the same is true for our economy. The same is true for helping the middle class. We’ve got to have a serious, steady, long-term American strategy to reverse the long-term erosion of middle-class security and give everybody a fair shot. (Applause.) And we know what we have to do. It involves education. It involves infrastructure. It involves research. It involves good energy policy. And we just have to stay at it — more good jobs that pay decent wages, a better bargain for the middle class, an economy that grows from the middle out. That’s got to be our focus. We can’t be getting into a whole bunch of fads and pretend like you roll back Obamacare and suddenly all these jobs are going to be created, because the middle class was struggling before I came into office. (Applause.) The middle class was losing ground before I came into office. (Applause.) Jobs were getting shipped overseas before Obamacare was in place. So we’ve got to be honest. We’ve got to be honest about the challenges we face, but also the opportunities that are out there. And that’s what I’m going to be focused on not just for the next few months. I’m going to be focused for every one of the 1,270 days I’ve got left in my presidency on how to make sure that we’ve got more opportunity and more security for everybody who is willing to work hard in this country. That’s where I believe America needs to go. (Applause.) And we can do it if we work together, Chattanooga. Let’s get to work. Thank you very much, everybody. God bless you. God bless the United States of America. THE KING’S SPEECH Writing the headline for today’s post, I remembered “The King’s Speech‘” — not least the exquisite double meaning of its title — and, because without an editor to restrain me I get to share whatever flies into my head, I just thought for anyone who missed it the first time, I’d suggest you Netflix it. Just so great. The triumph of the human spirit. Have a great weekend.
WheelTug On CNBC August 8, 2013December 29, 2016 Did you happen to catch WheelTug CEO Isaiah Cox on CNBC’s Squawk Box yesterday morning? It was another in their series on “The Disrupters” — disruptive technologies. And it began with a quote from Bob Crandall, a dean of the airline industry who ran American Airlines from 1982 to 1998. WheelTug is “attractive and viable.” He’s recommended it to people in the industry. He’s even considering investing in it himself, which, if he did, would now apparently cost him $180 per WheelTug share (the previous private placement round, at $90, just having closed). We still have a long way to go — and may never get there — but it’s encouraging to know that each publicly-traded Borealis share represents ownership of, among other things, approximately one (non-tradeable) WheelTug share. And that the “other things” could one day have value, too. Because, as you’re doubtless sick of hearing me remind you (but it just makes me feel so happy to think about it), if this little five-inch wide motor that fits inside a wheel can drive a fully loaded airliner at 20 miles an hour, might its underlying technology not have application elsewhere? In cars? Or elevators? Or forklifts? And if this Borealis technology is real and can ultimately produce value for us shareholders (no guarantee of that! invest only with money you can truly afford to lose! use “limit orders”!), then might not some of its other technologies, and perhaps even its Canadian iron ore deposits, one day prove to have value as well? Given my obsession with all this, I probably watched the interview more closely than most. The first thing I noticed was that our CEO does not seem nearly as weird as our company (you will recall, for example, that our company is headquartered, at least nominally, in Gibraltar, and recently filed a 1,200-page prospectus to begin trading its shares on the Prague Stock Exchange — doesn’t everyone? — except that so far no shares seem to have traded). He seems presentable, amiable, and eminently rational. Given the time constraint, he didn’t even mention the most basic of selling points: that with our little motor, the pilot no longer has to wait for a human driving a $1 million tug to back his jet out from its gate. Nor the savings from not sucking into an engine the occasional hammer or suitcase accidentally left on the tarmac. Nor the diminished air and noise pollution. Nor a host of less obvious advantages. But he packed an awful lot into the time he had — and did a wonderful job highlighting a key difference with the competition: with our solution, the airline puts up no money and can have the wheel removed at any time it doesn’t live up to expectations or some better system comes along. With Safran/Honeywell’s solution, a disinstall would be a lot harder. Which may be one of the reasons the competition has thus far signed up no airlines and we’ve signed up eleven. I keep trying to figure out what could go wrong. Maybe GE or Boeing or someone is about to reveal an even better solution — and without violating any of the patents protecting WheelTug and its motor. Maybe Boeing and Airbus will simply never allow the cash savings to the airlines, the time savings to the passengers, the capacity savings to the airports, and the environmental savings to our planet that WheelTug would confer. So there are certainly risks. This is a speculation. Yet if this were a normal, NASDAQ-listed-type speculation — a junior drug company, for example — one could easily imagine its sporting, say, a $500 million cap, as investors gambled that, well, they just might pull it off (in which case, it could be worth billions). Currently, with Borealis around $11 a share, it sports a $55 million market cap, up from the $15 million market cap of 14 years ago, when I first wrote about it. As usual, I can think of no better end note than . . . at the very least . . . . . . isn’t this fun? Enjoy the video!
People Versus Copper August 7, 2013August 6, 2013 $15 AN HOUR – THE DISCUSSION CONTINUES Artie: “I’m somewhat shocked by your reader’s suggestion that we let ‘the market’ determine wages. We sort of had that earlier in our history with the slaughterhouses, the coal mines, the migrant farmers, etc., and it took the blood and violence and the unions to somewhat level the playing field and get people a liveable wage. [And weekends! We got weekends! — A.T.] Now that the unions are being decimated, we’re heading back to the good old days. . . . Another interesting aspect of this argument is that there are other markets in play: I would contend that Wall Street is forcing a hard heartedness on corporations that perhaps exceeds what they would manifest were they privately run. Executives are expected to seek financial growth consistent with market ‘expectations,’ both as a condition of their continuing employment and as a determinant of their compensation. This kind of pressure, especially in the midst of an economic downturn, but even well before, has forced downsizing as well as cuts in compensation and in benefits, most notably health care insurance and pensions. As my former CEO, Verizon’s Ivan Seidenberg used to say, ‘We’re driving costs out of the business.’ He made it sound so benign.” Patrick Johnson: “I still strongly disagree with you on this. I trust you don’t believe the government should set a minimum price for a copper pipe or a share of IBM stock so why is it a good idea to set a price for labor? If government setting the prices of things was the path to prosperity wouldn’t Mao’s China and the Soviet Union been powerhouse economies? I respect anyone who works. However, sadly I don’t believe that all work adds enough value to pay everyone who works at a level to support a high consumption lifestyle. And if it doesn’t add sufficient value, how can an employer pay a higher wage level and stay in business? I want work to be valued and compensated but I only think market prices work.” ☞ Well, in the chasm between Patrick (my esteemed performance-tracker, by the way, in case you forgot his great contribution to this page) and Artie (who said most of what I would have said just now in response to Patrick) lies a very important difference of views. As a centrist type, I am all about rejecting the extremes (as I’m sure Patrick and Artie would, too) — communism at one end, Darwinian capitalism at the other — and finding a good balance in between. That’s why it’s frustrating yet oddly validating when President Obama is simultaneously lambasted as a Marxist from the right and “Republican lite” from the left. People are not copper. Copper doesn’t suffer if it’s sold cheap; copper’s children don’t lack for the investments in their future that ultimately benefit us all (by increasing the odds they will grow up to be productive citizens and good neighbors); and we have no special interest in seeing copper triumph. If copper can be replaced by a more cost-efficient material (especially when you price into your cost calculations the “externalities” our free markets rarely do), that’s totally fine. We don’t want the government setting prices for everything. But we do want a strong middle class, because, as Nick Hanauer so eloquently reminds us in that short video everyone in America needs to watch, it is the middle class — not the rich — who are the job creators. And most of us want a society in which, if you work hard and play by the rules, you can have the basics you need for a decent life. Which these days includes things like an Internet connection that no one would have dreamed of a century ago. A decent life shouldn’t be handed to you; but working at a fast food restaurant isn’t a walk on the beach. (I know: I’ve just taken a walk on the beach — like five minutes ago — and greatly prefer that to tending the boiling oil at McDonald’s, which I would pay a lot more than $7.25 not to have to do.) Those of us who patronize those restaurants are doing so voluntarily, which means we value the work of the people employed there. Do we want our employees — in a sense, for the few minutes we’re getting our oriental chicken salad, they are working for us — to be paid even less than the current $7.25 minimum wage so our bill might be a few pennies cheaper, or our dividends, as McDonald’s shareholders, a few pennies more? That’s what Republicans — who mostly oppose the minimum wage altogether, let alone raising it — would like to see. Which means that in a bad economy, with people desperate for work, keeping the government out of this would allow wages to fall from $7.25 to perhaps $6 or $5 or $4 . . . and that would also likely put downward pressure on wages of those currently earning modestly above minimum wage. Which would likely hurt the economy (less buying power), leading to larger deficits and less job creation. There was no minimum wage in 1929, which may be one of the reasons the middle-class-decimating Depression was as bad as it was. When you think about it, if you’re okay with “collective bargaining” — as even some Republicans are (a third of union members voted for Romney) — isn’t the minimum wage . . . sort of, vaguely . . . the ultimate collective bargain? We the people, through our elected representatives, decide that — for a variety of reasons, both moral and self-interested — it would be a good thing to set a floor on wages. If you buy that, then the question simply becomes: how high should that floor be? As we’ve been discussing these past couple of weeks (here and here), $15 — though higher than I first thought practical — might actually make a great deal of sense.
The Pope August 6, 2013August 5, 2013 Last week’s remarks by Pope Francis were a really big deal. Janet Tavakoli: “The Pope’s remarks are a huge change from Ratzinger’s hate-speech. Moreover the Pope accepts homosexual priests (albeit wants them to honor their vows). He also made it clear that he not only accepts homosexuals but will forgive priests who break their vows. In the weird world of Catholicism this is unprecedented. An earthquake. (I was interested to hear the remarks of New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan. The Cardinal claims ‘acts’ are a sin, but not the person. Well, guess what? The Church would say the same thing about an unmarried man or woman — me — engaging in heterosexual acts.) Although the Church doesn’t recognize gay marriage (yet), the Pope’s remarks were a bombshell. And the Pope says he’s not judging people.” Janet, who knows a little bit about finance, and who has written a novel about the Jesuits (Tag line: “when control of the Vatican is at stake — money talks, and nobody plays fair”), was particularly interested in the Pope’s remarks (here, at 3:11) about Monsignor Battista Ricca. Ricca is alleged to have had an affair with a Swiss Guard, among others. “The Pope appointed him to clean up corruption in the Vatican Bank,” Janet emailed me, “so of course, Ricca had to be blackmailed. The Pope made it pretty clear that 1) his internal investigation did not match with printed reports of Ricca’s having real-time gay partners, but that 2) even if the reports of his past life and breaking vows are true, God forgives and forgets, so those looking to use this as leverage against Ricca are out of luck. In one swoop, the Pope disarmed them. So a priest is gay? Who is the Pope to judge. So he had a wild past? If he asked for forgiveness and received it, the past is just that.” Janet imagines “it may have gone like this: Ricca agreed to be the pope’s investigator, and others sought to neutralize Ricca with embarrassing information — real or fabricated. The pope just said: ‘So what, even if it was once true? You can’t blackmail me, because I’m not embarrassed about anything, and Ricca shouldn’t be either; Ricca has my support. Write anything you like. Then try to get a better life.'” “A Pope,” Janet says, “has never done anything close to this in the history of the Church.” WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD Really.
Ronald Reagan Supports the $15 Minimum Wage August 5, 2013August 5, 2013 $15 AN HOUR The Daily Beast came up with this really great McPoverty calculator. You enter how much extra you’d be willing to pay for a Big Mac and it tells you how high McDonald’s could then raise wages. I entered 18 cents and got this: The average price of a Big Mac is $4.56, and many fast-food workers make $7.25 an hour. I’d be willing to pay 18 cents more for my Big Mac. Congratulations! Thanks to you, workers are now making $13.07 an hour, or $27,184.04 a year. (Not great, but at least above the poverty line.) (Presumably, they are figuring you’d be willing to see all prices on all the menu items hiked by the same small percentage, not just the Big Mac.) Alvin Bluthman: “When Ronald Reagan was President of the Screen Actors Guild, and on strike for an increase in ‘scale,’ he urged the public to understand that what he was seeking would increase the price of a movie ticket by less than one cent per ticket.” ☞ And here’s the kicker: when Ronald Reagan was elected President of the Screen Actors Guild, movie tickets cost 15 cents. So an extra penny was 7.5%. “Less than a penny” might have been 5%. Which is 23 cents on a Big Mac. Which, according to the McPoverty calculator, could bring McDonald’s wages up well past $15 an hour. President Obama should be calling not for a $10.10 minimum wage phased in over 3 years (although I’m very glad he has) but for a $15-tied-to-wage-inflation minimum wage phased in over, perhaps, 60 months. (Give employers the choice of doing it monthly or, if their payroll systems don’t allow, annually, halfway through each year.) Or do you know what? The Fast Food Association of America, or whatever it’s called, should just adopt this on their own. That’s what Henry Ford would have done. And neither he nor Ronald Reagan was an enemy of capitalism. SIGA Jim Leff: “Dengue Fever is a scary, scary thing. It’s starting to go epidemic in the New World, and a cure would be a much bigger moneymaker than SIGA’s smallpox drug.” ☞ So the stock jumped a little on Friday’s very early-stage announcement that they’re working on one. And perhaps on the news that the company suing SIGA has merged with another small company, prompting Wedbush (“Ranked 2012 Top Stock Picking Firm”) to reiterate its $11 price target for SIGA.