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As The bin Laden News Has Come And Gone, El-Erian Reminds Us What The Real Issues Are
In his virtually daily oped, which comes from Time today, Pimco's El-Erian looks at the transitory impact from the bin Laden news, and how even as it has come and gone, nothing has really changed.
Bin Laden Is Dead. Now It's Time to Fix the Economy, by Mohamed El-Erian
One of the most notable outcomes of the dramatic news that Osama bin Laden has been killed is the feeling of unity across the American political and social spectrums. The event has triggered a shared sense of achievement, pride and common purpose. It is a mood that the U.S. has not felt for years as increasingly polarized political debates, on both serious and trivial issues, gradually gutted the operational middle of the country's political system.
After initial excitement, this moment of unity has largely been shrugged off by global markets as investors worry about the immediate risk of terrorist backlash and, more generally, the continued sense of malaise in the American economy. Yet bin Laden's death has the potential to become a turning point for the country, and for President Barack Obama in particular, if the spirit of cooperation can be translated into broad-based, bipartisan progress on economic issues that are central to the long-term well-being of the country and the world.
Unemployment remains stubbornly high. Youth joblessness is at alarming levels, with too many of the country's teenagers getting close to the point where they go from being unemployed to being unemployable. Various budget constraints have limited the scope for easy solutions, even if these were desirable. The debt and deficit dynamics are bad and deteriorating at both state and federal levels. A major rating agency, Standard & Poor's, has already taken the previously unthinkable step of placing the country's AAA credit rating on negative outlook. And Americans can no longer rely on their central bank for yet another round of imaginative pump priming to buy them time, options and flexibility.
In effect, America can't buy itself out of its economic problems, nor can it again kick the can down the road for much longer. Meanwhile, the rest of the world continues to outpace the U.S. in growth, competitiveness and wealth creation.
These structural problems were years in the making, and they require structural solutions that will need to be implemented steadfastly for a number of years.
Until this week, any reasonable hopes for such solutions were dashed by the extreme polarization of the American political process. Indeed, many Washington veterans have lamented the unapologetic lack of purpose, collaboration and common vision. Sustained and serious debates had become the exception rather than the norm.
A palatable change in the country's mood has the potential, but not the certainty, to change this. To seize the moment, Obama must push for a broad-based political agreement on a new set of economic solutions that America urgently needs to pursue. Here are a few to start with.
Unemployment must be seen as much more than a cyclical problem; it's a structural one that requires concurrent progress on job retraining, housing reform, education, social safety nets and private-sector competitiveness.
The country's deficit and debt problem can only be solved through simultaneous reforms to both expenditures and revenues. We have to talk not only about budget cuts but also tax reform.
Most importantly, America's political parties must jointly agree that progress on the structural-reform agenda cannot be held hostage to the specification of all the details. The important, and urgent, thing is to start the journey; we can always make midcourse corrections as needed.
Back in 2001, the 9/11 attacks orchestrated by bin Laden influenced the mood of America for years. Americans lost the bounce in their step, saw their country embroiled in wars abroad and worried about the mounting bills faced by an economy that was growing on the basis of unsustainable leverage and borrowed time.
Bin Laden's death cannot change all this. But, with skillful political leadership, it can mark the moment when America re-establishes the sense of unity and common vision that is so central to the success of structural reforms. Let us hope that this moment is seized — for the sake of both current and future generations, both in the U.S. and abroad.
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What a nice fairy tale fix! All we need to do is hold hands and everything will work out!
After this post, I shit rainbows and gum drops, my peptic ulcer is gone, my eye sight and age were cured. Looked in the bank and I was a millionaire along with everyone in my area.
Then I went outside and we all sang along with each other about how super awesome it was.
Thank you Osama for Dying for our sins...
Yeah, it's a bit messianic to be sure.
Sounds like we will need some more laws...
How would they even begin to enforce that? JesusHChrist...man bureaucrats really have nothing better to do but invent crap to look busy.
I don't know how the .gov would enforce it, but I do know that by not posting job openings employers may mitigate some legal risks associated with...refusing to hire someone who has been unemployed [which] could have a disparate impact on certain protected groups of people.
I can't tell if this is saving, or creating, jobs?
Impossible to enforce and, further, likely to fall through the cracks... Good luck getting your EEOC claim through for an unprotected class... it will be devoured by the massive amount of fraudulent claims from protected classes... goes something like this:
You're firing me because I'm ________________????!!!!???!!!
No, we're firing you because you no call, no showed 3 times, were written up 3 times for it, the last time we said you were going to get fired if you did it again, and you've never met productivity and you got into a shouting match with customers twice in the last week...
Yeah, but all that stuff was bullshit man! Why are you bringing up old stuff?
I just threw up a little.
This could be a good little business though. Get a bunch of unemployed people and tell them to apply, then sue them for not hiring them.
Hilarious part is, you'd probably win every time with a good piece of shit lawyer.
Quick question though: Isn't everyone that's applying for a job unemployed (ignoring that person who... already had a job)? The fuck are they smoking over there?
If the only way to get a job is to have a job, everyone's fucked.
Thats why Osama was killed...because he was long-term unemployed. The cia weren't to worried about the other stuff....apparently he was offered a photo shoot but refused to take it.
slackrabbit
Now THAT is positively funny!
'nuther reason I read ZH.
RE: tekhneek -
If the only way to get a job is to have a job, everyone's fucked.
You have answered your own question. Most employers who are part of the largest 5000 companies in the US, would rather hire employed workers. A great number of them view unemployed workers as "damaged goods" to be avoided if possible.
Concerning you comment on unemployed people suing potential employers. Good luck with that. No lawyer will touch it unless a law has been broken. Unless you are in a protected class, the EEOC will not pursue a case beyond an initial conversation with you.
Granted, a lot of high tech job skills will be OUT OF DATE or not skillful any more after 6-9 months staying at home, doing nothing related to the profession.
If a software programer stops writting programs for a year, he will for sure forget a lot of skills. Admitted or not.
So you cannot blame the employers.
On something like this, I'd suspect it would be defended until the bitter end and, frankly, I'm not sure any reasonable plaintiff's attorney would take a piece of shit case like that... first, you probably don't have a legal claim... and, second, I can't fathom that you could prove discrimination... generally speaking, the hiring people for most employers with deep pockets are well versed in what to not to say and not to document to avoid a lawsuit...
Smokin some fine hopium today I see
..a shared sense of achievement, pride and common purpose... It is a mood that the U.S. has not felt for years ...
So is Kirstie still on DWTS?
ZH is about to become a Troll zombieland, and yes, I am looking forward to kicking some Troll ass.
So this priest walks into a bar with a monkey, well I forget the rest but your mother was a whore.
Thought I would start it off right.
listen in full (and ignore Tylers unabashed promotion of Time)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xj0pM5FoYbs
Ms. Lennon is a saint!
...and silver/gold/platinum fit all four definitions of monie, which fiat does not, due to it not storing wealth...
...thought I would end it nice and quick ;)
Seriously, I walked by the Apple store Saturday and it was fucking chaos. Nutty Americans in the streets Sunday night waving American flags.
All this tells me is that when the SHTF, there will only be a handful of us that saw it coming...
Nutty Americans in the streets Sunday night waving American flags.
Where was this so I can avoid these people.
Apparantly, every college campus (cops had to come in and seal the roads off to mour local Greektown), Times Square and in front of the White House.
Come join us America... Get up all you sleepy heads and celebrate...We have been saved, so lets join together and rejoice...AMERICA THE GREAT IS BACK!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McHyLKw5mHc
"Let us hope that this moment is seized — for the sake of both current and future generations, both in the U.S. and abroad."
Just gettin the top off a bottle of Beam.
Nothing like a righteous (extralegal) killing to pull the financial and political troops together and lift morale. God Bless Amerika.
Nonetheless, there probably isn't another branch of government that is as good at what they do than the U.S. military special forces.
They only managed to lose a helicopter, so I guess you are right.
I don't know. If lying and stealing is the designated task of the FED than they are certainly as proficient in their role as Special Forces. The only way to know which branch is more elite? Fight it out.
Small technicality that makes all the difference in the world. It's probably a slip on your part, but it shows the genius in the design. The federal reserve is not a governmental entity. It is a private consortium of banks that issues the money we use, at interest. Hereinlies the problem...
Don't get carried away in a wet dream about the pros from Dover dropping like the hand of god from the sky. Todays Guardian has a short, recent history of past operations, including the oops ops. The 2010 attempted rescue of Brit humanitarian worker Linda Norgove went badly wrong when a Seal tossed her a live hand grenade in the middle of a fire fight. In 2008 they flew a mile into Pakistan and engaged in a fire fight that resulted in a number of civilian casualties.
Courageous men doing dangerous work, yes it seems so. Effective outcomes are more uncertain.
Americans dancing in celebration of assasination squads seems misguided and entirely inappropriate. I prefer the feds when they are delivering the mail and health care, something they do reasonably well. Probably not a popular view.
NHS in Britain is the WORLDS third largest employer behind the PLA and the Indian Railroad and you equate that with delivering Healthcare reasonably well.. Yep, your a Brit alright well past your prime..
The US spends nearly 16% of GDP on health care, the UK 8%. Infant mortality in the UK is 5.1 per thousand vs. 6.8 in the US, life expectancy is 79 in the UK and 77 in the US. On the other hand the US has 26.6 MRI machines per million, the UK 5.4.
Not a brit either.
I'm glad he's gone, I suppose, but it was in fact murder and it casts a shadow over us all. He could have been arrested and dragged in chains down to Ground Zero where he could have been impaled and lofted up in the air, and left to rot to pieces over the course of the Summer. Isn't that what our social/economic forbears, the Romans, did? I wonder what prevented our gubmint from doing that? Certainly not the law, or ethics, or morals, or common sense.
Maybe because the 'real' Ben Hidin And Go Seek died years ago of kidney failure and this guy was the actor/patsy who made all those scary videos. Who really knows other than the hidden hands?
I assume my grandchildren will eventually know the truth.
Kinda makes me just want to sing a happy song...Up up and away...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsVgSqAwSEI
He lost me as soon as he pointed to raising taxes.....whatever they increase taxes potential spending cuts will fall by an equal amount. Cutting is the only solution..starting with killing retirement pensions for the ruling class at the bureaucrats. Things have changed...sorry we can't honor those agreements. The same words that are everyday expressions in the business world.
"oops." and "how much was that?" finally: "boy, that dog in the cage is just ROCKIN' in that thing. I think we should just let him go, what do you say?"
He lost me as soon as he pointed to raising taxes.....because whatever they increase taxes potential spending cuts will fall by an equal amount leaving us at the same net position. Cutting is the only solution..starting with killing retirement pensions for the ruling class and the bureaucrats. Things have changed...sorry we can't honor those agreements congressfolks and staffers. These are the same words that are everyday expressions in the business world....Things have changed.
El-erian finally read The Secret.
Oh...Damn... Make it stop!
Osama/Obama binDead for years.
The Fascist are laughing at all of you!
First the story was "Osama/Obama did it."
Then the story was "he's unfindable and
he taunts us from his hidden cave under the White House."
Now the story is "We got him!" and Obama/Osama
called in the strike personally when Kissinger told him it was okay.
Why they are playing this card now is
not open to question.
Could it have something to do with the
badly botched birth certificate forgery and a crash of the Comex which already happen?
In the meantime, the mostly untold
9/11 story. One you probably haven't
heard.
It's hair raising in its implications and
100% nailed down accurate.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9uB64ghcq8&feature=related
Core Of Corruption, Volume 1
In The Shadows
{Full Film}
Turn off your 'tick-for-tick' charts... sit back and relax... Learn the facts behind all this shit and the staged '3-ring circus' events of the past decade/century.
Could it have something to do with the badly botched birth certificate forgery?
http://intheknow7.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/obama-osama-rabbit-out-of-hat.jpg?w=208&h=242
sure theyre skilled- at infiltrating nations and destroying them from within.
http://www.viewzone.com/dualcitizen.html
http://www.biblebelievers.org.au/przion1.htm
Yawn. I'm sorry but tell me something I and everyone else don't know. We will not change until we are looking at a full blown crisis. It is human nature.
It is human conditioning.
THAT'S WHY WE HAVE A PROPAGANDA DEPARTEMENT!! SO WE DON'T HAVE TO LISTEN TO THESE PROBLEMS!
I`d be proud if I`d gone to that much trouble to kill one man. So.....incisive.
Unity my ass. I am hearing plenty of angry "what the fuck now?" calls. Get us the fuck out unless we want to fullfil Bin Laden's stated objective of driving us to financial ruin!
"Structural" like print more money and build roads to nowhere with it?
He ain't dead yet. One famous para site has more stories about him, his gardner, his kidney farmer, kidney bean, all the religious noots thanking some guy named god for killing something. They will milk the cow until it produces Afghanistan's GDP in a tasty pre packaged kind of way.
So what will they come up with next?
Annnddd thank you Muhammed for those lucid thoughts.
Now then . . . howse about some more QE!!!
And now we get regurgitated Time coverage. Next from Tyler: Royal Wedding Photos
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xj0pM5FoYbs
ZH is rapidly sliding into disinfoville
yes but the hits (pageviews) keep on coming. vote with your feet or you are complicit.
Who writes this shit . the 9/11 attacks orchestrated by bin Laden . next they will try to tell us that building 7 fell down because of fire , ho wait ,ho never mind
Much like the confusion regarding the amount of fuel it would take to incinerate a corpse to complete ash, sayanim Silverstein invents a lie not understanding how long it takes to set up a demolition.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WYdAJQV100
The US can start the journey by placing Heavy tariffs on communist manufactured junk. Help small business owners replace those Chinese goods through American manufacturing. There problems solved, throw out the third world.
skillful political leadership- It would be a big step forward, unfortunately it will not happen.
I have always found El-Erian to be a thoughtful and at least somewhat independent commenter on our political economy.
I wish other big shots would at least admit there is a severe problem that requires immediate and extraordinary action.
For a moment there his essay had given me some hope. Then I looked in the toilet and realized I just shit out a load of brightly-colored Skittles®.
All I have to save is:
Meanwhile on the streets of the United States they Twitter, they tweet, they Facebook and bleat, oblivious to any reality around them.
The Bank
OOPS! JP Morgan is in a wee bit “O” (big) trouble again. There goes the last 5 cents in the pension accounts. All they have left is monopoly money, backed by the full faith and credit of … ethanol, wind, solar, gas, batteries, and GE. Can you smell the toast burning (rising margin call volatility)?
The global IC chip has to borrow more than its income, irrespective of the deficit required to get that income. That’s negative quantum leverage for you. At this point, you should have sufficient income property to ride out 5 years, which will bankroll you regardless of what kind of currency they roll out. Just watch who you rent to, your rental policy, to adjust the feedback loop in time.
If you have excess physical silver, by all means hold onto it, regardless of whether they push the price to $100 or $0, with the leverage of silver paper, and they will, because they are desperate. The reason I pushed so hard on adaptive skills is because they can’t take those away, and you don’t have to worry about burying them somewhere.
The human flesh machines have been collecting data on systems, organizations, and individuals for the last three years, so, if you are a borderline sexist, now would be good time to step out of that circle and maintain your distance. You are better of liquidating everything you don’t absolutely need and getting a $10/hr job to practice real performance skills; the shake out at the top is going to be nasty, and increasingly irrational, as if it isn’t already. Just ride the tsunami; don’t get cute with cuts. Make your gates and rest in between. The system is going to accelerate again quite rapidly in August.
For the guy worried about my sex life, I just happened to win the genetic lottery. Even at my advanced age, there is no time when I do not have my choice of women, of any kind, anywhere, even as a homeless person. If you want Family Law, you are welcome to it, but keep it to yourself. Do not f**k with my kids again. Is that un-cryptic enough?
Next up, the collapsing circle enters Brazil again. The sub-humans never learn; they can only know. Once you are playing with the constants in the second integral, with an intelligent trial and error algorithm, the legacy institutions are toast. The error most technicians are making is expecting the past to repeat itself exactly, which is the trap, instead of working together to make the entire coliseum/circus the trap. Containment, containment, containment.
(There is not sufficient gold, nor is it sufficiently useful, and it requires constant monitoring, which reduces the amount of time spent on actual adaptive skill development. Best to leave it to the professional speculators.)
Don't get the wrong idea. I’ve been married twice, and just took a third out for a test run, but if you want lots of sex, be the guy travelling through town. The feminists use travelers, then tell their boyfriends/husbands that they are faithful. Or get into the town sex-buddy system. Same principle. If you want young, get a job at a university. The feminists are actually teaching each other this BS. Funny, they have to learn sex from a book/magazine, instead of learning as they go in their relationships, hence why they get bored so quickly with entertainment sex, become addicted, and are never happy. May as well be having sex with a doll. A friend of mine (hairdresser) sits on the board of a sex club. Same problems as any other artificial supply and demand system.
Have a nice day.
apparently there are no absolute limits to the thoroughly self fixated infantile wish projections emanating from the docile, complacent and hopelessly deluded American populace. our social and political arena has become a species of celluloid fantasy, entertainment, and psychotic delusion. no wonder then that our present social discourse is characterized by a bland acceptance of the most extraordinary falsehoods, the generally mute acceptance of which is telling evidence of the mental breakdown of a nation. David Ray Griffin's "Osama Bin Laden: Dead or Alive" provided conclusive evidence that Bin Laden (aka Tim Osman) died only short months after the false flag PNAC media extravaganza of 9/11.
El-Arian's disingenuous call for "fixing the American economy" is yet another misdirection down another blind alley which has about as much a possibility of happening as this country waking up from the ongoing and grotesque nightmare which the American dream has become.
this was really good: "The country's deficit and debt problem can only be solved through simultaneous reforms to both expenditures and revenues. We have to talk not only about budget cuts but also tax reform."
okey dokey. thank you mr. el erian! now, it will be 5th period. and the girls locker room is still being fumigated for the crabZ, and i want to personally thank all of the female students, and their parents, for the halt to the lingerie-to-school thingy that got so outa hand...
is this the main magnetic pole for trufer morons?
The problem is that Obama along with other politicians and policymakers represent the structural problems within our economy. It's one thing to use this opportunity to galvinize a country, but it's another to think these same assholes who are put in congress and in charge of policy purposely to divide and perpetuate imbalances all of a sudden will carry on a serious debate much less give up their respective sponsorship in order to join hands to solve society's greater problems-- it's like asking a pedophile to take a group of children into the woods for several years and teach them life lessons.
The problem is not only the structural ones, but the system and the people who run the system.
Americans are more untied than ever before.
And don't forget to kick Paul "the über-Keynesian" Krugman out of the US. To fellow Hugo Chavez or Castro.
I am told Cicero admittedly privately that despite his public republicanism, what the dying Republic needed was a Caesar-type character. Nescio. But looking back from Gibbon's and Spengler's chairs we can see that it wouldn't have mattered, Caesar I would have only delayed the inevitable. The decline was then as now structural, "baked in."
Look at us, the generation in charge, look at the young generation about to be in charge, look at flood of third-worlders with no concept or care of Western history or tradition. Look at the pettiness and naivete of the RedTeam-BlueTeam fanatics. The police-state rising, the awful schooling system, and the general Idiocratic state of our institutions. And what about peak oil and its effects on overall GDP via productivity? Considering all the big, important issues, who can thoughfully believe there will be a serious turnaround in our circumstances? Call it pessimism if you want, I call it reality.
Just waiting for the other shoe to drop.
This guy has no idea who Obama really is, or what really motivates him. This sentiment is waiting for a systemic "changing of the guard", which neither the Donkeys nor the Elephants seem to want to move toward with any real commitment. It is still "all politics all the time".
We have a hard landing (at best) ahead of anything this author is talking about...
Mr. El-Erian is obviously only another orwellian propaganda tool.
Not less-not more.
peak water, peak soil, peak oil ect... No tin foil hat needed how when the wall did fall they were on there own to sort it out, and the party did what? yea they eliminated all dead wood. I rememeber beyond clearly they pretend to pay us we pretend to work. They knew what was coming top to bottum but the west was unable listen.
"One of the most notable outcomes of the dramatic news that Osama bin Laden has been killed is the feeling of unity across the American political and social spectrums. The event has triggered a shared sense of achievement, pride and common purpose."
Another walking teleprompter with a daily opinion. Who does he think he's kidding? I haven't heard a single person even mention it. I guess the CIA did a good job staging a few fake "rallys" in DC and NY. Guess it must have been shown on CNBS and Feax News, but nobody I know watches those either.