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Global Business B.S.
The economist ran a piece yesterday called Global business barometer. I won't even bother with the fancy table because I reckon the data is rubbish. According to The Economist/FT, "business people around the world are bullish".
The results of course come from a survey of over 1500 executives, and was conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit. If this sounds like an unbiased study, we are but sheep.

Supposedly overall confidence, which measures the balance of executives who think business will improve over those who expect it to worsen is at 19.3 percentage points. How quickly we forget (so many don't even know) insiders are dumping.
According to ZeroHedge, in the week that ended May 6, 2011 there was $1.2 million worth of purchases, accomplished by a total of 10 insider purchases. This was only offset by a meager 165 insider sales, totaling $650 million. This represents a selling-to-buying ratio of 565 to 1. This is completely normal right? According to the Economist, business people are bullish. Somebody explain it to me because after all I’m just a high school teacher.
I heard Peter Schiff tell Robert Kiyosaki that if I (people who are teachers) was able to do something productive with my life then I would have. In so many words he went onto say, instead I am a teacher as a result of my limited productive capability. To think, I used to really like Schiffy. Schiff wouldn’t last a day where I work. He’d be curled up in a stairwell by 2nd period.
Those who claim it is perfectly normal for insiders to cash out promptly without regard for the message sent to other shareholders have been bought. Even Barrons' noticed the massive spike in selling in recent weeks, noting that any selling to buying ratio over 20 is bearish. 565:1.
The top ten list of sellers for the week that ended May 6, 2011:

Be careful what you believe because there is a good chance the info’s been sold down the river. Speaking of selling, silver is on sale, right? Now seems like a good time to let your local coin shop sell you a few rolls of 90%.
~MV
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schiff would expel the students who couldnt' learn, and elevate himself by allowing those who have more ability than himself to express that ability. the process would be slow and hesitating because the rule of academia is to hold back the new wave of knowledge and technology just as long as you can.
OP and columnist, why do you deserve shit as a public sector worker? why do you think schiff couldn't hack it as a teacher?
You have stolen from the private sector already as you get your buddies from the IRS to pay your exorbitant salaries and the private sector has but no choice but to pay.
You guys are pathetic, you could never be as good at economics as schiff.
I'm sure you are just a bitter public sector workerbee, but if you're so smart why didn't you write the books schiff did and do the presentations he did????
I couldn't agree more pton. I'm so tired of all these teachers crying about making more per hour than engineers and other highly productive individuals. They work half the year and are 100% unaccountable vampires that drain the workers while brainwashing the children to worship the state. Fortunately public schools are being rapidly abandoned by awake parents. Soon the teachers can wallow in the filth of other future leaches.
Dont forget, one can't teach in public schools without wasting time in college getting a teacher's certificate. One can have a PhD in math but not be permitted to teach 1st grade.
You must be properly indoctrinated first!
The purpose of a system is what it does...Check out: "Some Lessons from the Underground History of American Education" by John Taylor Gatto, found in "Everything You Know is Wrong", ISBN 978-1-56731-637-7, pgs 274-287
We can't have unindoctrinated smart people becoming teachers, can we? :>(
Seaborg and a few other Nobel prize winning scientists offered to write the science curriculum for the Los Angeles unified school district. They were turned down because they "were not teachers".
the federal reserve is killing the federal reserve
note.
.
why?
because it has a fatal flaw.
people love fatal flaws, these quicken the heart
of youth.
like, today, i saw half dozen frozen and skinned
lamb carcass thrown to the tailgate of a delivery truck,
delivery to the butcher, eyes frozen dead.
the butcher will know what to do with this sight
and meat.
you go for your corporate freedom, corporate freedom, and see.
you are just meat to be frozen and delivered to the
butcher, directed by those disembodied, floating entities
that have no heart, just an empty stomach for your meat
and fiat currency that they themselves command. this is
the government, corporate government, with corporate law,
judges and legislatures. now, corporate citizens that sing
the popular corporate songs of surrender and love. love
that has no direction or purpose but to bleed to feed the nameless,
almighty, rapist behind the curtain.
i can't wait for the rapture, ongoing
.
only hours from now ...
.........
so, now it's tomorrow or yesterday, or both.
.
The rascals- Its a beautiful morning cover 1968
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eM-l11tqWqw
.
i may have slept thru it? i'll have to go outside
for a while.
Young Rascals - How Can I Be Sure 1967
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuKeSUUK-A4&feature=related
.
Young Rascals - Good Lovin' (Live in studio, 1966)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70mUIvk8SxE&NR=1
.
Your analogy wrt the lamb and butcher made me think of the great Leonard Cohen.
The Butcher
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoArm1nkTnA
ITS BUSINESS BITCHEZ!
So Mr. Teacher how are those students stacking up against students around the world? Seems to me we are paying top dollar for a system where the quality is steadily dropping. So either the kids in America are genetically predisposed to lower test scores or someone is failing in their appointed duties.
The black/brown kids ARE genetically predisposed to lower test scores...the white kids are just lazy...the standard has been lowered so much, they don't even have to try...and so they don't.
It's about time we started admitting the differences between the races and their potential.
WTF is that all about? I have met some tremendously gifted black people, brown people, and women. Making assumptions about people you have not met is not only not cool, it is not particularly bright either.
Teachers I know try their best. Maybe there is something else wrong with america.
I agree with you, they work very hard, but they are forced to dumb things down from the top. Tough job, and I respect many who do it, and without the discipline of the past backing them up either.
The government (local, state, federal especially) rarely promotes the compotent, but rather the obsequious. This is a central characteristic of bureaucracy: do as told, not as improves.
If you constantly promote people who are actually effecient, then you might just put your bureaucracy out of business. Look at DHS: it didn't even exist before 9/11, and it only continues to exsist not because it is actually "protecting the Homeland" but rather because it is constantly promoting the dangers that validate its continued exsistence. The answer to inefficient bureaucracy is more bureaucracy; there is no incentive for improvement when improvement means elimination. Those who try to "fix" the thing are either held down or held out.
Its funny how many foreign workers I've had to train to take my job to the country they came from .... plenty of em
You have more freedom than your replacement, thus you are not business-friendly enough to work there.
If that conclusion is from the PISA rankings, you're depending on a flawed test.
PISA is about as scientifically valid as phrenology or AGW.
Is you don't like the results just declare them invalid?
No, it is due to the data actually being inconsistent. The test is largely something used to bash on the US's open-to-nearly-all-walks-of-life educational system.
It doesn't control for differing admissions criteria; the US being open while many other countries are not. Another point of contention is that one country handpicked who took the exam, without respect to true representation of the country.
But feel free to knock on the US's educational system with unsound data.
So all the countries with better PISA scores are gaming the tests through admission criteria?
You really have to work on your excuses.
$200K/yr so Susie Special can tie her shoes when she is older in the day care center. $125K/yr so Sammy Short Bus can read a comic book by high school. Meanwhile, gifted kids are allowed to tutor the moderately slow if they need a challenge. Teachers who depart from the lesson plan, innovate, or encourage independent thinking are usually gone in three years.
In our school district each retarded student is assigned two full-time tutors/counselors. A lawyer friend of mine has a retarded daughter who is now entering high school. He estimates that the school system has spent over $2 million getting her to the point where she can slightly respond when spoken to. Meanwhile the schools depend on donations to obtain equipment for the science classes.
Everywhere you look the odd and bizarre has become the norm, the good is bad, the bad is good, perversion is art, and the evil prosper.
+1
I thought I was the only one to notice they reversed everything in my lifetime.
It really started a century ago, but it is only obvious to those who started school before collective bargaining for teachers began in the '60s.
I didn't think the usa pissed its money away like these descriptions of the high school system.
its similar in europe - did the democrats stuff it up?
Its not going to be easy to change this crap.
It is a way to advocate to your emotions.
You are good if you help the helpless. If you don't, you are mean.
Of course the girl needs help, but not of that type. She is also forced to fit into something that she obviously can't be, that's even crueler.
Dumb down Kindergarten and overload the teacher so that the lowest common denominator gets through (and in Spanglish too).
This cohort continues year after year, K-end of College/University.
Steadily, each year, each suceeding cohort or year of graduates becomes steadily more confident of their knowledge and wisdom yet less and less capable.
Slowly remove morality and ethics from the lessons along with expecations of competency and you arrive at the present and future.
Must be an equation somewhere but this is why the great civilizations fail.
The purpose of a system is what it does...Check out: "Some Lessons from the Underground History of American Education" by John Taylor Gatto, found in "Everything You Know is Wrong", ISBN 978-1-56731-637-7, pgs 274-287
Welcome to my world. I went to a top ten law school and was in the top quarter of my class. Instead of joining Wall Street and screwing the public, I joined the government and opted for a rewarding job with a safe retirement. Now they are going after my salary, my retiment, and looting the pension fund. Stupid kids on this site have been yucking it up about that because the Fed. government is a fat sow that is milking them. They don't understand that everybody isn't a surely government worker with a high school education. I work with people from Harvard business school. I came into service with a guy who chucked a $250k a year job to work with us for a lousy $23k per year. The high school drop outs who work for GM and support a union that ruined the company, they will get their full pensions. I will get what I get.
I am very tired of stereotypes. The government screws everybody.
Smiddywesson, you are not the only one in your world---private sector or public sector. There are several-fold more people like you in the private sector who have seen their salaries, retirement, and pensions looted due in great part to this government and more specifically US monetary policy itself. You said that you "opted for a rewarding job with a safe retirement": I hope you at least felt rewarded from whatever you did, but there is no such thing as a "safe retirement" in a fiat system. For everyone who didn't know that years ago, they're learning it now, in spades. Wait until your SSI and Medicare are gone.
I don't know you (obviously) or your situation: I feel for people who get screwed, but that doesn't mean I support continuing to screw others in their stead, especially when I am one of those "others." I'm not going to get the SSI or Medicare that is currently costing me thousands of dollars a year that I would be otherwise investing, because there is no way ethier program will be around by the time I clock in for benefits. The fact is, if you work for an abusive, lying, dishonest employer---ie, the US government---you have to except abuse, lies and dishonesty. Whatever you were promised is just that: a promise.
Hopefully stories like yours will encourage people not to work for this corrupt government, as it is far too large now and continues to expand, taking our money and liberty with it. The "stupid kids" here are pissed because they/we are paying for all of this insane spending and never-fulfillable promises due to the "I'll be gone, you'll be gone" check-writing mentality, and we aren't even getting the salary and benefits in the first place. Can you possibly remove some your retirement assets currently under their control and reinvestment in PM's, or at least something not tied to the empty promises of our parasitic, corrupt government? Or better yet, can you possibly get another job?
No sympathy from me because bureaucrats have been hammering on the private sector for years. Now you get pushed back and you expect everyone to shed a tear for you? I've worked for the feds and I know a majority of them go on a power trip knowing that they have the federal government behind them and can crush anybody or anything in the private sector that refuses to roll over. Many people in the private sector are worse off than you. They graduated from college and are waiting tables, stocking groceries, or unemployed.
You're like an OPEC member complaining that oil prices are too high. If you say the government is screwing people over, you're one of the screwers. What are you doing about it?
Whenever I hear people whine about their pensions I wonder, "whatever happened to saving for your own retirement?" My grandfather lived through the depression, had no pension but saved 30% of every paycheck. The most recent complainer was a friend who just happens to be a government employee who, I kid you not, sent two emails on the same day, first one sharing pictures of his Caribbean holiday and second one complaining about state pay freezes and how he would have to delay retirement.
"whatever happened to saving for your own retirement?"
In the interests of keeping lobbying funds flowing, our politicians allowed the merger of "investment" banking with "commercial" banking.
Since churning and skimming is so much more profitable than paying real interest on savings accounts and investing the money into local loans, SAVERS ARE SCREWED.
Just put any sizable amount of money in the bank and see how soon they call to offer you "investment" advice.
DaBernank,
A very good point.
I eschewed holidays for years and years when I bought my house, so that I could work down my mortgage as soon as possible, to remove the DEBT.
DavidC
Welcome to the club, I guess.
Would it be ok if the gubermint just screwed the 'surly government worker with a high school education'? It kind of sounds like you think you deserve better - top ten law school, surrounded by Harvard grads, and all - than commoners.
I don't think that's you, though. You're getting screwed and you are pissed. That's fine. I figure it must be rough to slowly realize that the country might very well be better off without the government you've served and supported all these years. Good luck, Smiddy.
One thing is for sure..
Congress and the rich will turn out ok..
Everyone else will pay. The coming regulation/bank nationalizing like in 1929 will just rebuild the body armour for them to punch out again..or own up future wind/solar/natural gas..
It sucks for everyone else.
"Congress and the rich will turn out ok..."
Yes, until they hang by the neck or bleed out from a gunshot wound.
I'm not advocating, nor would I do such a terrible and awful thing, but the mob rules, and the mob thrice scorned will have justice sooner or later.
TPTB are on borrowed time.
The similarities to the French Nobilitiy right before the French Revolution is near 20/20 on an emotional basis.
Everything is fine, everything is like it has been for 200-300 years then "bang"!
If you are feeling unappreciated, maybe it is time to pick up some new skills in somethings that will make you a better person. Like what? Become fluent in a few languages, figure out what wild plants around you are edible, study some geology and chemistry, and throw in some computer science. So WTF does any of these things have to do with you? If you are ever homeless, you will know what you can and can not eat. If some foreign national wants to drill for oil/mine diamonds/coal/copper in your area, you will have the language skills and rudimentary knowledge to get a new/better job. Hell, maybe you could start your own company and single handedly bring America back to full employment.
Stop being a victim. Turn off your TV. You are the only person responsible for what you make of your life.