Remembrance of things past ...

Quote of the day: military eating the employment lunch

I am not always a fan of Congressional Representative Barney Frank--he is too ideological for my political tastes.  What he says here is a gem:

Scoffing at the suggestion that “everything is on the table’’ in budget negotiations between the Obama administration and congressional leaders, Frank said, “The military budget is not on the table. The military is at the table, and it is eating everybody else’s lunch.’’

Frank also commented a few days ago that after Obama announced troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, Congress didn't bother to take back the billions originally appropriated for those troops as well.

When it comes to war and defence, there is one one hell of a scary bipartisanship.

We are at war in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya Yemen, Pakistan.  In the first two, we have "boots on the ground."  In Yemen and Pakistan, we use drones.  And Libya, of course, is not war but "kinetic military action."

Meanwhile, scary employment and economy scenarios back here at home.

These are the kind of situations when I wonder why I even bother to read the news anymore :(

Scary chart of the day: unemployment

Actually the falling employment/population ratio:

David Leonhardt explains the graph:

By late 2010 and early this year, the situation was improving again — only to slide back again in recent months, this time because of gas prices, Europe (again) and general post-crisis uncertainty (again). The share of adults with jobs, 58.2 percent, is now tied with its low point since this recession began. It has not been lower since 1983. ...
Government officials, especially those at the Fed, have proven too optimistic again and again throughout the crisis. In recent months, they have been saying that they didn’t need to take further action because the economy would soon heal on its own. What do they do now?

What the heck can be done, right?

President Clinton's Chair of the CEA, Laura Tyson, writes:

pair temporary fiscal measures targeted at job creation during the next few years with a multiyear, multitrillion-dollar deficit reduction plan that would begin to take effect once the economy is closer to full employment. Pass both now as a package.
Current signals from Washington indicate that this way out will be not taken: instead, partisanship and politics will trump logic and premature fiscal contraction will undermine the already anaemic recovery. Even worse, a political stalemate over the debt limit could precipitate a financial crisis and necessitate immediate large cuts in government spending that would tip the economy back into recession, driving the unemployment rate into double digits.

Paul Krugman echoes the same point:

The situation cries out for aggressively expansionary monetary and fiscal policy. Instead, however, all the political push is in the opposite direction.

A reminder on the magnitude of the problem:

The unemployment rate — measured by a different government survey, and based on how many people are without jobs but are actively looking for work — ticked up to 9.2 percent in June, compared to 9.1 percent in May (also not a statistically significant change).
There are now 14.1 million workers who are looking for work and cannot find it; the figure nearly doubles if you include workers who are part-time but want to be employed full-time, and workers who want to work but have stopped looking.

From the other end of the political spectrum, here is Reason's explanation:

Cheating in schools. Not by students, but by teachers!

Rational people typically respond to, and begin to exploit, the incentives in systems within which they operate.  The incentive (and disincentive) aspects of No Child Left Behind rewarded "better" schools and teachers, while also penalizing the laggards.

Nobody in their right minds would want to be the laggards, and would want to be one of the better ones.  

However, as the Prairie Home Companion reminds us, only in Lake Wobegon can all students and teachers be above average. 

Which is why we then end up with a situation like this one in Atlanta, that even Al Jazeera thought was worthy enough of to cover!

No less than 187 teachers and several principals at almost four dozen public schools are accused of turning incorrect answers to correct ones after their students had taken their tests.
Nathan Deal, the Georgia state governor, said:, "We determined that 187 teachers and principals in the Atlanta Public Schools cheated. Of the 187, 82 confessed to this misconduct."
Teachers cheated to create the illusion that their students were performing better on standardised tests than they actually were because teachers face pay cuts and possible job-loss if their students’ test scores do not meet national standards.

The Washington Post has excerpted some juicy materials, like this one:

Teacher “Bahji Varner’s first year at Peyton Forest was the 2009-2010 school year. Varner was not at the school for the 2009 CRCT, but witnessed cheating in 2010.
“Varner saw teachers cheat on the APS district-wide benchmark tests. She proctored during this test and saw teachers point to certain questions and then identify the correct answer. After completing, the tests were scanned and scored at the school. [Teacher] Enolar Callands would watch the tests as they were scored. If the scores were not high enough, the teachers would review the tests with the students. Then, the students with low scores were sent to Callands’ or [teacher] Bess Mae Paschal’s classroom to retake the test.
“On the Fifth Grade Writing Test, Paschal instructed students to write drafts, and bring them to her to review and revise. Only after her revisions were the students allowed to write the essay on the official paper.”

Sounds so much like the stories we used to hear about schools in India, where teachers and principals routinely fudged the data.

The difference between such behaviors in K-12 and higher education is that we folks are a lot more savvy in terms how we manage to package the ponzi scheme we run into a vital service.  We no longer even bother to talk about grade inflation, for instance, because, well, hey everybody does that, which becomes the new norm then. 

The awful aspect is that students, whether in K-12 or in universities, are the ones who get screwed in the process. 

My only beef with the news reports--the use of "shocking" ... unless they are using it a la Inspector Renault!

Google search and my blog. What does this say about me?

It has been a while since I looked at the traffic data for my blog.  It is crazy that the posts that I thought were/are most meaningful are not the ones that draws most visitors though.

It turns out that some of my blog posts do show up in the top ten, or even the top five, for a few search terms that result in visitor traffic to my blog.  Some of these are:

• "Graduate school ponzi" Search results #3 and #4 are my posts
• "Anil ambani wife" my post is the fourth listed; all the three higher ones are from Wikipedia
• A variation of this same content, for which my post is the first among the results: "tina munim wedding"
• "map of the ottoman empire" why my post is pulled up as the tenth most relevant site simply beats me
• A post that has attracted quite a few visitors was one in which I was all drools about jackfruit!

So, if I piece together a composite image of me as a cyber-pundit offering opinions, then it appears that I am a graduate school curmudgeon who drools over jackfruit, while trying to make sense of the connections between the Ottoman Empire and Tina Munim.

Really?

Noooooooo ... it ain't me, babe :)

The Great Recession, Part II. The second dip cometh?

Yakking blogging about Ecuador, it turns out, was a wonderful distraction from depressing stuff, like Joseph Stiglitz's column, in which he writes that instead of putting "America back to work by stimulating the economy; end the mindless wars; rein in military and drug costs; and raise taxes, at least on the very rich" the fanatical free market ideology of the right is instead:

pushing for even more tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, together with expenditure cuts in investments and social protection that put the future of the U.S. economy in peril and that shred what remains of the social contract. Meanwhile, the U.S. financial sector has been lobbying hard to free itself of regulations, so that it can return to its previous, disastrously carefree, ways.

When Stiglitz writes thus, it is time to worry. To really, really, worry.

So, what are the Democrats and President Obama doing to counter this ideological offensive from the right?  Mark Thoma is utterly disappointed:

We can do better than this, but it takes leadership and a willingness to fight rather than acquiesce, traits that are far too short in supply in the current administration.

 Hmmm ... so, does this mean that Europe, which doesn't suffer from the ideological right, but is cursed by the ideological left, any better?  Yes, Professor Stiglitz?

But matters are little better in Europe. As Greece and other countries face crises, the medicine du jour is simply timeworn austerity packages and privatization, which will merely leave the countries that embrace them poorer and more vulnerable. This medicine failed in East Asia, Latin America, and elsewhere, and it will fail in Europe, too. Indeed, it has already failed in Ireland, Latvia, and Greece.

Oh, come on.  "Can't anybody here play this game?"

 Stigltiz says there is a way out, but that path is blocked by the ideologues from the right:

an economic-growth strategy supported by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund. Growth would restore confidence that Greece could repay its debts, causing interest rates to fall and leaving more fiscal room for further growth-enhancing investments. Growth itself increases tax revenues and reduces the need for social expenditures, such as unemployment benefits. And the confidence that this engenders leads to still further growth.Regrettably, the financial markets and right-wing economists have gotten the problem exactly backward: They believe that austerity produces confidence, and that confidence will produce growth. But austerity undermines growth, worsening the government's fiscal position, or at least yielding less improvement than austerity's advocates promise. On both counts, confidence is undermined, and a downward spiral is set in motion

I was positive Paul Krugman would have a succinct bottom-line, and he didn't fail:

what we now have is a political drive that will, in effect, undo all those institutional changes that prevented the Great Recession into turning into another Great Depression.

It is a good thing I do not have to worry about stuffing my money into the mattress--have nothing to spare after paying the bills!  Not complaining though--at least I have money to pay those damned bills ...

The birth of a nation

The lack of coverage on the Sudan/South Sudan split seems to echo the typical freshman-level philosophy teaser about whether a tree falling in a forest produces any sound if there is nobody around!

Of course, "who cares about South Sudan" is to be expected in the rather narcissistic and navel-gazing American daily life.

Even when a mid-sea disaster off the Sudanese coast  killed almost 200 African migrants trying to get to Saudi Arabia, it registered lower decibels compared to to the story on a boat capsizing in Mexico--because it had American tourists.

Such a skewed view of the world is no surprise.  Yet, I am shocked, shocked, as Captain Renault put it so well in Casablanca.

There is, thankfully, the BBC and Al Jazeera.

On July 9th, South Sudan will officially become the latest country on this planet.

It does not mean that life will be peaceful from the 9th on, after decades of atrocious violence.  I worry that things will get even worse.  The Sudanese split will not be a Czechoslovakian story.  Perhaps I am projecting here an understanding of the history of the sibling rivalry ever since the partition of India, where I was born, and Pakistan.

Have they ever been able to stop the war?

"... I feel very low."

"You have the war disgust."

"No. But I hate the war."

"I don't enjoy it," I said. He shook his head and looked out of the window.

"You do not mind it. You do not see it. You must forgive me. I know you are wounded."

"That's an accident."

"Still even wounded you do not see it. I can tell. I do not see it myself but feel a little."

"When I was wounded we were talking about it. Passini was talking." ...

"The officers don't see anything."

"Some of them do. Some are very delicate and feel worse than any of us."

"They are mostly different."

"It is not education or money. It is something else. Even if they had education or money men like Passini would not wish to be officers. I would not be an officer."

"... You are nearer the officers than you are to the men."

"What is the difference?"

"I cannot say it easily. There are people who would make war. In this country there are many like that. There are other people who would not make war."

"But the first ones make them do it."

"Yes." ...

"And the ones who would not make war? Can they stop it?"

"I do not know."

He looked out of the window again. I watched his face.

"Have they ever been able to stop it?"

"They are not organized to stop things and when they get organized their leaders sell them out."

"Then it's hopeless?"

"It is never hopeless. But sometimes I cannot hope. I try always to hope but sometimes I cannot."

"Maybe the war will be over."

"I hope so."

As I noted in an earlier post,

It is from Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms.

First published in 1929.
Eighty-two years have gone by and, yet, echoes today's world.

The Greek (debt) Tragedy: A Euro Sirtaki

And here is Nouriel "Dr. Doom" Roubini's take on the Greek events and the global economy:

If what is happening now turns out to be something worse than a temporary soft patch, the market correction will continue further, thus weakening growth as the negative wealth effects of falling equity markets reduce private spending. And, unlike in 2007-2010, when every negative shock and market downturn was countered by more policy action by governments, this time around policymakers are running out of ammunition, and thus may be unable to trigger more asset reflation and jump-start the real economy.
This lack of policy bullets is reflected in most advanced economies’ embrace of some form of austerity, in order to avoid a fiscal train wreck down the line. Public debt is already high, and many sovereigns are near distress, so governments’ ability to backstop their banks via more bailouts, guarantees, and ring-fencing of questionable assets is severely constrained. Another round of so-called “quantitative easing” by monetary authorities may not occur as inflation is rising – albeit slowly – in most advanced economies.
If the latest global economic data reflect something more serious than a hiccup, and markets and economies continue to slow, policymakers could well find themselves empty-handed. If that happens, the risk of stall speed or an outright double-dip recession would rise sharply in many advanced economies.

Opa!

The day the music died. Grandmother's music.

Grandma (Paatti, பாட்டி) died on July 6th, in 1993.

Because she was the Paatti from Sengottai, we sometimes referred to her in conversations as SP, so that we didn't get confused with the Paatti from Pattamadai.

During my early childhood years, I suppose I was like all the grandkids--we were a tad afraid of SP.  She was strict. We dared not to go anywhere near the storeroom and grab the delightful snacks from there.  Not that she ever yelled; come to think of, I don't remember even once SP yelling at any of us.  But, she knew how to control the running-around-crazies that we were when on our school vacations. 

As we both grew older, I was able to talk with grandmother in my semi-adult status.  It was during those years that I understood how much she was alive with the memories of her husband--my grandfather--who died when I was barely four years old.  To grandmother, there was no better gent that ever walked on this planet than this man to whom she got married when she was about fourteen. 

Grandfather, who was about five years older, died when he was 51, which left grandmother living a much less enjoyable life of a brahiminical widow for the rest of her 25 years.

My breaks during the college days, and then when I was loafing around after completing my undergraduate studies, were then all about chatting up old stories with Paatti, and my great-aunt.  (More on her later.)  While playing "thaaya-kattam" and eating murukku, it was a pleasure to listen to these two women tell stories from their pasts. 

I left for the US in 1987. 

Grandmother's health conditions forced her to come live with my parents. The years that I went to India, I could see the rapidity of the decline.

I was in the US when she passed away. 

I suppose we could say her death was romantic. 

She had been ill for a while, and was not quite able to take care of herself--mom attended to her daily needs during the last few months of grandma's life.

It was grandfather's death anniversary, for which the traditional rituals were performed.  That day, apparently grandmother was full of life.  She was up on her bed. Chatting. And even suddenly regained her appetite.  And asked for more of her favorite foods.  A couple of hours later, she was convinced that her husband was calling her to join him. 

And she died.

That is how it happened--grandmother, who was absolutely devoted to her husband, died on the anniversary of her beloved husband's death. 

Yankee Doodle Dandy. Videos of the day

Spike Jones - I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy by perruche
ht

And, here are the awesome American duo, Tom and Jerry, fighting a Yankee Doodle war :)

Happy Anniversary. And, Happy Birthday, America

Right from when I was a kid—a long time ago in India—I was familiar with the importance of the Fourth of July in the United States because of a family connection: the standing joke at home was that my parents lost their freedom when they got married on the very day that Americans celebrate their independence.

So, yes, anniversary greetings to my parents.

After gaining American citizenship, the Fourth of July is, of course, way too special for me. To quote from the musical, West Side Story, “I like to be in America, okay by me in America.”

Perhaps it is a typical immigrant emotion after all when I think that my love for this country is out of the ordinary because I consciously weighed the alternatives and worked to come to America. The American citizenship was not my "birthright."

Immigrating to America or any other country has never been as easy as it is now—unlike a few generations ago when most of the world’s population stayed at, or close to, the places where they were born and raised. Now, we move from state to state in this country, and with relatively little effort we migrate across international borders, and make ourselves new homes in strange places.

In our family, my grandfather was offered a job in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) because of his valued metallurgy qualifications from a reputed Indian university.

If grandfather had sailed on that ship, for sure my family’s history would have taken a different turn.

However, he was compelled to reject that offer and stay back in India.

It was not because the job did not pay enough--the offer was apparently a phenomenal one. But, his mother, who was deeply rooted in traditions, threatened to commit suicide if he went too far away from her!

Ah, mothers, without whom psychiatrists will be jobless :)

The distance between my grandfather's hometown and Ceylon’s capital city, Colombo, was nothing—a mere 250 miles. In contrast to that, a few decades later, I travelled half way around the world, in order to be here in the US.

In my case, my mother cheered me on.

In an interesting irony, I left India on its independence day--August 15th.  So, I now have an addition to the family joke: I gained my independence the very day in 1987 when Indians were celebrating the anniversary of self-rule and the end of the British Raj :)

And America has been home since the day I landed in Los Angeles.


Happy Birthday, America!