Mike Rowe Answers Your Questions, Discusses Karma, and Belts Out Some Puccini

Posted by erik [hueypriest] at 12:01

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To say that Mike went above and beyond in answering these questions would be an understatement. Oodles of fun anecdotes, commentary, and yes opera singin’. Also, his answer to “Is there any chance you’ll stop having sex with my wife in her dreams? It’s getting pretty old, Mike” is so elegant, it would have made Archimedes jealous. Check out the interview and also check out the season premiere of Dirty Jobs tonight at 9pm ET on Discovery Channel. Big thanks to Mike Rowe for his time.

Sanibel Homes for Sale – A Worthy Long Term Investment

When was the last time you had considered taking a long relaxing vacation somewhere near the coastline of Florida? You could stay all day long under the warm and beautiful rays of the sun. Birds would be flying about and frolicking near the waves or frantically soaring against the sky afraid of the presence of like-minded human counterparts who only wish to savor the wonderful feeling of Sanibel. It might be love or it might be the calming sound of the waves crashing against the shore, but this is a special place where the peace and tranquility surpasses any feeling of stress or anxiety. You can make it a permanent part of your life by purchasing available homes for sale in Sanibel.

Whether or not it’s for the purpose of permanent residence or merely a summer vacation house, it would serve as a worthy long term investment. Often people have a habit of diving in on the action without any inhibitions whatsoever. There is something special about Sanibel. It could be in the air or just the collective feeling that you can release yourself here. That’s why a lot of people who have built up their tension levels to unhealthy heights often go here for the occasional pampering and the recovery of their energy reserves.

There is much that could be done there. While Miami may have had its fair share of television shows and movies showcasing the area, Sanibel is no less beautiful. In fact many tourists and residents who have already enjoyed the local scenery would even openly declare it as the best in beach and summer destinations.

The homes for sale in Sanibel aren’t too shabby either. You have your fair share of houses lined up perfectly in a neat row behind white picket fences and you have houses just some distance away from the shores. If you purchase a home there, it won’t be long until you can have daily walks along the ocean. As waves encroach on the shore, you could soon be spending time napping under the sun or playing a game of Frisbee with your dog.

Kids and teens are also likely to have fun while basking under the radiance of the sun. Hours could be spent walking on the soft sands trying to look for the best sea shell they can find. As a rich deposit in seashells and other flotsam, Sanibel is regarded as a viable tourist destination for the whole family. You and the gang could have your own little adventures. Parents could have romantic getaways as their children engage in little adventures or misadventures of their own, searching for buried treasure.

It’s all so beautiful there that’s hard to reject of the claims written here. If you are still skeptical, try to check out a few sites and photographs that are floating in the internet. Aside from that, you could always exercise the option of buying one of those homes for sale in Sanibel. It’s a decision you won’t regret.

For several years ‘internet addiction’ has been promoted by the Chinese government as a serious mental illness affecting large numbers of young people, but in recent months it has started to pull back, seemingly due to the growth of a widespread, poorly regulated and abusive system of internet addiction ‘treatment’ centres.

Firstly, let me say that most of my sources on this issue are from China Daily, a state-run news service, but whether this reflects the reality or not, it is clear that the Chinese authorities are becoming worried about how the problem is being dealt with.

For example, the Chinese authorities recently shut down an unlicensed internet ‘boot camp’ style clinic and arrested 13 employees after a 15-year-old boy was beaten to death by camp counsellors for apparently running too slowly.

This follows news that the Chinese Ministry of Health has recently banned electroshock therapy for ‘internet addiction’. The same state media source reported that in Linyi Psychiatric Hospital alone, 3,000 young people had been ‘treated’ in this way. Both Chinese and Western media report that electroshock was also used as a punishment (note that some reports portray it as mild electrical current while others specifically describe it as electroconvulsive therapy).

The clinics seems to be a mixture of private clinics, of which 400 or so are estimated to exist, and government run clinics of an indeterminate number.

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The approach of one of the most prestigious state-run clinics is described in this article:

Co-founded by the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League of China and Beijing Military Region General Hospital in 2004, Tao’s clinic in the suburbs of Beijing has treated nearly 5,000 Internet-addicted youths and says 75 percent have been cured.

At the clinic, young addicts receive “comprehensive therapy” including medication, psychological counseling and low-intensity military training. They also take interactive courses with their parents to learn communication skills.

Tao also uses psychotropic drugs to treat patients suffering from mental illnesses such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, anxiety and depression.

This clinic seems to be the only one to have admitted Western journalists and it has been featured in TV and radio news reports, which, at times, make for quite disturbing viewing.

The recent admission of abuses in ‘internet addiction’ treatment centres is a significant change in tack as previous reports have typically discussed the internet in rather alarming terms, variously claiming that it has caused schizophrenia, led to drug addiction, resulted in job loss and the like. State media claims that about 10% of young net users are addicts.

Reading all the stories on ‘internet addiction’ in China, both from Chinese and Western media, I was struck by how it consistently reflected the idea that the popularity of the ‘treatment’ is being driven by parents’ anxieties about their children not conforming to the social pressures of family and academic achievement.

This is remarkably similar to what seems to drive the concept in the Western world and while our stereotype can often be that ‘internet addiction’ is simply a tool of Chinese state repression of free speech, it is worth bearing in mind that it may be closer to home than we like to believe.
Link to TV news report on ‘internet addiction’ in China.
Link to China Daily on shut down of illegal clinics.

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Anyone looking for the economy to “recover” is going to be disappointed, according to Robert Reich. The problem is that the old economy was built on sand–rising spending, falling wages, mounting debt, housing bubble–and it’s gone forever. If we are ever going to see prosperity again, it will have to be because we build it on a new basis.

(Note: We realize this is a couple of weeks old. We missed this when it was first published, and only picked it up because patrick.net linked to it today.)

Here’s Reich:

The so-called “green shoots” of recovery are turning brown in the scorching summer sun. In fact, the whole debate about when and how a recovery will begin is wrongly framed. On one side are the V-shapers who look back at prior recessions and conclude that the faster an economy drops, the faster it gets back on track. And because this economy fell off a cliff late last fall, they expect it to roar to life early next year. Hence the V shape.

Unfortunately, V-shapers are looking back at the wrong recessions. Focus on those that started with the bursting of a giant speculative bubble and you see slow recoveries. The reason is asset values at bottom are so low that investor confidence returns only gradually.

That’s where the more sober U-shapers come in. They predict a more gradual recovery, as investors slowly tiptoe back into the market.

Personally, I don’t buy into either camp. In a recession this deep, recovery doesn’t depend on investors. It depends on consumers who, after all, are 70 percent of the U.S. economy. And this time consumers got really whacked. Until consumers start spending again, you can forget any recovery, V or U shaped.

Problem is, consumers won’t start spending until they have money in their pockets and feel reasonably secure. But they don’t have the money, and it’s hard to see where it will come from. They can’t borrow. Their homes are worth a fraction of what they were before, so say goodbye to home equity loans and refinancings. One out of ten home owners is under water — owing more on their homes than their homes are worth. Unemployment continues to rise, and number of hours at work continues to drop. Those who can are saving. Those who can’t are hunkering down, as they must.

Eventually consumers will replace cars and appliances and other stuff that wears out, but a recovery can’t be built on replacements. Don’t expect businesses to invest much more without lots of consumers hankering after lots of new stuff. And don’t rely on exports. The global economy is contracting.

My prediction, then? Not a V, not a U. But an X. This economy can’t get back on track because the track we were on for years — featuring flat or declining median wages, mounting consumer debt, and widening insecurity, not to mention increasing carbon in the atmosphere — simply cannot be sustained.

The X marks a brand new track — a new economy. What will it look like? Nobody knows. All we know is the current economy can’t “recover” because it can’t go back to where it was before the crash. So instead of asking when the recovery will start, we should be asking when and how the new economy will begin. More on this to come.

Has big real estate finally hit rock bottom?

John Cannon has been financing big real estate loans for $25 billion-asset Capmark Finance Inc. of Horsham and its predecessors since 1985, and he’s never seen business this slow.

“There’s nothing being bought and sold,” Cannon told me by phone from the vast Virginia headquarters of government-controlled home lender Freddie Mac, one of the few outfits still pumping millions into buildings.

Capmark financed $1.5 billion in apartment deals during the first half of the year, down by half since early 2008. Almost all this year’s lending was refinancing loans, funded by Freddie and Fannie Mae, and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

“They’re the only viable lenders in U.S. commercial real estate right now,” and all they do is residential real estate, not offices or industry, Cannon said.

He’s seen slow markets before. The early 1990s, when the savings banks failed. But that “was a supply issue. You saw a lot of empty buildings. Now it’s a liquidity issue.” Banks aren’t lending.

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He’s hoping things have hit bottom. Fannie and Freddie tightened credit sharply last year. Lately, they aren’t requiring quite so many escrow payments, Cannon said hopefully. “Terms are getting looser. Spreads are coming down.”

It’s not that loan rates have fallen. It’s the spread between what money costs and what Fannie and Freddie charge that tells the story, according to Cannon:

Back in the mid-2000s, loans were approved at less than 1 percent above the benchmark 10-year Treasury rate. That zoomed to 3.5 to 4 percent above the benchmark during last fall’s credit crisis, after the Bush administration took control of Fannie and Freddie. Now it’s around 2 percent, Cannon says.

But banks still aren’t coming back into the market. It’s not just that they’re shy. There’s also “the disconnect between buyers’ and sellers’ expectations,” Cannon told me. “Guys bought a building five years ago for $10 million. They don’t want to sell for $8 million.”

NJ to PA

Archer Daniels Midland Co., Decatur, Ill., says it’s closing its Glassboro cocoa plant and ending jobs for 53 workers there. The work is moving to ADM’s new 500,000-square foot plant in Hazleton, says spokesman Roman Blahoski.

Bernanke or Summers?

Democrats in Congress and the Obama White House are plotting to remove Federal Reserve Chairman Benjamin Bernanke and replace him with Obama’s chief economic adviser, Larry Summers, at the end of his term next year, writes veteran bank analyst Richard X. Bove of Connecticut-based Rochdale Securities.

Summers is the brainy Main Line native, Harvard economist, and ex-Treasury Secretary who’s trying to re-regulate the financial institutions he helped deregulate under President Bill Clinton, setting the stage for the current mess.

Bernanke or Summers – what’s the difference? “Mr. Bernanke has demonstrated a willingness to act to defend both the economy and the financial system. Conversely, Mr. Summers has written the bulk of the proposals to regulate the financial industry,” which Bove says “would dramatically restrict fund flow to the economy” and kill the recovery like the government did when it tightened credit rules too soon in 1937. (But when’s the right time?)

Bove credits Bernanke, ex-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, and FDIC chief Sheila Bair with “bold, innovative action” that salvaged the banks and prevented a full U.S. takeover. Bush and Obama at that time “did nothing.” Congress was “the proverbial deer in the headlights.”

Yet “the same people who were incapable of acting when there was a clear need for action will now make the decision as to whether the man who helped save the system should be removed.”

Bernanke is set to testify before the House banking committee next Tuesday. Expect Fed critics to ask how he’ll reverse the scary growth in the money supply without stalling the economy.

Federal Debt Approaches 100% of GDP

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Even when The End of the American Century went to press in early 2008, the U.S. federal debt was reaching alarming levels, and was a central element of my forecasts of U.S. economic decline. At that point, the White House’s Office of Management and Budget projected the gross federal debt to expand to $10.6 trillion by 2009, constituting 72% of GDP.

Since then, the federal red ink has become a tidal wave. The OMB now expects the debt at the end of this year to be $12.7 trillion, and to expand to over $15 trillion by 2011, which would then be (at 97% of GDP) almost as large as the entire economy (see chart).

David Leonhardt of the New York Times, one of the few economists to have been tracking and raising concerns about the deficits, writes that erasing the deficits “will be one of the great political issues of the coming decade.” In his article “Sea of Red Ink” in the June 10 issue, he reports on a New York Times analysis of the composition of the debt accumulation over the last decade, “with the aim of understanding how the federal government came to be far deeper in debt than it has been since the years just after World War II.”

The analysis finds that the growth in the federal debt since 2001 comes from four main sources. The first, the business cycle (especially the 2001 recession and the current downturn) is the largest component, accounting for 37%. Another 33% of the recent debt comes from legislation signed by President Bush, including his tax cuts. Another 20% derives from President Obama’s continuation of several Bush policies, including spending on the Iraq War and the Wall Street bailouts. Only about 10% comes from new Obama policies, including the stimulus bill, and news spending on health care, education, energy and other areas.

Leonhardt sees little hope that the Obama administration can reduce or eliminate the deficits with “pay-as-you-go” government spending plans. The solution, he writes, “is no mystery” and involves inevitable tax increases and government spending cuts. These are political tinderboxes, of course, and pose a huge challenge to President Obama’s leadership skills.