IN THE MAIL: An advance copy of Charles Stross’s The Jennifer Morgue,
Archive for 2006
October 9, 2006
A MASSIVE ANTI-CHAVEZ RALLY: BBC reports: “Tens of thousands of people have marched through the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, in support of the main opposition candidate, Manuel Rosales. . . . Many claimed that they were seeking liberty and democracy and that made Mr Rosales their only option.”
THIS SEEMS LIKE GOOD ECONOMIC NEWS:
The Labor Department released its September jobs report on Friday, and some wags are calling it the “whoops” report. The “whoops” is a reference to the upward revision of 810,000 previously undetected jobs that Labor now says were created in the U.S. economy in the 12 months through March 2006.
So instead of 5.8 million new jobs over the past three years, the U.S. economy has created 6.6 million. That’s a lot more than a rounding error, more than the number of workers in the entire state of New Hampshire. What’s going on here?
Our hypothesis has been that, due to the changing nature of the U.S. economy, the Labor Department’s business establishment survey has been undercounting job creation from small businesses and self-employed entrepreneurs. That job growth has been better captured in Labor’s companion household survey, which reported 271,000 new jobs in September after 250,000 new jobs in August, and a very healthy total of 2.54 million new jobs in the past year.
The household survey is what is used to determine the unemployment rate, which fell in September to 4.6%, the lowest level in five years. The establishment survey, meanwhile, is used to announce the monthly “new jobs” numbers. Every year the Labor Department revises its job estimates from the previous year, in essence reconciling the figures from the two surveys, and the missing 810,000 jobs was the result through March 2006.
Getting out of the statistical weeds, the news here is that the U.S. has a very tight labor market — which is now translating into significant wage gains. Over the past 12 months wages have climbed by 4%, which is the biggest gain since 2001 and which economist Brian Wesbury points out is higher than the 3.3% average annual wage growth of the last 25 years.
Most of the media has ignored all this and instead focused on the disappointing 51,000 “new jobs” number from the establishment survey for September. But even in that survey, the jobs number for August was revised upward by 62,000 and the U.S. jobs machine continues to roll out an average of about 150,000 additional hires each month. Even the loss of residential construction jobs in September, due to the housing market slowdown, was nearly matched by payroll gains in commercial construction.
You’d think that all this good economic news would get more attention, but it seems that “It’s the economy, stupid!” was a 1990s phenomenon. Or something.
UPDATE: Fausta has further thoughts.
BROWNSHIRTS AT COLUMBIA: The D.C. Examiner editorializes:
The thugs should be expelled from Columbia and barred from admission at any other self-respecting university. But frankly, we doubt that Columbia officials will do much of anything beyond delivering figurative slaps on the wrists of the offending students and their accomplices. Too many American academic officials have become cowed by fear of appearing to violate the politically correct orthodoxy that rules most campuses.
Yes, commitments to free speech and academic debate are trotted out when it’s politically useful, but it’s been clear for years that many university administrators don’t really believe them.
A LOOK AT the Mullahs’ massacre on the road to Qom. “The second fact is widely, in fact compulsively, denied by a plethora of self-proclaimed experts on Iran. And that is the bravery of Iranians who wish to be free to practice their religion and politics as they see fit, rather than as their tyrants insist. Thousands of people stood up to the regime’s killers, in defense of a solitary mullah whose crime was to preach traditional Shi’ite values. That’s a major event, especially because Islam is not very popular these days in Iran.”
MICKEY KAUS: “Why is nearly every top Republican (Bush, Hastert, Sensenbrenner) suddenly babbling about ‘appropriations,’ using the same weasely, Clintonian syntax? It would be crazy not to be paranoid.”
If the GOP is this stupid, they deserve the brutal drubbing at the polls that will result. Message to the White House: You blew it on Harriet Miers and Dubai Ports because you ignored the early-warning signals from the blogs. You can’t afford another such disaster, so if Kaus is right here, you’d better rethink, pronto.
MORE ON THE NORTH KOREAN NUKE: The test now shows on the USGS quake map.
Japan and China join to call it “unacceptable.” Kim Jong Il is a uniter, not a divider!
Op-For looks at the implications, and notes that North Korea has probably been able to do this for most of a decade. Plus, a look at the bright side: “Our missiles work. Theirs don’t.”
The reality is that the international nonproliferation regime has failed again, because although people are willing to talk, nobody’s willing to actually do anything significant when a country appears close to going nuclear. See also Iran.
This article from the Washington Post features lots of stern diplomatic statements from lots of countries. If people actually do something about this, it may help bring Iran under some degree of control. If strong words are, once again, followed up by no action then it will have the opposite effect.
Meanwhile, Korean expat-blog The Marmot’s Hole has advice for American expats in Korea.
My own thought: North Korea usually does something attention-getting when Iran needs a distraction. So keep an eye on the mullahs, too.
And this piece from Friday by Josh Manchester just became more timely.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Josh Trevino takes a look at the situation, and manages to use the phrase: “puerile predator in Pyongyang.” Extra points! Plus he recommends the site MissileThreat.com.
DEFICIT HALVED, three years early. Due to the absence of even virtual gay sex, no one cares.