Happy Feet or Happy Meal?

SEPTEMBER 16, 2011

BRUCE A. BRENNAN BLOG FROM THE WORLD AND MY MIND

The news as I see it and the views as I want them.

September 16 is … Stay Away From Seattle Day and Collect Rocks Day

Somebody does not like Seattle. Glenn collects rocks but not in Seattle.

Happy Feet, the penguin that turned up over a thousand miles from his normal habitat this summer, was released into the ocean to return to his homeland late last week. He had apparently had a hard time distinguishing rocks from snow. His stomach was full of sand the experts determined he ate thinking it was snow. Unfortunately, hs luck may have run out.

The wayward penguin known as "Happy Feet" is missing in the Southern Ocean. He is now known as Happy Meal. RIP

Experts tell The Associated Press the most likely scenario is that the emperor penguin's satellite transmitter fell off. The small unit was attached to his feathers with super glue and was designed to fall off when he molted early next year. But the unit stopped transmitting Friday, just five days after the penguin was released into the sea south of New Zealand .

Other possibilities are that Happy Feet was eaten by an orca or a leopard seal; that he died of natural causes; or that the transmitter malfunctioned. The aquatic bird was discovered on a New Zealand beach in June. He became sick from eating sand which he likely mistook for snow, but was nursed back to health over two months at the Wellington Zoo. Veterinarians repeatedly flushed his stomach to remove sand and fattened him up on a diet of fish. After he was released from the deck of a research vessel, Happy Feet's satellite tracker showed that he swam in a meandering route, ending up about 75 miles (120 kilometers) southeast of where he began when the last transmission was received Friday morning. Experts say his looping pattern was typical for a penguin chasing fish.

Kevin Lay, a consultant at the company Sirtrack which attached the tracking device, said staff have gone over diagnostics from the tracker and it appears it was functioning well until the last transmission. Lay said the tracker needs to be above the water's surface to transmit. Because penguins surface regularly to breathe, that hadn't proved a problem until Friday. "We think the most likely scenario is tag detachment," Lay said. "The intention was always that the transmitter would fall off." That's the scenario favored by Peter Simpson, a program manager at New Zealand's department of conservation. "Who knows? He's probably swimming along quite happily without a transmitter on his back," Simpson said.

"I'm still confident we did the right thing by releasing him back into the wild," Simpson added. "He's a marine bird and he's designed to swim and he's designed to live in the ocean." Scientists say there's an outside possibility they may again hear from Happy Feet. The penguin also has been fitted with a transponder chip under his skin, similar to those used to identify household cats and dogs. The chip will be activated if the penguin turns up near certain monitored emperor colonies in Antarctica . Because Happy Feet is believed to be about 3 years old, it could be a year or two before he would arrive in an Antarctic colony to breed — if he is still alive. New Zealand penguin expert Colin Miskelly said it's time to face facts. "It's unlikely that we will ever know what caused the transmission to cease," Miskelly wrote on his blog. "But it is time to harden up to the reality that the penguin has returned to the anonymity from which he emerged."

Just a couple of thoughts I had and you should too or at least think about.

BRUCE A. BRENNAN

DEKALB, IL 60115

COPYRIGHT 2011

VISIT ANY OF THE SITES LISTED FOR REVIEW, RESEARCH, ORDERING MY WRITING PRODUCTS OR TO CONTACT ME.

Email: brucebrennanlaw@aol.com

www.brucebrennanlaw.com

www.lawyerbruce.wordpress.com

www.brucebrennanattorney.com

www.bruceabrennananddekalbilandtheworld.blogspot.com

www.lawyerbruce.blogspot.com

www.lawofficeofbruceabrennan.yolasite.com

www.lawyerbruceabrennan.com

http://lawofficeofbruceabrennan.law.officelive.com

http://lawofficeofbruceabrennan.webs.com

http://www.lawyerbruceabrennan.webstarts.com

http://www.linkedin.com/in/attorneybruceabrennan

Go to web sites below to buy books by Bruce A. Brennan. It is still a good time to purchase any of my books. The books are interesting and inexpensive reads. My third book should be available later this year, in late 2011. More information will be forthcoming.

www.ebookmall.com (Do search by my name or book Title)

www.barnesandnoble.com (do a quick search, Title, my name)

www.smashwords.com Do a Title or author search.

www.kobo.com

https://dtp.amazon.com/mn/dashboard

Book Titles:

Holmes the Ripper

A Revengeful Mix of Short Fiction

"Strangely enough, this is the past that somebody in the future is longing to go back to." - Ashleigh Brilliant

Is Obama all hat and no cattle?

SEPTEMBER 15, 2011

BRUCE A. BRENNAN BLOG FROM THE WORLD AND MY MIND

The news as I see it and the views as I want them.

September 15 is … Felt Hat Day

I do own a felt hat but I have a couple made out of beaver skin. I do not wear any of them that often except when I am camping but my youngest son wears fedoras quite often.

President Obama and the Democrats got a small look at the future on Tuesday when Republicans won two special elections for seats in the House of Representatives. One seat, from Nevada, was projected to go /republican; the seat had never been won by a Democrat. The other seat, in New York, to replace Anthony Weiner, the disgraced sexting twitter star, was won by a Republican in an unexpected landslide. The seat had been held by a Democrat for nearly a century but no more.

There was more bad news for President Obama on Tuesday. Bank of America took billions and billions of dollars of taxpayer’s money to remain in business. They apparently needed new management more than money. On the day after President Obama presented his job program to Congress, Bank of America gave the finger to the President, the Congress and the United States citizens when it announced a massive layoff.

As companies closing shop or cutting costs stoke recession fears, the return of mass layoffs may be the U.S. economy's greatest concern.

On the same day that President Barack Obama submitted the American Jobs Act to Congress, his plan to stimulate an ailing labor market, Bank of America announced it will lay off 30,000 employees due to restructuring. That's the largest layoff announcement in the country this year, according to outplacement consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

The bank's decision may not be the largest single layoff announcement in recent years -- that distinction belongs to Citigroup's November 2008 slashing of 50,000 jobs -- but in an economy that Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman says has a 50 percent chance of falling back into recession, it's cause for concern. And Bank of America's announcement is only the latest layoffs news. Companies like pharmaceutical giant, Merck and Co., Borders and Cisco Systems Inc. already made large layoff announcements this year. U.S. Postal Service officials said earlier this month that they would slash their workforce by 20 percent.

Even less encouraging, small businesses laid off workers for the third straight month in August, after planned job cuts surged to 66,414 in July, a 16-month high. Still, signs for optimism do exist on the layoffs front, as planned jobs cuts fell by a nearly a quarter in August. If only the country could create some jobs too. Bank of America's announcement that it plans to shed 30,000 jobs doesn't address the bank's most pressing concerns, experts said Monday.

The job cuts come as part of an initiative known as Project New BAC, the first phase of which aims to save $5 billion in annual costs by 2014, the bank announced Monday. But shareholders have been preoccupied in recent months with something other than overhead costs -- namely, the lawsuits from investors and government regulators that potentially threaten the bank with billions in losses. The company's stock price has fallen about 50 percent this year as speculation has swirled that it doesn't have enough capital to defend against losses, despite the bank's persistent statements to the contrary.

But experts say Project New BAC, which also included a shake-up of top management, doesn't address these legal concerns -- and say it may be for naught.

President Obama has a tendency to talk about Warren Buffet in many of his speeches. A few months ago, Warren Buffet came out and invested 5 billion dollars in Bank of America. He used this grand gesture as publicity to show his patriotism. If you had followed his lead and bought B of A stock, you would have enjoyed a quick increase in stock value but that only lasted a few days. The stock is now worth less than the day Mr. Buffet bought it.

Being a major player in the ownership of Bank of America, it seems obvious he would have been involved in this decision. His ownership interest also puts him in a great position to be the white knight that ‘saves’ the company, at a small per centage of the value using his ownership as his down stroke.

I wonder if President Obama is going to lavish Mr. Buffet with praise for his getting involved with Bank of America now?

More trouble for President Obama with his health care law. In what seems to be a continuing theme in legal challenges to the Obama Health Care law, It has once again been held unconstitutional. The United States Supreme Court should cut through the red tape and take the appeal immediately.

The requirement in the national health-care overhaul law that individuals buy health insurance is unconstitutional, a federal judge in Pennsylvania ruled Tuesday in a question that the U.S. Supreme Court is widely expected to settle. The ruling by Judge Christopher C. Conner in Harrisburg was issued in one of more than 30 lawsuits nationwide that have been filed over the 2010 law that is President Barack Obama's signature initiative. It was filed by a Pennsylvania couple who do not have health insurance, but believe they would be subject to the mandate.

Conner, who was appointed to the federal bench in 2002 by President George W. Bush, said the mandate that individuals buy health insurance or pay a penalty starting in 2014 is an unconstitutional extension of authority granted to the federal government under the Constitution's commerce clause. "The nation undoubtedly faces a health care crisis," Conner said. "Scores of individuals are uninsured and the costs to all citizens are measurable and significant. The federal government, however, is one of limited enumerated powers, and Congress's efforts to remedy the ailing health care and health insurance markets must fit squarely within the boundaries of those powers."

The power to regulate interstate commerce, Conner wrote, does not include the power to dictate a lifetime of buying health insurance. Left standing, such a requirement would effectively sanction Congress's exercise of police power, he wrote.

Just a couple of thoughts I had and you should too or at least think about.

BRUCE A. BRENNAN

DEKALB, IL 60115

COPYRIGHT 2011

VISIT ANY OF THE SITES LISTED FOR REVIEW, RESEARCH, ORDERING MY WRITING PRODUCTS OR TO CONTACT ME.

Email: brucebrennanlaw@aol.com

www.brucebrennanlaw.com

www.lawyerbruce.wordpress.com

www.brucebrennanattorney.com

www.bruceabrennananddekalbilandtheworld.blogspot.com

www.lawyerbruce.blogspot.com

www.lawofficeofbruceabrennan.yolasite.com

www.lawyerbruceabrennan.com

http://lawofficeofbruceabrennan.law.officelive.com

http://lawofficeofbruceabrennan.webs.com

http://www.lawyerbruceabrennan.webstarts.com

http://www.linkedin.com/in/attorneybruceabrennan

Go to web sites below to buy books by Bruce A. Brennan. It is still a good time to purchase any of my books. The books are interesting and inexpensive reads. My third book should be available later this year, in late 2011. More information will be forthcoming.

www.ebookmall.com (Do search by my name or book Title)

www.barnesandnoble.com (do a quick search, Title, my name)

www.smashwords.com Do a Title or author search.

www.kobo.com

https://dtp.amazon.com/mn/dashboard

Book Titles:

Holmes the Ripper

A Revengeful Mix of Short Fiction

"Observe diners arriving at any restaurant and you will see them make a bee-line for the wall-seats. No one ever voluntarily selects a centre table in an open space. Open seating positions are only taken when all the wall-seats are already occupied. This dates back to a primeval feeding practice of avoiding sudden attack during the deep concentration involved in consuming food." - Desmond Morris

The first shoe dropped!

SEPTEMBER 14, 2011

BRUCE A. BRENNAN BLOG FROM THE WORLD AND MY MIND

The news as I see it and the views as I want them.

September 14 is … National Cream-filled Donut Day

President Obama said his jobs program would pay for itself. On Monday, he announced a series of tax increases designed to pay for his program. Unless he is going to pay all of these taxes himself, his program is going to be paid for by the working Americans already hurting.

The Obama administration announced on Monday a series of tax policy changes that officials say will pay for the costs of the president's job creation plan. The provisions, announced by Office of Management and Budget Chair Jack Lew, would raise a projected $467 billion over the course of 10 years. The American Jobs Act, as outlined by the president last week, will cost an estimated $447 billion.

The proposals being made by President Obama are merely old ideas being repackaged. The tax increases are also old proposals already rejected by Congress. The President offered nothing new and it took him three years to come up with this failure. Obama has timed the jobs program to provide the Democrats with the most political cover. Congress will reject his plan and the Republicans will be blamed. The tax increases will fail and the Republicans will be accused of protecting the wealthy.

If the jobs plan passes and works, one of the major components would be giving teachers more jobs. By the time any law is passed and implemented, nearly a year will pass meaning the teachers will be going back to work in August 2012, three months before the election. Coincidence I am sure, not politics.

The president is set to offer those pay-fors as part of a larger package of debt and deficit reduction measures that he will present to the congressional committee tasked with finding $1.5 trillion in savings. Whether the committee incorporates those measures is up to them, Lew said. If they choose not to, however, the administration said it would welcome Congress as a whole taking up the proposal.

The provisions the White House is offering as an offset are largely rehashes of tax policy changes that the president has pushed before. The primary piece would be to limit itemized deductions for individuals making over $200,000-a-year and families making over $250,000 -- which Lew said would raise $400 billion over 10 years. Another pay-for would be to treat carried interest as ordinary income rather than capital gains, which Lew said would raise $18 billion. The White House is also calling for the end of tax subsidies for certain oil and gas companies, which the administration believes would raise $40 billion and the axing of a tax break for corporate jet owners, which it believes, could save $3 billion. "The kinds of provisions we are talking about changing we don't believe will cause a reduction of any kind of economic activity or job loss," said Lew. "In terms of timing, these provisions don't take effect until January 2013," he added, emphasizing the long-term nature of the off sets. "It is very consistent in paying for an immediate jobs and growth package."

By offering specific ways to pay for the American Jobs Act, the White House is fulfilling an early promise from when he began the latest pivot to job-creation: mainly that anything he proposed wouldn't increase the deficit. But in coming out with a plan of his own (rather than, say, asking the super committee to find the money for the bill), the administration risks handing the GOP a cudgel of its own. The tax provisions that Lew outlined all have been offered, to some degree, in the past, only to be summarily castigated as hikes and shelved by Democrats and this president. The administration also may be making the super-committee's job a touch harder. If those specific tax policy changes are used to pay for the jobs act, that means that committee members can't double dip -- i.e. use the same measures to achieve their $1.5 trillion in savings. Lew, for his part, downplayed that potential issue, noting that the president will outline a large deficit and debt reduction package that "will achieve beyond the targets beyond what the joint committee has, fully pay for the jobs package and stabilize the deficit and debt in the ten year window."

Just a couple of thoughts I had and you should too or at least think about.

BRUCE A. BRENNAN

DEKALB, IL 60115

COPYRIGHT 2011

VISIT ANY OF THE SITES LISTED FOR REVIEW, RESEARCH, ORDERING MY WRITING PRODUCTS OR TO CONTACT ME.

Email: brucebrennanlaw@aol.com

www.brucebrennanlaw.com

www.lawyerbruce.wordpress.com

www.brucebrennanattorney.com

www.bruceabrennananddekalbilandtheworld.blogspot.com

www.lawyerbruce.blogspot.com

www.lawofficeofbruceabrennan.yolasite.com

www.lawyerbruceabrennan.com

http://lawofficeofbruceabrennan.law.officelive.com

http://lawofficeofbruceabrennan.webs.com

http://www.lawyerbruceabrennan.webstarts.com

http://www.linkedin.com/in/attorneybruceabrennan

Go to web sites below to buy books by Bruce A. Brennan. It is still a good time to purchase any of my books. The books are interesting and inexpensive reads. My third book should be available later this year, in late 2011. More information will be forthcoming.

www.ebookmall.com (Do search by my name or book Title)

www.barnesandnoble.com (do a quick search, Title, my name)

www.smashwords.com Do a Title or author search.

www.kobo.com

https://dtp.amazon.com/mn/dashboard

Book Titles:

Holmes the Ripper

A Revengeful Mix of Short Fiction

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anais Nin

Will the military brag about this?

SEPTEMBER 13, 2011

BRUCE A. BRENNAN BLOG FROM THE WORLD AND MY MIND

The news as I see it and the views as I want them.

September 13 is … Defy Superstition Day

Well at least it is not Friday, it will be in three days. That sentence has thirteen words in it, I write in defiance.

With computers, bookkeepers, accountants, bean-counters, guards, guns and soldiers everywhere, how does this happen? Oh yeah, it is the government. That was a rhetorical question.

Officials at Fort Bragg say an investigation is under way into the disappearance of nearly 14,000 rounds of ammunition at the Army base. Staff Sgt. Joshua Ford, a spokesman for the 82nd Airborne Division, says the ammunition went missing from the 1st Brigade Combat Team at Fort Bragg.

The Fayetteville Observer reports that Ford believed the ammunition was taken overnight on Tuesday. The 1st Brigade team was placed on lockdown for a few hours Wednesday night while officials conducted a search. The missing ammunition can be used in an M-4 or M-16 assault rifle.

Ford says the 82nd Airborne Division and military police are taking the matter seriously and that "any amount of ammunition that goes missing" has "got to be accounted for."

How large of a moving device would you need to transport 14,000 rounds of ammunition? It would not fit in your pocket. Taking into account the security at military bases, this has to be an inside job. How ignorant is the soldier who thinks he/she would get away with this.

Authorities are trying to find 14,000 rounds of ammunition missing from Fort Bragg in North Carolina. The ammunition went missing from the 1st Brigade Combat Team at Fort Bragg, said Staff Sgt. Joshua Ford.

The missing ammunition can be used in the M-4 and M-16 assault rifles. Someone alerted Fort Bragg leadership about the missing items on Wednesday, Ford said. After the report, the 1st Brigade team, about 3,500 people, was placed on lockdown during an initial investigation, Ford said.

The ammunition was not found and the lockdown was lifted Wednesday night. "The incident is currently under investigation and all appropriate measures are being taken to locate the small arms ammunition that was discovered missing on Wednesday," said Lt. Col David Connolly, a spokesman for the 82nd Airborne Division.

Is the military too big to fail? It sure seems to fail an awful lot although it has more victories than losses.

Serena Williams embarrassed herself, her family and all Americans with her unsportsman like and unlady like behavior in the final of the 2011 U. S. Open in tennis. After her obvious fault on the court, she continued to berate and chastise the chair judge during breaks in the action.

At one point she commented how “...I never complain”. What a lie. She had two outbursts in this year’s tournament and another in the 2009 U. S. Open that was profane and nearly ended in her suspension from the United States Tennis Association. Serena has reached the highest level of competition in her chosen field and has generally been a credit to tennis. She appears to be unable to accept the aging process all athletes eventually reach. The sport and the tennis fans have made her enormously wealthy. I hope she does not entirely ruin her reputation and place in history by continuing this self-destructive behavior.

It is becoming clear Jackie Onassis was also a good actress. New details about what life was like behind the scenes in the Kennedy White House are coming to light, from interviews that Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis recorded just after her husband's death.

ABC says that the tapes deal with a wide variety of topics: from their early years on the campaign trail, to the Cuban Missile Crisis, to the Bay of Pigs, and his last days in the White House. The interviews also reflect Mrs. Kennedy’s evolving sense of herself and her role as first lady, as she talks about her family, world leaders, and life in the White House.

The tapes have been made public now by Kennedy's daughter Caroline, in a deal with ABC which saw the network scrap a miniseries that focused on the Kennedy administration. ABC is airing a special program, Jacqueline Kennedy: In Her Own Words, on the release of the tapes tonight at 9pm ET

Just a couple of thoughts I had and you should too or at least think about.

BRUCE A. BRENNAN

DEKALB, IL 60115

COPYRIGHT 2011

VISIT ANY OF THE SITES LISTED FOR REVIEW, RESEARCH, ORDERING MY WRITING PRODUCTS OR TO CONTACT ME.

Email: brucebrennanlaw@aol.com

www.brucebrennanlaw.com

www.lawyerbruce.wordpress.com

www.brucebrennanattorney.com

www.bruceabrennananddekalbilandtheworld.blogspot.com

www.lawyerbruce.blogspot.com

www.lawofficeofbruceabrennan.yolasite.com

www.lawyerbruceabrennan.com

http://lawofficeofbruceabrennan.law.officelive.com

http://lawofficeofbruceabrennan.webs.com

http://www.lawyerbruceabrennan.webstarts.com

http://www.linkedin.com/in/attorneybruceabrennan

Go to web sites below to buy books by Bruce A. Brennan. It is still a good time to purchase any of my books. The books are interesting and inexpensive reads. My third book should be available later this year, in late 2011. More information will be forthcoming.

www.ebookmall.com (Do search by my name or book Title)

www.barnesandnoble.com (do a quick search, Title, my name)

www.smashwords.com Do a Title or author search.

www.kobo.com

https://dtp.amazon.com/mn/dashboard

Book Titles:

Holmes the Ripper

A Revengeful Mix of Short Fiction

"Aspire, break bounds. Endeavor to be good, and better still, best." - Robert Browning

Global economic collapse

SEPTEMBER 12, 2011

BRUCE A. BRENNAN BLOG FROM THE WORLD AND MY MIND

The news as I see it and the views as I want them.

September 12 is … National Pet Memorial Day and National Chocolate Milkshake Day

I think I will have a Chocolate Milkshake in remembrance of my last dog, Duke.

This is a interesting article written by Katherine New. Think back to the evening of Sept. 10, 2001: It's been 10 years, and in some ways, it's as if nothing has changed. That Monday night, the United States was coming off a recession stemming from a bursting bubble, consumer confidence was declining, and predatory lending was in the headlines.

But as we all know, everything did change the next morning, in ways that we are still working to understand.

The terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 were only one element of what shaped the last 10 years, but those traumatic events magnified and accelerated underlying trends already in motion in the U.S. economy, such as the shift from manufacturing to services, the move away from small businesses to big ones, and the opaque power of bubbles.



Over the last decade, consumer confidence and housing prices have gone through a dramatic rise and fall, and two massively expensive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were initiated. We asked a number of economists to share their thoughts on two questions: What were the most significant economic shifts between 2001 and 2011; and if that decade had a headline, what would it be. Here is what they told DailyFinance.

The Great Disappointment in Real Wage Growth and European Integration
Niso Abuaf, professor of finance, Pace University

"Technology [the innovation of the '90s] bore fruit and the productivity gains we have experienced in technology, media and telecom sectors have been tremendous with the iPhone, iPad, Blackberry and virtual workplace. But has that accrued to the typical U.S. worker or European worker? Unfortunately, those productivity gains have not translated into real wage gains and it has been a disappointment. Wages have not kept up with productivity gains. Another disappointment is that Europe's lack of political union and its response to crisis in [the PIIGS nations] has not been as decisive and quick a response as the U.S. response during the Great Contraction."

The Economic Rise of China
Terry Connelly, dean emeritus, Ageno School of Business at Golden Gate University

"If you look at the 21st century as a 10-round fight, China won [the first round]. China has managed to get its arms around its population in a way that has not produced a hard landing. It has made a lot new friends around the world, even as the U.S. has suffered. [The United States] is still a fundamentally strong and vibrant economy. [We have] some issues to deal with, [which are] mostly political consensus issues.

But those are trivial compared to real fundamental issues of bankruptcy. ... Meanwhile in the left passing lane, there goes China, and we need to start worrying about that. They managed these 10 years better than we have. Their middle class is rising, but ours is [experiencing] death by a thousands cuts."

How the Housing Market Hid Our Problems
Edward Leamer, professor of economics and statistics, UCLA Anderson School of Business

"We are transitioning from an industrial to a post-industrial society. That transition was hidden by the Internet bubble and then the housing bubble. Now, we are faced with uncertainty in the post-industrial economy. ... The transition started in the '80s, but was hidden by those bubbles. ...The switch from manufacturing to intellectual services like movies, tech products and financial services [is part of the transition, and] that is where wealth is being created. That, by nature, is unequal [in income distribution.] In addition, we are having a change in income. The 1960s were the happy days, and earnings were growing at every level. But from 1970 to 2000, earnings were good for college grads and above, and since 2000, it is the highest [level of education], such as the Ph.D.s and investment bankers, who are the ones are getting earnings."

The Climax of the Era of Excessive Balance Sheet Expansion
David Levy, economist, The Jerome Levy Forecasting Center

"In 2001, we were still in era of the big balance sheet economy and bidding the prices of assets and stocks up higher and higher. In 2011, we are coming down the hill and adjusting to that period of excess. A lot of people think [the] excesses were in last decade, but in fact it was part of bigger process. ... A private economy needs to be expanding wealth in order to generate profits, so if you're not expanding the economy, it just doesn't work. Unlike 2001, when people were shocked by the stock market and then traumatized by 9/11, [there was] a correction. Now, we are in a much longer and more thorough correction and that will keep the economy satisfactory. The good news is that we will get through it."

Runaway Wealth
Eric Malm, professor of economics, Cabrini College

"In 2001, we had runaway wealth with house values expanding and 401(k)s growing, and we felt justified not saving as much, and we were still accumulating wealth. We were in an optimistic place and spending, and we were happy. But with the bubbles bursting, both the debt bubble and housing bubble, we are now having negative wealth effects. Americans are feeling poorer, and now that wealth has run away, we are not as optimistic."

The Not-So-Great Decade
Bill Seyfried, professor of economics, Rollins College

"In September 2001, a recession was just ending, but we were about to enter a jobless recovery that would last until 2003, when a stronger recovery took hold. Unemployment would rise into the recovery and policymakers would debate how to stimulate the economy to restore stronger economic growth and create jobs. A decade later, we face similar problems, but much more severe. Unlike the early 2000s, the budget deficit and the national debt are much higher, limiting how much the government can respond to economic weakness.

Since September 2001, the U.S. economy has lost 400,000 jobs and the percentage of Americans with jobs has declined from 63.5% to 58.2%. The type of jobs have changed as manufacturing has declined from 12.3% of all jobs to 9%, while health care has risen from 8.5% to 10.8%. Other items of note include the rise in poverty from 11.5% to 14.3% (as of 2009) and the decline in median household income adjusted for inflation. Overall, the decade spanning September 11 to the Great Recession has been the weakest decade for the economy since the Great Depression."

A Decade of Surprises and Disappointments
Susan Woodward, former chief economist of the Securities and Exchange Commission

"This recession has been especially hard on small firms, including the one-person businesses of self-employed people. The number of self-employed -- not the hobbyists, but people whose only work is self-employment -- is down 12% from a peak in early 2007, in contrast to the 5% decline in payroll employment we hear about in the news. In monthly figures, seasonally-adjusted, there is no recovery so far in self-employment since 2007.

For at least 40 years, employment has been shifting away from smaller businesses into larger ones. In 1975, 22% of workers were in firms with under 20 employees. Now it is about 18%. Not all sizes are suffering equally now. The number of very small firms (one to 19 employees) has fallen only 5% since 2007, and these businesses (covered by the Intuit Small Business Employment Index) have been hiring since the fall of 2009. In contrast, the number of firms with 20 to 250 employees is down 10% from 2007.

Looking back a decade by industry, small businesses have exited specific sectors both because of the recession and for structural reasons. The biggest decline, by number, is in local retail, second is construction, and third is real estate services and finance. The recession has hurt local small retail, but so has competition from online shopping and big stores. We cannot expect all of the decline will be reversed by a recovery. The sectors associated with construction will revive, and sometime in the next few years we will have a construction boom. We are now two million houses behind the long-term trend in residential construction despite all the building in the years running up to the collapse."

Catherine New is a staff writer with DailyFinance.com and AOL Huffington Post Media Group. You can reach her at catherine.new@huffingtonpost.com.

This is something to think about. It is something that needs to be dealt with. The global economy is not a blessing for countries that were already global in impact.

Just a couple of thoughts I had and you should too or at least think about.

BRUCE A. BRENNAN

DEKALB, IL 60115

COPYRIGHT 2011

VISIT ANY OF THE SITES LISTED FOR REVIEW, RESEARCH, ORDERING MY WRITING PRODUCTS OR TO CONTACT ME.

Email: brucebrennanlaw@aol.com

www.brucebrennanlaw.com

www.lawyerbruce.wordpress.com

www.brucebrennanattorney.com

www.bruceabrennananddekalbilandtheworld.blogspot.com

www.lawyerbruce.blogspot.com

www.lawofficeofbruceabrennan.yolasite.com

www.lawyerbruceabrennan.com

http://lawofficeofbruceabrennan.law.officelive.com

http://lawofficeofbruceabrennan.webs.com

http://www.lawyerbruceabrennan.webstarts.com

http://www.linkedin.com/in/attorneybruceabrennan

Go to web sites below to buy books by Bruce A. Brennan. It is still a good time to purchase any of my books. The books are interesting and inexpensive reads. My third book should be available later this year, in late 2011. More information will be forthcoming.

www.ebookmall.com (Do search by my name or book Title)

www.barnesandnoble.com (do a quick search, Title, my name)

www.smashwords.com Do a Title or author search.

www.kobo.com

https://dtp.amazon.com/mn/dashboard

Book Titles:

Holmes the Ripper

A Revengeful Mix of Short Fiction

"You can make mistakes, but you aren't a failure until you start blaming others for those mistakes." - John Wooden