Our Marginal Economy

Before you jump on the Bull market bandwagon of "don't fight the Fed," perhaps you should take a look at the quality of the debt the Fed has enabled and the diminishing returns on all that debt.

The mainstream media is delighted to highlight positive economic data, but nobody ever asks about the quality of the borrowers who are behind the rosy numbers. Behind the rosy numbers, sales and profits are increasingly dependent on marginal buyers and borrowers: those buying on credit who would not qualify to borrow money in a system ruled by prudent risk-management.

These marginal borrower/buyers are last on, first off: they qualify for loans at the end of a credit expansion, when lenders throw caution to the winds to reap the profits from issuing new mortgages, auto loans, student loans, credit cards, etc. to marginal borrowers.

These marginal borrowers are the first to default, because they have insufficient income and collateral to support their loans.

This rising dependence on marginal borrowers/buyers leads to an economy of diminishing returns: ever-rising rates of debt expansion are required to generate ever-declining rates of expansion of sales, profits, GDP, etc.

The waterfall decline of the quality of debt-based sales is masked by the rosy headline numbers. Auto sales are soaring; nice, but does anyone ask how many of those vehicles were sold to marginal buyers, the kind of borrowers who are one paycheck away from insolvency and default?

How many issuers of junk bonds are one recession away from insolvency and default?

Let's look at a few examples of diminishing returns/dependence on rising debt for marginal returns. Once again, we must keep in mind the quality of the debt and the borrowers is not revealed in rosy headline numbers.

Anecdotally, I see plenty of people who defaulted/declared bankruptcy in previous downturns who are once again in hock to the hilt, and they know the drill: borrow and spend as much as you can, because all you have to do is stop paying.

Yes, your credit score will be lousy for a few years, but lenders and retailers are so desperate for sales that you won't have to wait long to start getting a flood of credit card offers in your mailbox. After all, anyone with a pulse can buy a car now.

Here's total credit and GDP: this screams "diminishing returns":


The Fed's "free-money for financiers" balance sheet and the S&P 500: once again, this screams "diminishing returns:"



Money velocity: diminishing returns:



Small biz: fading at the margins:



Federal student loans: this fairly screams, "go ahead and default, there is literally no risk management here":



The return on a college degree? Diminishing faster than you can say "default":



Labor participation and real median income: diminishing returns on all the outlandish money pumping and Federal deficit spending:



Fulltime employment: going nowhere after 5+ years of unprecedented expansion of central bank "free money for financiers" and Federal debt:



Real household income: declining for all but the top 5%:



Household income has declined significantly in real terms: Five Decades of Middle Class Wages (Doug Short).

Federal Reserve "free money for financiers" has greatly expanded wealth inequality:



So before you jump on the Bull market bandwagon of "don't fight the Fed," perhaps you should take a look at the quality of the debt the Fed has enabled and the diminishing returns on all that debt.

---

Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy(Kindle, $9.95)(print, $20)
Are you like me? Ever since my first summer job decades ago, I've been chasing financial security. Not win-the-lottery, Bill Gates riches (although it would be nice!), but simply a feeling of financial control. I want my financial worries to if not disappear at least be manageable and comprehensible.

And like most of you, the way I've moved toward my goal has always hinged not just on having a job but a career.

You don't have to be a financial blogger to know that "having a job" and "having a career" do not mean the same thing today as they did when I first started swinging a hammer for a paycheck.

Even the basic concept "getting a job" has changed so radically that jobs--getting and keeping them, and the perceived lack of them--is the number one financial topic among friends, family and for that matter, complete strangers.

So I sat down and wrote this book: Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy.

It details everything I've verified about employment and the economy, and lays out an action plan to get you employed.

I am proud of this book. It is the culmination of both my practical work experiences and my financial analysis, and it is a useful, practical, and clarifying read.

Test drive the first section and see for yourself.     Kindle, $9.95     print, $20

"I want to thank you for creating your book Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy. It is rare to find a person with a mind like yours, who can take a holistic systems view of things without being captured by specific perspectives or agendas. Your contribution to humanity is much appreciated."
Laura Y.

Gordon Long and I discuss The New Nature of Work: Jobs, Occupations & Careers (25 minutes, YouTube) 

---

NOTE: Contributions/subscriptions are acknowledged in the order received. Your name and email remain confidential and will not be given to any other individual, company or agency.

Thank you, Transformation Institute ($10), for your most generous contribution to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Thank you, Karen H. ($25), for your much-appreciated generous contribution to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Read more...

The Case for a Bull or Bear Market in Two Charts

Which appears more likely--a straight-line extension of the past two years' rise in stocks, or another "impossible" decline to complete the megaphone pattern?

There are dozens of charts and data points supporting the case for a continuation of the Bull market in stocks or a reversal into a Bear market. For the sake of brevity I've distilled the two arguments into two charts, one for the Bull case and one for the Bear case.

The Bull case is easy: the economy has reached self-sustaining expansion, a.k.a. escape velocity; hotel occupancy rates are high, home valuations are rising, stocks are fairly valued based on forward earnings, debt has been paid down/written off, and the Fed has tapered its quantitative easing (QE) bond and mortgage buying with no ill effect.

Looking ahead, there is no fundamental or technical reason for stocks to drop significantly; stocks always go up in years ending in 5, and there is nothing magical about 2016 in terms of a decline, either. The market could advance for years.

Bottom line: the advance since early 2012 is founded on solid fundamentals and there's no reason the advance can't continue along with strengthening fundamentals such as corporate profits, rising tax revenues, etc.

The Bear case is based on sentiment, but this reliance on extremes of bullish sentiment is misplaced; the fact that everyone is talking about a bubble in stocks and expecting a correction just goes to show there is no bubble and a correction will simply offer another opportunity to buy the dip, a strategy that has been richly rewarded.

The Fed (and other central banks) have our back: any decline in risk assets will be washed away with another tsunami of near-zero-interest money, liquidity and credit.



The Bear Case is also simple: the supposedly solid fundamentals of earnings, stock buybacks, etc. are all based on an unprecedented expansion of debt, central bank monetary easing, leverage and systemic risk.

Finance trumps economic data, and financial risk has reached a tipping point:shadow banking is unraveling in China, the Fed already owns most of the new home mortgages that have been issued and has to taper lest it own the entire mortgage/Treasury markets, junk bonds have been bid to the moon, etc.

Debt, leverage and risk have reached bubble heights, and simple cause and effect means the stock market has also reached bubble heights.

Faith in the central banks' ability and willingness to push stock markets higher has reached extremes. Volatility and complacency have both reached levels that historically correspond to major highs.

Take away massive buybacks funded by cheap credit and the market's dependence on financial one-offs will be revealed: the Bull market was never about earnings; it was always about cheap credit, central banks pushing investors into risk assets like stocks and corporate buybacks. Bulls claiming hotel bookings, auto sales and profits are "proof" of a self-sustaining economy are looking at the effects, not the causes.



To understand the cycle of credit addiction, please read Are We Addicted to Failure?

Bulls and Bears alike tend to marry their convictions. As we all know, the human mind is uncomfortable with uncertainty, and so once a person chooses the Bull case, recency bias and confirmation bias kick in and the Bull selects recent data that confirms his conviction.

The same tropism toward certainty takes hold of Bears, and those of us without the conviction of marriage watch from the sidelines.

I have long been skeptical of the Bull case based on the unprecedented scale of central bank/state intervention, support and manipulation. If everything's so great, then why does the Fed need to buy trillions of dollars in assets and manipulate markets with reverse repos, etc. and direct purchases via proxies? If a market only rises as a result of such outlandish one-off intervention, how can anyone claim it has any fundamental foundation?

Which appears more likely--a straight-line extension of the past two years' rise in stocks, or another "impossible" decline to complete the megaphone pattern? If stocks continue climbing once the Fed ends its bond-buying in and stock buybacks drop to less frenzied levels, that will be evidence the Bulls are right about the economy's escape velocity.

If the market tanks as soon as the monetary heroin is withdrawn, that will support the Bear's case that financial legerdemain trumps economic data.

Two things favor the Bear case in my view: if volume is the weapon of the Bull (i.e. rising volume drives Bull markets), then the fact that volume has been declining for years is not supportive of the Bulls.

Secondly, I don't see how the economy can reach escape velocity with household income declining in real terms: Five Decades of Middle Class Wages (Doug Short). 

---

Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy(Kindle, $9.95)(print, $20)

Are you like me? Ever since my first summer job decades ago, I've been chasing financial security. Not win-the-lottery, Bill Gates riches (although it would be nice!), but simply a feeling of financial control. I want my financial worries to if not disappear at least be manageable and comprehensible.

And like most of you, the way I've moved toward my goal has always hinged not just on having a job but a career.

You don't have to be a financial blogger to know that "having a job" and "having a career" do not mean the same thing today as they did when I first started swinging a hammer for a paycheck.

Even the basic concept "getting a job" has changed so radically that jobs--getting and keeping them, and the perceived lack of them--is the number one financial topic among friends, family and for that matter, complete strangers.

So I sat down and wrote this book: Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy.

It details everything I've verified about employment and the economy, and lays out an action plan to get you employed.
I am proud of this book. It is the culmination of both my practical work experiences and my financial analysis, and it is a useful, practical, and clarifying read.

Test drive the first section and see for yourself.     Kindle, $9.95     print, $20

"I want to thank you for creating your book Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy. It is rare to find a person with a mind like yours, who can take a holistic systems view of things without being captured by specific perspectives or agendas. Your contribution to humanity is much appreciated."
Laura Y.

Gordon Long and I discuss The New Nature of Work: Jobs, Occupations & Careers (25 minutes, YouTube)

---

NOTE: Contributions/subscriptions are acknowledged in the order received. Your name and email remain confidential and will not be given to any other individual, company or agency.

Thank you, Paul W. ($120), for your wondrously generous contribution to this site -- I am greatly honored by your steadfast support and readership.

Thank you, Simon C. ($50), for your astonishingly generous contribution to this site -- I am greatly honored by your steadfast support and readership.

Read more...

Our Peach Pie Workshop

Measured in happiness, I feel pretty wealthy when eating the harvest of our peach tree and our baking handiwork.

The positive returns from focusing on intractable problems diminish rapidly. Since most of us have little control or power over geopolitics, central bank policies, etc., the only payoff from studying these issues is to clarify our response.

In my view, the only meaningful response is to take control of as much of your life as you can and opt out of destructive systems as much as possible.

Which brings us to peaches, or whatever you're growing. Some claim a garden doesn't yield enough calories of consumable food to justify the labor and expense, but their calculations (so typical of the Status Quo way of calculating "value"--only look at money and ignore everything else) fails to account for the enduring value of the skills, experience and expanding control that are part of the yield of gardening/ animal husbandry.

In a world dominated by centralized authority, monied Elites, illusory wealth and financial trickery, what ultimately matters is how much can you do in the real world, what you own/control in the real world, the reciprocal ties you share with others and your personal integrity. The Status Quo only measures money (the ultimate Neoliberal reduction), and this is one of its fundamental flaws. If we take the measure of wealth in happiness, we end up with something like Bhutan's Gross Domestic Happiness Index:

It's Time to Retire Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as a Measure of Prosperity (April 18, 2014)

(I recommend listening to this John Prine song while viewing the photos below: The Avett Brothers: Spanish Pipedream (3:04): "blow up your TV, eat a lot of peaches..." Thanks to correspondent Marc Z. for the song link)

OK, on to the peaches. Everything starts with the soil, rain, blossoms and pollinators:



With the help and advice of readers such as Bart D. (Australia), I aggressively thinned the young fruit this year and was rewarded with a healthy tree and large fruit:



A big bowl of peaches:



The peach filling for eight pies, halfway through the assembly:



A typical pie being filled; we use small pie pans to maximize the number of pies we can share/freeze for later:



Crimping the crust:



Can you see our cat Smokey's face in the crust's vent design?



The first four pies--all that will fit in our small oven:



Growing peaches and eating peach pie makes me happy. Measured in happiness, I feel pretty wealthy when eating the harvest of our peach tree and our baking handiwork.

---

Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy(Kindle, $9.95)(print, $20)
Are you like me? Ever since my first summer job decades ago, I've been chasing financial security. Not win-the-lottery, Bill Gates riches (although it would be nice!), but simply a feeling of financial control. I want my financial worries to if not disappear at least be manageable and comprehensible.

And like most of you, the way I've moved toward my goal has always hinged not just on having a job but a career.

You don't have to be a financial blogger to know that "having a job" and "having a career" do not mean the same thing today as they did when I first started swinging a hammer for a paycheck.

Even the basic concept "getting a job" has changed so radically that jobs--getting and keeping them, and the perceived lack of them--is the number one financial topic among friends, family and for that matter, complete strangers.

So I sat down and wrote this book: Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy.

It details everything I've verified about employment and the economy, and lays out an action plan to get you employed.

I am proud of this book. It is the culmination of both my practical work experiences and my financial analysis, and it is a useful, practical, and clarifying read.

Test drive the first section and see for yourself.     Kindle, $9.95     print, $20

"I want to thank you for creating your book Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy. It is rare to find a person with a mind like yours, who can take a holistic systems view of things without being captured by specific perspectives or agendas. Your contribution to humanity is much appreciated."
Laura Y.

Gordon Long and I discuss The New Nature of Work: Jobs, Occupations & Careers (25 minutes, YouTube) 

---

NOTE: Contributions/subscriptions are acknowledged in the order received. Your name and email remain confidential and will not be given to any other individual, company or agency.

Thank you, Royce M. ($100), for your outrageously generous contribution to this site -- I am greatly honored by your steadfast support and readership.

Thank you, Michael G. ($80), for your astoundingly generous contribution to this site -- I am greatly honored by your steadfast support and readership.

Read more...

Are We Addicted to Failure?

Like all addicts, Central Planners are confident they can manage the monkey on their back. But this is a self-serving illusion.

Addiction is many things, but beneath its complexities it is a self-destructive expression of the desire to avoid or suppress pain. The pain might be physical or the stuff of the mind, memories or inner demons or tortured misgivings about one's choices, soul and life.

Though the self-destructive aspects of the addiction are painfully visible to observers, to the addict they represent a solution: perhaps not the ideal one or even a good one, but a solution nonetheless.

Fear plays a big part in many addictions--fear of life without the addictive salve.The fear in an addict's eyes when the fix is not forthcoming is haunting to all who witness it.

To the non-addicted observer, addictions are not successes; they are failures of one kind or another, and those who care about the addict seek some way to extract the addict from the grip of his/her addiction, and from the fear that often drives it.

I have recently been wondering if America is addicted to failure. The oft-repeated definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, generally attributed to Albert Einstein.

But given the right mix of blindness and fear, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results might not be insanity but a self-destructive addiction to failure.

In this light, please consider this chart of the broad-based U.S. stock market index, the S&P 500, which I have marked up as an addiction to failure:



The source of this addiction is a fear of life without credit/asset bubbles. Fearing life without the rush and high of asset bubbles, we see an addiction to financial bubbles as asolution in the same terrible way a heroin addict sees smack as a solution: not as a long-term solution or even a good one, but a solution nonetheless, because it makes the pain of facing life without Central Planning financial bubbles go away at least temporarily.

But bubbles inevitably leads to overdose and a subsequent self-destructive crash.Our central bankers/planners have injected enough monetary heroin into the nation to guarantee not just the rush and the high but the overdose that leads to a destructive crash.

Like all addicts, Central Planners are confident they can manage the monkey on their back. But this is a self-serving illusion; it's the monkey who controls the addict, not the other way round.

If we're not addicted to failure, why do we tolerate a central bank that creates one rush-high-overdose-crash after another? Perhaps it's time to confess that we're addicted to failure because we're too afraid to face life without this financial addiction.

Pretty sad, huh? Like all observers, those of us without monetary heroin in our veins wonder when the poor addict will finally wake up and choose a path that isn't self-destructive. But as many of us know from personal experience, it often takes a near-death experience to awaken the instinct for survival in the addict. Sadly, sometimes not even that is enough, and a once-great nation spirals down to ruin.
If you missed this week's series:

The Rot Within, Part III: Our Political Order Is Defined by Favoritism and Extortion

The Rot Within, Part II: Inflation Is Not "Growth"

The Rot Within, Part I: Our Ponzi Economy

---

Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy(Kindle, $9.95)(print, $20)
Are you like me? Ever since my first summer job decades ago, I've been chasing financial security. Not win-the-lottery, Bill Gates riches (although it would be nice!), but simply a feeling of financial control. I want my financial worries to if not disappear at least be manageable and comprehensible.

And like most of you, the way I've moved toward my goal has always hinged not just on having a job but a career.

You don't have to be a financial blogger to know that "having a job" and "having a career" do not mean the same thing today as they did when I first started swinging a hammer for a paycheck.

Even the basic concept "getting a job" has changed so radically that jobs--getting and keeping them, and the perceived lack of them--is the number one financial topic among friends, family and for that matter, complete strangers.

So I sat down and wrote this book: Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy.

It details everything I've verified about employment and the economy, and lays out an action plan to get you employed.

I am proud of this book. It is the culmination of both my practical work experiences and my financial analysis, and it is a useful, practical, and clarifying read.

Test drive the first section and see for yourself.     Kindle, $9.95     print, $20

"I want to thank you for creating your book Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy. It is rare to find a person with a mind like yours, who can take a holistic systems view of things without being captured by specific perspectives or agendas. Your contribution to humanity is much appreciated."
Laura Y.

Gordon Long and I discuss The New Nature of Work: Jobs, Occupations & Careers (25 minutes, YouTube) 

---

NOTE: Contributions/subscriptions are acknowledged in the order received. Your name and email remain confidential and will not be given to any other individual, company or agency.

Thank you, Peter T. ($10/month), for your outrageously generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your steadfast support and readership.

Thank you, Stephen J. ($101), for your astoundingly generous contribution to this site -- I am greatly honored by your steadfast support and readership.

Read more...

The Rot Within, Part III: Our Political Order Is Defined by Favoritism and Extortion

What's the difference between the U.S. Congress and corrupt petty officials taking bribes at a Third-World border crossing? Only one of scale.

Corruption ceases to be corruption when it becomes the Status Quo; what was once recognized as corruption is seen as just another cost of doing business. Our political order is structurally corrupt: the key dynamic in every level of governance is favoritism and extortion.

Favors must be bought: those foolish enough not to spend freely on lobbyists and campaign contributions find their competitors have gained the upper hand by buying favors such as tax breaks, federal subsidies, no-bid contracts, cost-plus contracts, backroom deals, regulations that exclude competition and so on.

Politicos must extort campaign contributions from the maximum number of supplicants seeking favors to maintain their perquisites and power.

Here's how the system works.

There was much mainstream media hand-wringing and outrage in response to corporations moving their place of business offshore to lower their taxes. This outrage is completely misplaced--and indeed, seems designed to misdirect attention away from the systemic corruption that is the beating heart of the American political order.

Let me explain how favoritism becomes the Status Quo. There are two key dynamics at work.
1. Onerous, uncompetitive taxes and/or regulations. The U.S. corporate tax rate is 35%, the highest in the world, and various observers estimate the average state corporate tax tacks on another 4.1% for a total corporate tax rate of 39.1%.

This is roughly three or four times the nominal and effective corporate tax rates in competing nations.
The heavier and more asymmetrical the burden, the greater the incentive to find a way to lighten the load. This is why nations with asymmetrical tax rates and collection practices are inevitably hotbeds of black market activity, as those few chumps who actually pay the official tax rate go out of business or struggle to make ends meet while their black market competitors are living high on the hog.

The injustice of such a system fuels the need and desire to buy favors to escape the burden that virtually nobody actually pays.

2. Once a significant percentage of participants have eased their burden by buying political favors, everyone else is forced to wonder why they should continue paying the high taxes when others are avoiding them.

This system is not accidental. The asymmetry feeds the need to buy political favors, and is thus a form of systemic extortion. If you refuse to pay the bribe at a Third-World border crossing, the Powers That Be will make sure your life becomes increasingly miserable; while those who ponied up the bribe breeze through the paperwork, you wait and wait and wait, and are told to fill out more paperwork.

In precisely the same fashion, those who refuse to bribe legislators and key political players find their tax rates are crushing and life is miserable indeed. This is known as pay to play, and it defines the U.S. political order.

Those who don't pay the extortion to congresspeople and lobbyists are punished by a system designed to force every participant to pony up the bribe or suffer the consequences.

In other words, U.S. corporate taxes are extortionist and unfairly applied by design, to guarantee every corporation has to buy favors from politicos intent on stripmining billions of dollars in pay to play "contributions."

I know many people feel corporations should pay high taxes because they did so in the 1950s, but this historical precedent is blind to the realities of a global economy. Given global sales and workforces, why should a company headquartered in the U.S. pay punishing U.S. tax rates on its global operations?

Is it good policy to burden our corporations with absurdly complex tax codes and rates so far above global norms that every U.S.-based company is forced to seek tax avoidance schemes just to remain competitive and meet shareholder demands to be as profitable as others in the same global space?

It's easy for pundits protected by academic tenure to criticize corporate management, but put yourself in the shoes of a pension fund that owns stock in a company that actually paid the full 35% while competitors used strategies bought by political favors to eliminate that burden: your dividends and capital gains would be significantly lower as a result of the corporation's refusal to use pay to play tax avoidance strategies.

The reality is the pension fund manager and the corporate managers would both be fired for underperformance if they were stupid enough to pay the full corporate tax rate or insist on the company doing so.

We have a double standard: as individuals, we seek every possible avenue to escape high Federal taxes, and the wealthier you are, the more avenues are open due to favors bought from an always willing to wheel-and-deal Congress.

Yet we publicly demand corporations pay absurdly asymmetric tax rates to qualify as "good corporate citizens."

Corporations don't exist to be good citizens. As noted above, anyone clueless enough to pay the 35% federal tax rate on all net earnings will have failed the shareholders, who naturally demand the same payout in dividends and capital gains as those earned by competitors who paid to play and avoided most or all U.S. taxes.

Systems of good governance make exceptions and favors difficult to gain and the process transparent.

Corrupt governance makes exceptions and favoritism the unspoken rule and the process of buying them hidden from public view. That defines the U.S. political order perfectly.
Soaring corporate profits make juicy targets for taxes:



Soaring profits are the engine of a rising stock market:


Wages have stagnated while profits have soared:


It's easy to see why people want to tax corporations heavily, but in thinking this they are playing right into the extortionist/pay to play political order.

A fairer, good-governance system would lower corporate tax rates to the equivalent of an excise tax and exclude favors and exemptions. A corporate tax rate of 5% that was applied to all corporate sales and earnings in the U.S. regardless of where the company was nominally based would raise more money than the current corrupt system in which many corporations pay almost nothing and chumps who failed to pay the required bribes pay a globally asymmetric rate as punishment for their failure to 'contribute" to the campaigns of incumbents.

A low, evenly applied corporate tax rate would destroy the pay to play system of extortion/bribery, and as a result it will never be adopted. The U.S. political order is systemically corrupt and is incapable of self-reform. The rot has seeped into every nook and cranny of the political order, to the point that it's now accepted as "the way we do business here."

What's the difference between the U.S. Congress and corrupt petty officials taking bribes at a Third-World border crossing? Only one of scale. The corrupt petty officials can only look with envy on the Congressional extortion machine.

---

Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy(Kindle, $9.95)(print, $20)
Are you like me? Ever since my first summer job decades ago, I've been chasing financial security. Not win-the-lottery, Bill Gates riches (although it would be nice!), but simply a feeling of financial control. I want my financial worries to if not disappear at least be manageable and comprehensible.
And like most of you, the way I've moved toward my goal has always hinged not just on having a job but a career.
You don't have to be a financial blogger to know that "having a job" and "having a career" do not mean the same thing today as they did when I first started swinging a hammer for a paycheck.
Even the basic concept "getting a job" has changed so radically that jobs--getting and keeping them, and the perceived lack of them--is the number one financial topic among friends, family and for that matter, complete strangers.
So I sat down and wrote this book: Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy.
It details everything I've verified about employment and the economy, and lays out an action plan to get you employed.
I am proud of this book. It is the culmination of both my practical work experiences and my financial analysis, and it is a useful, practical, and clarifying read.
Test drive the first section and see for yourself.     Kindle, $9.95     print, $20
"I want to thank you for creating your book Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy. It is rare to find a person with a mind like yours, who can take a holistic systems view of things without being captured by specific perspectives or agendas. Your contribution to humanity is much appreciated."
Laura Y.

Gordon Long and I discuss The New Nature of Work: Jobs, Occupations & Careers (25 minutes, YouTube) 

---

NOTE: Contributions/subscriptions are acknowledged in the order received. Your name and email remain confidential and will not be given to any other individual, company or agency.

Thank you, Kathy S. ($10/month), for your outrageously generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your steadfast support and readership.

Thank you, Advanced Download ($25), for your extremely generous contribution to this site -- I am greatly honored by your steadfast support and readership.

Read more...