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IT Workers Cushioned From US Economic Downturn
DontLickJesus writes "According to the AP, technology has been the least hardest hit by the U.S.'s recent economic downturn. Quote: '"Overall technology employment is up in America and the wages associated with it are up," said John McCarthy, a vice president with Forrester Research.' The article goes on to say that companies realize the worth of their [IT] staff. This paired along with a recent article regarding the value of data centers when selling a company leads one to believe that the business world, while historically not fond of IT workers, is showing its true opinion of the sector."
Perhaps because during 2001-2003 they sliced back so much IT staff that they still have not finished catching up? Also many IT people went into other fields or back to school during that time, reducing the supply, meaning there is less chance of oversupply this time around.
Table-ized A.I.
IT professionals have been hit very hard and nowhere is this more evident than in Phoenix, where I live. Salaries are down again. Can you believe that help desk technicians and professionals are getting 12.00 an hour!? I could make this amount of money working as an Armored Car Guard and not work as hard. This is very sad. Don't believe this article .... I sure don't.
Spare a thought for us who don't work in IT though, we're still feeling the pinch. My company is laying off an entire 10% of the employee base over the next few months.
If each mistake being made is a new one, then progress is being made.
...why I feel insulated from this thing... it can't last forever. More and more of our friends are starting to have problems with credit cards, mortgages, evictions, etc. etc. And here I am still blowing $300 a week on weed and doing fine. Yes I think I will check the AC checkbox now.
Because our economy appears to be driven by bubbles after the 1970's, different recessions seem to sock different professions. Programmers got hit in the 2001-2003 poppage. This time finance people are getting smacked by bubblenomics.
We all get our turn.
Table-ized A.I.
I don't think that you're cusioned until the government bails you out with $700,000,000,000.
Sorry, I don't appreciate being forced to work for a living with unpaid overtime, while someone else gets free money.
testing out my trending skills
Unlike 2001 after the dot com bust. IT was in a shambles with job losses everywhere, no relief in site and then followed by 9/11.
The Shrub was quick to protect airline workers AND EXTEND their unemployment benefits while my benefits were expiring, money running out, certainly no new prospects with the further collapse in the market due to 9/11.
I felt great for the airline employees getting taken care of, while I prepared to move myself OUT of the IT field as a defensive measure.
I'll probably never make the same kind of money again, but I'm much happier overall, and I'll never go back to an IT based career.
Good luck to all still trying to make a living completely unappreciated - worse than plumbers but just as necessary.
There is no innocence in the eyes of an evil man with power. Referring to Judge Roy A. Scoggins 378th District Court
Companies have been cutting back staff to conserve money. But the truth is they want to accomplish the same amount, if not more, of work - and that means relying more on computers to multiply the effect of what workers remain.
Furthermore when it comes down to it, companies realize the large staffs they built up to manage overseas workers are less effective than just having a few dedicated IT people on staff, or use local consulting without so much overhead. Outsourcing overseas was always a luxury item and companies are coming to realize that.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Ah yes, I missed the original intent of the post...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This is just the start of it. It's way too early to crow.
Our end of the boat may not be taking on water yet but the ship is sinking, the brass band is playing and politicians are fighting over the deck chairs.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
That's good news for both of them!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I call bullshit on this. Most people I know who have lost their jobs have been sucking up anything making $10k less per year as it's better than nothing. Least hit, that comforting as I know at least 5 techies who are under or unemployed while everyone I know in any other "sector" is having no issues.
Hire me...
Companies are delaying/canceling IT projects all over the place. My company had a client last week, whine about needing a server upgrade, but cant do it because we actually charge for that shit. Says, if we would be willing to do the work for free, we can make it up on follow-on work next time around. We don't work for free, so his org will pound sand, or find some starving IT workers on Craiglist to do the work for Top Ramen. Fuck em. (yeah you, asshole, I KNOW you read Slashdot. Don't call me when your cheap-ass SATA-driven MOSS server goes tits up, baby.)
Nobody is willing to spend any money, which will only cost them down the road. IT requires investment in systems, people and maintenance. Skip on one, pay double for the others later.
IT is not just employees. Consultants are taking it in the shorts too.
Between about 2002 and 2006, offshoring indeed did seem to have a kind of fad mentality behind it. While I agree companies can make effective use of offshore labor, they usually picked the wrong projects or tasks to offshore.
The tasks easiest to offshore are those that take the least amount of time or questions to explain. For example, "find out why this routine is crashing when I enter 7" is easy to describe and does not require a lot of back-and-forth discussion. "Implement this based on the boss's fuzzy memo" on the other hands is going to require a lot of questions and explanation, and is thus a poor candidate for offshoring.
Table-ized A.I.
The reason IT is being the least hit is because it has been the primary target for so long. IT has been viewed as fat, as so trimmed, for so long that there is precious little left.
The "true opinion" is that all the expendable IT jobs are now outside the company.
After outsourcing and offshoring as many jobs as possible, there are few expendable positions left in companies. Many of the positions that are being cut are jobs waiting for backfill and contract jobs.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
"...the business world, while historically not fond of IT workers, is showing its true opinion of the sector." So what is it?
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
not only in u.s.
its simple supply and demand. as i.t. field got established, a lot of people entered the field. hence salaries dropped.
anyone who thought whopping wages of 90s would continue, were naive.
Read radical news here
I disagree with you.
Helpdesk has nothing to do with it, on the base. You forgot that cost of living varies drastically across the entire country.
$12/hr might be survivable in Virginia or Texas, but in Chicago people have a hard time surviving on $18-20/hr.
When the cheapest food to survive a day runs around 1-2$ (thus about 4-6$ a day foodwise) and gas runs almost 4$, trust me that 12$/hr helpdesk job will not keep people afloat, even if it was $12/hr cash.
Don't forget that employers employ people to make a profit, not a loss; thus $12/hr is probably turning about$20-50/hr profit.
Helpdesk itself varies from company to company. I know on mine some ofo the employees are borderline retarded and helpdesk has to show them anything more complex than what a mouse is.
Why pay another company? Well, ever heard of Unisys? Lets just say you pay for what you get. Those suckers can barely speak english, and about 1 in 20 of them are competent. Their managers are good IT helpdesk. The rest don't understand you, don't listen, don't know how to do their job, and good luck understanding them.
Guess how many companies offshore to unisys? Tons.
We must not allow the Treasure Secretary to receive $700 billion to spend with no oversight whatsoever. The current plan creates a gigantic moral hazard, is inflationary, rewards reckless risk-taking by CEOs, and still results in common people being foreclosed upon. We need to re-institute the Glass-Steagall act, allow highly leveraged firms to fail, insulate common people from the effects of these failing institutions, and regulate the market to prevent this catastrophe from happening again.
Manual labor manufacturing jobs are going away. I think schools should be teaching people to use technology. Instead people should be getting trained to operate the manufacturing tasked computers and robots that American tech companies will be leaders in. We need more smart people, stat!
Nobody can explain Comcast, not even themselves :-)
Table-ized A.I.
Just because technology companies are not hit as hard by this economic downturn, that does not mean technology workers (programmers, engineers, network admins, system admins) are equivalently immune. One problem here is the Labor department is classifying things badly. When the payroll of a technology company goes up, they interpret it as benefiting technology workers. It could be they are just hiring more sales people (I've seen it done). And a huge amount of IT is done in non-technology companies, including financial companies. And even if these companies consider their data centers to be of value, the IT workers own none of it, and few of them would be considered vital employees.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
The reason we're "cushioned" from the financial nonsense is because there isn't much room to go lower. Wages are crap, yet the nation is inextricably dependent on IT services. They can't pay us any less, and they can't fire us - they've already outsourced all the jobs they could.
The title may as well be "Wage slaves cushioned from US economy downturn". The only reason an IT guy gets a raise is because his supervisor's been getting too many phone calls checking references.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
That is an absolute lie.
John McCain has been nothing but a cheerleader for the Reaganomics that has caused this debacle. He's been for privatization, deregulation and tax cuts. In fact, there's a video going around on YouTube the last few days where John McCain is giving very energetic (as much as he can be energetic) support for the privatization of Social Security.
Even someone as far conservative as George Will today has said that John McCain has just been an utter failure on economic issues and has done nothing but sputter and froth when we really need someone who's going to be a little more thoughtful. If you don't believe me, go watch the video of today's This Week on ABC. Listen closely to what George Will says.
Sarah Palin has become little more than a circus sideshow. She's actually become the candidate (out of the main four) with the LEAST approval. She slid 10 points in public approval in just three days last week. There is evidence that having her on the ticket is losing votes for McCain in more than one swing state. His Hail Mary Pass has fallen incomplete. Now that the convention "bump" after the RNC Crystal Night has passed, all the polls are trending Obama, including the most important electoral college numbers.
My only fear is that the only Hail Mary pass that the GOP has left requires a body count.
By the way, did you know that on Sept 18, just a few days ago, George Bush extended the national state of emergency that he put in place on Sept 23, 2001 for another year? Go to whitehouse.gov and look at the daily press releases and executive orders for Sept 18. There it is, big as life. Who even knew that we have been under a state of emergency since 9/11?
You are welcome on my lawn.
For example, "find out why this routine is crashing when I enter 7" is easy to describe and does not require a lot of back-and-forth discussion.
I totally disagree.
It's possible that sometimes, finding the answer to why a routine crashes might be able to be determined without much discussion.
But the solution to fix the code based on the answer DOES require a lot of back and forth, and ideally experience in the codebase. In fact 99% of the time the answer to a question like that is found easily in the logs, or spending 5 minutes with a debugger.
And that is why companies do not, and cannot, use offshoring companies in the manner you describe - because while they could indeed find the answer without much input, they cannot find the SOLUTION without much more interaction - interaction that is increasingly recognized to be expensive.
Think of offshoring like SOAP, and local consulting/employees as REST, and you'll have the five year picture laid out for you.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Nice rant ... but how do you really feel?
Go ahead, let it out - we're here for you.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
John McCain has been nothing but a cheerleader for the Reaganomics
We are in total agreement.
The only problem is that the financial crisis we see today is the result of the exact opposite of hands-off Reganomics. It takes a lot of government propping-up to build an entity as ginormus as Fannie Mae. Reagan would not have stood for it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I'm Canadian, but yeah, you're right. I just knew that I shouldn't have voted in your election. ;^p
Seriously, though, no hard feelings, okay?
testing out my trending skills
I know my IT position is safer than many out there. I'm a gov't contractor and there is no shortage of work where I am. Really the only thing that can hamper myself and others like me is if Congress drastically reduces defense, justice, or other similar types of budgets which can reduce the funding available for contracts like the ones I work on. Outsourcing isn't a problem either because of required security clearances and the inability to telecommute (due to security issues) also means there isn't going to be any offices in India to teleconference with to get the latest status on code revisions.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
CRA is being trotted out in a last ditch attempt by Republicans to salvage this fucking disaster of 8 years and blame this on Democrats.
Excuse me, but who has been in control of the house and senate for the past four years?
Beyond that bit of obvious fact that has eluded you, note that I blamed both feckless Democrats AND Republicans who could have both acted long ago (or more like, never acted to start with). There were some Democrats with similar concerns as well, but since they were in power they bear more culpability in my mind for doing nothing as the crisis grew more and more obvious. One year ago Fannie Mae was a burning tower of fire for those who cared to look. Even Obama saw it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
A few phrases that should never be uttered again in American public life:
"Free Markets"
"Deregulation"
"Privatization"
And the name "Milton Friedman" should be never be spoken in business schools again, except to show just how wrong someone can be. Turns out "Free Markets" were nothing more than a mechanism for squeezing wealth out of the lower 95% of the population and pouring it into the pockets of the top 5%.
It's amazing how suddenly socialism looks good when rich guys are looking at losing a lot of money.
I truly hope that whatever bailout package gets approved includes some very punitive measures for the Wall Street CEOs and CFOs who got into this mess. Anybody who stands to gain from this bailout should be forced to go to the same credit counseling classes that regular people who file bankruptcy must attend. Also, several hundred hours of community service would also be appropriate.
Do you know that the executives from Lehman Brothers and AIG are still going to take home multi-million dollar bonus packages this year?
Yes, I'm talking about Class Warfare. As Warren Buffet famously said: "There's Class Warfare, and my side is winning." In fact, it was the rich and the GOP who declared class war on the rest of us back when Ronald Reagan took office. Well, now it's time to show them what it feels like to be in a war.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Wait, Palin is a libertarian now? I know that she and McCain are constantly changing their positions on issues, but that's just crazy. How does one go from being a Bush Republican to a libertarian in just a month?
No more changing than any other politican including Obama (e.g. to drill or not to drill). The question is, how do you determine whether they changed their opinion on issues to get votes or whether they legimiately received new information which changes their view on an issue and then telling the public about it? People do change their minds. The question is whether they really changed them or they just said they do.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
By the way, did you know that on Sept 18, just a few days ago, George Bush extended the national state of emergency that he put in place on Sept 23, 2001 for another year? Go to whitehouse.gov and look at the daily press releases and executive orders for Sept 18. There it is, big as life. Who even knew that we have been under a state of emergency since 9/11?
You must like complaining for the sake of complaining since this has nothing to do with the topic at hand. I know that topics change as people bring up new stuff in posts but this didn't even match the rest of your post. By the way, last I saw Obama and McCain had 4 points separating them favoring Obama. That doesn't really say anything though because the numbers waiver back and forth week to week or even day to day.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
Reagan would have expected the economy to run on jelly beans. He was a sufferer of Alzheimer and had no idea what was going on most of the time he was in the white house. That said, his aids did a pretty good job.
Get a web developer
The government will literally be buying up debt. They'll take ownership of various mortgage related securities. Ok, well this means that what they get depends on what happens with a mortgage. If the person defaults and doesn't pay anything, well then the government is going to lose money, especially if the property isn't able to be sold for much. If they pay off the mortgage, the government will make money.
You have to remember that it isn't as though all these mortgages are going to default, or that the property underlying them will suddenly become totally worthless.
So I certainly wouldn't expect the US government to come out with a net gain on this (though it'd be amusing if they did), but the net loss is going to be far less than the upfront cost.
One can make a cogent argument that too much government regulation is bad, and you might even be able to make a fair argument that the current crisis was not caused by too little regulation, but there is no reasonable argument that can conclude that the current crisis has been caused by too much regulation.
this fucking disaster of 8 years and blame this on Democrats. Even a few minutes of research would debunk that silly shit.
For example, the first two links of the first post? The blame is a 50/50 split at best between the parties.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Excellent.
And your sig is so spot-on, though I wish it wasn't!
Adam Smith's invisible hand--was it connected to Cthulhu?
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Reaganomics that has caused this debacle
But do read the Anchoress link in the FP.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Reminds me of the Ironic Times
Tech Jobs Migrating to India, Other Low-Wage Countries
But new jobs opening up in U.S. for textile workers, child prostitutes.
[Intentionally left blank]
John McCain has been nothing but a cheerleader for the Reaganomics that has caused this debacle. He's been for privatization, deregulation and tax cuts. In fact, there's a video going around on YouTube the last few days where John McCain is giving very energetic (as much as he can be energetic) support for the privatization of Social Security.
Yeah, a bunch of banks have failed and some people are losing their homes that they couldn't afford, but:
a) The commodities sectors are doing well. If you work in farming, oil, coal, iron, copper or gold, then, those sectors are all doing very well. Even the moribund alternate fuels sector is shaping up in spots. Biodiesel maker Nova Biosource Fuels is actually running its Seneca refinery profitably and if it gets some financing, this penny stock is going to absolutely kick ass.
b) Now we find out that IT workers are doing well. In fact, it looks that like that Lehman's data center is going to be purchased by Barclay's more or less intact. Not only that, but Intel and Microsoft, both industry leaders, are not only making record revenues, but Intel is actually paying dividends.
c) If we turn to the housing situation, we find, shockingly, that more people in the USA actually own their own homes than ever before. In short, despite the banking losses and the bankruptcies, at the end of the day, a bipartisan policy designed to encourage lending to put as many people into homes as possible actually WORKED.
The tell tale sign of a real recession or economic downturn is high unemployment and falling commodities prices. Neither has taken place. Instead, what we have is moderate unemployment and high commodities prices and this suggests that demand is high, rather than low.
Now, I don't doubt that some people are hurting in this economy but those people tend to be concentrated in blue states that have been stupidly run for way too long. Michigan's government has basically made it all but impossible to do business in that state and Ohio is as nearly as incompetent and corrupt, particularly in the manufacturing centers and Democratic bastions of Cleveland, Toledo, Akron and Youngstown. Red states, on the other hand, big producers of food and fuel, are doing rather well.
Bottom line is, this economy isn't falling apart, and never has been. Instead, wealth is shifting from those who make raw materials and products from those who make up financial services around them. WE have lived a lie that said that a bunch of paper is more important than the coal that it represents and it simply isn't true. Bush's economic policies have worked, free trade has worked, and if the market has decided that a program that does something with a car is not as valuable as the steel that makes it well, you are just on the wrong side of reality.
The irony is that Obama's policies are actually going to shift this economic advantage to red states any more. Bush's economic policies, at the essence, have allowed the market to refocus on the basics of materials and manufacturing as the value drivers of the economy. When Obama goes and enacts all sorts of environmental legislation, he's only going create even more scarcity. Suddenly, that old copper mine in Arizona or dying oil well the gulf are going to be even more valuable than it is today, when you can't get permits any more for a new one, and yes, those states that push back more against the Obama administration are those states that are going to have the biggest advantage, economically. They will make more, while the blue states make less, and as a consequence, they will wind up with more money. The future is passing from Chicago where the corn is traded, to the belts where the corn is made, from New York where the cars are traded, to the south where the cars are made.
This is my sig.
Again, when somebody decides to bring "lol creationism" to slashdot, everybody fucks up their quotes.
She's been saying she wants to see creationism shown as an alternative explanation to evolution, to spark some debates and let kids think.
Now, I know this is a facade. You don't. You haven't been to school in a while. It's not, "I think this is...", it's "I know this is." by heart and by the book. They see it as being more difficult to work with.
But guys, no theory works perfectly. One day we went from sensing light to eyeballs? Let alone the rest? The big bang? Everything came from something that came from nothing that appeared due to nothing and then exploded due to nothing?
It's where this 'free money' is coming from - guess what, it's coming out of his ass in the form of an extra $5,000 worth of income taxes next April 15th. Mine too. Yours too.
The fact of the matter is that this big bailout is really going to be a tax on the rich to let them sell mortgages to the poor for pennies on a dollar. Ultimately, a lot of these people that are overstretched are going to be able to renegotiate their loans and the banks won't care if they do, because they can always foist a screwed loan onto the feds now.
This is my sig.
. Wages are crap,
Actually, wages are not crap. We're just frigging greedy. WE're in a field that expects to pay us the same coming out of "Chumb MCSE school" the same rate that a frigging doctor makes coming out of medical school. I guarantee you that, on average, IT workers make more money on average than just about every other position, every field, in every other country on the planet earth. If you want more money, you need to own a business, rather than be an indentured servant for someone elses.
This is my sig.
This crap has been a long time coming. It is a direct result from basically two sources. 1. Easy credit for everyone! Our imaginary money economy was bound to implode at some point due to the unbelievable irresponsibility in both consumers and the companies that were trying to get rich quick by extending risky credit to everyone that would sign on the line. The housing market is imploding because a $500,000 mortgage (multiplied out) has a much larger impact than the same people multiplying out 10-30k in credit card debts. 2. I want it and I want it now! This is both the consumer buying everything with imaginary money they can't afford as well as the God awful business practices surrounding the immediate infinite growth model. Every company is trying to build monsterous immedaite returns every quarter. So they do stupid shit stacked on stupid shit stacked on stupid shit and then collapse. The company that did the bookkeeping for Enron was started by a cutthroat accountant. "Our responsibility is to the auditors, not to our clients, because when our responsibility is to the auditors, our clients will always be taken care of correctly." He built a tremendously large and successful company by this mentality. As soon as the company started cooking books for fun and profit for more immediate gains they imploded.
My real bitch is that over the last 20 years of predominately Republican control they have encouraged this insane business model of "don't worry, fuck up all you want, commit whatever crimes you need to maximize your profit, we promise not to step in as long as you make it worth our while". Not that Democrats are off the hook for this crap mind you, but it was predominately Republican approach to not getting involved at any cost. Now, the house of cards is collapsing and the Executive branch is acting on its own buying out all these companies. (Quick history check...go look up that form of government that involves the government owning all the businesses...they are definitely earning their colors as the Red Party with the secret laws, secret prisons, warrantless spying, voting problems, and now government owned business). Also, as previously mentioned, Bush was acting on his own as of 2003 to try and remove the regulations that were in place that were supposed to help prevent this meltdown, when he started positioning the Fed for this bailout it became clear that they could go balls the the wall and if they failed they would get a bailout package from the Fed and all would be ok. He poured on the gas and started smoking until it became that burning tower you mention.
These assholes have murdered almost every conceivable form of science and demonize intellectuals. This includes their apparent piss poor understanding of economics. I want to slap these assholes every time they say lower taxes to increase revenue. While it can most certainly increase revenue if you are on the correct side of the maximization curve, it most certainly does not work if you are already below the revenue maximizing number. Oh...that and it doesn't fucking matter if you maximize revenue if you spend more than the difference between the previous spending and previous revenue point.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
Depends on how widely you cast that net "regulation". If you include the existence and implicit (later explicit) backing of the government-created Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, then you can. If you don't include that, then there's an argument that it was the same as the old savings&loan crises -- too much government backing with too little oversight.
I look around at my colleagues and I see the hours I work and I have to say that I know of no freeloaders in the technology business. We're all working harder than ever before.
frankly I believe I'm taking on at least 150% the workload that I had four years ago, even adjusting for improvements in ability, that means I just have to pull more hours. And most of the people work with would likely say the same.
I have not seen an equivalent increase in pay that comes close to the increase in productivity.
I'd be interested to see some pay:productivity ratio - if one could be achieved, I bet that even with pay increases, such a ratio would be the lowest ever.
Nullius in verba
I knew we got off the gold standard but I hadn't realized we switched to coal.
You know, I haven't thought about it that way, but we really have. From my days at the utility I know that all the energies commodities prices track each other pretty closely as people tend to shop by BTU at least in that space. If I have a diverse portfolio of plants, I just pick the best commodity and that tends to drive all the prices up until they reach a sort of a market equilibrium that considers the BTU and the handling involved and the overall people that want it.
Seriously... just ask yourself, if oil goes up, why does coal go up? The answer is, is that there's some sort of "peak" behavior taking place in ALL of the commodities, not just oil.
Your best grades of coal are rarer... like, the most telling thing the German "clean coal plant" is not that its clean coal, but that its burning lignite, rather than anthracite or some other better grade of coal. In Germany, lignite seems to be about all that is left, and its pretty crappy stuff, indeed.
This is my sig.
Not to keep George "Fucktard" Bush in power longer, of course, since the Constitution does not allow that, but just to give him more power while he's there. I'm not necessarily in favor of it, unless it is necessary in helping certain parties to understand (such as with a bullet to the brain) that it is not considered socially acceptable to blow up Mariotts in Pakistan.
Anyway, here it is.
For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
September 18, 2008
Notice: Continuation Of The National Emergency With Respect To Persons Who Commit, Threaten To Commit, Or Support Terrorism
RSS Feed White House News
On September 23, 2001, by Executive Order 13224, I declared a national emergency with respect to persons who commit, threaten to commit, or support terrorism, pursuant to the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. 1701-1706). I took this action to deal with the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States constituted by the grave acts of terrorism and threats of terrorism committed by foreign terrorists, including the terrorist attacks in New York, in Pennsylvania, and against the Pentagon committed on September 11, 2001, and the continuing and immediate threat of further attacks against United States nationals or the United States. Because the actions of these persons who commit, threaten to commit, or support terrorism continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the United States, the national emergency declared on September 23, 2001, and the measures adopted on that date to deal with that emergency, must continue in effect beyond September 23, 2008. Therefore, in accordance with section 202(d) of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1622(d)), I am continuing for 1 year the national emergency with respect to persons who commit, threaten to commit, or support terrorism.
This notice shall be published in the Federal Register and transmitted to the Congress.
GEORGE W. BUSH
THE WHITE HOUSE,
September 18, 2008.
What debate? Here on this side we have science, and over on this side, unfounded conjecture based on a 2000yr old book that is little more than a documented game of telephone because i heard it from a guy who heard it from a guy who was there I swear. There is no debate, one is science, one is not. Pure and simple.
There is a british scientist that has a video floating around that shows the progression from light sensing to eyeball very well with example critters all along the way. So that irreducible complexity bullshit is a complete joke. In fact, Ken Miller has an amazing 2hr presentation on the whole Intellitent Design where he absolutely eviscerates their silly arguments, and is a Roman Catholic, so it science and intelligence goes beyond religion.
The God discussion belongs in religion and philosophy classes, not science classes. The evidence for "poof magic" is 0, so even though evolution can't trace the exact path for every critter that walks the earth, it at least has evidence.
What she and every other creationist wants is creationist bullshit treated like it is even remotely equal to scientific theory. They tout the "its just a theory" crap because they don't understand the definition of a scientific theory. Even if most kids laugh it off, the fact that they put that shit in the class causes the assumption that there is anything more to it than silly superstition and intellectual laziness.
I'm sorry, but my version of "God" is a hell of a lot more complex than rolling up some playdough snakes and saying "Bamf" its done.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
The whole free trade argument is mostly bogus anyways. Many german cars for example are made right here in the US and shipped back out all over the world. What the Germans have done is build factories in right to work states and offer good enough benefits that no one wants to unionize. It ends up saving everyone money.
What Obama can (and wants to) do is raise corporate taxes. Doing that could make all the foreign corps who have put up headquarters here leave and push some of our national companies to other countries. You're right that protectionism won't work, mainly because the base premise for wanting it is false to begin with.
This just in:
http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2008/09/ruh-roh-palin-draws-60000-in-florida.html
what was your argument again, please?
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Many german cars for example are made right here in the US and shipped back out all over the world.
Most of the foreign car factories in the USA are essentially assembly. It's not like the engines and transmissions are actually built in the USA. Just look at the parts origin list of these supposedly "American made" foreign cars. They only do the final assembly here to save on freight. It's like IKEA, but for cars.
This is my sig.
because I just lost my IT Administrator job on Tuesday...due to financial constraints at the company.
I have nothing clever to put here...
The problems we're experiencing today are NOT because of "free markets" at all.
The problems are because of govt. interference and manipulation of the markets for their own motives!
The USA has spent decades in a scenario people keep labeling a "free market", yet in reality, we REALLY have a situation that's just a bastardized version of the concept. A truly free marketplace requires a government that won't pass legislation simply because congressmen or senators have been "bought out" by big corporations.
Certain businesses have gotten ahead of the competition NOT through any normal means as defined by a "free market economy", but rather, by influencing government to give them a guaranteed legal advantage!
As we move more and more to a "global economy", it's also becoming clear that our government's standard tactics to control inflation and regulate economic growth are failing to work as well as they used to. There are probably just too many variables to the equations now. I believe Alan Greenspan made some comments to that effect right after he retired. He admitted that near the end, govt. was really just taking a lot of chances, hoping raising or lowering the interest rates or printing a little more or less money would have the desired effect. They felt they were slowly losing their ability to get a desired result from a specific action.
So Close
Time for a cow analogy
Communism
You have two cows,
the government takes both and gives you some milk.
Fascism
You have two cows,
the government takes both and sells you some milk.
Which one is more accurate.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Except for the fact that you are totally butchering his ACTUAL trade policy,
yeah.
McCain? Graham?
Let's just call it what it is: a recession.
Whenever I listen to international news, they refer to the U.S. economy as in recession. The U.S. media, however, always call it an "economic downturn" or "slow economy" or some other silly thing that basically means recession.
but it was predominately Republican approach to not getting involved at any cost. Now, the house of cards is collapsing and the Executive branch is acting on its own buying out all these companies
But the current house of cards is the result of EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE to what you say. It's a result of the GOVERNMENT stepping in, getting involved tightly and almost FORCING companies to take on questionable creditors. That's not true Republican action so much as pandering by both sides and social engineering at its best (read: worst). Social engineering markets is more a Democratic trademark than a Republican one which is why near the end when teh hosue was wobbling, Democrats in control shut eyes and ears and would not hear of their being a problem until it was too late. They wanted to hold off public acknowledgement of the total failure of government financial meddling until after the election. But again I am not saying this is Democrats alone, there's plenty of Republican whistling and looking the other way as FM was feeding both sides lots of money (that includes quite a bit to Obama and Biden BTW).
It's absolutely insane to look at Fannie Mae and decide what we need is MORE government intervention in banks!!! It's only the government being involved that let FM grow to the size it needed saving anyway.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It's not just Phoenix that's struggling. I have a friend in Portland, Oregon who is moving to where I live (St. Louis, MO) because she works in I.T. and can't find a job anywhere out there.
She said HP and Intel both have big layoffs either planned or in progress, and Nike is moving an entire facility out of Portland and overseas (S. Korea or something like that?). The only jobs you can find there right now are "day labor" types of things. Unemployment is something like 12% overall.
Here in St. Louis, I guess we look "good" by comparison, but we've recently had our "world headquarters" Anheuser Busch brewery bought out by the Belgians. Boeing seems to be continuously downsizing. Our Chrysler plant just closed up. Reuters' presence here has been dwindling. A.G. Edwards got bought out too. Meanwhile, I'm watching people going back to our area colleges and universities left and right, because they can't find a job and they decide they may as well just "take out a student loan, go back to school for a while, and hope it helps them get something better after they get back out".
We have a lot of help-desk type positions available here, thanks to businesses like Convergy's, who run 2 big call centers, and telcos who run others around town. But last I checked? Even $12/hr. was pretty optimistic for those positions. They're just "revolving door" jobs paying more like $8-10/hr. in many cases. Our cost of living might not be nearly as high as on the coasts - but I still can't imagine how anyone is able to live on their own at those wages here!
Here in St. Louis though, I often see this odd disconnect with reality. Typically, you'll have a married person who can't understand why a single person with a kid or kids wouldn't just "go work at place X" that has "openings right now paying $12 an hour". Obviously, they're too used to their 2 income lifestyle to realize that $12/hr. means scraping by in poverty level conditions if that's your sole source of income.
You know, that explains a lot - personally I've always thought someone told him the whole president thing was a movie he was acting in.
Control is an illusion, order our comforting lie. From chaos, through chaos, into chaos we fly
I'm paying attention, but you're not really making sense.
Are you proposing that all political systems are "shit" unless they're designed to be foolproof?
I think by the very definition of "government", you're talking about building some sort of system of rules and regulations that's automatically subject to people agreeing to try to follow them.
Put it this way. Is chess a "crappy game" because it doesn't have provisions built into it to prevent someone from cheating by taking more than one turn while the other person isn't watching? Is the game of Blackjack "shit" because it wasn't designed to account for the possibility of somebody keeping an extra ace up their sleeve while playing?
Yes, you want a political system that's "resilient". A minority of corrupt individuals will hopefully not make the whole thing topple. And I think we HAD that in this country, until people started effectively changing the rules. When your own president treats the Constitution like "outdated papers that are largely meaningless", and the Judicial system is able to "interpret" laws to the point where their original purposes are completely twisted around - you have some big problems looming on the horizon.
Mods around here suck... Or are just plain stupid. Can somebody rational fix this (there's nothing "flaimbait" about the parent.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
The ones that were subject to those government interventions did LESS damage than the ones that weren't. The ones that were under those regulations were constantly warned about that behavior. The ones that were not are the ones that did it more often.
Now to be fair...I think it needs different government involvement, not less, not more. Where the government needed to be involved early in that crisis it wasn't (thank you Republicans), and the areas where it was it shouldn't have been (thank you Democrats). I do believe there are a great number of areas where there needs to be regulation, the problem is that we will NEVER get the regulation we need so long as we have lobbyists for every special interest group under the sun greasing the palms of those congress critters. What we wind up with is broken ass loophole ridden nonsense that favors whoever paid the biggest sum when the law was written.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
I think you've brought up a good point, here. Nobody really knows the answers to life's big questions. Some people come to certain conclusions, and others decide that there are other big answers (i.e. if you choose not to decide you still have made a choice).
The important thing in education is to make sure that kids know that no one has all the answers, and that they should take *everything* that *other people* say with a grain of salt. In other words teach them to think for themselves
I know that people will fight against this. People want to say "well, that's not science and doesn't belong in a science class". How about pointing out - yes, even in science class - that the scientific method can only teach you about objective observation, and that your own intuition should guide your beliefs.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Fret ye not the mods. The whole thing was very arguably offtopic and trollish. And I'd friggin' do it again, too. Mwahahahaha.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Wow. Just... wow. I can't believe this partisan rant was rated so highly, especially considering that it claims the GP argument was a lie without any proof whatsoever.
Ok, this will probably be modded into obscurity right away, but the GP point was *not* a lie. I won't try to point out way, but here's a link to a Google search on how the Democrats blocked McCain's reform efforts years ago.
You could also do your own research on the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005 before deciding that PopeRatzo's post is "Interesting" rather than a bigger lie than the post he was responding to.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Fret ye not the mods. The whole thing was very arguably offtopic and trollish. And I'd friggin' do it again, too. Mwahahahaha.
Oh, wait... you're right. There seems to be some stuff in the links about the Democratic party being partially complicit in the problem - almost like it would have happened even if they had been fully in charge.
Sorry, my bad. By all means, let's make sure that post stays buried.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
It's absolutely insane to look at Fannie Mae and decide what we need is MORE government intervention in banks!!! It's only the government being involved that let FM grow to the size it needed saving anyway.
It's not a matter of more intervention. It's a matter of consistency. The companies should be tightly controlled to the extent that their failure is catastrophic. If you want to take away all the evil government intervention, that's a valid plan if and only if they are allowed to make fatal mistakes. Regulation and protection should go hand-in-hand.
Up from what? What do they consider an IT worker? How did they determine this?
Assembly line work is considered IT? Isn't about 99% of electronics manufacturing done offshore?
Were any of those workers US citizens? Or were they all offshore workers, and H-1Bs?
"[Obama will] touch off a trade war and drag down the world"
As a non-American it sounds like an improvement over touching of a ME war and draging the world into the smoking crater that used to be called the US economy.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Ok, I take your point - no system will be perfect. The gripe I have with both socialism and free markets is that they make untested assumptions about human nature - with both ending in dire straits because of it.
Modern government systems have taken this into consideration in the way the power is divided amongst the executive, legislature and the judiciary. If any one branch got too powerful the other two would gang up against it. Course as well all know this isn't foolproof.
Control is an illusion, order our comforting lie. From chaos, through chaos, into chaos we fly
I prefer Surrealism:
You have two giraffes,
the government requires you to take harmonica lessons.
Then why are mega corporations pushing to raise the cap on H1B Visa IT limits if they "love" us US Citizen IT Workers?
I've been out of work since 2002, and many other IT workers I know have moved on to non-IT work as all companies in our area are hiring are foreign IT workers via H1B Visas. I have been turned down for thousands of IT jobs because I am not a foreigner that is willing to work for minimum wage or almost minimum wage via a H1B IT Visa. I'd have a much better chance if I renounce my US citizenship and apply for citizenship in an Asian nation and then apply for an H1B Visa application and then I'd have a 100% chance of being hired as an IT worker in the USA. Of course it would be for a fraction of what I would be paid as a US citizen, but most of us have been out of work for so long, we start to get desperate. :)
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
If you can admin SharePoint server farms, write web parts in C#, and know Forms Server inside out, I would be THRILLED to pay you in Top Ramen. In fact, I will through in tons of extra seasoning packets, since I have to keep my salt down, ya know? Say the word, baby!
There is a british scientist that has a video floating around that shows the progression from light sensing to eyeball very well with example critters all along the way. So that irreducible complexity bullshit is a complete joke. In fact, Ken Miller has an amazing 2hr presentation on the whole Intellitent Design where he absolutely eviscerates their silly arguments, and is a Roman Catholic, so it science and intelligence goes beyond religion.
The largest flaw (that I can see) in the Creationist's argument is the refutation of Darwin (which is their agenda). Otherwise, the theory of intelligent design is plausible on a more macro scale.
The God discussion belongs in religion and philosophy classes, not science classes. The evidence for "poof magic" is 0, so even though evolution can't trace the exact path for every critter that walks the earth, it at least has evidence.
That I can agree with, except that we also teach in science about historical cases where scientific belief (which was sometimes religiously driven) was incorrect and changed as a result of new discoveries of ideas. Galileo is one example. I still don't see what this has to do with IT and that workforce.
I'm a gov't contractor and there is no shortage of work where I am.
Same for me... I've been working 60-70 hour weeks the past couple months.
I'm not getting rich though, my pay is still far below what I should be making given that I hold a bunch of certs including recently adding on CISSP which was required for one of the justice system contracts I got assigned. My boss keeps saying be happy we have the work.
Companies are busy replacing "expensive" American middle class tech workers with lower cost alternatives whenever possible. Here's a "for-instance" detailing the use of Indian IT workers from Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) to directly replace American IT workers in Florida at Nielsen. http://www.tampabay.com/news/business/article818379.ece
Companies can get workers from other countries IF American workers cannot meet the demand.
The demand is $1/hr tech support people that double as the billing department and moonlight as coders. Americans cannot legally fill this role in America for that price.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
She gives them the white trash vote, and presuming she isn't stupid she may be able to get a lot of women to vote for her as well. That's potentionally a very large number of new voters in a country where most don't even bother to do their duty and vote. If nothing else it makes a win look at least possible before it goes over to Diebold for the results - that's presuming there's still some uncovered corruption there.
Back to the economy - why is it that not even an economic rescue plan can get put together without it looking like an excuse for nepotism and corruption? Also why is your dollar going up so much in the middle of all this when the Banks are in chaos? Another thing on the positive side is that there appears to be a shortage of shipping containers in parts of the USA presumably becuase more things than usual are being exported - somebody must be doing well.
This latest move by ex-Goldman Sachs partner to shovel out $700 billion smacks of a well engineered financial terrorist attack organised by the government.
Couple this with today's FOX news headlines: Iran's gone nuclear!
Corporates know this administration is the closest they can get to a gravy train. They very well know the next admin is going to break their backs.
So after robbing us blind by Iraq wars (halliburton, KBR), Katrina rebuilding(again same clients), FedCopters (Bernanke showering money earlier this year to investment banks), they are trying the Greatest Robbery Ever!; Stealing the entire Tax revenue as "compensation" for screwing up citizens.
So lulling the people into a false sense of security (Economy is strong as told by Bush, Cheney, Paulson), they suddenly spring a surprise yelling the economy is going to fail and demanding $700 B as payment.
Much like a mugger sweet-talking you to disarm you and suddenly pulling the gun on you.
The same fear tactics are applied here: Pass a bill or else the security/finance of america is gone tomorrow. This is typical of the Karl Rove kind of threats: Put a sudden deadline, put a fear, and threaten: Much like Hitler used to do.
If congress and the dems had any back bone and especially if Obama has any backbone (which he doesn't after FISA), he should stop this fear-mongering in its tracks and start :
1. Ads in TV showing the negative aspects of bailout: Rich CEOs getting millions and enjoying yachts with blondes after the getting the Federal bailout.
2. Speeches in small towns stating the government wants to foreclose your home and wants the money to pay to rich men in New York.
3. Ads in radio and talk shows in radio patterned on O'Reilly tactics that force the listener to vote on whether the bailout would benefit the richest or the CEO of failed companies.
4. Ads in newspapers exaggerating that this administration wants to take their medicare money and feed it to greedy corporates.
Appeal to the emotions of people, not facts.
5. Subpoena every one involved, including Paulson and Bernanke and force them testify under oath the benefits they aim to receive after they leave their jobs and the benefits of CEO and CFO of these companies.
6. Arrest anyone who refuses to obey the Subpoena...starting with Todd Palin.
Once rhe republicans come to the table instead of crowing for money, put some teeth into the bill:
1. All companies which receive federal bailout will get back all the money they paid to their entire board in past 2 years. Minimum wage will be paid to the board, but all money beyond that is snatched back.
2. All companies sign over 80% of their equity to the Federal Government.
3. Barring any Federal Official in Treasury or Federal Reserve from accepting any job at any assisted institution for next decade.
4. Enabling courts to renegotiate unilaterally terms of a mortgage with any federal-assisted bank.
Unfortunately knowing Obama, Pelosi and Democrats well, they will hand over the check without any oversight and flay their helplessness to the american public as if they are innocent.
If that happens, Obama can kiss his election success goodbye and democrats can forget even their existing seats in congress.
They will be reduced to just two seats: Senator Kennedy and Biden.
I seriously hope this happens. That the dems hand over a black check and in november the public hands them back their as$es-deep fried.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
I know that people will fight against this. People want to say "well, that's not science and doesn't belong in a science class". How about pointing out - yes, even in science class - that the scientific method can only teach you about objective observation, and that your own intuition should guide your beliefs.
They did that for me in biology, without mentioning creationalism.
Whenever we went over theories or laws, such as how do you define life, or the theory of evolution, there was always a section that pointed out the flaws with these theories.
In the definition of life, or a cell, where was the first cell? Evolution (at the time) didn't know how complex scenarios involved, such as a beetle that had two chemicals that were explosive when mixed.
Make no mistake, you don't need to point out "Intelligent Design" to highlight these weaknesses, and they should already be pointed out to begin with.
No, I am not an English major. My posts are subject to typos and incorrect grammar. Do not expect perfection.
Oh, so the homeowners lent money to the banks? Silly me, I thought it was the other way round.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Not after the past week, friend.
Not today.
You are welcome on my lawn.
In Sweden? Finland?
Not hardly.
And charging those iPhones and Wiis to their credit cards, which will never get paid at the rate they are going. How big is your credit card balance?
You are welcome on my lawn.
What Obama can (and wants to) do is raise all taxes.
Fixed.
There are no loopholes. It's either legal or it's not.
i hadnt noticed...too busy working weekend maintenance windows and passing the oncall pager.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Companies can get workers from other countries IF American workers cannot meet the demand.
The demand is $1/hr tech support people that double as the billing department and moonlight as coders. Americans cannot legally fill this role in America for that price.
WRONG!!! That's why members of the Indian government occassionally refer to H-1b as the "outsourcing visa". Man, have you got alot to learn! It is a **MYTH** -- a grossly inaccurate claim -- that employers can only get an H-1b if they can't find a qualified American. Where have you been dude? Google up the YouTube vids of lawyers from a "big name" law firm explaining to paying business customers how to "technically" meet the standards of the law but "How NOT to hire an American" -- disqualify the Americans on some bogus pretext. Ron Hira from the IEEE-USA & EPI has been ALL OVER this issue!! Oh, and maybe you never bothered to read anything by Norman Matloff, the UC, Davis professor who has written academic papers and given Congressional testimony on this topic? Do some googling and read the reality of the situation -- not the phony claims of DoL bureaucrats and politicians anxious to please their business lobby friends and campaign contributors.
Now that's funny.
The article was written on September 5 and claims that "HP is still hiring" which is certainly consistent with laying off 25K people. The claim "...won't expect to be big ones" with regards to IT layoffs is quite likely to be proven false in light of recent events.
No more loans for ppl with bad credit no matter what their skin color is.
You sort of made your entire argument worthless when you got to that point. Care to explain what skin color has to do with loan qualifications?
I think the invisible hand of the market has its middle finger extended
--A wise old fart named SC0RN
Sure I can explain.
Some of the banks were forced by regulators to provide
loans to a certain percentage of minorities.
And by the way, I am an American Indian.
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
FORCING companies to take on questionable creditors
The fuck? Even assuming that the CRA you cited was FORCING banks to make expensive high-interest subprime loans, which law was FORCING companies to buy mysterious voodoo credit derivatives that pretty much everyone acknowledges they didn't understand (which is how freddie and fannie sunk themselves, "subprime" is defined as a loan not meeting their purchase requirements, yet they were more than willing to pad out their assets with these worthless instruments)?
The fact is, if it had just been banks making subprime mortgages this would have been contained as just a small crisis. The world didn't move for Indie Mac, Ameribank or any of the other banks that overextended their credit and sunk, barely a tear was shed. No, the world shook and quaked for Bear Stearns and AIG and Fannie and Freddie and even the Reserve Primary Fund. For these investors in the make-believe, the purchasers of debt and derivatives and swaps, markets soared and collapsed, government opened taxpayers' wallets, and so on.
Cry all you want about whatever laws "democrats" and "republicans" pass or don't pass, the only government people I can find at fault here are the ones who opened the vault yet again, ensuring that we'll have yet another "crisis" in a few decades time.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
I should have added a link.
This gets into part of it, but it should help
make the picture a little clearer.
http://realtytimes.com/rtpages/20011115_acornreport.htm
This almost looks like it was planned at some level,
maybe not for the results, but the statistics don't lie.
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
What Obama can (and wants to) do is raise corporate taxes. Doing that could make all the foreign corps who have put up headquarters here leave and push some of our national companies to other countries. You're right that protectionism won't work, mainly because the base premise for wanting it is false to begin with.
You hit the nail squarely on the head. The reason companies are reincorporating outside the US is because the US taxes companies on profits earned in other countries, even when those profits have already been taxed by those countries.
For example, you mentioned Mercedes. Daimler pays corporate income taxes in Germany on profit from operations in Germany. They pay taxes in the US on profit from US operations.
An American company, on the other hand, pays US tax on profit from US operations, foreign tax on profit from foreign operations, and US tax on profit from foreign operations. We are the only developed nation in the world with this double taxation, and it's driving large transnational corporations to move their headquarters to offshore tax havens to avoid the massive tax bills that result from our laws. Moving offshore doesn't absolve them from paying taxes on profits realized in the US, it just puts them on a level playing field with their foreign-based competition.
In other words, government greed has driven the engines of commerce straight into somebody else's boat. Raise your hand if you're surprised.
"Make it ten--I am only a poor corrupt official."
--Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains), Casablanca
Liberal problem?
Seriosuly.
and to use terms that were used for rounding up and killing jews, you are the real threat to the US.
I call bullshit, I worked for two banks for over 6 years from 1998-2004. Banks are NOT forced to give any percentage of any race a loan, that is a load of crap and you should really check your facts before you start spreading rumors of things you know nothing about.
How do I know this for a fact that you are wrong? I wrote loan qualification software and that is not one of the criteria our software used or ANY other of the major loan qualification systems used to determine loan qualification. The loan qualification software we wrote and maintained determined loan qualification based on criteria such as debt to income ratio, credit ratings at the big three bureaus, loan to value, down payment, cash reserves, employment information etc. and matched the person to available loan programs based on that info. I have personally written two loan qualification systems and seen the inner workings of three others, not one of them used race as a determining factor.
Banks only take information on ethnicity (which is completely voluntary) as a means of showing that they are not discriminating against any particular group, it has absolutely no bearing on if a person is qualified for a loan or not. The problem was that loans were too easy to get, the entire reason I quit the banking industry in 2004 was because the criteria for receiving loans was so lax that I knew it would blowup eventually.
Just as an example of how easy it was to get a mortgage, in 2002 we were asked by execs are our bank to adjust our software for a new product the bank was offering. It was a stated income, stated assets, no doc loan, with up to 106% financing, with a 680 FICO. In laymans terms it meant that if you had a 680 middle credit score you could walk into a bank tell them you make 300K a year as the VP of Technology at ABC Software Engineering Corp., ask for a 700K mortgage on a house that is only worth 660K and get it, all without proving that anything you said was true. The best part is that the only human validation that most banks performed was when the underwriter checked salary.com to make sure that the individuals stated salary was appropriate for the position they stated having.
I think the invisible hand of the market has its middle finger extended
--A wise old fart named SC0RN
The article you link to is about the steering of minorities to subprime loans when they qualified for prime loans with better terms. That is done at the discretion of the loan officer and has nothing to do with the actual qualification process. Qualification for loans has nothing to do with race, it is all numbers.
I think the invisible hand of the market has its middle finger extended
--A wise old fart named SC0RN
While I commend your stance it reminds me of the fact that modern American college educated people, that should understand science, all base law on some mystical magical moment in which "life" begins. These stated opinions that deny life begins at conception include the SCOTUS, the ACLU, and NOW. On top of that they have found an additional theory of law called "privacy" which never existed in the Constitution's inception. I would find their arguments more realistic if they would simply admit that government sponsored murder to accommodate irresponsible character and increase semi-affiliated murder industry organizations' coffers was the intent of Roe vs. Wade.
You need only look at our Rust Belt to see the truth of that. Once a big contributor to the GNP; now a sinkhole for social welfare.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Libertarians believe in personal freedom, economic freedom, and fiscal responsibility. Sarah Palin doesn't. About the closest she gets is that she knew enough to inhale when she smoked dope, but she's against legalizing it. But she thinks the Alaska constitution should be amended to give the state the power to decide who can get married, and thinks that schools shouldn't teach kids about contraception methods (other than the 100% reliable one, which is "expecting teenagers to stop at second base.")
Sarah Palin was for the Bridge to Nowhere before she was against it - as Governor, she took the money, and while she didn't build the bridge, she did build the access road to the bridge (and by the way, even in Alaska, why does a 3-mile gravel road cost $25M? That's about the price per mile of the Eisenhower Tunnel...) She took a town with no debt and left it with over $20M in debt for under 10000 people.
McCain, on the other hand, has plenty of experience dealing with failing mortgage institutions - the Keating 5's favorite S&L cost even more to bail out than the Silverado S&L, run by President GWBush's brother Neil.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Decades? Clearly you are an optimist.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
is that such job requirements are designed to both discourage Americans as well as create the pretext that the company has sought qualified American job applicants but been unsuccessful in finding anyone who meets the necessary qualifications. Then, the company can use this bogus paper trail as the basis for filing a DoL application to hire a "business visa guest worker" under H-1b. Of course, it's remarkable how so many Indian H-1b applicants will meet the stated background requirements word for word... It's done with a wink and a nod. Seen it done.
when teh hosue was wobbling
That's a great name for an album.
which is totally what she said
Wiis are pretty damn cheap for what they are. iPhones.. not so much. Xbox Elites or PS3s (which also mean you end up wanting a HDTV) would perhaps be better mentioned instead of Wiis.
I was regularly in my overdraft at the start of the year, after buying a 42" HDTV and a PS3 in quick succession (both which have seen a lot of use so I still think it was worth it), but I've not been overdrawn for a few months now as I've been trying to be more sensible.
My credit card balance is fully paid each month (I only use it when I have to import stuff from the US) :) Encouraging people who can't afford something to buy it is pretty damn stupid. I can understand loans for houses (though I'm still pretty nervous about buying a house because the whole market is so crazy right now), maybe even loans for cars, but buying everything on credit is stupid.
which is totally what she said
Downloadism. you have tucows...
Right! We all have to save the world from Nazis before we can have an opinion on political matters. That makes sense.
I've always thought politics is shit, and I didn't need Winston to tell me. All the spin, downright lies, hidden agendas and backstabbing - it's pretty tiresome and gets in the way of the real running of a country. I wouldn't have a problem with a dictatorship or patriarchy, as long as the leader wasn't a complete jerk, but what are the chances of that happening? :p We have the Queen here in the UK but she has sod all power, which makes the whole 'royalty' thing rather pointless.
which is totally what she said
H1B workers in IT don't work for minimum wage. There's no wage different between H1B, GC and citizen workes in Silicon Valley. Enough said.
That's only flamebait if you're an intollerant religious zealot, you asshole (whoever you are). Otherwise it's just the simple truth. Fuck you.
There is no cow.
Oh yeah? The feds say:
"The prevailing wage must be at, or above the federal or state or local minimum wage, whichever is higher. The federal minimum wage is $6.55/hr effective July 24, 2008."
Computer Programmers can be hired at $6.55/hr or the state wage if it is higher under the H1B Visa program. As long as it is minimum wage or higher it is 100% legal to under pay computer programmers.
I know many Thai H1B Visa workers who program C++, C#, Java, Visual BASIC for minimum wage and work a second job at a restaurant in my area. The chef or waiter job, pays them more than their programming job based on tips they get.
My wife is half Thai and I know a lot of Thai people and I've been to Thailand a few times and talked with them.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
I'm sure I speak for everyone here when I say that you sure did a damn fine job.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."