Not as many jobs were “created” in March as anticipated . .
. so (at least as of this writing) the stock market is going up. Had there been more jobs “created” than
anticipated, of course, the stock market would be . . . going up. People buying in to this insanity (i.e., pouring their money into the stock
market at this time) are evidently hoping to buy high and sell low, or think
that stock market prices are somehow a leading economic indicator.
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| "Step right up, getcher stocks and job creation." |
Want to know something?
Given the complete disconnect between the productive sector and the
secondary market for debt and equity (“the stock market”), stock market prices
aren’t a leading or lagging economic indicator.
They’re not an indicator of anything except how many people think stocks
are themselves a commodity. They’re the
same sort who “invest” in Bitcoins.
By the way, exactly how do
you “create jobs”? If labor is required
for a task, a job is created, isn’t it?
So the only way to “create jobs” is to encourage production, and the
only way to encourage production is to make it possible for people to
produce. Since capital is rapidly
replacing labor in production, wouldn’t making more people into capital owners
“create jobs” automatically? Why tax
people or inflate the currency by issuing more government debt to “create jobs”
when both are disincentives to production?
Isn’t that getting things backwards?
Yes — and if “they” (those in charge of the system) want to
put things right they might want to consider:
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| White House, rear view, 1840s. |
• Do you want to be a force for good and reform of the
system? A bunch of us are rallying at
the White House (okay, across the street from the White House) to draw
attention to the serious need for ownership, monetary, and tax reforms as a sound
solution to a number of growing problems, e.g.,
the growing wealth and income gap, unemployment, the “jobless recovery,” the
over-emphasis on stock market gambling instead of true investment and
production, and a host of other ills. These
days, if you’re not an owner of capital, you’re sooner or later (probably
sooner) going to be owned by someone who owns capital. When:
April 17, 2015. Where: across the street from the White House. A little bird told us there might be some
“man in the street” interviews . . . not in the street, of course, but on the
sidewalk, so come prepared to state your views (and sign a release).
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| Owners work harder for themselves. |
• Yet again it has
come out that worker-owned companies tend to out-perform otherwise comparable
firms. An article posted on the “Benefitspro”
section of the “Employee Benefits Network, ” “ESOPs
Crush S&P 500 Index Returns,” claims that, according to an Ernst and
Young study covering the period 2002-2012, worker-owned companies had a 62%
higher return than the stock market. Of
course, the article doesn’t take into account the fact that companies that are
100% owned by their workers through an ESOP are required by law to have a
qualified independent appraisal for the value of their shares, while stock
market values fluctuate pretty much according to whim and panic of the
speculators. The valuation of ESOP
shares is thus more likely to reflect the actual value of the company, while
publicly traded shares reflect what someone can be induced to pay for
them. Like the Bitcoin, there might not
actually be anything of value backing publicly traded shares — which explains
the increasingly wild swings in the market as what appears to be a pre-crash
frenzy continues to build.
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| "Five for the Family? I'm 'four' it for my five!" |
• We’re getting closer
to launching the “Five for the Family” effort, the initial phase of the
Campaign for Economic Justice. A draft
video script has been prepared, and we’re trying to locate easily accessible
(and affordable) studio facilities in the Northern Virginia/DC Metro area so we
can begin filming.
• As of this morning, we have had
visitors from 66 different countries and 48 states and provinces in the United
States and Canada to this blog over the past two months. Most visitors are from
the United States, Canada, Poland, Keyna and the United Kingdom. The most
popular postings this past week were “Thomas Hobbes on Private Property,” “The
Purpose of Production,” “You Asked, Kelso Answered,” “Aristotle on Private
Property,” and “What is a Central Bank
Supposed to Do?”
Those are the happenings for this week, at least those that
we know about. If you have an accomplishment
that you think should be listed, send us a note about it at mgreaney [at] cesj
[dot] org, and we’ll see that it gets into the next “issue.” If you have a short (250-400 word) comment on
a specific posting, please enter your comments in the blog — do not send them
to us to post for you. All comments are
moderated, so we’ll see it before it goes up.
#30#