For more than a decade, NewWork News has surveyed the world's news having to do with life and work in the revolutionary new world economy. Over all these years, we have not made a significant effort to distinguish between straight reporting and editorial comment.

Written by Gary Johnson, NewWork News each day is more like a newspaper or magazine column than a newspaper's front page. However, nearly every item is linked to at least one original story from somebody else's "front page" so as to enable our readers easily to examine the original story without deliberate interpretation or commentary.

Some NewWork News items are highly analytical. Several of these have been gathered together for presentation below. All have been written by Gary Johnson.

The headline says that consumers "BURROW" deeper, not borrow deeper (Friday, 10/31/08)
For many years now, Americans have been consuming far more than they have been producing, and far more than they have been able to afford. How has this been possible?

Despite what personal finance experts have been telling us for years, so many Americans have been borrowing money to buy things, including things that they might not need or even really want. Even with American houses more than twice as large as they were in the early 1950s, many people don't have room for all this "stuff" during the time they possess it. In fact, some of it ends up being sold at yard sales within a few months for a fraction of its original cost.

Meanwhile, many of America's "big spenders" have used the equity in their houses as an "ATM," and have developed huge credit card debts. As we've said numerous times, the principal difference between borrowing money from a credit card company and borrowing it from a loan shark is that the former isn't likely to break your knees if you don't pay up. The interest charges could break your spirit, though.

Running up credit card bills is the absolute WORST way to borrow money, but apparently the word hasn't gotten out. Moreover, if your find that a major portion of your income must go to "pay rent" on somebody else's money, and have to make the minimum payment on your credit card debt, it's likely to take the remainder of your life, because minimum payments do little more than cover the cost of interest.

Here's more on those recent data from the Commerce Department showing that Americans are spending much less now, either as an act of will or because they've finally gotten tapped out. A major adjustment may be underway, as Americans accommodate themselves to a more realistic standard of living.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: Congressional Hearings (Friday, 10/31/08)
The Law Library of Congress and Google have combined their efforts to digitize the 75,000 Congressional Hearings that the Law Library presently has on paper.

As you may know, Google wants to digitize virtually all information and make it available to anybody in the world via the Internet. We're among the Internet's pioneers and have been publishing online several years longer than Google has existed, but they're probably more ambitious than anybody else.

If your mortgage payment has become a burden, help may be on the way (Wednesday, 10/29/08)
Officials of the Administration have been working out the details of a plan that could help millions of howeowners stay in their homes, as Vikas Bajaj and Eric Dash report in the New York Times.

Of course, if these people really OWNED their homes, there wouldn't be much question about their ability to stay in them. In many cases, "homeowners" is a euphemism. The fact is that somebody else owns them. The current problem is that it's hard to say who that "somebody" is.

At one time, we could say that local banks owned locally-mortgaged houses. However, a major reason for the current American financial glitch which has spread to much of the world, is that individual mortgages have been bundled together and sold to gkw ("god knows who"), removing any incentive for the local mortgage granter to exercise any responsibility whatever for determining if the resulting mortgage holder is somebody who may be likely to pay it back, or whether this is a person with no income, no assets, no employment, and not much good luck.

People whose 401(k)s have lost 40 percent of their value recently have a right to be angry at somebody, but who?

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: Poverty Estimates for the Developing World (Wednesday, 10/29/08)
Is the "developing world" really developing, or is it more accurate to call it the "underdeveloped world?" We can argue over whether the glass if 5 percent full or not. At any rate, the "lender of last resort," the World Bank, has updated its estimates of poverty around the globe.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: Demand for the Arts (Monday, 10/27/08)
President Kennedy once remarked that the arts seem to have more to do with our ends than our means. Despite common attitudes in the United States, art surely isn't a frivolous luxury. In fact, the popular culture is filled with it, although many people think that much better stuff is widely available.

In fact, it appears that art has existed about as long as modern humans, considering the wonderful prehistoric drawings on those caves in France. People seem to have an inherent need to express themselves, and the most gifted members of our species are able to capsulize experiences in music, images, or architecture that cannot be expressed adequately verbally. However, some persons have special gifts in the artful use of language as well.

The RAND Corporation has examined how American institutions are cultivating demand for the arts. Here's RAND's report: Arts Learning, Arts Engagement, and State Arts Policy.

Asian and European financial leaders will take consensus with them to Washington (Saturday, 10/25/08)
There will be a summit in Washington, D. C. in November, which Asian and European representatives will attend after reaching agreement in their own meeting. They're calling for fundamental reform of the entire global financial system.

Incidentally, many economic experts have expressed surprise that the financial crisis has occurred, at least on its present scale. In fact, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has said that it is a tsunami" that happens every hundred years, and expressed amazement that the financial crisis has become so broad.

Why the surprise? Is it because economists have come to believe too much in their models, even though most of them are based on assumptions known to be untrue or impossible, such as the concept of "perfect competition" or the assumption that individual consumers always behave rationally and in isolation from other individuals? Is there "slippage" over time until something big happens? We don't know either.

The job-cut blizzard (Tuesday, 10/21/08)
Bank of America is taking over Merrill Lynch, and Merrill's chief says it will result in thousands of job losses overall. It appears that 500 trading jobs already have been targeted for elimination.

The beleaguered electronics chain, Circuit City, has announced that it may shutter at least 150 stores in order to avoid having to seek bankruptcy protection. That would mean the loss of thousands of jobs.

Yahoo! fought a takeover effort from Microsoft earlier this year, but might have reason to reconsider now, if they had it to do over. Bloomberg News' Crayton Harrison says that executives at the company are discussing the possibility of eliminating 1,000 jobs.

If you've looking for a hot market during these difficult economic times, maybe it's a good time to go into the pink slip business, because all kinds of companies will need a lot of them. More seriously, virtually every industry will be laying off a lot of workers, if the economy really tanks as predicted.

Car dealers are trying to cope with catastrophic conditions in the United States, as manufacturers experience a meltdown. The financial crisis hits dealers in multiple ways. For one thing, people interested in purchasing a new car are having great difficulty obtaining financing. Secondly, most dealers maintain their inventories on borrowed money, and they're having great difficulty getting loans too. Here's more from Sharon Silke Carty and Chris Woodyard in Detroit.

Incidentally, our Dr. William Raynor of the State University of New York suggested months ago that a second stimulus plan should target the auto industry. It may be time to read his article again, even if you're not a government official struggling to develop effective policy.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: Francis Bacon (Sunday, 10/19/08)
Francis Bacon died fewer than 400 years ago, and, while that seems like a long time, modern humans have spent virtually all of their time on Earth as hunters and gatherers. In relation to the time that humans have been on the planet so far, let alone in relation to geologic time or astronomical time, the past several thousand years of recorded history itself is very brief. It's important to keep things in perspective.

Also, it's important to know something about our recent origins. Francis Bacon helped to invent the modern mind. In addition, of course, he was a discredited public official and sometimes is given credit for being the real author of Shakespeare's plays. In fact, we don't believe that Shakespeare wrote all those masterpieces either. Instead, we think it was another guy with the same name. Tee-hee.

Seriously, here is a wonderful interactive exhibition on Francis Bacon from Bacon's own Untied Kingdom.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: Inside the Middle Class (Saturday, 10/18/08)
Traditionally, we have regarded America's "middle-class" as made up of people of working age--as well as their children and older people--who do have to work for a living, but who usually have enough money left over for things like a few luxuries, occasional vacations, and other forms of recreation. The term "middle-class" has a different meaning in some other societies, such as the United Kingdom.

The Philadelphia-based Pew Research Center does its own take on America's middle class in this 169-page report.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: British Museum: Middle East (Friday, 10/17/08)
As we have asserted numerous times, the British Museum is a treasure trove. One easily can get lost in it for many hours, while neglecting or even forgetting about all of London's other wonderful attractions. If you're unable to visit in person, the great museum's Web presence is at least enough to whet your appetite.

For instance, here is what the British Museum has to say about the Middle East and its extremely long history. It's where Western Civilization began, after all.

September was a VERY bad month for retail sales (Wednesday, 10/15/08)
September was a VERY bad month for consumer sales in the United States, according to the Commerce Department. Retail sales declined almost twice as much as expected. American retailers largely depend on holiday spending. What sort of holiday season lies ahead?

Most economists expect that the American economy will go through a painful recession which may last as much as two years. The only question seems to be whether it already has begun. The latest retail sales data may help settle that argument.

Spending associated with Second World War is widely credited with ending the Great Depression. Will new fiscal policy be put in place by the new president? Can we expect a lot of government spending to create jobs and rebuild the American infrastructure, while greatly inflating the budget deficit and national debt? We don't know either.

China wants to expand its internal market now that its external market is contracting (Wednesday, 10/15/08)
Demand for Chinese goods in the United States and Western Europe has declined a bit, and, with the recession that is either coming or already underway, further decline is expected. As a consequence, the Chinese government has decided to work toward increasing domestic demand in order to support its own production and GDP growth. Here's more from Gillian Wong in Beijing.

America. has been consuming more than it has been producing for a long time, and China has been loaning the U. S. much of the money to make this spending possible. Now that the U. S. dollar has weakened, will this mean that China will no longer want to be America's big creditor? Probably not, because China needs the U.S. market. Not only to American consumers account for about two-thirds of the U.. S. gross domestic product, their spending accounts for about twenty percent of the global economy. The Chinese and others have a strong vested interest in American consumers and their spending.

Volcker says the United States economy is in recession (Tuesday, 10/14/08)
Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker says that the U. S. housing sector will see more losses and that the American economy already is in recession. Volcker was Fed Head before Allan Greenspan. He was appointed by Jimmy Carter and also served during the Reagan administration.

Incidentally, Mr. Volcker was on the Charlie Rose television program the other night, and, my gosh, how tall IS he? Charlie is tall and was a high school basketball star, but Paul Volcker seemed to tower over Rose. Mr. Volcker is 6 feet, 7 inches tall, in case anybody ever asks.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: How Latino Immigration is Changing America (Tuesday, 10/14/08)
Is it "Latino" or is it "Hispanic?" The latter implies a connection to Spain because of the language, while the former implies ethnicity and national origin from somewhere in Latin America. But, it isn't clear what people prefer to be called at this point.

For instance, some "African Americans" are Caucasian, if their ancestors came from northern Africa, which is okay, but they're usually not the people we have in mind when we use the term. Also, some "Native Americans" are Hawaiian, which is okay, but they're usually not the people we have in mind when we use the term. It probably doesn't make much difference, so long as we don't use the "hate language" that developed for no purpose other than expressing hate, and we don't hate anybody. We don't love everybody either, but we don't hate anybody.

Anyway, the reality is that most Americans have an ancestral background that is a complex mixture. For instance, Senator Barack Obama is "biracial," but usually is referred to as "black," even though he is as much "white" as he is "black." We recognize that it is largely because of the identity that he has chosen, but it also brings to mind the old South Africa and its arbitrary categorization of people.

For quite a long time in the United States, "black" was considered an insult, while "Negro" was considered "politically correct." Then, something resembling metathesis occurred during the 1960s, and things reversed. Now, "Negro" is considered an insult, while "black" seems the correct way to refer to somebody who has predominant sub-Saharan African ancestry.

At any rate, African Americans no longer make up the largest minority group in the United States. Instead, the largest group is Hispanic, er, Latino. Notice how we managed to avoid saying either "Negro" or "black," but we still don't know what to do with "Latino" or "Hispanic." We certainly aren't interested in insulting anyone.

Christopher Columbus started it all. We now know that he wasn't the first European to visit North America, and the old idea that he "discovered" America would be news to the millions of people who already lived here for thousands of years. Columbus did seem to be responsible for bringing European cultures, including the Spanish, into collision with the Americas. Some Americans celebrated Columbus Day yesterday, and some didn't, particularly those whose ancestors succumbed to the massacres and diseases that the Europeans brought with them.

Interestingly, it really wasn't very long ago when all this occurred. Some of us who are not yet the oldest people in North America nonetheless can remember more than 10 percent of the time since the first arrival of Columbus in the Americas.

Here's Pueblo, USA: How Latino Immigration is Changing America.

Paulson follows Buffett (Sunday, 10/12/08)
Warren Buffett may have influenced the Secretary of Treasury's plans when he dumped several billion dollars into Goldman Sachs by buying perpetual preferred stock. Here's more from MarketWatch's Greg Robb in Washington.

The current financial crisis is new, because humanity never before has lived in a world where nearly everything is connected to nearly everything else. The problem is unprecedented, because the conditions are entirely novel and outside previous human experience. The world's economic leaders aren't sure what to do about it or what will work or what the intended and unintended consequences of their actions might be.

Still, Treasury Secretary Paulson is fairly confident about what kinds of things WON'T work. For instance, he emphasizes that this is not a good time to become isolationist or protectionist.

Are the machines to blame? (Sunday, 10/12/08)
A blowtorch can be a wonderful thing when used properly. Not so much if you stick it in your ear.

Technology must be used appropriately, which is to say that KNOWLEDGE must be used appropriately, and this depends upon decisions made my human beings.

If "knowledge is power," can it overpower people? Only if we let it. It's easy to overstate the value of ignorance. In fact, ignorance has had a terrible record over many centuries and has caused enormous suffering.

True, math and computers are very powerful tools that can do a great deal of damage if used improperly, just as you can use a hammer either to build your house or pound the daylights out of your thumb. But, why would you want to do the latter?

Do science--CREATING knowledge--and technology--USING knowledge--have limitations? Of course, and why on Earth would anyone not want to take these limitations into account?

Richard Dooling of the New York Times examines the reservations expressed by Warren Buffett and others in relation to the current financial mess.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: Creating the United States (Friday, 10/10/08) (Saturday, 10/11/08)
The United States will undergo continuous creation throughout its time on this planet. Clearly, it is a very different country now from what it was at the beginning, and it will be a very different country still during the decades ahead. Here is Creating the United States from the Library of Congress.

Oh, him--ho hum (Friday, 10/10/08)
President Bush made another statement about the state of the U. S. economy today, but he didn't seem to make much news. The President's credibility has fallen so low that, if he were to say that the Sun first appears in the east each morning, few would believe him.

That's too bad, because the president's role is unique in U. S. society, and Americans should be prepared to stop what they're doing and listen closely to what their president has to say, particularly during a national crisis.

By contrast, it is said that President Roosevelt spoke to the nation only a few days after his inauguration in 1933 and seemed to have had an immediate impact on national confidence. That's the way it's supposed to be.

According to polls, President Bush's approval ratings are among the lowest in modern history, although those of Congress are even lower.

Also, we should remember that President Truman's ratings were even slightly lower than President Bush's, which probably had something to do with Truman's decision not to seek reelection in 1952. Still, his reputation has been resurrected over the years since, to the point where both contemporary Democratic and Republican politicians like to claim an identification with him.

Surely the most unpopular president in American history was Abraham Lincoln. Many Americans in both the North and the South absolutely HATED him. Still, he is an American icon now. His image is on the currency, for heaven's sake, so one can never know how things will turn out.

It could have been much different, of course. Lincoln's national image was helped enormously by the North's victory in the Civil War and the fact that the President was martyred a few days after Lee's defeat.

Moreover, given his unpopularity and the unpopularity of the Civil War, Lincoln and many others expected that he would lose the 1864 election. Actually, he probably would have, if his generals had not given him some last-minute victories during the fall of 1864, shortly before Election Day.

Lincoln's opponent, George McClellan, had campaigned by saying that he WOULD end the War by letting the South go. If he had won the 1864 election, England is likely to have recognized the Confederacy almost immediately, because they needed Southern cotton. Other nations are likely to have followed suit quickly, and the Confederacy probably would have annexed Mexico, meaning that there would have been two major powers on the North American continent ever since, as well as several wars between then and now.

Instead of being remembered as America's greatest president, Lincoln likely would be remembered as its all-time worst, because Americans still would be blaming him for starting the Civil War and for losing a major portion of the country.

Many Democrats feel an almost moral obligation to dislike President Bush, and, as we've said, if you really want to see smoke come out of the ears of major Republicans, just convince them that what they say really is off the record, then mention George W. Bush's name.

Why? The President considers himself to be a Republican, but his efforts to spread democracy throughout inhospitable parts of the world are most like the policies of Democratic Presidents John Kennedy and Woodrow Wilson. Moreover, he likes to say that he is a "conservative," but his administration has been responsible for expanding the size of government, running up the budget deficit and the national debt, and now presiding over the federal government's nationalization of key financial organizations. The irony is that a conservative Republican president may be remembered by history as the American president who most moved the country in the general direction of socialism.

Remember when several new hi-tech companies had a larger market cap than GM? Well, it may be true again, but for different reasons (Thursday, 10/9/08)
The first time was during the "dot-come-all-ye-faithful" tech bubble of the 1990s. It was during the period when Yahoo! paid either $5.7 or $5.9 billion for Broadcast.com and made Dan Rather's current boss, Dallas bartender Mark Cuban, a billionaire.

During this same period, AOL bought Time-Warner with inflated stock in the most infamous merger of modern times in which hundreds of millions of dollars worth of shareholder value was blown away in only three years.

Incidentally, we've heard both $5.7 billion and $5.9 billion quoted. We don't know what the correct amount was, but what's a couple of hundred million dollars during a time when young entrepreneurs kept talking about "burn rates?"

During the late 1990s, when a new Internet company with no profits at all could have a larger market capitalization than the venerable General Motors, we should have known that something was amiss. Now, as David Bailey reports, GM stock has fallen to its lowest point since the start of the Korean War, and this should mean that something is amiss too--except, this time, it's not because of inflated tech stock, but suppressed GM stock. Stay tuned.

The "under the mattress" plan (Thursday, 10/9/08)
Where's all that money that people are taking out of the stock market going? If you're thinking that you'd rather have cash than corporate stock, it may be time to think again. Cash isn't entirely secure either. Not that you won't be able to buy something with it, but, if you "lock in" your stock market losses and accept cash by selling your stock, you'll make yourself vulnerable to inflation. Here's more from Ron Lieber of the New York Times.

Why the winner of the next presidential election may feel like demanding a recount (Sunday, 10/5/08)
Either President McCain or President Obama will have a tough job beginning on January 20, 2009. Tom Raum tells about an economy that will worsen and remain fragile for sometime to come. And, of yes--despite the campaign rhetoric, that huge new financial commitment will greatly limit what the new president will be able to do, because there won't be any money for doing it.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: State of the World's Birds (Wednesday, 10/1/08)
As we indicated a couple of days ago, we are particularly interested in two fundamental and important questions: 1) WHAT DOES IT TAKE to be right about something?, and 2) WHAT DOES IT TAKE to be sure about nearly anything? Some humans have learned a lot relating to both of these questions during recent years.

Moreover, it makes a great deal of difference how we arrive at our conclusions about ourselves and our world. Some of the more grim chapters in human history have been related to commonly accepted beliefs that we now know clearly were not true, including but certainly not limited to the Nazi period in Germany, the Atlantic slave trade plus slavery in the Americas, and traditional assumptions and attitudes about women.

So, why on Earth should we care about birds? Nearly everybody has heard about why miners used to take a canaries into the mines with them. If you're several thousand feet below the surface of the Earth and your bird drops dead, it's probably time for you to get the hell out of there. Since your canary is more sensitive to noxious gasses such as carbon monoxide and methane, he's trying to tell you something, and guess what? You're next, unless you heed your bird's warning.

Similarly, if we see other species dying all around us, we now know that we can interpret this to mean that the climate is changing in ways that may soon affect us.

Also, decreasing diversity is a problem that can affect all of us soon too, because natural system--of which we are a part--depends on diversity. It may seem ironic that so many people throughout history have believed in "pure" types of people, when, all the time, we should be promoting "hybrid vigor," in people, as well as in other species. But, then, some of us know far more about those two key questions listed above than we used to. Incidentally, there are no such things as "pure" human types anyway.

Here's BirdLife International's State of the World's Birds.

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