and especially outrageous because it exposes Democratic leadership for doing corporate bidding.

In the forum, I posted a snippet, about how CA and IL are suing countrywide for deceptive loan practices. I guess those "special" loans to Congress also paid off.

Truly, everyone should be calling their reps on this one.

I've got another one just in case, BoA was one of the biggest offshore outsourcers there is. literally a guy committed suicide in their parking lot over their treatment of him.

abet I'll claim because of the China PNTR, which wasn't in effect or we felt the effects during the Clinton era, I don't think we'll get a surplus. Although did you know two central banks in Europe talked about a great depression in press releases this week? Shocked me actually.

Yes. It happens and rather frequently. However, the offenders often do not know that they are engaged in this activity. Inappropriate behavior and off-hand remarks will sneak up to bite you. As a corporate director for a fortune 500 company, I have been blindsided many times by disparaging remarks made by your management team? The managers don’t realize at the time that they are in a discrimination mode. I detail these likely events in my management book, Wingtips with Spurs. Usually they will ‘get it’ when their depositions start. When you hear the following phrases, stop the offender, offer some education, and hope to goodness no one else heard them. If it happens again with the same person, it may be time to sell the cow. The courts and juries will decide if the remarks are ‘stray comments’ or direct evidence of a discrimination mindset.
• “We need sharp, young people.”
• “We need people who can come in early and stay late.”
• “They’re dinosaurs.”
• “They’re too old to learn something new”
• “We want employees who are young, lean, and mean.”
• “They wouldn’t be able to keep up with the fast company
growth.”
• “We’re looking for longevity.”
• “We need some young blood in this department.”
If a manager allows a culture that tolerates remarks such as the ones above, then the manager will probably get what he or she is asking for. The great leader will remind management on a frequent basis that they should never forget silence is often the best answer. Michael L. Gooch, SPHR Author of Wingtips with Spurs: Cowboy Wisdom for Today’s Business Leaders http://www.michaellgooch.com

From Bloomberg:

India's central bank signaled it will keep raising borrowing costs after unexpectedly lifting interest rates for the second time in two weeks and telling lenders to keep more cash in reserve.

The Reserve Bank of India increased the repurchase rate by 0.5 percentage point late yesterday to 8.5 percent, the biggest move since 2000, and adjusted the cash-reserve ratio by a similar margin to 8.75 percent.

At least india is in better shape than Vietnam, recently touted as the new even-lower-cost producer than China: Vietnam's inflation rate is almost 30%! The US and Europe are probably both in recession now, and Asia is in a 1970s style inflationary boom. The next few years will be chaotic and especially hard to foresee as the disinflationary global boom of the last 25+ years ends.

Being a Baby Boomer, I find it incredible how blatant hiring practices are.

In my working life, I went from sales, through management, to executive management, and on to owning my own business. I'm proud to say I never used bias in the hiring and assignment criteria regarding any of the protected classes, including age, in my or my company's hiring. In fact I fired one so-called Human Resources Specialist [an oxymoron onto itself] for trying to do so. Strange part, she thought nothing of it; didn't understand why it shouldn't be allowed.

I'm about to start a new company. The reason being after closing my last one after sixteen years, I thought I'd go to work for ten years or so working for someone else, and do what I've always enjoyed the most, Selling. That was a year ago. I'm still not hired. I know what's going on. And the reality is there is no sense in arguing the point. Another tact is necessary to with this challenge. (Read on.)

I have my own personal opinion on what's going on as well. Maybe some of the rest of you who are BB's as well can relate:

In our lives, we have lived and grown through periods where we have seen at least 3 generations come after us. GenX, Y or B2, and now Z. When we grew up in the 50's and 60's, we had a culture where education, growth, accomplishment were the underlying themes to how the US functioned. We had a new national highway system that required higher educations to be part of; we had a new space program that emphasized competitiveness, knowledge, and education. We had sports heroes who happened to play on 'teams', but you never heard them emphasising how they were 'team members' or 'team players'. (Today nearly all those in companies who tout their organizations have no clue what it means to be part of an actual TEAM. It's all buzz words they echo from the latest train seminar they went to.)

We were raised on competitiveness, intelligence, and experimentation. We actually changed the world in a great many ways. The country was progressive. Our society was a model of excellence. We were competitive.

Then along came GenX. If you remember, we couldn't understand why we couldn't motivate them. They became known as the Slackard generation. They also became protected. They invented political correctness, the schools dropped the bar for passing them through, televisions and video games replaced living a real life in a real world. All that counted was that everyone staying out of their face. (I can go on with more details.)

Well, they aged like the rest of us. Now they are in their late 30's, and are the corporate managers making such decisions as we are seeing documented in articles like this one.

But whoa are they. What they don't realize is that there is a generation coming right behind them; and that generation is the children of us Baby Boomers. That new GenY generation were raised with our ethics, methods, competitiveness, drive to question, accomplish and succeed. The X'ers are about to be 'the old ones'. How funny it will be when they find they are laid off and not rehired because of the dirty little secrets of unspoken, baseless policies they instituted.

Personally, if my new business idea flies, I'm contemplating only hiring those over 50. Why? It's simple. I know that as a whole our generation is far more educated and far, far more competitive. We had to really learn principles behind the instruction, our tests were far more stringent, and we weren't 'socially promoted' through the school systems. We either learned or flunked. (How many people do you hear about flunking or repeating a grade any more?) We are also healthier. Go to any athletic club and see who's playing racquetball, squash, handball, the real difficult and demanding sports. It's Boomers. (It doesn't take my athleticism to stay upright on a stairmaster; just a deadened brain without focus.)

Boomers as a whole are far less 'FAT'. Our ingrained socialization included going outside and playing as kids, 'without headphones on'. We played sports, were competitive, and felt good whether we won or lost, didn't make any difference. The fact that we showed up on the field and played hard is what counted. Winning was a celebration, losing was to find out how you could get better and then go do it. Today, they don't even keep scores in most sports for growing kids. They think it's more important that everyone win every game; as if that happens in the world, adult or otherwise......

We didn't grow up drugged-up on Ridlin and all the other pharmaceuticals. Our parents cared enough to give us a whack or three when we needed it, and it worked. The kids that were hyperactive grew out of it. It's normal for many kids to grow through development phases. For the other generations, they don't have the patience to wait for their kids to grow out of anything; it's easier to let some quack dumb them down. It's convenient because both parents work slave hours, and can't take the time to be parents. (That's okay, pharma makes billions and all those investors get a check; except for the kids who are treated that way.)

So where am I going with this? It's simple: Why hire GenX? Who wants that level of dysfunction, laziness, apathy, lacking drive, and poor judgment? And did I mention all that Type II diabetes they bring along due to eating so terribly? No, I don't think so. I'll go with the proven, the experienced, the learned, the accomplished, those who have had the chance to make the rudimentary mistakes earlier in their careers, and now know better and understand the systems better.

So you think there's age discrimination? I think so too. I just think it's time for some push-back. That's the new tact. Funny part is, the law for age discrimination as it reads now, supports my idea.

My attitude towards all of this is the situation a matter of least objectionable candidate and the race close or not. I assuredly agree with 3rd party candidates that the two parties lock them out completely so this ends up being a choice of corporate/super rich/special interest agenda with a woman's choice or without so often.

I can tell you what the Clintonistas strategy is. That's to vote McCain and since he's just a disaster plus 71, that will open the window for a Dem in 2012 certainly. They don't want 8 years of Obama plus they are royally pissed, especially regarding the sexism.

Myself, I think we should try to find some worthy Congressional candidates and try to help their campaign by volunteering and blogging about them.

We did manage to get some very good people into Congress in '06, the problem is they do not have seniority and are assuredly not in the majority.

I'll say something sacrilege on here now, since the world is so partisan, but Chuck Grassley, Iowa Senator who is a Republican has been Professional workers best friend for some time now and sometimes literally by himself. Because of people like him, I'm not so willing to swear alliance to vote Democratic like a zombie.

In terms of overall positions, policy, Nader has represented pretty much most of my views for a long time. I don't know why he gets so much shit when if Al Gore had not been so DLC, so "WTO", it wouldn't have been even close.

So where does that leave us?

Obama has got to be better than McCain.

Remember, the Democratic party has a larger, but less loyal, base than the Republicans.  I'm a life-long Democrat who talks frequntly to my congressman.  I can pass on this election altogether.  I can support Nader.  If we make enough noise, they will listen. 

Health care for Baby Bearing years is costly too. I do not believe it is the health care issue. I believe it has more to do with remaking the workplace society. Veteran employees teach the new hire more than the needed information to get the job done. They teach the new hire about working, about labor laws, about benefits, about saving plans, pensions, OSHA, workman comp issues, grievance filing procedures, etc. The veteran employee teaches the young things that the employer does not want the new hire to know about. So many employers segregate the veteran employees from the freshman employees. Forced retirement, layoffs, etc, ensures employers can get rid of the old and experienced and in with the new naive. I see it all the time. I work alot of temporary positions. The workplace is filled with the young that are unaware of labor laws. They work through lunches, breaks, etc. They accept additional responsibilities without the compensation. They stay late and do not report their overtime. They get hurt at work and do not report the injury for workman compensation. They put up with unsafe and unsanitary conditions because they do not know they have rights.

We really should consider VATS and tariffs on imported goods. this is largely where the US got most of its revenue pre IRS

we should also tax mineral extraction such as oil- this is an asset that is owned by the US citizen

We should also return to a higher tax bracket for the highest incomes and wealth

As Theodore Roosevelt once said (and I paraphrase since I don't have my Bartletts handy) The wealthy benefit more from the privileges of a free society and therefore have an obligation and responsibility to contribute back to it.