Why Are We Being Forced Into Recession?

2008-09-30T05:05:00.000-07:00

I'm amazed at the amount of UK reporting on recessions and economic slowdowns that are full of weasel words!

For instance, take today's reporting of the drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Everything is full of "biggest one-day drop ever" and "massive slump". It was in numbers, 770 points, but not in percentage terms. Only 6.9%.

Yet when you look back at previous large falls, October 1929, was a fall of 22%, albeit across three days of trading on the 24th, 28th and 29th. And 19th October 1987 was even larger at 32%.

But we aren't told these percentages. Just that it was the "biggest one-day drop ever!"

It's like the results of the poll that were announced a few weeks back that said that three million people in the UK are afraid of losing their job. No details were given for:

who conducted the poll,
what the sample size was, or
where the people who were surveyed came from.

I'm used to hearing things like "In a survey of 10,000 households across the UK that was conducted by the Gallup Organisation this week, 10 out of every 6 people...." But no such details were provided. More weasel words!

Wonder why the government wants to talk us all into a recession?

Is it because they want people to stop spending and start saving more? Like they do in Japan? Here's an interesting article about the Japanese bailout that occurred in the 1990's.

I wonder if banks that are "flush with cash" from savings don't have to have such an interconnected and complicated set of borrowings between themselves.

Advance Australia Fair

2008-09-22T15:01:00.000-07:00

Wow.

Didn't expect this to inspire the first post but the Aussie national anthem, Advance Australia Fair, has words that can be sung to a whole stack of other melodies.

For instance, Adam Hills, who inspired this search, has this post on YouTube of him singing Advance Australia Fair to Barnsey's (Jimmy Barnes) tune Working Class Man.

Since then, I've heard, and found, that Advance Austraia Fair can be sung along to the tunes of:

The theme from The Beverley Hillbillies.
The theme from Gilligan's Island - BTW will Gilligan ever get off that island? No. Never. According this excellent article by Clay Shirkey! Whose new book (Amazon link) (Amazon UK link), that expands on the theme in this article, should be compulsory reading for everyone who works in this zoo we call IT, development, software development, yadda-yadda! VBG! (To quote Lenny). IMHO natch.
The Beach Boys/Chuck Berry song "Surfing USA" - Hmmm. When will they release "Chuck Berry's Golden Decade" on CD/MP3/etc.
The theme from The Monkees.
The John Paul Young song Love is in the Air.

Anyone have any other tunes that they know of?

cheers,

Rob

The Mind of Rob

Why Are We Being Forced Into Recession?

Advance Australia Fair