The American Output Gap Trap – Part I: We have three years to escape or we’re dead meat - Eric Janszen

[Slimprofits]

Re: The American Output Gap Trap – Part I: We have three years to escape or we’re dead meat - Eric Janszen

The Output Gap Trap goes mainstream, sort of. I've seen several references to this from Bullhorn sources over the last couple of days:

Economists say the U.S. economy must create 200,000 new jobs per month in order to bring down the unemployment rate.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/08/05/wh...#ixzz1UA8m5SOv

MSNBC and elsewhere...

[Slimprofits]

Re: The American Output Gap Trap – Part I: We have three years to escape or we’re dead meat - Eric Janszen

Thanks for bringing this one back out again after two quarters of results, babbitted

This is one of my favorite and most useful articles by EJ. The 'gap trap' is a concept that almost anyone can wrap their heads around.

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: The American Output Gap Trap – Part I: We have three years to escape or we’re dead meat - Eric Janszen

Thanks for bringing this one back out again after two quarters of results, babbitted

[Slimprofits]

Re: The American Output Gap Trap – Part I: We have three years to escape or we’re dead meat - Eric Janszen

The contraction phase of the Great Recession left America with a $1 trillion gap between actual and potential economic growth. The economy must grow at a rate of at least 4% per year starting now in order to reach growth potential before the next recession opens the gap further a few years from now. If we fail to meet this deadline, the American political economy will enter a second circle of hell as chronic economic pain from high prices and low wages morphs into a self-destructive cycle of class conflict and political deadlock. The stakes are high, yet the only escape from the output gap trap isn’t even in the menu of mainstream debate.

Real gross domestic product -- the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States -- increased at an annual rate of 1.8 percent in the first quarter of 2011, (that is, from the fourth quarter to the first quarter), according to the "second" estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the fourth quarter, real GDP increased 3.1 percent.
http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/nati...ewsrelease.htm

[Chris Coles]

Re: The American Output Gap Trap – Part I: We have three years to escape or we’re dead meat - Eric Janszen

Shiny wins that bet. This cow is full of bull.

Thanks for the heads up Wriggly, best laugh I have had in weeks.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: The American Output Gap Trap – Part I: We have three years to escape or we’re dead meat - Eric Janszen

Sssshh! don't tell everyone, but I do believe he is a "she" .... leastways I think so.....

Shiny wins that bet. This cow is full of bull.

[Chris Coles]

Re: The American Output Gap Trap – Part I: We have three years to escape or we’re dead meat - Eric Janszen

Thank you again, Mr. Cow. As always, you are a fountain of knowlege.

Sssshh! don't tell everyone, but I do believe he is a "she" .... leastways I think so.....

[shiny!]

Re: The American Output Gap Trap – Part I: We have three years to escape or we’re dead meat - Eric Janszen

Not "Sun is doomed", rather "Sun was doomed." Oracle completed the acquisition of Sun on January 27, 2010.

OpenOffice has gone its separate way. At OpenOffice forks away from Oracle, now called LibreOffice (dated September 28, 2010), we learn:
P.S. -- You can find LibreOffice at http://www.documentfoundation.org/download/ while OpenOffice can still be found at http://www.openoffice.org/ . Presently, OpenOffice is what has been and remains the released product, is what is included in various Linux distributions, and is available for Windows, Mac, and Solaris platforms. LibreOffice is at "Release Candidate One" of their first release. I have not been following this, but I'd guess that the primary energy of development is now focused on LibreOffice, working from and continuing the OpenOffice source code base.

You see here a major advantage of Open Source projects. If they have a sufficiently energetic development and user base, then the demise or takeover of their corporate funder does not risk killing the product.

Thank you again, Mr. Cow. As always, you are a fountain of knowlege.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: The American Output Gap Trap – Part I: We have three years to escape or we’re dead meat - Eric Janszen

If Sun is doomed will this have any effect on OpenOffice.org?

Not "Sun is doomed", rather "Sun was doomed." Oracle completed the acquisition of Sun on January 27, 2010.

OpenOffice has gone its separate way. At OpenOffice forks away from Oracle, now called LibreOffice (dated September 28, 2010), we learn:

The OpenOffice.org project is separating itself from database giant Oracle. OpenOffice.org is now called The Document Foundation, the future of which will be determined by a committee of developers and project managers, taking the responsibility for OpenOffice away from a single company. Furthermore, the actual OpenOffice.org suite of programs is getting a temporary name: LibreOffice. Add all that to the fact that OpenOffice was once called OpenSolaris, and we have a serious problem of brand recognition on our hands.

LibreOffice will keep its name until Oracle decides whether it wants to donate the OpenOffice.org brand to the foundation, which in the meantime has invited Oracle to rejoin their new community by applying for membership. Initial supporters already include the Free Software Foundation, Open Source Initiative, Canonical, Red Hat, Novell, the GNOME foundation, and Google.

P.S. -- You can find LibreOffice at http://www.documentfoundation.org/download/ while OpenOffice can still be found at http://www.openoffice.org/ . Presently, OpenOffice is what has been and remains the released product, is what is included in various Linux distributions, and is available for Windows, Mac, and Solaris platforms. LibreOffice is at "Release Candidate One" of their first release. I have not been following this, but I'd guess that the primary energy of development is now focused on LibreOffice, working from and continuing the OpenOffice source code base.

You see here a major advantage of Open Source projects. If they have a sufficiently energetic development and user base, then the demise or takeover of their corporate funder does not risk killing the product.

[shiny!]

Re: The American Output Gap Trap – Part I: We have three years to escape or we’re dead meat - Eric Janszen

If Sun is doomed will this have any effect on OpenOffice.org?

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: The American Output Gap Trap – Part I: We have three years to escape or we’re dead meat - Eric Janszen

We probably got a little too aggressive near the end and probably [0]open sourced too much

Eh - Sun was doomed either way.

The top to bottom, chips (Sparc) to hardware to languages (Java) to operating systems to applications complete integration business model fails anytime that the dominant low cost leaders at each layer (Intel, PC's, C, Linux, GNU, etc. in Sun's case) are each both cheaper and better (more engineering resources behind them) than you can afford the R&D to compete with, and can be assembled at nearly zero additional cost. DEC (Digital) and SGI and many others have run into the same buzz saw over the years.

[charliebrown]

Re: The American Output Gap Trap – Part I: We have three years to escape or we’re dead meat - Eric Janszen

Well said.

I really would like a link or something to say right now how are we invested? I know the general thesis, but sometimes that takes searching through the web site. I too caught the tech wave, got out. I was not completely out, because I switched from tech stocks to very boring value stocks that really did not take a big hair cut. Key there was stratospheric PE's. I caught the mini wave from 1000 - 1500 2003 - 2007 and got out again in time. The key then was the spread between corps and treasuries. I wish I would have bought the itulip strategy hook line and sinker, but I moved in cautiously, buying my first gold around 700, and dollar cost averaging in. without itulip. I would not have 16% in gold, i would probably have nothing in gold as just looking at the price it appears too high. I do not really have the treasury position, i did not think that t's would rally with this storm. I just started rebuilding this postion with the recent weakness but only 2 year duration.

I like the idea of multifamily, but I don't want to put money into some private company. I enjoy and also feel empowered, by managing my own brokerage account. There are aparment reits out there. Maybes someone can do an analysis of what the best ones are. Maybe it wont go up like EJs idea, but if it beats, bonds then i would not be dissapointed.

drifting away from the itulip allocation, i have oil trusts, energy, materials and utility stocks. 15% I'm waiting for another fire storm before moving my allocation to equities higher. gold is always bought on the dips. i have 5% stake in silver.

[Chris Coles]

Re: The American Output Gap Trap – Part I: We have three years to escape or we’re dead meat - Eric Janszen

There is another side to this issue, Chris.

The open source work that I have done (in the Linux kernel mostly) has gone on to provide substantially larger benefit, to a wider class of users, for a far longer period of time, in part as an essential basis for work that others have done layered on top of my work ... than anything I did in proprietary software.

On the other side, the open source work that others have done has provided me with far better, richer and more valuable software (by my rather geeky standards) than anything that has come from the proprietary side.

I will always be grateful that I had the opportunity to share such wealth, giving and receiving, with mutual benefit to many people around the world.

This is why I suggested above that this is not an either-or question. Some proprietary ownership and control of ones market and product is required. Some sharing of ideas, infrastructure, understanding and common technology is also required. People naturally understand this in families and close communities. There is shared work, knowledge, tools, and lodging, and there are personal possessions and private labors.

Vibrant communities, including virtual and technology driven spheres, work at both layers at the same time.

I did enough proprietary work to live well and retire modestly. I did enough openly shared work to put a smile on my face when I look back at the contributions I was able to make.

It's a bit of both, Chris.

Wriggly,

found this today on Slashdot and thought of you. Particularly this: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/12...d_open_source/

Chris.

| Ex-Sun CEO Warns Oracle of Death By Open Source
| from the everyone's-got-a-narrative dept.
| posted by timothy on Wednesday December 08, @08:05 (Oracle)
|
| https://developers.slashdot.org/story/10/12/08/0256257/Ex-Sun-CEO-Warns-Oracle-of-Death-By-Open-Source?from=newsletter
+---------------------------------
gearystwatcher writes "Former Sun CEO Scott McNealy talks to The Reg on where things went wrong, and acquisition by Oracle: 'We probably got a little too aggressive near the end and probably [0]open sourced too much and tried too hard to appease the community and tried too hard to share,' McNealy said. 'You gotta take care of your shareholders or you end up very vulnerable like we got. We were a wonderful acquisition b� we got stolen for a song at the bottom of the Dow.'"
Discuss this story at:
https://developers.slashdot.org/story/10/12/08/0256257/Ex-Sun-CEO-Warns-Oracle-of-Death-By-Open-Source?from=newsletter#commentlisting
Links:
0. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/12/07/mcnealy_sun_and_open_source/

[Slimprofits]

Re: The American Output Gap Trap – Part I: We have three years to escape or we’re dead meat - Eric Janszen

David Stockman: two-thirds of the jobs which have been created in the last year - the jobs which everyone talks about each month - are only part-time jobs, averaging $20,000 per year...

[jk]

Re: The American Output Gap Trap – Part I: We have three years to escape or we’re dead meat - Eric Janszen

i used to read alan newman's crosscurrents [cross-currents.net] and he had a way of loading a page "in draft" or as some sort of preliminary loading [i obviously am not familiar with the relevant technology] which prevented copying. perhaps someone versed in this area can illuminate newman's method, which would provide a solution with static charts.