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Digr, read my PM to you. You want to expose GE, or get into a pissing duel with Matt? Sure looks like the latter.
AK
I was, but I came here to see who was YAKing it up <g>.
Kudos, Digr -- You made a post without a "but" -- #msg-551229
gg, I don't believe Sheriff Matt allows the term "pumper clown" unless, of course, he's the one using it, so I'd advise you to watch your language lest you wind up in the Jailhouse as a guest, rather than a visitor. And speaking of that dreary place, you said in reference to Digrdoug
he doesn't want to play nice - so he's taking his marbles home.
Actually, he does not seem to want to play at all. And as to his "marbles" I thought Matt was helping him find them. You say he's taking them home -- do you know something? Did I miss a post? I thought Digr was off in the shower with the boys, and that's why he wasn't posting.
I do the night shift while the boys are off playing, err, I mean getting cleaned up. Can't quite figure Digr out. So many have welcomed him here, yet he only wants to talk to Sheriff Matt. Even ex-Warden Fred took the time to write insightful doggerel, and not so much as a thank you, LOL, or an explicative. Guess when you get stuck out in the wilds in South America it affects your social skills. Little does Digr know he and Churak speak the same mother tongue.
AK
Any idea why that could be?
Looks like you need a cold shower to wake up.
No, I'm here -- they're there -- I think Sheriff Matt is supervising. Don't you be makin' no trouble now!
They are in the showers, trying to pick up Churak's dropped bar of soap. You going to join them?
Digr, remember when you were trying to teach your kid sports, and he answered, “I’d play by the rules, but…”, or “I was going to ______, but…
Do you remember what you told him?
Do you remember when you were teaching your kid to drive, and you told him he was going too fast, and he said, “But Dad, you go over the speed limit.”
What did you say to him then?
Perhaps you would take a few minutes and re-read your last five posts. The word “but” seems very much entrenched in your writing style. If you didn’t take it from your kid, why should Matt take it from you? As you have so delicately pointed out, you do have a few years on him.
I also noticed you posted here “SI are just a bunch of prudes that have no sense of humour since it changed hands.” Curious, Digr, you are posting on a thread that is full of humour, but you ignore it. Forgive me, for some reason you sound like a very angry person; if you are using the message boards to vent your anger, iHub may not be the right place for you.
Give the Jailhouse a chance for you to find the humor you profess to want, and we’ll help you improve your posts to more effectively get your point across.
As to pump and dumpers, I do know that unless you can demonstrate that is what a person is doing, you cannot use that term on iHub. That is not to say that such people cannot be dealt with, and it does not necessarily take Matt’s intervention. I suggest you go over to the YAKC board here on iHub and review it, then if you have any questions, post them over here in the Jailhouse.
My question to you: do you want to post or do you want to fight? You obviously know a lot, and iHub is a good place for people who are tired of the RB crappola. You are tired of that, aren’t you?
AK
How can the "Full-Text" search function be used for Private Messages I have sent or that I have received?
"Before anyone asks, let me make it clear that the term 'circumspection' does NOT involve the removal, surgically or otherwise, of any part of the genitalia .... in fact, a case could be made, that in some circumstances it could act to prevent such a lightening of the lode."
================
marcos, thanks for the clarification. Given you are so erudite, perhaps you would assign a grade to this answer on a high school history test:
It was an age of great inventions and discoveries. Gutenberg invented removable type and the Bible. Another important invention was the circulation of blood. Sir Walter Raleigh is a historical figure because he invented cigarettes and started smoking. Sir Francis Drake circumsized the world with a 100-foot clipper.
AK
I'm smokin' now! Yup, and blowin' smoke too!
Greenspan speech. Cannabis, you decide whether it is positive or not...
AK
================
Remarks by Chairman Alan Greenspan
Productivity
At the U.S. Department of Labor and American Enterprise Institute Conference, Washington, D.C.
October 23, 2002
The increase in nonfarm business output per hour over the past year will almost surely be reported as one of the largest advances, if not the largest, posted over the past thirty years. We at the Federal Reserve, along with our colleagues in government and the private sector, are struggling to account for so strong a surge. We would not be particularly puzzled if the increases in output per hour were occurring during a period of very rapid economic growth, such as has often attended recoveries from steep recessions. Historically, such recoveries have allowed overhead and maintenance employee hours to be spread over a rapidly increasing level of production. But during the past year we averaged only modest economic growth.
The reported estimates of output per hour do not appear to have resulted principally from faulty data or measurement error. Whether output is measured from the expenditure side or from the independently estimated income side of the national accounts, and whether hours of work are measured from the survey of establishments or the survey of households, the same basic result is clearly evident: an impressive gain in output per hour over the past year. This conclusion is buttressed by recent sizable increases estimated for labor productivity for the manufacturing sector, derived from a data system that, for the most part, is independent of the national accounts.
To be sure, because the productivity feast of recent quarters has been so difficult to explain, many analysts expect a productivity famine in the period ahead. Others, however, are not so pessimistic. Regardless of how events unfold, we will need to confront difficult questions posed by the recent performance of productivity, if we are to properly evaluate economic developments going forward.
Indeed, if the recent surge in measured productivity is not a statistical mirage, or if it is not expunged by data revisions, then we need to ask about its possible causes.
Clearly, over the past year corporate managers, confronted with tepid demand and a virtual disappearance of pricing power, have struggled to maintain profit margins. With price increases largely off the table and demand soft, lowered costs have become the central focus of achieving increased profitability. On a consolidated basis for the corporate sector as a whole, lowered costs are generally associated with increased output per hour.
Much of the recent reported improvements in cost control doubtless have reflected the paring of so called "fat" in corporate operations--fat that accumulated during the long expansion of the 1990s when management attention was focused primarily on the perceived profitability of expansion and less on the increments to profitability that derive from cost savings.1 Managers, now refocused, are pressing hard to identify and eliminate those redundant or non-essential activities that accumulated in the boom years.
Now, with margins under pressure, businesses effectively have been reorganizing work processes and re-allocating resources so as to use them more productively. Moreover, for capital with active secondary markets, such as computers and networking equipment, productivity may also have been boosted by a reallocation to firms that could use the equipment more efficiently. For example, healthy firms reportedly have been buying equipment from failed dot-coms.
Businesses also may have managed to eke out increases in output per hour by employing their existing workforce more intensively. Unlike cutting fat, which permanently elevates the levels of productivity, these gains in output per hour are often temporary, as more demanding workloads eventually begin to tax workers and impede efficiency.
Perhaps the return to a low-inflation environment in recent years in itself explains the intensification of competitive pressures, which has been a spur to the growth of productivity. Indeed, the data do suggest a relationship between inflation and productivity growth over the long run. But that statistical relationship is modest at best and inferring causality is complicated by a circularity that arises because increased growth in output per hour depresses unit labor costs and, hence, prices.
Taken at face value, historical relationships suggest low inflation would explain very little of the most recent surge in output per hour. To be sure, while lack of pricing power and associated competitive pressures may have initiated much of the cost cutting and organizational changes that have occurred, it will ultimately be the quantity of fat in the system and the opportunities for productive reorganization that will determine the potential gains in productivity.
Only in retrospect, if then, will we be able to ascertain how much of the past year's elevated growth in output per hour was transitory--that is, growth that resulted from cutting of fat, reorganizing operations, and more fully exploiting technologies already embedded in the existing capital stock. Such improvements, even though they are long-lasting, are, of course, a level adjustment with no necessary implications for productivity growth going forward. Moreover, there is an upper limit to the amount of output that can be produced from an existing facility, even in the short run, no matter how intensively it is employed and how much fat is taken out of the system. Corporate management can not unendingly reduce cost without at some point curtailing output or embodying new technologies through investment to sustain it.
The recent upsurge in the growth of output per hour has understandably renewed interest in the relationship between investment and so-called adjustment costs. Firms do not necessarily reap the full benefits of their capital investments immediately because of the disruptions to activity that can be initially created when new equipment is installed; these disruptions may include learning to use the new equipment and software or getting the new machines to mesh with existing systems. Thus, although capital investment ultimately boosts output per hour, these adjustment costs temper the initial benefits to increased production obtained from new investment.
It is likely that as capital spending fell over the past couple of years, so did the disruptions that accompanied its installation. Moreover, the dislocations associated with the substantial investment of the late 1990s and 2000 also likely were waning. This lower level of disruption provides a boost to growth in output per hour for a time. How much remains an open question. The quantitative evidence on the magnitude of this effect spans the range from significant to small.2
The ability of businesses to boost productivity with what seems to be minimal new capital investment over the past two years suggests that output per hour growth in the later years of the 1990s likely trailed the growth in underlying productivity in those years. If this inference is accurate, part of that earlier growth in underlying productivity is being reflected in today's gains in output per hour.
The difficulty in explaining the recent past is most evident when we decompose gains in output per hour into the contribution from changes in worker quality, the amount of capital used by workers--that is, capital deepening--and the contribution from all other factors, a notion that economists label "multifactor productivity." By definition, multifactor productivity includes technical change, organizational improvements, cyclical factors, and myriad other influences on output per hour, apart from capital investment. With capital spending sluggish over the past year, and no evident acceleration of worker quality, it is likely that growth of multifactor productivity accounts for an appreciable portion of the rise in output per hour.
Based on historical experience, it seems improbable that all of the large rise in multifactor productivity could be attributed to cyclical or transitory factors. Conversely, it seems very unlikely that all of the increase in the growth of productivity could be attributed to structural influences. The truth, presumably, lies between these two extremes, but where has yet to be determined. At minimum, however, it seems reasonable to conclude that the step-up in the pace of structural productivity growth that occurred in the latter part of the 1990s has not, as yet, faltered.
Indeed, high growth of productivity over the past year merely extends recent experience. Over the past seven years, output per hour has been growing at an annual rate of more than 2-1/2 percent, on average, compared with a rate of roughly 1-1/2 percent during the preceding two decades. Although we cannot know with certainty until the books are closed, the growth of productivity since 1995 appears to be among the largest in decades.
Our nation has had previous concentrated bursts of technological innovation. In those instances, business practices slowly adapted to take advantage of the new technologies. The result was an outsized increase in the level of productivity spread over a decade or two, with unusually rapid growth rates observed during the transition to the higher level.
For example, as the benefits that attended the development of the electric dynamo and the internal combustion engine more than a century ago became manifest in both the capital stock and the organization of production, the growth of labor productivity surged. From an average annual rate of 1-3/4 percent in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, it jumped to a 3-3/4 percent rate in the decade following World War I. Subsequently, productivity growth returned to a 1-3/4 percent pace. Then, for the quarter century following World War II, productivity growth rose to an average rate of 2-3/4 percent before subsiding to a pace of 1-1/2 percent annually from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s.3
Arguably, the pickup in productivity growth since 1995 largely reflects the ongoing incorporation of innovations in computing and communications technologies into the capital stock and business practices. Indeed, the transition to the higher permanent level of productivity associated with these innovations is likely not yet completed.
Surveys of purchasing managers in recent quarters consistently indicate that an appreciable share reports that their firms still have a considerable way to go in achieving the desired efficiency from the application of technology to supply management. If the backlog of unexploited long-term profitable technologies remains high, it should be assumed that once currently elevated risk premiums and the heightened cost of equity capital (and some debt) recedes, or cash flows expand, new productivity-enhancing capital investment will pick up.
Further evidence that firms still have not fully adapted their operations to the latest state of technology also is provided in a recent study4 that attempts to measure the "technological gap"--that is, the difference between the productivity of leading-edge capital and the average productivity embodied in the current capital stock. This gap is estimated to be quite wide currently, which suggests that there are still significant opportunities for firms to upgrade the quality of their technology and with it the level of productivity.
The paper presented by Stephen Oliner and Dan Sichel this morning also provides a basis for arguing that a significant portion--and possibly all--of the productivity revival of the mid-1990s is sustainable. Based on an analysis of a multisector growth model, their work suggests that a range for sustainable growth in labor productivity over the next decade is 2 percent to 2-3/4 percent per year. Jorgenson, Ho, and Stiroh use a similar methodology and find a range from a little less than 1-1/2 percent to about 3 percent with a central tendency of around 2-1/4 percent.5
These estimates are clearly plausible, but history does raise some warning flags concerning the length of time that productivity growth continues elevated. Gains in productivity remained quite rapid for years after the innovations that followed the surge of inventions a century ago. But in other episodes, the period of elevated growth of productivity was shorter. Regrettably, examples are too few to generalize. Hence, policymakers have no substitute for continued close surveillance of the evolution of this current period of significant innovation.
* * *
In summary then: given the difficult adjustments that our economy has been undergoing, long-term productivity optimism may currently seem a bit out of place. It may appear even more so in the months ahead should output per hour soften following this period of outsized gains. Nevertheless, it is both remarkable and encouraging that, despite all that has transpired over the past couple of years, a significant step-up in the growth of productivity appears to have persisted.
Tony, you can't afford iHub membership, you are out of work, you are trying to daytrade, and you have credit card debt?
Listen to Patrick Bateman and Zeev. Are you sure you know what you are doing?
I played over my head in the 70's. Took me two years of working overtime to pay everybody off.
Good luck to you...
AK
gg, please read #msg-548172, and the message referred to therein, then adjust your verbiage accordingly. Thank you.
AK
It says much about you, that you felt no need to ask about 'rangatang'
I dunno what it says about me. "Wetcoast" came before "rangatang", and that's where I got stumped. Thanks for your explanation. Moving along, what's a "rangatang"?, and then tell me what asking, or not asking, tells you about me.
AK
p.s. If it's not nice, please PM. I'm very sensitive.
O.K. -- but don't try that dropping your bar of soap in the shower trick -- Digr's spent time in mining camps, so I'm sure he'll get on to you (ha, ha) real quick.
AK
Digr, in all seriousness, talk to Churak on this thread. Although we joke around a lot, we CAN help you, independent of Matt. If you read this thread you know he (Matt) is frequently the butt of our humor, and we've all had our disagreements with him. We've learned to "get over it", but knowing the limits and just when to stretch them is an acquired skill, and Churak is WELL versed in this.
Take advantage of the poor guy -- he's not doing anything productive today anyway. <g>
AK
Maybe Digr is shy?
Carolyn...something about your banana.
AK
(I'm going back to sleep. Cool it, eh?)
Charitable? Please.
AK
(please respond to Churak -- he's on duty just now; this is my nap time -- maybe you could keep the noise down?)
Try Computer Learning thread (board 470)
iHub has a computer help thread. Try that too.
Maybe you can get Troy to respond on this, but fledgling lawyers work 100+ plus hours a week, and also don't get but a smallish percentage for the time they bill out. All I know is that when you NEED a mechanic, lawyer, or plumber, you pay!
AK
BoP, not sure of your claim. Ever figure out the "billing rate" on an auto mechanic that uses Flat Hourly rates to charge for specific tasks; you might be surprised.
AK
gotmilk, can't spell "Orgasmic"??
AK
Marcos, what's "wetcoast" mean? Thnx. AK
SKX. Skechers 3rd-qtr earnings rise, cuts 4th-qtr view
October 23, 2002 07:48:00 AM ET
MANHATTAN BEACH, Calif., Oct 23 (Reuters) - Trendy shoemaker Skechers U.S.A. Inc. (SKX) on Wednesday said third-quarter earnings rose despite weak demand and a slow back-to-school selling period.
The company said earnings for the quarter were $14.1 million, or 35 cents per share, compared to $11.4 million, or 30 cents per share last year.
Skechers, which sells fashionable casual and athletic shoes at lower prices than most major brands, lowered its earnings expectations for the quarter in September to a range of 30 cents to 35 cents a share and analyst estimates fell in line. The average analyst estimate, according to Thomson First Call, was 30 cents per share, with a range of 25 cents to 32 cents per share.
Net sales for the quarter fell to $261.1 million from $287.9 million last year.
Manhattan Beach, California-based Skechers said it cut its already lowered fourth-quarter estimate. It now expects earnings per share in the range of 3 cents to 8 cents on sales between $195 million and $205 million. REUTERS
Mr. Churak, I see that the day shift has arrived at the Jailhouse. Good, I can go home now. Yeah, I should have checked, but I'm tired -- don't you realize what time it is here in Hawaii? I'll catch you after my power nap.
AK
Marcos, a little help for the peanut gallery over here on the Jailhouse thread -- when you post your message to yourself, over here we tend to think someone has been incarcerated too long, because it give the appearance of you talking to yourself.
We're a nice bunch for a Jailhouse crowd, so kinda let us know who you are addressing your post to, please. Of course, if it's just a matter of learning how to do that, Sheriff Matt can tell you how to do that on his Question & Answer Thread.
You incarcerated too? or just visitin' on behalf of Digr?
AK
Digrdoug, welcome to The Jailhouse! Lately there haven't been too many inmates here, so we lifers sometimes call the place Club Matt.
I see that Sheriff Matt is concerned that you may not have noticed a subtle difference in posting etiquette between iHub and RB. I guess that's why y'all are paying us this 'visit'.
Guess since I'm still up, I'm whats left of the Welcome Wagon for you. I'm just a gadfly around here. Tomorrow, before the sun rises, former inmate Churak is usually up, and will respond to any questions you have, I'm sure. A bit of a warning -- he has a unique posting style, but is certainly in a position to help you. He recently went through the Jailhouse reformation process for treatment of his own RB-style posting predilection over here on iHub, and since his release from the Jailhouse, he's turned into one prolific poster, and seems to have avoided Sheriff Matt's ire.
The ex-Warden of the Jailhouse is one Mr. Koikaze, and he makes a visit here every day or two. He's a good listener, and very patient, and he's very insightful. A great resource for you.
I see you've had the opportunity to meet WTM. Gotta have your thinking cap on when you talk to that dude. He's someone who listens and if he doesn't like what he hears, he tells you so, but always with a logic that can be intimidating. I know he doesn't intend to be that way, but Sheriff Matt can't do much about WTM. Hmmm, maybe you can...you know, fight logic with logic.
For myself, I don't know caca about gold mining stocks, and the only thing I know about placer gold is what the Park Ranger told me at Sutter's Mill and that phoney miner at Knott's Berry Farm when I paid $5 for the kids to pan iron pyrite. Maybe you could learn me a thing or three on the subject? I'd be much obliged.
Well, got to turn in now. I'm a bit of a late sleeper, so you probably won't see me until afternoon. But give Churak a post; he's the earlybird in these parts.
Welcome to the Jailhouse,
AKvetch (but you can call me AK)
My, how udderly delightful.
Ugh.
AK
Yeah, and Churak can 'larn' him a thing or two--'specially about how to pick up soap in Club Matt's shower.
I was an observer also.
Just curious Phil...did they let you grade your own paper?
AK
p.s. I'm still waiting for you and your "assistant" to deliver the booze...the plane tickets were sent by FedEx two days ago. Do you know what it's like to have to eat pizza without beer?
...for places like LA where one minute you could be in the best neighborhood and a few blocks away you've crossed over into dangerous territory.
Sarals, you said you lived there. Where, pray tell, is this "best" neighborhood?
AK
Churak, please notice just how slick Counselor Houston is. You asked about finding a "good attorney" [sic], and his answer is about 'lawyers down here' as if one has something to do with the other. What he didn't tell you was that lawyurs down thar can CALL the bondsmen, and get a kickback for the directed referral.
And speakin' about down thar', I now present "Engineer in Hell".
An engineer dies and dutifully shows up at the Pearly Gates for
admission to Heaven. St. Peter denies him entrance, on the basis that
heaven is not accepting any engineers.
So the engineer reports to the gates of hell and is let in. Pretty
soon, the engineer gets dissatisfied with the level of comfort in hell
and he starts designing and building improvements. After a while, they've got air conditioning, flush toilets and escalators. The engineer is a pretty popular guy.
One day, God calls up Satan on the telephone and says with a sneer "So,
how's it going down there in hell?". Satan replies, "Hey, things are
going GREAT. We've got air conditioning, flush toilets and escalators, and there's
no telling what this engineer is going to come up with next."
"What?!" God shouts. "You've got an engineer? That's a mistake -- he
should never have gotten down there. Send him up here!".
Satan says, "No way. I like having an engineer on the staff, and I'm
keeping him!".
God says, "Send him back up here or I'll sue."
Satan laughs uproariously and answers, "Yeah, right. And just where are YOU
going to get a lawyer?"
I heard Texas is special that way -- do you have any personal knowledge?
AK
Sarals, you, maybe, were expecting from Churak that he would be honest, and say, "It was her big...
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..
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heart."
Zeev, this is the extent of what I know about the ML report: see #msg-548481. My recollection is that CYMI could have been sold in the pre-market this morning at 23, should one have chosen to act on the report, but that the open was slightly less, as you have indicated.
AK
p.s. Doesn't sell mean sell? So why would there be a target? <g>