Friday singalong.

Yes, your economics blogger will be returned to his normal, upright position presently. In the meantime, get all warm and fuzzy over this.

These are the original lyrics the folks are riffing on:

Stand by Me

When the night has come

And the land is dark

And the moon is the only light we'll see

No I won't be afraid, no I won't be afraid

Just as long as you stand, stand by me

And darlin', darlin', stand by me, oh now now stand by me

Stand by me, stand by me

If the sky that we look upon

Should tumble and fall

And the mountains should crumble to the sea

I won't cry, I won't cry, no I won't shed a tear

Just as long as you stand, stand by me

And darlin', darlin', stand by me, oh stand by me

Stand by me, stand by me, stand by me-e, yeah

Whenever you're in trouble won't you stand by me, oh now now stand by me

Oh stand by me, stand by me, stand by me

Darlin', darlin', stand by me-e, stand by me

Oh stand by me, stand by me, stand by me.

Released 1961 (single)

Writers: Ben E. King, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller.

All lyrics are property and copyright of their owners. All lyrics provided for educational purposes only.

Many thanks to Anne and Matt Tomljenovic.

Again, just asking.

 

The latest cover of Washingtonian, an upscale city magazine, is scandalizing the capital because:

* It's unpresidential.

* It's an invasion of privacy.

* It objectifies men.

* It could set a precedent. (McCain in the buff? Giuliani? Ewww.)

* It's a distraction from the gawdawful economy.

* And the bailouts.

* And the torture.

* It could set a precedent. (Limbaugh? O'Reilly? Krauthammer? Ewww.)

* And the deficit.

* And the foreclosures.

* And Iraq.

* It could set a precedent. (Harper? Sarko? Hugo Chavez? Ewww.)

* All of the above.

Finders, returners.

Day 509

In a recession as grim as this one, you'd keep a lost wallet, wouldn't you? No? Do you happen to live in Toronto, then?

Just asking.

Day 509

Most takeovers fail. Could it be that St-Hyacinthe, Que.-native Claude Mongeau, announced this week as successor to Hunter Harrison as CEO of Canadian National Railway Co., negotiated eight successful rail acquisitions at CN at least in part because he might be, as of Jan. 1, the only CEO of a tier-one railroad in North America with an undergraduate degree in psychology? (From the Universite du Quebec a Montreal.) For Harrison's estimable record, see here.

 

Note: For the purposes of this blog, the inception of the Great Recession in the U.S., the epicentre of the crisis, is taken as the start date for the global slump. The U.S. has been in recession since December 2007.

This will make you feel better. (Part II)

Day 509

Notice how the Liverpool Street Station onlookers are a little more inclined to get into the action than the Belgians.

Many thanks to Allison Nowlan of Toronto!

Some views are so idiotic only a newspaper columnist can hold them.

Arguably the stupidest Earth Day column of this or any year.

Luxury car smackdown: Audi v. BMW.

Even in the genteel luxury-car market, rivals aren't above a billboard war in Santa Monica.

BMW billboard from Juggernaut Advertising on Vimeo.

Spot the bad bank(s).

Day 508

As we said yesterday, it's hardly reassuring to know, as Tim Geithner, the U.S. treasury secretary, tells us, that only "some" U.S. banks remain troubled. Our take has been that if any of the "some" include the likes of Citigroup, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase or Wells Fargo, we're still in a heap of trouble.

Here's Nobel laureate economist Paul Krugman's impression of Geithner's congressional appearance Tuesday:

The market was greatly reassured when Tim Geithner declared that the “vast majority” of banks are well capitalized. Count me as baffled...After all, there are a lot of banks in America...But the big guys are where the money is. The top 10 institutions...have 58 percent of the assets...So it’s perfectly possible that the “vast majority” of US banks are well-capitalized, but that banks with, say, a third of the system’s assets are insolvent.

What Geithner said, then, was true but useless. If anything, his wording was cause for concern: Treasury knows the difference between raw numbers of banks and asset holdings, even if the press seemed to miss the distinction, and if he’d meant to say that the vast majority of assets are held by sound banks, he would have.

And here's Berkeley economist Brad DeLong:

The failure to assure us that the vast majority of bank assets are in well-capitalized institutions seemed to me to speak volumes. Nobody ever thought that the vast majority of banks are not well capitalized--it's the highly leveraged New York high flyers.

 

Note: For the purposes of this blog, the inception of the Great Recession in the U.S., the epicentre of the crisis, is taken as the start date for the global slump. The U.S. has been in recession since December 2007.

Cellar-dwelling Jays.

Day 508

Toronto's boys of summer are off to strong start on the diamond, no small thanks to pitching ace Ray Halliday (above). But the Blue Jays, first franchise to draw more than four million patrons a year (in the early 1990s), now rank a mere 23rd among Major League Baseball's most valuable clubs. According to Forbes'  latest annual ranking, Ted Rogers' heirs could expect to fetch about $353 million (U.S.) for the Jays. The Yankees top the list, at $1.5 billion (U.S.), and the Florida Marlins pull up the rear at $277 million (U.S.)

History's first truly global slump.

Day 508

Maybe go back and watch again that joyous dance scene in the Brussels train station before reading this.

Released yesterday, here's the IMF's dismal forecast for GDP performance by country and region in 2009:

Canada, -2.5 per cent (+1.2 per cent in 2010)

U.S., -2.8 per cent (0 per cent in 2010)

Eurozone, -4.2 per cent (-0.4 in 2010)

Eastern Europe, -3.75 per cent (+1 per cent in 2010)

Japan, -6.2 per cent

China, +6.5 per cent

For the past year we've been bashing forecasters for getting it wrong. But notice, they always get it wrong the same way - they've consistently erred on the positive side. All the figures above have undergone negative revision since since the last IMF forecast, which itself did not make happy reading. So the forecasts certainly are worth noting. Just put an even darker spin on them.

Other than those gloomy "negative growth" numbers, the news in this latest, landmark IMF report is that the few holdouts to the global slump so far - Latin America, Africa and the Middle East - will soon be in the tank, as well, if they aren't already. Problems in the major economies are curtailing inflows of foreign investment in Latin America and Africa. The Middle East is taking a hit from the sharp drop in crude prices.

Especially alarming is Japan, world's second-largest economy, which officially forecast a stunning 5.5 per cent drop in its 2009 GDP a few weeks ago. The IMF is saying Japan will fare still worse - a drop of 6.5 per cent. That's an astonishing plunge for a mature, major economy. Ditto the 2.3 per cent decline forecast for the U.S., which needs about 3 per cent positive GDP growth just to absorb the annual increase in folks entering the job market for the first time. The IMF singles out Britain and Ireland as victims of "severe" recession impact this year.

Recall that Britain was Europe's strongest economy this decade. And that Ireland's "miracle economy" with its low-tax fiscal regime was constantly held out by right-wing commentators as the perfect economy on which Canada should remodel itself.

Right. That was before the Emerald Isle's over-heated housing market imploded, and foreign employers attracted by the low tax rates - Microsoft, Intel and so on - packed up and headed home, leaving thousands of unemployed Irish behind.

The "headline" GDP number for global growth is a contraction of 1.3 per cent this year, described by the IMF as the worst recession in six decades.

Actually, it's worse than that, if you factor out China, the only major economy still expected to post positive growth. The 2009 number for China is about half 2007's growth rate. Even more disturbing is that numbers out of China are notoriously inaccurate. Some are prettied up by Beijing; others are wild guesses about conditions in the vast Chinese hinterland, where even Beijing doesn't have a grasp of local conditions. As a rule of thumb, one takes the best official guess on Chinese growth - and the IMF is nothing if not "official" - and cut it in half. So look for real Chinese growth this year of only 3 per cent to 4 per cent, in contrast to five years of double-digit growth up to 2007. The abrupt shift in social conditions will be jarring.

Worst-case scenario: Social unrest, particularly in China, already plagued with tens of thousands of protests each year, usually arising from farmers' property expropriated for factories, power plants and other manifestations of China's Industrial Revolution. By Beijing's own calculation, GDP growth of less than 8 per cent will trigger widespread protests by workers rendered jobless. We can count on protests related to job loss - or I should say, an increase in protests - in Britain, France and Germany as well.

Note: For the purposes of this blog, the inception of the Great Recession in the U.S., the epicentre of the crisis, is taken as the start date for the global slump. The U.S. has been in recession since December 2007.