It’s Here….

The good news in the U.S. economy… the stock market, despite recent dips to reflect bad economic news, is still relatively strong, and manufacturing inventories are down suggesting a need to hire more workers to build them back up.

End of good news.

Beginning of bad news:

1. Unemployment – “The U.S. economy added 54,000 jobs in May, the fewest in eight months. The unemployment rate rose to 9.1 percent.” WashingtonPost.com, June 3^rd. Under employment is still the hidden headline. As past blogs have supported, recent college grads are having a terrible time finding work commensurate with their education. And in some professions where significant post-undergraduate study is required, the numbers are really bad (according to the June 1^st ABAJournal): “Law graduates in the class of 2010 have set a new record, and it’s not a good one… Only 68.4 percent of 2010 grads were able to land a job requiring bar passage, the lowest percentage since the legal career professionals group NALP began collecting statistics.

”Another 10.7 percent have jobs that don’t require bar passage but prefer or require a JD [juris doctor – a law degree], while 8.6 percent are employed in other capacities… The statistics are based on jobs held nine months after graduation for those whose employment status is known…The classes of 2009 and 2008 had higher percentages of jobs requiring bar passage, at 70.8 percent and 74.7 percent respectively… Overall the employment rate for 2010 grads is 87.6 percent, the lowest percentage since 1996 when the rate was 87.4 percent. Only 71 percent of the jobs were both full-time and permanent.”

2. Housing – “Home prices in 20 U.S. cities fell 5.1 percent in the first quarter, the largest decline since 2009's first three months, according to S&P/Case-Shiller index figures released [June 1^st].” Detroit News, June 1^st.

3. Economic Growth – the US economy was projected to grow at rates hovering around 3%, but the first quarter of 2011 showed a considerable slowing of that expansion to a meager 1.8%.

4. Retail sales – While there was some strength in retail sales, rising gasoline and commodities prices in general probably pushed up the numbers. Drilling down into market segments that generally reflect economic confidence produced startlingly bad news: “About 1.1 million vehicles were sold last month, 3.7% less than a year earlier and 8.3% less than in April, Autodata Corp. said, as economic data perplexed consumers.” Los Angeles Times, June 1^st.

Hey, don’t worry, if you think this clear and convincing evidence that the “double dip” part of the recession has arrived is bad news, remember, there are a bunch of stalemated members of the House of Representatives, struggling to impose cuts and keep taxes low as a precondition to raising the debt ceiling, hell bent on major austerity measures… the kind that tanked the current economy in the UK and are provoking raging and massive protests in Spain and Greece, two economies that seem to be sinking faster than the Titanic. Oh, and the Federal Reserve still thinks that we are not going into a double dip, even though they don’t seem to be able to produce any numbers supporting that assumption, and all the leading indicators are saying otherwise.

We clearly don’t have consumers willing to spend – they are fearful of losing their jobs or simply aren’t able to earn what they once did – so anything that vastly cuts federal (state and local) jobs and contract federal spending will clearly ripple through the economy as these soon-to-be-laid-off individuals also spend less money and reduce demand further. Until now, government demand replaced a very fragile and shaky consumer demand curve. And let’s face it, if you think that a “boss” will starting hiring new workers simply because he/she is paying less taxes and has more discretionary income, trust me, they didn’t get to be a boss by hiring people in the absence of clear consumer demand for what the new hires would be producing. With austerity measures certain, you can expect the only remaining source of market demand – the government – to step aside and let the economy drop to a new low.

I’m Peter Dekom, and it is truly sad to watch uninformed and under-educated politicians make decisions that are going to draw this new “stupidly-infused” recession to linger for so much longer than necessary.

Not So Golden Arches

What venerable institution has a 6.2% acceptance rate, but only provides an entry-level promise that averages only $8.89-an-hour wage? Such selectivity is reminiscent of the acceptance rates of such prestigious institutions such as Yale, Princeton, Harvard or Stanford, except these universities actually have more liberal admissions policies. With approximately one million applicants, McDonald’s – yes, that McDonald’s – held its first national “hiring day” (April 19^th), determined to fill 62,000 new jobs. It was a good day for America’s employment statistics, but a bad day for the average American pay scale. “[T]hat's more jobs created by one company in a single day than the net job creation of the entire U.S. economy in 2009.” May 5^th jobs.aol.com

An average worker in the fast food sector, according to AOL, pulls down a meager $20,800 a year, less than half the U.S. average pay of $43,400 per annum. The lesson continues to be to pay attention to the information behind the rise in employment, looking not only at new job creation, but the numbers of people who cannot find work at all (including those who have given up looking completely, many older and middle-aged workers shoved unceremoniously out of the contemporary-skills job market). Those who find occasional or part-time work, but want more, also don’t make their way on to the federal jobless rolls.

But even more disturbing than the harsh numbers hidden behind the unemployment numbers is the completely devastating trend that new job creation seems to have on our average national wage structure. “According to a recent analysis by the National Employment Law Project (NELP), the biggest growth in private-sector job creation in the past year occurred in positions in the low-wage retail, administrative, and food service sectors of the economy. While 23% of the jobs lost in the Great Recession that followed the economic meltdown of 2008 were "low-wage" (those paying $9-$13 an hour), 49% of new jobs added in the sluggish "recovery" are in those same low-wage industries. On the other end of the spectrum, 40% of the jobs lost paid high wages ($19-$31 an hour), while a mere 14% of new jobs pay similarly high wages.” AOL.com.

In 2010, a quarter of the new jobs added in 2010 were “temporary,” employment with virtually no benefits and less job security. Everything about our employment statistics is tentative. Nobody seems to be willing to step up in the sectors that have traditionally provided higher paying wages to make longer-term job commitments. There is uncertainty as to the sustainability of the “recovery,” the impact of a dithering Congress on budgetary cut-backs and their likely larger scale rippling into the private sector or the desperate cuts being sought at state and local levels that should, likewise, have severe ramifications in the private sector.

For students encumbered by loans – where recent revisions to bankruptcy laws have made escaping such burdens close to impossible – the unemployment scene is untenably cruel. For undergraduates, the situation is bad. For professional students getting graduate degrees in an inhospitable job market, the situation is beyond grave, yet with contractions in financial aid, loans appear to be the basic financing tool of young men and women with hire aspirations: “The average amount borrowed annually by law students jumped 50 percent from 2001 to 2010, the Hartford Business Journal reports. In the last academic year, law students borrowed an average of $68,827 for public schools and $106,249 for private educations…For the 2001-2002 academic year, the average amount borrowed was $46,499 for a public law school and $70,147 for a private one… “ABAJournal.com, May 9^th. It seems, very clearly, that without a solid and deep change in our employment structure, we are in for a very long waiting period for a true recovery.

I’m Peter Dekom, simply looking behind the unfounded optimism that politicians seem to bubble… and babble.

Moiled Again No More?

Hey moils (actually, corrected spelled mohel – the person who performs circumcision on a Jewish male as a religious rite), there’s a group in San Francisco – they call themselves “intactivists” – that have a beef with your briskit! They’re joined by another similar such assemblage in Santa Monica seeking to put measures on their municipal ballots to criminalize the circumcision of minors, even though it is a religious mandate in both the Jewish and Muslim faiths. Oy! They may already just have enough signatures to get on the ballot in at least one of these cities.

Anti-circumcision activists say the measures would protect children from an unnecessary medical procedure, calling it ‘male genital mutilation.’ … ‘This is the furthest we’ve gotten, and it is a huge step for us,’ said Matthew Hess, an activist based in San Diego who wrote both bills… Mr. Hess has created similar legislation for states across the country, but those measures never had much traction. Now he is fielding calls from people who want to organize similar movements in their cities. ‘This is a conversation we are long overdue to have in this country,’ he said. ‘The end goal for us is making cutting boys’ foreskin a federal crime.’” New York Times, June 4^th. Fore!

Needless to say, there is trembling fear that this movement could catch on, threatening those who believe for health or religious reasons, that such procedures are fundamentally necessary or at least beneficial. “Jewish groups see the ballot measures as a very real threat, likening them to bans on circumcision that existed in Soviet-era Russia and Eastern Europe and in ancient Roman and Greek times. The circumcision of males is an inviolable requirement of Jewish law that dates back to Abraham’s circumcision of himself in the Book of Genesis.

“They say the proposed ban is an assault on religious freedom that could have a widespread impact all over the country. Beyond the biblical, there are emotional connections: checking for circumcision was one of the ways Jewish children could be culled from their peers by Nazis and the czar’s armies.” NY Times.

Even beyond the formal religious requirements of Islam and Judaism, there are advocates who adopt the procedure for their children simply on the basis of cleanliness, and there are substantial studies that circumcised males are less likely to pass certain sexually transmitted diseases – notably HIV – than their intact counterparts. Hospitals are generally neutral about the procedure and have been allowing parents to make this choice for their newborns for a very long time.

Our own government’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, citing several recognized international field studies (mostly in Africa), notes “In these studies, men who had been randomly assigned to the circumcision group had a 60% (South Africa), 53% (Kenya), and 51% (Uganda) lower incidence of HIV infection compared with men assigned to the wait-list group to be circumcised at the end of the study. In all three studies, a few men who had been assigned to be circumcised did not undergo the procedure, and vice versa. When the data were reanalyzed to account for these occurrences, men who had been circumcised had a 76% (South Africa), 60% (Kenya), and 55% (Uganda) reduction in risk fo r HIV infection compared with those who were not circumcised. …

“Ecologic studies also indicate a strong association between lack of male circumcision and HIV infection at the population level. Although links between circumcision, culture, religion, and risk behavior may account for some of the differences in HIV infection prevalence, the countries in Africa and Asia with prevalence of male circumcision of less than 20% have HIV infection prevalences several times higher than those in countries in these regions where more than 80% of men are circumcised.”

What is it about Americans who have a seemingly insatiable need to impose their personal values on others by law or by force who strongly disagree with them? I would have to agree that if such surgical procedures caused long-term, permanent damage to the individuals in question, there would be merit to the approach. In some countries, female circumcision is just a polite word for cutting out the pleasure-giving part of a woman’s genitals to control her and limit her sexual appetite.

But in this “circumstance,” this is nothing more than another group of fringe elements – using lots of graphic language – to impose their will on others. And don’t assume that if such legislation were passed, it would necessarily be defeated as violation of the religious freedom mandates of our First Amendment. If applied across the board to all children without reference to religious affiliation, it could possibly be sustained as within the legislative purview over health matters.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I’m and the long and the short of it is that I’m just trying to be circumspect.

Over Branding

The automotive world is a prime example of too many choices generating too many ad campaigns creating way too much confusion among consumers. Before the big bankruptcy of General Motors and Chrysler, GM shuttered its Oldsmobile brand, a product that had long since worn out its cache with consumers. When the big fall hit, GM eliminated Hummer and Pontiac as well. They couldn’t afford the overhead or the separate ad campaigns. Eliminating four brands (from eight) from the GM menu actually kicked sales up 16%.

Giving consumers too much choice can be as bad as giving them not enough. And in some cases, doing a few things exceptionally well is a perpetual home run. For example, at privately-held In-N-Out Burger, its burgers, fried, sodas and shakes… but the line for this West Coast fast food company, can stretch out the door. It’s always been this way for this wildly successful retailer that tends to generate four times the sales per shop of an average McDonald’s store, which offers multiple burgers, fries, chicken, ribs, a range of desserts, salads, breakfast variations of its basic products, etc.

Graham Button, writing for the May 23^rd FastCompany.com, tells it like it is: “There’s a point at which new product development can destroy more value than it creates. Innovation for the sake of revenue just degrades the equity that the core brand has built up. Marketers call it ‘overshooting.’ In the end, customers like you and me max out on ‘new and improved,. and we just stop buying… The average U.S. supermarket, one right down the road from you, sells as many as 50,000 products. There are 16 varieties of Tropicana Pure Premium juices alone, for example, and PepsiCo will probably up it to 30 before long. That’s over-service. We don’t need it.

“Recently, BlackBerry introduced Super Apps, apps that do what any app does, only a hair better. Here we go again. Another gold-platinum-titanium product cycle: Brands punching it out over incremental differences as if those tweaks were game changers. That’s branding a service to the customer that isn’t really a service at all; it’s just the natural evolution of things… Recently, when Procter and Gamble cut its Head and Shoulders product line from 25 to 16, profits rose 10%.” Consumers are looking for value, clarity and quality. Too many confusing choices and they just turn to a brand with simpler alternatives.

According to a recent Harris Interactive poll, 85% of those surveyed say that they would be willing to pay more in exchange for a better customer experience. There is a growing skepticism where a marginal “change” is touted as “new and improved” with some expected backlash when advertisers get too cute. How do you feel with this over-saturation of brand choices? How have your buying decisions changed as a result.

I’m Peter Dekom, and sometimes simply but good is more than enough.

Hot Topics

As rains and floods soak some in the United States, as water resources such as the Ogallala Aquifer (that once gigantic lake under a large section of the grain belt West of the Mississippi) slowly disappear, as sea levels rise and ice flows and glaciers melt, as hurricanes increase in intensity and disease-spreading insects move their habitats, there is at one horror that is raging across vulnerable regions in the U.S. (and elsewhere around the world, most recently Australia): fire.

In 2008, California officially announced that fire season which used to start in August and end by the first day of winter was now a year-long risk: “[Then] Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said the threat of fire now exists all the time because of California's two-year-drought and ‘climate change.’ Across the state, rainfall is below normal while temperatures are higher than average.” Bloomberg.com, November 18, 2008. This year, fires in the winter season were contained by massive rains (Governor Jerry Brown has declared the drought to be over), but every fire marshal knows that the extra growth generated by that precipitation increases the available kindling for the inevitable fire storms significantly… and fires decimate forests and grasslands, inviting mudslides when the rains return later in the year.

This year, it’s Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico that are being hit by too many wildfires. April has been particularly difficult: “Not only has little or no precipitation fallen so far this month -- at a time when the strengthening sun has increased the rates of evaporation and evapotranspiration (the loss of moisture to the air from vegetation) -- but precipitation amounts since the fall have been far below normal. Southern New Mexico, as well as western and southern Texas, has had less than 25 percent of average precipitation since October.

”This translates to less than 2 inches of total rainfall in nearly half a year for many locations. To put that in perspective, a single heavy thunderstorm sometimes produces that much rain in an hour.… The result is long-term drought conditions that are extreme to exceptional, the worst category, and the intense drought extends eastward through the remainder of Texas into large portions of Arkansas and Louisiana.” AOLNews.com, April 14^th.

Across the United States, with rainfall and blizzards having marked the winter in many sections, fire has taken an even greater toll than normal: “More than 360,000 acres of land have been burned nationally by ongoing fires [in the second week of April], according to the National Interagency Fire Center. More than 900,000 acres have been burned so far this year, which is roughly one-third more than the 10-year average to date.” AOLNews.com. Global climate change from greenhouse gasses trapped in the ozone layer does not translate into warmer temperatures for every area on earth; it does account for higher average temperatures, and it does explain some of the extremes.

For example, a hurricane is born of wind swirls that begin as cool air meets warmer air and accelerates as these water spouts suck up tons of seawater to become whirling masses of devastation. As the surface temperature of the water rises, particularly as it goes up to somewhere between 81 and 83 degrees Fahrenheit, the volume of water that rises into the storm, hence increasing its intensity, increases. Even to have a hurricane, a minimum water temperature is necessary: “In most situations, water temperatures of at least 26.5 °C (79.7 °F) are needed down to a depth of at least 50 m (160 ft); waters of this temperature cause the overlying atmosphere to be unstable enough to sustain convection and thunderstorms.”Wikipedia. In short, the intensity of hurricane is directly related to the surface temperature of the water beneath.

The issue becomes increasingly difficult with the reactor meltdown in Japan, a nation that, until the meltdown, drew 30% of its power from nuclear plants. Without alternative energy resources deployed now, the envelope in the ozone from increased use of fossil fuels will only expand and intensify. Yet the pressures to open up new lands for drilling have only grown stronger in the past weeks. We have become a planet of reactive politicians, solving problems that create crises, but not anticipating the longer term. We simply cannot afford to think or act that way anymore. We need to see the linkage between our choices and the consequences of our choices.

I’m Peter Dekom, deeply concerned for those who cannot think beyond today.

Cold Man Sacks?

Goldman Sachs was and continues to be an organization that knows how to make money… for themselves. In 1999, senior management saw how they could multiply the cash that represented the firm’s profits by a simple step: going public. The partners held onto 60% of the stock and foisted 40% onto the public. They got the instant multiplier that they had dreamed of… and a whole lot more that they really hadn’t thought about. Like the kind of open operational and public scrutiny imposed by law on such corporate offerings. Over the years, lots of partners cashed out – public stock has the benefit of allowing that liquidity – and today 480 Goldman partners now own 10% of the company.

Perhaps one of the most publicly decried companies – a symbol of the Wall Street greed that many believe brought the world down into the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression – Goldman was totally unprepared to handle the rigors of operating under a public microscope. Their traditional command and control structures were constantly challenged in the press, and a company that was horribly understaffed in the public relations area (their standard response to press inquiries was often “no comment”) and led by seemingly uncaring and imperious leaders, seemed only to know how to taint its image even more. High on the list of missteps is the profoundly arrogant utterance, in November of 2009, by CEO Lloyd Blankfein that he was doing “God’s work.”

And of course, the law required Goldman to reveal what senior managers were being paid. Blankfein’s compensation was the stuff that editorial writers could have their way with. “Blankfein earned a total of $54.4 million in 2006 as one of the highest paid executives on Wall Street. His bonus reflected the performance of Goldman Sachs, which reported record net earnings of $9.5 billion. The compensation included a cash bonus of $27.3 million, with the rest paid in stock and options. While CEO of Goldman Sachs Group in 2007, Blankfein earned a total compensation of $53,965,418, which included a base salary of $600,000, a cash bonus of $26,985,474, stocks granted of $15,542,756 and options granted of $10,453,031.” Wikipedia. His exalted pay continued into the present: “Goldman Sachs Group Inc. awarded Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Lloyd C. Blankfein $19 million in compensation for 2010, almost double the prior year, and granted him the first cash bonus in three years… The total includes $5.4 million in cash, $12.6 million in restricted stock, a $600,000 salary and about $464,000 in other benefits, the New York-based firm’s proxy statement showed. Blankfein’s $9.8 million pay for 2009 included $9 million in restricted stock plus salary and other compensation.” Bloomberg Business.com, April 2, 2011. God seems to be paying Lloyd ver y well for doing His work.

But change is afoot, and the fact that every Goldman CEO since the company went public was part of the group that made the decision to go public tells you the company is still mired in its past. Clients who lost fortunes in the financial collapse could only look with anger at the earnings reports and executive pay as Goldman created financial instruments that covered their losses as prices fell by selling their clients on investment strategies based on a rising or a falling market… playing both sides of the street at the same time. The financial advisory aspects of Goldman – investment banking – began to account for a decreasing share of the company’s profits, and the down-and-dirty traders – personified by Blankfein – were raking it in as they sequentially made money by crafting new financial instruments – derivatives – that based investment decisions on computer-generated predictive market trends as opposed to simply investing in the stocks and bonds available on the market.

The May 16^th New York Times speaks to Goldman’s near-term future: “While the clubby culture remains, the tight-knit group has lost its vise-like grip on the company, as the wishes of the insular partnership have given way to the demands of the outside shareholders… Their power base may soon erode further. Senior Goldman executives are considering whether to cull partner-heavy divisions like investment banking, according to people with knowledge of the matter who were not authorized to speak on the record.

“The diminished influence of the partnership has forced Goldman, albeit begrudgingly, to shed some of its secretive corporate personality, especially in recent years as its opaque business model has come under scrutiny in Washington. Although a small cadre of executives still steers strategy and runs the day-to-day operations, the financial firm now must act more like other publicly traded companies, responding to criticism over pay, adjusting strategy to placate shareholders and dealing with outspoken activists at annual meetings — all of which was unheard of a decade ago….

“Partnership remains an elite club today. Roughly 100 new partners are tapped every two years in a seven-month process. Candidates are not interviewed and do not even know if they are under consideration. Instead the partnership committee vets potential members, discussing them only with other partners.” It may be time for Goldman to reach into the next generation of partners, those who were part of the 1999 group that went public, for its next set of leaders. They now have to react to shareholder demands, and when they are attacked in the press, they know actually know how to defend themselves… like other corporations.

But don’t think that Goldman’s footprint is diminished in any significant way. Their former partners are scattered all over the highest reaches of government and corporate America; their influence continues to move decision-makers at every level. But the new Goldman Sachs is no longer the impervious monolith that once seemed almost to embrace being the Darth Vader of Wall Street.

I’m Peter Dekom, and change is what I write about.

Scapegoats and the Gold Man

“The business of America is business” is probably one of the few memorable quotes from President Calvin Coolidge, but clearly, this is a nation where so many define themselves by their work. Unlike Europeans, who are legally mandated to take 5 week vacations every year (try doing business in Europe in August), one in four working Americans don’t even have paid vacations, and over half of those that do seldom take all the days to which they are entitled. Among the most demanding vocations is finance, which rolls every second of every year, and has made the United States, with its powerful work ethic, the most important monetary center on earth. We do indeed seem to put our corporate business structures at the top of the American value priority list, trumping just about everything else by miles… even ethnics and common sense.

Blame for the global meltdown has been laid clearly on the doorstep of the financial community that encouraged and provided the underlying fuel to enable massive borrowings in both the public and private sector, using that America ingenuity to create wealth-building (later destroying) financial instruments that allowed bundles of debt to be repackaged and traded like commodities… constantly opening the flow for new debt to replace the bundles that were sold. Hardworking, thinking American in the financial community applying their vacationless efforts continue to create even more such tradable instruments.

And while the work of our nation’s major financial institutions is one of our country’s most necessary engines for economic growth, it sometimes puzzles me how we seem to be giving that sector much more of a blank check – without corresponding “checks” and balances – that accorded to any other segment of the American economy. Thirty trillion dollars or more in economic damage to the world’s financial health and not one single Wall Street maven at one of the big investment houses has been convicted of a single crime. Where the government has acted, it has tended to focus on individual scapegoats – who clearly cannot act in such mega-institutions without the approval and knowledge of management – as opposed to assessing true responsibility to those who approved, encouraged and enabled the less-than-ethical practices that lite rally caused the meltdown.

The best case in point is the Securities and Exchange Commission’s litigation against one individual in the vast bureaucracy of Goldman Sachs: “Hundreds of employees worked closely in teams, devising mortgage-based securities — billions of dollars’ worth — that were examined by lawyers, approved by management, then sold to investors like hedge funds, commercial banks and insurance companies… At one trading desk sat Fabrice Tourre [pictured above], a midlevel 28-year-old Frenchman who was little known not just outside Goldman but even inside the firm. That changed three years later, in 2010, when he achieved the dubious distinction of becoming the only individual at Goldman and across Wall Street sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission for helping to sell a mortgage-securities investment, in one of the hundreds of mortgage deals created during the bubble years.” New York Times, May 31^st. And note that this is a civil action, hardly the hard-nosed criminal prosecution that might be necessary to send the right signal to the Street.

The government, frankly, is embarrassed at the almost complete lack of prosecution, criminally or civilly, against the obvious wrongdoings at the mega-financial institutions – most certainly not just at Goldman, a company that has been vilified more than most, both because of the level of post-bailout profitability and its seeming inability to master public relations. “While Goldman paid $550 million last year to settle accusations that it had misled investors who bought the Abacus mortgage security, no other individuals at the bank have been named. Now, however, as criticism has grown about the lack of cases brought by regulators, the scope of the inquiries appears to be widening. The United States attorney general, Eric H. Holder Jr., has said publicly that his lawyers were reviewing possible charges against other Goldman officials in the wake of a Senate investigation that produced reams of documents detailing other questionable decisions that were made in the firm’s mortgage unit.” NY Times.

Of course, as time passes, the statutes of limitation – which set strict time limits (normally seven years in criminal actions) for prosecution – will exonerate more financial miscreants. If we want to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past, not only do we need regulations to defeat the most obviously destructive financial practices, but we also need to prosecute the decision-makers, the implementers, condoners as well as the enterprises themselves to send a truly clearly message that such behavior is simply intolerable. Apparently, Wall Street has very much been able to contain any attempt to generate justice from its past moral, ethical and legal lapses. What’s worse, Americans really don’t seem to care anymore and are electing politicians who very openly support letting such institutions to continue such abhorrent past practices unchecked.

I’m Peter Dekom, and at some point, unless we hold those responsible for massive social and economic damage accountable, we are going to see a repeat performance.

Livin’ on Gliese Street?

Life here on earth getting you down, Bunky? Global warming freaking you out? Damned recovery taking way too long with the payoff still being that the United States is a nation in decline? Deficit got you shakin’ in your boots? Worried about being blown to bits by a terrorist hell-bent on the destruction of the “Great Satan,” and you live in the heart of that devil? Scared about somebody in Pakistan selling a nuke to some crazy who’d just as much blow your berg all to hell? Well there’s this place, a tad off the beaten orbit – so to speak – that holds some promise. I can assure you that it will be peaceful, but it is a bit of a schlep, and the facilities there are less than primitive. But how’d you like to life in a place where your sun never sets (at least for half the planet), where the horizon shows of a warm red glow all t he time? Where you can park all those worries, put them behind you, as if they never existed?

The slide on over here and look at what you can zoom off to in a short rocket-powered journey that would take 3,000 lifetimes (OK, this is longer-term planning for your ancestors and a likely television series for ABC; it’s 20 light-years away) to a planet circling the red dwarf sun Gliese. If you get there, maybe you can give that life-providing orb a better name than Gliese 581d. In the constellation we know as Libra. Figured Gliese 581e was just too cold, but 581d is just about right… Oh, except for the gravity – 581d is about 5.6 more massive than Earth – but count on evolution to solve that one in a few additional centuries… “Honey, I think you’ve put on a few pounds,” as your once svelte 115 lb wife tips the Gliese 581d scales at roughly 230 lbs! Kind slows down your morning jog a tad, but hey, gotta figure you’re gonna just have to get used to it.

Well, scientists seem to be on the verge of confirming what their computer analyses suggest: that Gleise 581d may just be the first plant they’ve found that can sustain human life. But there are no Wall*Marts or McDonald’s out anywhere to be found. Liability or opportunity? Here’s what they think the planet is really like: “So, welcome to our future home. There are no days on Gliese 581d; one side is perpetually light and one side is perpetually dark. People thought this would mean that the night side would be perpetually frozen. But a new study by the Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique at the Institute Pierre Simon Laplace found that because of the local star's red light that penetrates deep into the heavy carbon atmosphere, the planet regulates heat quite well. Downside: It will always be a sort of red-hued dusk. And gravity i s twice as strong, meaning it won't be too pleasant to walk around. But at least we'll be able to live there. The problem, as with most things in space, is the distance. At 20 light years away, it would take 300,000 years to get there.

“There is still a chance that all these measurements are wrong, or that the planet is rendered uninhabitable by too much helium in the atmosphere. Also, given that we're basing these measurements on light from 20 years ago, the people of Gliese 581d could be destroying their environment as we speak. By the time we arrive, we might find a planet in worse shape than Earth is.” FastCompany.com, May 16^th. There may be closer planets, but as we consume the resources on the one we have at a rapidly expanding rate, Earth-folks may soon need to begin looking for our next home planet sooner than we might have expected. You may consider real estate future on 581d… could be a big payoff… someday. After all, it’s easier when it’s Gliesier!

I’m Peter Dekom, and it does seem a tad easier simply to take better care of the planet we already have!