Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal (2004)

Summer is icumen in
Venti Latte tu!
Eateþ pie and drinkeþ chai
murie biscotti tu.
Calorieþ cucu!

Oh don't taunt!
Cambridge is smack in the middle of a Noreaster
;)

Here's a true American story to while away the time between lattes.

We are a US-based medium-sized specialty-foods corporation. (I've changing the reality slightly to protect our identity.) We sell approximately 45% of our product line to the general public, and the bulk of it on fixed government contracts,
without any significant competition in our food sector.

Most of our production does not even get sourced before we have those government supply contracts in place, and the remainder of our sales to the public can never fully meet demand. We are neither constrained by sales nor capital
commitments, although we do see significant disconnects that plague our operations and profitability, since we're dependent on seasonal supply and cold-chain price flux.

We have 100 facilities across the US, many decades old, and a team of R&D, O&M tooling engineers and tradespeople that maintain our plants at a minimal level, that is, just enough
to meet on-call any unplanned outages, not to maintain or upgrade plant or equipment, except as things breakdown and get replaced. We have decrepit plants, and brand new ones in the process of becoming decrepit.

I'm a second-tier management accountant, responsible for generating operating side actuals, and also performing capital planning functions. My team is highly professional,
and our work is usually extremely timely and always accurate. Nevertheless, upper management, those who have been with the company the longest and are staring at the calendar waiting to take their pensions, are simultaneously on a barebones run-it-into-the-ground O&M bent, and a, gee, wouldn't it be great if we could divert more operating sides into capital sides for new high-tech facilities. If wishes were horses.
They're just trying to pump up their stock options.

The CEO and CFO are IPO schmooze-type golden parachute hires, have no interest whatsoever in plant operations, per se, just on maximizing the return on investment and minimizing expenses
on the operating side of the ledger, leaving our company COO to thrash around alternately reassigning plant staff, reorganizing our org chart, planning staff's early demise and outsourcing, inflating production demands on impossible schedules, or else abruptly cutting next year's production back at a whim. With
those government contracts, we'll never let go of the tit. If we ever lost those government contracts, we'd go bankrupt.

As a result, our products often suffer from quality problems, and our production and O&M staff suffer from an extremely low morale,
the tooling engineers pointing to the craftspeople, R&D yelling at O&M, new product development off in la-la land, advertising
just doing their own thing, and IT trying to bandaid us together.

All of which is a lengthy, I'm sure 'same old-same old' American prelude to the Chinese juggernaut, where Bank of China finances
exotic new $B plants, European consortiums provide the design-build, the PRC government facilitates a global trade in raw materials
and manufactured goods, hedges currencies and investments against each other, dumps production at below cost using near slave labor, and in general acts as the martial economic Sun Tsu we all know. They really are eating our lunch.

We're just a heartbeat away, everyone hunkered down, as we used to say in Oklahoma, scratching the clay with a stick and spitting tobacco juice, praying for one thing. Rain. And this Bush-Cheny outfit ain't rainmakers, that's for sure. They're just lining their own pockets, and the pockets of their people, no different
from any comb-over'd CEO brought in for a corporate turnaround, who ends up dumping his own shares while smiling to the camera,
telling everyone to "stay the course", while he's gutting the company pension fund (our Social Security), selling plant and
equipment (our national infrastructure), grabbing his golden parachute and bailing out as the auctioneer's gavel comes down.

"I want the world to buy America," President Bush's exact words.

After everything that can be produced or serviced is outsourced and outmanufactured overseas, and all that's left are the butcher,
the baker, the candlestick maker, and home improvement stewards, all happily serving iced tea to each other in hopes of a sale, who is
gonna pay our mortgages, our utilities, and our growing deficit?

And what are our kids going to do, except go off with the Army?

What if our grandfather's had said, "Well, those Japanese seem like nice people, let's do trade with them. Let them have the Indonesian
Archipelago, and we'll just buy our manufactured goods from them." What if our grandfather's had said, "Well, those Germans seem like nice people, and the Sudatenland was no different than Taiwan. And Poland, well, it's good to deregulate and consolidate companies, er,
countries. Let's just buy our arms and automobiles from Germany." (Which is what Grandfather Bush did, in trading with the Nazi's.)

Would we all be driving BMW's today, watching DVD's on our plasma screen TV's? I don't think so. We'd still be a nation of farmer's,
scratching hand-to-mouth, selling our raw materials to the Chinese in return for a handful of what one writer called 'dark-plastic wampum',
trading away our lands and estates for a handful of colored beads.

Is this Bush's "great vision for America"?

Sipping iced latte's under the bayon tree and watching the darkies singing Old Folks Back Home out in the fields?

it is spirng also in Austria, but
SO WHAT?
It's great that we are no freezing any more, you can again sit in street cafes and have your latte macchiato in the sun, but
SO WHAT?
OBL is still there, Dubya is still there, the Saudi sheiks are still there (as Paul Krugman reminds us in the NYT), the Chinese army is still occupying Tibet, jobless growth is still happening, and the world is mostly f***ed up.

Are you just telling us, Prof. De Long, that we should be grateful for small favors?
Then I agree.

On a recent list of what makes Boston unique and how you can tell a true Bostonian was included--

Drinks Dunkin Donut ice coffee all year, even when
it is freezing outside.

BAH -- It's 27 here in NYC with a blanket of snow.

BAH!!

Sing cuccu!

Thanks for the medieval lit fix for the morning!

Snowing here in Chicago.

Drinking iced-coffee :D

I'm from Boston originally.

Only girls and homosexuals drink iced lattes.

I find it rather odd that a person with a masculine name would have problems with both girls and homosexuals.

Surely you have some attraction to one or the other?

Surely you can understand that others may have some attraction to them?

People are different, thank goodness!

:D

Yeah, "sumer" may be "icumen" in out where YOU live, but for the numerous millions of us who live in Eastern North America, winter has come back to bite our a**e* once again - for a week or so.

remember the next verse, Brad:

"lhude sing cuckoo"

Kook!

Well, it's pretty sunny down here in San Diego as the marine layer has rolled out for the moment. What a nice day for finals to be over.

Hey Brad,

Is there any way for those of us who Aren't Brad de Long to post articles for discussion on your fine blog?

Don't you think a little Ying would spice up your Yang?

Adrian

It is in the mid-70s here in SoCal but as a native of the Adirondacks let me bring in Ezra Pound for the rebuttal:
 
Winter is icummen in,
Lhude sing Goddamm.
Raineth drop and staineth slop,
And how the wind doth ramm!
Sing: Goddamm.

Skiddeth bus and sloppeth us,
An ague hath my ham.
Freezeth river, turneth liver,
Damn you, sing: Goddamm.

Re; "Is there any way for those of us who Aren't Brad de Long to post articles for discussion on your fine blog?"

I've thought about setting up a group blog, but no time...

Happy to link to things, however...

Summer is icumen in, indeed! The Bay Area is ROASTING ...

... and speaking of roasting and Summer is icumen in, everyone should check out one of my favorite films, The Wicker Man [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070917/], which offers a thoroughly satisfying denouement for a hypocritical uptight born-again prude ...

"I've thought about setting up a group blog, but no time..."

Listen Brad.. I'm desperately looking for my political internet home. I can't stand the mindless Right Wingers' sites and the Lefty sites are positively Neanderthal in their human relations and intellectual rigor.

Even though you're an obvious Lefty you are a very bright - and most especially - a cordial one.

There is no real political dialog in this country right now, just partisans insulting each other.

Even Rush Limbaugh was impressed by your blog and I think you could provide a great service to our nation if you gave us a venue for actual enquiry between our two dominant political points of view.

Adrian

Yo, Adrian: Go to hell.

I kid, I kid. But seriously, when attempting to start a dialogue, don't lead off by saying "for a lefty, yer pretty darn smart..." And never let on that you listen to Rush Limbaugh.

Just a few helpful human relations tips.

Brad DeLong writes:
>
> A change in state:
> today I stopped drinking lattes, and started drinking iced
> lattes. It was 85 degrees. Summer is icumen in.

Hmm...isnt' that a change in phase rather than a change in state? I mean, if you were in a more *interesting* state you'd have tornado season between a real winter and an actual summer.

That said, when is it Bubble Tea season in Berkeley?

A mess of snow up in MA and down in NYC. Glad to see a fellow sufferer posted Pound's reply.

"I find it rather odd that a person with a masculine name would have problems with both girls and homosexuals."

Now you mention it, I guess my name IS pretty butch, though to level with you I was christened Jamie Janglepants. As for drinking iced lattes, or being a girl: go for it. I will defend to the death, etc. The main thing is to be tolerant. Indeed, many of my best friends drink iced lattes. We can get along here.

If you live in California I doubt anyone would even notice, what with all the gay weddings and dogs on roller-skates and serial killings that they’ve got going on over there. You could put a cocktail stick your iced latte and no one would care. Yet try it some place like Texas or Scotland and it would cause raised eyebrows, or a prolonged and savage beating. Either way, you are looking at instant social ruin.

Yet it’s a wide world and on the west coast people think nothing of drinking such lattes:

"The wildest dreams of Kew are the facts of Khatmandhu,
And the crimes of Clapham chaste in Martaban."

(Kipling)

Adrian,

It is terribly easy to set up your own blog / journal. And you could end up complete with regular posters and regular trolls.

But don't beg to ride on someone else's coattails.

People come here to read the Prof. Have a great blog, and people will come to read Adrian. That is how it works.

Hey Mathew,
"If you live in California I doubt anyone would even notice, what with all the gay weddings and dogs on roller-skates and serial killings" -
now if that is not homophobic bigotry, whatever is, good lord? I do not know about dogs on skateboards, but how how on earth can one line up "gay weddings" with "serial killings" (obvioulsy meaning: one is as pervert as the other)???

I mean, any slightly civilised person just accepts the fact the people have differing sexual preferences (and you can pursue your happiness with whoever you goddam please, just refrain from bashing others with different preferences). After all, due Declaration of Human Rights says so: No discrimination on the grounds of race, gender, sexual preferences etc.

Holy Jeebus, you try to make a joke and people start quoting human rights legislation at you. I merely mentioned the two things in the same sentence; I wasn’t trying to imply a connection. My point was that glittering urbanites in San Francisco will tend to have a higher tolerance of Professor Delong and his Paris fads than, say, Australian sheep farmers. About gay weddings I have no opinion whatsoever, and I doubt that the Declaration of Human Rights has much to say about it either.

As for dogs on roller skates: I think there is still legitimate humour to be had in California’s reputation as the land of the nutcase- pet psychiatrists, people starting new religions, etc. Say that a man has divorced his pet turtle and no one will believe you; add the words “in California” and it becomes all too plausible.

P.S. For the record, many of my best friends are gay serial killers. They add immeasurably to the –how to put this?- gaiety of life. Provided the killing takes place between mutually consenting adults, in the privacy of their own basements, surely it is no concern of ours.

I just seem to remember a while ago on this very blog, Brad, you announced how you were going to give up coffee, except for very exceptional circumstances. I was very impressed. The doc made me quit 2 years ago and my professional life has gone to....