Wilma Zeimmer, RIP

My grandfather's sister, Wilma Zeimmer, recently died back in Indiana. Requiescat in pace.

Here is the funeral home's obituary:

Born: January 14, 1912
Died: May 23, 2010

J. WILMA ZEIMMER, 98, of Fort Wayne, passed away on Sunday, May 23, 2010, at Coventry Meadow Nursing Home. Born Jan. 14, 1912, in Fort Wayne, she was a daughter of the late Henry W. McMaken and Jessie (Freck). She was a homemaker and member of Arcola United Methodist Church. Surviving are three daughters, Mary Grepke and Norma (Terry) Closson, both of Fort Wayne, and Janice (Bob) Bell of Geneva; stepdaughter, Roxanna Baker of Tucson, Ariz.; stepson, Ronald Zeimmer of Ashville, N.C.; brother-in-law, Kenneth Becktol of Roanoke; 15 grandchildren; 30 great-grandchildren; and eight great-great-grandchildren. She was also preceded in death by her first husband, Joseph Carroll; second husband, George H. Zeimmer; daughter Lorraine Schorey; sons-in-law, Stan Fink, Harry Beatty and Tom Grepke; brother, Herbert McMaken; sister, Margaret Van Hoozen; and grandchildren, Joey Grepke, David Fink and Mick Blockson.

Wilma was actually the last of 6 brothers and sisters to die. Not mentioned here are her other siblings: Ruth, Henry and Edith. The siblings were all born between 1902 and 1914 and they grew up on a prosperous farm in Aboite Township, Indiana.

Free Sholom Rubashkin!

Bill Anderson has an excellent piece on this case today:

This week, Sholom Rubashkin, who was the vice-president of what was once the largest kosher meat processing supplier in the world, was sentenced to 27 years federal prison for "financial fraud." Prosecutors had asked for 25 years, and this is essentially a life sentence for Rubashkin, who is 51. However, a lot of other people, including a number of former U.S. attorneys general, called for leniency and are outraged by this sentence that was motivated more by politics and not by the law.

I will go against all of them. Sholom Rubashkin, in my view, does not need "leniency." He needs to be freed, period, for the man is not a criminal, which is more than I can say for the people who hounded and prosecuted him and destroyed his business, Glatt kosher Agriprocessors of Postville, Iowa. Let me begin.

Rubashkin is a Hasidic Jew, his family having fled the U.S.S.R. after the Nazi invasion. They came to the United States and set up a butcher shop in New York City. After marriage in 1989, he and his new bride moved to Atlanta on shlihut to do kiruv (Jewish outreach). That same year, Rubashkin’s father started a kosher meat processing business in Postville to better enable Jews living outside of main Jewish centers to be able to obtain kosher meat.

Before Glatt kosher Agriprocessors began to expand its business, Jewish families could only purchase kosher meat from small butchers and specialty stores that catered to Jews. This made things more difficult for Jewish families who did not leave near these kinds of stores, but by expanding the amount of kosher meat for sale, the firm was able to bring kosher meat to regular grocery stores, which was not a small development for jewish families.

Read more.

The market for news

Cross-posted at the Mises Economics Blog: http://blog.mises.org/13055/the-market-for-news/

Historically, newspapers have made money in two ways. They make money from readers, and they make money from advertisers. Originally, most of the money that newspapers made came from readers. In the late 19th century and early 20th century the old newsboy sales model was based on incentives to move as many newspapers as possible at the highest possible price. Advertising was a source of revenue, to be sure, but not the primary source.

Over time, the emphasis would shift away from revenue provided by readers and toward advertiser revenue. Eventually, advertiser revenue would make up at least 70-80 percent of all revenue. Essentially, newspapers gave up on getting the readers to cover the full cost of the news a long time ago. The daily cost of a newspaper subscription is, more often than not, well below the cost of producing a paper copy of a newspaper. Until the last few years, the real money was to be made in advertiser dollars.

But with the significant decline in circulation (see here) advertisers know that they get less bang for their buck every month that circulation drops.

So, one day, after years of plummeting circulation and revenue, the newspapers suddenly realized they'd better get the readers to start paying for the news. Their most brilliant ideas revolved around erecting pay walls around content. In other words, the newspapers, to solve their revenue problem, returned to a revenue model that hadn't been used in decades. It hasn't been working out.

Mashable today carried a nice piece on some newspapers that are finally starting to look at innovative ways to make money. Primarily, they're finding ways new ways to make money off of advertisers.

The new innovation that some papers are showing results from the fact that some papers are finally starting to come to grips with reality. The new reality is that news can and will be produced without traditional newspapers.

For the last several years, the entire business model of the newspapers seemed to be "you'll miss us when we're gone, so give us money," which wasn't a rock-solid strategy to say the least.

But other organizations have already moved in to displace them. As the Mashable article notes, laid off journalists from closed and downsized papers have started to produce their own news. Here in Denver, at least one online newspaper aggregates news from a variety of blogs written by former newspaper writers and other bloggers. The blogs are sometimes funded by private firms, such as in the case of this real estate blog.

It has become clear that journalism will be funded, but that the new reality is far more decentralized, complex, and competitive.

The days are gone when one could ask "did you read the paper today" and everyone could discuss the same few news stories selected by even fewer news editors. Today, people can get the news they want, and different people are interested in different things. The market loves this kind of diversity and will move in to serve it in even more diverse ways.

The market is currently in transition, and transitions in the market produce winners and losers, but we're not sure yet who the big winners are in this. The losers are already pretty obvious. Capital needs to be moved to where it is demanded. That is to say, it will be moved away from physical printing presses and old-timey newspapers and toward new innovative leaders in delivering news. Some newspaper organizations will get learn to make money from this, and many will not.

Uh-oh, bigots don't like me

There's a web site called VDARE which many corporate web-surfing programs block for "racist content." They're a site that spins a variety of bizarre theories about the inferiority of non-Anglo Saxons and so on. Articles criticizing me for my moderately pro-immigration views have appeared more than once. On this site, a writer seems to (or at least did at one time) attribute to me the famous "Go back to Boston" tirade by Augustin Cebada of the Brown Berets. Comments that are a bit fiery for my tastes, and somewhat violent and in poor taste. And, I never wrote them. [Here is the original piece, although I don't want to link directly to such a site: http://www.vdare.com/misc/080514_pendleton.htm]

This is simply an occupational hazard of writing a lot, I suppose, since sooner or later, someone would attribute something to me that I never wrote. In my original posting in which I quote (without endorsement) Cebada's views, I did point out the hypocrisy of those who claim to be so horrified by such a statement, while supporting similar sentiments in favor of Anglos. My piece is basically a historical analysis, which is why I compare modern sentiments to those of John C. Calhoun, although for some people, everything is a cause for histrionics. [Here's the archived link, since my old blog posts prior to 2007 have been deleted.]

Which brings me to why I ever brought this up. The "racialists" (as they call themselves) who support these hyper-nationalistic views have twice now hurled insults at me in the comments section of the Mises Economics blog. Personally, I find it rather bizarre that some people have so much free time as to sit around starting fights over articles that were published 4 years ago. But there's a lot of variety out there I suppose.

Flat is the new 'up'

With the next several years looking quite grim, it seems that just neutral economic news will be good news.

From the Aurora Sentinel today:

Higher earners far from immune on foreclosure

AURORA | Not a single economic class or neighborhood in Aurora is immune to foreclosures.

Although foreclosures are more saturated in low-income neighborhoods, they are also dispersed throughout middle- and high-income neighborhoods, according to 2009 data from Arapahoe County.

Until recently, foreclosures were most prevalent in lower-income neighborhoods, among homeowners who were living paycheck to paycheck, afflicted with job losses and unable to pay their mortgages.

But as high unemployment persists and the aftermath of the recession continues to ripple across the state, wealthier neighborhoods with higher-income homeowners are becoming vulnerable to foreclosures as well.

Although the Arapahoe County Assessor’s office doesn’t track the incomes of people who have been affected by foreclosures, they do track the prices of homes that have been foreclosed upon.

Judging by those statistics, it’s evident that the rate of foreclosures has jumped from 2009 to 2010 in all levels of home prices — and, presumably in all economic classes.

*
“Every category did increase,” said Corbin Sakdol, Arapahoe County Assessor. “However, the heavy foreclosures are still in the $250,000 and below range.”

Since January, there were about 1,300 foreclosed homes in Arapahoe County in the price range of $250,000 and below, up from about 1,000 from January to June of 2009, Sakdol said.

In the price range of $250,000 to $500,000, there have been about 160 foreclosed homes since January, up from about 110 foreclosures in the same period of 2009.

The trend continues all the way up to the homes in the price range of $1 million and above. In that range, there have been 16 foreclosed homes since January, up from 11 in the same period of 2009.

Aurora still has the highest number of foreclosures out of any area in Arapahoe County, Sakdol said.

But data from the state of Colorado’s Division of Housing show that foreclosures are trending away from Aurora and into counties such as Jefferson, Douglas and Boulder.

“The fact that foreclosures have become more numerous in places like Douglas and Jefferson indicates that foreclosures are moving up the income scale,” said Ryan McMaken, community relations director for the state of Colorado’s Division of Housing. “We’re seeing movement in foreclosures toward areas that have more expensive homes, whereas they used to be centered in Denver, Adams, Arapahoe, and especially in Aurora.”

Foreclosures are quick to impact those people without college degrees, who most likely haven’t built coffers of savings to sustain them through a lull of unemployment, he said. That explains why the number of foreclosures were originally most concentrated in places like Adams County and Arapahoe County.

But since late 2008, as homeowners in high-income neighborhoods have slowly run out of money because of unemployment, they are now in the same position as those lower-income homeowners.

“The length of time that unemployment has been high is now starting to affect people with higher incomes because they are running out of savings,” McMaken said. “But people toward the lower end of the income scale are most impacted by the recession.”

Recent data suggests that the rate of people going into foreclosure statewide, including in Aurora, has reached a plateau.

McMaken said last month’s figures show the lowest foreclosure filings for counties since May 2009.

“Flat is the new ‘up’ in terms of good economic news,” he said. “Flat is what you like to see. Rather than foreclosures going up, if they can just stay flat for a while then you’re happy about that, and that seems to be what we’re looking at right now.”

#2 of ten things to not Tweet about

I especially enjoyed this one:



Translation: I don't have any actual knowledge about any actual industries. I just like to communicate about communications.

From The Oatmeal

More economic pain ahead

From my post at Libertarianstandard.com:

In the chart below, provided by chartoftheday.com, one can see how grim the job situation has become. The long term-trend experienced since 1961 has been abandoned for what can only be described as stagnation in job creation. As jobs remain flat, of course, the size of the job force will continue to grow as more young people graduate from college and secondary school. This is partly why unemployment among teens and twentysomethings is now about 25 percent.



According to chartoftheday.com:

Today, the Labor Department reported that nonfarm payrolls increased by 431,000 in May. It is worth noting that a large majority of last month's gain in payrolls was due to the hiring of temporary workers for the 2010 census. Today's chart provides some perspective on the US job market. Note how the number of jobs steadily increased from 1961 to 2001 (top chart). During the last economic recovery, however, job growth was unable to get back up to its long-term trend (first time since 1961). More recently, nonfarm payrolls have pulled away from its 40-year trend (1961-2001) by a record percentage (bottom chart). In fact, the number of US jobs is currently at level first reached in early 2000.

So far, the current "recovery" has produced a net loss of 133,000 jobs. During the same point in the last recovery (2003), the economy was adding 200,000 to 300,000 jobs per month. Calling the current situation a recovery is risible to anyone who is out looking for a job right now, especially since workers are now experiencing the longest periods of joblessness experienced in decades.

We can add to this the fact that the debt crisis in Europe has now spread to Hungary. So now, Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Spain and Hungary are all now facing serious debt crises and even risk of default. The European economy is in disarray, and investors were not pleased as the Dow plunged more than 300 points to below 10,000.

The homebuyer tax credits are gone, the stimulus is beginning to wear off, and there is nothing left that the feds can do to stave off another crisis since interest rates are already effectively zero and the federal government is more more broke than ever. State and local governments are in even worse shape.

Needless to say, this does not bode well for the "recovery."