November 30th, 2008 by Jon Taplin
Michael Pollan, our greatest writer on agriculture and the food business ( In Defense of Food
), told Bill Moyers he has no interest in being the Secretary of Agriculture and that’s too bad. Whoever gets the job must read Pollan’s memo to the Farmer in Chief. Although it may seem like food issues are pretty low on the priority list of the new administration, Pollan makes it clear that they are intertwined with all the issues of energy savings, global warming, health.
After cars, the food system uses more fossil fuel than any other sector of the economy — 19 percent. And while the experts disagree about the exact amount, the way we feed ourselves contributes more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than anything else we do — as much as 37 percent, according to one study. Whenever farmers clear land for crops and till the soil, large quantities of carbon are released into the air. But the 20th-century industrialization of agriculture has increased the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by the food system by an order of magnitude; chemical fertilizers (made from natural gas), pesticides (made from petroleum), farm machinery, modern food processing and packaging and transportation have together transformed a system that in 1940 produced 2.3 calories of food energy for every calorie of fossil-fuel energy it used into one that now takes 10 calories of fossil-fuel energy to produce a single calorie of modern supermarket food. Put another way, when we eat from the industrial-food system, we are eating oil and spewing greenhouse gases. This state of affairs appears all the more absurd when you recall that every calorie we eat is ultimately the product of photosynthesis — a process based on making food energy from sunshine. There is hope and possibility in that simple fact.
Pollan lays out a program to remove us from the fossil fuel intensive industrial agriculture system and return us to the perfection of solar based local harvests. Continue reading ‘Rethinking Food Policy’
November 30th, 2008 by Jon Taplin
From Nielsen Research.
Results of a global happiness survey from The Nielsen Company reveal that men are happier with money, while women are happier with friendships and relationships with their children, co-workers and bosses.
“Because they are happier with non-economic factors, women’s happiness is more recession-proof, which might explain why women around the world are happier in general than men are,” said Bruce Paul, VP Consumer Research, US, The Nielsen Company.
Thoughts?
November 29th, 2008 by Jon Taplin
From Suketa Mehta author of “Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found.”
And now it looks as if the latest terrorists were our neighbors, young men dressed not in Afghan tunics but in blue jeans and designer T-shirts. Being South Asian, they would have grown up watching the painted lady that is Mumbai in the movies: a city of flashy cars and flashier women. A pleasure-loving city, a sensual city. Everything that preachers of every religion thunder against. It is, as a monk of the pacifist Jain religion explained to me, “paap-ni-bhoomi”: the sinful land.
Mehta then goes on to say all the mumbai expats should go back and stand up for the city that pushed the boundaries. My gut tells me that President Zardari of Pakistan in not fully in control of his intelligence service.
November 29th, 2008 by Jon Taplin
Just like Ray Davies, I’m a “dedicated follower of fashion” and so I took myself to Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade to see who was going to live and die over Christmas season. Here’s my prediction. J.Crew and The Gap will thrive. Abercrombie and Fitch will barely survive. J.Crew seems to be surfing off the Michelle Obama look and the store was packed. Both the Gap and their Old Navy stores were doing land office business and their pricing structure is built for hard times. Abercrombie, with the half dressed male model in the doorway, was like a morgue, with more salespersons than customers. I think their slightly pornographic marketing to spoiled preppies just completely misses this cultural moment.
November 28th, 2008 by Jon Taplin
You gotta hand it to Robert Rubin.
Mr. Rubin, senior counselor and a director at Citigroup, acknowledged that he was involved in a board decision to ramp up risk-taking in 2004 and 2005, even though he was warning publicly that investors were taking too much risk. He said if executives had executed the plan properly, the bank’s losses would have been less.
Its troubles have put the former Treasury secretary in the awkward position of having to justify $115 million in pay since 1999, excluding stock options, while explaining Citigroup’s $20 billion in losses over the past year and a government bailout of at least $45 billion.
Mr. Rubin’s salary made him one of Wall Street’s highest-paid officials — and a controversial figure among Citigroup shareholders and some executives, who questioned whether his limited duties justified the big paydays.
“Even though he has no ‘operating’ responsibilities, he still has a fiduciary responsibility as a board member,” said William Smith, a New York money manager and frequent critic of Citigroup’s current management and board. “He has overseen the entire meltdown, yet been compensated as an operating employee while bragging about having no operating responsibility.” Mr. Rubin can’t “have it both ways,” Mr. Smith added.
November 28th, 2008 by Jon Taplin
A sign of the times.
A Wal-Mart employee in suburban New York died after he was trampled by a crush of shoppers who tore down the front doors and thronged into the store early Friday morning, turning the annual rite of post-Thanksgiving bargain hunting into a Hobbesian frenzy…
“When they were saying they had to leave, that an employee got killed, people were yelling, ‘I’ve been on line since yesterday morning,’ ” Ms. Cribbs told The Associated Press. “They kept shopping.”
November 28th, 2008 by Jon Taplin
Just before the election, Michael Porter, the Harvard Business School expert of competitiveness, wrote an article for Business Week entitled Why America Needs an Economic Strategy. Although this would seem to be obvious, Porter points out that for 30 years we have not had such a strategy.
America’s political system, especially as it has evolved in recent times, almost guarantees an absence of strategic thinking at the federal level. Government leaders react to current events piecemeal, rather than developing a strategy that unfolds over years.
He then goes on to point out seven key strategies we need to pursue for the long term. I wanted to focus on two of them that relate directly to my belief in the idea of a New Federalism–that innovation must be sourced at the edges–with fiscal stimulus money flowing to the states.
U.S. colleges and universities are precious assets, but we have no serious plan to improve access to them by our citizens. America now ranks 12th in tertiary (college or higher) educational attainment for 25- to 34-year-olds. We have made no progress in this vital area over the past 30 years, unlike almost every other country. This is an ominous trend in an economy that must have the skills to justify its high wages. Instead of mounting a serious program to provide access to higher education, like the G.I. Bill and National Science Foundation programs of earlier years, Congress grandstands over the rate of endowment spending in our best universities.
The federal government has also failed to recognize and support the decentralization and regional specialization that drive our economy. Washington still acts as if the federal level is where the action is. Beltway bureaucrats spend many billions of dollars on top-down, highly fragmented federal economic development programs. Yet these programs are not designed to support regional clusters, nor do they send money where it will have the greatest impact in each region. For example, distressed urban communities, where poverty in America is concentrated, are starved of the infrastructure spending needed for job development. Again, no strategic thinking.
In California for the first time in decades the state university system may deny qualified candidates access to colleges because of budget cuts. Thus the the first rung up the success ladder is denied.
The Obama Administration, having built their campaign on the networked, bottom-up model, must embrace that same model for the Rebuilding America process. Supporting the states with block grants based on population would be the key to the process. Thus California with 12% of the country’s population would receive block grants totalling $60 Billion in a $500 billion recovery package. That money could revive our fabled state college system, rebuild our failing k-12 schools, help support solar and wind investments and repair our aging infrastructure and help support projects like the high speed rail system. All of this would put our citizens back to work.
November 27th, 2008 by Jon Taplin
The rumor flooding the intelligence community is that if the Mumbai Attacks can be traced back to Pakistan’s Intelligence service (ISI) it could lead to a huge escalation of hostilities between two nuclear powers. The fact that Pakistani freighters brought in the boats the attackers used to approach the two hotels from the unguarded river side is evidence of high level coordination. An Indian reporter in the Wall Street Journal gives the mood in Mumbai.
India faces tough decisions over the next few weeks and months. Every time India has been hit, there has be no counter reaction. The vast majority of Indians believe that the attacks emanate from Pakistan. While most Indians don’t blame Pakistanis, they do blame instruments and agents of the Pakistani government, specifically the ISI. With the bombing in Kabul, the U.S. confirmed that the ISI was involved adding an independent credible voice to India’s charges of Pakistani involvement.
This is a true tinderkeg.
November 26th, 2008 by Jon Taplin
To the community:
I know the financial meltdown may bring an element of stress to your table on Thanksgiving, but before you start the meal say grace and thanks for what we do have. Our families, hopefully our health, our loving animals and the art and nature that surrounds us.
Unlike many generations, we Americans have been given the opportunity to reinvent our country in the same way Jefferson (“little revolutions from time to time”) predicted. Let us hope and pray our leaders have the wisdom to point the way in a truly new direction and we have the energy and commitment to each do our own part.
Warm regards,
Jon
Update: It seems Tom Toles was feeling the same way (above)
November 26th, 2008 by Jon Taplin
I have posted the speech I gave last month-America 3.0:Rebooting After The Crash here