Where Fun Comes to Die

USA Today recently reported that the National Guard is cutting back its recruiting efforts after receiving more than enough qualified applicants:

The Guard has already cut some bonuses, stopped accepting convicted felons on special waivers and lowered the maximum age for recruits.

What accounts for the sudden uptick in applicants?  Unemployment is an obvious answer: as more individuals get laid off or have their hours cut back, the Guard is a relatively accessible way to supplement income.  For those savvy would-be Guardsmen, though, the trick is to enlist right before you get fired and avoid unemployment altogether.  How?

Federal law under USERRA prohibits the termination of employees who belong to the United States military for certain military related reasons.  One of these is a broad prohibition on firing anyone who has recently served more than 30 days of active duty without cause:

C.F.R. Sec.  1002.247  Does USERRA provide the employee with protection against discharge?

Yes. If the employee’s most recent period of service in the uniformed services was more than 30 days, he or she must not be discharged except for cause–
(a) For 180 days after the employee’s date of reemployment if his or her most recent period of uniformed service was more than 30 days but less than 181 days; or,
(b) For one year after the date of reemployment if the employee’s most recent period of uniformed service was more than 180 days.

In other words, if you serve for 30 days active duty, the law presumes that if your employer fires you within 180 days, it is because they are discriminating against your military status.  Employers face an uphill battle (and near certain legal challenge) explaining that there was sufficient “cause” to discharge the employee.   Luckily for new Guardsmen, basic training lasts 9 weeks, well into the 30 day requirement.  The result is that after basic training, new Guardsmen are practically guaranteed not to be fired within 180 days of their reemployment.  In an economic downturn as fast as this one, hopefully 6 months from now the Guardsman’s employer would have done all the firing that he needed to do and the Guardsman would be one of the few left standing.

No wonder the National Guard has stopped handing out $20,000 bonuses — people who know they are on their employed days are numbered would join just to avoid being fired.

He’s been right for about 3.5 billion years.

Richard Posner, writing about “Capitalism in Crisis,” begins by reiterating exactly what are the potential issues of the $13 trillion the government is spending in its plans to improve the economy:

Much of this sum will not be spent (the guarantees), and probably most will eventually be recovered. But a commitment of such magnitude — stacked on top of enormous budget deficits enlarged by sharply falling federal-tax revenues — could lead to high inflation, greatly increased interest costs on a greatly increased national debt, much heavier taxes, the restructuring of major industries, and the redrawing of the line that separates business from government.

He follows this framing of the issue by an overview of how we have come to this, then finishes with several lessons that he has learned from the crisis, first that the Fed needs to do a better job looking for bubbles and gradually deflating them: “Our central bank failed us.” “The second lesson is that we may need more regulation of banking to reduce its inherent riskiness.” But he concedes:

[I]t is unclear how banking should be regulated. Banking in the broad sense of financial intermediation (borrowing capital in order to lend or otherwise invest it) is immensely diverse. It is also international. If one nation reduces the riskiness of its banking industry, business will flow to other nations, just as a bank that decides to be cautious will lose investors to its competitors because of the positive correlation of risk and return. So international regulation of banking is needed in principle, but international regulation tends to be lowest-common-denominator regulation and so may be ineffectual.

He concludes with some blame throwing:

Finally, let’s place the blame where it belongs. Not on the bankers, who are not responsible for assuring economic stability, but on the government officials who had that responsibility and failed to discharge it. They failed even to develop contingency plans to deal with what everyone knew could happen in a context of escalating housing prices (it had happened in Japan in the late 1980s and the 1990s). Lacking such plans, the government responded to the crisis with spasmodic improvisations, amplifying uncertainty and mistrust and thus retarding recovery.

And let’s not forget to apportion some of the blame to the influential economists who assured us that there could never be another depression. They argued that in the face of a recession the Federal Reserve had only to reduce interest rates and flood the banks with money and all would be well. If only.

So let me get this straight — the government is engaged in risky behavior ($13 trillion) that may sink the entire economy. The government is doing this in response to the dire consequences of it engaging in risky behavior that actually did sink the economy (manipulating interest rates to keep them artificially low).  Dastardly economists have been leading us astray (who knows for what purpose — conspiracy?).  Posner’s solution to all of this? Presumably based on the advice of a few influential economists, more government involvement in the form of regulation that Posner admits is at best tricky and at worst impossible to accomplish.  In other words, risky behavior by the government that could sink the entire economy.  More of the same, but better…  somehow…

Frankly I find George Selgin‘s solution of a free banking system a lot more coherent and promising then the disenchanted-libertarian rantings of Judge Posner.

Hollywood gossip column Defamer reports that television viewership for Obama’s press conferences has steadily declined to the point where networks running the most recent press conference got beat in the ratings by Fox’s “Lie to Me.”

On the one hand, Obama’s combined viewership beat Fox, on the other hand, it has shown a 42 percent decrease over the past three months from its February peak of 49 million.

At this rate, Fox only needs a few months before “Lie to Me” surpasses Obama press conferences across all networks and American Idol, at nearly 24 million viewers per show, is almost already there.

Obama was criticized during the presidential election by fellow candidate John McCain for being a celebrity, specifically he was compared to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton.  Unfortunately for him, only one of these comparisons seems accurate now.  Britney has enjoyed consistent popularity — she has been Yahoo!’s most popular search term for the last four consecutive years and seven times in the past 8 years.  Paris’s popularity, on the other hand, has recently “plummeted.”  Between the two, Obama’ resembles Paris more than Britney,  with  Britney recently surpassing Obama in google searches.  Is this happy news or unhappy news for the Obama camp?  On the one hand, there is less credibility to the argument that Obama is a supercelebrity.  On the other hand, who wouldn’t want to be popular?