Crunch (goes the global economy!)

Greetings good citizen,

Like the housing bubble, the mythical cheaper there, the driving force behind globalization has finally collapsed under it’s own logistical contradictions.

Besides, complete capture of just the top 20% of the market has proven ‘counter productive’. Driving the other 80 % out of the market place has only fermented open rebellion (especially in the ‘cheaper there’ itself!)

But while China’s industrial subsidies, trade policies, undervalued currency and lack of enforcement for intellectual property rights all remain sticking points for the United States, there is at least one area in which the playing field seems to be slowly leveling: the cheap labor that has made China’s factories nearly unbeatable is not so cheap anymore. China has experienced sporadic labor shortages, which in turn have driven up its once rock-bottom labor costs.

This trend is particularly evident in the weeks following China’s Spring Festival, or New Year, when more than 100 million rural migrants return to the countryside to spend the year’s biggest holiday with family. Coaxing those same migrants back into the urban work force has proven increasingly difficult.

This year has been no exception. Although nearly two weeks have passed since the Lantern Festival that officially marks the end of the 15-day holiday, cities across China are still facing a serious labor shortfall. In order to lure new workers and retain the old, some companies give employees sizable bonuses just for coming back to work, while others offer cash for every new employee they bring along with them. And in many areas, wage increases ranging from 10 to 30 percent have become the norm.

Funny how ‘time’ has played a factor here as well. China makes no bones about throwing you out into the cold after you turn thirty (because you can’t keep up with the kids!)

Which means their ‘hungry’ pool (of formerly communist) workers is exhausted.

The currently available pool KNOWS that THEY have the upper hand (the work HAS TO get done! Miss the JIT shipping date and there goes the profits!)

Worse, most of this shit CAN’T be shuffled (on a moments notice) to some other third world hell hole, the equipment and the raw materials required aren’t exactly ‘portable’…then there’s the ‘learning curve’. The machine does most of the work but the Monkey WATCHING the machine has to know what ‘proper operation’ looks like as well as being able to tell when the machine is fucking up!

Ironically, it was these factors that led the capitalists to start calling US workers ‘greedy’ (for wanting a wage above sustenance level!)

Which (naturally) brings us full circle to the fair days wages for a fair days work equation (that neither money nor capitalism has answered satisfactorily.)

The capitalist believes he’s lived up to his end of the bargain if the worker doesn’t starve to death, and the worker sees the employers ‘toys’ and lavish lifestyle and KNOWS who is REALLY paying for it all!

Understand Bubba, it takes a whole boatload of workers to make a single wealthy, er, ‘family unit’. (The loop isn’t closed until the trophy wife spits out a couple of kids to insure that the judge will award her ‘generous’ child support/alimony payments!)

So, to add insult to injury, the worker has to pay for the employer’s ‘mistakes’!

Well, the world of ‘tangible goods’ will always require knowledgable workers…who will continue to demand higher than sustenance wages.

Until they abandon their ’need for speed’ and allow workers to build some kind of life for themselves, the ‘cheaper there’ is officially ‘toast’!

What’s really gonna put a major kink in things will be the ‘sudden’ reassertion of longstanding ‘anti-trust laws’.

Few of you realize this but an ‘imported economy’ makes YOU a VERY ‘captive audience’.

Soon, local sources will start driving multi-national brands from the market place because Mother Nature doesn’t have a cash register! (and you CAN’T BEAT FREE!)

Clever local operators will start beating the (real) greedy bastards at their own game!

Once again we see workers being blamed for increases in prices.

How ‘hollow’ is this claim when working US citizen is officially an ‘endangered species’?

It galls me to no end to see GE (ONCE the world’s largest manufacturer) using ‘made in the USA’ in its advertising!

Those heartless pricks laid off hundreds of thousands of US workers!

What the ‘average’ worker doesn’t know is our supposedly free markets are anything but!

They are contractually bound to buy from certain vendors, often regardless of price!

So the next time you go to the store and notice the price of (fill in the blank) has taken a stiff jump, it would behoove you to question the validity of the (often bogus) news item related to the increase.

Look at housing prices? Locally they’re still ‘sky-high’ yet in the next state (up) they are virtually ‘giving’ property away! (Because it has ALWAYS been an ‘economic desert’ up there!)

And, mind you, neither story is making the news.

Because the ‘truth’ is that we will soon be faced with overwhelming ‘dearth of buyers’ situation that will literally destroy current property values.

The entire region would go up for sale overnight as everyone hoped to lure ‘the greater fool’ into buying their place (at the current greatly inflated price!)

If you step back a couple of paces and mentally blend the ‘Global race to the bottom with Peak Oil’, maybe you will begin to appreciate why National Geographic has begun ‘profiling’ ‘Dooms-Day Preppers.’

Left to our imagination is what it means when the corporate owned media starts admitting ‘the cheaper there’ is no more?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Things that make your head go 'boom'!

Greetings good citizen,

How many of you are thinking what I’m thinking? How the hell did BP get a permit to drill without having a failsafe method of capping the fucker IF something ‘went wrong’?

This brings us full circle to another ‘bizarre’, er, ‘coincidence’…have you noticed the fuckers are more concerned with being able to ‘get at’ the oil than they are in preventing an extinction level event in the Gulf?

They don’t want to ‘cap’ the fucking well! WTF is wrong with these people? This is way beyond stupid and the fact that the media has ignored this ‘option’ should tell you something.

If it were up to me, there would have been a HUGE HONKIN’ ROCK sitting on top of that puppy the day after the feed snapped! May not have sealed it ‘perfectly’ but at least it wouldn’t be blowing hundreds of barrels a minute into a sensitive eco-system either!

And we don’t even have that!

The level of, er, ‘ignorance’ displayed here is positively staggering! Once again ‘incompetence’ doesn’t even BEGIN to cover the level of ‘stupidity’ that has been indulged thus far!

Which brings us to tonight’s offering for another installment guaranteed to make your head explode!

I think we would gladly exchange all of the ‘artificial knowledge’ conferred upon the leaders of the world by their prestigious ‘college degrees’ for a ‘lick of common sense’!

HP to Cut 9,000 Jobs in Shift Toward Service Work
By Hugo Miller and Katie Hoffmann - Jun 1, 2010

Hewlett-Packard Co., the world’s largest personal-computer maker, plans to cut about 9,000 jobs and retool its computer-services business to help it compete with International Business Machines Corp.

HP will take a $1 billion charge for paying severance and modernizing its data centers to provide more automated services to customers, it said today in a regulatory filing. The Palo Alto, California-based company plans to replace about 6,000 of the eliminated positions with workers in different countries. [Somebody please explain to me why every Hewlett-Packard plant/retailer on US soil isn’t in flames right now? Why isn’t there a bill in Congress being ‘fast tracked’ to BAN HP products from the US market? Better, why isn’t HP’s charter being revoked? Or are the MORONS we elect to Congress TOO STUPID to understand what is in the public’s ‘best interests’?]

“These sets of actions will enable HP to grow better than the market,” Ann Livermore, executive vice president for enterprise business, said today on a conference call. “This is a substantial opportunity for us and something that we think is a good opportunity for our clients as well.” [You can insert ‘shareowners’ in there as well because this is another ‘cost based’ effort to reduce expense that will ultimately result in fewer customers!]

The job cuts come after HP raised its 2010 forecast last month for the third time since November as results beat analysts’ estimates on a revival in business spending. Chief Executive Officer Mark Hurd, who has announced more than 48,000 job cuts during his five-year tenure, has expanded into more profitable services as the recession crimped corporate budgets for equipment. He bought Electronic Data Systems Corp. for $13.2 billion in 2008, vaulting HP to No. 2 in services behind IBM. [Ironically, we can’t fault Mr. Hurd because he is following IBM’s example! Those, er, ‘ratfinks’ should also be banned from the US market and have their charter revoked as well!]

HP said the $1 billion in expenses for severance costs and asset impairments will be applied between now and fiscal 2013. The moves will result in net annual savings of $500 million to $700 million by the end of fiscal 2013, the company said. [Savings? You mean the company will ‘keep’ that money and it won’t be taken by Mr. Hurd as a well-deserved ‘bonus’? Heaven forbid the price of HP products might drop a few bucks, making them ‘more competitive! Because we all know this has NOTHING to do with competitiveness and everything to do with screwing the people who built the business from the ground up!]

Job-Cut History

The company had 304,000 employees at the end of its fiscal year in October. Hurd, 53, has cut jobs before to shift the workforce and expand the sales staff. When he became CEO in 2005, he cut 10 percent, or more than 15,000 positions, to lift profit. [And mostly to prove he had a pair…] In 2008, he announced a plan to eliminate 24,600 jobs over three years to save $1.8 billion after the purchase of EDS.

Livermore said today that the cuts and the new hiring will take place over a multiyear period. HP’s services unit will be hiring 6,000 workers in sales and in some “global delivery centers,” she said. [You can insert ‘call centers’ here…and don’t even imagine these jobs will be located within US jurisdiction. The corporate world are avowed ‘slavers’.]

“This company is focusing more and more on revenue growth in their services business,” said Aaron Rakers, an analyst at Stifel Nicolaus & Co. in St. Louis. “IBM’s always going to have a big presence in services, but these guys are going to battle it out for big deals.” [And US workers can go suck rocks!]

HP said last month that services revenue rose 2.5 percent to $8.71 billion, while PC sales rose 21 percent and orders for server computers and storage devices jumped 31 percent. Services accounted for 28 percent of HP’s overall $30.8 billion in quarterly revenue.

Dell, Xerox

Hewlett-Packard isn’t the only hardware maker trying to gain ground on Armonk, New York-based IBM, the world’s largest computer-services company. Dell Inc., the No. 3 personal- computer maker, bought Perot Systems Inc. in November for about $3.9 billion. Round Rock-Texas based Dell said in February it plans to acquire more computer-services companies.

Xerox Corp., based in Norwalk, Connecticut, completed its purchase of Affiliated Computer Services Inc. for about $6 billion in February to accelerate its focus on computer services amid declining sales of printing equipment.

Hewlett-Packard fell 43 cents to $45.58 at 4 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. The stock has dropped 12 percent this year.

“We are very supportive of this move,” Louis Miscioscia, an analyst at Collins Stewart Plc in Boston, said today in a note. “We believed there was more to be done” for HP to catch up to IBM, he said.

Never mind the obvious ‘pro-corporate’ spin of two US companies ‘slugging it out for market share’. What we’re seeing here is the reason why you (or your kid) can’t/won’t find a decent job! They’re all being ‘outsourced’ and the ignorant morons in Washington aren’t lifting a finger to stop it, despite campaign promises to the contrary!

Well don’t look now good citizen because believe it or not it’s even worse than it appears

Dead Cat Labor Market

Rebound in the labor market? Looks more like a dead cat bounce, where a great many of the jobs being created are either temporary, part-time, low wage, or stripped down, like those detailed in the following CNNMoney.com report, "Say Goodbye to Full-Time Jobs with Benefits":

Jobs may be coming back, but they aren't the same ones workers were used to.

Many of the jobs employers are adding are temporary or contract positions, rather than traditional full-time jobs with benefits. With unemployment remaining near 10%, employers have their pick of workers willing to accept less secure positions.

In 2005, the government estimated that 31% of U.S. workers were already so-called contingent workers. Experts say that number could increase to 40% or more in the next 10 years.

James Stoeckmann, senior practice leader at WorldatWork, a professional association of human resource executives, believes that full-time employees could become the minority of the nation's workforce within 20 to 30 years, leaving employees without traditional benefits such as health coverage, paid vacations and retirement plans, that most workers take for granted today. [What Bobo isn’t saying is that ‘churn’ has already devastated over fifty percent of the working aged population’s ‘benefit packages’.]

"The traditional job is not doomed. But it will increasingly have competition from other models, the most prominent is the independent contractor model," he said. [Why do you suppose that is? Because I.C.’s are ‘responsible’ for their own benefits, as well as making sure their taxes are paid! You think the government is in trouble now? Picture a largely ‘self-employed’ workforce where you have all of the downside and none of the upside of working for yourself!]

Doug Arms, senior vice president of Ajilon, a staffing firm, says about 90% of the positions his company is helping clients fill right now are on a contract basis.

"[Employers] are reluctant to bring on permanent employees too quickly," he said. "And the available candidate landscape is much different now. They're a little more aggressive to take any position."

Cathy, who asked that her last name not be used, lost her job as a recruiter for a financial services firm in February 2009. She started working on a contract basis four months later. She believes that many employers are taking improper advantage of the weak labor market.

"I work in HR, I understand that sometimes you need to hire a contractor because you have a project and you won't need the person when it's done in three months," she said. "But that's not what's happening here."

Cathy said her co-workers who had permanent jobs didn't treat her differently, but she still felt like a second-class citizen.

"At one job they were giving out H1N1 flu shots but the contract workers weren't eligible to receive them," she said. "I said 'You guys are still in trouble if I get the flu.'"

Much of the change is due to employers' desire to limit their costs. Stoechmann equates the shift to the one seen in retirement plans, in which employers moved away from the traditional pension plan toward defined contribution plans, which passes more of the burden onto the employee.

Yippee yi yo ki yay! Geez mo’ fo, ‘The Deal’ done got changed somewhere down the line and today’s kids are ‘too stupid’ to know things weren’t always like this!

Understand that you ‘surrender’ your right to ‘fend for yourself’ in exchange for having your needs met by society…but the ‘private sector fuckers’ think they are not bound to this ‘arrangement’.

The coming ‘energy crisis’ (which may be a lot closer than you think, considering what’s going on in the Gulf.) Will ‘short circuit’ the out-sourcing of physical products and the difficulty of long distance troubleshooting (think the Boeing ‘Dreamliner’, which still isn’t flying!) will claw back a percentage of jobs that are currently being done ‘over a wire’ solely to enrich the capitalist pigs.

It’s obvious the focus on ‘expense reduction’ was the primary driver behind the crisis in the Gulf today. The cheap fucks couldn’t even spend the money to change the batteries on the friggin safety device! It’s not like they weren’t making it ‘hand over fist’ or that oil was ‘dirt cheap’!

A little ‘trite’ to be saying ‘penny-wise and pound-foolish’ but there it is!

Better, the whole ‘loyalty’ thing will get a serious re-working because what you care about and why will suddenly matter very much!

The whole ‘profit’ thing is going to go right out the window because it has nothing to do with survival.

Funny how ‘life’ changes everything!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Another capitalist 'success story'...

Greetings good citizen,

In keeping with the theme of yesterday’s post, we are once again blessed to witness capitalism at its finest. It’s hard to tell what’s more disturbing here, how the advertising supported corporate media fawns over the ‘credentials’ of a former race car driver turned entrepreneur, or how this ‘hero’ plans to ‘off-shore’ the whole shebang once GM wraps up domestic production at the end of this model year…

What a ‘patriot’ huh?

Anyway, on to tonight’s offering

Detroit’s Mr. Fix-It Takes On Saturn

THEY call him The Captain at the racetrack, where his team has won the Indianapolis 500 a record 15 times. But at heart, Roger Penske has always been a consummate repairman, one who excelled at rebuilding used cars as a teenager and later deftly overhauled troubled businesses as an automotive entrepreneur.

Over the last 30 years, he’s also succeeded where corporate giants have failed. He turned around truck leasing for Hertz, revived General Motors’ diesel-engine operations, and gave new life to Daimler’s micro-car franchise, Smart. And when his struggling hometown, Detroit, had to make sure that Super Bowl XL went off without a hitch in 2006, the city turned to Mr. Penske to run it.

Now, at age 72, the silver-haired former race car driver is about to take on the ultimate problem child of the auto industry — G.M.’s Saturn division. [Saturn my not have been a ‘problem child’ before Penske got his hands on it but it sure has turned into one since the ‘hand-over’.]

Since its creation in 1985 as what G.M. anointed “a different kind of car company,” Saturn has been one of Detroit’s biggest disappointments. Instead of a shining example of G.M.’s foresight, it ended up epitomizing the slow, downward spiral of what was once the world’s dominant automaker. [Hmmn, high owner loyalty/satisfaction, er, are we talking about the same vehicle company here?]

Its early promise faded amid weak sales, years of bland cars and a marketing message that was lost in G.M.’s overstocked inventory of brands. G.M. threw money at Saturn, but never made a profit even during its best times. Analysts estimate that Saturn has lost as much as $20 billion over the last 24 years. [‘Analysts estimate’…wait a minute, aren’t these the same guys that keep telling us the economy is roaring back to life?]

“It may well be the biggest fiasco in automotive history since Ford brought out the Edsel,” said Jerome York, a former G.M. director and an aide to Kirk Kerkorian, the investor who has made and lost hefty sums investing in G.M., Chrysler and Ford. “Saturn has been a huge money loser for G.M. for a long, long time.” [Geez, GM sure did a great job of keeping that quiet (until now) didn’t they?]

In Mr. Penske’s view, however, Saturn is a potential jewel to be plucked from the scrap heap of G.M.’s bankruptcy. [Although he only saw fit to ‘pluck’ the name plate from the scrap pile while ‘rescuing’ none of the production facilities…he wasn’t getting ‘stuck’ with any UAW contracts!]

By early next month, his company, the Penske Automotive Group, is expected to complete its acquisition of Saturn from G.M. After that, it plans to try to reinvent the brand as an independent chain of dealerships. That experiment hinges on attracting a foreign car manufacturer that will supply Saturn with vehicles after G.M. stops producing its current line of Saturns in 2011.

The foray sets the stage for a classic business drama involving a self-made perfectionist who seldom tastes defeat and a tarnished brand that struggled to meet expectations under the heavy hand of a slow-moving and entrenched corporate behemoth. All of which has analysts, competitors and auto buffs placing bets on whether or not Mr. Penske met his match in Saturn.

[I suspect the public won’t be fooled by this ‘faux’ patriot and his planned ‘bait & switch’ scam.]

His efforts to restore Saturn’s credibility and improve its sales mirror, in a much smaller way, G.M.’s own uphill battle to come back — as a 60-percent-owned government entity backed by $50 billion in federal loans.

“My guess is that Penske has a shot at it,” says David E. Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich. “But I’m not sure I could say that about anyone else except Roger.”

Mr. Penske, citing the pending deal with G.M., declined to comment on his plans for Saturn. People inside G.M. who have knowledge of the transaction — but who requested anonymity because the negotiations are confidential — say that the acquisition should close early next month and that G.M.’s new board of directors wants to move forward with the Saturn divestiture. Penske Automotive has already sent Saturn dealers two-year agreements to review and sign. [These contracts will be a bit tough to honor considering nobody will be making ‘real’ Saturns after the end of this year…]

A G.M. spokesman, Thomas J. Pyden, says the automaker is eager for the deal to close. “We certainly remain hopeful that the sale will proceed,” he says. “In terms of Penske, we don’t think you could find a better buyer for the brand.” [Hmmn, what else would a GM shill executive say?]

Indeed, G.M. has few other options for Saturn. The company has been forced to jettison huge chunks of its global organization to meet government conditions to become a smaller, more nimble competitor so it can ensure its longevity and earn enough money to repay the federal loans that have kept it afloat.

Members of G.M.’s sprawling corporate family like Saab, Hummer and Opel are slated to be sold to foreign buyers, and the venerable Pontiac division will shut down completely. Saturn too looked to become extinct until Mr. Penske surprised the auto industry by making his bid in early June, just two weeks after his race team took home the championship at the Indy 500.

Mr. Penske controls 40 percent of Penske Automotive’s stock, giving him a stake worth about $600 million. The company lost $403 million last year, on revenue of $11.6 billion, during a seismic downturn that slammed all sectors of the auto industry.

In earlier years, Penske Automotive was reliably profitable as it became one of the largest car dealers in the world, with 150 franchises in the United States and an additional 160 in international markets. Mr. Penske’s holdings also include several Toyota dealerships in California.

Um, this is not the ‘end’ of this particular piece, it goes on for, er, 3 more ‘pages’ such as that can be here online (this is just the first page and it comprises a 4 page ‘word’ document.)
Or would print out in 4 separate pages, were I to do so.

I cut it off here because I think we’ve seen enough. I actually ‘took heart’ when I heard Mr. Penske was buying the Saturn Division from GM. (Because I mistakenly believed he was buying the whole product line and not just the nameplate, as is now apparent.)

Now that we see he intends to ‘sell out’ the former employees, I’m no longer impressed with his ‘daring’ nor his ‘can do’ spirit.

The fact that the media is calling this a ‘challenge’ is an insult to our intelligence although one must admit, we can only wonder who will buy a Saturn once they aren’t made here in the US anymore?

Contrary to this article, most folks I know who own Saturns, love ‘em…but once the parts go away, there won’t be much point in trying to keep ‘em running.

Don’t you just love seeing a ‘successful capitalist’ at work?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Amazingly, off-shoring proceeds apace

Greetings good citizen,

Chrysler may emerge from bankruptcy as soon as next week but it’s anyone’s guess as to when it will resume production. GM, having only entered bankruptcy protection yesterday, may not emerge for months…

But Mr. Market doesn’t mind, there are still too few buyers and even less demand.

GM is said to, er, ‘support’ in the vicinity of 11,500 parts suppliers. Naturally most of these suppliers provide parts for other carmakers. It’s the few that make ‘brand specific’ components (like fenders and headlight/tail light assemblies) that are finding themselves behind the ‘eight-ball’

Already a couple of the larger parts suppliers have filed Chapter 11. Left to our imagination is how many of the 11,000 plus others can weather a three plus month ‘drought’.

Before the GM bankruptcy is was estimated that roughly 3 million workers had jobs connected to the automotive manufacturing industry. Whereas one in ten jobs is related to the transportation industry.

If we were to add in warehousing and distribution we’d be talking one in four jobs. (I’m hip-shooting here, it may be higher than that, considering who our number one employer is.)

That said, one thing is certain, our automotive industry will be considerably smaller than it used to be. How many of the three million workers that ‘used to’ earn their living from the auto manufacturing sector will be permanently displaced, we can only guess.

With the global economy doing so lousy, you’d think patriotic US companies, especially companies on taxpayer ‘life support’ would be doing their best to hire ‘displaced Americans’.

sadly, no

India Feels Less Vulnerable as Outsourcing Presses On

By HEATHER TIMMONS
Published: June 2, 2009

NOIDA, India — The global downturn has slowed the rapid growth in India’s outsourcing business, but only slowed it. In fact — because of the pressure on companies, and even governments, to reduce costs — many outsourcing businesses are booming. And a mood that was deeply uncertain just six months ago has turned much more optimistic.

Unemployment has risen to 8.9 percent in the United States, a 26-year high, increasing longstanding pressures to “keep jobs in America.” But managers of companies big and small, squeezed between political pressures and the necessity of slimming down to survive, are choosing the bottom line.

J. Brandon Black, president and chief executive of the Encore Capital Group, a debt collection company based in San Diego, said he planned to significantly increase his work force in India in the next few years, in part because of the tough economic times.

“The thing it boils down to is the supply of well-trained educated labor at reasonable prices is just too great to ignore,” said Mr. Black. In India, “we’re hiring college-educated people.” The company is not doing that in the United States, where it would incur greater infrastructure and health care costs. [Tens of millions of US citizens are losing their jobs and THIS is how US commerce repays us? Worse, this is how our government is ‘protecting’ us?!]

“Outsourcing is here to stay,” Mr. Black said. [But you on the other hand, may not be.]

Some of America’s biggest companies continue to invest in India, even as they trim costs at home.

Hewlett-Packard said last month that it would cut an additional 6,400 jobs, on top of the 24,000 it said it was eliminating in September after a merger with Electronic Data Systems. About half of the September cuts are expected to come from the United States. In March, the computer giant said it was opening “HP Software University” in eight cities in India to train software testers. [Tell me good citizen, how inclined are you to buy a HP printer now?]

Last month, Honeywell International, the manufacturing behemoth based in Morristown, N.J., said it would invest $50 million in a new research and development facility in Bangalore that would employ 3,000. The move comes after Honeywell began a reorganization, closing plants and trimming hundreds of jobs recently in the United States. [This while the US is bleeding jobs!]

The company declined to comment for this article, but when it initially announced its India plans, its chairman and chief executive, David M. Cote, said about half of Honeywell’s employees and half of its business were outside the United States. [How would Mr. Cote like ALL of his business to be ‘outside’ the US?]

“Anything that creates any kind of protectionism, anything that stops the globalization activity, will be harmful,” he said. [There is the ‘problem’ good citizen, these morons may have MBA’s but none of them understand what TREASON is!]

Many in India say they believe that demographics are on their side in the long run.

“In most developed economies, the work force is aging,” said Ranjit Tinaikar, a partner with McKinsey, a consulting firm. The health care costs associated with employing those Western workers will continue to increase, he said, creating a “big opportunity” for India. [Where apparently if you get sick they drag you out to the gutter and shoot your sorry ass.]

A decade ago, McKinsey and India’s powerful information technology and outsourcing trade group, Nasscom, predicted that revenue from outsourcing by foreign companies would reach $50 billion in India in 2010. The global economic slowdown has delayed that by three or four quarters — revenue is predicted to reach $47 billion this year. [Understand good citizen, these are jobs US citizens could (and should) be doing.]

And in April, Nasscom and McKinsey predicted that by 2020, outsourcing would yield $175 billion in revenue here.

Growth will slow this year at many of India’s biggest outsourcing companies, however, because of the implosion of some of their largest clients: banks, mortgage servicing companies and Wall Street firms. But that does not mean revenue is no longer growing. [Um there isn’t one Wall Street firm that isn’t taking the US taxpayer’s dime…]

“People who have never looked at outsourcing before are saying they have to do it,” said Amitabh Chaudhry, the chief executive of Infosys BPO, the outsourcing arm of one of the largest Indian information technology companies. He expects his unit to grow 25 to 30 percent this year, compared with 40 to 50 percent in the past.

But political pressures are making a difference in how business is done. One growing trend, many outsourcing executives say, is placing more Indian employees in offices in the client’s home country. That way the job, ostensibly, does not move abroad. [Same fuckin’ difference!] But over the long term, many are likely to be moved across the globe.

“Our view is we start work onshore, then move it to Poland or Morocco, and then over time to India,” said Sachdev Ramakrishna, director of marketing for Steria, an information technology and outsourcing company. Steria is based in Paris, but one-quarter of its employees are in India, and it has offices in Morocco and Poland. “It’s like opening the tap in bits.”

Since Steria’s clients include public utilities and governments in Europe, getting them comfortable with the idea of moving jobs abroad can take time. “Everyone recognizes that this is a changed world order, and the focus is more on preservation of jobs,” Mr. Ramakrishna said. [The preservation of jobs! Easy for the thief to say…but it brings up and crucial point, if the workers weren’t ‘needed’ then neither would their jobs.]

And yet, new business is coming from all over: insurance companies with a growing number of elderly clients to monitor; pharmaceutical companies looking for more efficient ways to conduct drug trials and handle customer calls (even emergency inquiries, like overdose concerns); [Great idea. let’s out source matters of life and death to people where English is their second language! Is their no limit to their greed?] corporate legal teams balking at $350-an-hour fees to outside law firms. Even companies based in once union-friendly countries like France and Germany, as well as once-flush Middle Eastern firms, struggling media companies and companies that have been taken over by private equity firms are looking to outsource. [Mostly because these private equity firms leverage everything they touch to the point of unprofitability!]

Indian companies that relied on Wall Street and big banks for much of their business are aggressively learning new skills.

East of New Delhi, on a corporate campus that was once farmland, dozens of Indian doctors, nurses and pharmacists are scheduling checkups for patients in the United States and monitoring clinical trial data for some of the world’s biggest pharmaceutical companies. [Yet drugs still cost an arm and a leg…where’s the ‘savings’? Check the CEO’s pockets!]

Thirty miles to the southwest, in the town of Gurgaon, hundreds of Indian lawyers in a glass high-rise are conducting due diligence on deals, combing through contracts and studying intellectual property rights for Western clients. [Yep in a world ‘infested’ with ‘terrorists’, we want to send our sensitive, proprietary information to a ‘low cost’ not particularly secure country to be vetted…insane! I’m sure you are all aware that thousands of US lawyers have been sacked in the past six months, many of them with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of student debt.]

In the legal field, “there’s been a sea change in awareness of what’s possible” in the last 12 months, said Daniel Reed, the chief executive of UnitedLex, which has its headquarters in Atlanta but has the bulk of its employees in Gurgaon. More and more sophisticated work is coming to India, he said.

Matthew Fawcett, the general counsel of JDS Uniphase, a fiber optics company in California, started looking at outsourcing some legal work to India two years ago and is now a UnitedLex client.

“When you run a legal department of a publicly traded company,” he said, “you care about cost and overhead.” [But nobody gives a shit about jobs for US workers?]

Patni Computer Systems, which employs doctors and nurses in Noida, is working with health insurance companies in the United States whose policies provide home care for elderly patients. Patni’s doctors and nurses call the patients regularly for checkups, and if the patient needs a physical examination, they call the insurance company, which dispatches a nurse. [Have we just found out why US health care costs are climbing exponentially? It sure as shit ain’t getting ‘cheaper’! Every health care provider that uses these services should be prosecuted for fraud!]

“It’s a proactive measure, rather than reactive” said Sanjiv Kapur, the head of Patni’s outsourcing business, intended to prevent the patient from falling ill and winding up in the hospital. “It’s less costly for the insurance company.”

So, we have the US hemorrhaging jobs while US employers can’t off shore jobs fast enough! Worse, many of he worst offenders are currently on taxpayer supported life support!

Are you ‘pleased’ that these ‘frugal’ companies are watching their costs or are you bullshit that these traitorous bastards are keeping the ‘savings’ for themselves?

I’ll once again charge ‘off the reservation’ to point out a very basic point…if a pig is a pig and a duck is a duck then a dollar is a dollar.

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A LOW COST LABOR POOL!

What we’re witnessing is CURRENCY MANIPULATION, plain and simple!

If we fail to put a stop to this nonsense, we won’t have an economy left to save!

Understand that we have already lost ALL of the jobs created during the eight years of the Bush administration. Yet US employers have been ‘focused’ on building their overseas workforces…

That shit don’t float. If the Indians want to provide healthcare services for somebody, their population is FIVE TIME LARGER than ours, We don’t have enough qualified caregivers here, surely they must be experiencing the same situation?

We don’t ‘need’ healthcare providers located six thousand miles away, there are plenty right here more than willing to do the job for a living wage.

No US workers equals no US economy…but apparently the greed heads can’t figure this one out.

I’m not saying anything you don’t already know. The ‘management’ of our nation is badly broken; we have precious little time (and no tools) with which to repair it.

The ‘no tools’ part is the most troubling aspect because it means we can’t fix what we have, we will be forced to replace it.

Worse, time is running out.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner