http://4uhdtv.net/

The HB-1 program has been lobbied for by big business on the premise that it's needed (1) to remain globally competitive: and (2)to mitigate the fact that the U.S. education system doesn't produce enough skilled knowledge workers. It's a pretext, and rubbish. Much of the "skilled" foreign labor is here due to state subsidized education.
We have the talent here. I personally know many...many highly skilled engineers and MBAs here in Silicon Valley (and elsewhere) who are now--and have long been--under employed. HB-1 is not too too unlike the sex slave industry,
albeit there are significant differences.:-)

Naked Capitalism liked it so much they put your post in yesterday's links.

Congratulations. (Thank you NC for recognizing his post too).

This is definitely a man made crisis. But why are we supporting this "false wealth"?

It is time to start looking for alternatives our current financial system.

There was no H-1B guest worker Visa program before 1990 and there is an oversupply of labor. No, you do not get to come to the United States, take a citizens's job, ruin their career, have that citizen train you in their skills, reduce salaries and wages and enable age discrimination in this country. I have a funny feeling if this was going on in India there would be riots in the streets. Oh yeah, there already were when a U.S. company tried to fire India workers. And India is firing foreigners right and left to give those jobs to their citizens. I guess that's ok when India puts it's labor force, it's citizens first, but lord somehow that doesn't apply to America when we have people losing their careers left and right, their ability to earn a living due to this glorified slave trade of unlimited cheaper labor?

This is NOT about immigration, it's about cheap labor, global labor arbitrage and domestic labor forces. It's about ensuring career stability and opportunity for a nation's citizens...in their own country.

Of course the government wasn't totally heartless. The latter part of the 16th Century saw the first Poor Laws - the first efforts in the western world at setting up a welfare state. In 1572 the first poor tax was introduced. The services rendered from the Poor Laws were exclusively reserved to those who were unable to take care of themselves such as children, the old, the crippled and sick. In 1601 the Elizabethan Poor Law was enacted.

While it's true these were the first poor laws in English Common Law, they were NOT the first poor laws in Western Civilization, nor were they the first Welfare State. Rome saw a welfare state arise cyclically throughout the history of the empire and republic, usually centered around centralized production of water, bread, and salt. The Greeks, too, had a significant welfare state based on debt slavery (and such a good one that we got the quote "Better to be a slave in Athens than a King". And of course, the Egyptians had their own welfare state based on work and beer.

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Moral hazards would not exist in a system designed to eliminate fraud.

Which seems to me to be a missing step in all of this. A huge part of the problem is not economical, but anthropological- the bankers and traders in New York and other big cities have become culturally distinct from either industry or agricultural interests- and as such see the other segments of our society as marks for their con game.

A solution to that problem, and one I was hoping to see in a speech entitled "Too Big Has Failed", is localization. You see, the problem with simply nationalizing and creating the "Bad Bank" method is that it doesn't go far enough- it doesn't return control of the money to local communities. But if, in the process of breaking up the bad bank, you reduce the cross-border investment and sell the bad assets in their local communities, then you inject into the market a willingness to uphold the contract on one side, and a willingness to write down the contract on the other side, under the guise of helping one's neighbor (and supposedly, a person one runs into often at community events).

Otherwise "Too Big has Failed" might get fixed, but will just continue to roll over into a whole new "Too Big" get rich quick scheme.

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Moral hazards would not exist in a system designed to eliminate fraud.

Thanks for the feedback. Judging from Wikipedia it appears that the Statute of Merton was used to destroy the Commons in England.

In January 1550, in Edward VI's reign, long after the Statute had fallen out of use, it was revived under John Dudley, the Duke of Northumberland, to enable lords to enclose their land at their own discretion - out of keeping with the traditional Tudor anti-enclosure attitude.

The Commons Act 1285 seems to be much more inclined to preserve the Commons.

That's certainly what I see so far in many of these vehicles they created from about 2000 onward. Bad math, absurd mathematical assumptions and the idea one can issue unlimited CDS on one underlying asset.