Proactively “From the Sea”; leveraging the littoral best practices for a paradigm breaking six-sigma best business case to synergize a consistent design in the global commons, rightsizing the core values supporting our mission statement via the 5-vector model through cultural diversity.
Real GDP increased 1.7 percent in 2011 (that is, from the 2010 annual level to the 2011 annual level), compared with an increase of 3.0 percent in 2010.
The increase in real GDP in 2011 primarily reflected positive contributions from personal consumption expenditures (PCE), exports, and nonresidential fixed investment that were partly offset by negative contributions from state and local government spending, private inventory investment, and federal government spending. Imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP, increased.
The deceleration in real GDP in 2011 primarily reflected downturns in private inventory investment and in federal government spending and a deceleration in exports that were partly offset by a deceleration in imports and an acceleration in nonresidential fixed investment.
The price index for gross domestic purchases increased 2.5 percent in 2011, compared with an increase of 1.5 percent in 2010.
Current-dollar GDP increased 3.9 percent, or $561.2 billion, in 2011, compared with an increase of 4.2 percent, or $587.5 billion, in 2010.
During 2011 (that is, measured from the fourth quarter of 2010 to the fourth quarter of 2011), real GDP increased 1.6 percent. Real GDP increased 3.1 percent during 2010. The price index for gross domestic purchases increased 2.5 percent during 2011, compared with an increase of 1.4 percent during 2010.
Real GDP growth is contracting. Cost of goods is increasing. Imports are increasing greater than exports. People are spending more, but out of savings.
Frankly, I expected better. In macro - we need to watch 2012 close. To let politics sneak in - this plays in to Romney's strengths. This is a gift if he is willing and able to use it.
Yep'r. Today's FbF is a ponder'n one. A "how it should be done" FbF about Fullbore leaders who did it right - and a reminder of what is doing it wrong.
Via Ian Jack;
Chivalry at sea became an essential British ideal, and proof of the superiority of Anglo-Saxons (a category that included North Americans and most northern Europeans) over more panicky peoples from the south and east. The annals of old shipwrecks are filled with implications of their alleged poor behaviour. "I saw a lot of Latin people all along the ship's rails," recalled the Titanic's fifth officer, Harold Lowe. "They were glaring more or less like wild beasts, ready to spring." No Birkenhead drill for him: Lowe was sitting in a lifeboat at the time, being lowered past the still-crowded upper decks, but the awkwardness of his position as an officer leaving his passengers behind to drown seems never to have occurred to him. "Latins" weren't to be trusted in an emergency, and therefore didn't count.
The spectre now haunting Italy is that this label has stuck. "We've gone straight into the Titanic nightmare [and] Italy is once again the laughing stock of foreign newspapers," wrote a blogger, Caterina Soffici, this week. In Il Giornale, the columnist Cristiano Gatti wrote that the rest of the world would be delighted to rediscover "the same old rascally Italians: those unreliable cowards who turn and run in war and flee like rabbits from the ship, even if they are in command". But are either of these statements really true? People who know about ships and seafaring in Britain take pity on Schettino, rather than laugh at him. They puzzle over the course he took that led to the collision with the reef, they wonder how many people were on the bridge with him at the time, and why nobody raised a warning. Perhaps they snigger a little at his account of tripping and falling into a lifeboat ("How odd that his first officer seems to have done the same thing"), but on the whole they understand the torrent of guilt and self-recrimination that must threaten to overwhelm him, first for losing a ship and so many lives and, second, for his subsequent behaviour. None, at least of those I talked to, went as far as Professor Craig Allen of the US Coastguard Academy and accused him of "abject cowardice".
But his transgression is enormous. The rule that a captain must be the last man (or woman) to leave a ship in difficulties is never written down, but everywhere understood. In the words of a former P&O captain: "At sea, you have a great sense of responsibility for the people who are beneath you – it's moral as well as legal. You need to stay as long as anyone else remains."
In this altruistic sense, the mystique of captaincy has survived into its third century. Sentiment, if not always practicality, will ensure it continues. For who can resist the gallantry of David Hart Dyke staying aboard the tilting hull of HMS Coventry, or Noel Coward and what remains of his crew clinging to their life-raft in In Which We Serve, and Coward commanding, as his destroyer finally goes down: "Three cheers for the ship!"
The Press Freedom Index is out. Not a perfect proxy for freedom and the ideals of The Enlightenment, but close.
It is a very good snapshot of the condition of most of the people on our little planet. They do not even come close to the freedom we enjoy here - freedom to create your "creative friction" as you wish.
The sad part is that if you had a "Freedom of Speech Index," the areas of green would be even smaller - as our friends in Canada, where you can go on trail for speaking the "wrong thoughts" ISYN - and much of Europe would move from green to yellow - and quite a few yellow to red elsewhere.
Read the report here if you have the time, and appreciate that even with all our challenges - in the USA we do have something of great value in abundance that few in the world do - freedom.
I had some more entertaining DivThu loaded for today - but I'll shift it to the right for next week.
This week I want to quote the Command in Chief from the State of the Union speech Tuesday night.
These achievements are a testament to the courage, selflessness, and teamwork of America’s Armed Forces. At a time when too many of our institutions have let us down, they exceed all expectations. They’re not consumed with personal ambition. They don’t obsess over their differences. They focus on the mission at hand. They work together.
When you put on that uniform, it doesn’t matter if you’re black or white; Asian or Latino; conservative or liberal; rich or poor; gay or straight. When you’re marching into battle, you look out for the person next to you, or the mission fails. When you’re in the thick of the fight, you rise or fall as one unit, serving one Nation, leaving no one behind.
Mr. President, you're right. Especially Gen-X and younger, we don't.
When we come back from the mission though, when we try to keep that bind, there is an entire army of self-serving racialists on the DoD pay roster who see as their whole job to obsess over our differences; to count or invent every white, black, Asian or Latino nose. They force sectarianism and division for their own purposes, eroding out progress to a more equal and fair nation.
They are a cancer - a cancer that is eating at exactly the good that you spoke of. If you truly believe your words - act. As of right now, your military actively discriminates on the basis of race, creed, color and national origin - all you need to do is start with the actions of the Navy's Diversity Bullies and go from there.
... as it should be done. BZ and many happy returns.
U.S. Special Forces troops flew into Somalia on a nighttime helicopter raid early Wednesday, freed an American and a Danish hostage and killed nine of the kidnappers ... Ahmed Hashi said two helicopters attacked at about 2 a.m. about 20 kilometers (12 miles) north of the Somali town of Adado where the hostages were being held. ... The Danish Refugee Council confirmed that the two aid workers, American Jessica Buchanan and Dane Poul Hagen Thisted, were freed and "are on their way to be reunited with their families."
Oh, there are some helo pilots out there who are quite green today. What a great mission to be on.UPDATE: ... and yes, yes, yes to all you nit-pic'rs out there - these were not technically "pirates." That ain't the point. Geezzzzz ....
We haven't done a combo Retro Wednesday and RECCE quiz in awhile. This one will be fun.
See the below, and then see if you can guess what you are looking at before you read the text below it.
I remember that thing as a young MIDN when I first read about it. Just a grainy pic and a little hyperbole - a lot of things about tremendous speed and quick strike ability in the littorals or some such transformationalism ....
Yes my friends, its the Caspian Sea Monster; the Ekranoplan - more great pics here.
Note the background - it reminds me of my trip to Russia a couple of years ago - the smell of imperial decay is thick. Heck - how many old Soviet Republics have I been in - four? They all have "that" look.
