Daily French Roast

Anne is reading …

Illustration by Stephen Doyle.Saying that ‘yes’ we must fix a broken financial system, but … economist Joseph E Stiglitz re-examines the causes of the Great Depression, citing the revolution in agriculture that three millions out of work, and not a greedy financial system gone rogue as the primary cause of extreme hardship and suffering for millions of Americans. Today, the US faces a similar transition, with manufacturing jobs lost to increased productivity and technological innovation, and service-sector jobs replacing them.

In a cogent analysis and argument that should be read by all of us — those who agree with managed industrial policy and those who don’t — Stiglitz argues that without mobilizing for global war, the only path out of this economic decline in America is investment in infrastructure.

This path is exactly what Republicans refuse to embrace, arguing more vociferously for control of science curriculums to ban teaching evolution than for investments in quality schools and teachers. As America’s infrastructure crumbles — and it has dramtically in the last two decades compared to other countries in the world — it’s unclear how private companies will own our schools and roads, or repair our falling bridges.

Wall Street demands immediate returns on investments, faster and greater than in the last great wave of American economic prosperity, another consideration not discussed in ‘The Book of Jobs’. It remains unclear that the demands of Wall Street today will even permit investments in new technologies and research that can take a decade to incubate.

Major issues and questions for America’s future are rasied in this excellent article, one that moves beyond the endless, overly-simplistic platitudes and promises coming out of Iowa and into a substantative, strategic discussion about the lifeline of America’s future. Read on at Vanity Fair.

See also by Stiglitz for Vanity Fair: Of the 1%, by the 1% for the 1%.

Professional Women and a Secure Retirement

Nevertheless, it’s underappreciated how much better one large cohort of aging boomers should do financially during the traditional retirement years: The college-educated stalwarts of the feminist movement. A generation of well-educated career women is nearing retirement for the first time. It’s the group that marked the revolutionary shift from earning money because they and their families needed it to embracing working because it defined “one’s fundamental identity and societal worth,” said Claudia Goldin… They’re poised to flourish in their elder years, at least compared with most everyone else. Read on at Bloomberg | BusinessWeek

More DFR

Spin the Resolutions

The No-Resolution Resolution: How to Really Be Happy in 2012

Writing for GOOD, Gracy Obuchowicz shares her blueprint for getting things together:

1. Put the cart before the horse. Why not just decide to feel better, obsessing less about what isn’t right and moving forward.

2. Dream big and challenge yourself. Create a stretching but realistic blueprint for your life. Chop your life into phases and get moving with attainable goals to advance your plan.

3. Act small. Create ‘micromovements’, a concept developed by the inspirational author and dreaming advocate SARK. Every project is comprised of dozens of small steps.

4. Practice. Identify what you enjoy — yoga, biking, baking, writing — and DO IT several times a week. Creativity emerges within stability and the steady rhythm of pracice (Note, Anne swears by this one.)

5. Take refuge in yourself. In another item that Anne agrees with, Gracy suggests leaning from ‘The Artist’s Way’ — on her bookshelf. Writing about what’s going on in your own mind for 30 minutes a day isn’t narcissism and self-absorption. It’s personal power.

iTV Coming Soon?

Published in Adweek:

Taiwanese technology publication DigiTimes published two stories this week claiming that Apple is telling hardware suppliers to start preparing for production. While DigiTimes’ sources seem to differ on which companies will be responsible for which components, they agree that Apple plans to launch its own TV sets by the end of next year. One source says the initial product line will focus on 32- and 37-inch screens.

In Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs, the Apple founder is quoted as saying he’s “finally cracked” the TV problem. Presumably that will include content as well. New York Times writer Nick Bilton says “It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when.”

An Environmentalist Is Buried

Patrick Ytsma, lived mindfully, not wanting to harm the environment. Killed suddenly in a car crash at 53, he was laid to rest in the same manner in Bethlehem, Pa— “without harsh chemicals, without concrete, without a polyester-lined casket.” Read on at LA Times

Anne of Carversville

Beauty, Goodness & Self Worth As Female Expressions Of God’s Love | 2Ps in a Pod by Anne AOC Body

It’s easy for you and I to tell women to find their own inner beauty and to believe that God loves us and our corporeal nature, that we have beautiful soft skin and smiles for a reason. The reality is that the messages condemning female physicality and beauty come not only in the form of commercialism and parental child abuse or bullying at school. Those messages come from many of our religious institutions.

Ultra-Orthodox Jewish demonstrators in Jerusalem were denounced by Israeli leaders on Sunday after wearing yellow stars and alluding to other images from the Nazi era. Jim Hollander/European Pressphoto Agency

All Women Are Prostitutes

How will this little girl in Israel ever look at herself in the mirror and see her own beauty, able to regard her body as God’s temple?”

Via New York Times, we read a terrible story:

One Israeli television program recently reported how an 8-year-old girl, the daughter of American immigrants who are observant modern Orthodox Jews, had become terrified of walking to school in the city of Beit Shemesh after ultra-Orthodox men spit on her, insulted her and called her a prostitute because her modest dress did not conform exactly to their more rigorous dress code.

AOC Private Studio

Lara Stone & Fred Ward | Peter Lindbergh | Vogue China January 2012

Kasia Struss | Danko Steiner | Vogue China January 2012 | Fifties Addiction

Chloe Lecareux | Richard Bernardin | Grazia France January 2012 | House Wife Paradise

2012 Wishes @ Morfium Couture, Dusan Jaukovic & Jelena Malesevic

Emma Maclaren | Tony Kim | Sure Korea December 2011 | ‘The Shadow in Red’

Maryna Linchuk | Vincent Peters | Vogue Espana January 2012 | ‘Sempre Grace’