BRIC bats, Wayward Harvard, Spicy Kerrey, and other odds and ends

Fun Stuff First...especially for those having anything to do with academia...

According to the NYT, "Bob Kerrey, the Vietnam veteran and former Nebraska governor and senator known for his acerbic tongue and iconoclastic tendencies, earned an overwhelming vote of no-confidence on Wednesday afternoon from the senior faculty at the New School, the Greenwich Village university he has run since 2001. Mr. Kerrey has clashed with some professors since the day of his appointment as the New School’s president, with complaints that he lacks a Ph.D. and that his politics — particularly his early support for the Iraq war — were too moderate for the unabashedly liberal campus. But the underlying controversies became an open uprising this week after Mr. Kerrey announced that he would serve temporarily as provost as well as president after cycling through four provosts in seven years."

From Harvard, a school with a $30 billion endowment, give or take a few billions-
Deans at the faculty of arts and sciences at Harvard University plan to issue salary and hiring freezes as it faces $105 million to $125 million budget cut, according to a memo sent to academic deans Tuesday. The faculty of arts and sciences, which represents the bulk of Harvard’s undergraduate division, plans to freeze all non-union salaries and searches for tenured or tenure-track faculty. It’s also seeking to limit the number of new non-ladder, visiting faculty. Only faculty essential for filling curriculum needs will be approved and in those cases the deans are asking that appointments be recent Ph.Ds, tenure-track from other local institutions or practitioners from local industry, according to the memo, which was posted on the Web site of the Harvard Crimson student newspaper.
It is amazing that Harvard is doing this. Perhaps it is so caught up in the moment that it has failed to take the advice of Andy Grove, and invest during a downturn to emerge stronger.

On the other hand, our school, which has a MUCH SMALLER endowment, is splurging on hiring faculty in the liberal arts departments, while the students are flocking to the professional areas like Business, Education, and Nursing. While I am a strong proponent of 'technical' education first before professional education, this resource allocation seriously short-changes our students.


BRIC bats...
China’s exports fell for the first time in seven years, more evidence that recessions in the U.S., Europe and Japan are driving the world’s fourth-largest economy into a slump. Exports declined 2.2 percent in November from a year earlier, the customs bureau said in a statement on its Web site today. Imports plunged 17.9 percent, pushing the trade surplus to a record $40.09 billion.

**It is considered to be negative news when a country reports a RECORD SURPLUS!!!!!!** Of course the decline in exports means a potential decline in employment...

India is struggling through the downturn. The Reserve Bank has lowered interest rates to 6.5% (from 9% October), and the government is doing a fiscal stimulus of 3 trillion rupees (about $60 billion- not chump change in India). The story going around is that parents of young women are not considering any boys employed in IT as potential bridegrooms.
According to Bloomberg -- "India's passenger-car sales declined 19 percent last month, the most in more than five years, as tighter lending by banks and a slowing economy hurt demand. Sales fell to 83,059 from 103,031 a year earlier, the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers said in a statement in New Delhi today. That's the biggest drop since a 31 percent decline in February 2003, according to Bloomberg data. The total sales were the lowest level in two years."

Bloomberg: "Russian manufacturing shrank more in November than during the 1998 financial collapse as the global economic crisis drove output and new orders to record lows and companies cut jobs, VTB Bank Europe said. VTB’s Purchasing Managers’ Index fell for a fourth month to 39.8, its lowest level, from 46.4 in October, the bank said in an e-mailed statement today. The previous low was 43.2 in September 1998, a month after the government’s ruble devaluation and default on $40 billion of debt. A figure above 50 means growth, below 50 a contraction. The bank surveyed 300 purchasing executives."

Russia's GDP is falling, along with the Ruble, and with oil prices hovering around $40/barrel, Russia will face a host of issues.

Mike Luckovich has some really funny cartoons...As good as Calvin and Hobbes..