Nicolas takes a Chinese name

Well, I haven't yet decided on my Chinese name. But Nicolas Sarkozy is about to sign up for one!

Apparently Europe wants a bailout, and the Chinese have money. Could be a nice pairing. Like those pairings they have out at the wineries over Thanksgiving (note to self: find a day over Thanksgiving weekend to visit the wineries - oh so beautiful with leaves falling and wine tastings, yum). Pairing chardonnay with filberts. Or pinot noir with chocolate. Just stay away from the sake and brie pairings..

Greece will get its democratic chance to take a referendum on whether to get bailed out or not. Or what? Will they sever themselves into the Mediterranean Sea? If we could invent technology to sever land masses that are no longer pulling their fair weight, many have often thought about doing that with the land mass known as California.

Of course all of these problems with the EU, with Greece, with the Occupy Wall Street crowd, would all fade into the sunset if we had j-o-b-s.

There are plenty of state experiments out there trying to create jobs. Some are creating jobs. Some are lining pockets of developers. Some are providing employers with free labor. Some are taking that short term hit of crack cocaine, deferring the painful withdrawal of government largesse to a later date.

Is real job growth organic? Whatever happened to creative destruction? I used to love that concept. Some industries are meant to die away. Others will spring forth. You don't ask your corn plant to keep producing, propping it up with fake ears of corn so it has the appearance of continued production. When actually its just a layer. It produces an ear of corn. The stalk dies off. Something in there about "detassling" that I never quite understood, but my college roommates all did this in the fields of Illinois when they were in high school. Maybe that work is done by illegals now, I don't know. But the stalk then gets turned under. New seed corn is planted for the next year.

The real job growth, remember, as with all good things, springs from Bell Labs in New Jersey. The Western Electric experiments. The "Hawthorne effect". The managers at a Western Electric plant wanted to encourage their workers to be more productive. They painted the walls blue. The workers were more productive!

They turned up the lights. The workers were more productive! They then turned down the lights. The workers were more productive!

When all it took was perhaps, some internal motivation, that someone out there does give a rip about you.