English collective nouns…a school of fish, parliament of owls, pride of lions, Congress of baboons…making the world go round.

The English language has some delightfully anthropomorphous collective nouns for the various groups of animals.

We are all familiar with a herd of cows, a flock of chickens, a school of fish and a gaggle of geese.

However, less widely known is:
- a pride of lions,
- a murder of crows (as well as their cousins the rooks and ravens…recall the 1963 Alfred Hitchcock film "The Birds"?)
- an exaltation of larks and,
- presumably because they look so wise, a parliament of owls.

Now consider a group of baboons. They are the loudest, most dangerous, most obnoxious, most viciously aggressive and least intelligent of all primates. Ironically,  what is the proper collective noun for a group of baboons? Believe it or not... a congress!

Dedicated to the politicians of the world…especially to those on both sides of the Atlantic responsible for the current global economic woes and specifically, to that collective crew in Washington DC who literally personify this noun.

Against this backdrop, with the scope for fiscal and monetary policy ammunition running desparately short and stimulus all but exhausted, politicos might be expected to grasp the nettle, overcome their squeamishness about confronting vested interests opposed to change and push through reforms to improve the supply side of the economy; policies such as making it easier to hire and fire, promoting greater competition and investing more in training.

How about the people deserving a keen "convocation of eagles" in these national legislatures...

US jobs recovery has stalled...is a Greater Depression beckoning as financial crisis continues unabated...a possible jobs solution...

Ahead of the US Labour Day holiday weekend, the Labour Department's latest employment non-farm payrolls report for August, issued yesterday, makes for grim reading showing zero job growth with unemployment transfixed at 9.1% (14 million people).

President Obama has convened an "emergency" jobs speech before a joint session of Congress on 8 September.

Recent sagging consumer confidence and skittish businesses' reluctance to hire underscore the severity of the United States situation. The impact is also felt abroad right now by Asia exporters hurt by declining trade volumes. Consumer spending represents around 70% of US GDP (about US$ 14.7 trillion in 2010).

The tremendous stockmarket rallies triggered from March 2009 as company profits recovered have not translated into additional new jobs in the US.

What the chart above (made by Calculated Risk) shows is the trajectory of job losses and gains over time, after employment peaked, during this recession(red line), compared to previous recessions.

So as you can see, the depth of the decline was much worse than any other recession. Furthermore, the pace of the recovery is much weaker than in previous ones. Over a year it was looking as though the recovery might be kind of V-shaped (a really big, wide V), but now it's clear that the comeback won't look anything like the decline. Now the comeback is basically flatlining. It's turning into a tilted "L".

Ironically, the only time in history that portrayed a much worse and protracted decline than the current one came about during the 1930s and 1940's Great Depression.

With current sovereign debt crises unresolved, both in the US and Europe, there is a danger of panic solutions being deployed by governments that may portend unintended consequences (eg. implementing QE3, Eurobonds) and exacerbate the uncertainty over further new job creation.

There is one possible solution which can foster job creation back in the US. Consider the current S&P500 companies' balance sheets hold cash of US$500+ billion. Unfortunately, a significant chunk of this cash is held in their overseas subsidiaries bank accounts which cannot be repatriated back to US shores, otherwise they would be immediately subject to US business tax of 35% (the 2nd highest in the world after Japan's 39.5%). Scrap this inane tax rule. Let these companies bring their hard-earned money back tax-free.

Let's do a rule of thumb calculation. Say, 40% of this cash, valued at US$200 billion, is held abroad. Repatriate this to the US and assuming dividend and share buy-back policies remain unchanged, it's all re-invested in high value IT and biotech industries, within key R&D, software / hardware manufacturing processes, where the US still retains a solid competitive advantage. That should generate 2 million critical US$100,000 jobs...and these intrinsically satisfying roles stimulate increased consumer spending (including derived demand for Asia exports), pep up family units and generate local taxes paid...

Surely it makes commercial sense to also consider relocating some of these overseas positions back to the United States than end up with incessant verbal spats over high-technology transfer agreements, patent thefts and infringements with some local partners in those testy countries...like China.