Fall of the House of McGraw-Hill
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What is McGraw-Hill Publishing?

McGraw-Hill is one of the world's largest producers of textbooks, tests, and related materials, serving the primary, secondary, and post-secondary education markets through its McGraw-Hill Education unit. The McGraw-Hill Financial Services unit is a leading supplier of financial and business information services, producing indexes and ratings for both domestic and overseas markets through Standard & Poor's. A third division, McGraw-Hill Information & Media, publishes trade journals and other industry content (such as Aviation Week). The company also operates nine TV stations (including four ABC affiliates).

 
 
The sale of BusinessWeek Magazine in 2009 for a measly $5 million was not the beginning of McGraw-Hill's problems, but rather the cancer becoming visible, breaking through the skin. McGraw-Hill is on the brink of the greatest economic hurricane in the history of the world and is now captained by officers of avarice that are steering the ship against the winds. McGraw-Hill's quest to overtake Pearson has led it to it's doom. In order to defeat Pearson, a cunning and ruthless corporate giant if you ever saw one, McGraw-Hill became its twin and attracted the wrong people doing the wrong things when the worst cyclone in history was just over the horizon.

 

Pirates of the Publishing World:  At Economy's End

There is an old story about two colonial American frigates almost identical in build that, during a Northeaster storm, pursued each other for days south into the Caribbean. One was a local military sloop and the other a pirate vessel. From extensive experience, the pirate captain knew if he waited long enough that the other ship would take a plunge to the bottom because it was too heavily laden on the bow with two gargantuan long-range cannons. The pirate knew because he had two such guns of his own, moved back to midship and fastened down to center their weight in the tossing and turning vessel. The pirate knew from experience and cunning that that the military captain sought swift victory and it drove him to risk his ship, and it was just a mater of time before the navy ship, with too many sails aloft and too many long guns forward, came down the face of a freak wave twice the height of any other white cap, and plunged into the sea. Pearson Publishing is the pirate in more than one way and McGraw-Hill's actions have been just as foolish as those of the navy captain.
 
McGraw-Hill pushed it's ship too fervently, it's corporate officers more concerned with advancing stock prices and dividends than maintaining the founding principals of the company. The ship is coming apart. BusinessWeek was one of the original masts of McGraw-Hill's vessel, when A.W. Shaw Co. was purchased in 1929 by McGraw-Hill. It is just the first of McGraw-Hill's sacrificial lambs. For the past year, the strategy was to lighten the load on the ship in order to outrun the storm – a vain attempt, for this cyclone is not local, it is global and there are no safe harbors this time. The lustful crew, with the old captain dead, is in serious trouble.
 
What will save McGraw-Hill is proven authors and publications that have persevered while the rest of the company ventures outside publishing will be jettisoned. Technology itself will be it's savior and finally raise McGraw-Hill to it's former prestige, but not until much of the company and it's people are sacrificed.
 
An article by Hiram Lee from April 24, 2010 aptly describes the state of the Union and the course it is taking through the storm, what I tried and failed to convey to Dr Julia Burdge in 2006. When the US economy implodes on itself in the next two years, there will be no student loans, grants or scholarships, and the universities and colleges will become ghost towns, yet still in operation. The students and professors remaining will not be buying expensive, unproven first edition textbooks, they will be using the old tried-and-proven texts already in the 5th or older editions and these texts will be used until the covers disintegrate. The textbook industry will shrivel up like never before in it's history. Whole departments will be eliminated at lightning speed in order for the core of the publishing companies to survive and there will fierce competition between the survivors. All sub-companies collected over the gluttonous decades of currency inflation by the government will be eliminated. What I told Julia is that only the core of McGraw-Hill will remain, but it would survive and that her book would either be shelved for years or eliminated entirely.
 

Studies Reveal Declining Living Standards and Increasing Anger

 
By Hiram Lee April 24th 2010

A series of recent studies conducted by the Pew Research Center shed new light on the scope of the economic crisis in the US and the level of hostility the majority of the American population holds for the US government.

Released in March, before the passage of the Obama administration’s health care legislation, a survey entitled “Health Care Reform—Can’t Live With It, or Without It” indicates that 92 percent of Americans give the national economy a negative rating. No fewer than 70 percent of the respondents report having suffered job-related and financial problems in the past year, an increase from 59 percent the year before. Fifty-four percent report someone in their home has been without a job and looking for work in the past year, up from 39 percent in 2009.

The poll saw an aggravation of conditions in every area of economic life studied the year before. Increasing numbers of people are reporting difficulty receiving or affording medical care (26 percent) or paying their rent or mortgage payments (24 percent). More Americans faced problems with collections and credit agencies (21 percent), or had mortgages, loans or credit card applications denied (19 percent).

As could be expected, the poorest Americans are suffering the most. Some 44 percent of those making $30,000 per year or less report difficulty obtaining medical care, compared to 11 percent of those making $75,000 per year or more. A similar gap can be found in the category of rents and mortgages, with 37 percent of those making $30,000 or less reporting difficulty making rent or mortgage payments, compared to 11 percent of those making $75,000 or more. However, the percentage of those facing difficulties paying rent has increased dramatically for both groups since 2009.

Large numbers of workers polled in the study say they have little confidence in job security and prospects for the future, with almost half (49 percent) saying it is “very or somewhat likely” they will suffer “job-related financial stress” in the next year. Twenty-five percent of workers say they expect to be forced to take a pay cut this year, while 24 percent expect to be laid off.

The Pew survey found that 85 percent of Americans reported difficulty finding jobs in their communities. This and other statistics revealing the increasingly dismal employment opportunities facing millions of Americans are provided context in another study released this month by the Pew Economic Policy Group.

“A Year or More: The High Cost of Long-Term Unemployment” reports that no fewer than 44 percent of unemployed Americans met or exceeded the standard measure of long-term unemployment (six months or more) in March 2010. This marks the highest rate for long-term unemployment levels since World War II.

In addition to this, the Pew study reports that “23 percent of the nearly 15 million Americans who are unemployed have been jobless for a year or more.” This translates to 3.4 million people, “roughly equivalent,” the study points out, “to the population of the state of Connecticut.”

These alarming numbers should be considered along with findings in another recent Pew research study entitled “The People and Their Government,” released April 18. This report finds that “by almost every conceivable measure Americans are less positive and more critical of government these days.”

Only 22 percent of Americans say their government can be trusted, according to the new survey. The report puts this among the lowest measures of trust in the government in half a century.

The study also shows across-the-board declines in approval ratings for numerous federal agencies, including the Department of Education, the Food and Drug Administration, the Social Security Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Forty-three percent say the government has a negative effect on their daily life, up from 31 percent in 1997.

While approval ratings for the government are remarkably low, with 65 percent saying the federal government and congress have a negative impact “on the way things are going in the country,” the approval ratings for other major institutions are as low or lower. Sixty-nine percent of those surveyed say banks and other financial institutions have a negative impact on the way things are going in the country, while 64 percent say “large corporations” have a negative impact. Some 57 percent say the national news media has a negative impact, while 49 percent say labor unions have such an impact.

The report states that “more than six-in-ten (62%) say it is a major problem that government policies unfairly benefit some groups while nearly as many (56%) say that government does not do enough to help average Americans.”

Taken as a whole, the Pew studies from March and April offer additional insight into the growing social misery under conditions of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, and the outrage it is generating.

Wide layers of the population, who have seen trillions of dollars funneled from the public treasury into the coffers of Wall Street executives while their own living standards have been assaulted, their jobs slashed, their children’s schools closed, and vital social programs such as Medicare cut by billions of dollars, have no faith in the US government to secure their most basic social needs.

The corporate-controlled news media, along with the major institutions overseeing the nation’s educational needs and basic food and medical resources, are considered corrupt and untrustworthy, contributing to the suffering of millions.

President Barack Obama, continuing to pose as a populist man of the people when he finds it necessary or beneficial, stands exposed as the chief representative of the interests of the American ruling elite and the standard bearer in the assault on the working class.

The restructuring of society taking place, in the direct interests of the corporate-financial elite and at the expense of the working population, is not occurring unnoticed. The American and international working class will inevitably find itself drawn into struggle against the present, untenable form of social organization.
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