|
|
Thread Tools | Display Modes |
#1
|
|||
|
|||
Hey lets outsource satellite launches too.
Why do ANYTHING in america? Jobs? Who cares corporate america can make
more money doing it in other countries, and we americans must not need jobs.... we can import all of our manufactured products from china, satellite launches from india, etc etc etc...... http://www.indiastrategic.in/topstories748.htm |
#2
|
|||
|
|||
Hey lets outsource satellite launches too.
On Oct 19, 7:19*am, " wrote:
Why do ANYTHING in america? Jobs? Who cares corporate america can make more money doing it in other countries, and we americans must not need jobs.... we can import all of our manufactured products from china, satellite launches from india, etc etc etc...... http://www.indiastrategic.in/topstories748.htm At the end of World War 2 Eisenhower and Truman worried that the development of the Atomic Bomb was a real game-changer. We couldn't let things go back to the way they were before World War 2 because the USA couldn't recover from a surprise attack like the Lusitania or Pearl Harbor, in the nuclear age. So, we had to maintain a constant war footing. The big problem was how to pay for it? How to remain the leading power in the world while we outspent everyone else in military and intelligence operations? So, we created the DOD from the Army and Navy adding the Air Force. We turned OSS into CIA so that we could keep track of foreign governments. Why? Because if we had shot Hitler after he rose to power, we would have avoided World War 2 for a while. Same here. Better to avoid a nuclear conflagration by assassination than direct combat. Still, how to pay for it? The answer the wise guys gave the Truman and Eisenhower administrations was a simple one. Segment our economy into high medium and low wage jobs. Outsource the medium wage jobs to our allies. Outsource our low wage jobs to our friends. Keep the high wage jobs for ourselves. That way we could outspend every one else, and maintain the lowest tax rates around. Also, if we promote social programs among our allies, and avoid social programs for ourselves, we can outspend on that basis too militarily. What were the low wage jobs? Extraction - you know, getting stuff from the land. Farming, fishing, lumbering, mining. What were the medium wage jobs? Manufacture - factories, refineries, food processing. What were the high wage jobs? Retail & Banking - offices that shuffled paper. You can see how this all works by considering a dollar's worth of wheat. It goes to the mill and becomes five dollars worth of flour, and the flour goes to the donut shop and becomes twenty-five dollars worth of donuts, and you pay for it with your credit card and over time everyone pays fifty-dollars for the one dollar worth of wheat. Or consider a dollars worth of ore turned into five dollars worth of steel and then twenty five dollars worth of cutlery financed and paid over time for fifty to one hundred and fifty dollars. So if Americans did only the last part in office parks and shopping malls, we could make 5 to 10x what everyone else did, and outspend them dollar for dollar on their military while maintaining a very low tax base. So that's what we did. What could go wrong? Well, several things went wrong. The first was that we failed to set up an actual US based global currency. This would produce too much anti-US tension as low wage workers would see it as a tax they'd pay to Amerca. So, we let foreign currency survive the war and set up various banking schemes to make the US dollar the defacto standard not the official standard. That way we couldn't be blamed. This resulted in a situation where we paid people with greenbacks and we produced nothing they could buy with those greenbacks. Well, this wasn't really a problem at first. We had most of the world's gold then, and we backed every greenback $35 per ounce. So, what little foreigners took we paid them in gold, and we figured we could work around the edges to get even that back eventually. But over time our gold resources were depleted. So much so that by 1971 Richard Nixon had to take the USA off the gold standard. This caused a big increase in the cost of commodities. Well, what really happened we didn't want to say outright. Without gold to back it up, the dollar dropped in value to worthlessness. This led to the first energy crisis as Saudi's very practically wanted the same amount of gold per barrel of oil as they had always gotten. It also led to a change in the relative value of jobs for Americans, but since most of these decisions were taken in secret and implemented in secret, American business was busy processing the bull**** and didn't understand the situation. Rational markets assume rational actors operate within them. When markets are being manipulated for national security reasons, they fail. They failed in 1971. Bretton Woods established a trading scheme for dollars that hid the underlying weakness of the dollar, by making other currencies weak as well. This still didn't change the flow of dollars for stuff overseas, in fact it made it worse by increasing the cost of stuff overseas - primarily energy. But the secret plan was maintained without any critical analysis - for example- the wise guys in the administration still opposed becoming too dependent on what they considered low value industries - like extracting resources from America to fuel America - because it violated the disparity plan - which was never questioned. Meanwhile, foreigners with US dollars to spend - started buying up US real estate. This led to a political crisis - and Nixon opened up to China - which had the lowest wages around - and removed capital from the Japanese and German banks - which caused a banking crisis there - and set China up. Why? Because wage rates were really low in China, and by forcing Germany and Japan and other allies to match them, we could maintain a disparity of income even as dollars accumulated overseas. This didn't make the problem go away. It didn't reverse anything. People are very resistant to going backwards. Growth rates slowed for a decade though overseas, as China's growth accelerated to catch up. Then the problem returned by the 1980s with vengance. Did we address the reality of the disparity of income ideas of the 1940s? No. Ronald Reagan implemented another fix after confabing with his wise guys. Do in the Savings & Loans and take all the ****ty loans the Commercial Banks didn't want, and sell them to our Allies. This would stabilize the dollar, the price of commodities, and all would be right with the world. And that's what we did. It was morning in America. The Chinese could sell Walmart tee shirts and get paid in dollars. They would then buy ****ty housing loans from Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Chilean frozen food processors could sell fish sticks to Mrs. Pauls and get paid in dollars. They would then buy start-up business loans and commercial credit card debt. An oil sheik would sell Exxon Mobil crude oil and get paid in dollars. He could buy GMAC car loans for the hard to finance and oil company debt for the newly employed. All was now right with the world. Except... In addition to the very low wage jobs foreigners had, they now had direct access to the highest value jobs in the world... finance. Financial centers blossomed throughout the world as capital moved out of America. Those financial centers also helped organize the local economy in China India Middle East Europe. Meanwhile, Americans became more and more endebted to foreigners. While technology and the environment changed. Not just the political and economic environment. The physical environment. Resource use caused increasing pollution. Resources themselves were being depleted as they were used more and more. This led to real increases in costs - and radical improvements in INCOME earned by development of resources. Meanwhile technology applied to the factory radically improved the INCOME earned by factory workers overseas. Even as technology applied to banking and retail reduced INCOME earned by banking and retail. In the 1940s the department store ruled retail with a margin of 40%. In the 1980s the mass marketer ruled retail with a margin of 20%. In the 2000s ebay and spin offs ruled retail with margin of less than 10%. The internet and computing destroyed the value proposition of retail. Meanwhile automation and resource depletion improved the value proposition of manufacturing and extraction. Of course America didn't participate in any of this since our information environment was controlled to maintain what the wise guys thought we needed to keep our disparity of income - without really examining the basis of all that went before - and no one had enough knowledge or power to make difference in the machinery that was set in motion in the 1940s and not given an OFF switch to a qualified inspector no matter what the harm to the US economy. Eisenhower in his last year as President realized that things were out of control when we spent more on military during peace time than we spent during the height of World War 2. His final speech as President was a plea to the patriotism of those within the Military Industrial Complex to limit their spending. Spending of course accelerated. After the failed coup in Cuba, JFK no longer relied on the CIA and DOD to advise him on foreign matters. He turned to experts at Harvard and Yale, and as for issues involving our future and nuclear energy? He turned to Leo Szilard, inventor of the chain reaction and the atomic bomb. Szilard was a student of Einstein - Einstein's brightest student. These advisors gave him a different sort of vision of the future. One that put Military spending on a downward course. Following JFKs approval of the assassination of Diem in 1963 he refused to involve America further in Vietnam. He also didn't want to expand our submarine forces, air forces, or ground forces around the world on the scale envisioned by DOD. He pulled back forward based missiles in Turkey following the Cuba Missile Crisis and wanted to work jointly with USSR to explore space. JFK wanted to pull the military back from their grandiose plans, enlarge the Peace Corps to undo the damage wrought by CIA initiatives in Africa and South America, and deploy orbiting nuclear weapons to maintain at vastly lower cost US ability for Mutual Assured Destruction - while expanding our Space Exploration initiatives balancing the carrot with the stick, and pursuing a course that put our military budgets on a downward course. JFK was also friend to labor and saw that automation of the workplace and farm as a means to end the disparity of income between these different sorts of labor. Due to the strong connection between CIA and organized crime, JFK also launched an attack on organized crime as a way to reign in the power of an out of control security force. In short, JFK was unraveling the power centers established by Truman and Eisenhower at the end of World War 2 and positioning the USA for strength in the future - for strength today. JFK died Nov 1963. Leo Szilard died Mar 1964. LBJ cut back spending on nuclear propulsion and large launchers. LBJ also expanded US role in Vietnam. LBJ fired RFK and ended the war against organized crime in America. Drug use, especially in the poorest communities skyrocketed. The stage was set for many of the social ills we see today. Nixon as stated never really addressed the issues facing the nation, preferring to adjust things to keep the machine turning. Carter wanted to resolve our energy issues by doing what Brookhaven advised Kennedy to do in 1961 - develop a network of 100 GW high temperature nuclear reactors to generate electricity while breaking down water into hydrogen and oxygen - and use the hydrogen with US coal to make synfuel at $0.20 per barrel and electricity at 1/10th cent per kWh. Carter was successful in getting energy on the table. But the month he introduced his initiative to Congress, Karen Silkwood's family won a wrongful death settlement, (an unprecedented $5 million - later reduced to $5,000) China Syndrome hit the theaters (starring Jane Fonda who was arrested the year before on Marijuana possession - which was forgotten after she signed up for this movie), and the melt down of Three Mile Island. The nuclear provisions for the bill were forgotten - and twice as much as we spent going to the moon was spent on energy research - with nothing substantive changed. Reagan addressed the issue of high commodity prices by selling our low value debt overseas - setting our banking system and our economy up for the current crisis. Reagan also organized the Reagan Doctrine to get radical Muslims to fight the Russians in Afghanistan. What could go wrong there? We found out on 9/11. Bush invaded Somalia rather than help Russia contain loose nukes. Clinton attempted to expand social spending which hit a brick wall. Bush II made fighting terror his number one priority following 9/11. We have still to find bin Laden. We invaded Afghanistan AND Iraq. We are still a target. And over $8.2 trillion left our banking system for financial centers overseas. Obama comes into office with the promise to bring our troops home and restore confidence in American economy. He wins office and before he takes office, the Governor of his home State is arrested loses office in disgrace. Was it a threat to Obama by the powers within the White House? Well, Obama didn't go with his first choice for replacing the military leaders of the Bush Administration. He chose to keep the Bush team there. He also chose to increase levels in Afghanistan. Which pushed the Taliban into Swat Valley and created a whole host of problems in Pakistan and India. Maybe that's the plan. Get Pakistan to nuke India and kill the economies of Asia. Who knows? Its not Obama's plan, that's for sure. So Obama is trying to replace the $8.2 trillion Bush 2 lost (and which Reagan set up to lose to begin with) from our banking system by tax and spend - which cannot be done without killing our economy. Obama also wants to increase regulation of our banking system to protect America without really considering that it will push more money out of America into the other financial centers that Reagan and Bush caused to be created in the 1980s and 90s. What should we do? Here's what I think we should do http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYuK0iJqpNA And here is where we came from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCJl-ZbHOYc |
#3
|
|||
|
|||
Hey lets outsource satellite launches too.
On Oct 19, 9:57*am, Fred J. McCall wrote:
William Mook wrote: On Oct 19, 7:19*am, " wrote: Why do ANYTHING in america? Jobs? Who cares corporate america can make more money doing it in other countries, and we americans must not need jobs.... we can import all of our manufactured products from china, satellite launches from india, etc etc etc...... http://www.indiastrategic.in/topstories748.htm At the end of World War 2 Eisenhower and Truman worried that the development of the Atomic Bomb was a real game-changer. *We couldn't let things go back to the way they were before World War 2 because the USA couldn't recover from a surprise attack like the Lusitania or Pearl Harbor, in the nuclear age. * So, we had to maintain a constant war footing. *The big problem was how to pay for it? *How to remain the leading power in the world while we outspent everyone else in military and intelligence operations? So, we created the DOD from the Army and Navy adding the Air Force. We merely renamed the War Department. The National Security Act of 1947 was signed by United States President Harry S. Truman on July 26, 1947, and realigned and reorganized the U.S. Armed Forces, foreign policy, and Intelligence Community apparatus in the aftermath of World War II. The Act merged the Department of War and the Department of the Navy into the National Military Establishment, headed by the Secretary of Defense. It was also responsible for the creation of a separate Department of the Air Force from the existing Army Air Forces. Initially, each of the three service secretaries maintained quasi- cabinet status, but the act was amended on August 10, 1949, to assure their subordination to the Secretary of Defense. At the same time, the NME was renamed as the Department of Defense. The purpose was to unify the Army, Navy, and what was soon to become the Air Force into a federated structure. The act and its changes, along with the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan, were major components of the Truman administration's Cold War strategy. We turned OSS into CIA so that we could keep track of foreign governments. *Why? *Because if we had shot Hitler after he rose to power, we would have avoided World War 2 for a while. *Same here. Better to avoid a nuclear conflagration by assassination than direct combat. Another rename. Aside from the military reorganization, the act established the National Security Council, a central place of coordination for national security policy in the executive branch, and the Central Intelligence Agency, the U.S.'s first peacetime intelligence agency. The function of the council was to advise the president on domestic, foreign, and military policies so that they may cooperate more tightly and efficiently. Departments in the government were encouraged to voice their opinions to the council in order to make a more sound decision. The Joint Chiefs of Staff was officially established under Title II, Section 211 of the original National Security Act of 1947 before Sections 209–214 of Title II were repealed by the law enacting Title 10 and Title 32, United States Code (Act of August 10, 1956, 70A Stat. 676) to replace them. Still, how to pay for it? The answer the wise guys gave the Truman and Eisenhower administrations was a simple one. *Segment our economy into high medium and low wage jobs. *Outsource the medium wage jobs to our allies. *Outsource our low wage jobs to our friends. *Keep the high wage jobs for ourselves. *That way we could outspend every one else, and maintain the lowest tax rates around. *Also, if we promote social programs among our allies, and avoid social programs for ourselves, we can outspend on that basis too militarily. What absolute poppycock! George Kennan in Public Policy Study 23 completed on February 24, 1948 concluded in part; "Furthermore, we have about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3 % of its population. ... Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity" http://perso.infonie.be/le.feu/ms/histdoc/kennaag.htm What were the low wage jobs? Extraction - you know, getting stuff from the land. *Farming, fishing, lumbering, mining. What were the medium wage jobs? Manufacture - factories, refineries, food processing. What were the high wage jobs? Retail & Banking - offices that shuffled paper. You can see how this all works by considering a dollar's worth of wheat. *It goes to the mill and becomes five dollars worth of flour, and the flour goes to the donut shop and becomes twenty-five dollars worth of donuts, and you pay for it with your credit card and over time everyone pays fifty-dollars for the one dollar worth of wheat. Or consider a dollars worth of ore turned into five dollars worth of steel and then twenty five dollars worth of cutlery financed and paid over time for fifty to one hundred and fifty dollars. So if Americans did only the last part in office parks and shopping malls, we could make 5 to 10x what everyone else did, and outspend them dollar for dollar on their military while maintaining a very low tax base. So that's what we did. Well, no. * Well yes. We are one of the biggest agricultural producers in the world. * Today we are a net importer of food. In 1948 we were a net exporter for food. That's in your list of "jobs we don't do". * Fred claims I said something I did not. He claims I said we don't do farming at all or we don't do manufacturing at all. I said nothing of the kind. I said we made a decision to export these jobs where possible so as to maintain our disparity of income as called for in PPS 23. In this way we maintain low taxes and high military spending compared to nations with lower incomes. The reality is, the majority of the farming still done in the USA is done by low-paid foreign and migrant workers (both legal and illegal) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLzFJPAcqW0 We still do a lot of heavy machinery and aerospace manufacturing, among others. *Again in your list of "jobs we don't do". Today we are a net importer of manufactured goods. In 1948 we were a net exporter of manufactured goods. In fact, we still do huge quantities of those jobs you claim we don't do. I did not intend to speak in absolutes - which you've falsely attributed to me. The CIA World Fact Book analyzes all nations economies. One of the factors they analyze is 'income by economic sector' These sectors are those outlined in Planing Studies done in the 1940s - low median and high income, called agriculture, industry and services. For the USA today here is how our income stacks up INCOME agricultu 1.2% industry: 21.9% services: 76.9% POPULATION: farming, forestry, and fishing: 0.7% ** manufacturing, extraction, transportation, and crafts: 20.3% managerial, professional, and technical: 37.3% sales and office: 24.2% other services: 17.6% ** Does not include undocumented migrant workers This is distinctly different than the sector income prior to 1948, when the Public Planning Studies of how to organize our economy were done during the Truman Administration. http://www.jstor.org/pss/1239301 overwhelming economic ignorance elided It is your knowledge of our actual situation and actual history that's ignorant. -- "Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the *truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong." * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *-- Thomas Jefferson |
#4
|
|||
|
|||
Hey lets outsource satellite launches too.
Number of farmers: 0.7% - 2.1 million
Number of migrant farm workers: 3 million |
#5
|
|||
|
|||
Hey lets outsource satellite launches too.
On Oct 19, 9:57*am, Fred J. McCall wrote:
William Mook wrote: On Oct 19, 7:19*am, " wrote: Why do ANYTHING in america? Jobs? Who cares corporate america can make more money doing it in other countries, and we americans must not need jobs.... we can import all of our manufactured products from china, satellite launches from india, etc etc etc...... http://www.indiastrategic.in/topstories748.htm At the end of World War 2 Eisenhower and Truman worried that the development of the Atomic Bomb was a real game-changer. *We couldn't let things go back to the way they were before World War 2 because the USA couldn't recover from a surprise attack like the Lusitania or Pearl Harbor, in the nuclear age. * So, we had to maintain a constant war footing. *The big problem was how to pay for it? *How to remain the leading power in the world while we outspent everyone else in military and intelligence operations? So, we created the DOD from the Army and Navy adding the Air Force. We merely renamed the War Department. We turned OSS into CIA so that we could keep track of foreign governments. *Why? *Because if we had shot Hitler after he rose to power, we would have avoided World War 2 for a while. *Same here. Better to avoid a nuclear conflagration by assassination than direct combat. Another rename. Still, how to pay for it? The answer the wise guys gave the Truman and Eisenhower administrations was a simple one. *Segment our economy into high medium and low wage jobs. *Outsource the medium wage jobs to our allies. *Outsource our low wage jobs to our friends. *Keep the high wage jobs for ourselves. *That way we could outspend every one else, and maintain the lowest tax rates around. *Also, if we promote social programs among our allies, and avoid social programs for ourselves, we can outspend on that basis too militarily. What absolute poppycock! What were the low wage jobs? Extraction - you know, getting stuff from the land. *Farming, fishing, lumbering, mining. What were the medium wage jobs? Manufacture - factories, refineries, food processing. What were the high wage jobs? Retail & Banking - offices that shuffled paper. You can see how this all works by considering a dollar's worth of wheat. *It goes to the mill and becomes five dollars worth of flour, and the flour goes to the donut shop and becomes twenty-five dollars worth of donuts, and you pay for it with your credit card and over time everyone pays fifty-dollars for the one dollar worth of wheat. Or consider a dollars worth of ore turned into five dollars worth of steel and then twenty five dollars worth of cutlery financed and paid over time for fifty to one hundred and fifty dollars. So if Americans did only the last part in office parks and shopping malls, we could make 5 to 10x what everyone else did, and outspend them dollar for dollar on their military while maintaining a very low tax base. So that's what we did. Well, no. * We are one of the biggest agricultural producers in the world. *That's in your list of "jobs we don't do". * we now produce less than 50% of all the food we consume and that number continues to fall We still do a lot of heavy machinery and aerospace manufacturing, among others. *Again in your list of "jobs we don't do". again moving overseas In fact, we still do huge quantities of those jobs you claim we don't do. overwhelming economic ignorance elided -- look we cant compete at american wages. near 30 bucks a hour here.... china 3 bucks a hour...... |
#6
|
|||
|
|||
Hey lets outsource satellite launches too.
lets not forget exchanging our wealth for oil for a generation.
take any familiy on your street, have them give boatloads of money away for a generation every month. guess what sooner or later they are broke. .......... such sending for oil isnt sustainable forever....... just like home price increases..... eventually it catches up with you... |
#7
|
|||
|
|||
Hey lets outsource satellite launches too.
On Oct 20, 8:08*am, " wrote:
lets not forget exchanging our wealth for oil for a generation. take any familiy on your street, have them give boatloads of money away for a generation every month. guess what sooner or later they are broke. .......... such sending for oil isnt sustainable forever....... just like home price increases..... eventually it catches up with you... These are all symptoms of an underlying problem our country has - excessive spending on military and intelligence activities, and managing our economy to maintain that excess while keeping taxes low. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCJl-ZbHOYc At present we must do two things; (1) end the bleeding by cutting back our military expenditures to 1/10th their current level (2) organize our markets and banking to attract back the $8.2 trillion lost by George Bush http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYuK0iJqpNA |
#8
|
|||
|
|||
Hey lets outsource satellite launches too.
The United States of America in 1948 commissioned a policy planning
study (PPS 23) by George Kennan. That study, a portion of which I cut and pasted, said specifically that the USA should maintain a large disparity of income between itself and everyone else. It should do that so that it could spend large amounts of money on Cold War expansion without raising taxes. Doing this creates large structural problems for US banking and business in the world. For a deep analysis of that I would suggest reading LESSONS OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION by Temin. Here's a Reader's Digest Version http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCJl-ZbHOYc So, Truman and Eisenhower got together and determined that the atomic bomb was a game changer and organized US affairs to take that into account. Part of that re-arrangement included exporting low value jobs to our friends and medium value jobs to our allies and keeping high value jobs for ourselves. We also isolated and undermined our enemies. In this way we could tax at 4% and outspend everyone else in the world. The way this works is easy to see if you consider a $1 worth of wheat or ore. That wheat or ore is sent somewhere and processed into a more useful form. $1 worth of wheat is turned into $5 worth of flour. $1 worth of ore is turned into $5 worth of steel. That wheat and that steel is turned into something and sold. $5 worth of flour turns into $25 worth of donuts cake and bread. $5 worth of steel is turned into $25 worth of cutlery or car parts or toasters. The banker finances the purchases and earns another $25 or more depending on terms. Now, lets compare three countries that have decided to specialize on different sectors. Country A has decided to mine and farm and export food fuel and ore and buy everything else. Country J has decided to specialize on manufacturing import food and fuel and raw material and manufacture products for export. Country U has decided to import everything and concentrate on banking and buying and selling. For every $1 A earns J earns $5 and U earns $25. To spend $1 from this earning on its army Country U only has to take 4% of what it earns. To match it country J has to take 20% of what it earns. Country A must spend 100% of what it earns on its military to match what country U spends dollar for dollar. The problem with this approach is that country U does nothing that country J or A needs or wants. So, the dollars U spends in J and A for its imports accumulate and lose value. Now this happened to the USA early on. Back in 1948 the US dollar was backed by gold. $35 would buy an ounce of gold. This is what a dollar meant. It was established by law. By 1970 foreign countries were cashing in large amounts of dollars and draining our gold reserves. So, the President at that time, President Richard Nixon, had to go off the gold standard. This caused the dollar's collapse and huge increases in the price of imports - everything from sugar to oil went up. It didn't cut the number of dollars that foreigners had to invest. Just what they could buy with those dollars. So foreign investors began buying real estate and stocks in record number in the USA. When the Japanese started buying major US landmarks, there was a political backlash. This caused the USA to open to China and establish China as a MFN. Why? Because China had the lowest cost labor around. The USA moved a lot of its foreign investment at this time from Japan and Europe into China, which was good for China and bad for Japanese and German banking. Problem solved? Not really. The structural problem created in 1948 just changed its nature. Nixon, according to letters in the Nixon Library felt he had beat back rising living standards in Europe and Asia by opening to China and preserved the disparity of income sought and achieved since 1948. He didn't recognize that what he really did was provide a huge impetus to develop growth in China and eventually end US dominance in the world as the Chinese took control of the world economy. Problems with commodities and imports continued to be felt in the US banking system as stagflation. Reagan came in and with it a new army of economists. Milton Friedman being the most notable example. To them the problem was clear, the US had nothing it wanted to sell to foreigners to redeem its dollars that the foreigners wanted to buy. The answer was equally simple. Sell them crappy loans that major commercial banks didn't want to fund. To do this they'd have to change a few laws, which they did. Those rule changes would have to do something else. Cause the collapse of the Savings & Loan industry, the people who held all the crappy loans the commercial banks didn't want. To get a sense of the tension between the Commercial Banks and your hometown Savings & Loan - watch ITS A WONDERFUL LIFE with Jimmy Stewart playing the affable S&L owner George Bailey, and Lionel Barrymore playing the evil Mr. Potter owner of Potter Bank. Ronald Reagan turned America from Bedford Falls to Potterville in the name of National Security - so he could get at the loans the S&Ls had so they could be packaged and sold overseas. We paid for stuff with greenbacks and redeemed them with commercial paper. This finally stabilized the US dollar For a generation. According to the Economist Magazine the USA saved 9% of its income (mostly in S&Ls) owed 60% of its income and owned 90% of its assets and debts in 1980. By 2000 after 20 years of Reaganomics Americans no longer saved, they borrowed (from Commercial Banks) 4% of their income every year, owed 160% of their income in debts and owned only 35% of America's assets and debts. We had become dependent on foreign capital and given the highest value jobs to foreigners who used their accumulated capital to dominate US markets by 2000. This is why Bin Laden attacked the WORLD TRADE CENTER in 1993 and in 2001. It was to send a message to foreigners that the money they invested in the USA was no longer secure in a safe haven. Bush's focus on terror during his administration played right into Bin Laden's plans. Every time Bush gained popularity by rattling the terror stick, more money fled America and strengthened foreign markets. By 2007 more than $8.2 trillion had fled America and we couldn't find buyers for the lowest valued loans. Rule changes following the Enron collapse - which declared bankruptcy right after the attacks of 9/11 - made matters worse by creating toxic loans. Rather than address those rules President Bush ignored them because he didn't want to be tarred by his ties to Enron. Congress made the rules harsh in part because they wanted to draw the President into the Enron fiasco. So, neither group really worried about what would happen to the country worst case. Our present situation is the result of this. What can we do? Plenty! We can reduce our military spending for one. We can also restructure our banking and markets to attract foreign capital back. We can also restructure our economy in light of modern technology and its impact on job value. Where the money went and what we can do about it; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYuK0iJqpNA The assumptions of the wise guys like George Kennan in 1948 no longer apply. Land and raw materials suffer from depletion and environmental concerns - which increase their value and vastly increase the profits to be made - as Saudi Arabia shows. Manufacturing is improved by cybernetics, robotics and automation - to provide vast improvements in productivity. Retail has become the commodity by operation of the internet. Consider, in 1948 most products sold in America were sold through Department Stores like Macy's. Their margin was 40%. By 1978 most products sold in America were sold through discounters like WalMart. Their margin was 20%. By 2008 more and more products are sold through online e-tailers. Their margins are 10% and less. Internet is also adversely affecting the value of banking. Whose ultimate end is described here; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=istE1bpoDPg Yet, through policy decisions arrived at largely in secret committee meetings at the National Security Council in the 1950s, we are irrevocably wedded to the idea that retailing and banking are the highest valued jobs around while manufacturing and farming are inherently unwanted low value jobs foreigners do for us to maintain our leadership role in the world. This is killing us. It must end. |
#9
|
|||
|
|||
Hey lets outsource satellite launches too.
Fred's figures are for bulk foods, and do not include processed foods,
wines, things that most Americans recognize as food. Most Americans don't buy a bushel of wheat, they buy a loaf of bread, or a package of cookies. Next time you're at the store look at the Chilean fish, Australian wine, British mustard on the shelves - and contrast it with the US foods you find there. Also, most of our bulk food exports are not market driven. They are paid for by Americans as part of our food aid programs around the world. That's why our account balance is the largest in the world - we owe more money than any other nation. Here's what one site has to say about it; United States Balance of Trade The United States reported a balance of trade deficit equivalent to 42.8 Billion USD in July of 2010. The United States is the most significant nation in the world when it comes to international trade. For decades, it has led the world in imports while simultaneously remaining as one of the top three exporters of the world. Main exports a machinery and equipment, industrial supplies, non- auto consumer goods, motor vehicles and parts, aircraft and parts, food, feed and beverages. U.S. imports non-auto consumer goods, fuels, production machinery and equipment, non-fuel industrial supplies, motor vehicles and parts, food, feed and beverages. Main trading partners a Canada, European Union, Mexico, China and Japan. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cu...nt_Balance.png |
#10
|
|||
|
|||
Hey lets outsource satellite launches too.
According to the World Wealth Report most of the world's $40 trillion
in capital was invested in US markets in 2000. By 2008 less than $20 trillion in capital remained in US markets. From 2001 through 2007 $8.2 trillion moved out of the US markets into foreign markets, primarily in Mumbai, Shanghai, Moscow, - enriching those markets and impoverishing US markets. The US runs a trade deficit of $50 billion per month. The US spends $68 billion per month on its military and intelligence infrastructure. If the US would; (1) cut military spending to less than $10 billion per month (2) arrange its markets to attract foreign capital back we would quickly restore our economic strength in the world. Restructuring our markets doesn't mean more regulation, it means less. It doesn't meant surface fixes, it means a substantial restructuring of our long-term policies, for example, making it easier for manufacturers to get very low interest rate loans for capital equipment - stuff like that. |
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
Japan launches 5th spy satellite | [email protected] | Policy | 0 | November 29th 09 02:08 AM |
Iran launches satellite | Pat Flannery | Policy | 15 | August 22nd 08 10:12 PM |
Iran launches satellite | Pat Flannery | History | 14 | August 22nd 08 12:54 PM |
Proton Launches Communications Satellite | Jacques van Oene | News | 0 | March 30th 05 05:58 PM |
US intelligence satellite launches 1988-97 | Bill Robinson | Policy | 1 | February 21st 04 01:32 PM |