Article

2009-10-06 Economy

Archived material is restricted to Rantburg regulars and members. If you need access email fred.pruitt=at=gmail.com with your nick to be added to the members list. There is no charge to join Rantburg as a member.

Posted by tipper 2009-10-06 01:06|| || Front Page|| [11131 views ] Top

#1 Perhaps its time for oil that glows in the dark?

Posted by 3dc 2009-10-06 01:19|| 2009-10-06 01:19|| Front Page Top

#2 Old news recycled by an old hasbeen.

Good luck getting people to take billions in Yuan and Rubles.

And in other news today, The new Greek government plan to spend their way out of recession and in the process break the Euro sooner rather than later.

Posted by phil_b 2009-10-06 02:45|| 2009-10-06 02:45|| Front Page Top

#3 in the process break the Euro sooner rather than later.

Yeah, I'm a total dumbass, economy-wise or not, but I do read and listen to people who aren't, and for all the (few) free-market economists/thinkers in France, of any affiliation, the euro is doomed to fall sooner or later, as did all other pan-european currencies before (and there were a few). This is something the people gloating at the fall of the dollar seem to blissfully ingore.

Posted by anonymous5089 2009-10-06 04:03|| 2009-10-06 04:03|| Front Page Top

#4 Robert Fisk? Fiskie? Is there any reason I should waste my precious time reading what this half-wit thinks?

Posted by Jumbo Slinerong5015 2009-10-06 04:35|| 2009-10-06 04:35|| Front Page Top

#5 The one monetary policy America has allowed to hamper its own economy, short term and long term, is the continued obstruction to the development of domestic energy resources in all forms. And the billions and billions continue to flow out.

Posted by Procopius2k 2009-10-06 08:19|| 2009-10-06 08:19|| Front Page Top

#6 Problem with the Euro is:

1) Some countries (the largest being Spain) are getting into massive debt

2) They cannot devaluate because of the euro

3) While devaluating has a relatively small practical (no need to print new banknotes) and
political cost leaving the euro has a huge one.

4) Because them leaving the euros would shatter the Europa uber alles dream of rich Europe, Spain and friends are counting on being rescued by "First World Europe"

5) That means that those countries don't do any effort to reduce deficits.

Posted by JFM">JFM 2009-10-06 08:45|| 2009-10-06 08:45|| Front Page Top

#7 Actually, oil imports are not that large a part of the USA's import picture. 12M barrels/day at $70 is $300B/year. That's 15% of the more than $2T the US imports every year and less than half of the US trade deficit.

While it is important to develop domestic (or at least North American) energy sources and save the $50B/year ($200B/year post Sept 2001) the US devotes to keeping Middle East oil flowing, it is more important for the health of the US economy to revive manufacturing. Almost every manufactured thing Americans consume is now made overseas and is leading to pauperdom and a poor future for our children and grandchildren.

The first job is bringing back domestic auto production and all the industries and millions of jobs that rely upon it from steel and plastics to electronics. A 2% tariffs is crazy when our trade partners have 10-30% tariffs plus non tariff barriers that add more thousands to the price of imports.

The second is raising domestic energy production/increased fuel efficiency by 25% (5M barrels/day) to completely eliminate the Middle East as a source of oil imports. That allow us to disengage from the muslims and their corruption of the American political class.

The third is general revival of domestic manufacturing, and with it the office and engineering jobs that go with it. That will allow rising real wages for the middle class (that have stagnated since 1970) and halt the bifurcation of American society. In the end, a society consumes what it makes or eats the seed corn of it's future prosperity.

Posted by ed 2009-10-06 08:57|| 2009-10-06 08:57|| Front Page Top

#8 energy production/increased fuel efficiency by 25% of consumption

Posted by ed 2009-10-06 08:58|| 2009-10-06 08:58|| Front Page Top

#9 The first job is bringing back domestic auto production and all the industries and millions of jobs that rely upon it from steel and plastics to electronics.

Just because it says Honda or Toyota or Mercedes doesn't mean it isn't domestic.

However, why stop at manufacturing. Let's go way back to the 'good old days' and implement the Pol Pot program of driving city dwellers back to the land to make a living with subsistence farming? At least everyone was employed. /sarc off

You're typing on a device and communicating on systems that if we had constricted and restricted trade for the protection of domestic jobs, you'd never have had access to. The irony of it all.

That allow us to disengage from the muslims and their corruption of the American political class.

The American political class doesn't need any help from the Muslim to be corrupt. They can do it on their own and have been for a long time.

Posted by Procopius2k 2009-10-06 09:33|| 2009-10-06 09:33|| Front Page Top

#10 Just because it says Honda or Toyota or Mercedes doesn't mean it isn't domestic.

You do realize the Automobile trade deficit was $120 billion just a year or two ago? Of course it will be lower this year since there IS NO MONEY left in the US economy. You do realize that if that value was captured by US workers (more than one million direct jobs, additional as that capital circulated in the US economy instead of German, Japan, Korea) that there would have been no need for US taxpayers to bail out GM, Ford and Chrysler. Nor would the Feds have crazy deficits as there would be several hundred billion $ more tax revenue with a balanced trade. You do realize that if that money had stayed in the economy, foreign entities could not have manipulated the US money market and ensured a closeted Communist got elected to the US presidency?

However, why stop at manufacturing.

Isn't that what you are advocating, stop manufacturing? Get your story straight.

Yes, I'm typing on a machine whose components were invented in the USA. But are no longer made in the US. The research was paid for by the US but the value is now captured elsewhere. Good job! The jobs are just not American. Funny how I had computers (PC AT and before) when they were produced in the US, by US workers who had good paying jobs

The American political class doesn't need any help from the Muslim to be corrupt.

I'd rather they be in the pockets of the Chicago mob or Texas oil millionaires than bowing to Saudi sheiks and mullahs. At least the oil TX millionaire doesn't want to cut off my head or rape my nine year old.

Posted by ed 2009-10-06 10:13|| 2009-10-06 10:13|| Front Page Top

#11 The first job is bringing back domestic auto production and all the industries and millions of jobs that rely upon it from steel and plastics to electronics

How?

Posted by g(r)omgoru 2009-10-06 10:36|| 2009-10-06 10:36|| Front Page Top

#12 Start with import tariffs to give price preference to domestic production. The amount of the tariff varying with the trade imbalance. Add non tariff restrictions on nations that are notorious for them.

For those who think US auto industry is bad now, wait until Chinese auto exports to the US get going.

Posted by ed 2009-10-06 10:50|| 2009-10-06 10:50|| Front Page Top

#13 ...Keep in mind too that by this time next year there will be no General Motors, and probably no Chrysler. CFC had exactly the opposite effect that it was intended and the result is that GM is essentially only making cars for fleet sales. At their current rate of sales loss, they'll be gone by spring. Of course, they'll be back for another bailout with more promises, but the fact is they're history. And even as shrunken as they'll be, suddenly pulling them out of the economy - FOREVER - will be like setting off a nuke in a crowded city. We ain't seen the worst yet.

Mike

Posted by Mike Kozlowski 2009-10-06 10:51|| 2009-10-06 10:51|| Front Page Top

#14 Tariffs transfer money from Consumers to Producers.

Each dollar that buys exports has to be used in the us economy to buy something.

This is simple economics.

Posted by Bright Pebbles 2009-10-06 11:12|| 2009-10-06 11:12|| Front Page Top

#15 The money also stays in the domestic economy buying other goods and services, creating jobs, generating wealth and tax revenues. Unlike the $700 billion that leaves the US economy never to return except as debt.

Posted by ed 2009-10-06 11:24|| 2009-10-06 11:24|| Front Page Top

#16 Tarifs can't make up for:
(i) Too much regulation
(ii) Too many MBAs and not enough engineers in top management positions.
(iii) Too much sense of entitlement, and not enough of work ethic in labor.

Posted by g(r)omgoru 2009-10-06 11:31|| 2009-10-06 11:31|| Front Page Top

#17 Tarifs can't make up for:
(i) Too much regulation
(ii) Too many MBAs and not enough engineers in top management positions.
(iii) Too much sense of entitlement, and not enough of work ethic in labor.

Maybe, but at the moment the costs from the too much regulation, too many MBA's, and entitlement stuff all gets loaded onto the manufacturers, while the bicoastal elite classes that made the decisions to impose all that dreck chat away on their Chinese-made "Apple" iPhone while pumping Saudi gas into their BMW, all of which gets paid for by selling debt to other countries...

Tariffs would help ensure that the misery caused by all the lack of market freedoms in all the other sectors of the economy would be spread around more equally, instead of being concentrated in those of us still trying to manufacture stuff and staying in business by our fingernails. Currently the regulatory decision-making process is one in which the bicoastals always defect while we always cooperate and never retaliate against their defections. As a result we continue to get yentzed by more so-cial-ism

If the pain of so-cial-ism were spread more equally around, we'd probably have less of it.

Posted by Thing From Snowy Mountain 2009-10-06 12:39|| 2009-10-06 12:39|| Front Page Top

#18 All the costs associated with Federal and State regulations (EPA, OSHA, etc.,) lawsuits, outlandish executive pay packages, government give-aways domestically as well as overseas, affirmative action, etc. become a part of product pricing and make businesses less competitive. Our industries get eroded and disappear taking with them jobs.

Posted by JohnQC 2009-10-06 17:02|| 2009-10-06 17:02|| Front Page Top

#19 I wonder which currency Soros is invested in?

Any time someone advocates 'change' to you on how you are supposed to deal with your financials, I get a little skeptical. Someone, somewhere is pushing this to make money (of some stripe).

The Chinese would love to have the Yuan as the 'big dog', at least for a while until the full ramifications of the 'downsides' to that kick in.

Posted by Mullah Richard 2009-10-06 17:06|| 2009-10-06 17:06|| Front Page Top

#20 If the pain of so-cial-ism were spread more equally around, we'd probably have less of it.

BTW, to follow up... Apple today pulled out of the US Chamber of Commerce because they were critical of the whole global warming regulatory schemes.

I can't help but think that they'd probably be behaving a little differently if they had their factories here in the US and weren't selling Chinese-made hardware at an over 100% markup. And that they couldn't screw us out of our jobs and then merrily make the same amount of money selling their Chinese-sweatshop-made iPhones to the chattering classes on the coast.

Posted by Thing From Snowy Mountain 2009-10-06 17:31|| 2009-10-06 17:31|| Front Page Top

#21 I have an idea on how to bring manufacturing and engineering back - but it requires a national buy in.... and ends the current corporate formats.... (breaks all the paradigms)
I don't know how to sell a total society wide paradigm breaker. And yes its merges capitalism with a pseudo open source and government sponsored R&D centers of excellence, manufacturing plants that just make stuff, virtual design teams and virtual companies ...
Much more flexible than our current dinosaur companies and gov and science...
Oh and maybe until we recover downtrending NSF and creating an equivalent system for Engineering and Design R&D - designing new stuff, manufacturing, or in better ways that can't be lived without.

Posted by 3dc 2009-10-06 22:06|| 2009-10-06 22:06|| Front Page Top

23:07 Ulineper Scourge of the Veal Cutlets9295
22:55 Zhang Fei
22:53 Skunky Glins****
22:21 Broadhead6
22:15 Broadhead6
22:14 Barbara Skolaut
22:11 Barbara Skolaut
22:06 3dc
21:55 Steve White
21:43 Hellfish
21:43 Frank G
21:43 DK70 the scantily clad
21:39 Pappy
21:26 gorb
21:21 gorb
21:20 Verlaine
21:19 gorb
20:51 Chief
20:48 Chandler
20:47 ed
20:41 ed
20:39 Anonymoose
20:36 ed
20:34 ed