Strangewalk

The Worst Case Scenario (Someone Has to Say It)

Gregman2: It will be a long, long....long time before it makes any sense to MFG in the US: Labor unions, armies of lawyers suing for any or no reason, over-weight, undisciplined labor pool with an 'I want it now' work ethic, shattered social fabric plagued by broken homes while awash in illegal drugs, idealism replaced by hedonism and internet porn addiction, and all of this led by corrupt and incompetent government and business leadership. Forget it USA, it's over.


On May 03 11:35 AM Gregman2 wrote:

> Jake, I love reading you--this is akin to the film "MadMax." I tend
> to a greee with a few of your points (and scenarios). I too have
> wondered what a total breakdown and Balkanization would look like
> in the U.S.
> But, in the end the single biggest problem we have is too much debt.
>
> If this ultimately is forced to be restructured we can begin to pro--
>
> gress. And ultimately if prices become cheap enough here it will
> make sense once again to manufacture in the U.S.;-)

2009 Economic Forecasts Ignore Demographic Shift

Genuine wealth creation and sustainable recovery via American manufacturing cannot return since the same factors (unions, environmental extremists, worker's comp shake-down lawyers, etc) that forced its move to China would just drive it back there again. The only kind of recovery that's plausible is a new round of credit expansion resulting from Chinese funding of US consumption. This model hopefully won't return again, so what's left?

Low Rates, Big Problems

Peter Schiff's underlying reasoning is sound to an extent, but it is also unbalanced and short sighted. The fundamental problems threatening both the Euro and Asia zones are just as deep and serious as those here in the USA, if not more so, just not as immediate or well publicized. As one example:

globaleconomicanalysis...

Much of China's recent boom is illusory and shallow. Without US and other direct investment creating labor-intensive, sweat-shop platforms for mass exporting, there would be very little left aside from the world's preminent high-tech counterfeiting and pirating industries (and a completely destroyed environment).

Peter Schiff seems to have 20-20 vision when surveying the American economic landscape, but wears rose colored glasses with the wrong Rx when gazing out across the Pacific or Atlantic. He won't admit to his investors the truth: he can run, but there's nowhere left to hide.

The Truth About Bailouts

I agree with those who say that assisting the automotive companies at this time is a unique issue, separate from bailing out the slippery, oily crooks on Wall St. and financial industry. GM and Ford especially have been getting their act together in terms of world beating quality improvements, dealing with the unions and restructuring in a serious, responsible way to compete as 21st century industrial powers, and their management now is top rate. The desperate situation they face is a result to some large degree of the general economic collapse and subsequent commodities bubble (high gas prices) caused by the slick con artists at Lehman, Countrywide, AIG etc. Peter Schiff is advocating throwing the the baby out with the bath water, and he missed it on this one.