sunnsea

The Bias in Reporting Job Losses

BLS Unemployment rates are determined by household surveys done by phone, like a poll, NOT by actual data of those receiving checks. There has been a dispute as to whether to count part-time workers, or how many jobs are being held by a single person just "how many people are employed in the household?" As for jobs created, when jobs were being created it was mainly in the "service" sector which includes restaurants which are generally well below minimum wage jobs and are easy to "create."
An economy that is as bifurcated as this one with financial paper pushers running policy and destroying true value-added manufacturing by having everything made in China could not go on. Their "policy" was to offshore all good paying jobs and then the poorer middle class would then borrow from them in order to maintain a semblance of their standard of living. This MBAitis infected Asia and Europe and they bought the worthless paper that Wall St. pushed. This is at root of our current calamity.

Obama's 'Aggressive Attitude' Towards China Is Nothing New

Tariffs should be imposed on US companies that design and market their products here but have them Made in China. That's about 40% of the so-called trade with China and a large part of the wealth transfer between the two conuntries over the past 20 years. This has been done according to the Goldman Sachs recipe concocted in the 1980s.

The Fallacy of Floating Exchange Rates

Good analysis. I'm amazed at how little discussion there has been these historic shifts, i.e., yen today at 88 vs. USD vs. Euro vs Sterling, etc. As an exporter to Japan my customers are all scared and they wonder if we in the US are scared and I tell them we are too. Just like the oil price increases were triggered by speculators, so the yen. There really is no other explanation. I would be favor of a new currency that unites all industrial countries in a common market. If you really think about it, what other choice do we have at this point?

How We Solved the Gas Price Problem

You are correct in your assessment if all we do is print more money. But if it goes into investments like infrastructure: roads, rails, internet broadband, electric grid upgrade and education, then the impact should be less of a problem and we will see a return on the invested dollars. We are not exactly like Germany after WWI but neither are we the US after WWII.
The other part of the equation and the part that has made China wealthy is the intentional destruction of our domestic manufacturing base by the co-conspiritors Goldman Sachs and the Chinese. A strong President Obama should do everything in his power to disincentivize the off-shoring of jobs and manufacturing and create the conditions for a major revival. The key to solid wealth creation is not pushing and selling debt paper a la Wall St. but to manufacture high-value added, globally competitive products. Also, we should convert to the metric system so mistakes are not made on the shop floor to producing these products.

The Scariest Chart Ever

1946 and you might as well through in 1947. WE made things and we were not afraid to think BIG. Those returning veterans could see the power of a nation that at last had its act together and where any obstacles were seen as challenges and problems to be solved. Not the weenies we have had in Wall St. and in Washington until yesterday at 11:30 EST. I'll give you an example which might turn off non-Northeasterners, but I often think of NJ Gov. Driscoll's 1947 transportation plan for Northern NJ. He proposed a major transportation center in the Meadowlands and from there a new rail line with a tunnel under the Hudson River with a station opposite Rockefeller Center at 6th Avenue in Manhattan...all you NJ residents with jobs in Manhattan now...I want you to think what a difference in the quality of life that center and that new rail line would have made to all residents...the ease and convenience to access mid-town Manhattan..hassle free..no Port Authority Bus Terminal to contend with...but alas, we were shortly taken over by the oil and rubber tired, automobile industries and the rest, sadly, is history.....today's needless complications of travel in the New York Region and the lack of will power politically are symbolic of the fix the entire country finds itself in today....

Europe's Lack of Economic Understanding

At least Spain and Germany have electrified high-speed rail. They'll still be able to travel around while we in the US won't be able to afford gasoline even when it drops to 25 cents a gallon. Does anyone out there remember "Dallas", specifically the character, Cliff Barnes? During his 8 years Bush has been likened to Hitler, JR and Cheney with Darth Vader. But he always seem to me to be the hapless the Cliff Barnes of "Dallas", trying to be a JR , trying all kinds of schemes that in the end never worked. The world has been led by a Cliff Barnes and now we are all going to pay, but I would not be too hard on the Europeans. They never understood our Cliff Barnes propensities over on this side of the pond but they were still willing to tax themselves to pay for infrastructure investments and health care.

United Socialist States of America? Not Quite

We in America live in a country blessed with the self-correcting mechanism called "democracy." European countries have this too, even more democratic than us. Collective decision-making, open debate, etc. It's when we don't do this and develop a herd mentality or follow the leader is when we get into trouble, every time. Russia and China, to name two, cannot bring themselves, it seems, to be thoroughly open, although once in a while cracks do appear. Russia seems to be going backwards and China a little bit forward in this regard.

I voted for Obama, but he may prove ultimately to be more conservative than I would like on some issues and quite liberal on others. The point is that we have the opportunity to at least have a more open, debate-filled era than we had for the past 30 maybe even 40 years. Everyone of us has to 1) educate ourselves on the facts and issues 2) make ourselves heard through blogs like this every day for the next 4 years. It is not a one-time deal. JFK said it best: "vigilance is the eternal price of liberty."
..and he just wasn't refering to external threats.

Unemployment's Surprisingly Large Drop

You're kidding, right? During the week of Dec. 22 to Dec. 27 you had a national holiday known as Christmas and a Jewish holiday known as Chunnakah. Most places closed at noon or one p.m. on the 24th and remained closed over the 26th, Friday, yes, even government agencies. This whole story, repeated over and over on CNBC yesterday is totally irresponsbile if not idiotic. Most unemployed persons either filed before that week or just will wait until after Jan. 2 to deal with the bureaucracies. Happy New Year.

Over-Correction in the Phoenix Housing Market

Prices must drop to 1997-98 levels in all markets, period. The banks must be held accountable for this mess and they must suffer along with everyone else.

Also, the 1997 tax exemptions on home sale capital gains ought to be repealed. This was an underlying factor and rarely discussed incentive for the price bubble. If and when prices do stablize, we do not want to trigger off another bubble with this ill-advised exemption.

Artificial U.S. Dollar Rally Is Coming to an End

The dollar rallied because hedge funds had to redeem their foreign investments and convert them into dollars to meet margin calls. That is coming to and end. The one thing Europe has going for it is that its products are in demand, they are exporters in a way that the US is not. They will earn back those strengthening Asian currencies because of their a) consumer priducts, which are superior to American and have cachet in Asia and b) their machine tool products which allow the Asian economies to turn out the cheaper goods that have no cachet. Germany, Italy and France alll turn out designer labels from clothes and shoes to cars that are widely sold in Asia and Germany and Italy sell machine tools to the same countries except Japan. Americans are totally clueless as to what it takes to compete in this market as they have been so interested in consuming themselves they have forgotten how to make high quality products that do have cachet. Asians don't want "Made in China" products. They want "Made in Italy."

In the Long Run, the Dollar Is Dead

40% of our so-called "trade with China" is simply American companies having their products made in China and shipped back here duty free. If we can stop this reduction in the standard of living of the US worker, then we can come out of this alright. Obama will need to institute tariff schedules that will stop this. This is the principal reason for the erosion of our incomes and ultimately the roots of the sub-prime mess, Japan is another story all together. This is an advanced industrial economy that makes, markets its own products. However, many US auto companies have components such as engines made in Japan. Even with high per hour rates and other costs, Japan is still competitive. How is this possible? Does anyone know enouigh to even ask them the right question? Why haven't US manufacturers pushed to have a single-payer health care system and get health care off their backs? OR are they so ideologically driven they can't bear the thought that a government health care program would actually be cheaper for everyone? The dollar, the yen and the Euro should be merged into a single-currency which would bring all the major industrial countries into alignment. Think of the millions that would be saved just in transaction fees and costs under a single-currency. After this is all over, Americans are going to have to learn how to produce and market products in America that can be exported world-wide with a cachet that makes them appealing. Then we will be on the road to real recovery.

Deleveraging Pushes the Dollar Up

Great right-wing talk radio parrots on this board FDR's only problem was he tried to balance the budget in 1937-38, thus continuing the Depression until the start of the war. WWII spending was the size of a stimulus pckage that the economy needed all along, basically the WPA writ large. Nothing more. You can't blame FDRs public works programs, which were paltry by comparison to WWII spending and say these continued the Depression and then turn around and say WWII got us out of it. That wasn't a "public works" project? It was the order of magnitude of spending that "got us out of it."

Three Reasons Why the Dollar's Not Yet Done

To read this article is to think that it is somehow normal for the $1.28 v. 1 Euro to show that the dollar contunues as a reserve currency. If anything, it is the Yen that is the new reserve currency. If the US were all that strong, the Euro and the dollar should be at parity as they were in early 2002. That was the best of times...no need for a converter. Everything priced right. What was wrong with that? Why can't Americans sell Made in USA products in Europe at parity? They had better learn how because when this is over it is going to be a new more competitive, manufacturing based global economy and I don't mean making things in China.

The Downfall of Keynesian Economics and the U.S. (Part 2 of 3)

So this is the world created by Richard Nixon and Goldman Sachs. The way out of this is for China to buy more US manufactured products not assests. This of course it has an aversion to do. So we continue to sell ourselves off over the past 30 years. How stupid is that?

WSJ: A Frightening Indictment of Our Society

This is why full nationalization of the banks is needed at this time. It's the only solution.