pigdog67

There's No Jobless Recovery

Jobs are being created. Its just that they are in India, China and Vietnam. AMERICAN companies like Ford, GM and IBM have 75 -85% of the employees outside the USA. Until these companies are told that "you are either for America or against it" this crap will go on. Its really not very complicated. Strip these companies of their US status and protection by the US military. Watch them scream then. They should be required to have 51% of their jobs in America to keep their American corporate status. Our politicians have no balls. No politician even mentions offshoring. Lou Dobbs is the only one who ever mentions it. As it is going by 2020 China will declare war on America and not a shot will be fired. Because China will hold the purse strings and will say to Uncle Sam you fire a shot and we will close you down both financially and in terms of your imports. America is the new ARGENTINA.

The Aftershock: Where Does the Next Investment Opportunity Lie?

The real issue is the offshoring of production and the offshoring of services to India and China. This is destroying the ability of most Americans to increase or maintain incomes. Education will not solve this. Neither will entrepreneurship. As soon as something new is developed the multinationals will buy it or copy it and offshore development outside of the USA. Is it better to be educated and unemployed or just unemployed. This is the dirty undercurrent that the media and the politicians will not address. Basically the ability to generate wealth in the USA is being transferred to other countries. However the elite in America is doing fine by taking there cut from this. Eventually the offshore elite will cut the American elite out of the deal.

The Greatest Depression Is Coming

The analysis given basically follows that of Ravi Bhatra. It is very good. It cannot predict when but what. Unfortunately the worst has not come yet. No one has taken a hard look at the affect of offshoring. 10s of millions of jobs will go overseas in the next few years, to India and China. The middle class in the USA is going to experience a 50% drop in the standard of living very quickly. This is presaged by the 45% drop in housing prices in some locations. Most people will struggle to survive, feed themselves, pay there rent, healthcare and heat. The rich will start to get hit to as the 'globs' of money to be made from 'managing' offshoring will itself move offshore and the foreign multinationals will come into existence. Why have Cisco when you can have Huawei much cheaper. Why cheaper? Because their management gets paid a small fraction of Cisco's management. US multinationals will continue to struggle and then die wondering 'Why Me?' as the steamroller they started runs them over. Think about it. Many multinationals now have 70-85% of their workers overseas. Don't those people have the skills to eliminate the multinational and start their own foreign based companies. Especially when they see the ludicicrous salaries that bloated mostly incompetent US executives get. They will say 'I would be happy for one twentieth of that salary and I could do a better job'. Hmmm, the light bulb goes on....
Maybe then we will see some outcry about offshoring????

The Great Shift: China Rising, U.S. Falling

The rise of a new empire is very complex. That the USA is dying is obvious. I immigrated here fifteen years ago, and have watched the decline accelerate. Even mid sized US companies are now getting into offshoring in a big way. China if they do not make any big mistakes will be the new empire. The American political process is incredibly flawed. Pericles was a great man but the city state of Athens died with him. America is dying every day but Congress just makes things worse because they always sell out to those same multinationals that are hugely into offshoring. Big Pharma, Big Auto, Big financial etc. Obama is a gifted individual but has totally failed in Washington. He is continuing the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and will fail on healthcare. And he bailed out Wall Street. Wall Street is big into financing the destruction of America. Basically no change over Bush.

You Can Spend Your Way Out of a Recession

One thing that has not been addressed is the enormous structural problems in our economy. Bankrupt state governments which continue to spend, riduculous healthcare costs, enormous federal debt, the worlds largest military (bigger than everyone elses COMBINED). Even with this recession no one really gets it yet.
Take healthcare. Apparently it costs 7500 per person per year in the USA. So for a family of 4 that is 30,000 per year. And the average household income is 50,000. So after paying the families healthcare cost you have left 20,000 to live on. Yet this government cannot even address the healthcare issue. I am sorry but America is done, finished, kaput. And no one is addressing it.

Looks Like the Trade War Is on, Maybe

I bought dinner plates and bowls made in China. Of course they are relatively cheap but looked fine. They all chipped within a month. I was wondering where I could find decent plates. I had to go to Macy's of all places and buy some that are made in Germany. They cost $25 a plate but have lasted 6 months so far without any chipping. Chinese manufactures are JUNK.


On Sep 13 11:18 AM myscreenname wrote:

> Buying cheap chinese crap made by slave labor gives us short term
> economic benefit of cheap goods but eventually without jobs we wont
> even be able to afford the cheap slave made crap. The chinese have
> been cheating for years by holding their currency low and by refusing
> to implement any sort of environmental or labor policy. Economists
> have been feeding us this free trade creates jobs for years so where
> are the jobs? At some point you have to pay attention to the measurable
> evidence instead of the bullshit.

Economic Donkeys

The upside of this is that Chinese bankers are more cautious and sensible. So after the next collapse, which will likely occur either next year or the year after, these bankers will completely control the new world order. This order will be a Chinese order. Then men like Paulson and Geithner will take direct orders from Chinese President Hu Jintao. So there is hope for the future. It just will not be an Anglo-American future.

China Urges Citizens to Buy Gold and Silver

Wow. This is an active thread.
Let me give another perspective. I immigrated from Canada to the US in the early 90's because there were more opportunities for technical people here. What I have seen is a continual decline in opportunities mainly because of deindustrialization and offshoring. Also Canadians were much more careful with their money than Americans. I do see that Americans embrace risk much more so than Canadians. Then so did the Athenians but they understood 'tragedy'. Americans do not seem to realize they are facing a tragedy created by the multinational corporations and the Chinese government. When I was still in Canada the Chinese government sent in the first wave, "the Chinese scholars". Their role was to prepare the way for massive numbers of "Chinese graduate students". Why was China doing this? They were hoping many of the foreign graduate school educated, and possibly employed in US firms, Chinese would return to China to help jump start China's modernization. And others would provide US dollars. And it worked. The Chinese emigre have been helping to deindustrial the US and Canada and build up China. The actions of the Chinese government in my experience are carefully planned. The US appears to have no plan. This is a war that the US does not even know that it is in... When the real WAR comes, a shot will probably not be fired as the US will simply secede to its creditor.

The Face of Employment: Permanently Changed?

This is a great article and the comments are great too. This is certainly evidence of wise people living in America. Unfortunately vast swaths of the American population do not have a clue. The bizarre healthcare debate proves that. As my brother says it is those from the 60s generation (born in the 40s), that run the show and they are a bad bunch. He is one of them but open and wise enough to admit it. He has hope in the younger generation, those currently in their 20s, to clean things up. So all we have to do is wait another 20 years for these people to gain power.
Things are going to suck in the meantime for America though. 20 years of suffering ahead with paralyzed leadership.

China: Exactly Where Japan Was in the 1980s?

There are two huge differences between Japan and China.
Population
Japan: population 127 million
China: population 1.33 BILLION, 10 times greater than Japan
Land Area
Japan: 394744 sq km (a tiny country)
China: 9.6 million sq km—the third-largest country in land size in the world, sitting right next to Siberia on the Northern western side, which they will be able to easily grab or 'buy' for resources
Japan is and was basically a Xenophobic island country. China has embraced everyone else technologically and is using its Chinese worldwide network (the Chinese Diaspora) to great advantage.
Japan being an economic power at all is a near miracle.
China is the real deal, Japan was purely based on their citizens working 18 hours a day for 8 hours salary. That corporate slave generation in Japan is retired or near retirement and their offspring have no intention of working that hard.

Supporting the Financial System by Bleeding the 'Real' Economy

Its all just a temporary fix anyway. America is done. The people at the top are grabbing what they can from the savings and pensions of the suckers in the middle. Where do you think those Goldman Sachs Billions came from. Goldman can only swindle money from others. They do not create wealth by producing real 'goods or services'. Its a zero sum game. BRIC will move on because they create real wealth and America will become totally irrelevant. I feel sad because I immigrated to this country. Even with California going bankrupt nobody seems to get what deep dodo the country is really in. The public service employees there are threatening a strike. The country is bankrupt. Our economists talk about a recovery "in this country". That will take 20 years and our real incomes are going to drop 50-75%. We are becoming Argentina. Try to buy a decent plate. Yes a dinner plate. I went through many that chipped within a week from China and Portugal. I finally threw up my hands and bought some from Germany. At 20$ a plate. They do not chip. Hopefully I can pass them on to my daughters. So to buy something of value you have to pay dearly. That shows how much our living standards have really dropped. People are fooled by the cheap 'substitute' crap that they can buy. If I buy 4 plates at $5 a plate and they all chip within 2 months then I was better of buying one plate for $20 that lasts 10 years without chipping. But my true standard of living has dropped.

Jobless Recovery: Fasten Your Seatbelts

Actually this is only true in some cases. If the government spending crowds out private spending then the multiplier is 0. Pure public projects such as defense weaponry, museums, roads, do not crowd out private spending and do have a multiplier. Unfortunately the stimulus program largely went to supporting inefficient local and state governments that need to be forced to get their house in order. Most people in the private sector now get crappy medical benefits and no retirement benefits at all from their employers. So unfortunately the public sector will have to do the same, as our country can no longer afford such benefits. They are being paid for with borrowed money.
Our local governments and healthcare facilities need a strong talking to. If that means jailing government and healthcare bureucrats for not containing costs then that should be done. I think eventually someone like Chairman Mao will come along and send these people to labor camps. They definitely need to be "re-educated". Imagine that... "Capitalist China" and "Maoist America". So ironic.


On Jul 18 09:00 AM John Bowman wrote:

> A couple of interesting studies were highlighted this week by John
> Mauldin’s Outside the Box e-newsletter concerning the outlook for
> deflation versus inflation.
>
> "One study noted that the U.S. expenditure multiplier is close to
> 0. Thus the authors concluded that each $1 increase in government
> spending reduces private spending by about $1, with no net benefit
> to GDP. All that is left is a higher level of government debt creating
> slower economic growth. A second study done by at the University
> of California Berkeley concluded that the tax multiplier is 3, meaning
> that every $1 rise in taxes will reduce private spending by $3. "

Less to the Offshoring Jobs Scare than Meets the Eye

This article is total silliness. Offshoring is accelerating. My employer recently laid off 20% of their workforce and added another 20% in China. So they say the company stayed the same size and the costs went down. And the Chinese government is subsidizing those Chinese workers. And we are training them until we too are laid off. What a deal. And my company is a midsized company. Watch when this starts happening in small companies.
America is finished unless tariffs are imposed.

Kool-Aid and GDP: The Delusion of Economic Activity

About GDP
If an American multinational company has a foreign subsidiary produce a part and sell it in America it counts as American GDP.
So Intel has a computer chip created in China, by Chinese workers and designed by Chinese engineers at Intel China . All the wages are distributed in China. It is sold inside a computer at Best Buy in America. All of the money associated with that chip counts as US GDP. Unfortunately since no US designers or manufacturing workers were involved there are no US wages and hence no tax income for state and federal coffers excepting sales tax. And the US will not tax Intels foreign profits so to speak. So America governments go bankrupt while US GDP keeps rising, as GE, IBM, Intel, GM, Ford and every other multinational offshores. The American people need to rise up and demand only American made products be sold in America. Otherwise the multinationals need to slammed with tariffs or stripped of their 'citizenship' and declared 'enemies of the state' or ANTIAMERICAN traitors that go directly to the state and federal governments. Otherwise "AMERICA IS TOAST".

12 Notes on the Economic Scene

The article and the responses are very interesting.
1) Unions failed. Well yes because management failed.
2) Pharmas make lots of money. Thank Medicare (look at it from the beginning). The free lunch is going away for the pharmas. This ties in with (1). Pfizer has been down, down down.
3) American management is totally incompetent. Look at George Bush. Harvard and Yale and the president. GM, Ford, Chrysler, GE. American universities are incompetent/corrupt. American healthcare is incompetent. 18K in 2009 to deliver a baby in America and $25 in India. Women have had babies for millions of years. With no 18K dollars.
I believe all of this corruption comes from the American elite. So America is finished. They cannot compete with China's elite. George Bush vs Putin. George Bush vs Hu Jing Tao. Hmmm.
It is not the fault of the middle class. They are just getting shafted.
4) How did GE make there money really? By raiding the pensions of the companies they bought up. By raiding the wealth accumulated by America's "Greatest Generation". Where do you think Wall Street got the idea? From the conglomerates. Now there are no pensions left to raid (only unfunded liabilities). So Wall Street, GE and Tyco are dead. And all the jobs that create additional wealth instead of draining accumulated wealth have been offshored, or soon will be.
Healthcare - drains wealth away
Pharmas - drain wealth away
Government - drains wealth away
Education (in America) - drains wealth away