pigdog67

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

Opposing Views of Economic Imperatives

For a country to pay off debt it needs a way to generate 'exportable' income. The USA has 'healthcare', 'education' and 'government, state and federal' as its primary industries. In Michigan the largest employer is the University of Michigan. In Minnesota the largest employer is the Mayo Clinic. It is hard to export there products.
So America will need to default on its debt. That will kill any chance of future borrowing .So how will we pay for education, government and healthcare then.
Big changes are coming with enormous layoffs from our 3 industries. That means about 50% unemployment in this country.

Healthcare Reform: Industry Backpedals Fast

Our hospitals are corrupt. I was shocked to find out the state of Minnesota actually gives money to hospitals every year in the hundreds of millions. On top of that our local hospital charges patients/insurers 18000 dollars to have a baby (with NO Caeserean). In India this costs 25 dollars. That a is a factor of about 700 greater in cost.
Our hospitals need to be told simply 'cut costs or no goverment money'. I do not understand what is wrong with these people (in healthcare). They are bankrupting America. They should be treated as traitors.

Handy Summary of Regulatory Overhaul - Deloitte

The Atlantic, May 2009
The Coup: How Bankers Seized America
Also look at "What Now?"
A former IMF official states that America has become like an emerging market economy (oligarchy-Crony Capitalist). In this case its all about bailing out your friends among the oligarchs. So Lehmans goes under and Goldman Sachs gets bailed out. All of these institutions need to be totally destroyed and the earth where the stood salted for all time as a monument to their evil.
However this corrupt goverment just like the Bush goverment will give them money and charge it to the tax payer and screw the middle class. America is finished.
I am moving out. I have had it with all the crap...
Predatory healthcare, predatory politicians, predatory financial advisors, predatory food producers, predator phone companies, predatory cable companies. Its all a corrupt crony capitalist scam. Just like Russia. Rahm Emanuel is on there payroll. Nothing real will be done.

On the Burden of Home Ownership

I immigrated to this country from Canada. American is a place which engenders huge risk and yet provides more opportunities. In recent years though the odds have become much more stacked against social mobility, and especially against families. This is mainly due to offshoring, the rising cost of healthcare, and crony monopoly capitalism.
A good case in point is heathcare. The cost rises every year but no one really examines why. Doctors say it is caused by homeless people. I believe it is because doctors do not worry at all about the costs of their services. Why? Because they have a local monopoly.
Here everywhere there are local monopolies.
Our cable company Charter has a local monopoly. I found it interesting that in March they declared bankruptcy. They are making money hand over fist. However they wanted to discharge their obligations to creditors, 8 billion accumulated due to management incompetence. So a judge approved it.
Our phone company has a local monopoly also.
All of these are due to politicians, at the local, state and federal levels who support the multinationals and the corrupt banks. I believe America will totally collapse at least for the people who make less than 200K per year. These people (myself included) will be living in a society like Charles Dickens described in 'Hard Times". Other societies want to be civilized and they will be, for example France, China, Canada etc. The rest of the world will move on, and America will suffer. However the present multinationals will too, as China will launch there own multinationals with a human face. They will need to as most Americans will not have any buying power.

Trade Deficits: The Real Factors

It is interesting that people keep using GDP as way to normalize these statistics. Unfortunately they do not realize (or pretend not to realize) that GDP numbers in America are fake. The government GDP numbers are fudged upward to give a rosy picture of the economy. Their are many ways to prove this. Go to MarketBrowser and plot the money supply in the US or the US dollar versus the Swiss Franc. You will see an exponential relationship (going up over the last 25 years). This should imply enormous inflation but the government is lying about that also (under calculating it). We have had enormous inflation of the money supply driving down our foreign purchasing power. This has resulted in health care costs rising from 6% of GDP to 18% of GDP. Health care costs are not affected by trade so are a good way to measure the size of 'our non healthcare economy'. If they go up as a percent then our real economy (the non healthcare part) has gone down. This loss of true US GDP is because our productive capacity has been downsized enormously. The only people who profit from this are the Chinese and executives in our multinationals who get big bonuses for offshoring Americas wealth creation capacity.
America is done. We have been betrayed by our politicians who now work for the multinationals (or the CEOs).
Ironically the multinationals themselves are now failing as their is no longer a US middle class that has the purchasing power to by the crap.

A Stimulus Plan to Actually Improve Economy Fundamentals

I have not seen hardly any talented executives. Warren Buffett, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are the only ones that come to mind. I do not begrudge them a penny. I think the same of Henry Ford.
But most corporate executives today bring nothing to the table. The executive that brought down Nortel about 10 years ago was paid hundreds of Millions for destroying a great world beating company.
In most companies it is the grunts that make it successful, Apple, Microsoft excluded.

Citigroup's Derivatives Reduce Bailout to a Non-Event

Arymer what you said was true in the 50s or 60s. America has gone through enormous decline in the last 15 years, and the rest of the world has moved forward a lot. The financial collapse just indicates that a tipping point was reached. Most of America's industrial base is long gone, and the knowledge base is in early forced retirement. People tried to make money in housing and financial speculation because innovation is pretty much dead. The last company you hear about is Google which has 10K employees, Nothing like the 500K GM used to have. All we have now is healthcare which is essentially a cost that grows every year, and government another cost. Thats why people think Obama will be the saviour instead of someone like Henry Ford. Excellent hospitals exist in other countries that perform operations for 20% of the cost of our hospitals. America is done. I am going to China.

Paulson: The Exit Interview

If you took a dark view it would be clearer. You assume these people act in good faith. They and there buddies are stripping America of its assets and lining their own pockets. They do not act in the good of the community.

Personal Responsibility and the Housing Bubble

I find it interesting you mentioned China. In China they execute executives for corruption.
With the fiasco created by the our politicians and banks if Chinese style was applied a lot of these people who be executed.
Now you think that is not fair. However if they have destroyed the retirement savings of probably about 100 million people (or at least those who saved for their retirement) do you not think there should be punishment. People like you are blind. You think the government has no responsibility and if someones money was stolen by the government it is the persons fault. The real reason is you are scared to death of your and are afraid you will be added the the 3 million in prision (the highest per capita of any country in the world). And you talked about the troops. America spends more money on its military then the rest of the world combined, which proves that the US military is full of corruption and totally INCOMPETENT. The like American heathcare. Why are guys running hospitals fired for driving up the cost of healthcare and lowering the quality. You guys are a front the hate filled RNC that is bankrupting this country. And G HW Bush thinks we need another Bush in the whitehouse. Does he not GET IT....


On Jan 05 02:15 AM curious cat wrote:

> the ills of capitalism are many, but most of them come from government
> intervention. when you save people from the consequences of poor
> decision making, you end up with more people who are willing to make
> poor decisions. they become children of the cornucopia. all they
> see is the plenty in the horn, but the horn doesn't always blow,
> sometimes it sucks.
>
> bearkitty67, you made a decision based on the information you had
> at the time. you got some tax breaks and you also would have received
> more benefit if prices of homes had continued to escalate. even if
> home prices remained the same, you would have out maneuvered all
> the renters. you took a risk and things turned out poorly, instead.
>
>
> happens all the time, doesn't make you irresponsible, but also doesn't
> mean that anyone should bail you out. if you cannot tolerate any
> risk, you should buy insurance. same goes for those people in new
> orleans, those people who continue to build in areas that are frequently
> flooded or whatever.
>
> the real disservice provided by television and other medias is the
> disproportionate attention given to rich athletes, movie stars, lottery
> winners and get rich quick schemes. if those people are the standard
> by which you measure your life, you are being misdirected.
>
> all of us have to assume a certain amount of risk and be willing
> to live with the consequences. that's not only what it means to invest,
> it's also what it means to have free will and live in a democracy.
> if you want to live where the state handles everything, please move
> to china or russia.