I have an expression I present to my economics classes. It has a certain impact: the US is a a third world nation, we just haven't realized it yet. Our emerging status isn't obvious. Products remain relatively cheap (energy excluded) despite the falling value of the dollar against most foreign currencies. But there are real signs.
Most Americans who are paying attention have noticed a long term decline in manufacturing jobs in the US. Quarter after quarter, year after year, the government reports job gains, but those gains are primarily in service industries: health care (we're not talking doctors, here), restaurants and bars, retail trade and, until recently, construction. A close examination of the figures will usually reveal a decline in manufacturing jobs. This is not an accident.
Over the past 30 years, American manufacturing has moved offshore at an accelerating rate. Walk through any big box store (or any other for that matter) and look where things are made. Overwhelmingly, it's China or other developing nations. The process is inexorable. With “Globalization” we have opened the world's borders to free trade in goods and services. On the one hand, this has presented opportunities for US manufacturers to expand profits by shifting production to countries where wages are a tiny fraction of those in the United States. Goods made abroad can be sold at an attractive price in the US while still allowing producers to increase the difference between price and total cost, otherwise known a profit. Those companies with a sense of national pride and identity are, finally, forced to move some or all of their production offshore in order to survive.
Aside from the short term charm of finding bargains on the shopping rack, there are serious consequences here. Let's look them. The first problem is the disappearance of the American “living wage”. The only reason Americans have managed to avoid confronting their declining real income per capita it by increasing the number of family members working. There was a time, in American mythology at least, when people accepted that one working family member could support 4 people at a reasonable standard of living. This was the vision of America Nixon and Krushchev debated, famously, at an exhibit of the postulated US living standards presented in the Soviet Union. This was the Ozzie and Harriet version of American life which was broadcast to the world and to the home audience as standard: the norm. It wasn't, of course, but it was close enough to what middle America saw around them to be at least plausible. The incomes implicit in that early 1960's view of American life may have improved until the early 1970's (there was a war going on and war is always good for employment and incomes), but since that time statistics indicate that the real (inflation adjusted) incomes of American working people have actually declined.
A revealing example of this is the February 12th 2008 decision by General Motors to offer buyouts to all 74,000 union hourly workers. This followed closely a similar action by Ford. This would include severance packages for all employees, varying in terms depending on years of service. Relatively new employee's would get a lump sum payment for leaving and forfeiting all health and post retirement benefits. The new workers, waiting in the wings, will earn on average $16 and hour as opposed to the current average $28 an hour. That rounds to a 43% reduction in income, and little is revealed about what benefits these new workers will receive, or whether or not the will have union representation—though I expect they will. Here is an example of a central, traditional area of American employment were workers are moving from an average of $58,240 pre-tax per year to $33,280 pre-tax. Obviously, these people have a surprising readjustment to make. They're just the prominent tip of the iceberg. Already, young people are finding no jobs, or a universe of job opportunities which pay poverty wages. It's why so many young workers (and unemployed youngsters) live at home.
This is a problem that is not going away. It's going to get worse. Several convergent forces are leading to US economic destabilization. One force driving this tragedy is free trade, also called globalization. One of the more profound spokesmen on this subject is Paul Craig Roberts an economist in the Reagan Administration who has written extensively on the topic and lends support to the argument that globalization is on the verge of ruining the US economy.
The loss of American manufacturing jobs is largely the result of American firms moving their manufacturing off shore, to labor markets in which workers earn a tiny fraction of US wages. Once the globalization process began in earnest, it became impossible for many American firms to maintain US production even if the wished to. Keeping jobs here would render these firm uncompetitive as the rivals moved to take advantage of peasant wages in places like China , India and other developing nations. Even signature American enterprises such as Boing are moving larger segments of their airliner manufacturing to other countries. The finished sub-assemblies for the 777 Dreamliner, for example, are flown to Seattle for final assembly. Highly skilled professionals, such as radiologists (medical doctors specializing in interpreting X-rays) are finding their work sent via high speed communications to much lower paid radiologists in places like India. The effect of allowing the unimpeded flow of capital and goods and services between nations is precisely the same as allowing the free movement of people across borders. In the end, we will experience a relative equalization of wages, world wide. Obviously, those in the current Third World will find wages improving. With billions of impoverished workers waiting in the “wings”, US workers will find their wage declines much more starting and profound than the increases granted to the struggling poor of the developing world.
A byproduct of moving manufacturing to developing nations is a persistent negative balance of trade. For the past 30 or 40 years, the US balance of trade has been in deficit. That is, we've bought more from the world than we've sold to them. What this means is that other countries have been paid dollars in excess of their intentions to use dollars to buy US goods. A good example of this is our trade with China.
The table, above, shows a relentlessly increasing balance of trade deficit with China. By 2006, the cumulative deficit with China was $950,500,000,000. It is larger today, and China is not alone as a nation with which we are running a deficit. There are many others, Japan being a notable example. Why are the Chinese, Japanese, Indonesians and others willing to hold claims against US dollars, claims they aren't going to use to buy US made goods or services?
This was a question that plagued me as an economist trying to explain the workings of currency markets and free floating exchange rates to interested students. Under normal market circumstances, the Chinese and others would simply convert dollars into currencies they were interested in using for purchases of imported goods; the value of the dollar would fall and that would make US goods cheaper, US imports more expensive and would tend to equalize our balance of payments situation. But that didn't happen. The US has been in a consistent balance of payments deficit since the early 1970's, and somehow the dollar didn't fall, US exports continued to shrink and US imports exploded. There are several factors at work, here.
The first is the fact that countries like China are seeing their development fueled in significant measure by sales to the US. If the Chinese cashed their dollar claims in for, say, Euros, the dollar would collapse effectively ending the US's ability to power Chinese economic growth. This collapse of the dollar would also mean the Chinese and other dollar holders would only get a fraction of their nominal dollar wealth in the form of Euros—they'd lose their “dollar gains”.
What the Chinese, and other dollar holders, have chosen to do is to buy US Government bonds, US corporate bonds and US properties. In effect, we purchase more from China than they intend to buy from us, and they simply lend the money back to us. In this way, the get interest earnings, and rents and profits from the US lands and businesses they purchase. In a real sense, the Chinese have financed the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Finally, should dollar holder dump dollars indiscriminately, they would scrap their holdings of the very currency they need to purchase crude oil from the OPEC nations who, until recently, have agreed to sell oil only for US dollars. Dollars used to purchase crude oil are called 'petro-dollars'. A very significant component of the world demand for dollars has to do with buying petroleum. It's interesting to note that, apparently, Saddam Hussein was proposing selling oil in currencies other than dollars before we deposed him. Equally interesting is the fact that Iran has been selling oil to China in Yuan.
The ultimate point, here, is the absolute unsustainability of the US's position. We cannot expect our trading partners to hold dollars in unlimited quantities, and as we've no hope of being able to achieve a positive balance of trade, that's exactly what we are effectively seeking. That nations are cautiously moving out of dollar holdings is revealed by the rather steady overall decline in the value of the dollar over the past three years. This will continue.
I am a PhD economist who has taught at UW Madison, Ripon College, Victoria Univ. of Wellington NZ, Whitman College and the Univ. of the Americas in Cholula MX. I worked, as well, as an energy economist in the natural gas business for many years. Now retired, I teach an economics sequence at Portland Community College in Portland Or. I am a motorcyclist and fly fisherman. I enjoy camping. I'm fond of single malts. I am at the left most end of the political spectrum. I believe 911 was an inside job, or at least known about and allowed to happen.
We as a nation need to realize that it is not only our neighbor's head on the chopping block, but ours as well. Unchecked capitalism equates to unchecked greed. Globalization, as I see it, is an attempt to level the playing field between all countries. For the other countries, this may be a good thing. For us, it is definitely a major step backwards.
Here is an example:
I went to a website called Get a Freelancer at http://getafreelancer.com. At this site writers and people looking for writers can sign up and bid on or offer jobs. The site is a level playing field for people from other countries.
I couldn't believe the prices that people were willing to work for. 50 cents to 1 dollar per 500-word article was the going rate. 20 articles per day would net 10 - 20 dollars. That is 10,000 words per day, proofed, edited, and ready for copy. An American cannot work all day for that and support him/herself. Someone living in India can.
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Barbara Peterson (46 articles, 80 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 416 comments)
on Tuesday, February 26, 2008 at 1:17:27 PM
To me, a more interesting aspect of trade with China is that it is far from free. You can't freely export to China. They have a wide range of tarrifs and trade restrictions. They are primarily useful as a wedge to destroy the conditions of US workers and workers in all developed nations and they have been used in that way. In many respects, China is now a fascist dictatorship rather than a Communist country. It's as though Germany won the second world war...and the US exported manufacturing there to take advantage of the slave labour.
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Steve Withers (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 3 comments)
on Tuesday, February 26, 2008 at 1:22:52 PM
Also, lets get into the "Patriotic" factor. We are funding the largest military build-up (outside our own) going on today. All financed by that made in China sticker. And with climate change, resource depletion and oil issues, won't it be us against China for these resources? We could stop this right in its track and only suffer short term financila problems, but it is far better than financing the people we will be fighting against.
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denvan (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 28 comments)
on Tuesday, February 26, 2008 at 2:16:16 PM
In “The Emerging Third-World US,” Francis Ferguson, using confirmable data, paints what I believe is an extraordinarily likely scene; ugly without question, but really ugly nonetheless.
Francis Ferguson is, or used to be, an econ prof, and thus speaks with some authority. But I don’t care about his bona fides, and neither should anyone else. Neither a professorship, nor any other degree, nor even a high school diploma, are, or should be, prerequisites en route to grasping what the good professor is espousing. Let me rail at all that is necessary, but which anecdotally seems horribly absent in Americans, ages 2 through 102.
Remember Robert Dinero’s great 4 line Taxi Driver inquiry, “You talkin’ to me?”
YEAH! I’M TALKIN’ TO YOU! Just like this Bud, this one’s for YOU!
All that is necessary to understand what the hell has been going on in America, and what Ferguson was talking about, is for folks to take it upon themselves to have at least as much interest in their own circumstances, and that of their progeny, as they do in, say, some dumb-assed football game or television program that will have zero impact on their lives. If Tom Brady had never been born, besides his friends, those in his family and those in the New England area who directly drawn an income as a consequence of his participation in professional football, or if Dr. Phil or Oprah or Desperate Housewives were not on the air, would the cost of living be less or the monthly income smaller (what during the Carter administration was dubbed the “misery index)?
In other words, there is no law requiring that anyone be ignorant of basic, rather uncomplicated principles of economics or the structure of American government or American and world history. And all that’s needed for any of that is some excess desire to be just a little informed, the strength in either a thumb or finger to click off the TV remote (or keep it on, just change the station to C-SPAN), and the ability to read.
Two examples what I’m referring to when I suggest an underlying criminal — or, should be criminal; capital offense and I’d gladly serve as the hangman — ignorance in the American electorate.
One.
I reside during the winter in a senior park in Palm Springs. A few days ago I heard one mid-60s woman tell another mid-60s woman how her 18-year-old grandson had “this flag.” It had a diagonal blue cross inlaid with white stars, all against a red background.
I interjected, “It’s the “stars and bars.”
“Well, I think” she paused momentarily, “it’s the Confederate flag,” the woman replied.
Clearly, in her high school history class, she had somehow missed the fact the two are synonymous. (Synonymous, for those who didn’t pass English, means they mean the same thing.)
“How, why . . .” I was stunned, “why would anyone want such a symbol? Doesn’t he know what that flag means today? It’s code. Bigotry, like . . . if you’re African-American, ‘ya-all not wanted hih-ah boy. See, we-ah got this hih noose, call it a rope necktie. Heh, heh . . . now . . . ah . . . wah doan ya-all liv wilst ya-all kin? Know whut Ahm sayin’ to yih boy?’”
“Well, I don’t think he knows that — it was just a souvenir from Louisiana.”
For starters, I don’t buy it that her grandson didn’t know. My speculation is that she doesn’t know her grandson any better than she does American history.
Two.
(For all who may not be aware, C-SPAN’s Washington Journal viewer call-in program airs from 7:00 AM to 10:00 AM, Eastern time. I live in the Pacific time-zone.)
From her voice, my guess is she was late-middle age, and was definitely from the South. “Ah couldn’t vote fer no one whut dint swear his oath on the Bible. An’ Barak Obama, see-ins he’s a Muzlim in all . . . he don’t war no flag, or salute the ‘Merican flag er nuthin’, an’ I heerd he refused to say the Pledge Allegiance. An thet’s uhl whut Ah gots ta say.”
What makes this so incredible and supportive of my anecdotal suppositions concerning the dearth of information that inheres in the American electorate is that this anecdote is not the least atypical of calls that frequently reach the air from viewers who, one might suppose, are among the best informed.
And why I rail as I do is because being reasonably informed today is so darned easy. And what Professor Ferguson was opining was not some difficult-to-understand, arcane PhD thesis. But very few, I would wager, are aware, and of those who are, fewer still even care.
My position is well known in the camp. Just because someone smiles and is rather pleasant and goes to church regularly does not make that person either a good person or one I choose to associate with. Either their ignorance or their identification with the GOP makes of them as much my enemy as any foreign despot. If they are willing to toss my sons and any grandchildren I might someday have through them, or any others who may be disadvantaged, off the train, and more and more are becoming so as a direct result of GOP policies they endorsed, how are they not my enemy? And being my enemy, why should I abide them gracefully? Moreover, why should I not respond openly to them, with the hostility they have generated, as I would anyone deserving of being loathed?
— Ed Tubbs
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Ed Tubbs (113 articles, 1 quicklinks, 20 diaries, 38 comments)
on Tuesday, February 26, 2008 at 7:16:09 PM
One has to ask just who is served by the dumbing down of America.
Certainly, as jobs decline and standards of living fall, a well educated (or even moderately educated) population doesn't fit the bill. Historically, America has 'educated' to the market. When I was young, just after WWII, we needed well rounded education for our kids so they could fill the manufacturing and middle management jobs available.
We no longer need that. We now need consumers. Mindless, in debt, constantly behind but marginally able to pay at least the interest.
If there is any hope at all for employment, it has to be jobs that can't be off-shored. That means infrastructure--labor, engineering, supervision, equipment and machinery to put back what's falling apart in America, perhaps a high-speed rail system, etc. There is money for that--need for that and, when we gear up, there will be education for that.
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Jim Freeman (108 articles, 40 quicklinks, 157 diaries, 327 comments)
on Wednesday, February 27, 2008 at 5:58:50 AM
In 2006 I traveled with a friend that runs a non-profit organization to the Western provinces of Kenya. She teaches sustainability to villages forgotten by the west and enduring what no humans should be forced to endure - extreme poverty.
In these rural communities there is little food, one or two clean water sources shared by an entire village, no health care and they have been hit hard by HIV/AIDS. Virtually an entire generation has been eliminated, few people remain alive in the generation of their 30's and 40's.
There is no health care, malaria, HIV, and other parasites plague many of the villagers. If there were health care, the villagers would have to travel great distances to maintain it. Most go without.
When I returned, the US health care system reminded me a third world countries. 47 million Americans have none, 18,000 in the US die from preventable causes, and another 50 million people are underinsured and suffer needlessly when they need to see a doctor.
How does a society neglect nearly a million of it's people with so little of it represented on the main stream media?
At the time, the exchange rate from US dollars to Kenyan Shillings was about 1 to 69, very favorable. The average urban Kenyan made about 400 Shillings a day, roughly $5 dollars. Less in the rural areas we were visiting - they still bartered, and since most of the villagers were farmers, they were trying to exchange similar goods.
There was a Coca Cola stand on the side of the road. It was telling. The infrastructure could not sustain getting medicines, electricity, food or water to the villages, but it could deliver Coca Cola to the middle of no where. Sad.
Back at home in the US - the people are robbed blind. Our largest budgetary item goes to maintain the Military Industrial Complex. When we are told that there is not enough money for health care and education, we are being lied to.
The Military Industrial Complex has trashed our economic base for their own greed. And, now that our country has been gutted from the bottom up, and millions of college level jobs slated for export over the next 4 years, how can it continue. The very people paying the bills have had their incomes shredded.
The Military Industrial Complex has to get out of the people's government, or we'll simply end up destroying ourselves.
There is enough money in our budget to repair the nation, but not without a massive swing in priorities - and no one on the horizon comes close to proposing a transition to an economy based on peace and human dignity. We have to spend considerably less on military spending, form cooperative alliances for our defense and close some of the 700+ military bases around the world.
Corruption ran rampant in Kenya, on our travels we were stopped by a group of children. They had branches in their hand, rolled a log across the street and we needed to stop. They pretended to be Kenyan police and said we could drive through if we gave them a coke. This corruption was learned and repeated.
I was told at the time of my visit that if the incumbents won the election in 2007, there would be civil war - because they could only win by stealing the election. Watching the "closeness" of the election reminded me of the stolen elections here in 2000 and again in 2004.
The "appearance" that an election is close is essential to stealing it. In reality, in Kenya, several tribal factions were opposed to the ruling party. They had run on a platform of uniting the country and then once in power continued "status quo" rewarding their own.
Yep, the US resembles a third world country - in more ways than one.
Most Kenyans walk several miles each way to work every day, there are few automobiles, as I look around at the gas guzzlers zooming down the road, oblivious to how close we are to the edge of the economic cliff, I wonder what it will be like when the McMansions are empty and the SUV's abandoned on the side of the road.
Ask anyone out of work, that lost their home or had their job outsourced if it feels like America Anymore?
Nice article... my parents, when I shared my trip with them told me that the US seems a lot like Kenya. My parents supported a family on blue collar factory jobs. They shared in the American dream, before the corporate interests became so greedy they sold out the future.
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August Adams (10 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 385 comments)
on Tuesday, February 26, 2008 at 7:58:02 PM
This has been going on for quite a while - since October 12. That is quite a while - when you realize it's October 12, 1492. That is the year manufacturing left Europe to spread to poor continents.
The only wonder is not that it's going on fast now but that is hasn't accomplished centuries ago.
Listen up, Leftists - you're getting exactly what you asked for. My whole life you've been telling me poor nations are treated like dirt -which they are - and we need to do something about it. We are - we're giving them our jobs.
I think it's great that the rest of the world is catching up to us. When I hear about prosperity around the globe (except Africa - for some reason manufacturing has not spread there) it's music to my ears.
Let Asia and other continents enjoy wealth. Let me ask you - do you want other people to live in dire poverty? This is the price we pay.
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Barker (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 109 comments)
on Tuesday, February 26, 2008 at 8:35:52 PM
I was raised by "Ozzie and Harriet." My parents were middle-class, my dad worked every day, 5 or 6 days a week, and my mom stayed home. We were the only "normal" family that I knew on our block. My best friend's mom was single and worked, our neighbor across the street was divorced. All around us there were broken homes. All the kids flocked to our house for stability.
And that's what I've been trying to find ever since I became an adult. In the 70s, there was a real estate boom, and housing almost was out of reach for many young families. But we bought a house, and stayed there for 2 years. We sold it at a modest profit after an illness in the family. The profits went to pay the health provider.
Ever since then, it's been an uphill struggle. My DH passed away in 95 and I still had 3 young teenagers to raise. I had no real marketable skills, and I waited tables at the truck stop for 2 years. I bought a mobile home for my little brood. And then the roof caved in. Not literally, but I lost my job.
People think there is no more discrimination in America, but that's not true. Discrimination against older workers is often very subtly disguised by other means of locking older people out of the workforce. I couldn't find a job to save my life. So I attended truck driving school. I went on the road for nearly a decade.
In that time, my little family struggled with one crisis after another. But I had my house. Or so I thought. The mobile home park manager targeted me as she viewed me as vulnerable. I was vulnerable. She manufactured a stack of "complaints" about my family, few of which had any basis in reality. She wanted my house, and she could easily take it, simply with the financial pressure she could apply. We were summarily evicted. We had to find housing elsewhere, and still maintain the house payment on the house we could no longer occupy. This was the financial club she wielded. If and when we got behind, she could legally take the house.
We didn't get behind. Instead we sold the house. And that was just at the time the current housing debacle was at the seedling stage. We didn't make much, but it was something. We rented a house after that. The owner said he had no intention of selling for at least 2 years. So we were safe. So we thought.
The following year, he said his financial advisor told him to sell properties, and we could buy the house or move. I wasn't feeling well, and my mother was dealing with bone cancer. I was tired all the time. I didn't want to move. But I didn't want to buy it either.
The real estate agent pressured us (she was HIS agent too), and the lender pressured us (she was HIS financial advisor). They sent out an appraiser who said the house wasn't worth the asking price. I just about had a coronary and read the riot act to the lender. She discounted my concerns and said it was an "error" on the part of her secretary. That was something that her secretary shouldn't have said. Right. Because it was the truth.
I dragged my feet. I procrastinated. I didn't want to do it. And they applied more pressure. I felt between a rock and a hard place, and had no place to go. So we finalized the deal. We planned to sell after a year or two, but that was last year, when the bottom dropped out.
Now the house has lost half it's value. Or I should say half of it's inflated value. And the bank is playing hardball. We can't sell it. We can't even refinance it.
I'm still tired. I'm worn out, chasing a dream that will never be mine. It's not a fancy house. It's just a little 2 bedroom 1 bath tract house. I just wanted to be able to retire one day and hold my grandkids on the porch swing. I'll have to work the rest of my life, and never get to enjoy my house.
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Semisweet (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 5 comments)
on Tuesday, February 26, 2008 at 8:47:41 PM
We are living in a debt based economy. The government sells debt instruments in order to obtain funds to spend into the economy. In this way they do not have to print money as often and it helps to keep inflation down. This has a down side, though. In a debt based economy whenever debt is repaid, money is removed from circulation which shrinks the economy by that amount. Where it hurts is that when the government borrows, they have to pay interest on the loan, so to retire the debt they have to pull more money out of the economy than was put in. If all the lenders called the debts of the US due there wouldn't be enough money in the economy to repay and the government would be forced to fire up the printing presses to produce enough money to repay everyone with interest which would be inflationary. So by borrowing rather than printing new money, they hold back inflation temporarily, but once lenders lose faith and demand repayment, the government has no choice and the inflation hits us all at once instead of being spread over time. This is the situation we face today. The economy is shrinking as lenders lose faith and the government is printing money to make up the outflow from the economy and inflation is growing. Eventually they will be printing so much money that the Federal Reserve won't even bother keeping up a pretense of trying to control inflation because they know it will be impossible and the currency will be allowed to collapse and it will be the American people who suffer because the lenders will have already cashed out their dollar holdings by that time. This is why Ron Paul is a proponent of sound money. He does not want a return to Breton-Woods like many people believe, because that system was doomed from the start, but a new sound money system needs to be enacted to prevent all the complex financial diddling that takes place to rob people of their wealth when you use a debt based fiat currency.
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Watching (0 articles, 1 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 313 comments)
on Wednesday, February 27, 2008 at 3:49:04 AM
A peek behind the curtain will show us who the puppet . masters are: They are the usual suspects...(The Bilderbergers, The Cub of Rome, The Trilateral Commission, The Rockefeller think tank CFR (Council on Foreign Relations); and of course The Federal Reserve (Banking Cartel). Then we have the IMF, The WTO, NAFTA,Cafta, The North American Union, The Transcorridor Super Highway, The SPS (Security and Prosperity agreement between Mexico-USA-Canada. The only remaining article of our Constitution the Secind Ammendment is under constant assault; just waiting for martial law to be declared, and then private gun ownership will be history. The government now taps our telephones, opens our mail, spys on us in various unseen ways. The middle class is on the ropes, the trade imbalance is unsustainable,; the mortgage real estate debacle; rhe cridit crunch (credit card, auto loans etc. As the author points out, we are becoming a third world nation, wherein stagflation will destroy our purchasing power. The factual numbers for unemployment and the CPI would be much worse if the Feds did'nt fudge the numbers. The Dow Jones Index if adjusted for inflation and real value would probably be half of the 1200 where it now stands. More bad news! The current crop of Presidential hopefuls are all members of the CFR, Hillary has been rumored to have attended A Bilderberger Conference; all of the above have received huge contributions from the Transnational Corporate Elite. So don't expect any help from this group, or from the do-nothing members of both houses of Congress. Now The Good News: The Sleeping Giant known as the American Middle Class is starting to wake up to just how bad things have gotten. The Ron Paul Revolution (Now growing like wildfire, world wide and across America), fueled by the younger generation and the internet, is in it's infancy. As the situation continues to worsen here at home, the words of Ron Paul will continue to resonate with freedom loving people everywhere. Make no mistake about it, there are dire days ahead of us; but we will prevail in the end. Good always defeats Evil. There is a light at the end of this long dark tunnel. Stay close to those you love, help your friends and neighbors, pray to our Creator. We're all in this together...hold hands and hang on!
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ronheri (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 96 comments)
on Wednesday, February 27, 2008 at 4:29:52 AM
I almost forgot to mention our Government has been building hundreds, if not thousands of FEMA Prisons around the country. I wonder what they have in mind? Visit Alex Jones's, infowars.com, prisonplanettv.com; keep informed. Go to YouTube and watch Aaron Russo's "America Freedom to Fascism" video. It's free and a real eye-opener.
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ronheri (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 96 comments)
on Wednesday, February 27, 2008 at 4:57:31 AM
You have probably already read it, but if not, run (do not walk) to the nearest bookstore and buy Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine.
Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman engineered most of the worldwide collapse of social-democracies and we are only now seeing Asia and South America turning their backs on the IMF and World Bank.
But it's interesting (and required) reading for anyone trying to figure out the world today.
Lovely and thoughtful article--
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Jim Freeman (108 articles, 40 quicklinks, 157 diaries, 327 comments)
on Wednesday, February 27, 2008 at 6:08:06 AM
Undoubtedly Fed chairmen have been screwing around with our trading partners to their detriment for years. But what about giving credit to Alan Greenspan for the fine work he has done in the interests of his constituency, the rich and well connected? He had been toiling mightily for the last 20 years with interests rates and reserves, impeding economic progress when it suited his client's interests. When he even sniffed the slightest increase in economic activity he immediately yelled "inflation" and stifled it. And you give him no credit at all. Shame on you!
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Bacchus (13 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 37 comments)
on Friday, February 29, 2008 at 2:58:24 PM
At the same time we Americans find ourselves in financial trouble the world is being awakened to the problem of global warming. In addition the world is being awakened to the fact that war is being fought over oil resources and that the world's oil resources are unable to meet demand. In short there are very important reasons for polititians to take action for solving serious problems that America and the world are facing.
Solutions to global warming is a solution to oil supply/demand that also affects foreign policy (control of oil resources). The solution to global warming is to vastly decrease our energy use and to replace our energy supply with renewable and clean source. This action needs a vast amount of workers retrofitting our buildings and homes to be more energy efficient, workers to rebuild/replace our energy generation facilities, and reworking our transportation system.
The need to take action is urgent both because of the crisis we have in jobs for our work force but also the critical nature of the dual problems of energy shortages and global warming.
It is up to the US government to initiate a massive social jobs program to attack the problem. I am hopeful that our representatives understand the need and urgency to take action and will have the will to override the efforts of big oil, coal, and gas industries who will try to protect their profits at all costs. We the people can help by writing to your representatives to let them know your opinion on issues important to you.
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Philip Pease (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 106 comments)
on Wednesday, February 27, 2008 at 10:13:49 AM
To me, a more interesting aspect of trade with China is that it is far from free. You can't freely export to China. They have a wide range of tarrifs and trade restrictions.
THE PROBLEM IS THAT OUR GOVERNMENT HAS TURNED A BLIND EYE TO THIS INEQUALITY BECAUSE THE CHINESE COMPANIES SHIPPING GARBAGE TO WAL-MART, ETC. ARE OWNED BY AMERICANS! SINCE CORPORATIONS HAVE WAY TOO MUCH INFLUENCE IN WASHINGTON, THIS IS UNLIKELY TO CHANGE ANY TIME SOON.
I AGREE WITH THIS ARTICLE FULLY. IT IS INTENTIONAL TO MAKE US THE NEXT THIRD WORLD COUNTRY - THE AMERICAN DREAM IS GONE. CHEAP LABOR FROM MEXICO FOR NOW (CHEAP FOREIGN TECH WORKERS WITH VISAS) AND EVENTUALLY CHEAP LABOR FROM ALL OF US (THAT IS IF YOU WANT TO EAT).
THE RICH GET RICHER AND OUR MIDDLE CLASS IS GONE. WE ARE NOW A COUNTRY OF SERVITUDE....EXACTLY WHAT OUR FOREFATHERS TRIED TO FREE US FROM. IT SUCKS AND NOBODY NOTICES AND NOBODY CARES.
by
Jubie Something (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 3 comments)
on Wednesday, February 27, 2008 at 11:02:34 AM
JOHN MCLEAN HAD IT RIGHT, AND YOU ALSO HAVE RIGHT, WHERE IS THE OUTRAGE, BACK IN THE 60'S WE WOULD ALL BE ON THE STREETS PROTESTING. DAM THAT FLUORIDE.
by
RICHARD SHADE (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 459 comments)
on Wednesday, February 27, 2008 at 3:43:13 PM
All except Ron Paul who wants to go back to the Constitution. He's the only candidate NOT with the CFR which is precisely why there is a media (corporate-owned, corporate-controlled) blackout on him.
by
Jubie Something (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 3 comments)
on Wednesday, February 27, 2008 at 11:06:42 AM
WELL A LOT OF AMERICANS LIVE BEYOND THEIR MEANS, AND THIS IS STRESSFUL, AND DOES A LOT OF DAMAGE TO OR HEALTH, MAYBE GETTING BACK TO BASICS WILL BE A GOOD THING, COOKING MORE, SPENDING MORE FAMILY TIME, BUYING LESS JUNK FROM CHINA, THAT WE REALLY DON'T NEED. AND MAY BE WE MIGHT PUT WAL-MART OUT OF BUSINESS, AND THAT A GOOD THING, SO JUST TIGHTEN OR BELTS AND ENJOY YOUR FAMILY AND FRIENDS THEY ARE PRECIOUS, PRICELESS. I LIVED ON A SAILBOAT FOR 25+ YEARS, AND ON A SAILBOAT YOU LIVE THE KISS CODE, Keep It Simple Stupid, AND WITH LIMITED SPACE WHEN BRING SOMETHING NEW ABOARD, THEN YOU HAVE TO TAKE SOMETHING OFF TO MAKE ROOM. NOW I HAVE BEEN ON LAND FOR 7 YEARS, AND MY STORAGE SHED IS FULL OF STUFF STUFF STUFF, IT TIME TO STOP BUYING STUFF, YOU CAN'T EAT STUFF, IT WILL KILL YOU, PLEASE STOP BUYING STUFF.
by
RICHARD SHADE (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 459 comments)
on Thursday, February 28, 2008 at 1:56:48 AM
