I agree. I have heard so many talking head analysts trying to claim the race is about....race and I just shake my head, uh, no it's not, Americans are assuredly looking for a series of policy positions that represent their interests.
Obviously I was very disappointed reading this, especially because I know there is a fraction of the Democratic party that has much stronger economic positions.
....quotes in use because everything is 'political' as Pericles pointed out over 2500 years ago, are all a twitter over various aspects of the fubared Dem primary. Gender, ID, race, sytax, clothes, perfume you name it it's discussed ad nauseum; that is, except for one topic which is never discussed.
Public policy on any issue.
Nope and the idea of a platform...heh...
Yeah, they got one but it's considered 'quaint and irrelevant...' or at least it was until The Hill's loyalists decided to drag in out into the light and make it their own.
Wow! I just saw the poll results...I can shut up now....heh...
The opportunity does exist for this sort of discussion and let's try and get the word out to the people and the party....
Policy matters. It matters a lot. Let's formulate some good policy and tell the voters about it. They are dying to hear some good ideas. They are receptive to real change not bullshit promises.
While many of us agree in many cases Wall Street is more like Las Vegas and even a Ponzi scheme or the old shell game, I hope you write the details, specifics of why you believe this is.
For example, the guy who got fleeced, while I believe it, it certainly happened badly to many, many people from 2001-2003 time frame, the details of how it happened is not well understood.
Looks like we need to dig more deeply into your roller coaster global economic theory. We have a lot of research about them becoming the biggest economy soon (5 years to 10 year projections), but what kind of influence do they now have on the global economy if they slump?
The interaction between national economies has to be one of the least examined or understood relationships I can think of.
I am curious how they come up with this nonsense that automation accounts for all the mfg job loss? What data are they looking at to support this assertion?
Asian currencies slumped this week ... on concern slowing global growth will curb demand for the region's assets.
...[T]he Straits Times newspaper yesterday cited Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam as saying the economy is moving toward a slowdown and growth is unlikely to rebound ``anytime soon'' ....
....Taiwan's dollar .... fell ... after a government report Aug. 7 showed shipments grew last month at less than half the pace forecast by economists. Taiwan's gross domestic product may expand 4.78 percent this year, the slowest since 2005, according to a statistics bureau forecast released in May.
... Philip Wee, a currency strategist at DBS Group Holdings Ltd. in Singapore[, said] "Europe and Japan are all showing negative growth numbers, and the Asian region is seeing declining GDP.''
China's trade surplus probably fell for a fourth straight month, increasing the likelihood of more government measures to sustain the economy's expansion rather than stamp out inflation.
The Marxists always made this charge about economic theory under capitalism. Theory for capitalist economists is just a 'superstructure' of ideas upon a changing dynamic the paid puppet capitalist economists could never hope to explain. Look at the theories of so many non-classical economists like Friedman and Schumpeter and you see thinly-disguised politics. And the politics of Friedman and company are quite ugly.
What is surprising is how the non-classical economists, BushCorp, and the Oligarchs writing such words work so hard to justify the Marxists. Look at the red paint now spreading over the map of South America. None in power are alarmed at this because the disaster in South America was planned and created by the post-classical economists and the Bushies.
The best antidote to this insanity is to attempt to be empirical and scientific, realizing that economics is never going to be hard science.
Anyone else wanting to recommend something for Friday night videos, please do!
They aren't my clips. This is a series where I find good free clips on economic related topics for a Friday night post.
Anything that gives Dorgan more publicity and especially more power in the Senate is a very good thing. If he was directing what bills were being brought up in the Senate I'll bet a hell of a lot more would get done because he's for the people and thus would bring up bills Americans actually want.
Hey, A citizen, don't forget to format your links!
...and I got dizzy and fell down. Can anyone think that there is anything more going on with current economic theorizing and thought, at least by big well funded Universities and think tanks other than.
'Look, screw all this theory and shit. We need scientifically sounding verbiage that in the end let's us do what we want to do. We in corporate America know how to make money squeeze it out of the little guy. Better yet, have the legislators vote some train loads of Benjamins be shipped to us for doing squat. What we need from you are some 'theory' which justifies our doing what we are doing......
We don't need some 'egghead intellectual' to tell us we are fucking everything up. Have you got that straight?'
Folks are starting to discuss the possibility that the average citizen may be ready to hear that he'd the victim of the largest robbery in the history of the world. The transfer of wealth from those who produce it to those who 'finance' it.
That maybe a group of folks who can nickname a ftool like Greenspan 'The Maestro' should not be allowed with several hundred miles of any of the citizens tax money.
Or that a inexperienced fellow who never took an economics course in his life, well we don't know because all his academic records are sealed, and who intends to rely on the same folks that had him vote for the Richard Cheney Energy Bill to 'advise' him, or perhaps his biggest financial supporters Goldman Sachs will send some just just graduated Libertarian from Hahvard to 'handle things', might not be the best choice to 'lead' us at the current time.
I dunno....
I think folks had better start thinking and talking about economics and policy real damn quick.
The house of cards is looking more than shaky. It's looking like it's gonna come down. And it's perfectly clear that those who are supposedl 'in charge'...
....have no idea of what to do. Not surprising since they can't even find out what's going on with the mess Boosh has made of the primitive reporting tools we used to have.
Uh....oh....
I guess this wasn't a very 'relaxed' post...heh....
Thanks for the Dorgan clips. I'm gonna steal 'em for my blog, assuming you do not mind. Good, good stuff more folks need to see.
A Mercantalist State is one whose government aggressively promotes international trade and exports. China fits the bill perfectly. Mercantile states aggressively pile up exports and foreign exchange or in the old days, gold.
Adam Smith in the Wealth of Nations devoted a major section to the Spanish (Sieglo de Oro) and French - 18th Century mercantilism. After Smith, Central Europe of the 1800s and Japan have been classified as mercantilist.
All mercantile states domestic economy through the conversion of foreign exchange into domestic inflation (Spain), failed trading companies (France - Companie de Suez), or bad foreign investments, Japan in late 1980s.
China at this time is keeping its foreign exchange hoard in
U.S. treasuries mostly. China is quietly diversifying into
mortgages in U.S., African Oil, diamonds, gold etc, and recently, U.S. and international equities.
China loses by hold U.S. treasuries long term due to the dollar's decline and inflation. So the push toward foreign hard assets and equities is almost unavoidable.
The odds of an mal-investment are overwhelming. No mercantile system has survived very long. If China's mercantile state survives, it will be the first and Adam Smith will be proved wrong.
I worked as a corporate relocation counselor in Sacramento in the late 1990's. The high-tech desired "hires" came to us through Vancouver from Taiwan and India. Later I read these countries or private groups within these countries had decided to train the workers to the needs of these corporations. I wondered why with our extensive California higher education we could not train American workers, but no American workers were hired during my job tenure. No doubt the high-tech industry knows what is happening. And no doubt our politicians are willing to support these practices.
"The standard answer is that automation, not trade caused manufacturing job loss. But technology manufacturing is a subset of manufacturing and tech production has all but vanished with the rest of the manufacturing base."**************************************************
Indeed - I happen to work in the automation industry. You would think if it were true that automation was displacing workers then we would be going full steam ahead in our industry, but alas, such is not the case - as manufacturing declines so too does the demand for automation equipment
It is still cheaper to send production and do it manually offshore than it is to invest in automation. I know of whole automated assembly lines mothballed because production was shipped off to china or mexico.
Anecdotally, my neighborhood is and always has been a solidly middle class neighborhood of manufacuring blue and white collar workers.
With the major decline of midwest mfg base, so too are we seeing an increase in number of homes on the market as well length of time on the market
there are simply no new jobs except retail and resturant coming to the community that would allow people to afford these homes - typical two story colonials and rambler ranches. Especially without some gimmicky financing
The neighbors leaving are not for the most part due to credit or mortgage problems so much as the need to either downscale to a more affordable home, or relocating for a job change. And with no demand for these homes due to no new jobs, so too has value stagnated.
The empirical case between manufacturing job losses and the housing crisis is a slow meltdown of the U.S. Manufactures over 70 years - from WWII to 2008. For the increases in productivity, the US worker got deeper into debt over the last 70 years. WWII are the only years with both growth of savings and lower debt (savings were larger than household debt during War years).
Manufacturing job loss and Housing Debt are gradually unfolding crises until the level of debt becomes unsustainable and housing prices no longer support debt increases. WWII is unique for the quadrupling of GDP between 1939 and 1942 and the burst of manufacturing: half the world steel output is U.S made.
The standard answer is that automation, not trade caused manufacturing job loss. But technology manufacturing is a subset of manufacturing and tech production has all but vanished with the rest of the manufacturing base.
The surprising result is that folks working in Starbucks and Wally World have greater difficulty with paying mortgages.
hmmmm.....well, to get Congress to cough up a blank check for their investor pals, honestly ....is it that hard anyway?
That seems opposite of BushCorp. They usually are trying to privatize, so I don't quite get this, unless it shows somehow more funds for their investor class.
What would nationalizing Freddie and Fannie do for the neocon agenda long term? (how would it move large funds out of the national interest, working America's interests and to their cronies and pals?, long term...
or is this just to keep the Ponzi scheme going?
The state of the science of economics is just pre-Kepler. There are revelations coming, provable stuff, which will show that the reality is that having a 'financial advisor' or hiring folks to 'invest for you...' is akin to the elaborate rituals of the Roman Augurs as they rooted around in the guts of bulls and goats.
That things which people believe are possible are not and that much of what people actually believe about how modern markets is just bullshit.
The Maestro should be proof enough but....
Seriously, I'm a trying to get enough time together to do a solid post on what I'm talking about. I may need a tin-foil hat but what I've been reading is very interesting indeed.
And of course it's all your fault you wanted to buy a house but corporate America was no way gonna pay you enough to do so.
The root cause of financial market excesses on both the upside and the downside of the cycle is collective human behavior — unbridled optimism on the upside — and fear — bordering on panic — on the downside
According to the New York Times, this was in the cover letter to Treasury secretary Paulson.
I agree. I have heard so many talking head analysts trying to claim the race is about....race and I just shake my head, uh, no it's not, Americans are assuredly looking for a series of policy positions that represent their interests.
Obviously I was very disappointed reading this, especially because I know there is a fraction of the Democratic party that has much stronger economic positions.
....quotes in use because everything is 'political' as Pericles pointed out over 2500 years ago, are all a twitter over various aspects of the fubared Dem primary. Gender, ID, race, sytax, clothes, perfume you name it it's discussed ad nauseum; that is, except for one topic which is never discussed.
Public policy on any issue.
Nope and the idea of a platform...heh...
Yeah, they got one but it's considered 'quaint and irrelevant...' or at least it was until The Hill's loyalists decided to drag in out into the light and make it their own.
Wow! I just saw the poll results...I can shut up now....heh...
The opportunity does exist for this sort of discussion and let's try and get the word out to the people and the party....
Policy matters. It matters a lot. Let's formulate some good policy and tell the voters about it. They are dying to hear some good ideas. They are receptive to real change not bullshit promises.
While many of us agree in many cases Wall Street is more like Las Vegas and even a Ponzi scheme or the old shell game, I hope you write the details, specifics of why you believe this is.
For example, the guy who got fleeced, while I believe it, it certainly happened badly to many, many people from 2001-2003 time frame, the details of how it happened is not well understood.
Looks like we need to dig more deeply into your roller coaster global economic theory. We have a lot of research about them becoming the biggest economy soon (5 years to 10 year projections), but what kind of influence do they now have on the global economy if they slump?
The interaction between national economies has to be one of the least examined or understood relationships I can think of.
I am curious how they come up with this nonsense that automation accounts for all the mfg job loss? What data are they looking at to support this assertion?
Did they ask anybody in the automation industry?
From Bloomberg:
And
The Marxists always made this charge about economic theory under capitalism. Theory for capitalist economists is just a 'superstructure' of ideas upon a changing dynamic the paid puppet capitalist economists could never hope to explain. Look at the theories of so many non-classical economists like Friedman and Schumpeter and you see thinly-disguised politics. And the politics of Friedman and company are quite ugly.
What is surprising is how the non-classical economists, BushCorp, and the Oligarchs writing such words work so hard to justify the Marxists. Look at the red paint now spreading over the map of South America. None in power are alarmed at this because the disaster in South America was planned and created by the post-classical economists and the Bushies.
The best antidote to this insanity is to attempt to be empirical and scientific, realizing that economics is never going to be hard science.
Anyone else wanting to recommend something for Friday night videos, please do!
They aren't my clips. This is a series where I find good free clips on economic related topics for a Friday night post.
Anything that gives Dorgan more publicity and especially more power in the Senate is a very good thing. If he was directing what bills were being brought up in the Senate I'll bet a hell of a lot more would get done because he's for the people and thus would bring up bills Americans actually want.
Hey, A citizen, don't forget to format your links!
Interestingly I was reading this:
http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2008/08/scapegoating-re...
Followed by this:
http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2008/08/feldstein-a-tal...
...and I got dizzy and fell down. Can anyone think that there is anything more going on with current economic theorizing and thought, at least by big well funded Universities and think tanks other than.
Folks are starting to discuss the possibility that the average citizen may be ready to hear that he'd the victim of the largest robbery in the history of the world. The transfer of wealth from those who produce it to those who 'finance' it.
That maybe a group of folks who can nickname a
ftool like Greenspan 'The Maestro' should not be allowed with several hundred miles of any of the citizens tax money.Or that a inexperienced fellow who never took an economics course in his life, well we don't know because all his academic records are sealed, and who intends to rely on the same folks that had him vote for the Richard Cheney Energy Bill to 'advise' him, or perhaps his biggest financial supporters Goldman Sachs will send some just just graduated Libertarian from Hahvard to 'handle things', might not be the best choice to 'lead' us at the current time.
I dunno....
I think folks had better start thinking and talking about economics and policy real damn quick.
The house of cards is looking more than shaky. It's looking like it's gonna come down. And it's perfectly clear that those who are supposedl 'in charge'...
....have no idea of what to do. Not surprising since they can't even find out what's going on with the mess Boosh has made of the primitive reporting tools we used to have.
Uh....oh....
I guess this wasn't a very 'relaxed' post...heh....
Thanks for the Dorgan clips. I'm gonna steal 'em for my blog, assuming you do not mind. Good, good stuff more folks need to see.
A Mercantalist State is one whose government aggressively promotes international trade and exports. China fits the bill perfectly. Mercantile states aggressively pile up exports and foreign exchange or in the old days, gold.
Adam Smith in the Wealth of Nations devoted a major section to the Spanish (Sieglo de Oro) and French - 18th Century mercantilism. After Smith, Central Europe of the 1800s and Japan have been classified as mercantilist.
All mercantile states domestic economy through the conversion of foreign exchange into domestic inflation (Spain), failed trading companies (France - Companie de Suez), or bad foreign investments, Japan in late 1980s.
China at this time is keeping its foreign exchange hoard in
U.S. treasuries mostly. China is quietly diversifying into
mortgages in U.S., African Oil, diamonds, gold etc, and recently, U.S. and international equities.
China loses by hold U.S. treasuries long term due to the dollar's decline and inflation. So the push toward foreign hard assets and equities is almost unavoidable.
The odds of an mal-investment are overwhelming. No mercantile system has survived very long. If China's mercantile state survives, it will be the first and Adam Smith will be proved wrong.
I forgot to mention, there are still many many tasks that even the most complex robotics can not fully duplicate human labor
My observation is that we are losing more of the so called advanced manufacturing than the grunt labor jobs.
US Manufacturing is becoming a hollowed out shell with most operations becoming final assembly and packaging points using foreign made componentry.
I worked as a corporate relocation counselor in Sacramento in the late 1990's. The high-tech desired "hires" came to us through Vancouver from Taiwan and India. Later I read these countries or private groups within these countries had decided to train the workers to the needs of these corporations. I wondered why with our extensive California higher education we could not train American workers, but no American workers were hired during my job tenure. No doubt the high-tech industry knows what is happening. And no doubt our politicians are willing to support these practices.
Your quote is the best roller coaster analogy for the market I have heard.
"The standard answer is that automation, not trade caused manufacturing job loss. But technology manufacturing is a subset of manufacturing and tech production has all but vanished with the rest of the manufacturing base."**************************************************
Indeed - I happen to work in the automation industry. You would think if it were true that automation was displacing workers then we would be going full steam ahead in our industry, but alas, such is not the case - as manufacturing declines so too does the demand for automation equipment
It is still cheaper to send production and do it manually offshore than it is to invest in automation. I know of whole automated assembly lines mothballed because production was shipped off to china or mexico.
Anecdotally, my neighborhood is and always has been a solidly middle class neighborhood of manufacuring blue and white collar workers.
With the major decline of midwest mfg base, so too are we seeing an increase in number of homes on the market as well length of time on the market
there are simply no new jobs except retail and resturant coming to the community that would allow people to afford these homes - typical two story colonials and rambler ranches. Especially without some gimmicky financing
The neighbors leaving are not for the most part due to credit or mortgage problems so much as the need to either downscale to a more affordable home, or relocating for a job change. And with no demand for these homes due to no new jobs, so too has value stagnated.
Read the last 2 Stanzas of the Lyrics as though Guthrie just wrote them yesterday:
" If you'll gather 'round me, children,
A story I will tell
'Bout Pretty Boy Floyd, an outlaw,
Oklahoma knew him well.
It was in the town of Shawnee,
A Saturday afternoon,
His wife beside him in his wagon
As into town they rode.
There a deputy sheriff approached him
In a manner rather rude,
Vulgar words of anger,
An' his wife she overheard.
Pretty Boy grabbed a log chain,
And the deputy grabbed his gun;
In the fight that followed
He laid that deputy down.
Then he took to the trees and timber
To live a life of shame;
Every crime in Oklahoma
Was added to his name.
But a many a starving farmer
The same old story told
How the outlaw paid their mortgage
And saved their little homes.
Others tell you 'bout a stranger
That come to beg a meal,
Underneath his napkin
Left a thousand dollar bill.
It was in Oklahoma City,
It was on a Christmas Day,
There was a whole car load of groceries
Come with a note to say:
Well, you say that I'm an outlaw,
You say that I'm a thief.
Here's a Christmas dinner
For the families on relief.
Yes, as through this world I've wandered
I've seen lots of funny men;
Some will rob you with a six-gun,
And some with a fountain pen.
And as through your life you travel,
Yes, as through your life you roam,
You won't never see an outlaw
Drive a family from their home.
"
The empirical case between manufacturing job losses and the housing crisis is a slow meltdown of the U.S. Manufactures over 70 years - from WWII to 2008. For the increases in productivity, the US worker got deeper into debt over the last 70 years. WWII are the only years with both growth of savings and lower debt (savings were larger than household debt during War years).
Manufacturing job loss and Housing Debt are gradually unfolding crises until the level of debt becomes unsustainable and housing prices no longer support debt increases. WWII is unique for the quadrupling of GDP between 1939 and 1942 and the burst of manufacturing: half the world steel output is U.S made.
The standard answer is that automation, not trade caused manufacturing job loss. But technology manufacturing is a subset of manufacturing and tech production has all but vanished with the rest of the manufacturing base.
The surprising result is that folks working in Starbucks and Wally World have greater difficulty with paying mortgages.
hmmmm.....well, to get Congress to cough up a blank check for their investor pals, honestly ....is it that hard anyway?
That seems opposite of BushCorp. They usually are trying to privatize, so I don't quite get this, unless it shows somehow more funds for their investor class.
What would nationalizing Freddie and Fannie do for the neocon agenda long term? (how would it move large funds out of the national interest, working America's interests and to their cronies and pals?, long term...
or is this just to keep the Ponzi scheme going?
Latest reported earnings
Freddie Mac - $821M
Fannie Mae - $2.3B
AIG - $5.4B
....my opinion?
The state of the science of economics is just pre-Kepler. There are revelations coming, provable stuff, which will show that the reality is that having a 'financial advisor' or hiring folks to 'invest for you...' is akin to the elaborate rituals of the Roman Augurs as they rooted around in the guts of bulls and goats.
That things which people believe are possible are not and that much of what people actually believe about how modern markets is just bullshit.
The Maestro should be proof enough but....
Seriously, I'm a trying to get enough time together to do a solid post on what I'm talking about. I may need a tin-foil hat but what I've been reading is very interesting indeed.
And of course it's all your fault you wanted to buy a house but corporate America was no way gonna pay you enough to do so.
They spent all their cash on CEOs.
According to the New York Times, this was in the cover letter to Treasury secretary Paulson.
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