Pat and Bay Buchanan are very interesting people. I will put "Day of Recknoning" on my todo list. (Having a hard time right now getting through Friedman's Flat Earth diatribe.)
On Illegal Immigration, I agree that NAFTA had a terrible effect on Mexican AG -- however the price war in AG could not have happened without the cheap illegal labor arbitrage and the "El Norte" encouragement from the Mexican government. For instance, it was only 3 cents per gallon that broke the backs of the Mexican dairy farmers.
I think that nearshoring is important to promote -- the families must not be economically expelled from their homes, they must retain equity and capitalize on any lower living costs. A housing requirement, or per-diem along with prevailing wage could be a solution to the migrant worker problem (high and low skill.)
The AGJOBS bill seeks to eliminate the housing requirement for an unstated housing allowance and freeze H-2b wages. We have experienced in California that even with greatly subsidized housing -- the workers will not live inside if they have to pay.
I for one, would like to be assured that the people handling food are living indoors (for health reasons), showering regularly, have health screening and have return transportation provided. Staying in touch with family and continuing to send remittances.
I think pointing out this massive decline, (India stock market index is now at a 15 month low), is useful because I would agree, it's not really being mentioned.
That said, China is moving out of textiles and into foreign investments in advanced manufacturing, autos, and research. China now has 1160 foreign owned R&D centers alone, and seems to be moving towards state or just domestic corporate investments vs. being a place for multinational corporations to use as a method of cheap labor and market access.
How inflation will affect all of this and they are still pegging their yuan and assuredly have unfair trading practices your post is most interesting because I don't think anyone has mentioned it in all of the (many) reports that China will supercede the US as the world leading economic power in 10 years, world leading R&D investments in 5, etc.
That said, China (and India) are flush with cash from their labor arbitrage economic payouts and are buying up assets, many assets in the United States as I type.
So, we might have an emerging markets drop and maybe, just maybe oil will affect global manufacturing due to the supply chain (transport) costs but on services, I don't see an implosion.
Go for the contrary view and explore this further for the stats you are listing are significant and I have another issue with China and that is their stats, which are released. How do we know their methods of reporting are accurate? They are not exactly known for objectivity and free speech, public disclosure.
In keeping up the tradition of using rock songs as global economic indicators, I'll use ShadowPlay.
I had forgotten about the reposession of consumer goods. Now in 2008 banks have virtual warehouses of reposessed housing. Every time I drive around my neighborhood I see more, 2-3 per block usually. I'm going through chapter 7 right now, and Indymac has just filed a motion of relief from automatic stay so they can continue to 'work' with me. They have the idea that the house I'm giving up is the one I'm living in. Thing is, it will take them 4-6 months to foreclose, but my discharge will have taken effect by then probably, so they'd get the house either way. I asked my attorney why they were in such a hurry, and he said it was because Indy is desperate for cash.
A coworker of mine who had an all electric home a couple years back and was seeing his electric bills getting upwards of 800 bucks a month in the winter
He installed a windmill, and has been adding solar panels on his southern roofline. He is using a modular system that you can add panels as time and budget permit.
He is completely off grid now and electric self sufficient
Investment since he did most of the work himself was around 20k. If his energy bills averaged 5k a year thats only a 4 year payback
You are absolutely right about micro economics we really need to be rediriecting from globalization to localization. It puts people somewhat back in control of their own destinies, saves energy and reduced environmental impact
Hate to say it- but centralization and large scale thinking is exactly the problem. What we need is small scale thinking- every building generating its own energy and then some (from ambient sources, be they solar, wind, wave, deep water thermal transfer, geothermal, or something I'm not even aware of), every vehicle self-contained in some way.
Economics, also, makes much more sense on the small scale than the large: take the simple example of the parasite criminal con artist. If your economics is small scale, you're going to see him in social settings his entire life, and somebody, someday, will take revenge upon him for his crimes. But if you're in a large scale economy, he can rob your 401k account without you ever knowing who he was or why he did it, and revenge becomes impossible.
This is the reason why globalization has failed. This is the reason why federalization is failing. Anonymous economics yeilds bad neighbors.
Just some of the many reasons why most of our founding fathers abhorred the idea of central banks, and why we used to have regulations that prevented these mega merger financial institutions as well as the seperation of commercial banking from investment banking, insurance and other fianancial firms - to prevent the sort of excesses we are seeing today
We need to return some regulatory power back to a more local level as well as the federal level, break up the mega banks and return to seperation of the various fiancial institutions.
Let freddie and fannie fail. Let housing prices collapse, and then create a new entity to get mortgages at the new price. When the loans become underwater, force the lenders to eat differential between home equity and oustanding mortgage equity. If the big banks can't handle it, let the government take over the banking business and/or relegate it to the states.
I think the best way to relegate it to the states, would be to allow the states to run the banks with say a 10/1 leverage ratio, and have the banks overseen and audited by the fed. These banks could lend to local officials and/or local banks. Bank secrecy laws should be changed to make a public account of all loans, and prevent fraud.
I don't think the financial system should be dominated by big money center banks. Credit creation should be more distributed throughout the country with oversight. Sufficient leverage ratios should be maintained, and diverse types of loans should offered. If the leverage ratio goes out of bounds, liquidation should be forced. However, the individuals should be aware of what they are financing with their bank account.
Maybe we need another page which is called "statistics". We could either just post graphs, or we could link up really useful statistics and analysis resources. I personally have to go googling every time.
Another thing as a thesis I am learning towards is overall economic/trade policy and the correlations to economic health pre 1934 generally. I think many of the government stats don't go back that far, but I keep seeing "deja vu" when I go digging around pre 1934.
I see can't believe you wrote this diary. It's clearly a great research effort. Very well done!
There's a good graph as well that I've posted before (have to go look for it) in real, inflation adjusted income that goes back to WW1, I think. There's also a graph on income inequality that confirms that we are at 1929 levels.
In 1932, Congress created a government lending agency which issued tax-exempt bonds, extended credit to banks, corporations and railroads. It did not assist small businesses or individuals who faced the loss of their homes, instead prevented most of the large banks from going bust. Then, they passed an additional act to allow the federal reserve to sell gold assets to meet the foreign investor withdrawals.
I'm reading the history of the House (Remini, Robert, Smithsonian Books) and I swear to God if I didn't pull this out of this book I would think this is action from 2008.
This is an amazing diary, exceptional analysis, especially going into the consumer credit scenario. As I was reading, I was thinking about how they changed the bankruptcy law, which makes it more amenable to walk away from a mortgage than a credit card debt now, since credit cards are now secured debt, plus the fact Americans have negative savings rates. The latest reports I have read are that credit card debt is ever increasing and there is assuredly a case to be made about declining wages.
I'm also wondering about the wealth determination in comparison to 1930.
Are those statistics the aggregate, averaging out the super rich with most Americans? I wonder what happens if one excludes the super rich from that calculation, if it becomes more equal to inflation adjusted average household income? I see your link goes to CPI versus real inflation adjusted net income, so I'm not sure how the two compare. I found this Berkeley research from tax returns income inequality including the 1930's but didn't find immediately any direct comparisons.
I do know I've seen reports which say income inequality has reached the levels of the pre New Deal.
and they are working on a blog, but to date don't have an RSS feed. I should have mentioned they must have a RSS or some sort of XML feed. Anyone else reading this American Economic Alert.
He advocated flooding the market with educated workers. He framed it as a way to decrease disparity of wealth.
But what it does do is pull down upper middle and middle class wages and does nothing to decrease disparity of wealth in the stratosphere.
This is one of the major fallacies of supply side free marketeer thought - that somehow increasing the pool of skilled and educated labor magically creates demand for them.
I had another topic, almost void in the blogosphere for any real insight on the robbing of pension funds, the 401k, scam no corporate contributions and the cancellation of retirement health benefits, the disappearance of traditional pension plans and so on.
Anybody know of a real watchdog blog on this topic, that would be a great addition. I've looked and all you find are those "personal finance" yada yada stuff that isn't talking about the great financial wipe out that's going on to the middle class and this area is one of the biggest places.
If you haven't noticed the middle column has other blogs where the writing is insightful, expert, sometimes topic specific, or....a "personal friend of mine" (just kidding).
There are a couple where they aren't adding too much content though and it's also covered on a couple of others so I'm thinking of pulling in some other blogs.
Anyone have any suggestions? They should be heavy anything to do with $$$ (trade, economics, labor, middle class, taxes, policy, globalization, consumer rights or lack thereof, and so on), we don't have and nor have I found a blog covering all things economic with respect to government policy, which would be a great addition.
Thing to avoid: "philosophy" where number spin is presented as an afterthought. Corporate propaganda of any kind, you know the drill.
Also useful would be truly insightful, unusual coverage, writings that is more obscure. After awhile these blogs become kind of incestuous and if one isn't in the "ring" then really good stuff doesn't get as much traffic when it should.
What blog have you found that is amazingly in depth and has updated content at least 2x a week?
I don't know if anyone but myself knows there is currently a code bug plus I need to add to it! Let's see if it ever gets used so the code bug shows up! ;)
the systems are there in case we get a sudden well, "funky" blog post because they do automatically start on the front page and if enough demotions occur a post will be removed from the front page or vice versa, a forum can be put up to the front page or an especially funky "comment" so you can hide it.
I can make the user controlled content voting system more advanced but nobody was really using it, but as we grow, I'll bet money we get that "funky" front page post and I might not be connected to catch it.
People have mentioned and I heartily agree to not turn it into a popularity contest method or a retaliation method (say you disagree with the poster, but their post is reasonably financially cited/sound), which to me is a good sign we all think the "ratings" of certain "sites" is out of control....
Anybody can show up here and write something so it's also a method to keep the site "on topic" (a hem).
Pat and Bay Buchanan are very interesting people. I will put "Day of Recknoning" on my todo list. (Having a hard time right now getting through Friedman's Flat Earth diatribe.)
Pat tends to call them as he sees it, but he always seemed to be the more moderate host on the old Crossfire TV program.
http://www.nndb.com/people/484/000107163/
From her writing, I think that Bay is the true intellect.
http://www.nndb.com/people/484/000107163/
On Illegal Immigration, I agree that NAFTA had a terrible effect on Mexican AG -- however the price war in AG could not have happened without the cheap illegal labor arbitrage and the "El Norte" encouragement from the Mexican government. For instance, it was only 3 cents per gallon that broke the backs of the Mexican dairy farmers.
I think that nearshoring is important to promote -- the families must not be economically expelled from their homes, they must retain equity and capitalize on any lower living costs. A housing requirement, or per-diem along with prevailing wage could be a solution to the migrant worker problem (high and low skill.)
The AGJOBS bill seeks to eliminate the housing requirement for an unstated housing allowance and freeze H-2b wages. We have experienced in California that even with greatly subsidized housing -- the workers will not live inside if they have to pay.
I for one, would like to be assured that the people handling food are living indoors (for health reasons), showering regularly, have health screening and have return transportation provided. Staying in touch with family and continuing to send remittances.
I think pointing out this massive decline, (India stock market index is now at a 15 month low), is useful because I would agree, it's not really being mentioned.
That said, China is moving out of textiles and into foreign investments in advanced manufacturing, autos, and research. China now has 1160 foreign owned R&D centers alone, and seems to be moving towards state or just domestic corporate investments vs. being a place for multinational corporations to use as a method of cheap labor and market access.
How inflation will affect all of this and they are still pegging their yuan and assuredly have unfair trading practices your post is most interesting because I don't think anyone has mentioned it in all of the (many) reports that China will supercede the US as the world leading economic power in 10 years, world leading R&D investments in 5, etc.
That said, China (and India) are flush with cash from their labor arbitrage economic payouts and are buying up assets, many assets in the United States as I type.
So, we might have an emerging markets drop and maybe, just maybe oil will affect global manufacturing due to the supply chain (transport) costs but on services, I don't see an implosion.
Go for the contrary view and explore this further for the stats you are listing are significant and I have another issue with China and that is their stats, which are released. How do we know their methods of reporting are accurate? They are not exactly known for objectivity and free speech, public disclosure.
In keeping up the tradition of using rock songs as global economic indicators, I'll use ShadowPlay.
I had forgotten about the reposession of consumer goods. Now in 2008 banks have virtual warehouses of reposessed housing. Every time I drive around my neighborhood I see more, 2-3 per block usually. I'm going through chapter 7 right now, and Indymac has just filed a motion of relief from automatic stay so they can continue to 'work' with me. They have the idea that the house I'm giving up is the one I'm living in. Thing is, it will take them 4-6 months to foreclose, but my discharge will have taken effect by then probably, so they'd get the house either way. I asked my attorney why they were in such a hurry, and he said it was because Indy is desperate for cash.
Very good observations.
A coworker of mine who had an all electric home a couple years back and was seeing his electric bills getting upwards of 800 bucks a month in the winter
He installed a windmill, and has been adding solar panels on his southern roofline. He is using a modular system that you can add panels as time and budget permit.
He is completely off grid now and electric self sufficient
Investment since he did most of the work himself was around 20k. If his energy bills averaged 5k a year thats only a 4 year payback
You are absolutely right about micro economics we really need to be rediriecting from globalization to localization. It puts people somewhat back in control of their own destinies, saves energy and reduced environmental impact
Hate to say it- but centralization and large scale thinking is exactly the problem. What we need is small scale thinking- every building generating its own energy and then some (from ambient sources, be they solar, wind, wave, deep water thermal transfer, geothermal, or something I'm not even aware of), every vehicle self-contained in some way.
Economics, also, makes much more sense on the small scale than the large: take the simple example of the parasite criminal con artist. If your economics is small scale, you're going to see him in social settings his entire life, and somebody, someday, will take revenge upon him for his crimes. But if you're in a large scale economy, he can rob your 401k account without you ever knowing who he was or why he did it, and revenge becomes impossible.
This is the reason why globalization has failed. This is the reason why federalization is failing. Anonymous economics yeilds bad neighbors.
Just some of the many reasons why most of our founding fathers abhorred the idea of central banks, and why we used to have regulations that prevented these mega merger financial institutions as well as the seperation of commercial banking from investment banking, insurance and other fianancial firms - to prevent the sort of excesses we are seeing today
We need to return some regulatory power back to a more local level as well as the federal level, break up the mega banks and return to seperation of the various fiancial institutions.
Let freddie and fannie fail. Let housing prices collapse, and then create a new entity to get mortgages at the new price. When the loans become underwater, force the lenders to eat differential between home equity and oustanding mortgage equity. If the big banks can't handle it, let the government take over the banking business and/or relegate it to the states.
I think the best way to relegate it to the states, would be to allow the states to run the banks with say a 10/1 leverage ratio, and have the banks overseen and audited by the fed. These banks could lend to local officials and/or local banks. Bank secrecy laws should be changed to make a public account of all loans, and prevent fraud.
I don't think the financial system should be dominated by big money center banks. Credit creation should be more distributed throughout the country with oversight. Sufficient leverage ratios should be maintained, and diverse types of loans should offered. If the leverage ratio goes out of bounds, liquidation should be forced. However, the individuals should be aware of what they are financing with their bank account.
I think we have at least a sound byte, if not a blog post title!
Thanks to voodoo economics and its cousin globalization, the new deal has been killed and we have enterred into the era of "raw deal"
Maybe we need another page which is called "statistics". We could either just post graphs, or we could link up really useful statistics and analysis resources. I personally have to go googling every time.
Another thing as a thesis I am learning towards is overall economic/trade policy and the correlations to economic health pre 1934 generally. I think many of the government stats don't go back that far, but I keep seeing "deja vu" when I go digging around pre 1934.
I see can't believe you wrote this diary. It's clearly a great research effort. Very well done!
There's a good graph as well that I've posted before (have to go look for it) in real, inflation adjusted income that goes back to WW1, I think. There's also a graph on income inequality that confirms that we are at 1929 levels.
In 1932, Congress created a government lending agency which issued tax-exempt bonds, extended credit to banks, corporations and railroads. It did not assist small businesses or individuals who faced the loss of their homes, instead prevented most of the large banks from going bust. Then, they passed an additional act to allow the federal reserve to sell gold assets to meet the foreign investor withdrawals.
I'm reading the history of the House (Remini, Robert, Smithsonian Books) and I swear to God if I didn't pull this out of this book I would think this is action from 2008.
This is an amazing diary, exceptional analysis, especially going into the consumer credit scenario. As I was reading, I was thinking about how they changed the bankruptcy law, which makes it more amenable to walk away from a mortgage than a credit card debt now, since credit cards are now secured debt, plus the fact Americans have negative savings rates. The latest reports I have read are that credit card debt is ever increasing and there is assuredly a case to be made about declining wages.
I'm also wondering about the wealth determination in comparison to 1930.
Are those statistics the aggregate, averaging out the super rich with most Americans? I wonder what happens if one excludes the super rich from that calculation, if it becomes more equal to inflation adjusted average household income? I see your link goes to CPI versus real inflation adjusted net income, so I'm not sure how the two compare. I found this Berkeley research from tax returns income inequality including the 1930's but didn't find immediately any direct comparisons.
I do know I've seen reports which say income inequality has reached the levels of the pre New Deal.
In the Alan Greenspan Recommends Wiping out the Middle Class, there is a video where he says that right on tape.
and they are working on a blog, but to date don't have an RSS feed. I should have mentioned they must have a RSS or some sort of XML feed. Anyone else reading this American Economic Alert.
I like American Economic Alert by Alan Tonelson
it offers a summary and commentary on the weekly news concerning trade, manufacturing and the economics therof
this is all part of Greedspan's design.
He advocated flooding the market with educated workers. He framed it as a way to decrease disparity of wealth.
But what it does do is pull down upper middle and middle class wages and does nothing to decrease disparity of wealth in the stratosphere.
This is one of the major fallacies of supply side free marketeer thought - that somehow increasing the pool of skilled and educated labor magically creates demand for them.
I had another topic, almost void in the blogosphere for any real insight on the robbing of pension funds, the 401k, scam no corporate contributions and the cancellation of retirement health benefits, the disappearance of traditional pension plans and so on.
Anybody know of a real watchdog blog on this topic, that would be a great addition. I've looked and all you find are those "personal finance" yada yada stuff that isn't talking about the great financial wipe out that's going on to the middle class and this area is one of the biggest places.
If you haven't noticed the middle column has other blogs where the writing is insightful, expert, sometimes topic specific, or....a "personal friend of mine" (just kidding).
There are a couple where they aren't adding too much content though and it's also covered on a couple of others so I'm thinking of pulling in some other blogs.
Anyone have any suggestions? They should be heavy anything to do with $$$ (trade, economics, labor, middle class, taxes, policy, globalization, consumer rights or lack thereof, and so on), we don't have and nor have I found a blog covering all things economic with respect to government policy, which would be a great addition.
Thing to avoid: "philosophy" where number spin is presented as an afterthought. Corporate propaganda of any kind, you know the drill.
Also useful would be truly insightful, unusual coverage, writings that is more obscure. After awhile these blogs become kind of incestuous and if one isn't in the "ring" then really good stuff doesn't get as much traffic when it should.
What blog have you found that is amazingly in depth and has updated content at least 2x a week?
I don't know if anyone but myself knows there is currently a code bug plus I need to add to it! Let's see if it ever gets used so the code bug shows up! ;)
the systems are there in case we get a sudden well, "funky" blog post because they do automatically start on the front page and if enough demotions occur a post will be removed from the front page or vice versa, a forum can be put up to the front page or an especially funky "comment" so you can hide it.
I can make the user controlled content voting system more advanced but nobody was really using it, but as we grow, I'll bet money we get that "funky" front page post and I might not be connected to catch it.
People have mentioned and I heartily agree to not turn it into a popularity contest method or a retaliation method (say you disagree with the poster, but their post is reasonably financially cited/sound), which to me is a good sign we all think the "ratings" of certain "sites" is out of control....
Anybody can show up here and write something so it's also a method to keep the site "on topic" (a hem).
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