Tom Friedman is at it again on the beauties of the Global Outsourcing Village. From the lofty perch of the CEO's, we see this benign view of Apple and Foxconn in a piece called 'Made in the World'
NYTimes:
"
There is today an enormous gap between the way many C.E.O.’s in America — not Wall Street-types, but the people who lead premier companies that make things and create real jobs — look at the world and how the average congressmen, senator or president looks at the world. They are literally looking at two different worlds — and this applies to both parties.
Consider the meeting that this paper reported on from last February between President Obama and the Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, who died in October. The president, understandably, asked Jobs why almost all of the 70 million iPhones, 30 million iPads and 59 million other products Apple sold last year were made overseas. Obama inquired, couldn’t that work come back home? “Those jobs aren’t coming back,” Jobs replied.
....
These C.E.O.’s rarely talk about “outsourcing” these days. Their world is now so integrated that there is no “out” and no “in” anymore. In their businesses, every product and many services now are imagined, designed, marketed and built through global supply chains that seek to access the best quality talent at the lowest cost, wherever it exists. They see more and more of their products today as “Made in the World” not “Made in America.” Therein lies the tension. So many of “our” companies actually see themselves now as citizens of the world. But Obama is president of the United States. '
"
We do not get the rejoinder from Obama, so let us try. Foxconn
is based on the production model of the Third Reich, aptly depicted in "Schindler's List". Party members own the factory. The factory uses forced labor, brutality and murder to get production quotas. In the case of Apple, attempts at organizing
resulted in prison death. The scratch-proof screens Steve Jobs insisted on happen on 80 hour per week shifts.
Things look different when your billionaire wife can pay your Amex bill every month like Friedman. No matter who you injure with your apologies for Foxconn, you can retreat to you multimillion dollar mansion in your gated community.
There were sharp upward movements when the Fed announced "zero interest until 2014! We finance" plus another after the press conference. Yeah, I agree, demand rules all though so it's more crazy speculators.
To wit, Facebook IPO looks like it's going to sucker in millions. Don't these people know an IPO spikes out and then drops after, that all of the institutional investors and such who have pre-IPO stock are the winners and they are guaranteed to lose?
How in God's name can a company be worth so much when it's a glorified layer on top of the Internet.
Anyway, I fear a host of people buying the hype will lose their shirts.
Not really. Commodities have been moving in tandem with the stock market. When stocks tank, so will commodities. It's the same hot money going into both.
Forget the supposed link of metals to the 'fear factor.' In today's world that is only a small part of price fluctuations.
Then there's China, which when it tanks will smack down metals by at least 30%. QE3 has been talked about, and thus priced in for quite some time now.
What should you buy, now? Clothes, food, electronics, booze etc. Keep your cash on hold till it can be put to good use in a market crash.
If the cash becomes worthless? That's what's the booze is for!
Folks, I hope people share this. I have seen so many articles on GDP and this one is right. Other's focus in on PCE and that's NOT the story for Q4, government spending dropped almost an entire percentage point from GDP and then we also have an unexpected inventory build up. Both of these are significant and few in the MSM are paying too much attention.
When something like the SOTU happens, everyone and their brother reviews it and gives an opinion. Many of these "reviews" are things like secret, hidden, messaging (which some is real, such as who sits with the First Lady), or body language (couldn't be someone got a tick suddenly?) or who smiled at who, Congressional date night.
More odious are some of the economic fiction that poses as analysis of the speech. We hear this stuff everyday and frankly, here at EP, we just ignored those people.
We need action, strong action, strong bills right now. That's the problem, we have political corruption and insanity swirling around us on a daily basis, creating a fog.
None of Obama's proposals are ideal, some will hurt, instead of help, U.S. citizens and workers. That said, it's critical to focus on what does what instead of the great political fog machine.
There are actually worst corporations for cheap labor. That said, Apple by the markets is now larger than Exxon and their profit margins are obscene.
So, the fact they are doing this by using low-tech, cheap Chinese workers instead of retooling a U.S. manufacturing facility with high tech robotics and U.S. citizen workers, when they could actually do so for about the same production costs (plant investment another story), says it all.
We need to call these tech companies out here. They have public relations sewn up better than any oil corporation has ever done and few seem to notice.
It's just unbelievable on some financial sites. They kiss the hem of the Apple robe, and the hype machine is unbelievable.
Of course Apple's good juju contribution, investment in battery R&D, portable hydrogen battery research, (this is hot, I'm telling ya), seems to go unnoticed by these same "financial journalists".
Anyway, Apple could be manufacturing in the United States and all of those Apple Zealots should demand it.
It is part of the remorseless tyranny of cost reduction driven by a paradigm supported by the banks. It is very destructive - ALL costs are fair game and this extends to any way of reducing costs - labour and capital (in-sourcing, out-sourcing, off-shoring). Also ignoring externalities such as eliminating costs that ensure worker safety, avoiding the costs of pollution, etc. The ultimate perversion is the reintroduction of the modern day equivalent of Victorian 'workhouses'. Yet this is lorded as success....the mind boggles.
It was one of the most idiotic articles I have read for a while. Of course US workers could build 'gadgets' and be very good at it as Americans are very adept at exploiting technology. It is only my opinion but the Chinese use lots of labour, cheap labour, and that can only take you so far. So given the US penchant for innovation and adopting technology the US would have out produced the Chinese. Pity we cannot wind history back and choose a different path.
Apple are like a rotten Apple - all shiny on the outside but not so nice on the inside. Yes Apple products could have easily been made in the US but with a lower margin. The cost of that 'gain' in margin is easy to see. Apple are the Apple in the eye of Wall Street.
What is more amazing about this story is how revered Steve Jobs is and how Apple is considered "so cool". That if you buy an iPhone, Mac, somehow you're part of this grand "culture".
Well, well. Honestly, the "iPhone" was conceived by at least 10 different technology strategists before Apple. The problem was other corporations had their heads up their ass so far they could not listen or actualize the vision. EOM, the iPhone was not "thought up" by Steve Jobs or Apple. More Apple engineers were out there, "having lunch" and they put all of that vision together and executed, i.e. Apple did not have it's head up their ass.
That said, story after story about Foxconn have emerged yet Apple is still considered "cool". Why is it chocolate obtained by child labor is not "cool" and coffee which kills birds isn't "cool" and tuna fish which kills dolphins isn't "cool", yet corporate policies which enslave people and cause human deaths (they are responsible for these suicides) is still considered "cool"?
Flexibility - workers are roused out of their beds in their company dorms at midnight to get to work. Yep - that definitely beats typical American workers, who are at home at midnight if they aren't working the midnight shift. In other words, American workers have lives - they don't live in company dorms.
Diligence - workers are given a biscuit and cup of tea and then put to work on a 12 hour shift. That's real diligence all right - all the diligence of a 19th century industrial sweat shop.
Industrial skills - workers do the same task repetitively for hour after hour, not being allowed bathroom breaks or the right to talk to their fellow workers without risk of dismissal. That's real skill - the skill of a robot.
Wouldn't the executives at Apple have any hint of embarrassment at admitting what system they have created. They are certainly every bit as responsible as the Chinese executives for creating this modern version of slavery - complete with Chinese workers having to resort to suicide as their only way out of the system.
Too bad the NY Times editorialists weren't sharp enough to see what was going on here. Thanks for spelling it out in its appalling detail.
Just yesterday there was a 101 yr. old women foreclosed on, evicted. This is why we push to contact the attorney generals in the above link as well as your Congress representatives.
We have story after story like yours on HAMP, never mind the brazen fraud in foreclosures.
What ever you do, don't take it personally or think you did something wrong. You did not do anything wrong. It's the system and honestly, we've been writing about this since 2008 as have others, but one thing is certain, if you "go away quietly" this will never been exposed. Frankly you probably won't get justice but tell your story anyway.
This isn't a political issue, it's a ripoff issue.
Total Injustice Over and Over Again! Will it ever stop?? I am a homeowner in Charlotte, NC that was given 2 different Trial Modifications since 2009, and completed both successfully!! JPMC has only been the biggest pain in my you know what ever since. They refuse to offer me the Permanent Modification that I was sent in and Email.... although they continued to take my payments up until just recently around X-MAS 2011. All of 2011 they did nothing but constantly harassed me with rude phone calls, and Fed Ex packages threatening to take home, and continuously sending people to take pictures of my house. I cant begin to tell you the effect this has had on my family, marriage, and health. If our government doesnt hold them accountable, then I know who will, Almighty God has the last say! Thanks for this opportunity to voice my situation. It's a shame the world has come to this:(
The never ending press release and stories of Greece's immiment demise versus a new package are going on 3 years? Last I heard was the twist on QE but because inflation in tame, I believe they will do it again.
We missed you and your comments! You add to the site and posts!
Last week it was all about the Euro was looking better against the dollar, so the talk was that it was all because Greece (the tail) was wagging the dog (core European economies).
But wasn't it really a weakened USD rather than a strengthened Euro, what with rumors or reports that the Fed has quietly embarked upon QE3, buying MBS in an apparent effort to further enrich the banksters?
Now there are reports dated tomorrow out of Asia -- the tail is supposedly wagging the dog again, as rumors return about faltering talks on negotiations between major bond holders and the government of Greece. Talk, talk, talk.
It is ironic, indeed quite paradoxical, etc, that all of these issues were discussed during the Regan Administration. Firstly, China was recognised at the time as a significant manufacturing threat and Secondly, analysis concluded that Wall Street would collapse the US economy if a focus on 'finance capital' were adopted as would hollow out the 'real' economy, people's lives and well being.
The link below is a good read and shows what the US could have become - an innovation power house that would have stream rolled China.
Ironically, the innovation economy strategy (Project Socrates) was developed for the US during the Regan Administration and was closed down by the first simpleton Bush when he came to office after Regan. Bush 1 was aligned totally to Wall Street.
The 'finance capital' approach only benefits a very narrow group in US society - the elites. A way of making money through cost reduction without the need for all that complex investment in people, plant, etc, so as to design and build desirable products that people outside the US wanted to buy.
We all know the perverse outcome now - the US is now being torn apart socially and valuable IP is being shifted remorselessly off shore to the detriment of the US population in general. The workforce in the US is being systematically de-skilled and rapidly marginalised as part of a global pool of labour that now includes a couple of billion cheap Indians and Chinese. Working in government will not save anyone as is it ultimately futile if you have no productive manufacturing sector to create value through exchange. There is only so much you can borrow.
On Thatcher...I lived and grew up in the UK and the woman was a monster (the recent film is an absolute joke). The whole perverted premise of her administration was the massive theft of public assets via her 'privatisation' agenda and the seizure of the 'commons' - sold off so that we could pay for assets and public services that we had already paid for through tax and public investment.
They (Thatcher and her flunkies) used that idiot Friedman's Monetarist crap as foil to demonise public services and steal using the banks as 'partners' in crime a number of grandiose public offerings .
The result - decline of manufacturing, the rise of debt economy, the property owning delusion, decline in public services (the UK will probably run out of generating capacity as the private sector will not invest) and the unfortunate rise of the wankers, sorry bankers, who as we know add sod all value but continue to destroy value on an unprecedented scale and continue to skim off the top.
This is what I mean by Zombies. After all amendments have been voted on, there is something called the "managers" amendment, which is huge, either from a committee chair or the bill sponsor. It's always at the last minute, often by voice vote and no one has read it at all so they don't know what's in it. That's where a lot of lobbyist agendas get into bills.
Then, after a bill has passed both houses, they must "rectify the differences". The House and Senate leadership each appoint 3 Congressional members to met to "rectify the differences". That's also a place where things are slipped into bills, after they have passed, which have nothing to do with the bills or were even voted down earlier.
On "financial reform" that's where derivatives regulation was even further watered down.
Congress is about as democratic as a feudal lord and their serfs.
Do we recall how the REAL ID Act got enacted? Everyone was happy that it got shot down, but "staffers" slid it into an unrelated conference bill and no one "noticed" that it was there until after it was signed into law.
The AAM is wondering the same thing you are. So many warned this would happen and have been shouting from the rooftops for the last 10 years, some going back 30 years. They are screaming this is horrific policy and frankly I think they will continue to do so from the grave.
Yet, our corrupt politicians, it falls on deaf ears. That's the problem, corporate lobbyists and the corrupt politicians they purchase.
Still, some of this could be undone. If they simply hired back Americans, confronted China currency manipulation and starting tying tax incentives to jobs, worker training (yes a corporate sponsored PhD study is training), and then cut off the global tax manipulation game, we'd be half way there.
There is an algorithm by ISM to maximize profits by manipulating national tax codes. Frankly the U.S. should subpoena that algorithm, run it themselves and craft a corporate tax policy to wipe out all savings by nation hopping by MNCs accordingly.
IBM stupidly tried to patent this algorithm/software and why we know about it. Grab it and figure out how to subvert their global labor arbitrage and tax arbitrage game. End of their Monopoly game as we know it.
Tom Friedman is at it again on the beauties of the Global Outsourcing Village. From the lofty perch of the CEO's, we see this benign view of Apple and Foxconn in a piece called 'Made in the World'
NYTimes:
"
There is today an enormous gap between the way many C.E.O.’s in America — not Wall Street-types, but the people who lead premier companies that make things and create real jobs — look at the world and how the average congressmen, senator or president looks at the world. They are literally looking at two different worlds — and this applies to both parties.
Consider the meeting that this paper reported on from last February between President Obama and the Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, who died in October. The president, understandably, asked Jobs why almost all of the 70 million iPhones, 30 million iPads and 59 million other products Apple sold last year were made overseas. Obama inquired, couldn’t that work come back home? “Those jobs aren’t coming back,” Jobs replied.
....
These C.E.O.’s rarely talk about “outsourcing” these days. Their world is now so integrated that there is no “out” and no “in” anymore. In their businesses, every product and many services now are imagined, designed, marketed and built through global supply chains that seek to access the best quality talent at the lowest cost, wherever it exists. They see more and more of their products today as “Made in the World” not “Made in America.” Therein lies the tension. So many of “our” companies actually see themselves now as citizens of the world. But Obama is president of the United States. '
"
We do not get the rejoinder from Obama, so let us try. Foxconn
is based on the production model of the Third Reich, aptly depicted in "Schindler's List". Party members own the factory. The factory uses forced labor, brutality and murder to get production quotas. In the case of Apple, attempts at organizing
resulted in prison death. The scratch-proof screens Steve Jobs insisted on happen on 80 hour per week shifts.
Things look different when your billionaire wife can pay your Amex bill every month like Friedman. No matter who you injure with your apologies for Foxconn, you can retreat to you multimillion dollar mansion in your gated community.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/29/opinion/sunday/friedman-made-in-the-wo...
There were sharp upward movements when the Fed announced "zero interest until 2014! We finance" plus another after the press conference. Yeah, I agree, demand rules all though so it's more crazy speculators.
To wit, Facebook IPO looks like it's going to sucker in millions. Don't these people know an IPO spikes out and then drops after, that all of the institutional investors and such who have pre-IPO stock are the winners and they are guaranteed to lose?
How in God's name can a company be worth so much when it's a glorified layer on top of the Internet.
Anyway, I fear a host of people buying the hype will lose their shirts.
Not really. Commodities have been moving in tandem with the stock market. When stocks tank, so will commodities. It's the same hot money going into both.
Forget the supposed link of metals to the 'fear factor.' In today's world that is only a small part of price fluctuations.
Then there's China, which when it tanks will smack down metals by at least 30%. QE3 has been talked about, and thus priced in for quite some time now.
What should you buy, now? Clothes, food, electronics, booze etc. Keep your cash on hold till it can be put to good use in a market crash.
If the cash becomes worthless? That's what's the booze is for!
Folks, I hope people share this. I have seen so many articles on GDP and this one is right. Other's focus in on PCE and that's NOT the story for Q4, government spending dropped almost an entire percentage point from GDP and then we also have an unexpected inventory build up. Both of these are significant and few in the MSM are paying too much attention.
Supposedly the NY AT who has been touch on "settlements, is one of the new Financial fraud unit's co-chairs. HuffPo Story, at the end.
Next, supposedly BoA is behind blocking AZ AT from investigating mortgage fraud.
When something like the SOTU happens, everyone and their brother reviews it and gives an opinion. Many of these "reviews" are things like secret, hidden, messaging (which some is real, such as who sits with the First Lady), or body language (couldn't be someone got a tick suddenly?) or who smiled at who, Congressional date night.
More odious are some of the economic fiction that poses as analysis of the speech. We hear this stuff everyday and frankly, here at EP, we just ignored those people.
We need action, strong action, strong bills right now. That's the problem, we have political corruption and insanity swirling around us on a daily basis, creating a fog.
None of Obama's proposals are ideal, some will hurt, instead of help, U.S. citizens and workers. That said, it's critical to focus on what does what instead of the great political fog machine.
There are actually worst corporations for cheap labor. That said, Apple by the markets is now larger than Exxon and their profit margins are obscene.
So, the fact they are doing this by using low-tech, cheap Chinese workers instead of retooling a U.S. manufacturing facility with high tech robotics and U.S. citizen workers, when they could actually do so for about the same production costs (plant investment another story), says it all.
We need to call these tech companies out here. They have public relations sewn up better than any oil corporation has ever done and few seem to notice.
It's just unbelievable on some financial sites. They kiss the hem of the Apple robe, and the hype machine is unbelievable.
Of course Apple's good juju contribution, investment in battery R&D, portable hydrogen battery research, (this is hot, I'm telling ya), seems to go unnoticed by these same "financial journalists".
Anyway, Apple could be manufacturing in the United States and all of those Apple Zealots should demand it.
It is part of the remorseless tyranny of cost reduction driven by a paradigm supported by the banks. It is very destructive - ALL costs are fair game and this extends to any way of reducing costs - labour and capital (in-sourcing, out-sourcing, off-shoring). Also ignoring externalities such as eliminating costs that ensure worker safety, avoiding the costs of pollution, etc. The ultimate perversion is the reintroduction of the modern day equivalent of Victorian 'workhouses'. Yet this is lorded as success....the mind boggles.
It was one of the most idiotic articles I have read for a while. Of course US workers could build 'gadgets' and be very good at it as Americans are very adept at exploiting technology. It is only my opinion but the Chinese use lots of labour, cheap labour, and that can only take you so far. So given the US penchant for innovation and adopting technology the US would have out produced the Chinese. Pity we cannot wind history back and choose a different path.
Apple are like a rotten Apple - all shiny on the outside but not so nice on the inside. Yes Apple products could have easily been made in the US but with a lower margin. The cost of that 'gain' in margin is easy to see. Apple are the Apple in the eye of Wall Street.
What is more amazing about this story is how revered Steve Jobs is and how Apple is considered "so cool". That if you buy an iPhone, Mac, somehow you're part of this grand "culture".
Well, well. Honestly, the "iPhone" was conceived by at least 10 different technology strategists before Apple. The problem was other corporations had their heads up their ass so far they could not listen or actualize the vision. EOM, the iPhone was not "thought up" by Steve Jobs or Apple. More Apple engineers were out there, "having lunch" and they put all of that vision together and executed, i.e. Apple did not have it's head up their ass.
That said, story after story about Foxconn have emerged yet Apple is still considered "cool". Why is it chocolate obtained by child labor is not "cool" and coffee which kills birds isn't "cool" and tuna fish which kills dolphins isn't "cool", yet corporate policies which enslave people and cause human deaths (they are responsible for these suicides) is still considered "cool"?
Gez.
Is this what Chinese workers bring to the table?
Flexibility - workers are roused out of their beds in their company dorms at midnight to get to work. Yep - that definitely beats typical American workers, who are at home at midnight if they aren't working the midnight shift. In other words, American workers have lives - they don't live in company dorms.
Diligence - workers are given a biscuit and cup of tea and then put to work on a 12 hour shift. That's real diligence all right - all the diligence of a 19th century industrial sweat shop.
Industrial skills - workers do the same task repetitively for hour after hour, not being allowed bathroom breaks or the right to talk to their fellow workers without risk of dismissal. That's real skill - the skill of a robot.
Wouldn't the executives at Apple have any hint of embarrassment at admitting what system they have created. They are certainly every bit as responsible as the Chinese executives for creating this modern version of slavery - complete with Chinese workers having to resort to suicide as their only way out of the system.
Too bad the NY Times editorialists weren't sharp enough to see what was going on here. Thanks for spelling it out in its appalling detail.
Just yesterday there was a 101 yr. old women foreclosed on, evicted. This is why we push to contact the attorney generals in the above link as well as your Congress representatives.
We have story after story like yours on HAMP, never mind the brazen fraud in foreclosures.
What ever you do, don't take it personally or think you did something wrong. You did not do anything wrong. It's the system and honestly, we've been writing about this since 2008 as have others, but one thing is certain, if you "go away quietly" this will never been exposed. Frankly you probably won't get justice but tell your story anyway.
This isn't a political issue, it's a ripoff issue.
Total Injustice Over and Over Again! Will it ever stop?? I am a homeowner in Charlotte, NC that was given 2 different Trial Modifications since 2009, and completed both successfully!! JPMC has only been the biggest pain in my you know what ever since. They refuse to offer me the Permanent Modification that I was sent in and Email.... although they continued to take my payments up until just recently around X-MAS 2011. All of 2011 they did nothing but constantly harassed me with rude phone calls, and Fed Ex packages threatening to take home, and continuously sending people to take pictures of my house. I cant begin to tell you the effect this has had on my family, marriage, and health. If our government doesnt hold them accountable, then I know who will, Almighty God has the last say! Thanks for this opportunity to voice my situation. It's a shame the world has come to this:(
naked capitalism details the press release.
But it says only for one week.
The never ending press release and stories of Greece's immiment demise versus a new package are going on 3 years? Last I heard was the twist on QE but because inflation in tame, I believe they will do it again.
We missed you and your comments! You add to the site and posts!
Last week it was all about the Euro was looking better against the dollar, so the talk was that it was all because Greece (the tail) was wagging the dog (core European economies).
But wasn't it really a weakened USD rather than a strengthened Euro, what with rumors or reports that the Fed has quietly embarked upon QE3, buying MBS in an apparent effort to further enrich the banksters?
Now there are reports dated tomorrow out of Asia -- the tail is supposedly wagging the dog again, as rumors return about faltering talks on negotiations between major bond holders and the government of Greece. Talk, talk, talk.
This same deal is being reported to "go to the States" and will be in SOTU. Lovely.
Naked Capitalism explains how this sucks money from pensions never mind is no justice.
It is ironic, indeed quite paradoxical, etc, that all of these issues were discussed during the Regan Administration. Firstly, China was recognised at the time as a significant manufacturing threat and Secondly, analysis concluded that Wall Street would collapse the US economy if a focus on 'finance capital' were adopted as would hollow out the 'real' economy, people's lives and well being.
The link below is a good read and shows what the US could have become - an innovation power house that would have stream rolled China.
http://quadrigy.com/papers/Technology-based%20Planning%20and%20Impact.pdf
Ironically, the innovation economy strategy (Project Socrates) was developed for the US during the Regan Administration and was closed down by the first simpleton Bush when he came to office after Regan. Bush 1 was aligned totally to Wall Street.
The 'finance capital' approach only benefits a very narrow group in US society - the elites. A way of making money through cost reduction without the need for all that complex investment in people, plant, etc, so as to design and build desirable products that people outside the US wanted to buy.
We all know the perverse outcome now - the US is now being torn apart socially and valuable IP is being shifted remorselessly off shore to the detriment of the US population in general. The workforce in the US is being systematically de-skilled and rapidly marginalised as part of a global pool of labour that now includes a couple of billion cheap Indians and Chinese. Working in government will not save anyone as is it ultimately futile if you have no productive manufacturing sector to create value through exchange. There is only so much you can borrow.
On Thatcher...I lived and grew up in the UK and the woman was a monster (the recent film is an absolute joke). The whole perverted premise of her administration was the massive theft of public assets via her 'privatisation' agenda and the seizure of the 'commons' - sold off so that we could pay for assets and public services that we had already paid for through tax and public investment.
They (Thatcher and her flunkies) used that idiot Friedman's Monetarist crap as foil to demonise public services and steal using the banks as 'partners' in crime a number of grandiose public offerings .
The result - decline of manufacturing, the rise of debt economy, the property owning delusion, decline in public services (the UK will probably run out of generating capacity as the private sector will not invest) and the unfortunate rise of the wankers, sorry bankers, who as we know add sod all value but continue to destroy value on an unprecedented scale and continue to skim off the top.
This is what I mean by Zombies. After all amendments have been voted on, there is something called the "managers" amendment, which is huge, either from a committee chair or the bill sponsor. It's always at the last minute, often by voice vote and no one has read it at all so they don't know what's in it. That's where a lot of lobbyist agendas get into bills.
Then, after a bill has passed both houses, they must "rectify the differences". The House and Senate leadership each appoint 3 Congressional members to met to "rectify the differences". That's also a place where things are slipped into bills, after they have passed, which have nothing to do with the bills or were even voted down earlier.
On "financial reform" that's where derivatives regulation was even further watered down.
Congress is about as democratic as a feudal lord and their serfs.
Do we recall how the REAL ID Act got enacted? Everyone was happy that it got shot down, but "staffers" slid it into an unrelated conference bill and no one "noticed" that it was there until after it was signed into law.
The AAM is wondering the same thing you are. So many warned this would happen and have been shouting from the rooftops for the last 10 years, some going back 30 years. They are screaming this is horrific policy and frankly I think they will continue to do so from the grave.
Yet, our corrupt politicians, it falls on deaf ears. That's the problem, corporate lobbyists and the corrupt politicians they purchase.
Still, some of this could be undone. If they simply hired back Americans, confronted China currency manipulation and starting tying tax incentives to jobs, worker training (yes a corporate sponsored PhD study is training), and then cut off the global tax manipulation game, we'd be half way there.
There is an algorithm by ISM to maximize profits by manipulating national tax codes. Frankly the U.S. should subpoena that algorithm, run it themselves and craft a corporate tax policy to wipe out all savings by nation hopping by MNCs accordingly.
IBM stupidly tried to patent this algorithm/software and why we know about it. Grab it and figure out how to subvert their global labor arbitrage and tax arbitrage game. End of their Monopoly game as we know it.
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