The AFL-CIO as well as many other groups are asking people to FAX, call their representatives to stop the Panama, Columbia and South Korea trade deals. We've written volumes on how these will lose jobs, are based on NAFTA style agreements and Panama, is just beyond belief in terms of putting tax havens legally out of reach.
The movement is sprouting up all over the country, now specific demands should be made. Lots of people describe the problem then present some agenda which is the antithesis of any solution.
i.e. enact a transactional tax on high frequency flash trade. Ban derivatives. Demand banks take a hair cut on current mortgages...
Folks, let me know if you have any trouble with viewing and commenting on the site. I've tested the site with Opera and Opera Mini, Symbian S60, Android 2.2 and I could login, write comments and pass the CAPTCHA, play all of the videos, view and scale the images.
For my testing, Opera mini was by far the best mobile browser.
That said, I'd like to know if anyone has any problems with participating on the site via a mobile phone, tablet and so on.
More and more people are reading articles on the go and I want to make sure the site is user friendly in the mobile space!
Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), the Senate Majority leader, is lining up with at least some other Senate Democrats as opposed to the three FTAs that are being pushed by Obama (as the Obama trade policy, even though they were negotiated back during the Bush administration).
Reid, who was re-elected in 2010 and won't face re-election until 2014, appears to be speaking for a number of Democratic senators.
The White House and Democratic leaders in Congress are at odds over three pending trade deals that President Obama is poised to send to Capitol Hill.
Throughout the summer, Obama has been making the case that the trade accords with Colombia, South Korea and Panama will help the ailing economy by creating jobs. But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) disagree.
The politically awkward situation comes at a time when the nation's unemployment rate is 9.1 percent ...
Reid has vowed to vote against all three deals when they arrive on the Senate floor, possibly as early as next month.
"I am not a big fan of free-trade agreements," Reid said on the Senate floor in June. "My voting record is in accordance with that."
Reid has a long track record of voting against free trade deals, including no votes on the U.S. agreements with Chile and Singapore in 2003, the Dominican Republic-Central America-United States-Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) in 2005, Oman in 2006 and Peru in 2007.
"I think if you asked people in Nevada: Boy, hasn't NAFTA helped us a lot, they would just sneer and walk away," he said in his floor speech. "We keep talking about free-trade agreements, but where is the fair part of those trade agreements? Shouldn't we be more worried about our American workers than workers in other places? I think that certainly is the case."
Pelosi
The article from The Hill states that Pelosi also is in disagreement with Obama on 'free' trade issues. She takes what is known as a 'more nuanced' position than Reid, although the facts seem to be saying that it all comes down to the worm turning on CAFTA. Yes, CAFTA was enacted in 2005 with a 217-215 vote in the House, but only 15 Democrats voted for it (and no Democrats failed to vote). The populist strength of the anti-FTA position was already clear in 2005, and it is much stronger now.
In 2008, Pelosi torpedoed fast-track authority for the Colombia agreement and that was the last lawmakers have seen of the [three] agreements [now pending].
The California Democrat, who supported trade deals with Peru, Singapore and Chile but opposed CAFTA, hasn't said outright that she would vote against the three deals. Instead, she has shifted her attention to what she considers higher-priority job-creation measures -- more funding for infrastructure and a China currency bill, both of which she has said "would keep American workers on our shores."
China currency issue
Yes, that's correct: House Democratic leader Pelosi says she is focusing on "a China currency bill" which "would keep American workers on our shores."
(That's a strange way of putting it, must be quoted out of context -- "keep American workers on our shores." It sounds like workers are shipping out of San Francisco, headed for the South China Sea. Surely, Pelosi would mean to say "keep American jobs on our shores" or "keep American workers employed on our shores.")
Need for accountability in House voting
It will indeed be a sorry day for the United States of America if Boehner decides to repeat the voice-vote charade when the three treaties come up for a vote in the House. An even sorrier day if nobody even notices ....
Mea culpa. Senate vote #150 was already history when I posted my comment, and now, on review, I see that #150 was the vote on the GSP/TAA itself, not the vote on cloture for GSP/TAA! So, here's the correction: GSP/TAA passed the Senate (70 to 27) on 22 September 2011, preparing the way for another sell-out of the American people in three more so-called 'free' trade agreements (FTAs) ...
... (the cloture vote (84 to 8) was taken on 19 September 2011) ...
... and now, the other shoe to drop is when the President sends the three FTAs over to Congress for approval ... and GOP members of Congress can hardly wait for another chance to betray US workers and the US economy ... so that they can pass GO and collect their money, while there is still time for voters to have forgotten all this betrayal before next November 2012 ... or so that they won't have to worry if they are never re-elected anyway, as they call in favors owed to them by MNCs.
GOP senators have sent a letter to Obama asking that he quickly send over the three FTAs so they can be approved. The eleven signers of that letter are Republican leader McConnell (Ky.), Orrin Hatch (Utah) Chuck Grassley (Iowa), Jon Kyl (Ariz.), Mike Crapo (Idaho), Pat Roberts (Kan.), Mike Enzi (Wyo.), John Cornyn (Texas), Tom Coburn (Okla.), John Thune (S.D.) and Richard Burr (N.C.).
In Vote #150, ten of the eleven voted NAY, and Enzi did not vote. But now they are all for the FTAs themselves! A nest of 'free-trader' snakes, including Hatch and Grassley who both voted NAY on 22 September 2011 (obviously only against the TAA).
"Submitting the free trade agreements to Congress is a concrete step you can take to help the American economy recover," they wrote.
"We urge you to take that step immediately. Once you submit these agreements, we are confident that they will be quickly considered and approved by a bipartisan majority in both houses of Congress."
I mistakenly supposed that at least some of the 27 NAY votes (all GOP) on 22 September 2011 were symbolically taking a stand against renewal of the GSP, which would mean symbolically against the entire WTO system. But no, appears to be not the case!
The reality appears once again that GOP members of Congress have never seen a FTA that they didn't like!
The GOP NAY votes were symbolically against only the TAA (Trade Adjustment Assistance) -- the crumbs to be thrown to Americans who will lose jobs in the very near future if these three FTAs are approved by the House and by the Senate. Approval by the House is 100% certain, especially since Boehner can repeat the September 7 act of betrayal -- when Boehner allowed a voice vote where no votes are recorded so no one will be able to cite these votes in 2012!
Approval by the Senate is still unclear at best, but Senate approval would be much less certain if some GOP senators would come out announcing strongly their NAYs now, when they actually may make a difference.
I personally move/close out accounts based on new fees or changes in interest rates and so on. What you do is just open a new one with some funds and some Internet banks, credit unions, you can open with nothing or $5 bucks, wait for all checks to clear in the old one and set up payments and so on in the new one. Then, close out the old one.
These financial institutions bank on people not closing out their accounts. But truly, if you want a vote, use your consumer choice one and it's also plain smart.
Another example are trading fees. People will pay $20 buck trades when you can find $5 buck, $7 buck trades all over, with the same execution speed, same features and so on.
I have interest bearing accounts with debit cards which gives cash back and free perks on top of it.
Why anyone would stay at these banks which offer nothing and even suck more money from consumers is beyond me.
The top link in these report overviews always goes to the government statistical site with more information.
It's usually linked in the first sentence. The data is manufacturers in the U.S. from a survey, most with $500 million or more in annual sales.
Inflation, or "real" is done by the BEA and that is where exports, imports are subtracted as well as "price deflators", i.e. exchange rates are part of that.
Then, all of that is translated into the BEA NIPA reports, and GDP is revised tomorrow so I will assuredly overview it.
This data, run by the Census (they always say the U.S. dept. of Commerce, but the actual statistical group is part of the Census) and this raw data is an input into the NIPA accounts, where the BEA takes over and gives you "real" or adjusted for inflation, data.
The MXP or price multipliers is where I've had a lot of problems cranking the numbers here to match the BEA. One of those things I haven't gotten to yet on what assumptions, data, etc. I'm missing.
FRED, again, is simply a data and graphing online tool, run by the St. Louis Fed research division. They don't tabulate any of these national statistics, but they offer tools to economists, researchers and students to help them with their analysis.
Durable goods is a component of GDP, PCE is the winner winner chicken dinner because PCE is 70% appox of GDP.
"Core capital goods" ... is that from the point of view of the machine tools manufacturer (shipper) or from the point of view of the producer who is purchasing equipment-machinery (receiver)?
I ask that because I suppose the numbers are for USA, but are we talking about in-USA producers (sellers) of machinery or are we talking about in-USA purchasers of machinery? The in-USA purchasers of machinery are going to be ordering outside the USA as often as not, although they may go through in-USA suppliers.
I am supposing that it's from the point of view of the receivers, the producers of consumer products of all kinds. It doesn't matter where the latest 10,000 units/second ExCello machine was manufactured -- USA or Germany or Italy or Japan or Taiwan. What matters is that manufacturers are tooling up ... or are they just ordering to replace normal wear-and-tear?
Also, what about equipment that is purchased at auction or otherwise from businesses that have closed down or down-sized? Like used but serviceable logging equipment, portable saw mills, and so forth? I guess that's negligible gyppo enterprises, tending almost toward the underground economy ... so, you can't track everything!
Core capital goods are back to 2007, or pre-recession levels. That said, this report is not adjusted for inflation. -- Robert Oak
As an aspect of inflation, we might appreciate it if FRED would break down data to consider specific exchange rates. It's difficult to make comparisons year over year since machinery models change ... and sometimes prices are unique quotes. Then there's the cost of shipping plus installation (or major maintenance-repair) ... but if we could track USD prices through online catalogs ... I think exchange rates would be a big factor.
So, the thinking has been that Core Capital Goods may not be such a great index of employment ... and therefore maybe not a great index of disposable income ... and therefore not such a great predictor of GDP after all, because the new 10,000 cans/second Excello may be running at 40% capacity a year or two years after installed -- since people can't afford to buy the canned products (or are buying products not produced or canned in USA).
Oh well, I guess I really am a 'neo-Fordist' at heart (borrowing term from a recent comment here at EP).
BTW: Sooooooo tempting in the first graph shown (top of page) to tweak that last little apparent low so as to go back up and then maybe oscillate around 0% change -- meaning that the long sought 'low' has been established. That would then eliminate that factor of buyers waiting for the low.
But, is that what the graph will look like a year from now (oscillating around 0% change)? -- considering all the foreclosures that are said to be coming soon or already in the works? I don't know. It's possible.
The only sense I can make out of comment by RossWolfe is by supposing that the last line was to have been a link.
BTW: As someone who grew up in the world of "neo-Fordist Rooseveltian capitalism," I have to comment that it wasn't all bad! Indeed, if it were possible, I'd trade what we have now for those good old days!
Certainly the OccupyWallStreet demonstrations have created a lot of buzz and enlisted a lot of leftish celebrities like Chomsky, Michael Moore, Cornell West, and others to support their cause, but I believe that the rather inchoate, generalized discontent expressed by the protestors needs to be given adequate theoretical clarification in order that the participants in this phenomenon might dedicate themselves to a longer-term program of reconstituting the Left. Michael Moore quite transparently wants a return to neo-Fordist Rooseveltian capitalism, Chomsky is a self-proclaimed "anarchist" who voted for John Kerry in 2004, and so on down the line. I therefore offer the following (Marxist) critique of the protests to this point.
Of course, I realize that it is not enough to relentlessly criticize from the sidelines, but it is essential that these protestors be engaged so that their understanding of global capitalism is deepened and their politics radicalized. This means more than waving a few placards with populist slogans and other such theatrics.
Regressive "Resistance" on Wall Street: Notes on the Occupation
Investigate who is responsible and what exactly happened in the first place...
The men who crashed the world
The first of a four-part investigation into a world of greed and recklessness that led to financial collapse.
Four men who brought down the global economy: a billionaire mortgage-seller who fooled millions; a high-rolling banker with a fatal weakness; a ferocious Wall Street predator; and the power behind the throne.
The crash of September 2008 brought the largest bankruptcies in world history, pushing more than 30 million people into unemployment and bringing many countries to the edge of insolvency. Wall Street turned back the clock to 1929.
But how did it all go so wrong?
Lack of government regulation; easy lending in the US housing market meant anyone could qualify for a home loan with no government regulations in place.
Also, London was competing with New York as the banking capital of the world. Gordon Brown, the British finance minister at the time, introduced 'light touch regulation' - giving bankers a free hand in the marketplace.
All this, and with key players making the wrong financial decisions, saw the world's biggest financial collapse.
Meltdown is a four-part investigation that takes a closer look at the people who brought down the financial world. It can be seen on Al Jazeera English
A global financial tsunami
Meltdown examines how an epidemic of fear caused banks to stop lending, triggered protests and led to industrial action.
In the second episode of Meltdown, we look at how the financial tsunami swept the world. We hear about a renegade executive who nearly destroyed the global financial system and the US treasury secretary who bailed out his friends.
Henry 'Hank' Paulson, the former CEO of Goldman Sachs and later an economic advisor to the US government; refused to bail out global financial services firm - the Lehman Brothers. Paulson said it was not the role of government to save private businesses.
Lehman's failure had repercussions around the world. Millions of people lost their life savings. Pension plans were decimated.
Christine Lagarde, the French finance minister at the time and a close friend of Paulson's, publicly described Paulson's decision on Lehman "horrendous".
Markets from London and Paris to Shanghai fell. An epidemic of fear caused the world's major banks to stop lending, ending the year in protests and industrial action.
Sign up for Al Jazeera news, read it everyday like reading the newspaper. I'm tired of just hearing about the politics here in the USA, the world news is just as important. This Occupy Wall Street is not in the news because of news blackouts, just like Michael Moore said. This is the same thing happening that I was involved in to end the War in Vietnam. I used to go to the same type of rallys in Sacramento in the 60's.. the people had a voice by joining forces...
This has been going on for awhile now and you won't see it on US TV, its going on all over the USA you just have to look for an event nearest you...
This country needs to get back to Ethics....
And to which of those three generations of media-controlled idiots do you belong? Even if you're a "Greatest," look at the prophetic dualism in war-era propaganda posters or the naive, idyllic newsreels introducing the suburbs into the American consciousness to see how little has changed.
People have been throwing around the term "Class Warfare" when in reality the scarcity of resources has also led to a clash between two generations. I see all three (yes, I remember Gen X, too) working age generations with heartfelt pity: laid off Boomers can't find work, Gen Xers have little mobility and underwater mortgages from the mid-'00s, and Millennials can't even find a first job to begin paying down their mountain of student debt. There's a lot of blame to pass around, but ultimately there's more to pity in each scenario.
first, most people from Wisconsin don't have enough money to make it to NY and sit and protest and odds on, these people have the time because they do not have a job.
They also could have not been 18 in 2010 election to even vote.
I think they are trying to do something here, obviously voting didn't work out too well.
That is to say, histrionic personality disorder. Look, mommy, the Whole World is Watching (me)!
That's nice, dear. Now let's go sign up for more debt so you can go to a good college and leapfrog over others in your pursuit of class status!
Shall we take Mommy's Prius? Or Apple Vixen Django's fixy?
I'm sick of this shit. It's political spectacle, and that's all--Situationist self indulgence that does nothing practical but divert the masses. These stupid kids couldn't even get out of bed last November long enough to vote to keep Rick Walker from getting elected, and Russ Feingold--the most honest person in Senate--in his seat.
Oh, but they could turn up by the hundred thousand to "march" on Madison afterwards!!!
By the way:
http://www.cracked.com/article/116_5-facts-about-woodstock-hippies-dont-...
They are now three generations of media-controlled idiots. And Boomer fucks like Michael Moore whip them up so they can feel good about being personalities, rather than doers.
America was not founded by some Ron Paul distorted libertarian philosophy, not by a long shot.
My favorite example is trade, the U.S. had tariffs, incentives, all sorts of government intervention to make it the great exporter it once was.
Look, we're an economics site, not a philosophy or fantasy site and go by the theory and the statistics.
We are not a political site per say, although politics pop up and we assuredly are not a Ron Paul cheerleader fan club.
This post was to cheer on these people for finally standing up and raising hell, which everyone in America should do.
But repeating economic fiction over and over by people who do not even know the basic economic history of the U.S. sure doesn't help.
I usually say, quit with the prattling and go to your nearby university library and crack some undergrad economics texts. Paul Samuelson's Econ 101 is a great place to start.
I agree on celebrities generally. Look at their Presidential endorsements for a start...but Michael Moore is more of a political activist and just did his "documentary" on Wall Street, financial "Armageddon".
Roger & Me is a classic and a foreshadowing of all of the disposable worker syndrome in the U.S. that is imploding not only the U.S. middle class but now the entire economy.
You can have two comments or register and get an account.
The AFL-CIO as well as many other groups are asking people to FAX, call their representatives to stop the Panama, Columbia and South Korea trade deals. We've written volumes on how these will lose jobs, are based on NAFTA style agreements and Panama, is just beyond belief in terms of putting tax havens legally out of reach.
The movement is sprouting up all over the country, now specific demands should be made. Lots of people describe the problem then present some agenda which is the antithesis of any solution.
i.e. enact a transactional tax on high frequency flash trade. Ban derivatives. Demand banks take a hair cut on current mortgages...
and so on.
Folks, let me know if you have any trouble with viewing and commenting on the site. I've tested the site with Opera and Opera Mini, Symbian S60, Android 2.2 and I could login, write comments and pass the CAPTCHA, play all of the videos, view and scale the images.
For my testing, Opera mini was by far the best mobile browser.
That said, I'd like to know if anyone has any problems with participating on the site via a mobile phone, tablet and so on.
More and more people are reading articles on the go and I want to make sure the site is user friendly in the mobile space!
I have just assumed they would pass them, since multinational corporations are the ones demanding these bad trade deals.
If they are actually blocked by Democrats, they just got a spine.
I'm sorry, but especially the Panama one, it seems it's all about tax havens and has nothing to do with bad trade.
The Korean trade deal will flood the U.S. with Korean autos.
Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), the Senate Majority leader, is lining up with at least some other Senate Democrats as opposed to the three FTAs that are being pushed by Obama (as the Obama trade policy, even though they were negotiated back during the Bush administration).
Reid, who was re-elected in 2010 and won't face re-election until 2014, appears to be speaking for a number of Democratic senators.
Following is excerpted from article in The Hill (Vicki Needham, 25 September 2011), Pelosi and Reid at odds with Obama over trade
Pelosi
The article from The Hill states that Pelosi also is in disagreement with Obama on 'free' trade issues. She takes what is known as a 'more nuanced' position than Reid, although the facts seem to be saying that it all comes down to the worm turning on CAFTA. Yes, CAFTA was enacted in 2005 with a 217-215 vote in the House, but only 15 Democrats voted for it (and no Democrats failed to vote). The populist strength of the anti-FTA position was already clear in 2005, and it is much stronger now.
According to the Vicki Needham article from The Hill
China currency issue
Yes, that's correct: House Democratic leader Pelosi says she is focusing on "a China currency bill" which "would keep American workers on our shores."
(That's a strange way of putting it, must be quoted out of context -- "keep American workers on our shores." It sounds like workers are shipping out of San Francisco, headed for the South China Sea. Surely, Pelosi would mean to say "keep American jobs on our shores" or "keep American workers employed on our shores.")
Need for accountability in House voting
It will indeed be a sorry day for the United States of America if Boehner decides to repeat the voice-vote charade when the three treaties come up for a vote in the House. An even sorrier day if nobody even notices ....
Mea culpa. Senate vote #150 was already history when I posted my comment, and now, on review, I see that #150 was the vote on the GSP/TAA itself, not the vote on cloture for GSP/TAA! So, here's the correction: GSP/TAA passed the Senate (70 to 27) on 22 September 2011, preparing the way for another sell-out of the American people in three more so-called 'free' trade agreements (FTAs) ...
... (the cloture vote (84 to 8) was taken on 19 September 2011) ...
... and now, the other shoe to drop is when the President sends the three FTAs over to Congress for approval ... and GOP members of Congress can hardly wait for another chance to betray US workers and the US economy ... so that they can pass GO and collect their money, while there is still time for voters to have forgotten all this betrayal before next November 2012 ... or so that they won't have to worry if they are never re-elected anyway, as they call in favors owed to them by MNCs.
GOP senators have sent a letter to Obama asking that he quickly send over the three FTAs so they can be approved. The eleven signers of that letter are Republican leader McConnell (Ky.), Orrin Hatch (Utah) Chuck Grassley (Iowa), Jon Kyl (Ariz.), Mike Crapo (Idaho), Pat Roberts (Kan.), Mike Enzi (Wyo.), John Cornyn (Texas), Tom Coburn (Okla.), John Thune (S.D.) and Richard Burr (N.C.).
In Vote #150, ten of the eleven voted NAY, and Enzi did not vote. But now they are all for the FTAs themselves! A nest of 'free-trader' snakes, including Hatch and Grassley who both voted NAY on 22 September 2011 (obviously only against the TAA).
Following is from article in The Hill (Vicki Needham, 9 September 2011), Senate Republicans step up pressure on White House to submit free-trade deals
I mistakenly supposed that at least some of the 27 NAY votes (all GOP) on 22 September 2011 were symbolically taking a stand against renewal of the GSP, which would mean symbolically against the entire WTO system. But no, appears to be not the case!
The reality appears once again that GOP members of Congress have never seen a FTA that they didn't like!
The GOP NAY votes were symbolically against only the TAA (Trade Adjustment Assistance) -- the crumbs to be thrown to Americans who will lose jobs in the very near future if these three FTAs are approved by the House and by the Senate. Approval by the House is 100% certain, especially since Boehner can repeat the September 7 act of betrayal -- when Boehner allowed a voice vote where no votes are recorded so no one will be able to cite these votes in 2012!
Approval by the Senate is still unclear at best, but Senate approval would be much less certain if some GOP senators would come out announcing strongly their NAYs now, when they actually may make a difference.
I personally move/close out accounts based on new fees or changes in interest rates and so on. What you do is just open a new one with some funds and some Internet banks, credit unions, you can open with nothing or $5 bucks, wait for all checks to clear in the old one and set up payments and so on in the new one. Then, close out the old one.
These financial institutions bank on people not closing out their accounts. But truly, if you want a vote, use your consumer choice one and it's also plain smart.
Another example are trading fees. People will pay $20 buck trades when you can find $5 buck, $7 buck trades all over, with the same execution speed, same features and so on.
I have interest bearing accounts with debit cards which gives cash back and free perks on top of it.
Why anyone would stay at these banks which offer nothing and even suck more money from consumers is beyond me.
Thanks for outline of data collection and analysis process.
The top link in these report overviews always goes to the government statistical site with more information.
It's usually linked in the first sentence. The data is manufacturers in the U.S. from a survey, most with $500 million or more in annual sales.
Inflation, or "real" is done by the BEA and that is where exports, imports are subtracted as well as "price deflators", i.e. exchange rates are part of that.
Then, all of that is translated into the BEA NIPA reports, and GDP is revised tomorrow so I will assuredly overview it.
This data, run by the Census (they always say the U.S. dept. of Commerce, but the actual statistical group is part of the Census) and this raw data is an input into the NIPA accounts, where the BEA takes over and gives you "real" or adjusted for inflation, data.
The MXP or price multipliers is where I've had a lot of problems cranking the numbers here to match the BEA. One of those things I haven't gotten to yet on what assumptions, data, etc. I'm missing.
FRED, again, is simply a data and graphing online tool, run by the St. Louis Fed research division. They don't tabulate any of these national statistics, but they offer tools to economists, researchers and students to help them with their analysis.
Durable goods is a component of GDP, PCE is the winner winner chicken dinner because PCE is 70% appox of GDP.
"Core capital goods" ... is that from the point of view of the machine tools manufacturer (shipper) or from the point of view of the producer who is purchasing equipment-machinery (receiver)?
I ask that because I suppose the numbers are for USA, but are we talking about in-USA producers (sellers) of machinery or are we talking about in-USA purchasers of machinery? The in-USA purchasers of machinery are going to be ordering outside the USA as often as not, although they may go through in-USA suppliers.
I am supposing that it's from the point of view of the receivers, the producers of consumer products of all kinds. It doesn't matter where the latest 10,000 units/second ExCello machine was manufactured -- USA or Germany or Italy or Japan or Taiwan. What matters is that manufacturers are tooling up ... or are they just ordering to replace normal wear-and-tear?
Also, what about equipment that is purchased at auction or otherwise from businesses that have closed down or down-sized? Like used but serviceable logging equipment, portable saw mills, and so forth? I guess that's negligible gyppo enterprises, tending almost toward the underground economy ... so, you can't track everything!
As an aspect of inflation, we might appreciate it if FRED would break down data to consider specific exchange rates. It's difficult to make comparisons year over year since machinery models change ... and sometimes prices are unique quotes. Then there's the cost of shipping plus installation (or major maintenance-repair) ... but if we could track USD prices through online catalogs ... I think exchange rates would be a big factor.
BTW: ProphetWithoutProfit back in June cited NYT for better-late-than-never recognition that core capital goods may not indicate anything positive for relief of unemployment. Purchase of a new 10,000 cans/second Excello machine may be keeping people employed in Germany but what if it doesn't require any more employees to run that the old 5,000 cans/second machine?
So, the thinking has been that Core Capital Goods may not be such a great index of employment ... and therefore maybe not a great index of disposable income ... and therefore not such a great predictor of GDP after all, because the new 10,000 cans/second Excello may be running at 40% capacity a year or two years after installed -- since people can't afford to buy the canned products (or are buying products not produced or canned in USA).
Oh well, I guess I really am a 'neo-Fordist' at heart (borrowing term from a recent comment here at EP).
Thanks.
BTW: Sooooooo tempting in the first graph shown (top of page) to tweak that last little apparent low so as to go back up and then maybe oscillate around 0% change -- meaning that the long sought 'low' has been established. That would then eliminate that factor of buyers waiting for the low.
But, is that what the graph will look like a year from now (oscillating around 0% change)? -- considering all the foreclosures that are said to be coming soon or already in the works? I don't know. It's possible.
I had to disable them due to a spam attack that the system wasn't able to catch.
If people want to write, discuss, they should register. Sorry about that, never ending, ongoing battle with spam vs. real people who want to discuss.
The only sense I can make out of comment by RossWolfe is by supposing that the last line was to have been a link.
BTW: As someone who grew up in the world of "neo-Fordist Rooseveltian capitalism," I have to comment that it wasn't all bad! Indeed, if it were possible, I'd trade what we have now for those good old days!
Certainly the OccupyWallStreet demonstrations have created a lot of buzz and enlisted a lot of leftish celebrities like Chomsky, Michael Moore, Cornell West, and others to support their cause, but I believe that the rather inchoate, generalized discontent expressed by the protestors needs to be given adequate theoretical clarification in order that the participants in this phenomenon might dedicate themselves to a longer-term program of reconstituting the Left. Michael Moore quite transparently wants a return to neo-Fordist Rooseveltian capitalism, Chomsky is a self-proclaimed "anarchist" who voted for John Kerry in 2004, and so on down the line. I therefore offer the following (Marxist) critique of the protests to this point.
Of course, I realize that it is not enough to relentlessly criticize from the sidelines, but it is essential that these protestors be engaged so that their understanding of global capitalism is deepened and their politics radicalized. This means more than waving a few placards with populist slogans and other such theatrics.
Regressive "Resistance" on Wall Street: Notes on the Occupation
Investigate who is responsible and what exactly happened in the first place...
The men who crashed the world
The first of a four-part investigation into a world of greed and recklessness that led to financial collapse.
Four men who brought down the global economy: a billionaire mortgage-seller who fooled millions; a high-rolling banker with a fatal weakness; a ferocious Wall Street predator; and the power behind the throne.
The crash of September 2008 brought the largest bankruptcies in world history, pushing more than 30 million people into unemployment and bringing many countries to the edge of insolvency. Wall Street turned back the clock to 1929.
But how did it all go so wrong?
Lack of government regulation; easy lending in the US housing market meant anyone could qualify for a home loan with no government regulations in place.
Also, London was competing with New York as the banking capital of the world. Gordon Brown, the British finance minister at the time, introduced 'light touch regulation' - giving bankers a free hand in the marketplace.
All this, and with key players making the wrong financial decisions, saw the world's biggest financial collapse.
Meltdown is a four-part investigation that takes a closer look at the people who brought down the financial world. It can be seen on Al Jazeera English
A global financial tsunami
Meltdown examines how an epidemic of fear caused banks to stop lending, triggered protests and led to industrial action.
In the second episode of Meltdown, we look at how the financial tsunami swept the world. We hear about a renegade executive who nearly destroyed the global financial system and the US treasury secretary who bailed out his friends.
Henry 'Hank' Paulson, the former CEO of Goldman Sachs and later an economic advisor to the US government; refused to bail out global financial services firm - the Lehman Brothers. Paulson said it was not the role of government to save private businesses.
Lehman's failure had repercussions around the world. Millions of people lost their life savings. Pension plans were decimated.
Christine Lagarde, the French finance minister at the time and a close friend of Paulson's, publicly described Paulson's decision on Lehman "horrendous".
Markets from London and Paris to Shanghai fell. An epidemic of fear caused the world's major banks to stop lending, ending the year in protests and industrial action.
Sign up for Al Jazeera news, read it everyday like reading the newspaper. I'm tired of just hearing about the politics here in the USA, the world news is just as important. This Occupy Wall Street is not in the news because of news blackouts, just like Michael Moore said. This is the same thing happening that I was involved in to end the War in Vietnam. I used to go to the same type of rallys in Sacramento in the 60's.. the people had a voice by joining forces...
This has been going on for awhile now and you won't see it on US TV, its going on all over the USA you just have to look for an event nearest you...
This country needs to get back to Ethics....
And to which of those three generations of media-controlled idiots do you belong? Even if you're a "Greatest," look at the prophetic dualism in war-era propaganda posters or the naive, idyllic newsreels introducing the suburbs into the American consciousness to see how little has changed.
People have been throwing around the term "Class Warfare" when in reality the scarcity of resources has also led to a clash between two generations. I see all three (yes, I remember Gen X, too) working age generations with heartfelt pity: laid off Boomers can't find work, Gen Xers have little mobility and underwater mortgages from the mid-'00s, and Millennials can't even find a first job to begin paying down their mountain of student debt. There's a lot of blame to pass around, but ultimately there's more to pity in each scenario.
first, most people from Wisconsin don't have enough money to make it to NY and sit and protest and odds on, these people have the time because they do not have a job.
They also could have not been 18 in 2010 election to even vote.
I think they are trying to do something here, obviously voting didn't work out too well.
That is to say, histrionic personality disorder. Look, mommy, the Whole World is Watching (me)!
That's nice, dear. Now let's go sign up for more debt so you can go to a good college and leapfrog over others in your pursuit of class status!
Shall we take Mommy's Prius? Or Apple Vixen Django's fixy?
I'm sick of this shit. It's political spectacle, and that's all--Situationist self indulgence that does nothing practical but divert the masses. These stupid kids couldn't even get out of bed last November long enough to vote to keep Rick Walker from getting elected, and Russ Feingold--the most honest person in Senate--in his seat.
Oh, but they could turn up by the hundred thousand to "march" on Madison afterwards!!!
By the way:
http://www.cracked.com/article/116_5-facts-about-woodstock-hippies-dont-...
They are now three generations of media-controlled idiots. And Boomer fucks like Michael Moore whip them up so they can feel good about being personalities, rather than doers.
Same thing on the right.
America was not founded by some Ron Paul distorted libertarian philosophy, not by a long shot.
My favorite example is trade, the U.S. had tariffs, incentives, all sorts of government intervention to make it the great exporter it once was.
Look, we're an economics site, not a philosophy or fantasy site and go by the theory and the statistics.
We are not a political site per say, although politics pop up and we assuredly are not a Ron Paul cheerleader fan club.
This post was to cheer on these people for finally standing up and raising hell, which everyone in America should do.
But repeating economic fiction over and over by people who do not even know the basic economic history of the U.S. sure doesn't help.
I usually say, quit with the prattling and go to your nearby university library and crack some undergrad economics texts. Paul Samuelson's Econ 101 is a great place to start.
I agree on celebrities generally. Look at their Presidential endorsements for a start...but Michael Moore is more of a political activist and just did his "documentary" on Wall Street, financial "Armageddon".
Roger & Me is a classic and a foreshadowing of all of the disposable worker syndrome in the U.S. that is imploding not only the U.S. middle class but now the entire economy.
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