The Decline & Fall Of The American Empire

[firstandten]

Why not? Those trading 'partners' are the present beneficiaries while US workers and taxpayers are the present losers. How else are we going to get at the root of the problem?

I guess my concern is a sparking of a trade war in which we don't have a lot of leverage. But as you stated we may be at a point where we don't have good options other than import taxes

[oladub]

I guess my concern is a sparking of a trade war in which we don't have a lot of leverage. But as you stated we may be at a point where we don't have good options other than import taxes

From your post #70

#17 The United States spends approximately $3.90 on Chinese
goods for every $1 that the Chinese spend on goods from the United
States.

China has much more to lose so I think we have the leverage. We might lose a customer for our treasuries though. Hillary pointed out something about not upsetting one's banker. It's like a chess game. We have to somehow balance our budget to not be vulnerable to the actions of our bankers in order to exploit our trade disadvantage leverage. However, if we maintain the status quo, we are financially doomed.

[Big Dog]

I think it is too late. I hope and pray that it isn't. We will know, in the near future.

[Patrick]

Doed anybody predict the "breakup" of the US in the next 50 years? Maybe something similar to what happened to the USSR?

[canuck]

firstandten

Maybe since the real estate prices have gone to hell, and the new workers being hired at 14$/hour, the ball will start rolling in US auto manufacturing. Who knows?

This little bit from detnews in 2007, note the comment about how US mfrs would love to build an integrated plant like this in the US but the UAW is not warm to it...

http://apps.detnews.com/apps/multime...ex.php?id=1189

[firstandten]

firstandten

Maybe since the real estate prices have gone to hell, and the new workers being hired at 14$/hour, the ball will start rolling in US auto manufacturing. Who knows?

This little bit from detnews in 2007, note the comment about how US mfrs would love to build an integrated plant like this in the US but the UAW is not warm to it...

http://apps.detnews.com/apps/multime...ex.php?id=1189

Supplier integration is the future of auto manufacturing. Small, flexible plants that can produce a variety of vehicles. The suppliers will be doing the typical supply chain funtions including going down on the shop floor and helping to assemble the vehicle or at least assembling their module that will go into the vehicle.

Of course this represents a loss of jobs for UAW members however the union needs to understand that the traditional way of doing business will make the American companies non-competitive. The UAW will come around eventually, they will have to or get left in the dust again like in the eighties with the Japanese.

[maxx]

http://extremeinequality.org/?p=101
"...In 1997, Daimler’s top gun, Juergen Schrempp, earned an estimated $2.5 million. Chrysler’s Robert Eaton that same year took home $16 million, over six times more. Chrysler’s top five execs, together, collected $50 million in 1997 compensation. Daimler’s top ten execs pulled in only $11 million....In the fiscal year that ended in March 2007, Toyota’s top 32 executives — a group that included CEO Katsuaki Watanabe — together pulled in $7.8 million in bonuses on top of salaries of $12.1 million. For the comparable period, one single GM exec, CEO Rick Wagoner, raked in $10.2 million.
Ironically, Ford’s current CEO, Alan Mulally, came into the auto industry from Boeing, a company with a relatively egalitarian — by American standards — pay tradition. In Boeing’s golden years, observes author David Kusnet, whose new book explores the aircraft giant’s history, a Boeing CEO would never have considered flying into Washington in a luxurious private jet..."


Yes, lowly workers, it's important to be competitive.

[canuck]

Thanks maxx.

[firstandten]

...In the fiscal year that ended in March 2007, Toyota’s top 32 executives — a group that included CEO Katsuaki Watanabe — together pulled in $7.8 million in bonuses on top of salaries of $12.1 million.

And to think that once upon a time Japanese company exec's never made more than 10 times the salary of the lowest assembly line worker.

[Danny]

If Roman Empire fell to the barbarians then the American Empire will fall to the Islamic barbarians.

[maxx]

If Roman Empire fell to the barbarians then the American Empire will fall to the Islamic barbarians.

Great logic, Danny. Who is not barbaric when waging war? The USSR fell by extending itself too far and not keeping its people happy.

[rb336]

I am making a point about entiltlement babies thinking the governement owes them something for being alive in the U.S. and poilticians playing off that by trying to get votes from entitlement babies by promising them this and that and the next thing, this goes on from all sides of the political spectrum in different forms as we all know.

Do you ever say anything that doesn't come out of the right-wing don't-think-for-yourself handbook? What, exactly, are "entitlement babies" and exactly how much do they drain out ofthe budget and economy? my bet is you don't have a clue, the words just sounded good to you

China has 600 million people that make $3.00 or less a day. [[that's 2 times bigger than us)
They have to sell cheap stuff to us because most their own country can't afford their own stuff.
This country will come back stronger in the long run, DESPITE what the socialists do to redistribute wealth.

Sorry, bub, the largest redistribution of wealth in the history of the world has happened during the last 30 years of Reaganomics - from the poor and middle class to the wealthy. Why is it wrong to rectify that situation?

[Jimaz]

A New Year's Resolution for the Rich

American opposition to the "redistribution of wealth" has achieved the luster of a religious creed. And, as with all religions, one finds the faithful witlessly espousing doctrines that harm almost everyone, including their own children. For instance, while most Americans have no chance of earning or inheriting significant wealth, 68 percent want the estate tax eliminated [[and 31 percent consider it to be the "worst" and "least fair" tax levied by the federal government). Most believe that limiting this tax, which affects only 0.2 percent of the population, should be the top priority of the current Congress.

The truth, however, is that everyone must favor the "redistribution of wealth" at some point. This relates directly to the issue of education: as the necessity of doing boring and dangerous work disappears--whether because we have built better machines and infrastructure, or shipped our least desirable jobs overseas--people need to be better educated so that they can apply themselves to more interesting work. Who will pay for this? There is only one group of people who can pay for anything at this point: the wealthy.

[maxx]

gdog: China has 600 million people that make $3.00 or less a day. [[that's 2 times bigger than us)
They have to sell cheap stuff to us because most their own country can't afford their own stuff.
This country will come back stronger in the long run, DESPITE what the socialists do to redistribute wealth.

WalMart is selling Chinese stuff to Americans thereby destroying U.S. manufacturing and sending U.S. money to China. That sounds like wealth redistribution to me.

[maxx]

For all the traitors who want Obama's admin. to fail.

http://www.truth-out.org/figuring-ou...lar-worth66609
"...But the Fed’s strategy of injecting money into the economy seems to be working, as it has improved economic growth expectations for the United States, quieting naysayers who argued that merely “printing money” was not an effective solution. The spread between yields on 10- and 30-year Treasuries has narrowed by more than a percentage point. This is a signal from the market that the United States’ economy is on track to recover, since the spread between these two long-term bonds narrows when investor confidence increases in the riskier 30-year bonds. The narrower spread also makes it unlikely that the Fed will have to resort to further quantitative easing in the near future..."

[oladub]

Of Maya Schenwar: "Maya is Truthout's Executive Director. Previously, she was a senior editor and reporter at Truthout, writing on US defense policy,
the criminal justice system, campaign politics, and immigration reform. Prior to her work at Truthout,
Maya was Contributing Editor at Punk Planet magazine, and wrote for In These Times, AlterNet, Zeek Magazine, TheNation.com,
Bitch Magazine, Common Dreams, Z Magazine and others."

It is only reasonable that she would print sacred word of Paul Krugman who has a record of being wrong about about most everything and being an apologist for Goldman Sachs. Whereas Ron Paul predicted the internet bubble and the fall of the banks, Fannie, Freddie, and the housing market, Krugman did not. Whereas Paul is predicting a significant collapse of the value of our dollar when the banks start lending out all their Treasury and Fed gift money, Krugman is saying "nothing happening here folks, move along. The fed will continue to protect the value of the dollar according to Krugman. That is one of its charter obligations. Never mind that the dollar has lost 96% of its purchasing power since the instigation of the fed.

I hope that all the Americans who are still out of work or losing their houses, or watching their jobs move offshore agree with Krugman's rosy assessment of our economy.

Krugman seems upset that Ron Paul will now be able to take a better look at what Mr. Krugman's sponsors at the megabanks have been up to. Mr. Krugman didn't even like it when the Huffington Post managed to fight for it's freedom of information rightsand found out that the-"US Fed lent $3.3tn to multinationals, billionaires and foreign banks US central bank releases details of thousands of secret loans to global firms as well as foreign banks and American billionaires"
-http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/dec/02/us-federal-reserve-bailouts-multinationals

Fortunately, the US press was not very interested in following up on this story so it leaves people like Ron Paul, Bernie Sanders, and the occasional reporter to learn more. Krugman, your corporatist front man has cause to be snitty. I wouldn't go so far as to call him a 'traitor' but 'court fool' would almost suffice.

[ghettopalmetto]

That is one of its charter obligations. Never mind that the dollar has lost 96% of its purchasing power since the instigation of the fed.

Yeah, and nobody makes $25 a week anymore, either.

Let us know when the sky has finally hit the ground.

[oladub]

Yeah, and nobody makes $25 a week anymore, either.

Let us know when the sky has finally hit the ground.

Nothing like fighting facts with cliches. The Federal Reserve's mandates are threefold:
"to promote effectively the goals of maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates."

So are you happy about the Fed's employment success or the stable prices that it has maintained since 1913? The dollar, repeat, has lost 96% of its spending value since 1913. Our official unemployment rate has been over 9% for over two years. Americans are losing their homes in record numbers. Krugman, Obama, and you guys are so happy with the results that you want to protect the fed from transparency and give it more power over our economy. The inlation is just beginning to show up at the grocers'. What next guys to make your central corporatist planning work, rationing?

[ghettopalmetto]

Nothing like fighting facts with cliches. The Federal Reserve's mandates are threefold:
"to promote effectively the goals of maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates."

So are you happy about the Fed's employment success or the stable prices that it has maintained since 1913? The dollar, repeat, has lost 96% of its spending value since 1913.

Oh, YOU are going to lecture on "cliches", Oladub?

What do you not understand about people no longer making $25 a day? Do you want people to make $50,000 a year, with purchasing power of the dollar remaining the same as it was in 1913? If so, the end result would be the disastrous inflation about which you piss yourself on a daily basis.

Our official unemployment rate has been over 9% for over two years.

And of course, this has been completely static. Not a shred of improvement whatsover.

Americans are losing their homes in record numbers.

You didn't give a shit when enormous tax cuts permitted the wealthy to buy second and third homes, putting an unsustainable bubble into real estate prices. Why worry now?

Krugman, Obama, and you guys are so happy with the results that you want to protect the fed from transparency and give it more power over our economy.

Yes, I do believe the Fed should exercise monetary policy, so designated to it by Congress. Who, in your opinion, should exercise monetary policy instead?

The inlation is just beginning to show up at the grocers'. What next guys to make your central corporatist planning work, rationing?

Yes, and that "inflation" at the grocers has nothing to do with the cold snap in Florida. You're just taking two closely-spaced data points and extrapolating long-term trends from those. Hardly the stuff of sound economic science.

[maxx]

Whereas Ron Paul predicted the internet bubble and the fall of the banks, Fannie, Freddie, and the housing market, Krugman did not.

Actually, Krugman was looking at monetary crises around the world and offering a solution.
http://econ161.berkeley.edu/econ_art...epression.html

"...
The root causes of all of these crises lie in sudden changes in international investors' opinions. Like a herd of not-very-smart cattle, they all were going one way and investing in the particular "emerging market" at the center of the crisis in 1993 or 1996, and then they turned around and were all going the opposite way and pulling their capital out of the "emerging market" even if they had to sell it at fire-sale prices two years later...


So if sudden changes of opinion by international investors cause so much trouble, shouldn't we keep such sudden changes of opinion from having destructive effects? Shouldn't we use capital controls and other devices to keep international flows of investment small, manageable, and firmly corralled? Shouldn't we--as Mahathir Muhammed has done and as Paul Krugman advocates--impose capital controls?.."

[But nobody wanted capital controls. Everyone wanted more and more growth.]

From what I can figure out, it appears that the rich need to have the rest of us poor so there is little money in circulation which keeps down inflation which would diminish the value of the dollars the rich have squirreled away. Which explains why the Republicans weren't particularly interested in extending UE.

from wikipedia:
In September 2003, Krugman published a collection of his columns under the title, The Great Unraveling, about the Bush administration's economic and foreign policies and the US economy in the early 2000s. His columns argued that the large deficits during that time were generated by the Bush administration as a result of decreasing taxes on the rich, increasing public spending, and fighting the Iraq war. Krugman wrote that these policies were unsustainable in the long run and would eventually generate a major economic crisis. The book was a best-seller.[69][70][71]

[It's understandable why Republicans hate Krugman since he revealed their game.]

from wiki:
In 2007, Krugman published The Conscience of a Liberal, whose title references Barry Goldwater's Conscience of a Conservative.[72] It details the history of wealth and income gaps in the United States in the 20th century. The book describes how the gap between rich and poor declined greatly in middle of the century, and then widened in the last two decades to levels higher even than in the 1920s. Most economists [[including Krugman) had regarded the late-20th century divergence as resulting largely from changes in technology and trade. In Conscience, Krugman argues that government policies played a much greater role than commonly thought both in reducing inequality in the 1930s through 1970s and in increasing it in the 1980s through the present, and criticizes the Bush administration for implementing policies that Krugman believes widened the gap between the rich and poor.
Krugman also argued that Republicans owed their electoral successes to their ability to "exploit the race issue to win political dominance of the South".[73][74] In this connection, he said that Ronald Reagan had been able to use the so-called "Southern Strategy" to "signal sympathy for racism without saying anything overtly racist,"[75] citing as an example Reagan's coining of the term "welfare queen".[76

[oladub]

GP: "Oh, YOU are going to lecture on "cliches", Oladub?

What do you not understand about people no longer making $25 a day? Do you want people to make $50,000 a year, with purchasing power of the dollar remaining the same as it was in 1913? If so, the end result would be the disastrous inflation about which you piss yourself on a daily basis."

I understand that the melt value of US coins from as late as 1964 would buy 20.75 times as much as today's currency because they were/are anchored to the metal in them. In other words, I could take a dollar worth of 1964 dimes to a coin shop and exchange it for $20.75 of today's federal reserve notes and buy over six gallons of gas with those 10 dimes. Now remember, one of the only three duties the federal reserve was tasked with was "stable prices". Yet the fed has contributed to screwing up the spending value of the dollar so much that it has instead of buying 3 gallons of gas in 1964, one dollar only buys a third of a gallon today unless one is lucky enough to have some old 1964 dimes in which case they buy 6 gallons today.

And of course, this has been completely static. Not a shred of improvement whatsover.

Not really, Unemployment was 5.7% when Bush left office.

You didn't give a shit when enormous tax cuts permitted the wealthy to buy second and third homes, putting an unsustainable bubble into real estate prices. Why worry now?

Actually I did. You are confusing me with mainstream Republicans who also spend way too much for my taste. Also, the bubble had a lot to do with the liquidity policies of the Fed.

Yes, I do believe the Fed should exercise monetary policy, so designated to it by Congress. Who, in your opinion, should exercise monetary policy instead?

The Constitution says that the job belongs to Congress. I will defer to that. The Fed chairman told Bernie Sanders point blank that he would not provide him with the information about the fed that he asked for. That was not an example of the Congress being in charge. If Congress set up a national bank under it's control as Kucinich wants, that would put such a bank under congressional control. however, the fed is a consortium of private banks with their own agendas.

Yes, and that "inflation" at the grocers has nothing to do with the cold snap in Florida. You're just taking two closely-spaced data points and extrapolating long-term trends from those. Hardly the stuff of sound economic science

.

So the reason that there are worldwide record prices in grain, sugar, fish and other prices has to do with a cold snap in Florida? You need to do a bit more reading about food commodity prices.

[maxx]

Looks like sugar was hit with bad weather too although not in FL.

http://www.commodities-now.com/news/...nue--2010.html

[maxx]

Now I'm not happy with Krugman.
http://michael-hudson.com/2010/09/am...unk-economics/

Youtube has Michael Hudson explaining what's going economically.

[maxx]

http://www.thenation.com/blog/161378...t-not-security

"
According to the Pentagon, there are approximately 865 US military bases abroad—over 1,000 if new bases in Iraq and Afghanistan are included. The cost? $102 billion annually—and that doesn’t include the costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan bases.
In a must-read article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Sciences, anthropologist Hugh Gusterson points out that these bases “constitute 95 percent of all the military bases any country in the world maintains on any other country’s territory.” He notes a “bloated and anachronistic” Cold War-tilt toward Europe, including 227 bases in Germany..."


[Do we really need all 227 bases? Could we get by with 226?

[canuck]

maxx[Do we really need all 227 bases? Could we get by with 226?

Well one of them there german bases stocks refrigerated frankfurters and hamburgers.