EASY READING CULTURE OF LIFE NEWS: FREE TRADE FOLLIES FUN « Culture of Life News 2
Of all nations on earth, the US needs the most to untangle itself from half a century of ‘free trade’ follies. We cannot run epic trade deficits forever while consuming a quarter of the earth’s output. But the free trade follies continue, unabated. The bail out of major industries, using future US tax revenues and adding on more debts, isn’t fixing the US deteriorating job situation. The situation is worse in England and the elites there are now openly begging everyone to form support this ‘New World Order’ business. And what the hell is that? Eternal Japanese carry trade? You bet it is!
American exporters in last-ditch attempt to stop Obama raising the trade barriers – Times Online
A coalition of leading American exporters, including Boeing, Caterpillar and General Electric, is trying to stop a “Buy America” clause being included in President Obama’s $825 billion stimulus package.
The American Steel First Act would ensure that only US-made steel was used in $64 billion of federally funded infrastructure projects.
The money, earmarked for roads, bridges and waterways, is aimed at kickstarting the economy, but the initiative by steelmakers, which secured support last week in the House of Representatives Appropriations Committee, is opposed by American exporters, who fear retaliation by foreign governments.
Their concern is given credence by the European Commission and by Eurofer, the association of European steelmakers, which said that it would urge the European Union to challenge the “Buy America” clause at the World Trade Organisation.
I am going to write this in big, fat letters so everyone can figure it out:
This trade war has been raging for 50 years and we lost it, utterly and totally, and now we must fight back or die!
There. I said it in bold enough letters, anyone can hear me. Heh. A lot of people call me ‘crazy’ or even, gosh, ‘stupid.’ But everything is relative. Right now, much of the world is trapped in a mental box. The people who are smart are outside of the box and they all speak funny languages like Chinese or Japanese. They can see the box. They energetically helped us build this box. They even lent us lots and lots of money to buy the materials that are this box.
But they are outside of the box and we are inside of it. And it is called a ‘coffin.’ The US, trapped in a shroud of the floating fiat currency paper, can’t fight its way out of this box. Instead of recoiling in alarm as first OPEC, then Japan and Europe and finally, the rest of Asia, bought up nearly all of our public debt. And their collective FOREX funds held mostly US dollars. And this gave them all tremendous leverage over US finances, foreign policy and trade.
It used to be, the US would have these negotiations like the Bretton Woods II and Plaza Accords where we forced Japan and Germany, several times, to devalue the dollar on our behalf. But those days are now long gone! We owe to everyone and everyone holds dollars and nearly everyone has a trade surplus with the US.
The new administration is very aware that we have a lousy trade and finance position vis a vis our trade rivals. But rather than honestly fight this, we see this crab-like sideways action. ‘Buy American!’ is not going to work. There will be retaliation, of course. So I say, ‘Bring it on!‘ But the exporters in the US want the present status quo, of course.
The Raw Story | US companies cut 45,000 jobs even before stock market opens
- Update at bottom: GM slashes 2,000 more jobs, Obama addresses ‘deepening crisis’
- Caterpillar, Inc. announced they’d eliminate 20,500 jobs Monday morning.
- Pfizer said they’d ax 8,000 as part of a $65 billion deal to buy rival healthcare firm Wyeth.
- Sprint-Nextel announced they’d shed 14 percent of their 56,000 employees.
- “Home Depot Inc. plans to eliminate 7,000 jobs
Whatever jobs the US government creates, it won’t catch up with this freight train. Pfizer, for example, is being hammered by the sharks who rapidly drove up the cost of buying out another drug company. This, in turn, forces Pfizer to fire more people. Stocks shot up today based on this one, big fat deal. But this was a bad day, not good day, for more jobs will be lost due to this one, dumb deal.
Gold continues to climb and finally has gone over the $900 threshold. Of all the above jobs being eliminated, this means another 40,000 people will probably go bankrupt by next year. This, in turn, will spread agony in local communities as many of these jobs are pretty well-paying jobs. Especially the Pfizer, Caterpillar and GM jobs.
SAO PAULO — General Motors plans to invest $1 billion in Brazil to avoid the kind of problems the U.S. automaker is facing in its home market, said the beleaguered car maker.
According to the president of GM Brazil-Mercosur, Jaime Ardila, the funding will come from the package of financial aid that the manufacturer will receive from the U.S. government and will be used to “complete the renovation of the line of products up to 2012.”
“It wouldn’t be logical to withdraw the investment from where we’re growing, and our goal is to protect investments in emerging markets,” he said in a statement published by the business daily Gazeta Mercantil.
See how this box works? The US taxpayers lend money to GM. GM then uses it to upgrade and expand factories in cheap-labor countries. Ditto, Caterpillar. Of course, Caterpillar is hoping to have Obama spend most of the money on building more and more roads for cars. This is yet another wall in our coffin. We can’t see to be able to change gears even when it is painfully obvious, we must or we shall die.
GM does need to expand overseas. But what is good for GM isn’t good for the US. Just like Japan’s export market philosophy is great for Toyota, it stinks for the Japanese people. It is killing Japan, not growing Japan. If Toyota or GM want to do things, they may. But when they control our governments and egg them into doing things that kill both nations, this is means we don’t need to enable them and fund them!
Dutch bank ING sheds chief executive and 7,000 other jobs | Business | guardian.co.uk
ING, the Dutch bank bailed out last year with €10bn (£9.4bn) of state money, today reported its first loss and said it would slash 7,000 jobs worldwide in response to the growing financial crisis.
The bank, one of Europe‘s biggest, took immediate action by shedding its chief executive, Michael Tilmant, after what it said was the worst quarter for equity and credit markets for a quarter of a century. It is due to post an underlying loss of €3.3bn, including €2bn in structured products, for the final three months of 2008.
ING, which employs 130,000 globally, has again turned to the Dutch government which is taking on 80% of its €27.7bn exposure to mortgage-backed assets and monoline insurance products – mirroring similar moves by the Swiss authorities and UBS late last year.
Everyone who is being bailed out is throwing their staff overboard. ING is international while the Dutch are local. The locals are being dragooned into supporting internationalism which hurts them, at home, during hard times. Now, another ‘New World Order’ speech from a struggling prime minister, Brown of England.
BBC NEWS | UK | UK Politics | Brown warns against ‘pessimism’
The economic crisis should be treated as “the difficult birth-pangs of a new global order”, with new rules introduced on trade, Gordon Brown says.
The prime minister set out a series of actions designed to “replace fear with confidence” and warned against just “muddling through as pessimists”.
During a speech defending his handling of the crisis he also warned against the “deglobalisation threat”. His speech came as a poll suggested the Tory lead had grown to 15% over Labour.
“As some want, we could close our markets – for capital, financial services, trade and for labour – and therefore reduce the risks of globalisation.
“But that would reduce global growth, deny us the benefits of global trade and confine millions to global poverty.
“Or we could view the threats and challenges we face today as the difficult birth-pangs of a new global order – and our task now as nothing less than making the transition through a new internationalism to the benefits of an expanding global society – not muddling through as pessimists but making the necessary adjustment to a better future and setting the new rules for this new global order.”
He said: “As the downturn spreads across the world, we are, for the first time, seeing cross border flows growing more slowly than domestic flows. And we are seeing banks favouring domestic lending over foreign lending.
“This is a trend which must be halted if we are to avoid the risk of a damaging worldwide spiral of deleveraging and deglobalisation – with adverse consequences for all economies.”
Where are the voices for controlling international operations? I know that whenever our rulers got together, for years, people would brave violent police suppression to demonstrate against the ruling elites! The ‘free trade’ negotiations had to be held in distant desert dictatorships or on high mountains and other non-urban locales. Now, they are all weeping and wailing and telling us, we need this ‘New World Order’ or we will all be ‘poor’ and die of starvation or something.
I wish he would make this speech in Iceland. Or in Detroit. The sentence I highlighted says it all. He is attacking banks that lend to their own people in their own countries????!!!!! Good grief! This shows how brain rot sets in: these guys go to the Bilderberger and Doha meetings and get increasingly detached from their own nations. Of course, they want this ‘One Ring Rules Them All’ world.
These people are so used to jet-setting in private jets, of course, across the planet and then conspiring with aliens, seeking ways of enriching themselves…look at the money they get when they retire!…and there is zero sense of ‘patriotism’. They want more, not less, internationalism. England, in particular, should be ashamed. England protects a string of islands which are not part of the English judicial or tax systems and these islands are bleeding tax money from the US, England and all the world. And yet, no one dares suggest, these places be shut down.
Also, the speech enrages me. Are banks supposed to stop lending at home in order to save this system that is killing all economies? Well! Here in America, the very best banks are credit unions. Who don’t do business out of the Cayman Islands or Bermuda. No, they are local. And solvent. And the only ones able to lend.
Should they lend to big international corporations so they can bid up the stocks of companies being eaten alive by other corporations? Like today’s Pfizer deal? Which destroy local communities? Good grief.
BBC NEWS | UK | UK Politics | Brown warns against ‘pessimism’
But SNP spokesman Stewart Hosie described Mr Brown’s comments as “meaningless rubbish” designed to deflect criticism from the prime minister.
“Gordon Brown might be better answering why he allowed a credit bubble during his tenure as chancellor or why debt levels were so high that the recession can now only be fought by doubling the national debt to over £1 trillion,” he said.
The poor people of England will rush from the wolf to the lion like in those ancient Aesop’s Fables . There is zero chance that the Tories are going to repudiate world trade and the banking gnomes. They are the banking gnomes! This is like moving from one side of the Titanic to the other, not to the life boats. The life boats are small and uncomfortable but at least, they are floating.
On top of this, look at how the Tory guy blames Labour for the credit bubble. This bubble was global. Anyone who pretends it is local is loco. The central banks all enjoyed this bubble because it made everyone happy. All bubbles thrive on this! As they grow and grow, everyone feels richer and richer! Then, it pops and everyone is plunged into terrible poverty.
All the G7 nations and probably all the G20 nations are on the same Titanic. And all of the leaders who drove the ship onto this immense debt iceberg are lying about the iceberg, lying about their joint responsibility for crashing into this iceberg of debt and they are all trying to move blame to someone else. Most often, the most powerless of the passengers on this Titanic.
Taiwan’s Winbond Electronics (2344.TW) and Inotera Memories (3474.TW) have a combined T$4.35 billion ($129 million) in exposure to insolvent German DRAM memory chip maker Qimonda (QI.N), media reported on Sunday.
Of the pair, Inotera, a joint venture between Taiwan’s Nanya Technology (2408.TW) and U.S. firm Micron Technology (MU.N), has the bigger exposure, with the German chipmaker owing it T$3.4 billion, the Chinese language Economic Daily reported, citing Inotera’s own preliminary estimates.
Winbond is owed about T$950 million, the newspaper reported, also citing the company.
I am including this seemingly odd story to show how internationalist finance and business can screw up everything quite royally. When the German corporation, DRAM, went under, others were pulled under, too. The US Micron Technology company will now be forced into bankruptcy, too. Are local banks going to fix this international mess?
Of course not! The big guys at the top made promises that failed. They allowed international trade to get utterly out of control. Out of hand, racing along with the blessings and help of the G20 central bankers. And to ‘insure’ all this, the international bankers, not local bankers, created the Derivatives Beast. Of all things, this creature is the responsibility of the international elites. And I want all of them to sell their yachts and private jets to pay for it. Not us.
Bad news: we’re back to 1931. Good news: it’s not 1933 yet – Telegraph
Ambrose Evans-PritchardIt is worth glancing at the front page of New York Times on Monday March 6, 1933 to see what the world looked like three days after Franklin Roosevelt moved into the White House.
The newspaper splashed with the story that FDR had closed the US banking system – invoking the Trading with Enemies Act – and ordered the confiscation of private gold. From left to right, the headlines read: “Hitler Bloc Wins A Reich Majority, Rules Prussia”; “Japanese Push On In Fierce Fighting, China Closes Wall, Nanking Admits Defeat”; “City Scrip To Replace Currency”; “President Takes Steps Under Sweeping Law of War Time”; “Prison For Gold Hoarders”.President Obama faces a happier world. The liberal economic order is still intact, if fraying at the edges. Capital and ships move freely. North America and Europe talk the same political language. China has so far proved a dependable pillar of the international system.
But then the world seemed benign enough in early 1931. It is the second phase of depression that does terrible things.
This is so pathetic. It is a good piece if we gloss over it. But if we look very closely, we see some immense and unforgivable errors. For example, ships are most certainly not ‘moving freely’. And capital has vanished. It isn’t moving at all. It is dead, Jim. Europe and the US are not ‘speaking the same political language’, either. Europe has a huge, collective trade surplus with the US before this year. They have an utterly different trade agenda from the US. Even in NATO, there is a huge conflict. The US wants more Europeans to be blown up in Central Asia, for example. Europe says, no way.
And the Chinese are getting pretty pissed at everyone.
The People’s Bank of China, the country’s central bank, disproved Saturday the allegations by a U.S. Treasury official that China is manipulating the exchange rates of its currency, saying the statement is untrue and misleading.
Su Ning, vice governor of the central bank, said that the allegation could sidetrack the effort to track the real cause of the financial crisis.
“President Obama — backed by the conclusions of a broad range of economists — believes that China is manipulating its currency,” the U.S. Treasury Secretary-designate Timothy Geithner wrote to the Senate Finance Committee in documents released on Thursday.
“Also, we should avoid any excuse that might lead to the revitalization of trade protectionism. Because it will do no good to the fight against the crisis, nor will it help the healthy and stable development of the global economy,” Su said.
The US wants a stronger yuan. China has told us to save more money and buy more yuan. We want to have another Bretton Woods III. China wants the old status quo. The one with us running immense trade deficits. The US and China are in conflict. This will and must, worsen. We have no choice.
Strong U.S. dollar paying off for some investors — chicagotribune.com
The expectation from some experts, though not universal, is continued fear of risk likely will keep the dollar strong against other currencies this year. Investors should be aware that U.S. firms such as retailers importing goods from overseas will benefit.
“There are outlets for investors to act on their opinions about where the U.S. dollar is headed,” said Jeff Tjornehoj, senior research analyst with Lipper Inc. “These include exchange-traded funds and mutual funds that bet that the dollar will either get stronger or weaker.”
The whole and entire and utter reason for the flood of imports was simple: the US said, this prevents inflation. Cheap foreign goods via either cheap yen or cheap Asian labor, would keep the price of things in the US very low and in turn, we get super-low interest rate loans. This destroyed our entire economic system and the temptation of cheap lending drove most of our nation deep into debt. Now, we are in a noxious ZIRP situation where saving money earns no returns at all.
And the dollar is strengthening since everyone wants a weak currency so they can trade. The glaring exception is the yen, of course. Japan is frantic to join the ‘strong dollar’ game.
Opinion: U.S. Debt’s Appeal Has Limits – WSJ.com
Barack Obama has spoken often of sacrifice. And as recently as a week ago, he said that to stave off the deepening recession Americans should be prepared to face “trillion dollar deficits for years to come.”
But apart from a stirring call for volunteerism in his inaugural address, the only specific sacrifices the president has outlined thus far include lower taxes, millions of federally funded jobs, expanded corporate bailouts, and direct stimulus checks to consumers. Could this be described as sacrificial?
What he might have said was that the nations funding the majority of America’s public debt — most notably the Chinese, Japanese and the Saudis — need to be prepared to sacrifice. They have to fund America’s annual trillion-dollar deficits for the foreseeable future. These creditor nations, who already own trillions of dollars of U.S. government debt, are the only entities capable of underwriting the spending that Mr. Obama envisions and that U.S. citizens demand.
Obama’s place in history will be in the same box we are in, this coffin. Bush rushed the coffin building scheme forwards and now, all we need is some final nails in the lid. During ‘good’ times, we are supposed to balance the budget, cut the trade deficit and live within our means. In bad times, we go into debt and use this to restart capitalizing things again. We cut taxes in bad times, not good times.
Now, we cut taxes all the time. This is so degenerate. Even if OPEC and Asia are willing to enable this doesn’t mean we do this! The US can’t tighten its belt in bad times. But we refused to get into shape in good times. All elections see tax cut promises. All elections see politicians promising more services. Now, we are in a coffin, rather than stronger and better. We are rapidly falling down the rankings in nearly everything. We owe too much money to too many trade rivals.
Fannie to Seek Up to $16 Billion in Emergency Treasury Aid to Stay Afloat
Bloomberg) — Fannie Mae, the largest source of home-loan money in the U.S., said it will need to tap as much as $16 billion in emergency funds from the U.S. Treasury Department to stay afloat as deterioration in the housing market persists.
Fannie’s planned request, announced today, follows Freddie Mac, which said Jan. 23 that it will need as much as $35 billion more in federal aid. Unprecedented mortgage losses drove the net worth of both companies below zero last quarter, they said in separate securities filings.
Every month, every possible organization, bank and entity is now demanding to be bailed out not once but over and over and over again. The army of new-unemployed at the top of this story will now make things much, much worse. The beginning of the housing collapse was all the people who went too deep in debt even though they still had jobs. It began when stocks were still climbing.
Now, we are in the grinding, ugly part of a depression: more and more people will lose their homes not due to buying McMansions but due to losing their jobs! This is really nasty and not easily fixed. Unemployed people can’t renegotiate a mortgage. ‘Mort’ is old French for ‘death’ and ‘gage’ is ‘security’. An older form of ‘mort’ is ‘mordor’ which is Tolkien’s name for the place where the One Ring That Rules Them All came from.
Opinion: U.S. Debt’s Appeal Has Limits – WSJ.com
Neither the left nor the right of the American political spectrum has shown any willingness to tolerate such a contraction. Recently, for example, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman estimated that a 6.8% contraction in GDP will result in $2.1 trillion in “lost output,” which the government should redeem through fiscal stimulation. In his view, the $775 billion announced in Mr. Obama’s plan is two-thirds too small.
Although Mr. Krugman may not get all that he wishes, it is clear that Mr. Obama’s opening bid will likely move north considerably before any legislation is passed. It is also clear from the political chatter that the policies most favored will be those that encourage rapid consumer spending, not lasting or sustainable economic change. So when the effects of this stimulus dissipate, the same unbalanced economy will remain — only now with a far higher debt load….
If any other country were to face these conditions, unpalatable measures such as severe government austerity or currency devaluation would be the only options. But with our currency’s reserve status, we have much more attractive alternatives. We are planning to spend as much as we like, for as long as we like, and we will let the rest of the world pick up the tab.
Currently, U.S. citizens comprise less than 5% of world population, but account for more than 25% of global GDP. Given our debts and weakening economy, this disproportionate advantage should narrow. Yet the U.S. is asking much poorer foreign nations to maintain the status quo, and incredibly, they are complying. At least for now.
The last President who allowed a contraction in order to kill Stagflation was Jimmy Carter. Everyone but a small, small handful of us, hates him to this day. Even children born after his day, hate him. He fixed our finances and other things and he tried to set us on a course where we reduce our oil imports. For this, he is hated…tremendously.
The Wall Street Journal loved Reagan and hated Jimmy Carter. The NYT won’t give the man the time of day. He is not in the news. The look of disgust on his face when the five Presidents met clearly shows how he feels. He knows that hard choices have to be made. And we don’t want to make them. The feeble attempt with the ‘buy American steel’ provision shows how desperate this situation is and how difficult it is to stop even one nail from being hammered into the lid of our economic coffin.
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Culture of Life News 
I wonder how many people would ‘buy’ homes instead of rent them if they had to take out a 30 year DEATH SECURITY. HAHAHA!
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Maybe houses would return to 3 to 4 times average salary rather than inflated to 10x.
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Here is a great article about the root of the symbol $ for the US dollar. ISIS, The Egyptian Goddess of the Moon and Sirius.
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Also some very interesting discussion of the importance of 4 July AD 1187.
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http://www.atlanteanconspiracy.com/2009/01/freemasonic-statue-of-liberty.html
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Did you know the Statue of Liberty was given to America by French Freemasons? There is another statue just like it in France on an island in the Seine. The character propagated as “Lady Liberty,” supposedly derived from the Roman goddess Libertus, is simply a patriotic pseudonym for the public. Lady Liberty has been known throughout history as Isis of Egypt, Semiramis/Ishtar of Babylon, Athena of Greece, Astarte of Syria, Cybele of Rome, Ashtoreth of Israel, and Diana of Ephesus. She is the Pagan mother Goddess of the Brotherhood, nearly always depicted dressed in robe, wearing a crown of thorns, and carrying the torch of illumination. She is symbolic of both the Moon and “dog-star” Sirius, which is why the English word for God is simply Dog backwards. The “dog days” of summer was coined after Sirius and was believed to be an evil time. J. Brady in “Clavis Calendarium” says the dog days were known as a time “when the seas boiled, wine turned sour, dogs grew mad, and all creatures became languid, causing to man burning fevers, hysterics, and phrensies.” This hot time was associated with hot-headedness. This is why you’re Sirius when you’re Serious. This is also the occult origin of the all-American “hot dog.” July 4th, America’s Independence Day, just happens to be the 2nd of Sirius’ dog days – an important date to the pre-Masonic Knights Templar.
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“It is the date of the Templar’s massive defeat by Muslim armies in the Holy Land at the Horns of Hattin on 4 July AD 1187, which was followed by the loss of Jerusalem to Christendom. There could therefore hardly be a more evocative ‘Templar’ or ‘Solomonic’ date than 4 July – evocative, that is, of the aspiration to build Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem. The reader will also be aware, of course, that 4 July is Independence Day in the US, commemorating the signature of the Declaration of Independence and converting the date forever into a powerful talisman that spells out ‘Independence’ and ‘Freedom” for the New World and, now by and large, for a new world order.” -Graham Hancock and Robert Buaval, “Talisman” (470)
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The symbol for the U.S. dollar is $, sometimes with one or two vertical lines. The “S” and “I” have nothing to do with “dollars” and everything to do with “ISIS.” The Egyptian Goddess of the Moon and Sirius was “ISIS” and this is the most common name for her used by the Brotherhood. The dollar sign is actually an occult talisman to this Illuminati Goddess. This is why both the Statue of Liberty/Isis and her dollars are both the same color green. The ancient roots of the word Moon were “mon” and “min” which is why we have “money” made at the “mint.” The very idea of money and symbolic currency comes from ancient secret societies.
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“Silver was connected with the moon and therefore with the Goddesses of the moon, the most famous of which was and is ISIS. So her name became the symbol of money. We find this today in the cleverly camouflaged motif – $- which is nothing more than the sigil for the name of I-S-I-S, but fused together in an ingenious manner.” -Michael Tsarion, “Astrotheology and Sidereal Mythology”
That young man is so utterly wrong about so many things!
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First off, the word ‘god’ has NOTHING to do with ‘dog.’ Nothing. It comes from ‘Gott’ in German and from an old, old gothic word for ‘[to hear a] voice’. Namely, the gods ‘speak to us’, we can’t see them.
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His history of the dollar sign is equally wrong. Few Americans know that our early money was based on the Peso. Not English money! The strike shape of the $ is based on old forms of strike plates for spanish coins. And silver was used for money because it is a ‘precious metal’ but it never, ever surpassed gold, which doesn’t degrade like silver. Gold has always been the top of the mountain.
Alright, back to something we can all agree on.
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Free trade has whacked over 2 million jobs in 2008. Wow.
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http://money.cnn.com/2009/01/26/news/economy/job_cuts/index.htm
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“Nearly 2.6 million jobs were lost over 2008, the highest yearly job-loss total since 1945.”
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Anyone have any statistics on the number of H1-B visas issued in the USA over the last 8 years?
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This chart is pretty cool.
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http://h1b-visa-data.com/states.html
I think the people of England might start going for the BNP.
These are scary times!
Elaine said:
“US taxpayers lend money to GM. GM then uses it to upgrade and expand factories in cheap-labor countries. Ditto, Caterpillar. Of course, Caterpillar is hoping to have Obama spend most of the [bailout] money on building more and more roads for cars.”
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Elaine: I had hardly started reading this article when my blood began to boil and I had to force myself to calm down before finishing it.
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I just wish Caterpillar and GM would just go ahead and move their fucking headquarters to Dubai or Brazil or the Bahamas or wherever the hell the stupid, greedy bastards want to go. Just get the hell out of my country and take your families with you…and don’t come the fuck back..ever. Those of us who remain here in poverty will turn your McMansions into fucking museums dedicated to human stupidity or something like that.
If we remaining citizens have to eventually scratch around and rebuild this G… D….. mess, then we won’t be burdened by supporting these corrupt billion dollar deadbeats while we do it.
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Good god! This pisses me off! When these executives die, I hope someone writes on their tombstones that they went through life with their heads stuck up their dumb asses.
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On a more reasonable note, Elaine, you are very right about these guys thinking being enclosed in a box..a coffin. They lived for many years exploiting everyone and everything around them…and they don’t know how to “change gears” or “shuttle shift” backwards when disaster is certain. They just plough straight ahead like always, but the entire nation is crumbling and their actions are ensuring that its decline continues.
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Researchers have discovered that the human mind plays tricks on itself when people are driving down the highway in heavy fog…seems that the mind tells people to speed up a lot to try to get into the fog to see what is ahead, but the increased speed makes it impossible to stop for traffic ahead…and thus, the spectacular, deadly fifty car highway crashes we see on the news occasionally.
Well, this is what we are seeing now. The more stupid of these corporate leaders will not slow down and proceed carefully,and try to help us preserve our homeland. Instead they destroy lives and wealth with their full-speed ahead thought paradigms.
They might imagine the world loves them and globalization will make them valued globally, but most other nations view them as outright suckers, or “marks” to be taken advantage of.
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And what the fuck do we need more roads for? To use more oil for asphalt since it is increasingly scarce and soon to be extremely expensive…and the damned cars…what are we going to do when oil becomes too expensive to even generate electricity to charge batteries, put pedals in the darned things?
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What we need is high speed rail transportation built from one end of the nation to the other..with trunk lines passing near every town and village…This is 100 times more efficient than driving millions of autos and trucks on ever crumbling asphalt and concrete roads. But it won’t happen because few in financial leadership positions give a flying fuck about our nation…and feel no sense of obligation toward our future, and this is why globalization won’t work…the more distant leadership is from the people, the less it works at solving problems and citizen loyalty declines…and the entire system stagnates…like now.
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My neighbor owns heavy equipment and he switched to John Deere/Lebeher because Caterpillar is crap…at least the tracks and engines on the German stuff do not wear out in a few thousand hours like Caterpillar. Screw Caterpillar.
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I’ve been associated somewhat with autos and auto repair for much of my life…and I was a GM lover for many years, and I still love their old cars. GM built fine cars for many years, but then the fat, old fart, dead head, bottom line CEOs and managers took over.
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While Japan built quality, GM cut costs and quality…and worse their line of cars really looks like shit…really ugly, no taste at all…and ergonomically antiquated.. meaning that they rode like a horse drawn buckboard, seats were uncomfortable, and they were tiring to drive…real crap…and they wanted the world to buy this junk? Part of our trade problem is that we try to sell junk for high prices.
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I think we will have to economically crumble before these old farts ever wake up and realize they are the problem…and they need to step aside and make room for people who are willing to work and rebuild things in new directions.
Elaine, you’ve been harping about how free-trade, if unbalanced, will destroy a nation. Maybe I missed, what is the solution for the US?
Do you propose tariffs and import taxes and trade wars? What if we piss off the Chinese and Japanese by closing our market to them and they sell all their FOREX dollars and the dollar collapses – do we win then? That’s why we need to pay off the national debt by creating a stable US dollar (Treasury notes with the money supply controlled by our representatives in Congress, not Federal Reserve Notes) and reform our banking industry and the way money is created, indeed the whole concept of money as debt needs to go away.
If we agree we need to preserve our manufacturing base, or at least to keep some jobs here, what is the solution?
What about Warren Buffet’s plan (below) of giving exporters “import certificates”? It deserves a good look, or at least people need to start thinking about and promoting possible solutions.
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2003/11/10/352872/index.htm
I still wonder if free trade is really all that bad.
I’m of the belief that pretty much all financial and business transactions are in general, mutually beneficial to both parties. Or else why do the deal it all? When I went to buy a car a few years ago, the salesman said, “We’re really not making any money on this deal.” I laughed at him and said, then why are you selling me the car?!
Maybe it’s more a question of exactly who benefits from global trade. The workers may lose, but the corporation and stock holders benefit. So it’s not an issue of free trade not being a net positive for the US, it’s more of a question of equal distribution of those benefits to all.
On the whole, trade is good, no? Countries kept from participating in global trade are very poor. Cities and regions close to water and trade routes are able to trade and are rich, no? Society as a whole has benefited tremendously from the increase in trade, by free, open markets for their goods and services – it matches producers with consumers, and everyone benefits.
What about Milton Friedman’s ideas that buying goods for worthless pieces of paper / IOUs is an ideal system? “If the Japanese exporters were willing to burn or bury the dollar bills, that would be wonderful for us. We would get all kinds of goods for green pieces of paper that we can produce in great abundance and very cheaply. We would have the most marvelous export industry conceivable.”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1154295/posts
Friedman points out the problems with floating currencies is that they are manipulated by central banks. So let’s abolish all central banks and have a truly free market.
Sorry, I’m a little scatter-brained, but really I’d like to know what is the solution you propose to fix our free trade problem? and why is free trade so bad, other than the issue of workers’ well-being being sacrificed for the “good of the corporation?” (if there is such a thing independent of the workers who make up the corporation).
Well it looks like the Chinese are pretty pissed about the Geithner attack, which happened around the time of the new lunar year
Ah David, I still remember the good old days when the crimes of these criminals made me angry. Now it is just lots of fresh fruit and vegetables and ice cold determination.
In other good news, we ARE building railroads! Hurray! Alas, the bad news is the just do not happen to be located in our country.
http://www.judicial-inc.biz/91jerusalem_train.htm
K-Bo, all very good points. Trade is good. But not when it leads to the deindustrialization of one’s own country coupled with a tremendous rise in debt. All countries must balance the pluses and minuses. The US has fooled itself into thinking, if we cease to be a creditor nation but are instead, handing out ‘fake money’ with the INTENTION of reneging on our deals…guess what happens next?
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Our empire will be isolated as everyone shuts us down. Empires collapse…badly. and are totally ruined not for a year or two but very often for CENTURIES. The US is running on fumes. The Chinese are willing to hold our dollars and debts ONLY so they can slap us on the snot with them, in front of the entire planet. Think all our trade partners will be happy with us when we cheat everyone? And our morals will utterly rot. Instead of being honest and forthright, we will be a nation of SWINDLERS. And think we will have any powers once we decide to not honor our debts?
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Total hell.
If we want to control things, we must tax imports. All nations do this to some degree via VAT taxes.
K-Bo:
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Perhaps you should trash your books by Friedman (the man is an idiot) and then do a little research on the Chicago boys…students of Friedman who went to Chile and used Freedman’s idiotic theories to totally destroy the economy of that nation…Well, our financiers and corporate executives learned nothing and followed Friedman s advice…and look at mess we’re in right now.
K-Bo, this isn’t a just a little ole recession, its a fucking depression..and free market theories helped put us in this predicament.
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Equitable trade and fair trade is ok, but borrowing money from trading partners to buy the things we need to survive from them is totally idiotic….somebody is going to get royally screwed, sooner or later…and printing worthless money and running scams to devalue currencies or drive up gold prices is also screwing someone somewhere, but screwing the other fellow appears to be part of the free trade mindset…the box, Elaine talked about.
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You talked about both parties getting something out of the deal…well, somebody is going to get screwed when you trade worthless paper for real, value added products…Do you know who?
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The Americans whose jobs are lost to free trade (millions of them) …and the Japanese workers who hardly have enough to eat and keep warm because their industrialists were stealing their labors and lending money back to the US so we could buy more stuff (man that’s cold-hearted).
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Well, in case you haven’t noticed, there are 300 million people in the US alone, and a majority of them are getting screwed by this free trade system. And, those investors who sit in their home offices and move their money desperately from one thing to another, short selling and driving up the price of food and fuel..then gold, and then commodities again are now finding out what free trade is all about, and they are losing their shirts.
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Free means it’s unregulated, and people make up the rules as they go whereas regulated trade can force some equity back into trade systems.
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The more distant anything becomes, the less you have control over it…and we cannot control our corporations or tax them when they park most of their money in unregulated tax havens outside the US…and the people and infrastructure of the US suffers and crumbles from a lack of tax money.
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I don’t think free trade is working right now. Of course I’m not important…and seeing empty storefronts and empty factories everywhere is probably some indication of great prosperity that I just don’t understand because I don’t believe in Milton Friedman, and I’m stupid enough to believe that all citizens in the US and elsewhere deserve a chance to prosper.
Chinese just say too much invested in UST, maybe sell some, not buy more.
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What say? Receivership Committee? With Chinese at head of table?
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Fluck you, Bubbles!
Libra confronts Bernanke at the mouth of the
Cave of Weath and Death
http://tinyurl.com/bsbogu
Russia has NWO Secret/aries
http://www.russiatoday.com/features/news/36440
2 things about free trade as far as I can see.
1. There are many ways for a nation to gain an economic advantage while trading goods with another such as de-valueing their currency or paying their workers bad wages.
2.The idea that the natural desire of businesses to make a profit will benefit a countries economy especially if we remove all restraints fails because it assumes that a currency profit is the same as wealth and that by returning a profit a business is making wealth.
A nation’s wealth as I see it is a material thing. It consists of desirable and necessary items, partly desirable because people have money to purchase them. A Business in generating a profit does not have to create wealth. ie they can speculate and drive up prices. They can fire every one, they can move the production off shore.
Elaine, love your stuff, as always. Quick note though: SNP is not the Tories, but the Scottish nationalists. Of course that doesn’t mean your argument is incorrect, as the British will indeed likely next elect the banker’s party aka the Tories.
We have the little thing called GST
big deal… it doesn’t increase mfg internally because no one wants to make anything
Artificial taxes don’t translate into resolve to produce factory goods
Read below and you will see an example of the thought paradigm “box” Elaine is talking about.
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93 year old man freezes to death after his electricity was cut off for unpaid bills.
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090126/ap_on_re_us/frozen_indoors
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“The City Manager Robert Belleman told The Associated Press on Monday…he didn’t believe the city did anything wrong. Neighbors need to keep an eye on neighbors,” Belleman said. “When they think there’s something wrong, they should contact the appropriate agency or city. department.”
You see, Belleman is a true usinessman–business first always. This is GOP style “personal responsibility”…which really means, “I got mine. You get yours so, so sorry, but I don’t care about anyone but myself…and greed is good.”
the problem is not with anyone or any company that helps make anything, does anything, moves anything, grows anything …. the problem is with the civilization culture that thinks manipulating MONEY is an even desireable skill and alone lmust be a sign of superior intelligence. money is truely the root of all evil and a civilization that thinks greed is good is rotten to the core. any “industry” generally is a good thing. its that money changers started running them too in the last generation or two. and to the nmoney changers, making something is simply not an important skill. fuck them. and do not expect the next generations to pay off their debts either.
and to those of you, and that is most now, who worked all your lives and depended on and trusted these money changers and what they do to not only run things but take care of you now and in your shitty futures, it is going to suck to be you i expect. a huge criminal ponzi scheme dependent on consuming the childrens future to keep it all going right now. just because they taught you–AND YOU BELIEVED– in college how intelligent and sophisticated it would all be to depend on the kindness of strangers and their sophisticated and innovative financial “PRODUCTS” …. well, the joke is on you i expect.
so by all means continue to let them distract you with their cynical “tittytainment” to keep you docile and diverted and let them continue to DEFINE reality for you all….and call swallowing that “being educated” and a “good citizen” too.
all right i am finished again. why contiune to flog a dead horse…. and the dark side is better i think. no more guilt. and no more confusion. i was sooooo stupid!
“MONEY”….its like confusing the score with playing the game. instead, somehow the scorekeepers became not only the most important part of the game, but the entire rationale and underlying reason for playihg the game in the first place.
the whole rotten mess is a spiritual problem methinks. well, now i am surely done. and i am starting to wonder wtf would be wrong with some global warming too. i am getting sick and tired of this winter!
lets hear it for state control! give it a year and we will be screaming for it MAKE THOSE COMPANIES OBEY YOUR FACIST DESIRE! TAKE THEM OVER RULE THEM SUPPLY US WITH YOUR POWERS U.S. GOVERNMENT MAKE THE GREEDY ONES YOUR SLAVES!!! heh… life is like a box of chocolates, retards are the best at convincing the public that personal freedom is a unrealizable joke…
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http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7gqts_immortal-tyrants-graspop-2008_music
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in the year 2025 the golden age of Digital TV dawned
subsidy gravy train stealing system efficiency’s for the mans boys
all of this may be happening to make cormac mccarthy vision reality soon. then you all will understand the true meaning of life and the wet ass hour.
“the US needs the most to untangle itself from half a century of ‘free trade’ follies.”
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US wine and cheese producers would certainly like to see, say, 500% tariffs on French product.
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That’s what happened with Smoot-Hawley – every inductry with a lobby got their own little tariff added to protect their piece of the pie.
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But Heidsieck will always be better than Cook’s.
openly hidden.
I agree its is an aggregate of a spiritual problem. Too much hubris. The ancient greeks understood that hubris was dangerous for society. Creating dangerous competition that made people do terrible things to one another.
What can people do about it that’s an important question. Unfortunaely every one is still giddy with the illusion of wealth.
Such a strange illusion the 4wd bought with a credit line can be looked at, touched or driven. But it does not really belong to its “owner”. Every one is walking around in a charmed world almost like people in a fairy tale. A lot of shiny stuff is fake it is beginning to disappear
Repo man makes it all disappear. At night. Hubris is when we irritate the gods. These creatures are very queer. They live in this cave, you see, I call it the Cave of Wealth and Death but this cave is really our collective minds. When we decide to replace reality with fake images, we get punished by reality.
I’m not talking about trying to cheat the rest of the world (although I thought it was somewhat humorous Friedman put it in the light of us exporting pieces of paper as our trade product). I’m talking of us as a nation, indeed as individuals as well *getting out of debt* and balancing our books – living in a *sustainable* fashion. I would like to know the best way to do that. I want prosperity for all, and don’t want anybody to get cheated or left behind. I really think if we, the people, take our money power back from those who took it from us, we can fix things. What would be wrong with creating a new US currency, call it the true greenback or something similar – and issue it to pay off our national debts. Don’t let any central or private bank debase it! Have treasury issue these notes, and use it for the common good not for private gain and public indebtedness = slavery!
David, thanks for your comments. I don’t blame our problems on free trade, but on our money system and who benefits from it. I don’t know enough of Milton Friedman’s work to judge it compared to other economic schools of thought. I just thought his article for free trade made some good points – but that was 30 years ago, and my how things have changed!
Regarding mutually beneficial transactions, I recommend a book by Robert Wright, called “Non-Zero.” It talks about game theory applied to human civilization. “Games” or transactions do not always result in a winner and loser (with a net sum of 0). In “non-zero” games / trade, if both parties get something out of it, the sum of the transaction is non-zero, it’s a net positive and the world on the whole is better off.
As I said above, I’m not for screwing the majority of the 300 million people in this country so a few people who shuffle money around or sit in boardrooms can benefit. I am strongly against this, against corrupt power in control, and want, nay demand a fair system so all can benefit. I think that most people who reads Elaine’s work share these points of view.
I have a lot to learn, and thank everyone for sharing their points of view.
I wonder how many American voters would prefer to keep the Fed if they knew that they have to pay interest on Every Cent in existence. When anyone borrows Dollars they have to pay interest TWICE – once to the Fed and once to the bank issuing the loan.???? The interest due to the Fed is priced into every transaction. Everyone is paying it, not only the taxpayer. It is simply ABSURD to continue this idiocy. The way to get rid of these parasites is to find a SIMPLE formulation, so simple that ANYONE can understand how expensive and unnecesary this system is.
Bloomberg UK just had an item about the government (i.e., us) supporting UK auto production. Then they returned to the studio, whence they went over to some stock sector pie chart thingy. This was introduced thus:
“I’d like to show you the charts for some UK car manufacturers, but I can’t. We don’t have any. So…”
I think that’s called a wry sense of humour. 😦
Fortunately, we have our financial ‘industry’. Heh™.
Last one out, please switch off the EU-mandated energy-saving fluorescent lamp.
Be warned.
elaine! “the cave of wealth and death but this cave is really our collective minds”!!!! OMG! we really ARE one!!!! and we are back to the root of all religions straight from the neolithic times and before the collective unconscious and at least pointing to “THE REALM WHERE THERE IS NO FORM”!!! aka the soul of the world! and the tail eater, the ouroboros! and now all that remains is wait and see what form our destruction will take, which may or may not be the stay puft marshmallow man! outfuckingstanding candidate we all get to go to the head of the line. WE HAVE DONE OUR JOB! all fall down praise the lord thy will be done! i am indeed lucky to be living in these interesting times. absolutely the end now no more to be said as i tremblingly watch and wait. you too are a believer with me. the end!
The price of sugar in the US is some six times higher than the going world price due to tariffs and subsidies. I suppose one might argue that it’s fine for US sugar producers to not worry about low-cost furrin’ sugar, and that state of affairs should be extended to all sorts of products.
However… another beneficiary is Archer-Daniels-Midland (the planet’s leading producer of high-fructose corn syrup, which is a low-cost domestic substitute that isn’t especially good for one – but what the hell, we’re talking JOBS!!! here.)
I’ personally, would welcome a flood of low-cost furrin’ cane sugar. Then Coke might begin using it again and the stuff would taste better as a result.
Totally off-topic, but related to recent discussion on having a common language. Here is Shakespeare in “Globish” (Sorry, it’s a little lengthy)
… below, is what Mark Antony might have said in Globish:
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him;
The evil that men do lives after them,
The good is often buried with their bones,
So let it be with Caesar … The stately Brutus
Has told you Caesar wanted to be king:
If he said that, then it was a deadly mistake,
And it was deadly for Caesar today …
I am allowed to speak here by Brutus and the rest,
(For Brutus is an honourable man;
So are they all; all honourable men)
I come to speak at Caesar’s burial …
Caesar was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says Caesar wanted to be a king;
And Brutus is an honourable man….
Caesar has brought many prisoners home to Rome,
Whose fathers buy them back to our great profit:
Did this seem like Caesar was trying to take too much?
When the poor have cried, Caesar cries as well:
If he wanted to be king he should have had a stronger character:
Yet Brutus says Caesar was trying to be all powerful;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
You all saw that at the ceremony
I presented Caesar a kingly crown 3 times,
Which he did refuse 3 times: Did this man want to be king?
Yet Brutus says he wanted to rule us completely;
And, sure, he is an honourable man.
I speak not to argue with what Brutus spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love Caesar once, not without cause:
What cause now keeps you from being sorry for him?
O wise thought! You have escaped to the animals,
And men have lost their reason…. Stay with me now;
My heart is in the ground there with Caesar,
And I must wait until it comes back to me.
http://www.bizeng.net/JC.htm
Globist consists of some 1500 words, plus technical terms appropriate for specialised communication. It’s intended as a pragmatic means of communication. As you can see, even ‘ol Will’s ramblings don’t suffer that much. More here
http://www.bizeng.net/globish.htm
Seems eminently sensible to me.
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Linked via the generationaldynamics.com site
Dear Bear, the number of words in old English were far fewer than in post-Queen Elizabeth I English. We have a much richer vocabulary and this is a richness of the mind. Simple language means ditching fine distinctions.
“Simple language means ditching fine distinctions.”
That’s meant to be the point. It’s to establish a basic means of international communication. Maybe I should have linked the Generational Dynamics site and Xenakis’ comments (individual topics are not separated, but it’s the second item, just now):
http://tinyurl.com/cz92b4
Where’d my Putin post go? 😦
DHS censorship?
Postscript on Ukraine/Russia gas spat:
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‘ “The country [Ukraine] is staring into the abyss, both politically and economically,” said Neil Shearing, an analyst at London-based Capital Economics Ltd. “I can’t think of another country that will be hit harder this year” in eastern Europe.’
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‘The outcome of the energy controversy has strengthened Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, 56, who said on Jan. 8 that Ukraine’s leadership was “highly criminalized.” ‘
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http://tinyurl.com/cnafp3
(Bloomberg)
GK and everyone:
Thanks for the link GK.
Please, everyone click on GK’s link and view the Israeli trains…lots and lots of big beautiful trains…that US foreign aid helped purchase for Israel…and possibly Bernie Madeoff helped buy with stolen investor dollars.
Dear Bear: I beat up the Postings Beast that ate your post and now it is back up! Sorry about it. 😦
By the way: I just ran down the mountain to the mail box and got Elaine Taylor’s CD. IT IS BEAUTIFUL I love it a lot. Will talk about her in the future. I hope she makes it…she writes her own lyrics and makes her own songs! Brilliant singer/songwriter who is as good as the best. And as an old hippie chick, it brought tears to my eyes….damn, I miss those days.
She’s the best alright, I’m not sure if that’s a blessing or a curse.
I wouldn’t sentence my worst enemy to so-called ‘success’ in the musical industrial complex.
One of my friends/ex-band mates is virtually the best rock guitarist alive.
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Someone in the “business” saw him in a club when he was 19 years old. He was flown out to LA for a ‘showcase’.
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He told me that a very famous bigwig in the music industry, someone we all have seen on television many times, maybe on New Year’s eve once in a while, attempted to induce him to perform fellatio.
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He tours Europe in a heavy metal band nowadays.
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Also, all that cocaine has to come from somewhere. It doesn’t just fall from the sky.
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Yup, ran in those circles once and yes, they want both forms of blow.
Nope. No sign of my Putin posting. Partly, it’s a link to a half-hour video of the thinking woman’s crumpet, so I’ll re-link, just for you, dear Elaine. 😉
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=-TFr_opt-D8
Ain’t that weird? Just re-posted the Putin vid link and it’s failed AGAIN. Must be DHS. Just try YouTubing, “Putin, bloomberg interview”. It’s 28 minutes long. Ho, hum…