Soros: Europe on the verge of economic collapse
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You are out to lunch, yankee and rockman. Old Europe is leading the world in solar power, electric vehicles, wind energy, energy conservation and practically all the emerging technologies. Tell me again that scandinavia and Germany is not competitive. It is the US that has no manufacturing base left.
Douglas Turner Spells it all out using REAL numbers!
It's so clear only a fool or corporate apologist/lapdog couldn't see!.....
Whole new approach is needed on imports
Douglas Turner June 27, 2011, 6:18 AM
WASHINGTON — President Obama is fond of quoting Abraham Lincoln. But when Obama went to Pittsburgh on Friday to plug manufacturing, he did not quote Lincoln’s very first political statement in which he backed “high tariff protections” (taxes) against imported manufactured goods.
Lincoln, in 1832 a candidate for the Illinois Legislature, and only 23 years old, was merely repeating Whig Party truisms that Illinois, all America, would be more prosperous if we ourselves made the stuff we buy instead of England.
It is a simple idea: Make it here, sell it here; create jobs and tax revenue to build America, and sustain Americans. Instead of building China’s state capitalism and military might.
Nearly two centuries later, the United States has lost millions of manufacturing jobs to one-sided “free trade” — 2.5 million since 2001 alone. Yet the connection between
outsourcing decent-paying factory jobs and America’s biggest problems seems to have escaped almost everybody.
Congress, including most Democrats, dodges the obvious fact that the surge of Asian imports has depressed employment and impoverished our cities, turning huge urban tracts into war zones with crippled schools. Now Obama and Congress are in a crisis over whether this country even can pay its lenders. To deal with the politics of this mess, Obama is reverting to type. He is kicking the can down the street with stunts and sloganeering, pretending that the country’s manufacturing base is on the rebound.
A report issued last week says that the decline is getting much worse. The U. S. Business and Industry Council (USBIC) reports that outsourcing of some of our most sophisticated “advanced industries,” as the private research group called them, took place in the depths of our Great Recession, and is ongoing.
We’re not talking shoes and clothing here. Those plants are gone. The new list of domestic employers under attack includes makers of machine tools, turbines, computers, electricity testing instruments, household freezers, chemicals, semiconductors, medical equipment and prescription drugs. These are skill jobs, some requiring postsecondary schooling.
The new data helps explain why China’s growth rate was a robust 7.4 percent in 2009, while ours plunged to a first quarter low of minus 6.8 percent at the same time.
Alan Tonelson, the USBIC research fellow who compiled the report, doesn’t come right out and urge import tariffs, or taxes. But he says Obama would be better off if he controlled imports instead of merely encouraging exports. Just selling our own American-made high-tech goods to our own domestic markets, Tonelson said, would have boosted our economy hundreds of billions even in 2009.
Tonelson says the country “needs a whole new approach” to imports, including strict enforcement of existing trade laws and countering China’s undervaluing its currency, which gives it a 40 percent price advantage over U. S. goods.
Another private group, the Alliance for American Manufacturing, has been calling on the White House for years to declare China a currency manipulator, which would start the machinery for financial sanctions against their goods. Obama won’t touch it, any more than President George W. Bush would.
Few Republicans care. It’s their knee-jerk belief in “free trade.” With Democrats, it’s stupidity, indifference to their old blue-collar constituency and simple avarice. The Democrats need billions in campaign money to keep the White House and the Senate. Unemployed factory workers don’t have it. Wall Street globalists do.
So Democrats build Potemkin villages, neighborhoods with fake store fronts. Such as the program for “advanced manufacturing” by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, offering tax credits to manufacturers. It will do next to nothing without Tonelson’s “whole new approach” to imports.
It's so clear only a fool or corporate apologist/lapdog couldn't see!.....
Whole new approach is needed on imports
Douglas Turner June 27, 2011, 6:18 AM
WASHINGTON — President Obama is fond of quoting Abraham Lincoln. But when Obama went to Pittsburgh on Friday to plug manufacturing, he did not quote Lincoln’s very first political statement in which he backed “high tariff protections” (taxes) against imported manufactured goods.
Lincoln, in 1832 a candidate for the Illinois Legislature, and only 23 years old, was merely repeating Whig Party truisms that Illinois, all America, would be more prosperous if we ourselves made the stuff we buy instead of England.
It is a simple idea: Make it here, sell it here; create jobs and tax revenue to build America, and sustain Americans. Instead of building China’s state capitalism and military might.
Nearly two centuries later, the United States has lost millions of manufacturing jobs to one-sided “free trade” — 2.5 million since 2001 alone. Yet the connection between
outsourcing decent-paying factory jobs and America’s biggest problems seems to have escaped almost everybody.
Congress, including most Democrats, dodges the obvious fact that the surge of Asian imports has depressed employment and impoverished our cities, turning huge urban tracts into war zones with crippled schools. Now Obama and Congress are in a crisis over whether this country even can pay its lenders. To deal with the politics of this mess, Obama is reverting to type. He is kicking the can down the street with stunts and sloganeering, pretending that the country’s manufacturing base is on the rebound.
A report issued last week says that the decline is getting much worse. The U. S. Business and Industry Council (USBIC) reports that outsourcing of some of our most sophisticated “advanced industries,” as the private research group called them, took place in the depths of our Great Recession, and is ongoing.
We’re not talking shoes and clothing here. Those plants are gone. The new list of domestic employers under attack includes makers of machine tools, turbines, computers, electricity testing instruments, household freezers, chemicals, semiconductors, medical equipment and prescription drugs. These are skill jobs, some requiring postsecondary schooling.
The new data helps explain why China’s growth rate was a robust 7.4 percent in 2009, while ours plunged to a first quarter low of minus 6.8 percent at the same time.
Alan Tonelson, the USBIC research fellow who compiled the report, doesn’t come right out and urge import tariffs, or taxes. But he says Obama would be better off if he controlled imports instead of merely encouraging exports. Just selling our own American-made high-tech goods to our own domestic markets, Tonelson said, would have boosted our economy hundreds of billions even in 2009.
Tonelson says the country “needs a whole new approach” to imports, including strict enforcement of existing trade laws and countering China’s undervaluing its currency, which gives it a 40 percent price advantage over U. S. goods.
Another private group, the Alliance for American Manufacturing, has been calling on the White House for years to declare China a currency manipulator, which would start the machinery for financial sanctions against their goods. Obama won’t touch it, any more than President George W. Bush would.
Few Republicans care. It’s their knee-jerk belief in “free trade.” With Democrats, it’s stupidity, indifference to their old blue-collar constituency and simple avarice. The Democrats need billions in campaign money to keep the White House and the Senate. Unemployed factory workers don’t have it. Wall Street globalists do.
So Democrats build Potemkin villages, neighborhoods with fake store fronts. Such as the program for “advanced manufacturing” by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, offering tax credits to manufacturers. It will do next to nothing without Tonelson’s “whole new approach” to imports.
Americans and Canucks are so clueless; When I was last in Milan, the restaurants were packed with a capital P, the hotels were charging rates that T.O. hostelries would kill to be able to charge, and, as I read in the newspapers, unemployment was hovering around 4% in the Lombardy region. In the neighbouring Veneto, they were practically begging people to come up from the south to fill the manufacturing jobs nobody else would do.....don't believe everything you all read in the newspapers. And northern Italy is hardly the centre of Europe....I was witness to overwhelming well-being among the populations of most of the adjacent countries I travelled through. As danmand said, they're doing better over there than the average north american. By the way, they also do not have the excessive credit card debt that floats our prosperity over here on a cloud of nonsense....if you compare personal debt adjusted consumption between the average euro to the average HELOC and Credit card-stuffed North American, I think you'd get a clearer picture of how well each are doing.
Yes, but then there is Souther Italy, Spain, Greece Portugal.... you can anecdote all you want but the social system that Europe has constructed will fall under it's own weight.
OTB
LOL,
Yes Scandinavia and Germany do quite well, unfortunately for the Germans they bought into the Euro and now have to carry Southern Europe. What is Denmark's debt?
OTB
I suppose it is a retorical question, but here is External debt by country: http://www.photius.com/rankings/economy/debt_external_2011_0.html
or, if you prefwer total public debt as a % of GPD: http://www.economicshelp.org/blog/economics/list-of-national-debt-by-country/
You are truly delusional. The main reason for Germany's competitiveness is their adoption of the Euro as a devalued currency compared to the DM and the fact that they trade with a bunch of inefficient partners. Scandanavia is starting to see strains on their social safety net thanks to immigration. We'll see how they fare 10 years from now.
Scandinavia has had its social programs since the 1940's and their demise have been predicted every year. In the meantime, they are doing great.
Anyone who travels recognizes the aging infrastructure, more economically challenged neighbourhoods and gridlock in North America compared with better designed cities and governments that are still investing in social services in Europe. The states, in particular, are making their way back into a third world country.
Looks like those large productive economies in Europe carry a lot of debt..... perhaps that's Soros point, debt plus aging population plus expensive entitlements equals......
OTB
I think you have to look at what these countries have spent their money (now debt) on. They have a pretty much 100% educated population (vs US 30% illitterate), good infrastructure, new technology etc etc. The US has gazillions of military hardware, big jails and a crumbling infrastructure.
What, except Apple products, do the world want from the US. Entertainment, I guess, and maybe large airplanes.
You're both kidding yourself and dodging the issue.
If you think the US is a poor place for R&D you're an idiot, and we both know you're not an idiot (although you sometimes play one here). I could do a bunch of google queries (oh, wait, where is that company based) or look on Facebook (again) on my mac (again) or windows (again) computer and find that the research universities in the US kick the worlds ass in R&D.
You're dodging the reality that the big wealthy countries in Europe (the one's bailing out the PIGS at the moment) carry more debt, have slower growing (or declining) populations, lower productivity and per capita GDP than the US, they have unsustainable entitlement regimes that are proving very hard to reform.
OTB
Maybe they just need to adopt Globalism like the USA!
Then they can enjoy all the great things Globalism brings, just like we are experiencing now!....:Eek:
The problem in europe is not it's social programs. That stuff inevitably gets paid by someone, in the usa healthcare comes out of your wallet, in europe it comes out of your taxes. From a gdp perspective it's not much different.
The difference is the uneasiness of european nations with the immigrants they need to stay young. The usa had basically embraced particularly hispanic immigration, and as a result has a younger and not aging population.
That makes a huge long term difference, and it's why despite serious economic errors the us will eventually recover.
The difference is the uneasiness of european nations with the immigrants they need to stay young. The usa had basically embraced particularly hispanic immigration, and as a result has a younger and not aging population.
That makes a huge long term difference, and it's why despite serious economic errors the us will eventually recover.
Yup, Europe is aging and depopulating fairly quickly. Not sure about the exact number, but the average age of "old" Europe must be north of 50 (Brazil is under 30). Soon the number of retired workers (they retire in their 50's) will outnumber active workers.
I guess we have come to the end of our discussion. I think you are kidding yourself, and you think that I am kidding myself. Time will tell.
You need to take the blinders off danmand. Time will not look kindly on Europe and Russia unless they make drastic changes.
