although normalizing relations with China did open the door to really bad trade deals...but when trade deficits really kicked in was starting with NAFTA and then the WTO. That's 1993, with the China PNTR (disaster!) in 2000.
It's other things and this is the start of union participation decline. I'm missing something.
Sure seems to me to be a turning point against Labor in the United States. Took a while for that trade deal to work it's damage though.
-------------------------------------
Executive compensation is inversely proportional to morality and ethics.
I suspect that alone could solve California's money problems.
-------------------------------------
Executive compensation is inversely proportional to morality and ethics.
The U.S. economy was on a real roll from the New Deal until about the 1970's. Now Nixon (I'm sorry I have never seen him as the ultimate bad guy here, he looks like a Communist in comparison to policy today ;)) took the U.S. off of the Gold Standard, I believe started at that time, labor arbitrage trade but it's not clear to me precisely what policies were changed that started this downward spiral on wages. But it seems to spring from the 1970's time frame, when they were also fighting like mad inflation and the oil crisis.
So, I need an economic policy history lesson or need to find out for myself. If someone already knows I'm listening.
1. We need health care workers. As the baby boomers age, they're going to need care. Medicare home health workers can be a huge chunk of the new WPA.
2. We need a massive transition to ambient energy. Note I didn't say *alternative* energy- in some areas of the country coal, gas, and oil still make economic, if not green house gas, sense. But it's time to stop shipping these items worldwide, and it's time to stop having all of our energy eggs in the fossil fuels basket. A massive conversion to electric transportation and fast battery chargers fed by a huge variety of energy sources is in order for the United States- and that will take a lot of work.
3. Our third prong, is reducing transportation needs overall- and that means fiber to every house, every building, in the United States. Every barn even. A networked farm can use less labor in the long run.
These are the three challenges that are equal to the national highway and parks system that the WPA and CCCs built.
-------------------------------------
Executive compensation is inversely proportional to morality and ethics.
Still, I know a guy who considered a mortgage payment to just be another form of rent. He never intended to *actually* pay it off or own anything- just build up some equity, sell it off, buy something else, lather, rinse repeat.
I've yet to ask him how he's doing now that Real Estate prices are going DOWN instead of UP....
-------------------------------------
Executive compensation is inversely proportional to morality and ethics.
It's high time someone focus on the ever eroding income.
Econbrowser has a great post on industrial production and there are now others focusing in on the trade deficit....saying (which is strongly connected to wages due to global wage arbitrage) if that is not reduced there will not be a real recovery.
Supposedly China is second as I recall in standard of living, but I have a hard time believing that because even with these (to us) beyond low wages, both India and China they have loads of disposable income and live pretty well.
The rest of the country....but the ones displacing U.S. workers are the ones I'm referring to.
Interesting that an auto worker in the U.S. can no longer support a family of four on current wages. Yet, this is not the case in China. I find the BLS projections not credible inasmuch as they indicate a decline in 2010, while there's currently zero evidence to support this, given current trend.
The only area of the construction economy that seems to be sustaining is the remodeling end. People won't build new houses, but they will fix up old ones.
There's already some of this in the "Green Jobs" part of the stimulus/budget (Van Jones, et al), but a big program to push retrofitting could be a big win. This would drive manual labor, as well as the manufacturing feed-streams for everything from windows to water heaters. Lots of wins there in the snow belt.
In the sun belt, we can work on the upgrades needed to handle micro-distribution of power generation (e.g. paying back the grid from local solar/wind, etc).
And there's also a big opportunity to push retraining. A non-trivial subset of the currently unemployed are experienced. They could be effectively put to work mentoring/training others. The service/servitude industry isn't a good answer for mainline employment. Learning real skills is a win for the coming decades.
Agreed wholeheartedly that our country will not recover until the "work for a living" is employed. We have left the Industrial Age and the Information Age. Remember when our country was transitioning to the Informational Age, we had high unemployment. Today, we are leaving the Information Age for an Unknown Age. Since the new Age is still TBA ( to be announced) the recovery will take a long long time to sprout. With no direction into a new Age for the near future, we are positioned for THE GREATEST DEPRESSION.
should move into the management business and take over the company. Others have argued against it but I don't see why not. Odds are they (if they also get engineers, salaried workers to join in) can build a better car and be more strategic than what GM management continually does. At least if it's subsidized we would be supporting labor directly, U.S. citizen labor, with a purchase.
Wow. This is a dramatic and great idea and even though it's from the New Deal, this is quite out of the box as a proposal!
I believe that the entire U.S. economy will never recover, we've gone past the edge on the middle class squeeze to the point it's bringing down the entire Macroeconomic economy.
What I see happening is the U.S. simply refuses to deal with what globalization is doing to the United States. There is no way American workers can compete with wages that are at 100:1, 10:1, even 3:1 ratios to U.S. wages and there is no way that will level until the United States PPP and standard of living goes to a 3rd world country.
Somehow I don't think that's what America is supposed to be about.
So, not only do they need a jobs program, tied to citizenship, to U.S. workers, to people of this nation, almost as a national union....but they need to modify a host of policies from corporate international tax codes to trade to employment law and put U.S. labor first.
FDR said work was a right and now that entire value is gone. Instead we have game shows as drama of who will be canned next.
The entire middle aged class is now double whammied. Through age discrimination, labor arbitrate their income is greatly reduced. Then they have no retirement. Old pensions were replaced with 401ks which have gotten wiped out through the stock market bubbles and busts and they also have had to raid them for health care costs, living expenses, being out of work.
So, we need a major paradigm shift in this nation and we need this age group especially to get their careers back.
This continual retraining, reeducation bullshit is just that. These people have college degrees, advanced degrees, years of experience, skills abounding and the reason they are in this boat is the obsession from multinational corporations to thrash their workforce and labor arbitrage people.
Folks, this really is a dramatic policy call and at minimum one that wakes up the brain and puts the focus squarely where it needs to happen, the U.S. labor force. So, please cite it on other sites in comments, rate it up on sharing sites, send it around to your friends. I think NDD and Bonddad are really onto something with this policy suggestion.
... first thing that you would need, which would be to get out from under the decades of "the future is more of today" management that led GM to get bogged down under these liabilities that only made sense for a company with a big share of a big US market, with buyers buying a new car every three years, with a large labor input per car.
Given "the 1950's will last forever", it made all the sense in the world to make sure that 1/3 of the wage was promises to pay in the future out of a larger cash flow, which at the same time eliminated the overtime pay penalty.
Given "the future will be different than today", loading up on unfunded liabilities to a massive workforce was a critical mistake.
And on a "reboot", the whole legacy problem is dumped on someone else ... the UAW, the former shareholders, raiding the pension plans of GM executives, or whatever. So that is one out of the way.
Then with the old shareholders burned, have the company taken over by the employees, with genuine profit sharing in the sense of, "share all the profits among the employees", drive the wage down to a point where GM-America can be competitive across the board with North American produced automobiles, and take market share back.
Take on profit-maximizing corporations with an employment-maximizing labor syndicate and let some other sorry sucker be the one to go under the next time.
If we can't beat them, join them! Not!!! But GM is making a crucial error, because it has," we the peoples" money funding China laborers verses USA laborers. No one in this country wants to see GM take off with our money and outsource jobs, so it puts America even in more of a recession. Sure they can get cars for a cheaper price, but without jobs, who will be able to even afford a Chinese car.. And a funny this occured. We got the 1.6 trillion dollars mainly from the Chinese, we gave GM a 15 billion dollar loan to restructure and think up the next fuel efficient car, now GM is talking bankruptcy anyhow and buying cars from China to send to the USA. Recall we are friends with China and they own America basically. Walmart, K Mart, Target, Dollar General, ect.. They are into scooters, atv, motorcycles, dune buggies, ect.. Now cars.. So anyhow, I am for the Chinese to bring over cars too, if they feel they will sale. They are apart of the US Trade Agreement. Japan, Germany, Korea, Mexico, ect are making our car products. Transmission parts made in Japan, shipped to Mexico for assembly, and put in a Ford sold in the good ole USA. But even Ford is talking a deal with China, but Ford took no bailout money. So Ford can do what they want. Recall the PUMA- GM's latest creation the two man electric wheelchair. Probably designed after a actual wheelchair. But it was GM's lowest moments. See, I thought they had courage and would fight for dominance in the auto world. Think up a two person car, 600cc engine, get 60 mpg and travel 55 mph.. This was our President asking the impossible of GM. Ford is making cars and on no bailout. 15 billion dollars is enough money to start a auto manufacturing plant. Did that money go on bonuses. It makes me wonder. I own a 2006 Chevy Colorado that I wish was a Ford.
Here is a story of an economics reporter for the New York Times being foreclosed on. I want to take this quote:
I was handing over $4,000 a month in alimony and child-support payments. That left me with take-home pay of $2,777, barely enough to make ends meet in a one-bedroom rental apartment. Patty had yet to even look for a job. At any other time in history, the idea of someone like me borrowing more than $400,000 would have seemed insane.
Now here is the thing that I just find ridiculous and frankly I just do not want to pay for it. People living way beyond their means and signing up for these mortgages when they clearly, anyone with high school math should have known....they could not afford them.
Seriously. This drives me nuts and is completely irresponsible. If one has a take home pay of $2,7k...in New York City....signing up for a $400k mortgage....
well, I'm sorry but I don't want to pay for this just as much as I don't want to pay for someone with a gambling addiction or buying a Ferrari when they make $12/hr and so on...
I know they scammed people, but how can someone not figure out...esp. on such a large purchase...that one simply cannot borrow half a million dollars?
Picture this: you get the feeling that you're hanging, no place special, weightless and suspended in mid-air, and something tells you this may last quite a while. For all intents and purposes, you should be falling, and gaining speed while you do. But it doesn't happen, and you're not Wile E. either. What's more, you’re incessantly being promised that you’ll never fall as long as you keep moving your arms and legs. And though you wonder what fate will have in store once you get too tired of swimming, you try very hard to believe that the breaststroke and the butterfly, when executed properly, nullify gravity, because you think you know what's next if you don't. Nothing to do but to keep swimming and tell yourself you have faith. Mind over matter and all that.
Yeah, and whatever you do, don't look down, or so they say, but that's easier said then done. You peeked, you couldn't help yourself, who do they think they're fooling, after all it's your life too, and more than it's theirs, and you see "they" are losing over a third in their life blood tax income, while they rake up debt as if it's cotton candy, the kind that you can feel is being spun out of your living tissue, and you're afraid that might start hurting something bad sometime soon. And if that would happen, you now realize that no medicare is all too bleeding very likely to pay for your medical bills, and the insurance that came with your job is sure to leave with it too, and one out of every 6 of your neighbors is out of work already and once it's one out of every five you're pretty darn sure it'll be your turn too.
And you might get up and shout, and vent your doubts and anger, or so you think, and so you keep repeating in your head, if only you were sure you would not have to be alone. What, you ask, is bound to become of the one who is the first to lose the belief? Is that one destined to fall into the bottomless pit reserved for ye of little faith and none at all, or will it be a ritual tearing off of life and limbs by the hands of the truer followers? What are the chances that the first head to stick out above the evenly waving fields of grain will be hailed as a liberator, and not cut off at the neck in order to let what everybody knows their place is to go on and on and on?
For now you see no other way, no choice or option, than to believe that believing will keep you from falling, like everyone else around you tells you they do, and you do feel somewhat comforted by the notion that ever since the days of old, those who live in their faith have pledged they will take care of their own. But mostly, if you're open and lucid and honest, you're just simply scared out of your wits. And what you're most afraid of above all is that somewhere high above the waving fields of grain, your very fear will freeze you, no place special, in mid-air, suspended and weightless and unable to keep on moving your arms and legs. And you think you know what's next.
So far I would claim except for a few brave economists, policy analysis, so far most are in complete denial of the effect of outsourcing, globalization, trade, insourcing, immigration (i.e. the race to the bottom) is having on a macro economic scale. Just now I notice more economists are talking about wages, income, but in terms of consumer driven economies and confidence.
I think we maybe over the tipping point on that fundamental principle to have a robust economy one must provide great jobs, stable income, i.e. a middle class to have it and that's on a macro economic scale. This is my hypothesis but I wish we didn't have to sit here, like we're in a huge dysfunctional family, watching those in power destroy it all before it finally dawns on them this is the case.
I fully agree with your excellent comments, but given not only the lagging indicator(s), but those recent auto industry layoffs will have both an obvious and gradual multiplier effect, together with further credit derivatives meltdowns (leveraged buyouts coming due, commercial real estate loans going default, credit card loan securitization, auto loans, etc.) causing ever increasing unemployment, along with the exponential growth in jobs offshoring deriving from both TARP bailouts and that stimulus bill (where the "buy America" clause was killed) may give us a bizarre mix of decreasing wages/hyperinflation. May not fit the popular models, but this is a mighty unique economic situation we are facing.
Then, of course, these new bailouts to the insurance industry, a principal offshorer, which has encouraged others to offshore prior to their being insured, and now will undoubtedly further offshore jobs upon receiving said bailout funds.
although normalizing relations with China did open the door to really bad trade deals...but when trade deficits really kicked in was starting with NAFTA and then the WTO. That's 1993, with the China PNTR (disaster!) in 2000.
It's other things and this is the start of union participation decline. I'm missing something.
Sure seems to me to be a turning point against Labor in the United States. Took a while for that trade deal to work it's damage though.
-------------------------------------
Executive compensation is inversely proportional to morality and ethics.
10% on international wire money transfers.
I suspect that alone could solve California's money problems.
-------------------------------------
Executive compensation is inversely proportional to morality and ethics.
The U.S. economy was on a real roll from the New Deal until about the 1970's. Now Nixon (I'm sorry I have never seen him as the ultimate bad guy here, he looks like a Communist in comparison to policy today ;)) took the U.S. off of the Gold Standard, I believe started at that time, labor arbitrage trade but it's not clear to me precisely what policies were changed that started this downward spiral on wages. But it seems to spring from the 1970's time frame, when they were also fighting like mad inflation and the oil crisis.
So, I need an economic policy history lesson or need to find out for myself. If someone already knows I'm listening.
1. We need health care workers. As the baby boomers age, they're going to need care. Medicare home health workers can be a huge chunk of the new WPA.
2. We need a massive transition to ambient energy. Note I didn't say *alternative* energy- in some areas of the country coal, gas, and oil still make economic, if not green house gas, sense. But it's time to stop shipping these items worldwide, and it's time to stop having all of our energy eggs in the fossil fuels basket. A massive conversion to electric transportation and fast battery chargers fed by a huge variety of energy sources is in order for the United States- and that will take a lot of work.
3. Our third prong, is reducing transportation needs overall- and that means fiber to every house, every building, in the United States. Every barn even. A networked farm can use less labor in the long run.
These are the three challenges that are equal to the national highway and parks system that the WPA and CCCs built.
-------------------------------------
Executive compensation is inversely proportional to morality and ethics.
Was getting a divorce!
Still, I know a guy who considered a mortgage payment to just be another form of rent. He never intended to *actually* pay it off or own anything- just build up some equity, sell it off, buy something else, lather, rinse repeat.
I've yet to ask him how he's doing now that Real Estate prices are going DOWN instead of UP....
-------------------------------------
Executive compensation is inversely proportional to morality and ethics.
does not encourage wage growth. "American" Capitalism is strongest with low-wage jobs and high leverage.
NDD, you are on a role.
It's high time someone focus on the ever eroding income.
Econbrowser has a great post on industrial production and there are now others focusing in on the trade deficit....saying (which is strongly connected to wages due to global wage arbitrage) if that is not reduced there will not be a real recovery.
Supposedly China is second as I recall in standard of living, but I have a hard time believing that because even with these (to us) beyond low wages, both India and China they have loads of disposable income and live pretty well.
The rest of the country....but the ones displacing U.S. workers are the ones I'm referring to.
Interesting that an auto worker in the U.S. can no longer support a family of four on current wages. Yet, this is not the case in China. I find the BLS projections not credible inasmuch as they indicate a decline in 2010, while there's currently zero evidence to support this, given current trend.
The only area of the construction economy that seems to be sustaining is the remodeling end. People won't build new houses, but they will fix up old ones.
There's already some of this in the "Green Jobs" part of the stimulus/budget (Van Jones, et al), but a big program to push retrofitting could be a big win. This would drive manual labor, as well as the manufacturing feed-streams for everything from windows to water heaters. Lots of wins there in the snow belt.
In the sun belt, we can work on the upgrades needed to handle micro-distribution of power generation (e.g. paying back the grid from local solar/wind, etc).
And there's also a big opportunity to push retraining. A non-trivial subset of the currently unemployed are experienced. They could be effectively put to work mentoring/training others. The service/servitude industry isn't a good answer for mainline employment. Learning real skills is a win for the coming decades.
Agreed wholeheartedly that our country will not recover until the "work for a living" is employed. We have left the Industrial Age and the Information Age. Remember when our country was transitioning to the Informational Age, we had high unemployment. Today, we are leaving the Information Age for an Unknown Age. Since the new Age is still TBA ( to be announced) the recovery will take a long long time to sprout. With no direction into a new Age for the near future, we are positioned for THE GREATEST DEPRESSION.
should move into the management business and take over the company. Others have argued against it but I don't see why not. Odds are they (if they also get engineers, salaried workers to join in) can build a better car and be more strategic than what GM management continually does. At least if it's subsidized we would be supporting labor directly, U.S. citizen labor, with a purchase.
Wow. This is a dramatic and great idea and even though it's from the New Deal, this is quite out of the box as a proposal!
I believe that the entire U.S. economy will never recover, we've gone past the edge on the middle class squeeze to the point it's bringing down the entire Macroeconomic economy.
What I see happening is the U.S. simply refuses to deal with what globalization is doing to the United States. There is no way American workers can compete with wages that are at 100:1, 10:1, even 3:1 ratios to U.S. wages and there is no way that will level until the United States PPP and standard of living goes to a 3rd world country.
Somehow I don't think that's what America is supposed to be about.
So, not only do they need a jobs program, tied to citizenship, to U.S. workers, to people of this nation, almost as a national union....but they need to modify a host of policies from corporate international tax codes to trade to employment law and put U.S. labor first.
FDR said work was a right and now that entire value is gone. Instead we have game shows as drama of who will be canned next.
The entire middle aged class is now double whammied. Through age discrimination, labor arbitrate their income is greatly reduced. Then they have no retirement. Old pensions were replaced with 401ks which have gotten wiped out through the stock market bubbles and busts and they also have had to raid them for health care costs, living expenses, being out of work.
So, we need a major paradigm shift in this nation and we need this age group especially to get their careers back.
This continual retraining, reeducation bullshit is just that. These people have college degrees, advanced degrees, years of experience, skills abounding and the reason they are in this boat is the obsession from multinational corporations to thrash their workforce and labor arbitrage people.
Folks, this really is a dramatic policy call and at minimum one that wakes up the brain and puts the focus squarely where it needs to happen, the U.S. labor force. So, please cite it on other sites in comments, rate it up on sharing sites, send it around to your friends. I think NDD and Bonddad are really onto something with this policy suggestion.
... first thing that you would need, which would be to get out from under the decades of "the future is more of today" management that led GM to get bogged down under these liabilities that only made sense for a company with a big share of a big US market, with buyers buying a new car every three years, with a large labor input per car.
Given "the 1950's will last forever", it made all the sense in the world to make sure that 1/3 of the wage was promises to pay in the future out of a larger cash flow, which at the same time eliminated the overtime pay penalty.
Given "the future will be different than today", loading up on unfunded liabilities to a massive workforce was a critical mistake.
And on a "reboot", the whole legacy problem is dumped on someone else ... the UAW, the former shareholders, raiding the pension plans of GM executives, or whatever. So that is one out of the way.
Then with the old shareholders burned, have the company taken over by the employees, with genuine profit sharing in the sense of, "share all the profits among the employees", drive the wage down to a point where GM-America can be competitive across the board with North American produced automobiles, and take market share back.
Take on profit-maximizing corporations with an employment-maximizing labor syndicate and let some other sorry sucker be the one to go under the next time.
If we can't beat them, join them! Not!!! But GM is making a crucial error, because it has," we the peoples" money funding China laborers verses USA laborers. No one in this country wants to see GM take off with our money and outsource jobs, so it puts America even in more of a recession. Sure they can get cars for a cheaper price, but without jobs, who will be able to even afford a Chinese car.. And a funny this occured. We got the 1.6 trillion dollars mainly from the Chinese, we gave GM a 15 billion dollar loan to restructure and think up the next fuel efficient car, now GM is talking bankruptcy anyhow and buying cars from China to send to the USA. Recall we are friends with China and they own America basically. Walmart, K Mart, Target, Dollar General, ect.. They are into scooters, atv, motorcycles, dune buggies, ect.. Now cars.. So anyhow, I am for the Chinese to bring over cars too, if they feel they will sale. They are apart of the US Trade Agreement. Japan, Germany, Korea, Mexico, ect are making our car products. Transmission parts made in Japan, shipped to Mexico for assembly, and put in a Ford sold in the good ole USA. But even Ford is talking a deal with China, but Ford took no bailout money. So Ford can do what they want. Recall the PUMA- GM's latest creation the two man electric wheelchair. Probably designed after a actual wheelchair. But it was GM's lowest moments. See, I thought they had courage and would fight for dominance in the auto world. Think up a two person car, 600cc engine, get 60 mpg and travel 55 mph.. This was our President asking the impossible of GM. Ford is making cars and on no bailout. 15 billion dollars is enough money to start a auto manufacturing plant. Did that money go on bonuses. It makes me wonder. I own a 2006 Chevy Colorado that I wish was a Ford.
Here is a story of an economics reporter for the New York Times being foreclosed on. I want to take this quote:
Now here is the thing that I just find ridiculous and frankly I just do not want to pay for it. People living way beyond their means and signing up for these mortgages when they clearly, anyone with high school math should have known....they could not afford them.
Seriously. This drives me nuts and is completely irresponsible. If one has a take home pay of $2,7k...in New York City....signing up for a $400k mortgage....
well, I'm sorry but I don't want to pay for this just as much as I don't want to pay for someone with a gambling addiction or buying a Ferrari when they make $12/hr and so on...
I know they scammed people, but how can someone not figure out...esp. on such a large purchase...that one simply cannot borrow half a million dollars?
Picture this: you get the feeling that you're hanging, no place special, weightless and suspended in mid-air, and something tells you this may last quite a while. For all intents and purposes, you should be falling, and gaining speed while you do. But it doesn't happen, and you're not Wile E. either. What's more, you’re incessantly being promised that you’ll never fall as long as you keep moving your arms and legs. And though you wonder what fate will have in store once you get too tired of swimming, you try very hard to believe that the breaststroke and the butterfly, when executed properly, nullify gravity, because you think you know what's next if you don't. Nothing to do but to keep swimming and tell yourself you have faith. Mind over matter and all that.
Yeah, and whatever you do, don't look down, or so they say, but that's easier said then done. You peeked, you couldn't help yourself, who do they think they're fooling, after all it's your life too, and more than it's theirs, and you see "they" are losing over a third in their life blood tax income, while they rake up debt as if it's cotton candy, the kind that you can feel is being spun out of your living tissue, and you're afraid that might start hurting something bad sometime soon. And if that would happen, you now realize that no medicare is all too bleeding very likely to pay for your medical bills, and the insurance that came with your job is sure to leave with it too, and one out of every 6 of your neighbors is out of work already and once it's one out of every five you're pretty darn sure it'll be your turn too.
And you might get up and shout, and vent your doubts and anger, or so you think, and so you keep repeating in your head, if only you were sure you would not have to be alone. What, you ask, is bound to become of the one who is the first to lose the belief? Is that one destined to fall into the bottomless pit reserved for ye of little faith and none at all, or will it be a ritual tearing off of life and limbs by the hands of the truer followers? What are the chances that the first head to stick out above the evenly waving fields of grain will be hailed as a liberator, and not cut off at the neck in order to let what everybody knows their place is to go on and on and on?
For now you see no other way, no choice or option, than to believe that believing will keep you from falling, like everyone else around you tells you they do, and you do feel somewhat comforted by the notion that ever since the days of old, those who live in their faith have pledged they will take care of their own. But mostly, if you're open and lucid and honest, you're just simply scared out of your wits. And what you're most afraid of above all is that somewhere high above the waving fields of grain, your very fear will freeze you, no place special, in mid-air, suspended and weightless and unable to keep on moving your arms and legs. And you think you know what's next.
So far I would claim except for a few brave economists, policy analysis, so far most are in complete denial of the effect of outsourcing, globalization, trade, insourcing, immigration (i.e. the race to the bottom) is having on a macro economic scale. Just now I notice more economists are talking about wages, income, but in terms of consumer driven economies and confidence.
I think we maybe over the tipping point on that fundamental principle to have a robust economy one must provide great jobs, stable income, i.e. a middle class to have it and that's on a macro economic scale. This is my hypothesis but I wish we didn't have to sit here, like we're in a huge dysfunctional family, watching those in power destroy it all before it finally dawns on them this is the case.
I fully agree with your excellent comments, but given not only the lagging indicator(s), but those recent auto industry layoffs will have both an obvious and gradual multiplier effect, together with further credit derivatives meltdowns (leveraged buyouts coming due, commercial real estate loans going default, credit card loan securitization, auto loans, etc.) causing ever increasing unemployment, along with the exponential growth in jobs offshoring deriving from both TARP bailouts and that stimulus bill (where the "buy America" clause was killed) may give us a bizarre mix of decreasing wages/hyperinflation. May not fit the popular models, but this is a mighty unique economic situation we are facing.
Then, of course, these new bailouts to the insurance industry, a principal offshorer, which has encouraged others to offshore prior to their being insured, and now will undoubtedly further offshore jobs upon receiving said bailout funds.
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