Recent comments

  • Not that a old-fashioned rant isn't worth reading now and then. ;-)

    Reply to: Brain Dead Friedman Dutifully Writes Propaganda for His Corporate Lobbyist Masters   15 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • I just read through your source and I would do a reality check on some of this and get a second source. While I believe between Monsanto wanting to patent seeds and global climate change this is possible, I'm not so sure of the analysis I just read.

    He's got a huge section of the planet in "red", yet going to this government drought predictions for 2009, here, I don't see anything like that for the United States.

    China is facing the worst drought in 50 years but whether they actually have the reserves or not is like chasing a conspiracy theory...as this blog duly notes the lack of evidence of these reserves as well as the CT aspect of it all.

    Reply to: Expect a catastrophic fall in food production in 2009   15 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • My bad. Should have taken the time to look it up. Wall Mart is headquartered in Bentonville, Arkansas, according to the Wikipedia Article.  

     

    Reply to: Intel - Invest in the United States   15 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • I think you meant to say Arkansas, not Alabama. In any event, I do believe your pricing model is correct.

    Reply to: Intel - Invest in the United States   15 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • Apparently forgot that Wal*Mart's headquarters is still in Alabama.

    Yes, the manufacturing portion of the profits would go to China, but Wal*Mart's pricing model has always been at least 25% of the purchase price goes back to Alabama. 8% would also go to the local store hiring people. So while yes, far less of the profit would come back to the United States, some of it still would.

    Reply to: Intel - Invest in the United States   15 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • hopefully all companies will realize that US consumers are the best and that we are taking note of the one's who are shipping our jobs overseas and are not shopping with them at all. i read somewhere last week someone said it was pointless in helping the economy to help the poor with a stimulus check, they'd just go spend it at wal-mart and all the profits would go straight to china. great sentiment huh? i'm poor and we have consciously not been spending our money at wal-mart and we have also been taking the time to research what profits go where before we do shop. i suspect others are doing the same, poor or not.

    Reply to: Intel - Invest in the United States   15 years 9 months ago
  • Bloomberg seems to be the only financial press reporting on our lovely Benedict Arnold Corporations and GE....they were one of the first to squeeze their workers and arbitrage:

    Reply to: U.S. Corporations Demand the U.S. Taxpayer Should Not Buy American   15 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • I think Paul Otellini may just have finally figured out what Ford did- that his own employees are the early adopters of new tech.

    Reply to: Intel - Invest in the United States   15 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • but it would still sidestep the real problem from my point of view- the bigger picture of number of people supported by each laborer.

    Reply to: Proposed new Unemployment Rate number- U7   15 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • We've had plenty of posts of what is going wrong here- and the only *real* contribution overseas is making is that's where the jobs went.

    The rest has to do primarily with the "New American Way" since Reagan to spend more than we earn.

    Reply to: GM Using Bail Out Money to Invest in Brazil?   15 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • They are going to have 2 FABS up and running by 2010. Right now FABs processes are pretty much 45nm. And they are going to put a 45nm graphics processor onto the main processor.

    But the biggest news here is Intel is challenging other corporations to "invest in America" and that is one change of message. Amazing.

    Reply to: Manufacturing Tuesday   15 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • Seriously. This is next generation FAB, advanced manufacturing technology which is precisely the type of manufacturing the U.S. should be giving incentives, tax breaks, whatever to grab.

    Also, due to national security issues and the increased dependency upon advanced technology...it's critical to keep some of this in the U.S.

    But in all honesty, I am positive Intel could have manufactured these FABS elsewhere for cheaper so something just happened we need to find out more.

    We need advanced laser manufacturing in the U.S. as well...we could put together a critical next generation advanced manufacturing list and promote the shit out of it actually now that I think about it...

    another critical area is battery technologies. There are research areas, i.e. we still need breakthroughs, many in manufacturing techniques to reduce costs.

    Biggest thing is I'm so used to blasting Intel for their inane labor arbitrage I am just stunned, with my mouth open....maybe someone somewhere is "getting it" and seeing the long term picture instead of quarterly numbers!

    Reply to: Manufacturing Tuesday   15 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • but it was revealed a week or so ago, and forgot to include. Kudos for bringing it up. But like RO mentioned, we have no idea what the H1 B situation will be with this. Hrmm....I'm going to keep an eye on this. Once more good call.

    Reply to: Manufacturing Tuesday   15 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • and odds are by the time they get these plants operational all of those high skilled manufacturing engineers (FABs) will have had to move onto to find some other source of income.

    Shame they didn't plan this a long time ago, do a temporary furlough of workers and some sort of ease of transition to retrofit the new plants.

    Seriously this is a major bitch to build a FAB and even if they wanted to, they could not just "whip it together"...

    but still I was shocked. I have only seen Korea and Japan building FABs in the U.S. All U.S. companies have been offshoring everything including your mother and the kitchen sink as fast as they can.

    Reply to: Manufacturing Tuesday   15 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • That's still net about 1500 jobs after the recent layoffs. 2000 were lost at those locations recently, and you've got to figure 3500 of those new jobs will be going to H*class visa holders. But that leaves 3500 new hires, 2000 of which will likely be the very people recently laid off- good news indeed.

    Reply to: Manufacturing Tuesday   15 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • Taxpayers assume too much downside risk in this machination. You are right about homeowner relief. It almost seems like an afterthought.

    This is more than a liquidity crisis. This idea that if we buy up CDOs or loans will unfreeze the credit markets is so old - this may have worked months ago but not now.

    'Nationalization' leading to liquidation of insolvent banks would have been cheaper.

    Reply to: Geithner's New TARP Plan - BARF   15 years 9 months ago
  • This is a surprising piece of good news:

    Intel said the money would fund factories that use its 32-nanometer manufacturing technology to build faster, smaller chips that consume less energy. The chip giant will invest in existing manufacturing sites in Oregon, Arizona and New Mexico and will support about 7,000 high-wage, high-skill jobs at those locations -- part of the company's total U.S. workforce of more than 45,000.

    Of course Intel is huge on labor arbitrage, using H-1Bs but still this is very surprising for normally they hunt the cheapest place on the globe to locate new FABs. They are very expensive to upgrade.

    Reply to: Manufacturing Tuesday   15 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • I think everyone who is a regular on EP was blogging their brains out on the stupidity of the TARP. I must have over 10 posts on it and NDD has multiples, so does midtowng...

    now we debated about the correct plan but I think we all agreed *this* plan was absurd and just delaying the inevitable at an enormous cost.

    Reply to: Want to Know What was Said in September to Get Congress to Approve TARP?   15 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • That what we'll get afterwards is just the same system with some feel-good patches on it.

    One does not need to have a global economic collapse, a melt down, etc. they describe and "do the restructuring" the way they are.

    True, but both you and I know the way they are doing the restructuring is just going to, at best, set the United States up for another crash in another 70 years. They aren't doing the draconian measures it would take to actually, gasp, use what we've learned from Operating System Resource Allocation to come up with a better economy. The only way they'd ever even consider such a cross-disciplinary system is if there was an Armageddon that took the system down completely.

    Reply to: Want to Know What was Said in September to Get Congress to Approve TARP?   15 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • I understand the focus on U6--Total unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers--which stands at 13.9%

    However, wouldn't the real percentage be higher if the discouraged workers from U5--Total unemployed, plus discouraged workers, plus all other marginally attached workers, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers--were included in the U6 number?

    Reply to: Proposed new Unemployment Rate number- U7   15 years 9 months ago
    EPer:

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