11 Long-Term Trends That Are Absolutely Destroying The U.S. Economy
by ilene - October 7th, 2010 5:52 pm
11 Long-Term Trends That Are Absolutely Destroying The U.S. Economy
Courtesy of Michael Snyder at Economic Collapse
The U.S. economy is being slowly but surely destroyed and many Americans have no idea that it is happening. That is at least partially due to the fact that most financial news is entirely focused on the short-term. Whenever a key economic statistic goes up the financial markets surge and analysts rejoice. Whenever a key economic statistic goes down the financial markets decline and analysts speak of the potential for a "double-dip" recession. You could literally get whiplash as you watch the financial ping pong ball bounce back and forth between good news and bad news. But focusing on short-term statistics is not the correct way to analyze the U.S. economy. It is the long-term trends that reveal the truth. The reality is that there are certain underlying foundational problems that are destroying the U.S. economy a little bit more every single day.
11 of those foundational problems are discussed below. They are undeniable and they are constantly getting worse. If they are not corrected (and there is no indication that they will be) they will destroy not only our economy but also our entire way of life. The sad truth is that it would be hard to understate just how desperate the situation is for the U.S. economy.
Long-Term Trend #1: The Deindustrialization Of America
The United States is being deindustrialized at a pace that is almost impossible to believe. But now that millions upon millions of people have lost their jobs, more Americans than ever are starting to wake up and believe it.
A recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found that 69 percent of Americans now believe that free trade agreements have cost America jobs. Ten years ago the majority of Americans had great faith in the new "global economy" that we were all being merged into, but now the tide has turned.…
No, It Is Not Entirely Different This Time – But It is More Insidious
by ilene - December 7th, 2009 1:22 pm
No, It Is Not Entirely Different This Time – But It is More Insidious
Courtesy of Jesse’s Café Américain
There are some differences and they are significant.
The US is not on a gold standard, so the devaluation of the dollar does not have to occur in a stepwise function with an official restatement of value. This time the Fed can simply monetize debt and provide more dollars as it wills. That is fiat.
The US is not a net exporter to the world, as it was then. This is why Smoot-Hawley was harmful to the US recovery. The major nations of the world, such as Germany, Italy, and Japan, became engaged in their own domestic industrial recovery including rearmament. Today the US is the consumer for the world’s exporting nations. And it also owns the reserve currency.
The New Deal was a bottom up Jobs Program. The Deal this time is a new version of trickle down. The second wave down in the Great Depression caught many of the professionals who had made millions shorting the initial market declines, or at least survived the Great Crash by selling early. The next wave down in the current credit collapse is going to boil the middle class, a few degrees at a time.
Geither: None Would Have Survived – Rolfe Winkler