Posted on 08/08/2007 12:41:14 PM PDT by SirLinksalot
Keep spreading that ignorance, you’re good at it.
...But it’s different THIS time!
Hahaha.
I believe the author has it right. And once economic reality hits China in the face, their demand for fuel (due to their ability to pay) will drop off. That will lower the price for all. You might have a point if energy supply and demand were static, but they are not. Neither is technology.
And like the guys says, China cannot keep under-cutting the world forever, if the dollar is allowed to fall to a point where they are not making any profit. The Chinese can subsidize for a while but not forever. Our economy has the flexibility to deal with these things, theirs does not.
One category of Americans it does hurt is our servicemembers stationed overseas. Our servicemembers in Europe are hurting now, and the cost of living adjustment doesn’t come close to making up for it.
This kind of reasoning is akin to that where one has bilateral mid thigh amputations as a quick weight loss strategy.
And don’t pay your taxes, I heard there is no law saying you have to. Be sure to let us know how your trial goes. Maybe while you’re in jail you can read up on economics and the Constitution.
That's even funnier!
It’s easy when you give me so much material to work with.
Sure measuring from peak to trough.
My pleasure.
Yep.
The fact is that we are becoming a debtor nation. Almost all the money the government spends produces little in the way of economic gains. If our educational system was productive, we could say we are investing in education. As it is, the money spent on education, is little more than a head start program for the proliferation of the social welfare state.
The Dollar has declined 30% since 2002, yet the cost of living in the U.S. has only gone up 10% since then.
Thus, a declining Dollar doesn't have to erode savings or cost more to live here.
...But if you don't drop the Dollar a lot more, then we'll continue to import too much. Try going into Wal-Mart to find a few things not labeled "Made In China".
Now, if that Meat-Lover's pizza was made with imported Japanese ingredients, I can see it (is that cost-push inflation? I get mixed-up). Either way, you have to ignore a LOT of factors if you think that way.
I haven’t read the entire article, but it does make some sense.
I work in an industry that watches the housing starts and construction industries to see if we are headed to a pull back. Based on those numbers, we should be.
But, many of our customers are able to sell their heavy equipment overseas right now and that has offset the pull back in domestic production.
In other words, a weaker dollar on the global scale has saved American jobs.
Oh boy. Honestly, I’ve been angry about this since Nixon went to China. The answer is just stop doing business with the ChiComs. But that is of course an entirely different issue.
As far devaluation, it certainly does depend on whose numbers your reading and whether you are looking at the dollar in comparison to a particular currency like Sterling, euro, or Canadian dollar for example or if you are choosing a different constellation of items by which to reckon “its horoscope”.
It doesn't work that way.
Sure, in the past four years the dollar has lost 17% of it's value in terms of other major currencies. Big deal. During that same time American private wealth has increased by 41%. This not only makes up for the drop, but leaves us 24% ahead.
There's more. Americans spend 90% of their money in the US, so that 17% drop only applies to a tenth of our spending, so most of the time foreign exchange simply doesn't matter.
When it does matter, it helps more than it hurts. The falling dollar makes us rich because the stuff we're selling ends up being cheaper to foreign buyers.
The problem is OPEC sells oil in dollars, and buys most of their imported goods in euros. A weak dollar makes them angry, and they hold back supply, just as they did in the 1970’s and just as they have done the past few years. I do give the author credit for knowing the Phillips no longer works.
I’m not looking at other currencies; I’m looking at trade imbalances.
Where you have a rising trade imbalance (i.e. more imports from said country than exports to them)...you typically have a currency imbalance.
Drop the value of your currency versus that country’s currency to reduce imports (or the rate of increase in imports) from them to help cure that imbalance in trade.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.