Posted on 03/19/2008 5:47:40 AM PDT by buzzer
Americans are living beyond their means and Asia is currently financing that. But eventually the Asians/Europeans will stop financing the USA and then the bubble will burst.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4n3g5lUgkWk&NR=1
(Excerpt) Read more at youtube.com ...
If it happens. it happens. People, including govts, must live within their means.
Today, in the USA, we could easily say that the gods are money, sex, and leisure. Our money is becoming less and less, as for sex, well unless you like std's you might want to keep that zipper up. And as for leisure, well it is going to take a lot of work to feed the family, heat the house and fill the family car, leisure may be less and less as well.
-and now the world's ending all over again.
This is what the loony bonkers leftists do: convince themselves that their predictions of doom are valid no matter what. Some Marxist on TV a while back was saying that the very fact that none of Marx's prophesies had yet come to pass was proof of how farsighted he was.
At least we can fill Chinese walmarts with cheap American made goods
Are all those filthy rich Asians going to buy out America?
Welcome to FR
I didn’t even look at the video . . . I figured that, since the Administration has been allowing the dollar to slide since, oh, 2002 a video from 2007 predicting it is a waste of time.
It has to happen at some point. Oh, things would have been infinitely better if they come back to their senses 6~7 years ago. We would have had a normal recession albeit rather painful.
I guess what bothers me most in all this is that many have never really prospered during the “prosperous” times,but have lived humbly within their means,and now are already getting into a bind with the rising prices & stagnant wages & have no direction to go.
Capitalism creates wealth, Socialism uses that wealth up..
Not many options still remain on a bail-out. Austerity budgets are apparently beyond the scope of our present Congress, and very likely, beyond the ambitions or vision of the current President. So whatever “help” we get from government sources is probably only a pallative and prolongs the problem.
Unfortunately, people get elected because they promise to “do something”, when doing nothing is probably the best antidote for the current situation. Sure, people, and largely innocent at that, are adversely affected, but the “government solutions” merely spread the hurt around even further.
Pump priming (does anyone even UNDERSTAND that term any more?) and draconian banking measures were tried back in the period 1933-1935, with the result of having an even DEEPER depression in 1938 than there was in 1932.
Understanding the ethanol boondoggle: the effective result is a widespread support of agricultural income, from the conversion of corn grain into a non-food product, and effectively providing an artificial scarcity (therefore higher prices) to ALL foodstuffs. “Growing our own fuel” is the supposed benefit, but it is an inferior grade of primary fuel, even though it makes an excellent additive to the primary fuel, gasoline, taking the place of a number of less desirable fuel additives.
If it is FUEL we want for the enormous number of internal combustion engines now in existence, then go to harvest of Methane Hydrate from the ocean floor, and convert the methane to high-grade hydrocarbon fuels like iso-octane by reformulation. Or coal gasification using the Fischer-Tropsch process.
Face it, we are going to be using carbon-based fuel to power our civilization, perhaps forever. To do that, we shall have to be recycling all the carbon dioxide BACK into hydrocarbon fuels, plus free oxygen, to be burned and reburned over and over again. That is exactly what happens in nature, only the process are very slow. These processes can be vastly accelerated in laboratory conditions, and have already been scaled up to industrial levels in certain applications. HUGE economic opportunities exist for the entrepreneurs that can take advantage of this technology.
Pretty good segue, even if I say so myself. This current paranoia about “global warming” has stalled our thinking about how to solve several recurrent problems.
Simultaneously.
HUH??? You mean because folks point out some economic realities like to mooch free lunches for a living you have to be a whole lot cuter than most of us are or the obvious fact that the dollar HAS dropped they are loony bonkers leftists? Even the French with their 35 hr workweek live off the produce of their own economy.
When you use a credit card at Dunkin’Donuts in the morning,
do you think this will lead to a larger problem?
I’ve noticed they no longer interview Peter Schiff on CNBC even though he was quite popular there. His book is very enlightening.
Can we say that in the long term, free market prevails? Aside from the short term manipulation of currencies attributed to Soros and his ilk, there are certain advantages to a revaluation of currency. I am always amazed that so few people really look at the international revaluation of the dollar. A reduction in the purchasing power of the dollar can well be a stimulus for American manufacturing. Import costs are increased. Our goods are more exportable and it becomes relatively more viable to make our own goods. There is a willingness to spend other currencies in America when they will buy more. Less of our money is spent in other countries as we can’t afford their goods. The balance of trade becomes much better.
Get something straight. Even Soros with his billions under management did not have the gravitational power to realign the planets of currency exchange rates. He merely profited off the fact that government had manipulated their currencies way beyond what the markets could support, the imbalances became to severe to continue, he took a counter position and when thing returned to equilibrium, he walked off with a bundle. And just to be clear I despise his politics.
Not if you pay the entire balance each month.
“Aside from the short term manipulation of currencies attributed to Soros and his ilk, there are certain advantages to a revaluation of currency.”
When the dollars nothing worth, dollar debts are either meaningless. But as “Depeche Mode” sung in the 80’s “Everything counts in large amounts”
“Our goods are more exportable and it becomes relatively more viable to make our own goods.”
At least if foreign investors are goeing to invest in the US. I hope that Airbus will build that plant in Mobile even if they don’t get the tanker contract.
Also worth a look on global economics are these videos:
Soaring U.S. Global Inflation pt 1 - 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RaIRxBpTt0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ed4sv6ND5Qo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_xU9yD6x-0
--like last year's announcement of the "collapse of the dollar"?
Oops, I mean "COLLAPSE OF THE DOLLAR"?????????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You forget a few salient points.
1. we import commodities - thus we import at much higher costs, causing the cost of our exports to increase as well
2. American purchasing power in the world is destroyed
3. at some point when the devaluation of the dollar gets too painful for the ME and Asia they will unpeg completely from the dollar, and we will no longer be a reserve currency. What then will prop up our government deficit spending ?
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