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NOTE: All material is Copywright protected.
Use without proper attribution and where applicable consent is a
violation of the law. Yes, that means you, AP writers who have
begun copying M/I's stuff, and you at the news site of the network
with the B in the middle of its call letters.
September 9, 2009 –
Let’s get a few of the basics facts out on the table to start:
1) There is 0.0% chance recovery has begun, or could
begin.
The fact that the President, and last week the Vice
President, are claiming the stimulus has fixed things is
terrifying. It means they don’t understand that there is something
actually wrong that needs to be fixed. Here’s a question: Why did
we need to change parties if everything was really fine, just a
little stimulating was needed?
Obama ran for office talking about fixing free trade,
outsourcing, offshoring, rolling back the Bush tax cuts, fixing
serious structural problems that have destroyed the national
economy. He promised “paradigm shift.”
All of it was just talk. Even worse, it has been
made absolutely clear by the President himself that he has no idea
about anything with regard to the economy. He really thinks it is
generally fine and will just right itself thanks to his stimulus
package. Our jobs are overseas. No one has made ends meet in a
generation. The entire economy is a bubble, which is increased
exponentially by the unprecedented amount of debt people are in.
People who have been laid off aren’t being rehired – more are losing
jobs instead. Businesses are shutting down left and right.
Businesses are moving more jobs to Mexico and China. Yet the
President now sounds like John McCain during the campaign, who
thought the economy was basically sound except for a short-term,
mortgage-caused blip.
None of what is happening is mysterious or
unpredicted. And no, I do not just mean I am a lone psychic who is
the one and only who saw this coming. You may recall back in the
late 1990’s the riots up in Seattle when the WTO met there. While
average Americans focused on detail after detail about that Jon
Benet girl or Payne Stewart’s plane, they ignored people who took to
the streets to warn that the nation will collapse if we don’t stop free
trade globalization. Robert Dole admitted he was, “Getting 2000
calls against for every call for,” back in the mid-1990’s when GATT
(The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) was first being voted
on. Most Americans knew – and most Americans know – that free trade
agreements put America out of business. Our jobs leave, go to
places where workers are paid dirt and regulations don’t exist like
they do here. First factory jobs, then service jobs (customer
service over in India,) then computer programming jobs (yes, entire
tech cities are now set up in India, where high tech work like
computer programming is done and companies like Symantec now do
their business,) and even jobs like lawyer jobs (again, sent to
India for document review, etc.)
The truth is simple and obvious. And the reality is
simple and obvious – Barack Obama hasn’t taken step one to address
any of these issues. And so there is no possibility of recovery.
Even worse, it is exactly like in 2003, when M/I ran
this article.
Bush had flooded the economy with billions of borrowed dollars.
The newspapers claimed “record growth” and “recovery.” M/I reported, accurately, that it was just a prelude to
something far worse – none of the problems had been addressed, but
now, once tax cut money was gone, there would be hundreds of
billions in additional debt on top of our other issues. Yes,
now it will be trillions in extra debt once the stimulus bump has
passed, and none of the actual issues has been addressed.
And then there’s your part. Yes, you collapsed your
nation’s economy.
It is real. You know people warned you about
shopping at Wal-Mart. But it’s not just Wal-Mart, and the effect is
not just on other stores. Every time you shop at Home Depot, you
put dozens and dozens of businesses out of business – AND, drive
salaries down for everyone from distributors to manufacturers to
truck drivers. This second part people don’t really get.
The first part is bad enough. Mr. Cunningham in that
old TV show Happy Days – he had a hardware store. Yes, TV is not
the best view of reality, but people like him were the norm – they
had a mom-and-pop business, like a hardware store, and could support
a family on it. Now, Mr. Cunningham – thousands and thousands of
Mr. Cunninghams across the country – have lost their businesses,
because we shop at Home Depot or Lowes or one of the few chains that
dominate. Just by shopping Home Depot, we put hardware stores,
lighting stores, appliance stores, lumber yards, nurseries, and
countless other businesses under.
But it goes beyond this. The reason Home
Depot/Wal-Mart/etc. succeed is that they offer things for cheaper
(and people put having a few dollars short-term in their pocket over
the fact they will lose their job/business in the long-term.)
Answer this: how does Wal-Mart/Home Depot sell things for cheaper?
1) They squeeze suppliers. This costs salaries and
jobs down the line. Every dollar pinched from the price Home Depot
pays is one that must be pinched by distributors, manufacturers,
truckers – everyone involved in making that product and getting it
to the store. So yes, you save a few dollars. But your salary
crumbles. You lose your job. Your neighbor loses his business. We
know this, and yet we did it anyway.
2) The second way big box stores beat competitor’s
prices is that they only need to make little bits of profit, because
all the cash just has to support 1 central head. Rather than
thousands of Mr. Cunninghams each needing to earn enough to live on,
each big box store or Applebee’s-type chain just needs to make some
profit to be sent up to headquarters where – yes, just like with the
big banks – the handful of the fortunate make all the money that
used to support ourselves and our neighbors. A handful at corporate
make huge money and bonuses. All the money is sucked up into the
hands of the few; as Mr. Cunningham now works as a clerk at Home
Depot, not able to get by, and Marion now has to work, too, as a
cashier; and no one is home to watch the kids or cook healthy food
for them, as they sit at home getting in trouble and growing obese.
Um, how did Barack Obama’s stimulus plan fix this?
The problems facing the economy are two-fold: 1)
Conservative economics that sells destructive voodoo like free
trade, outsourcing, offshoring, and tax cuts for businesses and
the wealthy; 2) us choosing to look out only for ourselves, and
patronizing big box businesses that have put our nation out of
business.
Here’s a central point with regard to conservative
economics that everyone has missed: if you send your factory to
China, you may save 30% in labor costs, but you lose 100% in
potential revenue. It’s called the Henry Ford rule. Remember
that? “If I don’t pay my employees enough that they can afford my
cars, I won’t have any customers.” If businesses just think about
themselves and not about being part of a whole economy, moving to
China or Mexico or India may seem wise. “I’m cutting costs.” But
2/3 of the economy is consumer spending. If you don’t have
customers with money to buy your products, you can produce them as
cheaply as you wish, you will still go out of business.
Businesses argued for free trade, etc., thinking they
were pulling one over on us – pretending it would help us by opening
markets – markets like China where people have no money to spend.
Companies like Boeing – who owes its existence to America – thought
they were brilliant setting up factories over in China. Not only
did they betray the nation that gave them a chance to exist, but
they shot themselves in the face. Yes, some cost savings, but even
if they saved 50% on costs, they lost 100% in potential revenue –
that money they gave to the Chinese will not come back as
patronage. Instead, back where they generate their revenue,
Americans can’t afford to fly; one by one, the airlines start going
bankrupt, start cutting back services and, yes, purchases of Boeing
planes; in the end, Boeing, just as we do when we shop at big box
stores, loses much more than it saved in the short-run. It lost its
customer/revenue base, without which a businesses ceases to exist.
Who out there do you hear talking about getting
Americans to stop shopping at Home Depot? Who do you hear waging
the campaign to fix/end free trade?
In short, nothing – nothing – is being done to even
begin addressing the problems facing our nation. Instead, one
trillion has been flushed down the toilet for clunkers, and another
trillion was handed to criminal banks that looted the nation.
There is a 0.0% chance recover is about to occur.
This is obvious to anyone who understands anything about what is
really happening in our country.
And just to throw one more thing in, check out this
article from CBS News:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/09/03/eveningnews/main5286515.shtml
Like so many articles in the non-M/I media, the reporting/facts are
well done, but the analysis = epic fail.
Look at this excerpt:
The other big change is how the workforce breaks
down by gender. The fact that 47 percent of American workers are
now female is a huge jump from 28 percent six decades ago. For the
first time ever, women workers may soon outnumber men.
"I think it's wonderful we're going to be 50 percent of the
workforce," Ramos said.
Not so fast. With construction and manufacturing jobs vanishing
and health care and teaching fields expanding, there's no
predicting which will be the majority gender.
"As male-dominated sectors contract, it is conceivable that men
will change their patterns of employment, you know," Taylor said.
"They'll look to become more employed in rising sectors that
heretofore have been predominantly women."
The article avoids reaching the obvious
conclusion/reality: There are now twice as many people in the work
force, but the workforce doesn’t need twice as many workers. There
isn’t a need for twice as many lawyers, doctors, bankers – there is
a slight uptick in services need, but basically you have the same
number of families, so the same amount of need, but the workforce is
– for the first time in all of American history – flooded with all
the women as well as men.
Where the above article concluded, “(Men will) look
to become more employed in rising sectors that heretofore have been
predominantly women,” the article dives off the deep end of
unreality – there is no vast expanse of woman-dominated professions
for men to now invade, exactly the opposite has happened: women are
in sectors predominantly dominated by men. “As male-dominated
sectors contract,” at the same time women are have also taken up 50
percent of the jobs. And so those unemployed men will, long-term,
remain unemployed men. Thus, combined with the above factors, the
collapse we are in.
This is real, this is all new to America over the
past few decades: women working/schooling, free trade, big box
stores dominating the nation. This is a massive collapse that has
been decades in the brewing. The current model isn’t sustainable,
and hasn’t been for years and years. Americans got by by living on
credit. That bubble has popped. A massive crash is underway.
America can’t economically survive free trade, women in the
workplace, big box store domination.
Now back to the President and media talking about the
recession being about over, and focusing on the pet project of
healthcare reform while ignoring the issues continuing to lead the
nation toward collapse..
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