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STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Friday, 17 August 2012
[font size=3]STOCK MARKET WATCH, Friday, 17 August 2012[font color=black][/font]
SMW for 16 August 2012
AT THE CLOSING BELL ON 16 August 2012
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Dow Jones 13,250.11 +85.33 (0.65%)
S&P 500 1,415.51 +9.98 (0.71%)
Nasdaq 3,062.39 +31.46 (1.04%)
[font color=red]10 Year 1.84% +0.04 (2.22%)
30 Year 2.95% +0.05 (1.72%) [font color=black]
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[font size=2]Market Conditions During Trading Hours[/font]
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[font size=2]Euro, Yen, Loonie, Silver and Gold[center]
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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Market Data and News:[/font][/font]
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Economic Calendar
Marketwatch Data
Bloomberg Economic News
Yahoo Finance
Google Finance
Bank Tracker
Credit Union Tracker
Daily Job Cuts
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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Economic Blogs:[/font][/font]
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The Big Picture
Financial Sense
Calculated Risk
Naked Capitalism
Credit Writedowns
Brad DeLong
Bonddad
Atrios
goldmansachs666
The Stand-Up Economist
The Automatic Earth
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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Government Issues:[/font][/font]
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LegitGov
Open Government
Earmark Database
USA spending.gov
[/center][font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Videos:[/font][/font]
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Charlie Rose talks with Roubini
Charlie Rose talks with Krugman
William Black: This Economic Disaster
Bill Moyers with Kevin Drum and David Corn
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[font color=red]Partial List of Financial Sector Officials Convicted since 1/20/09 [/font][font color=red]
2/2/12 David Higgs and Salmaan Siddiqui, Credit Suisse, plead guilty to conspiracy involving valuation of MBS
3/6/12 Allen Stanford, former Caribbean billionaire and general schmuck, convicted on 13 of 14 counts in $2.2B Ponzi scheme, faces 20+ years in prison
6/4/12 Matthew Kluger, lawyer, sentenced to 12 years in prison, along with co-conspirator stock trader Garrett Bauer (9 years) and co-conspirator Kenneth Robinson (not yet sentenced) for 17 year insider trading scheme.
6/14/12 Allen Stanford sentenced to 110 years without parole.
6/15/12 Rajat Gupta, former Goldman Sachs director, found guilty of insider trading. Could face a decade in prison when sentenced later this year.
6/22/12 Timothy S. Durham, 49, former CEO of Fair Financial Company, convicted of one count conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, 10 counts of wire fraud, and one count of securities fraud.
6/22/12 James F. Cochran, 56, former chairman of the board of Fair, convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, one count of securities fraud, and six counts of wire fraud.
6/22/12 Rick D. Snow, 48, former CFO of Fair, convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, one count of securities fraud, and three counts of wire fraud.
7/13/12 Russell Wassendorf Sr., CEO of collapsed brokerage firm Peregrine Financial Group Inc. arrested and charged with lying to regulators after admitting to authorities he embezzled "millions of dollars" and forged bank statements for "nearly twenty years."
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[font size=3][font color=red]This thread contains opinions and observations. Individuals may post their experiences, inferences and opinions on this thread. However, it should not be construed as advice. It is unethical (and probably illegal) for financial recommendations to be given here.[/font][/font][/font color=red][font color=black]
100 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
But they have been bought and paid for by TFB crime syndicate.
Should the time actually come, I'd propose that he be hung by them. 
He is addicted to gambling. The guy needs court-ordered counseling(jail would be better).
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/08/14/give-bernanke-a-pink-slip/
You don’t need to comb the pages of the Wall Street Journal or the Financial Times to know what’s going on with the economy. Just take a look at Bloomberg Bonds and skip-down to the price/yield section on 10-year US Treasuries. That will tell you everything you need to know. As of Monday, yields are at 1.66%, a little higher than they have been lately, but still ridiculously low in what many people are calling the 4th year of the recovery. Recovery? You’ve got to be kidding. 1.66% is below the rate of inflation, which means that if you plunk your money into a 10-year bond, you’ll get back less than you put in. (inflation adjusted) Great investment, eh?
So, why are rates so low?...And, fifth, rates are low because we’re ruled by idiots. How else would you explain the fact that the Fed has initiated 3 rounds of bond buying (QE) to the tune of many trillions of dollars and unemployment is still above 8 percent, underemployment is above 15%, 13 million people still can’t find jobs, consumer confidence is down, retail sales are flagging, the housing market is in the dumps, domestic manufacturing is contracting, business investment is anemic, and credit expansion is zilch excluding rip-off student loans and junk subprime auto loans? How is it that Mr Bernanke–who never saw the housing bubble, who sang the praises of knucklehead mortgage products that blew up the financial system, and who assured us that the housing implosion was “contained”– can keep his job as chief regulator and monetary policymaker with this abysmal record of failure? The economy cannot possibly improve as long as the man in the wheelhouse is a dunce. That much is certain. Rates are low mainly because of the criminal mismanagement of the economy.
Did you know that people are stuffing boatloads of money into their mattresses to avoid investing in the transparently rigged stock market? It’s true. Here’s the scoop from TrimTabs:
“TrimTabs Investment Research said today that inflows into checking and savings accounts are far outpacing inflows into all other major investment vehicles….
In a research note, TrimTabs explained that checking and savings accounts attracted a combined $356 billion in the first half of 2012, nearly double the inflow of $188 billion into bond mutual funds and exchange-traded funds….
“Inflows into savings accounts were consistently heavy—the flows weren’t just happening in one or two months,” noted Biderman. “Savings account inflows ranged from $30 billion to $90 billion in each of the first six months of this year.”
Now if you or I, dear reader, were assigned the task of restoring faith in the capital markets, and yet, 4 years after the Lehman debacle, people were still squirreling their money away in regular zilch-interest ”vanilla” bank accounts, we’d get our “walking papers”, right? But not easy-money Bennie, the Pride of Princeton. Oh no. Bernanke gets a pat on the back and another 6 years to drive the world’s biggest economy deeper into the ditch. Go figure? Of course, the state of the economy doesn’t matter to Bernanke as long as the “people who count” are still making money. Take a look at this:
“The only major metric I looked at wherein today’s recovery outperformed the average expansion of the previous 60 years was corporate profits. In the average postwar recovery, corporate profits rose 38 percent from trough to peak. So far into this recovery, they have risen 45 percent.”
...In the same article, Rampell notes that government spending has actually seen “smaller growth in this recovery than in any previous ones …. In fact, the public sector has not grown at all in the last three years; it is smaller today than it was when the recovery began.”
How about that? So all that baloney about Obama being a ”big spender” is just more GOP propaganda. There’s not a word of truth to it. The administration should have boosted the size of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), as every competent economist in the country had warned. Instead, Obama went with the recommendations of Wall Street favorite, Larry Summers, who torpedoed Christina Romer’s appeal for a $1.8 trillion stimulus and set the stage for today’s protracted slump. Interestingly, there was an article in the Washington Post just last week that confirmed once again that –according to the data–the ARRA did just what it was supposed to do. The only problem was that it was too small. Here’s a clip from the article that drives home the point:
That settles it, stimulus works. Fiscal stimulus, that is. Monetary stimulus, on the other hand, is a total dud, unless, off course, the goal is too pump more helium into hyper-inflated equities to keep the investor class cheery. If there’s any doubt that that was Bernanke’s real intention, then take a look at this chart of QE’s performance over the last few years. The chart shows how stocks rose on an ocean of Fed-generated liquidity while the economy stagnated and the jobless numbers barely budged.
Diminishing returns on bond buying make it less likely that Bernanke will initiate another round of QE, mainly because the Fed’s accommodative policy (The “Bernanke Put”) hasn’t increased the amount of money in circulation, which means that QE is having negligible effect on the real economy. The so-called transmission mechanism is on the fritz, leaving the Fed without the tools it needs to kick-start the economy. British economist John Maynard Keynes warned that monetary policy alone would not be sufficient to trigger economic recovery during a massive deleveraging cycle like today, but Bernanke doesn’t like Keynes, so we can probably expect more of the same. QE to infinity...There are a number of ways to measure Bernanke’s dreadful effect on the economy, the most obvious of which is GDP. How much is the economy actually growing, that’s the question? Not much, it appears. Take a look at this:
Be real. The truth is, the economy is probably already in recession, but the data won’t show it for another quarter or so. But consider what this information on GDP means in terms of what we have already gone over in this article. First, that monetary stimulus (quantitative easing) hasn’t worked for 4 years. Second, that fiscal stimulus did work. That said, which type of stimulus do you think the administration should pursue?
MORE
*********************************************************************
MIKE WHITNEY lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion. He can be reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com
You don’t need to comb the pages of the Wall Street Journal or the Financial Times to know what’s going on with the economy. Just take a look at Bloomberg Bonds and skip-down to the price/yield section on 10-year US Treasuries. That will tell you everything you need to know. As of Monday, yields are at 1.66%, a little higher than they have been lately, but still ridiculously low in what many people are calling the 4th year of the recovery. Recovery? You’ve got to be kidding. 1.66% is below the rate of inflation, which means that if you plunk your money into a 10-year bond, you’ll get back less than you put in. (inflation adjusted) Great investment, eh?
So, why are rates so low?...And, fifth, rates are low because we’re ruled by idiots. How else would you explain the fact that the Fed has initiated 3 rounds of bond buying (QE) to the tune of many trillions of dollars and unemployment is still above 8 percent, underemployment is above 15%, 13 million people still can’t find jobs, consumer confidence is down, retail sales are flagging, the housing market is in the dumps, domestic manufacturing is contracting, business investment is anemic, and credit expansion is zilch excluding rip-off student loans and junk subprime auto loans? How is it that Mr Bernanke–who never saw the housing bubble, who sang the praises of knucklehead mortgage products that blew up the financial system, and who assured us that the housing implosion was “contained”– can keep his job as chief regulator and monetary policymaker with this abysmal record of failure? The economy cannot possibly improve as long as the man in the wheelhouse is a dunce. That much is certain. Rates are low mainly because of the criminal mismanagement of the economy.
Did you know that people are stuffing boatloads of money into their mattresses to avoid investing in the transparently rigged stock market? It’s true. Here’s the scoop from TrimTabs:
“TrimTabs Investment Research said today that inflows into checking and savings accounts are far outpacing inflows into all other major investment vehicles….
In a research note, TrimTabs explained that checking and savings accounts attracted a combined $356 billion in the first half of 2012, nearly double the inflow of $188 billion into bond mutual funds and exchange-traded funds….
“Inflows into savings accounts were consistently heavy—the flows weren’t just happening in one or two months,” noted Biderman. “Savings account inflows ranged from $30 billion to $90 billion in each of the first six months of this year.”
Now if you or I, dear reader, were assigned the task of restoring faith in the capital markets, and yet, 4 years after the Lehman debacle, people were still squirreling their money away in regular zilch-interest ”vanilla” bank accounts, we’d get our “walking papers”, right? But not easy-money Bennie, the Pride of Princeton. Oh no. Bernanke gets a pat on the back and another 6 years to drive the world’s biggest economy deeper into the ditch. Go figure? Of course, the state of the economy doesn’t matter to Bernanke as long as the “people who count” are still making money. Take a look at this:
“The only major metric I looked at wherein today’s recovery outperformed the average expansion of the previous 60 years was corporate profits. In the average postwar recovery, corporate profits rose 38 percent from trough to peak. So far into this recovery, they have risen 45 percent.”
...In the same article, Rampell notes that government spending has actually seen “smaller growth in this recovery than in any previous ones …. In fact, the public sector has not grown at all in the last three years; it is smaller today than it was when the recovery began.”
How about that? So all that baloney about Obama being a ”big spender” is just more GOP propaganda. There’s not a word of truth to it. The administration should have boosted the size of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), as every competent economist in the country had warned. Instead, Obama went with the recommendations of Wall Street favorite, Larry Summers, who torpedoed Christina Romer’s appeal for a $1.8 trillion stimulus and set the stage for today’s protracted slump. Interestingly, there was an article in the Washington Post just last week that confirmed once again that –according to the data–the ARRA did just what it was supposed to do. The only problem was that it was too small. Here’s a clip from the article that drives home the point:
“At its peak, the Recovery Act directly employed more than 700,000 Americans on construction projects, research grants and other contracts. That number doesn’t include the jobs saved or created through its unemployment benefits, food stamps and other aid to struggling families likely to spend it; its fiscal relief for cash-strapped state governments; or its tax cuts for more than 95 percent of workers. Top economic forecasters estimate that the stimulus produced about 2.5 million jobs and added between 2.1 percent and 3.8 percent to our gross domestic product….
It’s true that a bigger stimulus would have provided a bigger economic jolt and accelerated the sluggish recovery. More public works projects would have produced more jobs; more state aid would have prevented more of the public-sector cutbacks that have slowed the recovery; more tax cuts would have directed more cash into your wallet.”
It’s true that a bigger stimulus would have provided a bigger economic jolt and accelerated the sluggish recovery. More public works projects would have produced more jobs; more state aid would have prevented more of the public-sector cutbacks that have slowed the recovery; more tax cuts would have directed more cash into your wallet.”
That settles it, stimulus works. Fiscal stimulus, that is. Monetary stimulus, on the other hand, is a total dud, unless, off course, the goal is too pump more helium into hyper-inflated equities to keep the investor class cheery. If there’s any doubt that that was Bernanke’s real intention, then take a look at this chart of QE’s performance over the last few years. The chart shows how stocks rose on an ocean of Fed-generated liquidity while the economy stagnated and the jobless numbers barely budged.
Diminishing returns on bond buying make it less likely that Bernanke will initiate another round of QE, mainly because the Fed’s accommodative policy (The “Bernanke Put”) hasn’t increased the amount of money in circulation, which means that QE is having negligible effect on the real economy. The so-called transmission mechanism is on the fritz, leaving the Fed without the tools it needs to kick-start the economy. British economist John Maynard Keynes warned that monetary policy alone would not be sufficient to trigger economic recovery during a massive deleveraging cycle like today, but Bernanke doesn’t like Keynes, so we can probably expect more of the same. QE to infinity...There are a number of ways to measure Bernanke’s dreadful effect on the economy, the most obvious of which is GDP. How much is the economy actually growing, that’s the question? Not much, it appears. Take a look at this:
“According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia’s Survey of Professional Forecasters, real gross domestic product is expected to grow at only a 1.6% annual rate this quarter and 2.2% in the fourth quarter, down from 2.5% and 2.6% forecast three months ago…
Lower economic activity forecasts are leading to reduced expectations for job growth. The forecasters now see payroll gains averaging 125,000 per month this quarter and 135,300 in the fourth. That hiring pace is down sharply from the gains of 170,000 and 172,600 expected in the second-quarter survey.
Slower hiring means the U.S. unemployment rate will remain above 8% until the second quarter of 2013. In the previous forecasts, the economists thought the rate would fall below 8% by the fourth quarter of this year.” (“Economists in Philly Fed Survey Lower Forecasts”, Wall Street Journal)
Lower economic activity forecasts are leading to reduced expectations for job growth. The forecasters now see payroll gains averaging 125,000 per month this quarter and 135,300 in the fourth. That hiring pace is down sharply from the gains of 170,000 and 172,600 expected in the second-quarter survey.
Slower hiring means the U.S. unemployment rate will remain above 8% until the second quarter of 2013. In the previous forecasts, the economists thought the rate would fall below 8% by the fourth quarter of this year.” (“Economists in Philly Fed Survey Lower Forecasts”, Wall Street Journal)
Be real. The truth is, the economy is probably already in recession, but the data won’t show it for another quarter or so. But consider what this information on GDP means in terms of what we have already gone over in this article. First, that monetary stimulus (quantitative easing) hasn’t worked for 4 years. Second, that fiscal stimulus did work. That said, which type of stimulus do you think the administration should pursue?
MORE
*********************************************************************
MIKE WHITNEY lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion. He can be reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com
Now if I can just find that 3D printer I keep reading about... 
I'd be happy with the baked and crab meat with butter. I'm easy like that. 
http://www.businessinsider.com/spains-gigantic-rally-2012-8
Spain is nicely higher today (by about 1.8%) but we just wanted to give you some quick broader context for how much the IBEX has risen since late July, when Mario Draghi talked about doing whatever it took to save the Euro.
The index bottomed at 5950, and today it's at 7543.20.
That's a 26% gain in less than a month.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/spains-gigantic-rally-2012-8#ixzz23nqsoU9n
Spain is nicely higher today (by about 1.8%) but we just wanted to give you some quick broader context for how much the IBEX has risen since late July, when Mario Draghi talked about doing whatever it took to save the Euro.
The index bottomed at 5950, and today it's at 7543.20.
That's a 26% gain in less than a month.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/spains-gigantic-rally-2012-8#ixzz23nqsoU9n
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19292428
The demand for gold has surged in China in recent years amid an economic boom
China's state-owned miner, China National Gold, has held preliminary talks to buy a stake in African Barrick Gold (ABG), one of Africa's largest gold miners.
Demand for gold in China has surged and it is expected to become the world's biggest market for the metal this year.
African Barrack has large reserves but has struggled to meet production targets.
Barrick Gold, the parent of ABG, said the talks were at an "early stage".
The demand for gold has surged in China in recent years amid an economic boom
China's state-owned miner, China National Gold, has held preliminary talks to buy a stake in African Barrick Gold (ABG), one of Africa's largest gold miners.
Demand for gold in China has surged and it is expected to become the world's biggest market for the metal this year.
African Barrack has large reserves but has struggled to meet production targets.
Barrick Gold, the parent of ABG, said the talks were at an "early stage".
http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2012-08-16/22-stats-show-how-emerging-one-world-economy-absolutely-killing-american-work
Courtesy of Michael Snyder of Economic Collapse
For decades our politicians have promised us that the "free trade" agenda would bring us greater prosperity than ever before. They insisted that merging our economy into the emerging one world economy would cause millions upon millions of new jobs to be added to the U.S. economy. Unfortunately, it was all a giant lie.
Trading with other countries is not a bad thing as long as the level of trade is fairly equal on both sides. When trade becomes very unequal, the consequences can be absolutely catastrophic. Since 1975, the United States has bought more than 8 trillion dollars more stuff from the rest of the world than they have bought from us. We are the only economy on earth that could have had 8 trillion dollars drained out of it and still be standing. Instead of leaving the country, those 8 trillion dollars could have gone to U.S. businesses and U.S. workers. If we could go back and have a "do over," how much more prosperous would we be today if we had kept that 8 trillion dollars inside the country? But instead of pursuing a balanced trade philosophy, our politicians were so enamored with the emerging one world economy that they threw all caution to the wind.
So we have lost tens of thousands of businesses, millions of jobs and trillions of dollars of our national wealth. And this emerging one world economy is absolutely killing American workers. It lumps them into a global labor pool with workers in other countries where it is legal to pay slave labor wages...
#1 One professor has estimated that cutting the U.S. trade deficit in half would create 5 million more jobs in the United States.
#2 The United States has a trade imbalance that is more than 7 times larger than any other nation on earth has.
#3 Overall, the United States has run a trade deficit of more than 8 trillion dollars with the rest of the globe since 1975. That 8 trillion dollars could have gone to support U.S. businesses and pay the wages of U.S. workers. Federal, state and local taxes would have been paid on that 8 trillion dollars if it had stayed in the United States. This is one reason why our national debt is getting ready to cross the 16 trillion dollar mark.
#4 When NAFTA was passed in 1993, the United States had a trade surplus with Mexico of 1.6 billion dollars. In 2010, we had a trade deficit with Mexico of 61.6 billion dollars.
#5 In 2001, American consumers spent 102 billion dollars on products made in China. In 2011, American consumers spent 399 billion dollars on products made in China.
#6 The Chinese undervalue their currency by about 40 percent in order to gain a critical advantage over foreign competitors. This means that many Chinese companies are able to absolutely thrive while their competition in the United States goes out of business. The following is from a recent Fox News article...."To keep Chinese products artificially inexpensive on US store shelves, Beijing undervalues the yuan by 40 percent. It pirates US technology, subsidizes exports and imposes high tariffs on imports."
#7 According to the New York Times, a Jeep Grand Cherokee that costs $27,490 in the United States costs about $85,000 in China thanks to all the tariffs.
#8 The U.S. trade deficit with China during 2011 was 295.4 billion dollars. That was the largest trade deficit that one nation has had with another nation in the history of the world.
#9 Back in 1985, our trade deficit with China was only about 6 million dollars (million with an "m"
for the entire year.
#10 U.S. consumers spend about 4 dollars on goods and services from China for every one dollar that Chinese consumers spend on goods and services from the United States.
#11 The United States has actually lost an average of about 50,000 manufacturing jobs a month since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001.
#12 According to the Economic Policy Institute, America is losing about half a million jobs to China every single year.
#13 The United States has lost more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities since 2001.
#14 During 2010 alone, an average of 23 manufacturing facilities closed their doors in America every single day.
#15 Since the auto industry bailout, approximately 70 percent of all GM vehicles have been built outside the United States.
#16 As I have written about previously, 95 percent of the jobs lost during the last recession were middle class jobs.
#17 According to Professor Alan Blinder of Princeton University, 40 million more U.S. jobs could be sent offshore over the next two decades if current trends continue.
#18 The percentage of working age Americans that are employed right now is actually smaller than it was at the end of the last recession.
#19 The average duration of unemployment in the United States is nearly three times as long as it was back in the year 2000.
#20 Due in part to the globalization of the labor pool, only about 24 percent of all jobs in the United States are "good jobs" at this point.
#21 Without enough good jobs, more Americans than ever before are falling into poverty. Today, more than 100 million Americans are on welfare.
#22 In recent years the U.S. economy has embraced "free trade" and the emerging one world economy like never before. Instead of increasing the number of jobs in our economy, it has resulted in the worst stretch of job creation in the United States in modern history....
...And if everything posted above was not bad enough, some U.S. companies even find themselves competing with slave labor here in the United States. Seriously. Prison labor is absolutely destroying some businesses here in America. The following comes from a recent CNN article....
One company that tries to compete with Unicor has been forced to lay off 150 people over the years because they lose so many contracts to them....
But this is also the kind of thing that U.S. companies are dealing with when they try to compete with big corporations that are exploiting cheap labor abroad. If you are spending ten times as much on labor as your competitor is, it is going to be really hard to survive. That is why it has become so hard to find products that are made in America. Most of our jobs these days are low paying "service jobs", cushy government jobs or jobs where people push papers around all day. But those kinds of jobs do not create lasting wealth for a country.
Did you know that there are more tax preparers in the United States than there are police officers and firefighters combined?
IF IT'S ANY CONSOLATION TO ANYONE--THAT $8 TRILLION WAS PROBABLY A DOWN PAYMENT ON ALL THAT THE US HAS RIPPED OFF THE REST OF THE WORLD, INCLUDING ESPECIALLY AFRICA AND ASIA OVER THE GENERATIONS OF SLAVERY AND COOLIE LABOR AND GUNBOAT DIPLOMACY AND OTHER ABOMINATIONS...
BUT THAT DOESN'T EXCUSE THE INEQUITIES AT HOME IN TAXES AND INCOME.
Courtesy of Michael Snyder of Economic Collapse
For decades our politicians have promised us that the "free trade" agenda would bring us greater prosperity than ever before. They insisted that merging our economy into the emerging one world economy would cause millions upon millions of new jobs to be added to the U.S. economy. Unfortunately, it was all a giant lie.
Trading with other countries is not a bad thing as long as the level of trade is fairly equal on both sides. When trade becomes very unequal, the consequences can be absolutely catastrophic. Since 1975, the United States has bought more than 8 trillion dollars more stuff from the rest of the world than they have bought from us. We are the only economy on earth that could have had 8 trillion dollars drained out of it and still be standing. Instead of leaving the country, those 8 trillion dollars could have gone to U.S. businesses and U.S. workers. If we could go back and have a "do over," how much more prosperous would we be today if we had kept that 8 trillion dollars inside the country? But instead of pursuing a balanced trade philosophy, our politicians were so enamored with the emerging one world economy that they threw all caution to the wind.
So we have lost tens of thousands of businesses, millions of jobs and trillions of dollars of our national wealth. And this emerging one world economy is absolutely killing American workers. It lumps them into a global labor pool with workers in other countries where it is legal to pay slave labor wages...
#1 One professor has estimated that cutting the U.S. trade deficit in half would create 5 million more jobs in the United States.
#2 The United States has a trade imbalance that is more than 7 times larger than any other nation on earth has.
#3 Overall, the United States has run a trade deficit of more than 8 trillion dollars with the rest of the globe since 1975. That 8 trillion dollars could have gone to support U.S. businesses and pay the wages of U.S. workers. Federal, state and local taxes would have been paid on that 8 trillion dollars if it had stayed in the United States. This is one reason why our national debt is getting ready to cross the 16 trillion dollar mark.
#4 When NAFTA was passed in 1993, the United States had a trade surplus with Mexico of 1.6 billion dollars. In 2010, we had a trade deficit with Mexico of 61.6 billion dollars.
#5 In 2001, American consumers spent 102 billion dollars on products made in China. In 2011, American consumers spent 399 billion dollars on products made in China.
#6 The Chinese undervalue their currency by about 40 percent in order to gain a critical advantage over foreign competitors. This means that many Chinese companies are able to absolutely thrive while their competition in the United States goes out of business. The following is from a recent Fox News article...."To keep Chinese products artificially inexpensive on US store shelves, Beijing undervalues the yuan by 40 percent. It pirates US technology, subsidizes exports and imposes high tariffs on imports."
#7 According to the New York Times, a Jeep Grand Cherokee that costs $27,490 in the United States costs about $85,000 in China thanks to all the tariffs.
#8 The U.S. trade deficit with China during 2011 was 295.4 billion dollars. That was the largest trade deficit that one nation has had with another nation in the history of the world.
#9 Back in 1985, our trade deficit with China was only about 6 million dollars (million with an "m"
for the entire year.
#10 U.S. consumers spend about 4 dollars on goods and services from China for every one dollar that Chinese consumers spend on goods and services from the United States.
#11 The United States has actually lost an average of about 50,000 manufacturing jobs a month since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001.
#12 According to the Economic Policy Institute, America is losing about half a million jobs to China every single year.
#13 The United States has lost more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities since 2001.
#14 During 2010 alone, an average of 23 manufacturing facilities closed their doors in America every single day.
#15 Since the auto industry bailout, approximately 70 percent of all GM vehicles have been built outside the United States.
#16 As I have written about previously, 95 percent of the jobs lost during the last recession were middle class jobs.
#17 According to Professor Alan Blinder of Princeton University, 40 million more U.S. jobs could be sent offshore over the next two decades if current trends continue.
#18 The percentage of working age Americans that are employed right now is actually smaller than it was at the end of the last recession.
#19 The average duration of unemployment in the United States is nearly three times as long as it was back in the year 2000.
#20 Due in part to the globalization of the labor pool, only about 24 percent of all jobs in the United States are "good jobs" at this point.
#21 Without enough good jobs, more Americans than ever before are falling into poverty. Today, more than 100 million Americans are on welfare.
#22 In recent years the U.S. economy has embraced "free trade" and the emerging one world economy like never before. Instead of increasing the number of jobs in our economy, it has resulted in the worst stretch of job creation in the United States in modern history....
If any single number captures the state of the American economy over the last decade, it is zero. That was the net gain in jobs between 1999 and 2009—nada, nil, zip. By painful contrast, from the 1940s through the 1990s, recessions came and went, but no decade ended without at least a 20 percent increase in the number of jobs.
...And if everything posted above was not bad enough, some U.S. companies even find themselves competing with slave labor here in the United States. Seriously. Prison labor is absolutely destroying some businesses here in America. The following comes from a recent CNN article....
Unicor is a government-run enterprise that employs over 13,000 inmates -- at wages as low as 23 cents an hour -- to make goods for the Pentagon and other federal agencies.
With some exceptions, Unicor gets first dibs on federal contracts over private companies as long as its bid is comparable in price, quantity and delivery. In other words: If Unicor wants a contract, it gets it.
With some exceptions, Unicor gets first dibs on federal contracts over private companies as long as its bid is comparable in price, quantity and delivery. In other words: If Unicor wants a contract, it gets it.
One company that tries to compete with Unicor has been forced to lay off 150 people over the years because they lose so many contracts to them....
Wilson has been competing with Unicor for 20 years. He's an executive at American Apparel Inc., an Alabama company that makes military uniforms. (It is not affiliated with the international retailer of the same name.) He has gone head-to-head with Unicor on just about every product his company makes -- and said he has laid off 150 people over the years as a result.
"We pay employees $9 on average," Wilson said. "They get full medical insurance, 401(k) plans and paid vacation. Yet we're competing against a federal program that doesn't pay any of that."
"We pay employees $9 on average," Wilson said. "They get full medical insurance, 401(k) plans and paid vacation. Yet we're competing against a federal program that doesn't pay any of that."
But this is also the kind of thing that U.S. companies are dealing with when they try to compete with big corporations that are exploiting cheap labor abroad. If you are spending ten times as much on labor as your competitor is, it is going to be really hard to survive. That is why it has become so hard to find products that are made in America. Most of our jobs these days are low paying "service jobs", cushy government jobs or jobs where people push papers around all day. But those kinds of jobs do not create lasting wealth for a country.
Did you know that there are more tax preparers in the United States than there are police officers and firefighters combined?
IF IT'S ANY CONSOLATION TO ANYONE--THAT $8 TRILLION WAS PROBABLY A DOWN PAYMENT ON ALL THAT THE US HAS RIPPED OFF THE REST OF THE WORLD, INCLUDING ESPECIALLY AFRICA AND ASIA OVER THE GENERATIONS OF SLAVERY AND COOLIE LABOR AND GUNBOAT DIPLOMACY AND OTHER ABOMINATIONS...
BUT THAT DOESN'T EXCUSE THE INEQUITIES AT HOME IN TAXES AND INCOME.