Forget NAFTA

[Octafish]

TOTF: Ted Rall

[Nitram]

1. NAFTA didn't kill Ohio.

A global recession that rivaled the Great Depression in severity did. And NAFTA was not the work of one politician.

[Armstead]

2. You're kidding, right?

Like the 30 years before 2008 didn't exist? Hooooookay.

[Nitram]

3. NAFTA passed 38 years ago?

You bring up a very good point. the decline in manufacturing in the US started long before NAFTA.

[Armstead]

4. It did start before NAFTA....And passing NAFTA was stupid because of that

The decimating of American manufacturing -- and the working class -- was already underway when NAFTA was passed.

The problem was that instead of policies to constructively try to solve that problem, NAFTA accelerated and encouraged it.

It was like pounding on a broken leg with a hammer.

[Nitram]

5. No, NAFTA would have given US manufacturing a chance if it was competitive to begin with.

Obsolete technology and poor business choices took their toll. The recession was the coup de grace.

[Armstead]

9. I disagree about NAFTA. Agree about poor business practices....

It was also a matter of corporate values -- or more specifically lack of moral and ethical values.

It was a matrix of economic, political and social factors that led to it.

And that's why Bernie's core message of Trade, Wall St., Corporate Responsibility and a "Political revolution" and not separate, or "single issue" but part of an overall call to change the direction.


.

[Hiraeth]

10. wow

[Ferd Berfel]

14. I can't believe that I'm reading this crap

at a place with 'Democratic' in it's name.

NAFTA accelerated the race to the bottom TPP (NAFTA on Steroids) will be the coup de grace to our economy, middle-class and our national sovereignty.

We really need to take the democratic party back from the neocons

[Skwmom]

6. Just because people are blue collar workers does not make them stupid. n/t

[Nitram]

7. Where did that come from?

Did I imply blue collar workers are stupid? Are the workers to blame for obsolete technology and poor business decisions by companies?

[Hiraeth]

11. Maybe you did not IMPLY it but, I sure INFERRED it from what you said.

[Nitram]

15. Then you inferred incorrectly, Hiraeth.

It never would have occurred to me that blue collar workers were to blame for thee loss of manufacturing jobs. I think that's called jumping to conclusions. My point was that NAFTA is probably not to blame. How does that reflect on blue collar workers?

[Octafish]

8. NAFTA was the first in a line of Big Dominos

Larry Summers
and the Secret "End-Game" Memo

Thursday, August 22, 2013
By Greg Palast for Vice Magazine

EXCERPT...

The year was 1997. US Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin was pushing hard to de-regulate banks. That required, first, repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act to dismantle the barrier between commercial banks and investment banks. It was like replacing bank vaults with roulette wheels.

Second, the banks wanted the right to play a new high-risk game: "derivatives trading." JP Morgan alone would soon carry $88 trillion of these pseudo-securities on its books as "assets."

Deputy Treasury Secretary Summers (soon to replace Rubin as Secretary) body-blocked any attempt to control derivatives.

But what was the use of turning US banks into derivatives casinos if money would flee to nations with safer banking laws?

[font color="green"]The answer conceived by the Big Bank Five: eliminate controls on banks in every nation on the planet – in one single move. It was as brilliant as it was insanely dangerous. [/font color]

CONTINUED...

http://www.gregpalast.com/larry-summers-and-the-secret-end-game-memo/

Wish it weren't so. I'm in Detroit. My eyes aren't that bad.

[Nitram]

16. How could NAFTA be first in line when manufacturing had been in decline for decades

before NAFTA? It seems to me that there is a lack of knowledge of the history here. Or else people are just too quick to find simplistic answers to complex issues.

[Octafish]

17. Maybe you need a little Stiglitz.

Larry Summers: Goldman Sacked

By Greg Palast
Reader Supported News, September 16, 2013

Joseph Stiglitz couldn't believe his ears. Here they were in the White House, with President Bill Clinton asking the chiefs of the US Treasury for guidance on the life and death of America's economy, when the Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers turns to his boss, Secretary Robert Rubin, and says, "What would Goldman think of that?"

Huh?

Then, at another meeting, Summers said it again: What would Goldman think?

A shocked Stiglitz, then Chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisors, told me he'd turned to Summers, and asked if Summers thought it appropriate to decide US economic policy based on "what Goldman thought." As opposed to say, the facts, or say, the needs of the American public, you know, all that stuff that we heard in Cabinet meetings on The West Wing.

Summers looked at Stiglitz like Stiglitz was some kind of naive fool who'd read too many civics books.

CONTINUED...

http://www.gregpalast.com/larry-summers-goldman-sacked/

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

12. I'm not a huge Rall fan, but he nails what it's like to live in our dying towns here. nt

[Octafish]

13. My Detroit.

The building's owner has cut down the tree since this was taken.