Fareed Zakaria - Tom Friedman's replacement as Globalization's #1 cheerleader

[arendt]

Fareed Zakaria is an insufferable apologist for our corporate overlords. His arrogance makes me ill. It grates my ass how much Jon Stewart sucks up to this slick snake. The financial elitism of this man practically oozes from the TV screen.

All snips from:

"The Future of American Power" By Fareed Zakaria
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/04/the_future_of_american_power.html

U.S. military power is not the cause of its strength but the consequence. The fuel is the United States' economic and technological base, which remains extremely strong... The United States will remain a vital, vibrant economy, at the forefront of the next revolutions in science, technology, and industry...

The U.S. technological base is shit. Every tech job that can be outsourced has been outsourced - including major surgery, organic chemistry, airplane maintenance. The children of the well-to-do want to be lawyers and bankers, not geeks or navvies. Our secondary school system is non-functional; so we import foreigners to our univeristies to make up the slack. But, in a recent poll, Indian techies have decided there is no reason to come to the U.S. anymore; they think the job opportunities at home are as good as here. We are screwed.

...capital has been free to move across the world -- and the United States has benefited massively from these trends.... Despite two decades of a very expensive dollar, U.S. exports have held ground, and the World Economic Forum currently ranks the United States as the world's most competitive economy.

"Exports have held ground." Tell me another one, Fareed. Ha. Ha. Ha. Our trade deficit is gigantic and growing. The only thing we export is trouble and weapons.

Manufacturing has, of course, been leaving the country, shifting to the developing world and turning the United States into a service economy. This scares many Americans, who wonder what their country will make if everything is "made in China." But Asian manufacturing must be viewed in the context of a global economy....What it comes down to is that the real money is in designing and distributing products -- which the United States dominates -- rather than manufacturing them. A vivid example of this is the iPod: it is manufactured mostly outside the United States, but most of the added value is captured by Apple, in California.

This is classic globalism-speak. Yeah, a tiny handful of CEOs pocket the sweatshop laborers sweated profits. Meanwhile, the Chinese are, as a country, getting about 50% of the value they add; and Americans are being laid off in droves. This "the money is in design" shtick went out with the dot-com bust.

The U.S. savings rate is zero; the current account deficit, the trade deficit, and the budget deficit are high; the median income is flat; and commitments for entitlements are unsustainable. These are all valid concerns that will have to be addressed. But it is important to keep in mind that many frequently cited statistics offer only an approximate or an antiquated measure of an economy. Many of them were developed in the late nineteenth century to describe industrial economies with limited cross-border activity, not modern economies in today's interconnected global market.

So, Fareed. Just because the circulation of the blood was discovered 300 years ago, does that mean it is "approximate" or "antiquated"? Just asking. Is "antiquated" another word for "quaint" or "inoperative"? You weasel-wording schmuck. Why don't you "keep in mind" that our economy is in the ICU and flat-lined. It is being kept alive by the central banking equivalent of a heart-lung machine at this point. Yeah, I guess being legally dead is a "valid concern".

For the last two decades, for example, the United States has had unemployment rates well below levels economists thought possible without driving up inflation... Or consider that the United States' current account deficit -- which in 2007 reached $800 billion, or seven percent of GDP -- was supposed to be unsustainable at four percent of GDP.

You know, Fareed, that a man who has just been shot through the heart is still alive for a few seconds. You could say that his life during those seconds was "supposed to be unsustainable". Wouldn't that be fair? :-)

Oh, all of this and low inflation too. Right. Did you get a chutzpah transplant from Tom?

The current account deficit is at a dangerous level, but its magnitude can be explained in part by the fact that there is a worldwide surplus of savings and that the United States remains an unusually stable and attractive place to invest. The decrease in personal savings, as the Harvard economist Richard Cooper has noted, has been largely offset by an increase in corporate savings. The U.S. investment picture also looks much rosier if education and research-and-development spending are considered along with spending on physical capital and housing.

"the United States remains an unusually stable and attractive place to invest." ROFLMAO. That's why everyone is fleeing the U.S. dollar. That's why banks all over the world are bailing on our crap-assed real-estate paper. That's why all the economists agree we are in at least a recession. What fucking brass balls you have, Fareed.

I could go on; but I need a shower. What a sickening display of corporate propaganda. No wonder this guy has a contract with Newsweek.

:puke: :puke: :puke:

arendt

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

1. He believes the unemployment numbers?

:rofl:

[arendt]

2. He believes the same way Dick Cheney believes we are spreading democracy in Iraq...

clearly Fareed is one of those charming sociopaths - you know, the ones who wipe their knife on a napkin and straighten their tie after they've stabbed you. How else could he recite this lying cant with a straight face and enthusiasm?

arendt

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

4. I caught the Stewart interview.

Felt much the same as you do about it. Cheap labor bullshit™ was my takeaway.

[arendt]

8. I lasted about two sentences of that interview. Skipped McCain, last night, entirely...

I guess Stewart does it to prevent being accused of partisanship. But it still makes me ill.

I haven't heard that he beat McCain up, like the last time Jon had him on. So, I guess he took pity on Gramps.

arendt

[Terry in Austin]

3. "Globalization???"

Oh, yeah -- that "flat earth" thing. How quaint.

[ogsbee]

5. These nutcases believe reality conforms to whatever is verbalised.

Real sickos.

[arendt]

7. Money buys a lot of denial. Reality is mutable if you have enough $$$. n/t

[arendt]

6. No wonder he's such a smug POS...

His mother edited the Times of India; his father was a big-time politico. They sent their darling child to Harvard.

Silver-spoon, rich, spoiled, supercilious prick. And, I bet he has no hesitation playing the victim card about being Indian if that will score a point.

Like the chief in Little Big Man said: "There is an infinite supply of white men (in this case, Indian "white men"); but only a finite number of Human Beings."

arendt

[On the Road]

9. Exports HAVE Held Ground

Imports have been the issue, especially since China joined the WTO in 2001. A lot of these are from foreign divisions of US companies as Chomsky is fond of pointing out.

The problem in the US is more one of income distribution and wages for the bottom half of workers. A lot of changes are needed in the tax code, the minimum wage, and other means of balancing the playing field. Shutting down international trade is a very blunt instrument that is likely to do more harm than good, and has not worked for countries like Mexico that have tried to adopt it. The trick is to reduce the trade imabalances with low-wage countries like China without killing the goose that laid the golden egg.

The US is an attractive place to invest. It's become a lot cheaper for foreign investors because of the weak dollar.



I think Zakaria has blinders on about the long-term effect of the federal deficit, but still, many of his points are well taken. As far as the 'antiquated' numbers, I believe what he was trying to say is that in the past, there was a consensus among economists that the current trade deficits, foreign exchance deficits, and budget deficits and zero savings rates would have caused massive repercussions long before now. New models are really needed to evaluate the new economy, and so far I don't know of anyone who's successfully done that.

[arendt]

10. Please don't offer me the kool aid; I'm not thirsty.

You say two things:

1. The US is an attractive place to invest. It's become a lot cheaper for foreign investors because of the weak dollar.

2. The problem in the US is more one of income distribution and wages for the bottom half of workers.

But, this is the heart of the problem. They have turned the U.S. into just another third world country (i.e., a place with labor rules that brutal capitalists like). They have done this via a twenty-year long, succesful "Eastern Airlines bankruptcy maneuver" on the whole U.S. economy. By shipping U.S. jobs overseas, where our wage and environmental laws don't apply, they were able to lower prices and drive our home industries into the ground (close the factories, declare "bankruptcy" within the U.S.). Then they came back and offered our workers the same shitty deal they already extracted from the Chinese workers. Same job as before, but for much lower wages and benefits. They used Chinese labor as scabs for all the good jobs in America.

So, I agree its about income distribution. But, that is the effect and not the cause. BTW, I notice your last graph ends in 2004 (well before the current real-estate bubble showed problems), and its mostly about acquisition, not growth.

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You say: "New models are really needed to evaluate the new economy".

I say this is BS. The new economy is a Ponzi scheme, like every "new economy" since the 1920s. It is all about financial manipulation. How can ANYONE evaluate an economy where derivative contracts are "opaque"? where the Fed refuses to publish M3 numbers? Where all the lessons of 1929 have been repealed (Glass-Steagal, an SEC with teeth, a Fed that regulates the dollar instead of bailing out hedge funds)? No one can, because its not an economy; its a racket. The entire Bush administration is nothing but a mob "bustout" on America.

I say: arrest these crooks; try them for fraud and theft. Then put honest, transparent rules back in place and run an old economy.

FZ is just the latest Pied Piper for suckers.

arendt

[On the Road]

12. Saying That Many Workers are Getting Screwed

is not the same as saying the whole economy is in shambles.

Your reply is so full of derisive terms that it's difficult to understand your points. Did I understand you to be saying that every economy since the 1920s has been based on financial manipulation? That hardly seems possible over that long a period of time.

An example is: take the effects of NAFTA. It's been about 15 year, and Ross Perot's giant sucking sound never materialized. There is plenty of employment -- the problem is that many of the jobs are not well compensated enough. To address that you adopt different policies (sometimes oppposite policies) from those that would help an economy that's in bad shape.

----

As far as new models go, the old ones obviously don't account for the current situation. So that suggests new ones. I don't know what they are.

I didn't buy into the Dow 38,000 philosophy, the "real estate can go up forever" philosophy, and I'm not buying into the "the bull market on gold is only starting" philosophy. Or the commodities bubble, for that matter.

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As far as the foreign investment chart, I spent some time looking for those numbers and this is the clearest I could find. Please post more recent information if you think it shows a different trend.

[arendt]

11. kick n/t

[KamaAina]

13. Time once again to trot out my favorite Fareed story

he was a year behind me at Yale. He was also head of the Yale Political Union, modeled on Oxford's (of course, he was in the Party of the Right).

I needed to go to a P.U. meeting to get myself qualified to vote, so I went to hear Raygun's defense secretary Cap Weinberger speak. It goes without saying that a number of members of the Yale community attended this event with the intention of exercising their First Amendment rights, which they proceeded to do the moment Weinberger took the stage.

This is where Zakaria comes in. He got up on the stage and, so help me, pointed out the protesters one by one, so they could be ejected, with his hand out in the Heil Hitler salute!