Daily News Roundup
Posted by vriz on 04/02/2009
Today’s the day of an 8,000-Dow. That’s right, Ladies and Gentlemen: the Dow Jones Industrial Average reached the psychologically significant 8,000 point threshold. This is after almost two months of hovering below the 7,000 watermark, half the value of the Dow at its peak 1,4000-point level. Increasingly, market analysts talk about the “general belief” that we have passed the worst point of the economic crisis. The G-20 came out with a pledge of $1.1 trillion for loans and additional guarantees to finance trade and bail out troubled countries. Among the measures agreed to by G-20 leaders are: strict new regulations on hedge funds and rating agencies; crackdown on tax havens; new global rules to cap the pay and bonuses of bankers, as well as a common approach to dealing with the toxic assets on the balance sheets of the world’s banks. The Group of 20 pledged to triple the resources of the International Monetary Fund to $750 billion — through a mix of $500 billion in loans from countries, and a one-time issuance of $250 billion in Special Drawing Rights, the synthetic currency of the IMF, which will be parceled out to all its 185 members. G-20 also committed $250 billion in financing for trade. Ironically, the G-20 also came out with this nugget of wisdom: they agreed to “name and shame” countries that erected trade barriers. Well, that would be 17 out of the 20 of them. Say what you will, but G-20 is great political theatre. How will newcomer U.S. President be received? Is the newly minted German-French alliance going to last? How will Russia and the U.S. get along? And does China have any newly acquired political capital? Well, judging from an increasingly vocal, and some might even say aggressive, behavior by China in the runup to the Summit—China might believe it has.
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Well, the yen fell to 100 to
Well, the yen fell to 100 to the dollar, so that is the end of any chance for US manufacturing to survive. Although China trade has closed the most factories, Japan unfair trade closes the most important factories. And China and Korea just play by the Samurai play-book (which has worked flawlessly for 30 years).
What fundamental issue would weaken the yen against the dollar? There is none. Even last month, Japanese car sales looked stronger than the Get Small Three of Detroit. I am taking a course in nano-technology, and Asia is agressively taking this away from us (and they will succeed). "Economists" say factory orders were up a bit last month, but that just means the surviving "factories" were just relabeling more Asian or European goods (it is a purchasing managers statistic not a we-made-stuff statistic). We now import tons of stuff we used to buy from Pennsylvania factories (hydraulic components, controllers, sensors, etc.).
Your web site lists job losses. My factory lost 750 (over 50% of the shop) in the last few months. You probably don't even know about the vast majority of layoffs. The media doesn't really report factory losses (the media hates manufacturing more than the US govt).
Everyone knows that the factory jobs lost in the last year are never coming back. Wall Street knows it, so no US manufacturer (Cat, Deere, Boeing, whatever else may be left) is being taken seriously at all (unless they just re-label, re-package, import, partner with Asia).
The explanation of the yen fall is clear. The transglobal bankers (who will never be regulated by G-20 or any other body) have made the yen fall. This was designed and intended (most certainly by the Japanese government and probably with the US govt support). They're selling yens and buying dollars. The US government even said it would buy its own T-bills to support the dollar (they're borrowing money to borrow money - seriously).
Think about it. China has practically demanded that a new "super currency" be established (which will happen, and it will fix in stone our subservience to the global arrangements). This is intended to strip any power we might have had to save ourselves (our tech-military-industrial complex is almost gone). In what universe would we have imagined the Chinese dictating terms to us? Even just 10 years ago? How many years has it been since their Student Uprising and Massacre? They totally absolutely got away with that, and nobody cares. We have sold our soul, literally.
So, its over. We had our chance. Obama has chosen to favor the global economy at the expense of the US economy. He could have just made one "let the market dictate the dollars value" sentence. Just one.
The labor bosses clearly just want dues collected so they can go to conventions in Vegas and Atlantic City and pretend they're something special. It certainly seems like they don't care about the future of this country (as a country instead of a province of super-currency-regional-Oriental-authority). If they did, there would have been a nationwide strike for whatever factory workers are left. This would have brought the dollar down anyway and thus saved their very own jobs.
I could not imagine being more disappointed in my fellow Americans. Maybe I am the problem - I consider myself an American. I am a descendent of those that fought in the Revolutionary War (which is being revised to the War of Indpendence - the global elites that run this country now like Kings, as long as they have Oilfields or Chinese workers to spare, so there was nothing noble or revolutinary about that war apparently). I marvel at my forefather's hard work and sacrifice. What would they say today? Why don't you challenge the powers that denegrate what they accomplished?
I miss having a sovereign country already...