On Mar 27, 11:23*pm, z <gzuck...@snail-mail.net> wrote:
> On Mar 27, 8:36*am, trad...@optonline.net wrote:
>
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> > On Mar 27, 2:24*am, z <gzuck...@snail-mail.net> wrote:
>
> > > On Mar 16, 8:20*pm, wis...@yahoo.com wrote:
>
> > > > On Mon, 16 Mar 2009 21:38:06 GMT, jazzerci...@hotmail.com (-) wrote:
>
> > > > >http://halturnershow.blogspot.com/20...re-they-on-whi...
>
> > > > >What planet are they on? White House says economy is "sound"
>
> > > well, it's "sound" in the sense of "mechanical vibrations at a
> > > frequency between 20 and 20,000 Hz transmitted by an elastic medium",
> > > i.e. a bunch of empty verbal activity.
>
> > > if they mean it's healthy, you could make an excellent case that the
> > > economy has not been healthy since the oil shock of the 70s.
>
> > Yes, you could say that, but it would be asinine. *If the US economy
> > hasn't been healthy since the 70's, you might just as well say it's
> > never been healthy.
>
> > >300
> > > million people selling each other their houses at ever higher prices
> > > does not a healthy economy make no matter how much cheap chinese junk
> > > it allows them to buy.
>
> > As if that's all that's happened in the last 30 years. *Talk about
> > looking at a cup as half empty....
>
> > > i really hate it when i say something that agrees with something hal
> > > turner said.- Hide quoted text -
>
> > - Show quoted text -
>
> well, this all my own impression, and i'm no kind of expert, but i
> don't think too many folks will say that american fundamental
> industries like manufacturing have been healthy for a while.

It depends on how you define fundamental manufacturing. Companies
like Boeing, Intel, Caterpillar have been far more than just healthy
from the 80's until now. The economy isn't static, it evolves. What
would you rather have? An economy based on building hammers and cheap
appliances, or one that builds airplanes and microprocessors? This
transition is inevitable. Countries like China and India have evolved
and can now build many products. Before them, it was Japan, Taiwan,
then Korea that were on that path.



>our
> economy has moved on to more ephemeral things. since the 1970s it's
> been one bubble after another. southeast asia,

It wouldn't seem southeast Asia should be part of the measure of the
soundness of the US economy. Are computers ephemeral? Software?
The US invented those industries during your period of unsoundness and
is by far in control of them today. We are still the largest
manufacturing country in the world today.


> savings and loans,
> dotcoms, housing.
>
> the real beginning of the end of cheap energy was the oil shock(s;
> 1972 and 1979) of the 1970s;

All that did was bring oil more in line with reality. Oil by any
reasonable measure was still cheap in the 80's and 90's. But,
regardless of how cheap or expensive you think oil was, clearly the US
economy had enormous growth during the 80's and 90's, with low
inflation, and reached levels of low unemployment previously thought
impossible.


>the western governments bailed us out
> with a lot of *borrowing and a lot of delicate management of the
> dollar/pound/mark/franc which prevented the kind of acute mess we >are
> in right now, but you can't scooch out a bulge in the wall to wall
> carpeting without making a lot of little bulges. so, high interest
> rates delivered us from stagflation,

The borrowing had nothing to do with oil and everything to do with
politicians wasteful spending. Look what's going on now. Does it
have anything to do with oil? No. Though Obama would like to have
you believe it does, so he can justify more govt spending in that
area.

As for delicate management of foreign exchange rates, that just isn't
so. The US govt hasn't intervened in currency markets in a long
time. Also, it's kind of crazy to think you could get Europe, Japan,
etc all to agree to adjust exchange rates to some agreed plan, as
they all have their own interests. Sure, occasionally one govt or
another will intervene for some reason, but it's the exception rather
than the rule.


>at the cost of a worldwide
> recession in the early 80s. smaller US industries like appliances and
> consumer electronics having already left town, now the ones that
> couldn't move overseas like housing, steelmaking, automobile
> manufacturing collapsed. Chrysler got pulled out of a death spiral by
> Lee Iacocca, at the expense of GM losing a piece of the market equal
> to the size of Chrysler.

Most would say that the market share GM lost over decades was through
their own doing, and primarily to overseas competitors, not
Chrysler. How do you explaind the fact that MB, BMW, Honda can build
card here in the USA, have been gaining market share, and even in the
current environment, aren't almost bankrupt like GM?

The answer is better management and lower labor costs. GM is
burdened with a $75/hr labor cost. MB, Honda, BMW's labor costs in
the USA are half that.

The same thing happened to the US steel industry. With poor
management decisions and labor costs that were out of whack, they got
clobbered by the mini-mills right here in the US. Those mini-mills
developed and thrived in the last 2 decades.




>
> lowered interest rates and more deficit spending pulled the economy
> out of that hole, without restoring any of the american industries in
> the now "rust belt". banks couldn't make money on financing industrial
> production as they used to, and the ones who didn't fail started a lot
> of speculative investments in real estate, casinos, junk bonds,
> corporate raiders, junk bonds, derivatives and hedge funds. the less
> regulated savings and loans industry collapsed when these investments
> proved as risky as they really were, but the banks were insulated from
> catastrophe by regulation, so they kept pushing that limit until it
> got repealed recently, with well known results.
>
> the late 80s brought the black monday stock market collapse; another
> oil price shock from the gulf war led to stagflation again. the dotcom
> boom carried us through the 90s; the triple related bubble collapses
> of the asian economies and the dotcom and telecom bubbles brought that
> down to earth, only to lead into the real estate bubble. and that
> brings us to now.
>
> on the other hand, the oil shocks taught the arab nations how to bring
> the europeans to heel.- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

Why does your analysis start with the 80's and only continue to
present time? If you go back through history, there have been
recessions, booms, busts, panics, inflations, deflations all through
not only US history, but world history as well. In the 1800's the US
had a crisis averaging every 7 years. This is nothing new. Which
is why I say if you want to say the US economy has not been sound
since the 70's then you can just as easily say that it has never been
sound, nor has any other economy. And if the US economy is so
unsound, why is it that people from all over the world continue to
pour money into it in the form of investment? Even now, in this world
financial panic, the US remains the safest, soundest economy.

Now, I certainly would agree that what is going on in Washington now
is truly reckless. The amount of wasteful spending and borrowing that
was already going on, resulting in a $11 tril national debt was
troubling, but relative to GDP it was still manageable. Obama's
proposal to double that debt in the next decade is truly alarming and
beyond anything I ever expected to see. So, we may yet get to your
unsound economy in the future. If anything close to this budget gets
passed, I would say we are headed that way.

I'd also say that part of the current problem is everyone today wants
instant fixes. We're running around acting like this current economy
is the worst since the Great Depression. IMO, as of right now, the
situation in 1980-82 was far worse. You had not only unemployment
that was higher than it is today, but high inflation, high interest
rates, and a total loss of confidence in the US and it's place in the
world. Yet, instead of taking a recession like we normally would,
people are demanding an instant fix, so everything can just go back to
like it was before. And that sentiment is being manipulated and used
to justify an unprecedented expansion of govt.