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Saturday, June 6, 2009

US Jobs-Our Biggest Export?

Well-Paying Jobs-Our Biggest Export
Our Precarious Prosperity
http://www.poormansurvival.com
Bruce David



Since the late 1980s my op/ed pieces blasting Wall Street policies of offshoring US jobs have appeared in USAToday, the Wall Street Journal, Crain’s and other business publications.

Decades of sinking real wages for the middle and working classes and increasing disparity between rich and poor, have left Americans more economically polarized than ever before. Wall Street has shown utter disdain for the consumer class. The government hasn’t done much better and this has led to…


The federal deficit for this year alone is four times last year's record. The official US debt is exploding. Bill Gross says it will be 100% of US GDP within 5 years.
At 100% of GDP...even mainstream economists believe the situation will be irreversible...interest payments will be more than the US can afford.

Obama may have been handed the keys to GM…but the old jalopy is worn out. The French say the whole US economic model is ready for the junkyard.

China has the biggest pile of Treasury bonds in the world – $768 billion of them. That’s 768 billion reasons to worry. Because each T-bond is denominated in dollars…and while everything else is going up, dollars are going down. Yesterday, the dollar touched a new low against the euro for this year – at $1.42.

Tim Geithner is in China, hat in hand, like a major debtor called into the bank president’s office. Geithner, of course, has no choice. He has to go…and defend the USA.

The US government is less concerned with protecting foreign lenders than it is with getting the US economy back to its old E-Z money ways. Cheap money is what people want. Cheap money is what the feds are trying to give them.

And now, the “French model” for managing an economy is the envy of the world. At least, that’s what you might think if you read The Economist.

What’s the ‘French model?’ It’s a system where the state meddles heavily in the economy. Health care, education and public transport are all government enterprises. And political cronies, rather than entrepreneurs, run key businesses.

Heck the French don’t even have a word for “entrepreneur,” as George W. Bush pointed out.

It seems to work fairly well. The health care system functions fairly well – while taking a smaller percentage of GDP than in the US. The trains run on time and grammar and secondary schools are probably better than in the US

Despite an effort by mainstream TV news to report ‘positive signs,’ things are not getting better for the average American. You can’t fix the economy by overspending – we must get people back to work before they will buy anything major again…if you have cash right now, you can name your price on many things including cars and homes!

The rest of us will, out of necessity, become even more frugal…which in itself, is not a bad thing. Affluenza has afflicted Americans for many decades.

So what do you do? The man or woman on the street; perhaps with kids to feed and the need to keep a roof over your head?

Try these suggestions.

Start from where you are.
Keep informed.
Connect with others.
Support local businesses, politicians, non-government organizations (NGO's) that help.
Write letters to make corporations more accountable.
Research your company's pension fund investments.
Promote biking, walking and public transportation.
Simplify your life and consumerism.
Develop new "health and wealth" indicators for your city.
Create and support stakeholder businesses that draw on the region's resources.
Strategize to take away the "person" status of corporations

As is my norm, here are some additional resources for you to use. Support local businesses, especially those which hire in your community!

Our Main Resource

Financial Times – Excellent reporting & resources covering the economy
http://www.ft.com/reports

Nice site for a more sustainable future-areas you can put to immediate use
http://www.newdream.org/

Financial Integrity Offers many free tools you can use to control your money
http://www.financialintegrity.org/index.php?title=Main_Page


Government website comparing the economics of various countries w/ ours
http://www.america.gov/capitalism_compared2.html

And as always, bookmark our poormansurvival.com site I add new content weekly and have recently added several new legitimate work-at-home resources.

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