Mike Duke, CEO of Wal-Mart Stores Inc., and former Procter & Gamble Co. CEO Alan Lafley came to the White House on Monday at the invitation of the President to discuss the economy.
The White House spokesman, Robert Gibbs, said the meetings were part of a series of meetings of the Presidents plans company leaders. In July, the President met with Warren Buffett to discuss the economy and stepped up efforts to attract comments from the industry since the mid-term elections. In October, Steve Jobs visited the President to discuss the policy.
Wal-Mart, the largest U.S. private employer, with 1.4 million domestic workers, is sad proof of the deteriorating state of the U.S. economy. As more and more to low profits, low-wage jobs in retail, rather than the positions of the high manufacturing quality, will decrease our standard of living.
"Get use knowledge and ideas of those who has a lot of importance for economic decision-making, the president and the team have to do," said Gibbs.
At a meeting with entrepreneurs is important for the economy, the President must take into account consideration of other aspects of the economy. In addition, President Obama, given the appointment of a Corporate Executive Board a senior position as part of this last effort.
With financial executives with the various key positions in the Treasury Department, and the consideration of the Corporate Executive management has equipped, with production once again forced to take a back seat to other interests. Officials do not yet know that the production is a cornerstone of the ever-worsening economy, which must be addressed.
Many believe that the meetings are on calming financial officials that the president is to do away with his criticism of the banking system and its efforts to tax exemptions aimed angry.
In other meetings, which is not yet been announced, and to speak the President an invitation to the test before the American Chamber of Commerce, expects that good use of these opportunities for trade policy make a positive push to the domestic industry. Taking into account not completely lost the image and the possibility for producers to support.
Friday, December 3, 2010
Common Sense Planning
Our current approach is incorrect and should be changed, and must radically revise development plans for the future of the United States, or are we doomed to continue down a path that may become irreversible. We consider some of these solutions before it is too late
Recognize that we have huge problems, analyze our weaknesses and resolve to do something.
Plan to regenerate the necessary strategic industries that are losing or have lost (for example, steel, electronics, telecommunications and others).
Negotiate trade agreements with other countries better and not allow any country to do in this country will allow us to do in your country.
Development of research sponsored by government facilities and development to select and Industry (Example: The government has sponsored the World War II Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb). to restore government sponsored Sematech Corp. has launched major projects and developed products that are needed urgently.
Analyzing these 5 elements in our country by foreign competition. They will determine the final price of a product: the comparative rates of wages, technology, comparative benchmarking taxes (income, depreciation and other capital goods), government subsidies comparative costs and comparative accessories (medical, retirement, insurance and al.)
Plan to make the changes we can.
Adjust the tax structure to encourage the industries that produce basic necessities.
Negotiate fairly with other countries taking into account what is in our interests instead of focusing disproportionately on global considerations only.
Limit the sale of some companies in strategic sectors to foreign companies if they have a negative impact on our defense capabilities, or to harm our country.
A new spirit of cooperation should be developed between government, management and labor - are all in the same boat.
American people are aware, hardworking, creative and intelligent. leadership and incentives can do significantly more than the Powerhouse manufacturing worlds were and make the country richer, freer and stronger in the world - but if we lose the economic war we will not be able to produce competitively and compete with other industrialized countries - particularly Germany, Japan and even China. The future will not be as good as in the past.
Recognize that we have huge problems, analyze our weaknesses and resolve to do something.
Plan to regenerate the necessary strategic industries that are losing or have lost (for example, steel, electronics, telecommunications and others).
Negotiate trade agreements with other countries better and not allow any country to do in this country will allow us to do in your country.
Development of research sponsored by government facilities and development to select and Industry (Example: The government has sponsored the World War II Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb). to restore government sponsored Sematech Corp. has launched major projects and developed products that are needed urgently.
Analyzing these 5 elements in our country by foreign competition. They will determine the final price of a product: the comparative rates of wages, technology, comparative benchmarking taxes (income, depreciation and other capital goods), government subsidies comparative costs and comparative accessories (medical, retirement, insurance and al.)
Plan to make the changes we can.
Adjust the tax structure to encourage the industries that produce basic necessities.
Negotiate fairly with other countries taking into account what is in our interests instead of focusing disproportionately on global considerations only.
Limit the sale of some companies in strategic sectors to foreign companies if they have a negative impact on our defense capabilities, or to harm our country.
A new spirit of cooperation should be developed between government, management and labor - are all in the same boat.
American people are aware, hardworking, creative and intelligent. leadership and incentives can do significantly more than the Powerhouse manufacturing worlds were and make the country richer, freer and stronger in the world - but if we lose the economic war we will not be able to produce competitively and compete with other industrialized countries - particularly Germany, Japan and even China. The future will not be as good as in the past.
Landrieu Amendment toxic imported shrimp can not be avoided in order to pass
Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) to amend the Act on the modernization of food safety protection, the Americans shrimp imports dangerous.
The amendment would have the FDA review 20 percent of the import dependency in 2015. Currently, the FDA reviews of less than 2 percent of these imports. With 80 percent of shrimp in the United States, consisting of imports used, and state control to find issues of consistency, it is inadmissible, this test a small amount.
Bill is also food importers needed to register with the FDA to prevent companies from countervailing duty and false labeling to avoid land of origin. "We have repeatedly shown that companies use unscrupulous Prevention same rules - such as coverage and the false labeling - two U.S. laws on food safety and fair trade to escape the law," John Williams, Executive Director Alliance of Southern Shrimp said.
Finally, the change of country eating with child labor from the export to the United States produces prohibited. human rights abuses such as these tend to go together with fish in corrupt countries like Bangladesh and Thailand.
A change to protect raw oysters to go, proving once again the ignorant and misguided priorities of the current leadership. When it comes, the Food Safety Modernization Act is a step in the right direction, but the other too little, too late action by Congress.
Japan and the European Union now check 100 percent of shrimp imports from Vietnam after finding widespread contamination. The Today Show and NBC Nightly News both reported on the dangers of imported shrimp. Alabama regulators to reject 50 percent of shrimp imported by pollution. Obviously there is a problem with imported shrimp, which must be addressed.
Because of this laxity and lack of customs duties, is imported shrimp are often sold at a lower price than domestic products, putting honest shrimpers out of business. "Bad actors involved in the treatment of U.S. consumers in danger and destruction of the business of shrimp of the family," Williams said.
The bill must now be linked to a House version passed in line early this year and is then sent to President Obama for his signature.
The amendment would have the FDA review 20 percent of the import dependency in 2015. Currently, the FDA reviews of less than 2 percent of these imports. With 80 percent of shrimp in the United States, consisting of imports used, and state control to find issues of consistency, it is inadmissible, this test a small amount.
Bill is also food importers needed to register with the FDA to prevent companies from countervailing duty and false labeling to avoid land of origin. "We have repeatedly shown that companies use unscrupulous Prevention same rules - such as coverage and the false labeling - two U.S. laws on food safety and fair trade to escape the law," John Williams, Executive Director Alliance of Southern Shrimp said.
Finally, the change of country eating with child labor from the export to the United States produces prohibited. human rights abuses such as these tend to go together with fish in corrupt countries like Bangladesh and Thailand.
A change to protect raw oysters to go, proving once again the ignorant and misguided priorities of the current leadership. When it comes, the Food Safety Modernization Act is a step in the right direction, but the other too little, too late action by Congress.
Japan and the European Union now check 100 percent of shrimp imports from Vietnam after finding widespread contamination. The Today Show and NBC Nightly News both reported on the dangers of imported shrimp. Alabama regulators to reject 50 percent of shrimp imported by pollution. Obviously there is a problem with imported shrimp, which must be addressed.
Because of this laxity and lack of customs duties, is imported shrimp are often sold at a lower price than domestic products, putting honest shrimpers out of business. "Bad actors involved in the treatment of U.S. consumers in danger and destruction of the business of shrimp of the family," Williams said.
The bill must now be linked to a House version passed in line early this year and is then sent to President Obama for his signature.
Truth About Depression: Book Review
Want to read the global economic crisis, the Great Depression of the twenty-first century, edited by Michel Chossudovsky Gavin and Andrew Marshall, if you meet these criteria: You will receive information and analysis on key topics from the great thinkers outside of the mainstream media and publishing, you can manage the pain brain revelations detailed and brutally honest you are willing and able to make your own prejudices and preconceived notions challenge, new explanations on the lease as the world really works.
If millions of Americans read this book, we would probably create a much stronger rebellion against the political establishment has refused to punish severely the perpetrators of numerous accounts, banks and mortgage to the decline of the United States and the global economic system.
This book contains a number of factors in twenty chapters, as is corruption in the world, because to reveal the interests of plutocratic power, rich and businesses. Conference rooms of Wall Street business of the Federal Reserve and other central banks on the U.S. military and NATO, a variety of son a carpet of interwoven alarming crime against society, that has not been followed up.
This book is really an instrument to fight against the brainwashing. If you are willing to spend lots of time to read them, then you are surely to be a lot of trouble over the sad state of the economy, so much pain and suffering for the ordinary people around the world. If you are personally the worst ravages of the economic crisis have escaped then you have much sympathy for those affected most.
In all honesty, if the current global economic crisis has you angry, pessimistic, anxious, paranoid, desperate, and worse still, this book is likely to exacerbate those feelings. With more compounds disclosed consequences and causes, this book will motivate you to do what is fighting against the company, the plutocratic forces to wreak havoc on people's lives. If you already have little confidence in the government, makes it even worse. Does this mean that you do not read? Absolutely not.
Here are some statements from the book that resonates with me and you can decide whether the general philosophical orientation, which is compatible with your views to decide:
"Wall Street Ponzi scheme was used to manipulate the market and to transfer billions of dollars into the pockets of the bankers."
"The government rescue plans worldwide were corporatist in character, as they save the capitalists at the expense of the people."
"The global political economy is transformed into a structure of global governance at the crossroads of a major financial crisis."
Gin only the courage to read out colored markers to highlight certain passages, and expand your knowledge to the propaganda you started to overcome the time. We need more citizen agitation further strengthening of public demonstrations, the powers that corrupt and perverted to overthrow our government. An important voice in the mainstream media, which is in phase with the pain messages in this book, Dylan Ratigan was a terrible sight daily on MSNBC. He should also read this book on time.
If millions of Americans read this book, we would probably create a much stronger rebellion against the political establishment has refused to punish severely the perpetrators of numerous accounts, banks and mortgage to the decline of the United States and the global economic system.
This book contains a number of factors in twenty chapters, as is corruption in the world, because to reveal the interests of plutocratic power, rich and businesses. Conference rooms of Wall Street business of the Federal Reserve and other central banks on the U.S. military and NATO, a variety of son a carpet of interwoven alarming crime against society, that has not been followed up.
This book is really an instrument to fight against the brainwashing. If you are willing to spend lots of time to read them, then you are surely to be a lot of trouble over the sad state of the economy, so much pain and suffering for the ordinary people around the world. If you are personally the worst ravages of the economic crisis have escaped then you have much sympathy for those affected most.
In all honesty, if the current global economic crisis has you angry, pessimistic, anxious, paranoid, desperate, and worse still, this book is likely to exacerbate those feelings. With more compounds disclosed consequences and causes, this book will motivate you to do what is fighting against the company, the plutocratic forces to wreak havoc on people's lives. If you already have little confidence in the government, makes it even worse. Does this mean that you do not read? Absolutely not.
Here are some statements from the book that resonates with me and you can decide whether the general philosophical orientation, which is compatible with your views to decide:
"Wall Street Ponzi scheme was used to manipulate the market and to transfer billions of dollars into the pockets of the bankers."
"The government rescue plans worldwide were corporatist in character, as they save the capitalists at the expense of the people."
"The global political economy is transformed into a structure of global governance at the crossroads of a major financial crisis."
Gin only the courage to read out colored markers to highlight certain passages, and expand your knowledge to the propaganda you started to overcome the time. We need more citizen agitation further strengthening of public demonstrations, the powers that corrupt and perverted to overthrow our government. An important voice in the mainstream media, which is in phase with the pain messages in this book, Dylan Ratigan was a terrible sight daily on MSNBC. He should also read this book on time.
Colombia-Venezuela to strengthen ties FTA Imperii
The agreement proposed US-Colombia free trade could be in danger because of the relationship more comfortable with the president Juan Manuel Santos, with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, told the Miami Herald.
Since taking office, Chavez has been very critical of America and its foreign policy, and strengthening ties between his country and many enemies in the world, in essence, the tightening of US-Venezuela.
Santos embrace of Chavez is seen by many in the U.S. as a guarantee of failure in seeking passage of a trade pact between the people and the U.S.
Despite several meetings with Chavez and tourism in many countries around the world, Santos has not extradited to S. U. He snubbed the United States in the choice of a Venezuelan drug lord returns to his home instead of visiting America. Santos and no project, an agreement allowing U.S. troops on military bases in Colombia must be renewed.
"I'm adrift: their orientation is not weighted according to the U.S. than it was before," Carl Meacham, a senior fellow for the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the Senate Ranking Member Richard Lugar (R -IN), told The Miami Herald.
Some believe, however, that Santos is simply to stimulate the U.S. to act. Anyone who thinks that's the case I think Santos is a close relationship with Chávez to fear in American politics, who will immediately ratify the agreement not to lose an ally in the region.
"Bit disappointed by the Colombian United States," Enrique Santos Calderon, the president's brother, told the Miami Herald. "There is a feeling that we need to take some distance and stop, another advantage that no is not reciprocal. "
The agreement was signed, which was negotiated in 2006 under the Bush presidency for four years in Congress as lawmakers debate the merits languishes establish a free trade agreement with a country that condones the killing of trade unionists .
In 2009, a total of 48 union members were murdered. Already this year, 29 unionists were killed.
The United States should, in the absence of free trade agreements with countries that do not allow its workers to unionize, collective bargaining or, if necessary, the attacking force. Much less a nation that turns a blind eye to the murder of people who participate in these activities.
Over the past 20 years, 2,754 trade unionists in Colombia have been murdered. More often than not, no convictions ever received. In the rare cases where prosecutors are able to obtain a conviction for about 5 percent of the time, it is often overlooked that the government is not a suspect in the crime. This is the case in 40 percent of the area convicted of murdering a trade unionist.
Not only Colombia Free Trade Agreement between jobs and poor view of human rights, but the trade pact would hurt the economy by the national trade deficit and tens of thousands of jobs in the process .
The American people feared, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Trade agreements with the previous model EPI projects, trade agreements with Colombia and South Korea are very expensive, the U.S. economy would be. The study revealed that the nation lost 214,000 jobs by 2015, manufacturing jobs for better pay. The trade deficit has increased $ 16800000000, the study projects.
Since taking office, Chavez has been very critical of America and its foreign policy, and strengthening ties between his country and many enemies in the world, in essence, the tightening of US-Venezuela.
Santos embrace of Chavez is seen by many in the U.S. as a guarantee of failure in seeking passage of a trade pact between the people and the U.S.
Despite several meetings with Chavez and tourism in many countries around the world, Santos has not extradited to S. U. He snubbed the United States in the choice of a Venezuelan drug lord returns to his home instead of visiting America. Santos and no project, an agreement allowing U.S. troops on military bases in Colombia must be renewed.
"I'm adrift: their orientation is not weighted according to the U.S. than it was before," Carl Meacham, a senior fellow for the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the Senate Ranking Member Richard Lugar (R -IN), told The Miami Herald.
Some believe, however, that Santos is simply to stimulate the U.S. to act. Anyone who thinks that's the case I think Santos is a close relationship with Chávez to fear in American politics, who will immediately ratify the agreement not to lose an ally in the region.
"Bit disappointed by the Colombian United States," Enrique Santos Calderon, the president's brother, told the Miami Herald. "There is a feeling that we need to take some distance and stop, another advantage that no is not reciprocal. "
The agreement was signed, which was negotiated in 2006 under the Bush presidency for four years in Congress as lawmakers debate the merits languishes establish a free trade agreement with a country that condones the killing of trade unionists .
In 2009, a total of 48 union members were murdered. Already this year, 29 unionists were killed.
The United States should, in the absence of free trade agreements with countries that do not allow its workers to unionize, collective bargaining or, if necessary, the attacking force. Much less a nation that turns a blind eye to the murder of people who participate in these activities.
Over the past 20 years, 2,754 trade unionists in Colombia have been murdered. More often than not, no convictions ever received. In the rare cases where prosecutors are able to obtain a conviction for about 5 percent of the time, it is often overlooked that the government is not a suspect in the crime. This is the case in 40 percent of the area convicted of murdering a trade unionist.
Not only Colombia Free Trade Agreement between jobs and poor view of human rights, but the trade pact would hurt the economy by the national trade deficit and tens of thousands of jobs in the process .
The American people feared, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Trade agreements with the previous model EPI projects, trade agreements with Colombia and South Korea are very expensive, the U.S. economy would be. The study revealed that the nation lost 214,000 jobs by 2015, manufacturing jobs for better pay. The trade deficit has increased $ 16800000000, the study projects.
Important messages have to know newspapers, most of the day: Reclaiming America
Americans usually refer to their homeland as "the best" greatest "," or "the most powerful nation in the world. Barack Obama has used the terminology of his inaugural address and has repeatedly speak to these points in mind that a public database. Congress to do this are doing. The entrepreneur. The people on the street do so easily because they can.
Perhaps the time has come to begin in the light of everything that has happened this nation so-called "big" For us as a superpower to act again.
The United States will have nearly all the natural resources of a country can or must. Saving for our excessive dependence on oil is to develop the U.S. domestic saving enough most of their resources. The United States also has a huge population and relatively well-trained workers. Our students left their colleagues around the world, but with a little effort you can reverse this trend and stimulate the generation of young people into a strong nation in this time to build up substantial damage is a mess.
United States used a model of inefficiency in the field of national infrastructure. President Eisenhower began to aggressively build and expand our highways of America to join with their neighbors and a national community. He did not stop with the highway, he laid the foundation for our current network expansion and reinvention of public service. The result is economic life and sustainable growth.
Unfortunately in the last two decades, our infrastructure has started to fall apart. Chaos in the streets, old trains, bridges in the control system is damaged and water urgently need an update.
We always hear that America would love us to fix the problem if only he had money. Our nation relies on foreign financing of our budget, annual and fiscal imbalances have more than $ 1000000000000 to cover for each of the last two years.
The Republicans have the closure of almost all social services, proposed to save money - regardless of those who rely on these services in order to survive.
Democrats have proposed to simply spend more and the money later.
No one has proposed to bring back the areas where we have more than enough money left over. Our military budget is more than $ 1000000000000 a year. This money will be spent to protect us and prosecute our wars abroad, but also for complex issues easy to do and not used. While people argue about the need in Iraq and Afghanistan can, there is no doubt that our bases in Germany, Japan, South Korea, Spain, Italy, Saudi Arabia, Britain and some remote areas of the waste of money. If we close bases in Europe, the Russian tanks did not appear at the border the next day. If we immediately to withdraw from the Japanese, not Chinese fighters strafe the Imperial Palace. It is also impossible to lead from South Korea to renewed conflict with the North.
The only basic hardware project American power is independent of where the economy. If America is not in national health care system, because these systems are "too expensive" because they have a comprehensive system to an acceptable police.
The worst thing is that the Americans do not use "hard power". Most developed countries in the world hold marginal forces for national defense in size, and the crack team of special forces for operations overseas. Then work with our allies to ensure that any major nuclear power would be stupid enough to violence.
Money saved by maintaining the power of a huge weapon can be included in education, research and infrastructure development, health and national support. How E.U. To pay what the U.S. can not?
If the United States cut military budget with a small portion, perhaps a tenth, could save tens of billions of dollars per year. This money can then in the things that are reinvested to build up the economy. When we send troops abroad, why not send students and teachers to build and repair our image around the world diplomatic? That is what happened in Europe, China, Japan and throughout the developed and developing countries. It is yet another area in which the United States falling behind painful.
In the U.S., we usually only after the crisis landed on us to act before we wait. Our current crisis has been raging for almost two years, and now it is time to take drastic measures to eventually take over. When we mention really great nation, not the "greatest" nation, we are up to the challenge.
Perhaps the time has come to begin in the light of everything that has happened this nation so-called "big" For us as a superpower to act again.
The United States will have nearly all the natural resources of a country can or must. Saving for our excessive dependence on oil is to develop the U.S. domestic saving enough most of their resources. The United States also has a huge population and relatively well-trained workers. Our students left their colleagues around the world, but with a little effort you can reverse this trend and stimulate the generation of young people into a strong nation in this time to build up substantial damage is a mess.
United States used a model of inefficiency in the field of national infrastructure. President Eisenhower began to aggressively build and expand our highways of America to join with their neighbors and a national community. He did not stop with the highway, he laid the foundation for our current network expansion and reinvention of public service. The result is economic life and sustainable growth.
Unfortunately in the last two decades, our infrastructure has started to fall apart. Chaos in the streets, old trains, bridges in the control system is damaged and water urgently need an update.
We always hear that America would love us to fix the problem if only he had money. Our nation relies on foreign financing of our budget, annual and fiscal imbalances have more than $ 1000000000000 to cover for each of the last two years.
The Republicans have the closure of almost all social services, proposed to save money - regardless of those who rely on these services in order to survive.
Democrats have proposed to simply spend more and the money later.
No one has proposed to bring back the areas where we have more than enough money left over. Our military budget is more than $ 1000000000000 a year. This money will be spent to protect us and prosecute our wars abroad, but also for complex issues easy to do and not used. While people argue about the need in Iraq and Afghanistan can, there is no doubt that our bases in Germany, Japan, South Korea, Spain, Italy, Saudi Arabia, Britain and some remote areas of the waste of money. If we close bases in Europe, the Russian tanks did not appear at the border the next day. If we immediately to withdraw from the Japanese, not Chinese fighters strafe the Imperial Palace. It is also impossible to lead from South Korea to renewed conflict with the North.
The only basic hardware project American power is independent of where the economy. If America is not in national health care system, because these systems are "too expensive" because they have a comprehensive system to an acceptable police.
The worst thing is that the Americans do not use "hard power". Most developed countries in the world hold marginal forces for national defense in size, and the crack team of special forces for operations overseas. Then work with our allies to ensure that any major nuclear power would be stupid enough to violence.
Money saved by maintaining the power of a huge weapon can be included in education, research and infrastructure development, health and national support. How E.U. To pay what the U.S. can not?
If the United States cut military budget with a small portion, perhaps a tenth, could save tens of billions of dollars per year. This money can then in the things that are reinvested to build up the economy. When we send troops abroad, why not send students and teachers to build and repair our image around the world diplomatic? That is what happened in Europe, China, Japan and throughout the developed and developing countries. It is yet another area in which the United States falling behind painful.
In the U.S., we usually only after the crisis landed on us to act before we wait. Our current crisis has been raging for almost two years, and now it is time to take drastic measures to eventually take over. When we mention really great nation, not the "greatest" nation, we are up to the challenge.
Stocks a sucker bet
With corporate profits in the records of the U.S. breaking, Wall Street anxiously anticipating the return of individual investors to the stock market. It can be a long wait, because the little boy may have concluded the investment in shares is a sucker bet.
Investors, unlike traders, buying stocks in companies whose profits are ready to go. Conventional wisdom says that stock prices follow profits, but in the last two economic cycles, which simply did not happen.
In February 1998, the first S & P 500 closed above 1,000. From the first quarter of 1998 to the third quarter of 2010, business profits have increased by 203%, but the average daily close of the S & P 500 rose by only 7% - about half of one percent per year.
purchases of stocks does not seem to pay more because most of the greater value created by increased profits was captured by hedge funds, traders electronics, private equity funds, and aggressive mergers and acquisitions (M & A) stores - free-standing and major investment banks - which have mushroomed over the past two decades.
Their activities, in essence, are divided into two categories. aggressive trading - for example, by exploiting the possibilities complex short circuit, quickly identify and exploit their intentions in negotiating large mutual funds and other tactics often associated with exotic and ambiguity of e-commerce. Direct purchase of assets - buying companies underperforming, in whole or in part, to force managers to pay large sums to reorganize their businesses through mergers and divestitures, or exploit business opportunities unattended town manager have been lazy about pursuing.
Not everything was negative for stock prices or unfair.
Cleverly summarizing public information to identify the value in the company before other investors is the way in which stars such as Warren Buffet has become legend. The permanent increase in stock prices in the wake of their actions, and that's good for the ordinary investor in the stock already collect.
Shaping up underperforming companies probably started even before the first greek shippers bought out the rival captains to discharge incompetent and reduce the risks of the sea, spread overheads and get more leverage with the potters, weavers, farmers, and foreign merchants.
However, too much of a good thing - the e-commerce and aggressive coverage - can be disruptive. Watch the costs imposed by the May 6 "Flash Crash" defensive tactics by managers or company besieged by unjustified short circuit. And, often regarded as private equity and M & A shops acquisition of companies and load them up with debt, make large payouts for business, and then disappoint investors and creditors.
Through the above information, fast execution and aggressive marketing, traders and businessmen to capture a large amount of potential increase in value created by new and expected corporate profits before the value is recognized in share prices. This translates into lavish compensation for traders and speculators and stock prices that do not increase profits.
Instead of ordinary people get a decent return on their retirement accounts, real estate prices in the Hamptons and luxury goods sales rise best shopping in Manhattan.
Hedge funds, electronic traders, private equity and M & A in the shops you act on information that is obtained through a careful, legitimate research, but as the ongoing investigations by the Securities and Exchange Commission into insider trading and has published voyeuring electronic reports indicate critical competitive information is obtained through immoral means, and perhaps illegal. The data from unwary corporate officers snooping through electronic espionage and disadvantages of further opportunities for gains by individual investors and traditional mutual funds and pension funds.
It seems completely absurd, but consider that JPMorgan and Bank of America has gone through the entire quarter, third, without a negative trading day - no day to lose on trades of property. Unless you believe in perfection, something stinks about the information they are using.
If someone is winning all the time, then someone else is losing. This is the common investor. Stocks have become a rigged game.
Peter Morici is a professor at the Smith School of Business, University of Maryland School, and former chief economist at the U.S. International Trade Commission.
Investors, unlike traders, buying stocks in companies whose profits are ready to go. Conventional wisdom says that stock prices follow profits, but in the last two economic cycles, which simply did not happen.
In February 1998, the first S & P 500 closed above 1,000. From the first quarter of 1998 to the third quarter of 2010, business profits have increased by 203%, but the average daily close of the S & P 500 rose by only 7% - about half of one percent per year.
purchases of stocks does not seem to pay more because most of the greater value created by increased profits was captured by hedge funds, traders electronics, private equity funds, and aggressive mergers and acquisitions (M & A) stores - free-standing and major investment banks - which have mushroomed over the past two decades.
Their activities, in essence, are divided into two categories. aggressive trading - for example, by exploiting the possibilities complex short circuit, quickly identify and exploit their intentions in negotiating large mutual funds and other tactics often associated with exotic and ambiguity of e-commerce. Direct purchase of assets - buying companies underperforming, in whole or in part, to force managers to pay large sums to reorganize their businesses through mergers and divestitures, or exploit business opportunities unattended town manager have been lazy about pursuing.
Not everything was negative for stock prices or unfair.
Cleverly summarizing public information to identify the value in the company before other investors is the way in which stars such as Warren Buffet has become legend. The permanent increase in stock prices in the wake of their actions, and that's good for the ordinary investor in the stock already collect.
Shaping up underperforming companies probably started even before the first greek shippers bought out the rival captains to discharge incompetent and reduce the risks of the sea, spread overheads and get more leverage with the potters, weavers, farmers, and foreign merchants.
However, too much of a good thing - the e-commerce and aggressive coverage - can be disruptive. Watch the costs imposed by the May 6 "Flash Crash" defensive tactics by managers or company besieged by unjustified short circuit. And, often regarded as private equity and M & A shops acquisition of companies and load them up with debt, make large payouts for business, and then disappoint investors and creditors.
Through the above information, fast execution and aggressive marketing, traders and businessmen to capture a large amount of potential increase in value created by new and expected corporate profits before the value is recognized in share prices. This translates into lavish compensation for traders and speculators and stock prices that do not increase profits.
Instead of ordinary people get a decent return on their retirement accounts, real estate prices in the Hamptons and luxury goods sales rise best shopping in Manhattan.
Hedge funds, electronic traders, private equity and M & A in the shops you act on information that is obtained through a careful, legitimate research, but as the ongoing investigations by the Securities and Exchange Commission into insider trading and has published voyeuring electronic reports indicate critical competitive information is obtained through immoral means, and perhaps illegal. The data from unwary corporate officers snooping through electronic espionage and disadvantages of further opportunities for gains by individual investors and traditional mutual funds and pension funds.
It seems completely absurd, but consider that JPMorgan and Bank of America has gone through the entire quarter, third, without a negative trading day - no day to lose on trades of property. Unless you believe in perfection, something stinks about the information they are using.
If someone is winning all the time, then someone else is losing. This is the common investor. Stocks have become a rigged game.
Peter Morici is a professor at the Smith School of Business, University of Maryland School, and former chief economist at the U.S. International Trade Commission.
New ideas to increase American manufacturing
During a period of ten years, I developed a completely new set of ideas to increase manufacturing jobs and reducing the trade deficit. Some of the ideas do not require Congress to raise or lower taxes or social programs. They have recently published a selection of them in a forum:
The ideas have received positive feedback there. These ideas are as follows:
Best solution for competitiveness
Abstract: A de facto minimum wage increased international agreement would be a better solution than the massive decline in U.S. wages and salaries which the Conservatives are working.
The reason Obama is struggling very hard to solve the problem of trade deficit is that the loans to pay for excess imports more loans to pay interest on the increased debt to foreign lenders, will ultimately produce a collapse U.S. economy worse than the last couple of years. That
in turn, leaving China as the sole remaining superpower in the world.
Obama has asked the rest of the world to help reduce the trade deficit, but foreign nations involved have denied, or only a symbol. For example, India recently said that buying an additional $ 10 million United States dollars in exchange for us to support a permanent seat on the Security Council of the UN, but $ 10 billion to do almost anything to help the trade deficit that swings around $ 500 billion dollars a year figure.
The business community and conservatives want to resolve the problem by lowering U.S. wages and salaries to a level competitive with third world nations, so that American workers can produce goods cheaper than those sold by China, Philippines, Indonesia, Bangladesh, etc. That would make the middle and lower class poor.
There are two ways that the Conservatives could do it. Some Republicans are proposing the elimination of the minimum wage, and social programs like unemployment insurance, food stamps, etc., ie, do not say "unemployment insurance", etc, but the budget deficit is so high that without raising taxes on higher income earners, the only way to produce a balanced budget that was requested by the Republican Movement and the Tea Party would be to eliminate all social programs. Once the above is done, people would have jobs as wages of an employer is willing to give, or face real hunger.
The other way to do so would be to promote a high level of inflation, without increasing the minimum wage, etc. With a thousand percent inflation, the minimum wage actually become worth only abut 70 cents per hour, for example, and $ 300 per month for food stamps a family would become $ 30 per month. Inflation is caused by printing money, and the Federal Reserve has announced it is initiating the printing of approximately $ 600 billion in new money in the near future.
However, the reduction of American wages and salaries is not the only possible way that American exports competitive. You could also make the competition to bring wages in foreign nations to a level of America.
This could be done by a rapid increase in international minimum wage. As the international minimum wage increases, which would pay for itself to foreigners, because the income of older people, enabling companies to sell more goods and services, which would produce more economic growth. Just keep wages stagnant economic growth. The higher wages in foreign countries that would mean more sales of goods and services produced by American workers at current wage levels.
We could do this effectively enough unilaterally immediately. I should not wait for the long process of making a new international treaty.
The method would be for the United States to pass legislation that would allow countries to sell their products and services in the United States, a corporation, foreign or domestic, would be required to pay employees anywhere in the world to an extent that the lowest employee receiving a salary equal to the minimum wage in America. For example, if a Chinese company wanted to sell something in the U.S., its lowest level employees must earn no less than the minimum wage in America.
In this way, the whole world that the United States seeks economically would be paying at least minimum wage in America. Companies from other nations to do this because they want to sell to the United States, and this would also be very popular with workers from other nations.
It is true that the introduction of a requirement of all the minimum wage in force immediately could cause economic chaos too. However, if it were implemented over a period of five years, which would be sufficient time for companies to adapt. Thus, under de facto minimum wage could be 20% of America's minimum wage the first year, 40% the second year, 60% the third year, 80% the fourth year, and 100% thereafter.
Note that legislation to establish an international regime de facto minimum wage does not add anything the deficit or require spending cuts and tax increases. Therefore, there would be no political reason for anyone to oppose it.
If the Republicans threatened to block legislation, only to be blocking the way things have been doing, the consequences of reduced wages international agreement not to approve the minimum wage and the fall of the United States to be a poor power, a third class If the trade deficit is not reduced might be explained to voters. The voters know so it would be a terrible thing for Republicans not to support it.
Of course, it is urgent to start in the legislative process quickly, because if not, then the wages and salaries are massively reduced in either of two ways discussed above.
There is another option for the rapid creation of new manufacturing jobs in the United States would not be necessary to increase the budget deficit or raise taxes.
Should not the cost of living adjustment Social Security for this idea to work.
People may acquire additional income from social security, and that the money would be used to create many new small manufacturing companies. Some of the small manufacturing companies probably remain small in order to continue to provide only a modest contribution to the U.S. economy. Some would probably become the major companies make new products in the United States, both for domestic consumption and for export.
Interest rates unusually low at the moment, but in normal times, annuities typically pay 6% or more. You can do that, because when a person dies, no return to what the person has in
Therefore, to be attractive, I think a program for the purchase of additional funds from social security would attract adequate amounts by paying 6% more than the cost of living adjustment. That means every $ 200 paid in person would give an extra dollar of income per month, when the person reaches retirement age. If the person is already receiving social security, additional income to start immediately.
In addition, foreign citizens are allowed to buy social security pensions for them at the same speed. Produced by small companies manufacturing new year, and further reduce net debt to foreign lenders at the bit immediately to bring new dollars in the United States. In the long run, it would be a payment to foreigners when he began to receive social security but would be offset by manufacturing in the United States.
There are several ways the money could be used for the implementation of new manufacturing firms in the United States. Whatever method is used, it would be of vital importance that the letter of all new business and its agreement with the federal government should specify that all products manufactured by the company would have to be manufactured in the United States, at all times
the future existence of the new company. It would also help large companies to acquire new companies that proved successful. However, the manufacturing agreement-in-the-United-States to continue holding of the subsidiary, when a company became a subsidiary of a large corporation.
I have a recommended method, which probably could be improved. It is designed to ensure that very few of the manufacturers of new error. The greatest danger of failure in the early years, when a customer base has not yet developed very far, and a new company has fixed costs, however, must pay such as rent and interest on loans. With a still fluctuating
Early customer base, there will be periods of lower revenue for the company and the periods of higher income. Often, a period of lower income will make the company to fail when they can not make your rent and interest payments.
Therefore, each new company will begin to own land, original buildings and housing for the owner or several partners. The cost of that would be part of the loan, the government provided for starting a business. The loan, of course, include all equipment necessary for commissioning and initial working capital.
Now, as part of the protection of new businesses fail, the government loan non-interest bearing. Instead, the principle would be reimbursed at a rate of ten percent of what the company actually sold each quarter. Thus, temporary reductions in sales would not cause the company to fail. The payments, of course return to the social security fund.
Then there would be a landmark agreement. Permanently, the company would pay 3% of their gross income on social security payments, payroll tax --- funds are not counted as part of this, of course. The permanent income than one would expect, I think, provide full funding
for the social security fund in the coming centuries. If 3% did not solve the problem long term social security funding, the percentage could rise to a level that could solve the problem. All this would have to be estimated at first because it would be better to have a firm agreement with each new business from scratch, with the percentage of gross revenues paid into the social security fund are the same for the company (or subsidiary if became one) for all time.
The government selected the new owners likely to do well in running a business, and provide oversight of the early years as needed. Once a company is securely established and the owners knew exactly what they were doing, monitoring the government would withdraw.
This would not be socialism at all, by the way, because the end result would be a group of companies free enterprise. That would be similar to much of what China has been doing to produce about ten percent growth rate the last couple of decades. The Chinese government gives temporary help firms, which then continue as private companies in the free enterprise once they are well on their own.
China remains socialist in some ways, but for the most part, China has become a nation free enterprise.
For example, one of my ideas would be the imposition of a fee required Investment (RIF). This is seen in either the retail or wholesale, something like a sales tax but a tax would not be real. The RIF would be the same for domestic and foreign. Instead, the money needed for investment income Cargo RIF enter into special bonds issued by the federal government. Non-interest bearing bonds. Bonds can be bought and sold, but could only be charged if the bailout money used to build new factories in the United States. So, I mean really new. Just building a new factory to replace an old one not closed
count.
RIF bonds to be issued to companies, foreign and domestic alike, which makes products people bought. Any company can use its revenue bonds under federal government supervision sufficient to ensure that this happens, to build a new factory in the United States or could sell their bonds, no doubt, at a discount to another company I wanted to build a factory in the United States. In a number of areas, a new factory can be designed so that it can compete with products made by low-wage workers abroad. There is no doubt that companies specializing in the construction of factories to be competitive in that way.
One source of new exports to our range are products with new designs, special designs of the new museum quality.
To create the avalanche of new designs that we have to increase enough to save exports to the United States, we must increase the number of artists, encouraging them to do the work of the highest quality, and make arrangements to have their designs manufactured United States States.
There are several ways that could increase the number of artists, so there are many options to choose from.
1. Could provide an income of $ 1000 per month (ie, equal to $ 1000, 2010) to anyone who wants to be an artist and has the right skills, with the provision that to maintain income, the artist must work on time complete. The artist gets everything he or she earned from the sale of their work without affecting the grant. One million artists supported in this program would require one billion dollars a month in grants, not all that much compared to many programs. Taxes paid on sales would probably most of that cost to the government.
2. You could pass legislation that would allow people who bought the work directly from the artists who made them, to have half of the purchase price of the products as a tax deduction. Most of that cost would come back in new taxes paid by artists in the income they receive.
3. We could provide all adults in the country a credit equal to 1000 2010 dollars, so the adult could be used for the purchase of any direct work of an American artist who did the work. That would cost something in the area of 200 billion dollars per year. I'm running for various reasons, so it did not look up the exact number of adults in the United States at this time.
Some people may be able to come up with new ideas for options of further adding to the list above.
To drive the quality up, there are several things that could be done.
1. Could be a number of awards each year for high-quality works that had been done during the year. If I had a million artists, we could have 50,000 prizes of $ 10,000 each, for example. That cost 5 billion dollars per year.
2. We might have teachers who continuously provide instructions and examples appropriate (images of works in museums) to the artists, with the aim of getting the work of each artist to museum quality. Each artist, for example, might have 100 hours of instruction this year.
Others might be able to add to this list.
To manufacture products in the United States would hold the copyright on the works of artists strong.
So we want to do something to encourage companies to start making products with new designs from artists. Since it would be copyright, no foreign company could produce new designs in competition with American products, so no need to worry about cheap labor outside the United States. Then, in exchange for incentives to companies to start producing the designs, the companies signed a contract strong binding always making the whole design of new products in the United States.
various incentives would be possible.
1. Each company may be proposed by the government of half the cost of the new factories needed to manufacture a new product design.
2. In the U.S., each time a customer bought one of products of new design, he or she could have half the cost as a tax deduction.
3. Corporations be allowed to join a government funded cooperation supermarkets everywhere that sell only products of new design.
4. The shareholders of the companies manufacturing the new design would be allowed to pay no taxes on corporate dividends.
Others could not doubt add other options to the list.
What we must do to save America is to have a national debate earlier lists, and other ideas from other people might have to add to the list.
No matter if my ideas were used in the end, if someone's ideas were used.
The ideas have received positive feedback there. These ideas are as follows:
Best solution for competitiveness
Abstract: A de facto minimum wage increased international agreement would be a better solution than the massive decline in U.S. wages and salaries which the Conservatives are working.
The reason Obama is struggling very hard to solve the problem of trade deficit is that the loans to pay for excess imports more loans to pay interest on the increased debt to foreign lenders, will ultimately produce a collapse U.S. economy worse than the last couple of years. That
in turn, leaving China as the sole remaining superpower in the world.
Obama has asked the rest of the world to help reduce the trade deficit, but foreign nations involved have denied, or only a symbol. For example, India recently said that buying an additional $ 10 million United States dollars in exchange for us to support a permanent seat on the Security Council of the UN, but $ 10 billion to do almost anything to help the trade deficit that swings around $ 500 billion dollars a year figure.
The business community and conservatives want to resolve the problem by lowering U.S. wages and salaries to a level competitive with third world nations, so that American workers can produce goods cheaper than those sold by China, Philippines, Indonesia, Bangladesh, etc. That would make the middle and lower class poor.
There are two ways that the Conservatives could do it. Some Republicans are proposing the elimination of the minimum wage, and social programs like unemployment insurance, food stamps, etc., ie, do not say "unemployment insurance", etc, but the budget deficit is so high that without raising taxes on higher income earners, the only way to produce a balanced budget that was requested by the Republican Movement and the Tea Party would be to eliminate all social programs. Once the above is done, people would have jobs as wages of an employer is willing to give, or face real hunger.
The other way to do so would be to promote a high level of inflation, without increasing the minimum wage, etc. With a thousand percent inflation, the minimum wage actually become worth only abut 70 cents per hour, for example, and $ 300 per month for food stamps a family would become $ 30 per month. Inflation is caused by printing money, and the Federal Reserve has announced it is initiating the printing of approximately $ 600 billion in new money in the near future.
However, the reduction of American wages and salaries is not the only possible way that American exports competitive. You could also make the competition to bring wages in foreign nations to a level of America.
This could be done by a rapid increase in international minimum wage. As the international minimum wage increases, which would pay for itself to foreigners, because the income of older people, enabling companies to sell more goods and services, which would produce more economic growth. Just keep wages stagnant economic growth. The higher wages in foreign countries that would mean more sales of goods and services produced by American workers at current wage levels.
We could do this effectively enough unilaterally immediately. I should not wait for the long process of making a new international treaty.
The method would be for the United States to pass legislation that would allow countries to sell their products and services in the United States, a corporation, foreign or domestic, would be required to pay employees anywhere in the world to an extent that the lowest employee receiving a salary equal to the minimum wage in America. For example, if a Chinese company wanted to sell something in the U.S., its lowest level employees must earn no less than the minimum wage in America.
In this way, the whole world that the United States seeks economically would be paying at least minimum wage in America. Companies from other nations to do this because they want to sell to the United States, and this would also be very popular with workers from other nations.
It is true that the introduction of a requirement of all the minimum wage in force immediately could cause economic chaos too. However, if it were implemented over a period of five years, which would be sufficient time for companies to adapt. Thus, under de facto minimum wage could be 20% of America's minimum wage the first year, 40% the second year, 60% the third year, 80% the fourth year, and 100% thereafter.
Note that legislation to establish an international regime de facto minimum wage does not add anything the deficit or require spending cuts and tax increases. Therefore, there would be no political reason for anyone to oppose it.
If the Republicans threatened to block legislation, only to be blocking the way things have been doing, the consequences of reduced wages international agreement not to approve the minimum wage and the fall of the United States to be a poor power, a third class If the trade deficit is not reduced might be explained to voters. The voters know so it would be a terrible thing for Republicans not to support it.
Of course, it is urgent to start in the legislative process quickly, because if not, then the wages and salaries are massively reduced in either of two ways discussed above.
There is another option for the rapid creation of new manufacturing jobs in the United States would not be necessary to increase the budget deficit or raise taxes.
Should not the cost of living adjustment Social Security for this idea to work.
People may acquire additional income from social security, and that the money would be used to create many new small manufacturing companies. Some of the small manufacturing companies probably remain small in order to continue to provide only a modest contribution to the U.S. economy. Some would probably become the major companies make new products in the United States, both for domestic consumption and for export.
Interest rates unusually low at the moment, but in normal times, annuities typically pay 6% or more. You can do that, because when a person dies, no return to what the person has in
Therefore, to be attractive, I think a program for the purchase of additional funds from social security would attract adequate amounts by paying 6% more than the cost of living adjustment. That means every $ 200 paid in person would give an extra dollar of income per month, when the person reaches retirement age. If the person is already receiving social security, additional income to start immediately.
In addition, foreign citizens are allowed to buy social security pensions for them at the same speed. Produced by small companies manufacturing new year, and further reduce net debt to foreign lenders at the bit immediately to bring new dollars in the United States. In the long run, it would be a payment to foreigners when he began to receive social security but would be offset by manufacturing in the United States.
There are several ways the money could be used for the implementation of new manufacturing firms in the United States. Whatever method is used, it would be of vital importance that the letter of all new business and its agreement with the federal government should specify that all products manufactured by the company would have to be manufactured in the United States, at all times
the future existence of the new company. It would also help large companies to acquire new companies that proved successful. However, the manufacturing agreement-in-the-United-States to continue holding of the subsidiary, when a company became a subsidiary of a large corporation.
I have a recommended method, which probably could be improved. It is designed to ensure that very few of the manufacturers of new error. The greatest danger of failure in the early years, when a customer base has not yet developed very far, and a new company has fixed costs, however, must pay such as rent and interest on loans. With a still fluctuating
Early customer base, there will be periods of lower revenue for the company and the periods of higher income. Often, a period of lower income will make the company to fail when they can not make your rent and interest payments.
Therefore, each new company will begin to own land, original buildings and housing for the owner or several partners. The cost of that would be part of the loan, the government provided for starting a business. The loan, of course, include all equipment necessary for commissioning and initial working capital.
Now, as part of the protection of new businesses fail, the government loan non-interest bearing. Instead, the principle would be reimbursed at a rate of ten percent of what the company actually sold each quarter. Thus, temporary reductions in sales would not cause the company to fail. The payments, of course return to the social security fund.
Then there would be a landmark agreement. Permanently, the company would pay 3% of their gross income on social security payments, payroll tax --- funds are not counted as part of this, of course. The permanent income than one would expect, I think, provide full funding
for the social security fund in the coming centuries. If 3% did not solve the problem long term social security funding, the percentage could rise to a level that could solve the problem. All this would have to be estimated at first because it would be better to have a firm agreement with each new business from scratch, with the percentage of gross revenues paid into the social security fund are the same for the company (or subsidiary if became one) for all time.
The government selected the new owners likely to do well in running a business, and provide oversight of the early years as needed. Once a company is securely established and the owners knew exactly what they were doing, monitoring the government would withdraw.
This would not be socialism at all, by the way, because the end result would be a group of companies free enterprise. That would be similar to much of what China has been doing to produce about ten percent growth rate the last couple of decades. The Chinese government gives temporary help firms, which then continue as private companies in the free enterprise once they are well on their own.
China remains socialist in some ways, but for the most part, China has become a nation free enterprise.
For example, one of my ideas would be the imposition of a fee required Investment (RIF). This is seen in either the retail or wholesale, something like a sales tax but a tax would not be real. The RIF would be the same for domestic and foreign. Instead, the money needed for investment income Cargo RIF enter into special bonds issued by the federal government. Non-interest bearing bonds. Bonds can be bought and sold, but could only be charged if the bailout money used to build new factories in the United States. So, I mean really new. Just building a new factory to replace an old one not closed
count.
RIF bonds to be issued to companies, foreign and domestic alike, which makes products people bought. Any company can use its revenue bonds under federal government supervision sufficient to ensure that this happens, to build a new factory in the United States or could sell their bonds, no doubt, at a discount to another company I wanted to build a factory in the United States. In a number of areas, a new factory can be designed so that it can compete with products made by low-wage workers abroad. There is no doubt that companies specializing in the construction of factories to be competitive in that way.
One source of new exports to our range are products with new designs, special designs of the new museum quality.
To create the avalanche of new designs that we have to increase enough to save exports to the United States, we must increase the number of artists, encouraging them to do the work of the highest quality, and make arrangements to have their designs manufactured United States States.
There are several ways that could increase the number of artists, so there are many options to choose from.
1. Could provide an income of $ 1000 per month (ie, equal to $ 1000, 2010) to anyone who wants to be an artist and has the right skills, with the provision that to maintain income, the artist must work on time complete. The artist gets everything he or she earned from the sale of their work without affecting the grant. One million artists supported in this program would require one billion dollars a month in grants, not all that much compared to many programs. Taxes paid on sales would probably most of that cost to the government.
2. You could pass legislation that would allow people who bought the work directly from the artists who made them, to have half of the purchase price of the products as a tax deduction. Most of that cost would come back in new taxes paid by artists in the income they receive.
3. We could provide all adults in the country a credit equal to 1000 2010 dollars, so the adult could be used for the purchase of any direct work of an American artist who did the work. That would cost something in the area of 200 billion dollars per year. I'm running for various reasons, so it did not look up the exact number of adults in the United States at this time.
Some people may be able to come up with new ideas for options of further adding to the list above.
To drive the quality up, there are several things that could be done.
1. Could be a number of awards each year for high-quality works that had been done during the year. If I had a million artists, we could have 50,000 prizes of $ 10,000 each, for example. That cost 5 billion dollars per year.
2. We might have teachers who continuously provide instructions and examples appropriate (images of works in museums) to the artists, with the aim of getting the work of each artist to museum quality. Each artist, for example, might have 100 hours of instruction this year.
Others might be able to add to this list.
To manufacture products in the United States would hold the copyright on the works of artists strong.
So we want to do something to encourage companies to start making products with new designs from artists. Since it would be copyright, no foreign company could produce new designs in competition with American products, so no need to worry about cheap labor outside the United States. Then, in exchange for incentives to companies to start producing the designs, the companies signed a contract strong binding always making the whole design of new products in the United States.
various incentives would be possible.
1. Each company may be proposed by the government of half the cost of the new factories needed to manufacture a new product design.
2. In the U.S., each time a customer bought one of products of new design, he or she could have half the cost as a tax deduction.
3. Corporations be allowed to join a government funded cooperation supermarkets everywhere that sell only products of new design.
4. The shareholders of the companies manufacturing the new design would be allowed to pay no taxes on corporate dividends.
Others could not doubt add other options to the list.
What we must do to save America is to have a national debate earlier lists, and other ideas from other people might have to add to the list.
No matter if my ideas were used in the end, if someone's ideas were used.
The senators want to end ethanol subsidies
Instead of the attack was unfair subsidies and tariffs in China, U.S. manufacturers and service providers with regard to economic disadvantage, a bipartisan group of senators to approve the domestic production of ethanol.
The product of alternative energy from corn is the beneficiary of subsidies, tariffs and quotas, which are unprecedented in the basis of 17 senators led by Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and John Kyl (R-AZ) takes place.
"Maybe the elimination or reduction of subsidies for ethanol and trade barriers are important steps to take to reduce the budget deficit, improve the environment and reduce our dependence on imported oil," they wrote in a letter to Senate leaders .
The awards, which are currently at 54 cents per gallon generally discourage the importation of low-cost subsidies for ethanol made from sugar in Brazil, critics say.
They also note that the growing demand for corn to produce fuel additive added to cereals to higher prices of feed and food, so that more people suffer from hunger in the Third World.
This year, the government also requires the nation's fuel 12000000000 gallons of fuel containing renewable resources. The combined market share of government expenditure to grant U.S. $ 31000000000 Over the next five years, according to the letter.
"The combination of subsidy to ethanol gas tax is not to defend" the letter said.
Despite the rare cooperation between the parties, could be the end of federal support for ethanol industry will be much easier said than done.
The industry is strongly supported in the production of maize in the Midwestern states like Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Illinois and Nebraska. Parliaments of these countries - at least 10 senators - just the suspension of aid in support of the sector.
Not to mention the fact that nowhere more important than the ethanol industry in Iowa, which happens to be the first state to hold presidential primaries. Due to its special place in the presidential nomination, each presidential ambitions MPs lose their chance at the White House by supporting the bipartisan effort.
However, many Republicans feel the pressure of the right to end their subsidies and tariffs parties. Tea party members are less receptive to alternative energy and built a movement on unnecessary expenses.
"The elimination or reduction of ethanol subsidies and trade barriers are important steps to do to reduce the budget deficit, improve the environment and reduce our dependence on foreign oil. We look forward to working with you responsible fiscal policy, the energy can "read the letter.
The product of alternative energy from corn is the beneficiary of subsidies, tariffs and quotas, which are unprecedented in the basis of 17 senators led by Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and John Kyl (R-AZ) takes place.
"Maybe the elimination or reduction of subsidies for ethanol and trade barriers are important steps to take to reduce the budget deficit, improve the environment and reduce our dependence on imported oil," they wrote in a letter to Senate leaders .
The awards, which are currently at 54 cents per gallon generally discourage the importation of low-cost subsidies for ethanol made from sugar in Brazil, critics say.
They also note that the growing demand for corn to produce fuel additive added to cereals to higher prices of feed and food, so that more people suffer from hunger in the Third World.
This year, the government also requires the nation's fuel 12000000000 gallons of fuel containing renewable resources. The combined market share of government expenditure to grant U.S. $ 31000000000 Over the next five years, according to the letter.
"The combination of subsidy to ethanol gas tax is not to defend" the letter said.
Despite the rare cooperation between the parties, could be the end of federal support for ethanol industry will be much easier said than done.
The industry is strongly supported in the production of maize in the Midwestern states like Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Illinois and Nebraska. Parliaments of these countries - at least 10 senators - just the suspension of aid in support of the sector.
Not to mention the fact that nowhere more important than the ethanol industry in Iowa, which happens to be the first state to hold presidential primaries. Due to its special place in the presidential nomination, each presidential ambitions MPs lose their chance at the White House by supporting the bipartisan effort.
However, many Republicans feel the pressure of the right to end their subsidies and tariffs parties. Tea party members are less receptive to alternative energy and built a movement on unnecessary expenses.
"The elimination or reduction of ethanol subsidies and trade barriers are important steps to do to reduce the budget deficit, improve the environment and reduce our dependence on foreign oil. We look forward to working with you responsible fiscal policy, the energy can "read the letter.
The Crucifixion of Christmas by business and media
Christmas consumerism is unsustainable practices of companies and advertisers that Americans are increasingly attracted.
Black Friday is a term that describes the day after Thanksgiving, for Christmas sales are expected to dealers in black or cost sharing for the year. Christmas shopping now 50 per cent per cent of retail sales, which makes it essential for the survival of businesses. Typically, consumer spending represents 70 percent of U.S. economic growth.
Ironically, our mentality of consumers could be our loss in the last 15 years, the vast majority of products sold in the U.S. during this period abroad. With stagnant wages in the same period, are increasingly buying up the claim, putting citizens and the most indebted country has a trade deficit and national staff continue.
But many people much more cautious about buying a $ 1,000 TV for $ 300, quite important. Knowledge is power, and blissful ignorance of the companies have taken the Christmas and America, "the people" have become powerless.
Protection of the Republic has need of care and supervision to special interests to prevent the acquisition, as has happened in America. the absurdity of man, has become "Black Friday" trampled to death for discounts Door Buster - a symptom of mania, which affects the general population.
However, there are few signs of life. At the request of a group of people promising to buy anything to Black Friday, in protest against the enormity of the Christmas shopping has become popular. What started as an innocent tradition in the 1940 season is now three months since the media constantly pushes.
Online shopping and small purchases have also some reason in the party again, as people reject the gifts flashy and visible to the simplest products. However, much of this spirit may be necessary to stop this madness at Christmas and the United States.
The values of freedom and liberty that America was not built to give the bondage of blind consumption. Stay educated on the issues and press for the module itself is important for healthy citizens of a republic.
Black Friday is a term that describes the day after Thanksgiving, for Christmas sales are expected to dealers in black or cost sharing for the year. Christmas shopping now 50 per cent per cent of retail sales, which makes it essential for the survival of businesses. Typically, consumer spending represents 70 percent of U.S. economic growth.
Ironically, our mentality of consumers could be our loss in the last 15 years, the vast majority of products sold in the U.S. during this period abroad. With stagnant wages in the same period, are increasingly buying up the claim, putting citizens and the most indebted country has a trade deficit and national staff continue.
But many people much more cautious about buying a $ 1,000 TV for $ 300, quite important. Knowledge is power, and blissful ignorance of the companies have taken the Christmas and America, "the people" have become powerless.
Protection of the Republic has need of care and supervision to special interests to prevent the acquisition, as has happened in America. the absurdity of man, has become "Black Friday" trampled to death for discounts Door Buster - a symptom of mania, which affects the general population.
However, there are few signs of life. At the request of a group of people promising to buy anything to Black Friday, in protest against the enormity of the Christmas shopping has become popular. What started as an innocent tradition in the 1940 season is now three months since the media constantly pushes.
Online shopping and small purchases have also some reason in the party again, as people reject the gifts flashy and visible to the simplest products. However, much of this spirit may be necessary to stop this madness at Christmas and the United States.
The values of freedom and liberty that America was not built to give the bondage of blind consumption. Stay educated on the issues and press for the module itself is important for healthy citizens of a republic.
German example shows how to operate a successful manufacturing company
Germany, the unemployment rate lower than the U.S., and increased GDP growth, is a model of how to manage a thriving economy.
Germany's success is based on its manufacturing base. The production represents about 25 percent of the German economy in comparison to only 11 percent in the United States. extended when the U.S. financial sector and the United Kingdom at a cost of production of goods, Germany has managed to stay the course. The results were phenomenal.
Germany is the second in a € of China's trade balance, which is especially remarkable when one considers that Germany has a population of 82 million dollars. Germany is able to put through an intensive production system of capital and knowledge to achieve efficiency stressed.
German SMEs are the key to effectiveness. SMEs are small, family businesses and medium-sized manufacturing. These are highly qualified middle school through vocational training in Germany, and this terrible workers tend to remain in the same company for decades. Have a banking system, a maintenance of time and not to engage in speculative behavior is affected risk.
"What we have here is part of capitalism, not shareholder value," said former lawmaker and businessman Klaas Hübner. This small production company should not worry about shareholders, and can focus on long-term growth and development. German firms in the securities markets, such as BMW will continue to invest in national list to guarantee their future profits.
While other UN programs when unemployment Great Depression hit Germany a new approach called short-term work, where the government pays a portion of the wage gap if the company reduced its full-time employees and no part-time tried to dismiss.
There are several lessons to emulate America and our struggling economy. The most important thing is that the producer is to achieve high growth and wages, and push the effort in this country in this regard through the reform of trade agreements, education and our banking system should be done.
Germany's success is based on its manufacturing base. The production represents about 25 percent of the German economy in comparison to only 11 percent in the United States. extended when the U.S. financial sector and the United Kingdom at a cost of production of goods, Germany has managed to stay the course. The results were phenomenal.
Germany is the second in a € of China's trade balance, which is especially remarkable when one considers that Germany has a population of 82 million dollars. Germany is able to put through an intensive production system of capital and knowledge to achieve efficiency stressed.
German SMEs are the key to effectiveness. SMEs are small, family businesses and medium-sized manufacturing. These are highly qualified middle school through vocational training in Germany, and this terrible workers tend to remain in the same company for decades. Have a banking system, a maintenance of time and not to engage in speculative behavior is affected risk.
"What we have here is part of capitalism, not shareholder value," said former lawmaker and businessman Klaas Hübner. This small production company should not worry about shareholders, and can focus on long-term growth and development. German firms in the securities markets, such as BMW will continue to invest in national list to guarantee their future profits.
While other UN programs when unemployment Great Depression hit Germany a new approach called short-term work, where the government pays a portion of the wage gap if the company reduced its full-time employees and no part-time tried to dismiss.
There are several lessons to emulate America and our struggling economy. The most important thing is that the producer is to achieve high growth and wages, and push the effort in this country in this regard through the reform of trade agreements, education and our banking system should be done.
Follow import more than we pay for
Here are some sobering facts: The U.S. loses 725 billion dollars a year in another country by operating losses. This money is not to buy our goods and services. E 'up to three additional functions of the United States:
1. Foreign countries are financing the U.S. government - with levels as high as 53% of U.S. government bonds in foreign hands down 2. The stranger, use the rest of the money to buy our industries and enterprises (over 16,000 U.S. companies that produce wealth in the last 30 years) 3 United States Many industries are now non-US companies (such as publishing books for 63% ownership foreign sound recording industries 97%, 75% of motion pictures, the cement industry, 62%) controls
The result: foreign lenders are actually supported the U.S. government, lower U.S. interest rates and consumer spending. If foreign countries stop these loans are easy to grow in the United States, the imported goods cheaper and the government should raise interest rates to attract lenders in the United States government bonds. We assume naive belief in the sustainability of the superpower status of the United States. N superpower in history has ever so little of what they consumed in taking so long to produce a crushing debt. Why is this a risk? If foreign creditors are willing to help us continue to ship goods abroad and our government to bankroll an indefinite period, everything would be in exchange for dollar bills printed, and in order. But at some point, be able to continue as U.S. debt rising foreign demand a bit 'more than one document as collateral for the loan. As currently purchase using most of these dollars to our credit, will always offer less than the U.S. as a guarantee. U.S. prices of debt and financial losses are much faster than the rate we replace them with new industries and new factories climbing. We assume that every point we can provide our industry a whim to rebuild. The U.S. automobile industry shows how difficult it is. It takes time, money and know-how - three luxury of a country at war with massive debts can not have. Why was nothing done? This is designed for 30 years and like any new government that are not taken with the "hot potato". Instead, make the country U. S. undervaluation of its currency in Asia and do not open their markets. The United States accuses Europe does not help reign in the military threats to global stability and to subsidize their own industries. Meanwhile, these regions, the debt of the United States for abusing its status as a slightly run a world power, huge deficits in the lifestyle of the United States without the support of domestic production. By our own admission, has moved from a manufacturing to a services economy. However, we do not recognize that domestic services are not easily exchanged for foreign goods. At present, our goods deficit with the rest of the world is 14 times greater than our surplus services. Straw Finally, high oil prices, terrorism, higher interest rates or other exogenous factors that could upset the delicate balance that currently supports the U.S. standard of living. Our options are to wait to see the market forces that want to return to a balanced situation or problem and develop a plan to tackle this problem. The problem with "wait and see approach is that since other countries are actively implementing its economic" war plans "we can not then it is likely that the new balance in S. U. The problem: The proposed approach is pain-term for the United States and the outcome can not be what we expected either. At least, the leaders of the United States, a working group to examine the issue in detail and understand the magnitude of our economic weakness and to make as many Different scenarios can happen any time soon. Everything else is nothing short of a disgrace to the past generations who sacrificed themselves for our current position and dereliction of duty for future generations, based on the debts of this generation have to live.
1. Foreign countries are financing the U.S. government - with levels as high as 53% of U.S. government bonds in foreign hands down 2. The stranger, use the rest of the money to buy our industries and enterprises (over 16,000 U.S. companies that produce wealth in the last 30 years) 3 United States Many industries are now non-US companies (such as publishing books for 63% ownership foreign sound recording industries 97%, 75% of motion pictures, the cement industry, 62%) controls
The result: foreign lenders are actually supported the U.S. government, lower U.S. interest rates and consumer spending. If foreign countries stop these loans are easy to grow in the United States, the imported goods cheaper and the government should raise interest rates to attract lenders in the United States government bonds. We assume naive belief in the sustainability of the superpower status of the United States. N superpower in history has ever so little of what they consumed in taking so long to produce a crushing debt. Why is this a risk? If foreign creditors are willing to help us continue to ship goods abroad and our government to bankroll an indefinite period, everything would be in exchange for dollar bills printed, and in order. But at some point, be able to continue as U.S. debt rising foreign demand a bit 'more than one document as collateral for the loan. As currently purchase using most of these dollars to our credit, will always offer less than the U.S. as a guarantee. U.S. prices of debt and financial losses are much faster than the rate we replace them with new industries and new factories climbing. We assume that every point we can provide our industry a whim to rebuild. The U.S. automobile industry shows how difficult it is. It takes time, money and know-how - three luxury of a country at war with massive debts can not have. Why was nothing done? This is designed for 30 years and like any new government that are not taken with the "hot potato". Instead, make the country U. S. undervaluation of its currency in Asia and do not open their markets. The United States accuses Europe does not help reign in the military threats to global stability and to subsidize their own industries. Meanwhile, these regions, the debt of the United States for abusing its status as a slightly run a world power, huge deficits in the lifestyle of the United States without the support of domestic production. By our own admission, has moved from a manufacturing to a services economy. However, we do not recognize that domestic services are not easily exchanged for foreign goods. At present, our goods deficit with the rest of the world is 14 times greater than our surplus services. Straw Finally, high oil prices, terrorism, higher interest rates or other exogenous factors that could upset the delicate balance that currently supports the U.S. standard of living. Our options are to wait to see the market forces that want to return to a balanced situation or problem and develop a plan to tackle this problem. The problem with "wait and see approach is that since other countries are actively implementing its economic" war plans "we can not then it is likely that the new balance in S. U. The problem: The proposed approach is pain-term for the United States and the outcome can not be what we expected either. At least, the leaders of the United States, a working group to examine the issue in detail and understand the magnitude of our economic weakness and to make as many Different scenarios can happen any time soon. Everything else is nothing short of a disgrace to the past generations who sacrificed themselves for our current position and dereliction of duty for future generations, based on the debts of this generation have to live.
Unions frustrated Outsourcing Conference
The movement has succeeded in a plan by a Mexican magazine to a conference defeat on outsourcing for U.S. companies in Seattle.
The magazine had MexicoNow conference on 2 December planned on air and space company in the U.S. to Mexico to promote.
This is the third time this year that the magazine has tried such an event in the U.S. are the two other scheduled conferences both in Wichita, Kansas, were canceled. Although it is difficult to understand why union leaders have threatened to picket the two events, saying it would result in the loss of American jobs.
"It's sad that such threats are held in a free market, where the emphasis should be placed on the long-term competitiveness and lower prices for consumers," MexicoNow Editor Sergio Ornelas said in a statement.
However, the members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers District Lodge 751 and say the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace, they are only to protect what is theirs.
District 751 President Tom Wroblewski said in a statement that the goal was the union does not request the cancellation of the event power, but about the responsibility of the potential loss of thousands of American jobs. Upcoming events were just a way for his side heard, "he said.
"I do not think that it's time for an open debate over outsourcing in America," he said. "Sending work to Mexico or China, short-term gains for companies to win the practice, but our members know first hand how it can destroy a community - or nation -. The long-term competitiveness in the air when America's leadership in this global economy have our businesses and our country to invest in us - and not abroad. "
Ornelas guilt of the threats and risks of an interruption that was the reason he and his newspaper decided to cancel the event.
"It's sad that such threats are held in a free market, where the focus should be on the long-term competitiveness and lower prices for consumers. It is because of these dangers and risks of interruption and care is our students that we have for this event to say, 'he said.
The planned event was addressed to the manufacturers of aerospace United States to "enjoy knowledge of the competitive advantages for air and space company in Mexico," they can "interact with the managers of the aerospace plant in Mexico" and the development of a detailed cost of the pro forma of a potential project offshore industry in Mexico. "
"While the goal of MexicoNow American jobs, we steal some effort will continue, the group was able to do a conference in Washington against subcontracting," said Wrobel.
The magazine had MexicoNow conference on 2 December planned on air and space company in the U.S. to Mexico to promote.
This is the third time this year that the magazine has tried such an event in the U.S. are the two other scheduled conferences both in Wichita, Kansas, were canceled. Although it is difficult to understand why union leaders have threatened to picket the two events, saying it would result in the loss of American jobs.
"It's sad that such threats are held in a free market, where the emphasis should be placed on the long-term competitiveness and lower prices for consumers," MexicoNow Editor Sergio Ornelas said in a statement.
However, the members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers District Lodge 751 and say the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace, they are only to protect what is theirs.
District 751 President Tom Wroblewski said in a statement that the goal was the union does not request the cancellation of the event power, but about the responsibility of the potential loss of thousands of American jobs. Upcoming events were just a way for his side heard, "he said.
"I do not think that it's time for an open debate over outsourcing in America," he said. "Sending work to Mexico or China, short-term gains for companies to win the practice, but our members know first hand how it can destroy a community - or nation -. The long-term competitiveness in the air when America's leadership in this global economy have our businesses and our country to invest in us - and not abroad. "
Ornelas guilt of the threats and risks of an interruption that was the reason he and his newspaper decided to cancel the event.
"It's sad that such threats are held in a free market, where the focus should be on the long-term competitiveness and lower prices for consumers. It is because of these dangers and risks of interruption and care is our students that we have for this event to say, 'he said.
The planned event was addressed to the manufacturers of aerospace United States to "enjoy knowledge of the competitive advantages for air and space company in Mexico," they can "interact with the managers of the aerospace plant in Mexico" and the development of a detailed cost of the pro forma of a potential project offshore industry in Mexico. "
"While the goal of MexicoNow American jobs, we steal some effort will continue, the group was able to do a conference in Washington against subcontracting," said Wrobel.
Food Safety Bill Hits Speed Bump
Due to a terrible procedure, the Food Safety Modernization Act will have to wait until the end of the year, before reaching the president's office - if ever.
Since the bill contains costs for importers, producers or farmers whose products were recalled by the Food and Drug Administration. Some see this as a tax. Under the Constitution, the new tax measures must originate in the house.
"The Senate knows the rule and should follow the rule and must be familiar with the rule," Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) said that, according to AFP.
"Nobody should be surprised by the rule. E 'in the Constitution, and has lectured and been reading and the Constitution. "
The bill, which passed with bipartisan support in both houses of Congress should go to a conference committee between the two chambers, each time for a new vote, then the president's desk for signature. It should be one of the signature achievements of the lame duck session of Congress.
Even simpler than that, there were indications that the House leaders were willing to accept the weaker version of the Senate measure, which would have allowed the camera to avoid a new vote on the bill.
Now their time is increasingly seen as a certainty, although Democrats say they are confident the bill can be approved at the end of the year.
But Republicans have vowed to block any measure that does not relate to taxes and spending.
The measure was brought to the forefront of political action, due to a rash of recent health crisis with eggs, peanut butter, spinach and milk.
According to Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL), each year 76 million Americans suffer from foodborne illnesses can be avoided. 325,000 are hospitalized each year due to contamination of food and kill 5,000.
Under current law, those responsible for the distribution of contaminated products is responsible for the issuance of their recovery. The FDA can only suggest that the withdrawal will be published. The law could change the situation and give the FDA mandatory recall authority.
The bill also provides for more frequent inspections of food processing plants and better monitoring of the epidemic. FDA hiring new inspectors to meet.
Despite the defeat, the Democrats still maintained an optimistic tone about the potential passage of the bill.
"I think we have done. I think it will happen soon. Let's get something for the House to be moved. In a way, it will do. We're just looking for a way to do it," said Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA).
"Human error happens Nobody who tries to jam -. It's just human error, no one has made a fatal error is nothing here, nothing will kill this bill .."
Since the bill contains costs for importers, producers or farmers whose products were recalled by the Food and Drug Administration. Some see this as a tax. Under the Constitution, the new tax measures must originate in the house.
"The Senate knows the rule and should follow the rule and must be familiar with the rule," Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) said that, according to AFP.
"Nobody should be surprised by the rule. E 'in the Constitution, and has lectured and been reading and the Constitution. "
The bill, which passed with bipartisan support in both houses of Congress should go to a conference committee between the two chambers, each time for a new vote, then the president's desk for signature. It should be one of the signature achievements of the lame duck session of Congress.
Even simpler than that, there were indications that the House leaders were willing to accept the weaker version of the Senate measure, which would have allowed the camera to avoid a new vote on the bill.
Now their time is increasingly seen as a certainty, although Democrats say they are confident the bill can be approved at the end of the year.
But Republicans have vowed to block any measure that does not relate to taxes and spending.
The measure was brought to the forefront of political action, due to a rash of recent health crisis with eggs, peanut butter, spinach and milk.
According to Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL), each year 76 million Americans suffer from foodborne illnesses can be avoided. 325,000 are hospitalized each year due to contamination of food and kill 5,000.
Under current law, those responsible for the distribution of contaminated products is responsible for the issuance of their recovery. The FDA can only suggest that the withdrawal will be published. The law could change the situation and give the FDA mandatory recall authority.
The bill also provides for more frequent inspections of food processing plants and better monitoring of the epidemic. FDA hiring new inspectors to meet.
Despite the defeat, the Democrats still maintained an optimistic tone about the potential passage of the bill.
"I think we have done. I think it will happen soon. Let's get something for the House to be moved. In a way, it will do. We're just looking for a way to do it," said Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA).
"Human error happens Nobody who tries to jam -. It's just human error, no one has made a fatal error is nothing here, nothing will kill this bill .."
China Marches to the Beat of Their Own Drummer
American politicians have been trying for years of work, China will abide by the United States, but China has more resistance, acting in their interest to Helene Cooper, The New York Times.
"A key element of U.S. relations with China is becoming a question, that is, at its heart, an impossible conundrum: How is he moved to Beijing that its leaders do not think they are good for for their country, "they wrote.
Not only are desperate for China's cooperation on many foreign policy issues such as nuclear proliferation in Iran and North Korea's aggression against its southern neighbor, but also a number of economic issues in the United States.
Since Obama administration took office, officials have tried to use pressure China to change its currency, the agreement more or less, on coal export controls and better protection of intellectual property - anything that China has resisted.
"Beijing has been reluctant to let its currency rise, as the yuan is cheap economy based on exporting difficult race," wrote Cooper. "China has been reluctant to harsh sanctions against the nuclear ambitions of Iran's execution, allowing access to Iranian oil and gas to fuel its growth. Beijing wants no carbon dioxide emissions curbs because of its ability to hundreds of millions of people in the elevator of the middle class in the coming years can be connected directly to the increased use of energy. "
China has always acted in the interest, but is stronger now that rival the United States as one of the largest superpower in the world. Not militarily or economically powerful as the United States, China is about or has already passed the U.S. in several key categories, including production and investment in clean energy technologies.
And China has stuck to his new position with the United States in the eyes. At the recent Summit of the G-20, U.S. officials hoped that other Member States to persuade China to exert pressure on trade balance better and stop manipulating its currency. Instead, rounded up enough support to give China, the United States to protect a language in its policy of quantitative easing.
"You do the background, the U.S. China, which the U.S. wants to do," said Rodger Baker, vice president of strategic intelligence at Stratfor, a firm geopolitical risk analysis. "We want to ensure that it remains the world as the U.S. wants to see the world. This means that China make us slaves, in some cases.
"A key element of U.S. relations with China is becoming a question, that is, at its heart, an impossible conundrum: How is he moved to Beijing that its leaders do not think they are good for for their country, "they wrote.
Not only are desperate for China's cooperation on many foreign policy issues such as nuclear proliferation in Iran and North Korea's aggression against its southern neighbor, but also a number of economic issues in the United States.
Since Obama administration took office, officials have tried to use pressure China to change its currency, the agreement more or less, on coal export controls and better protection of intellectual property - anything that China has resisted.
"Beijing has been reluctant to let its currency rise, as the yuan is cheap economy based on exporting difficult race," wrote Cooper. "China has been reluctant to harsh sanctions against the nuclear ambitions of Iran's execution, allowing access to Iranian oil and gas to fuel its growth. Beijing wants no carbon dioxide emissions curbs because of its ability to hundreds of millions of people in the elevator of the middle class in the coming years can be connected directly to the increased use of energy. "
China has always acted in the interest, but is stronger now that rival the United States as one of the largest superpower in the world. Not militarily or economically powerful as the United States, China is about or has already passed the U.S. in several key categories, including production and investment in clean energy technologies.
And China has stuck to his new position with the United States in the eyes. At the recent Summit of the G-20, U.S. officials hoped that other Member States to persuade China to exert pressure on trade balance better and stop manipulating its currency. Instead, rounded up enough support to give China, the United States to protect a language in its policy of quantitative easing.
"You do the background, the U.S. China, which the U.S. wants to do," said Rodger Baker, vice president of strategic intelligence at Stratfor, a firm geopolitical risk analysis. "We want to ensure that it remains the world as the U.S. wants to see the world. This means that China make us slaves, in some cases.
Important News You Need to Know - Today's Issue: American Cars
The Americans can not really understand the benefits of purchasing cars, electronic goods and services. Most theories of trade over the centuries, 18 and 19 are outdated and useless for the modern world. In addition, most theories of trade in a few decades (as in "free trade") are outdated and obsolete in the modern world.
However, there are a few platitudes about an economist or can keep the consumers. One of them was covered by Robert Ingersoll more than 100 years. Ingersoll said:
"It is better for Americans to buy American, even if you buy the things that cost you more. If we buy a lot of steel rails from England for twenty dollars, so that we have the money and title in England. But if we do a lot steel rails from a U.S. $ 25 to buy, then the U.S. title and money. "
What is true for steel rails is for everything else. It is better to buy before its economy, to buy elsewhere. It is better to buy a cinema ticket or a gallon of gasoline in your community to shop elsewhere because they are the receipts of local businesses and local employees, the company employees.
In all cases, but at a higher level, it is better to buy goods from a U.S. company to go because ultimately the profits of American companies and support American jobs. Even if the property outside the United States - is it better to buy than buying a foreign firm producing goods - as is the case for many Ford and GM. In a world divided into sovereign nations, it is essential not to allow the flow of money overseas, if you can not be avoided.
Unfortunately, in many U.S. industries that are not ethical. The automotive industry can be particularly bad, but other sectors are facing competition from abroad successfully.
The United States for decades, the world market for many consumers for cars. Consumption of China has surpassed the U.S. in 2009, but the country remains dependent and dependent on cars and trucks. However, the market share for domestic companies has fallen, largely from foreign competition.
The Wall Street Journal, thirteen cars, buy and sell vehicles in the U.S., with a market share of 1.4 percent of the market. Only three of them are Americans.
The so-called Big Three dominate only 44.7 percent of the domestic market, while foreign companies have a large influence on the other 55.3 percent. This means that for every dollar spent in the U.S. with the purchase of vehicles, more than half to a foreign company that seeks to eliminate his rivals in the United States goes. Compared with the exception of some imports from America and Europe, the Japanese car market is 90 percent dominated by Japanese automakers.
How was the land, the car loses its leading role in the industry to adapt invented? It was just a combination of displacement of domestic and foreign indifference.
For decades it was considered fashionable to buy an imported car. They were easy to consume, thanks to government subsidies for American cars and often less fuel.
foreign car manufacturers, began production in the United States to "import" the removal of the label, and consumers were instructed to believe that buying a Toyota or Honda Nissan USA was an investment in the economy. Marketing departments easy access to the fact that buying a Toyota equivalent ignored not buy a GM Chrysler, Ford, O. The purchase of a Toyota products in the country could be a Toyota employee, but also to reduce substantially the work of GM employees, more money, more power and remains a titan of the U.S. industry afloat.
At the same time, there was a discussion about the position of quality for consumers. Foreign cars are imported or manufactured in the factory were generally considered "better" than American cars. They were considered safer, more reliable and longer lasting. In many cases, they have all these things, but only because the foreign firm to help finance his government at home and our government to offset the additional costs. This is no secret that Toyota loses money on every Prius, Camry and Corolla. But the question is not and never was, to make money. He gained market share and restrict competition. Toyota has its losses on the Japanese market, which dominates, and the sale of expensive trucks and SUVs.
This always happens in the U.S. for decades, and dried in the automotive industry in the United States, a shell of its own.
However, change luck for the Big Three. According to the Associated Press, is to increase the American preference for American vehicles. More Americans now prefer American cars from Asian competition. In the wake of major recalls Honda and Toyota, and the discovery of huge U.S. cover-up by the offices of Toyota in view of the potentially fatal errors in some of their cars were told them that's not a car from Asia so perfect as to believe.
The Big Three will take many years for additional services on top in the U.S. to recover, but a change in consumer confidence is a good starting point. Now we expect more Americans start with the basics of import to understand the export and see that American cars are not equivalent or better products to take the only sensible choice is.
However, there are a few platitudes about an economist or can keep the consumers. One of them was covered by Robert Ingersoll more than 100 years. Ingersoll said:
"It is better for Americans to buy American, even if you buy the things that cost you more. If we buy a lot of steel rails from England for twenty dollars, so that we have the money and title in England. But if we do a lot steel rails from a U.S. $ 25 to buy, then the U.S. title and money. "
What is true for steel rails is for everything else. It is better to buy before its economy, to buy elsewhere. It is better to buy a cinema ticket or a gallon of gasoline in your community to shop elsewhere because they are the receipts of local businesses and local employees, the company employees.
In all cases, but at a higher level, it is better to buy goods from a U.S. company to go because ultimately the profits of American companies and support American jobs. Even if the property outside the United States - is it better to buy than buying a foreign firm producing goods - as is the case for many Ford and GM. In a world divided into sovereign nations, it is essential not to allow the flow of money overseas, if you can not be avoided.
Unfortunately, in many U.S. industries that are not ethical. The automotive industry can be particularly bad, but other sectors are facing competition from abroad successfully.
The United States for decades, the world market for many consumers for cars. Consumption of China has surpassed the U.S. in 2009, but the country remains dependent and dependent on cars and trucks. However, the market share for domestic companies has fallen, largely from foreign competition.
The Wall Street Journal, thirteen cars, buy and sell vehicles in the U.S., with a market share of 1.4 percent of the market. Only three of them are Americans.
The so-called Big Three dominate only 44.7 percent of the domestic market, while foreign companies have a large influence on the other 55.3 percent. This means that for every dollar spent in the U.S. with the purchase of vehicles, more than half to a foreign company that seeks to eliminate his rivals in the United States goes. Compared with the exception of some imports from America and Europe, the Japanese car market is 90 percent dominated by Japanese automakers.
How was the land, the car loses its leading role in the industry to adapt invented? It was just a combination of displacement of domestic and foreign indifference.
For decades it was considered fashionable to buy an imported car. They were easy to consume, thanks to government subsidies for American cars and often less fuel.
foreign car manufacturers, began production in the United States to "import" the removal of the label, and consumers were instructed to believe that buying a Toyota or Honda Nissan USA was an investment in the economy. Marketing departments easy access to the fact that buying a Toyota equivalent ignored not buy a GM Chrysler, Ford, O. The purchase of a Toyota products in the country could be a Toyota employee, but also to reduce substantially the work of GM employees, more money, more power and remains a titan of the U.S. industry afloat.
At the same time, there was a discussion about the position of quality for consumers. Foreign cars are imported or manufactured in the factory were generally considered "better" than American cars. They were considered safer, more reliable and longer lasting. In many cases, they have all these things, but only because the foreign firm to help finance his government at home and our government to offset the additional costs. This is no secret that Toyota loses money on every Prius, Camry and Corolla. But the question is not and never was, to make money. He gained market share and restrict competition. Toyota has its losses on the Japanese market, which dominates, and the sale of expensive trucks and SUVs.
This always happens in the U.S. for decades, and dried in the automotive industry in the United States, a shell of its own.
However, change luck for the Big Three. According to the Associated Press, is to increase the American preference for American vehicles. More Americans now prefer American cars from Asian competition. In the wake of major recalls Honda and Toyota, and the discovery of huge U.S. cover-up by the offices of Toyota in view of the potentially fatal errors in some of their cars were told them that's not a car from Asia so perfect as to believe.
The Big Three will take many years for additional services on top in the U.S. to recover, but a change in consumer confidence is a good starting point. Now we expect more Americans start with the basics of import to understand the export and see that American cars are not equivalent or better products to take the only sensible choice is.
Best Off-Broadway Show
Everyone knows how to create jobs in the Governor of the South. Luther Hodges of North Carolina, and kept pace in the competition. We went to Europe, and went to Latin America for business and industry of our ports. "We now have over 100 German industry in South Carolina.
I learned very early to call special attention in the sixth man who was with the development of investment in heavy industry to give. If you do not have good schools for the children of men and their equipment for children, who knew that South Carolina would never flyblow and Industry. Luther made the best quality training, which is currently in production in South Carolina, the "machine ultimately lead" to BMW and Boeing's Dreamliner.
I raised my taxes and get the first South Carolina triple score in the southern state. Thank God we have economists with a plan to reduce the deficit as a percentage of GDP. We pay the bill for each year of the Government to maintain the credit rating of triple A. Accordingly, I propose five GE, Westinghouse four, four-Dupont, Timpke roller, etc, and proudly announced the multiplication factor creating jobs for each industry. I have to move the multiplication factor of a small business as a furniture store or a McDonald's for advertising. Small businesses do not create jobs. Manufacturing creates jobs and fuels growth. And we fight in the war business.
After the Second World War, Japan began a trade war by closing their markets, by subsidizing its production, the sale of its exports to the costs and make profit from foreclosure. In 1960, I designed a witness in the trade war, before the first Japan Tariff Commission against fraud and in 1961 President Kennedy enforce our trade laws against Japan, leaving thousands of textile jobs. President Reagan enforce our trade laws saving Harley-Davidson and receive voluntary restraint agreements on steel, automobiles, computers and machine tools in Japan.
In the United States Senate, we have worked closely with U.S. companies to protect production and employment through trade measures by both houses of Congress. But President Johnson, Carter, Reagan and "Daddy" Bush, bowing to the Cold War, his veto against our efforts. When the Cold War ended, President Clinton has sold the land for the production and use of the NAFTA with Mexico and the road to China's accession to the World Trade Organization. outsourcing of jobs began in earnest with Clinton and Bush and Obama hemorrhage.
Corporate America has joined the China trade war in the call for free trade. Ridiculous! There is no possibility of free trade with Communist China controls its funding, labor and market. China puts the competition in the industry of war, because it violates every principle of free movement of goods. Provide China with technology and know-how U.S. companies moved to the country of research and production in China. Consequently, China had ended in the U.S. are more profitable.
If tried, the President, in the production of profitable business and enforce our laws, or a member of Congress, a trade bill, down on the head with contributions to his defeat in Wall Street, U.S. companies . UU. , And the Chamber of Commerce, Tom Donahue of the United States. Wall Street and U.S. companies want to continue to move profits offshore, and want to keep the President and the Congress of campaign contributions flowing. Washington is based on a measure of job creation with the stimulation and gifts for small businesses, but refuses to enter the market, and war is not serious about the economy and employment.
The President and Congress are paid to do nothing and do nothing.
Politicians always shouting: "The government does not create jobs." This trade war with China is the United States government, the great protector of our economy and create jobs, the government can boost the economy. eliminate the corporate income tax and replace it with a 5% tax. The estimate for 2010 corporate income of $ U.S. 156 700 000 000, while a tax of 5% of sales, U.S. $ 600 billion. More money raised by the tax reduction. VAT exemptions on food, health and housing for low income still leaves 350 billion U.S. dollars to reduce the national debt. VAT accounts for the greater incentive to work off-shore and the recovery of exports, promote the president's plan to increase exports. The elimination of the tax liability instead of billions of dollars in-shore profits of U.S. companies to invest in domestic production and employment. The VAT law should prohibit foreign profits are used for raw and excess profits. If the debt is paid, the VAT will reduce personal taxes. U.S. corporations can now produce a benefit for the United States. But always with the government to enforce trade laws to protect domestic investment and production of corporate America.
Instead of fulfilling its duty under the Constitution to regulate foreign commerce and enforce our trade laws, Congress and Washington, the president turned in the best off-Broadway show. If the president of a budget deficit of over a billion dollars a year, every year, provides for ten years, Congress engaged in a farce of the hearings and deliberations, noting that the budget will never be called a debate in both chambers. The 112 filibusters in the 110th Congress was all a joke. The Senate did not act on them at the base, all day until there is a commitment. A farce in which a Republican senator from the Republican base, the Democratic senator has the Democratic side, and the rest of the senators to go to New York or California for charity events. The Trust Fund for Social Security has a surplus of M $ 2,586,000,000,000 But Washington is like Social Security is in crisis because they have spent the funds Social Security Trust for everything but Social Security.
So how raising the age of the Social Security Act 75 years is now a difficult decision. Congress has no idea that the government in a "pay-as-you-go." The proposal to reduce spending to 2008 levels, it still leaves a deficit of 641 million dollars and require loans of 641 billion U.S. $ from China. The payment of one billion dollars in overnight interest costs nothing to let the recommendation of Alan Greenspan and Paul Volcker Bush tax cuts expire and start paying the debt is not even discussed. The debate is whether the increased debt by $ 3500000000000 loans from China and an additional $ 700 billion for the idle rich. Even hard work and conscientious efforts Erskine
Bowles and Alan Simpson of the Commission on the debt becomes a farce.
The 9 / 11, according to the U. S. State Department as al-Qaida was in forty-five countries - but not in Iraq but the United States. Personal consultation with the FBI and said that seventeen of Al Qaeda cells in America we see. We purified from Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan within four weeks, but always in a masquerade of ten years, the elimination of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, Al Qaeda can no longer be a threat to our security. According to the State Department report, we have to win forty-four countries, including the United States. One might think that endemic corruption in Afghanistan is simple. We also believe that the lesson of Vietnam: more people are willing to die for a government that is not democracy. Afghanistan has become a test of political parties "will be on defense. Democracy comes from within, but the announcement of Obama's four years of nurture democracy is received with approval. Nobody seems to respect our arms and farce legs and life.
I learned very early to call special attention in the sixth man who was with the development of investment in heavy industry to give. If you do not have good schools for the children of men and their equipment for children, who knew that South Carolina would never flyblow and Industry. Luther made the best quality training, which is currently in production in South Carolina, the "machine ultimately lead" to BMW and Boeing's Dreamliner.
I raised my taxes and get the first South Carolina triple score in the southern state. Thank God we have economists with a plan to reduce the deficit as a percentage of GDP. We pay the bill for each year of the Government to maintain the credit rating of triple A. Accordingly, I propose five GE, Westinghouse four, four-Dupont, Timpke roller, etc, and proudly announced the multiplication factor creating jobs for each industry. I have to move the multiplication factor of a small business as a furniture store or a McDonald's for advertising. Small businesses do not create jobs. Manufacturing creates jobs and fuels growth. And we fight in the war business.
After the Second World War, Japan began a trade war by closing their markets, by subsidizing its production, the sale of its exports to the costs and make profit from foreclosure. In 1960, I designed a witness in the trade war, before the first Japan Tariff Commission against fraud and in 1961 President Kennedy enforce our trade laws against Japan, leaving thousands of textile jobs. President Reagan enforce our trade laws saving Harley-Davidson and receive voluntary restraint agreements on steel, automobiles, computers and machine tools in Japan.
In the United States Senate, we have worked closely with U.S. companies to protect production and employment through trade measures by both houses of Congress. But President Johnson, Carter, Reagan and "Daddy" Bush, bowing to the Cold War, his veto against our efforts. When the Cold War ended, President Clinton has sold the land for the production and use of the NAFTA with Mexico and the road to China's accession to the World Trade Organization. outsourcing of jobs began in earnest with Clinton and Bush and Obama hemorrhage.
Corporate America has joined the China trade war in the call for free trade. Ridiculous! There is no possibility of free trade with Communist China controls its funding, labor and market. China puts the competition in the industry of war, because it violates every principle of free movement of goods. Provide China with technology and know-how U.S. companies moved to the country of research and production in China. Consequently, China had ended in the U.S. are more profitable.
If tried, the President, in the production of profitable business and enforce our laws, or a member of Congress, a trade bill, down on the head with contributions to his defeat in Wall Street, U.S. companies . UU. , And the Chamber of Commerce, Tom Donahue of the United States. Wall Street and U.S. companies want to continue to move profits offshore, and want to keep the President and the Congress of campaign contributions flowing. Washington is based on a measure of job creation with the stimulation and gifts for small businesses, but refuses to enter the market, and war is not serious about the economy and employment.
The President and Congress are paid to do nothing and do nothing.
Politicians always shouting: "The government does not create jobs." This trade war with China is the United States government, the great protector of our economy and create jobs, the government can boost the economy. eliminate the corporate income tax and replace it with a 5% tax. The estimate for 2010 corporate income of $ U.S. 156 700 000 000, while a tax of 5% of sales, U.S. $ 600 billion. More money raised by the tax reduction. VAT exemptions on food, health and housing for low income still leaves 350 billion U.S. dollars to reduce the national debt. VAT accounts for the greater incentive to work off-shore and the recovery of exports, promote the president's plan to increase exports. The elimination of the tax liability instead of billions of dollars in-shore profits of U.S. companies to invest in domestic production and employment. The VAT law should prohibit foreign profits are used for raw and excess profits. If the debt is paid, the VAT will reduce personal taxes. U.S. corporations can now produce a benefit for the United States. But always with the government to enforce trade laws to protect domestic investment and production of corporate America.
Instead of fulfilling its duty under the Constitution to regulate foreign commerce and enforce our trade laws, Congress and Washington, the president turned in the best off-Broadway show. If the president of a budget deficit of over a billion dollars a year, every year, provides for ten years, Congress engaged in a farce of the hearings and deliberations, noting that the budget will never be called a debate in both chambers. The 112 filibusters in the 110th Congress was all a joke. The Senate did not act on them at the base, all day until there is a commitment. A farce in which a Republican senator from the Republican base, the Democratic senator has the Democratic side, and the rest of the senators to go to New York or California for charity events. The Trust Fund for Social Security has a surplus of M $ 2,586,000,000,000 But Washington is like Social Security is in crisis because they have spent the funds Social Security Trust for everything but Social Security.
So how raising the age of the Social Security Act 75 years is now a difficult decision. Congress has no idea that the government in a "pay-as-you-go." The proposal to reduce spending to 2008 levels, it still leaves a deficit of 641 million dollars and require loans of 641 billion U.S. $ from China. The payment of one billion dollars in overnight interest costs nothing to let the recommendation of Alan Greenspan and Paul Volcker Bush tax cuts expire and start paying the debt is not even discussed. The debate is whether the increased debt by $ 3500000000000 loans from China and an additional $ 700 billion for the idle rich. Even hard work and conscientious efforts Erskine
Bowles and Alan Simpson of the Commission on the debt becomes a farce.
The 9 / 11, according to the U. S. State Department as al-Qaida was in forty-five countries - but not in Iraq but the United States. Personal consultation with the FBI and said that seventeen of Al Qaeda cells in America we see. We purified from Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan within four weeks, but always in a masquerade of ten years, the elimination of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, Al Qaeda can no longer be a threat to our security. According to the State Department report, we have to win forty-four countries, including the United States. One might think that endemic corruption in Afghanistan is simple. We also believe that the lesson of Vietnam: more people are willing to die for a government that is not democracy. Afghanistan has become a test of political parties "will be on defense. Democracy comes from within, but the announcement of Obama's four years of nurture democracy is received with approval. Nobody seems to respect our arms and farce legs and life.
The FDA is Letting You Unknowingly Eat Toxic Fish
As this video proves, imports from "free trade" deals are not just hurting our economy, they are killing us. 80% of our fish comes from over seas, from countries with no regulations. Do you think they care about our health? Why would they, we sure don't. How can our government allow this to happen? Why are we standing by doing nothing? We must demand tariffs on food imports. The FDA is overwhelmed and does not have the budged to handle all this imported food. The government use to get funding from tariffs, but with out them there is no money to fund needed programs like the FDA.
Disastrous Panama FTA Inches Closer to Reality
For tax evaders and average blue-collar workers in the U.S., things just got a little more difficult.
On Tuesday, the governments of Panama and the U.S. signed a tax accord that will allow them to share tax information, and may also pave the way for the passage of a long-stalled trade agreement between the two nations.
"Upon entry into force, the new [agreement] will provide the United States with access to the information it needs to enforce U.S. tax laws, including information related to bank accounts in Panama," the Treasury Department said.
The deal allows for the exchange of tax information on individuals and corporations dating back to the tax year of 2007, according to reports. The information could be asked for in both criminal and civil matters.
In recent years, Panama has signed similar deals with Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain and Mexico to try and shed its label as a well-known tax haven.
Recently, it was one of just13 countries listed on all of the major tax-haven watchdog lists that also does not have U.S. tax transparency treaties. Panama also happens to be the only country on that list that the American government is currently seeking to finalize a “free trade” agreement with.
A report by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group Education Fund found that the U.S. Treasury Department loses approximately $100 billion each and every year due to American businesses utilizing tax havens.
It is unknown how much of that winds up in Panama, where 350,000 foreign subsidiaries are located in the country to take advantage of the nation’s lax tax laws, usually in the form of offshore shell companies and fake headquarters. That makes it the second most popular destination in the world for multinational corporations seeking to avoid taxes, behind only Hong Kong.
Despite the obvious failings of signing a free trade pact with a nation widely regarded as a safe haven for people and businesses looking to hide their money from the government, free trade proponents say now is the time to finalize the agreement.
"The fact that we have now signed a Tax Information Exchange Agreement with Panama should remove any remaining hurdles to moving forward with this important trade agreement, something we should do as soon as possible," Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI) said.
The trade pact, which was negotiated in 2007 under the Bush administration, has been ratified by the Panamanian Congress, but stalled in the U.S., where Democrats had demanded greater transparency from Panama.
Panama President Ricardo Martinelli believes that now that U.S. lawmakers have that, the agreement is bound to become law.
"This new tax accord moves us closer to final approval of a trade agreement between our countries that is vital to our economies – especially at a time when the United States is trying to increase exports. The free-trade agreement we negotiated, and which Panama has approved, would make over 88 percent of U.S. consumer and industrial exports to Panama duty-free immediately, with the remaining tariffs phased out over 10 years,” he said.
On Tuesday, the governments of Panama and the U.S. signed a tax accord that will allow them to share tax information, and may also pave the way for the passage of a long-stalled trade agreement between the two nations.
"Upon entry into force, the new [agreement] will provide the United States with access to the information it needs to enforce U.S. tax laws, including information related to bank accounts in Panama," the Treasury Department said.
The deal allows for the exchange of tax information on individuals and corporations dating back to the tax year of 2007, according to reports. The information could be asked for in both criminal and civil matters.
In recent years, Panama has signed similar deals with Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain and Mexico to try and shed its label as a well-known tax haven.
Recently, it was one of just13 countries listed on all of the major tax-haven watchdog lists that also does not have U.S. tax transparency treaties. Panama also happens to be the only country on that list that the American government is currently seeking to finalize a “free trade” agreement with.
A report by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group Education Fund found that the U.S. Treasury Department loses approximately $100 billion each and every year due to American businesses utilizing tax havens.
It is unknown how much of that winds up in Panama, where 350,000 foreign subsidiaries are located in the country to take advantage of the nation’s lax tax laws, usually in the form of offshore shell companies and fake headquarters. That makes it the second most popular destination in the world for multinational corporations seeking to avoid taxes, behind only Hong Kong.
Despite the obvious failings of signing a free trade pact with a nation widely regarded as a safe haven for people and businesses looking to hide their money from the government, free trade proponents say now is the time to finalize the agreement.
"The fact that we have now signed a Tax Information Exchange Agreement with Panama should remove any remaining hurdles to moving forward with this important trade agreement, something we should do as soon as possible," Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI) said.
The trade pact, which was negotiated in 2007 under the Bush administration, has been ratified by the Panamanian Congress, but stalled in the U.S., where Democrats had demanded greater transparency from Panama.
Panama President Ricardo Martinelli believes that now that U.S. lawmakers have that, the agreement is bound to become law.
"This new tax accord moves us closer to final approval of a trade agreement between our countries that is vital to our economies – especially at a time when the United States is trying to increase exports. The free-trade agreement we negotiated, and which Panama has approved, would make over 88 percent of U.S. consumer and industrial exports to Panama duty-free immediately, with the remaining tariffs phased out over 10 years,” he said.
Who Should Pay to Fix the Economy?
Imagine you live in the suburbs and the residence next door is sold. The new owners raze the old cottage, build a McMansion and party 24/7. The neighbors complain about the noise but nothing is done until the house is trashed. Then your city council declares the dwelling a hazard and demands that you and your neighbors clean it up. Unfair? Of course, but that's what has happened in the US, where the rich and powerful had a decades-long party and trashed the economy. Now Republicans want average citizens to pay for the repairs.
Recently New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote an emotional column "National Greatness Agenda" imploring Americans to come together and fight for our country. Why? The deficit: because the US is "careening toward bankruptcy." Not surprisingly, conservative Brooks has swallowed the conservative orthodoxy hook, line, and sinker. He thinks our big problem is the US deficit. But it's not.
The real problem is that our economy was broken by thirty years of failed Republican economics. During the Reagan presidency conservative ideology began to dominate American political discourse: helping the rich get richer would inevitably help everyone else, "a rising tide lifts all boats;" markets were inherently self correcting and therefore there was no need for government regulation; and the US did not need an economic strategy because that was a natural consequence of the free market. As a consequence, America's working families were abandoned in favor of the rich. Good jobs were shipped overseas. Inequality rose as middle class income and wealth declined. Corporate power increased while unions were undermined. CEO salaries soared but fewer families earned living wages. Then the Bush Administration cut taxes while initiating an unnecessary war in Iraq. It was thirty years of economic ineptitude.
Republicans fractured the US economy because they forgot an elemental truth: our economic heartbeat requires steady consumption by working Americans not the random largesse of the rich. Now, confronted with the consequences of their bad judgment, the GOP wants us to focus on the massive deficit and not consider what caused the crisis.
What David Brooks and other conservative columnists are afraid to admit is that the Reagan Administration initiated a thirty-year-long war on Democracy. During the Bush administration, Plutocrats won and built McMansions. But the victory of corporate CEOs and Wall Street money grabbers left the American economy in shambles. Now Republicans want average Americans to pay to fix it.
Many Americans don't understand this outrage because conservatives have seized the economic message initiative and wrapped it in the sacred mantle of bipartisanship. Well-meaning folks like NoLabels.org want Americans to come together and shovel money into the deficit pit. Most of the political air space is dominated by faux deficit hysteria.
David Brooks and other deficit hawks ignore a commonsense rule: in order to solve a problem, you have to first understand what it is. The deficit isn't the problem; it's a symptom. The problem is that America doesn't have enough decent jobs. If more Americans had good-paying jobs then our economy would be healthy and we'd be generating enough tax revenue to erase the deficit. (The same conclusion was reached by members of the "Citizens' Commission on Jobs, Deficits and America's Economic Future".)
So what should we do? Conduct radical surgery on the economy.
First, there has to be a massive redistribution of income by increasing taxes on both the wealthy and corporations -" particularly financial institutions that profited from 2008's financial meltdown. The guys who built the McMansions should pay for the repairs. That's why it's ludicrous to continue Bush-era tax cuts for the rich.
Second, there has to be another stimulus package that not only supports America's teachers and public safety workers but also strengthens the US infrastructure, in general. For a period, Government needs to become the employer of last resort in order to retrain workers and pump money into the economy, motivate working Americans to consume again. This is why Congress has to extend unemployment benefits for those whose eligibility has lapsed.
Third, the Federal government has to be involved in economic policy. The last thirty years has demonstrated that the free market follows the path of least resistance and dictates economic policy solely based on greed. Creating wealth for a handful of CEOs isn't consistent with the national interest. What are needed now are economic policies that produce decent jobs for average Americans.
Finally, and most important, Liberals must seize the message initiative. Conservative columnists like David Brooks have negatively impacted millions of Americans. Liberals have to take back the political narrative and tell the truth about what's wrong with the economy and what political action is needed.
It's time to talk common sense to Americans. The conservative politicians and rich folks who broke the US economy should pay to fix it.
Recently New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote an emotional column "National Greatness Agenda" imploring Americans to come together and fight for our country. Why? The deficit: because the US is "careening toward bankruptcy." Not surprisingly, conservative Brooks has swallowed the conservative orthodoxy hook, line, and sinker. He thinks our big problem is the US deficit. But it's not.
The real problem is that our economy was broken by thirty years of failed Republican economics. During the Reagan presidency conservative ideology began to dominate American political discourse: helping the rich get richer would inevitably help everyone else, "a rising tide lifts all boats;" markets were inherently self correcting and therefore there was no need for government regulation; and the US did not need an economic strategy because that was a natural consequence of the free market. As a consequence, America's working families were abandoned in favor of the rich. Good jobs were shipped overseas. Inequality rose as middle class income and wealth declined. Corporate power increased while unions were undermined. CEO salaries soared but fewer families earned living wages. Then the Bush Administration cut taxes while initiating an unnecessary war in Iraq. It was thirty years of economic ineptitude.
Republicans fractured the US economy because they forgot an elemental truth: our economic heartbeat requires steady consumption by working Americans not the random largesse of the rich. Now, confronted with the consequences of their bad judgment, the GOP wants us to focus on the massive deficit and not consider what caused the crisis.
What David Brooks and other conservative columnists are afraid to admit is that the Reagan Administration initiated a thirty-year-long war on Democracy. During the Bush administration, Plutocrats won and built McMansions. But the victory of corporate CEOs and Wall Street money grabbers left the American economy in shambles. Now Republicans want average Americans to pay to fix it.
Many Americans don't understand this outrage because conservatives have seized the economic message initiative and wrapped it in the sacred mantle of bipartisanship. Well-meaning folks like NoLabels.org want Americans to come together and shovel money into the deficit pit. Most of the political air space is dominated by faux deficit hysteria.
David Brooks and other deficit hawks ignore a commonsense rule: in order to solve a problem, you have to first understand what it is. The deficit isn't the problem; it's a symptom. The problem is that America doesn't have enough decent jobs. If more Americans had good-paying jobs then our economy would be healthy and we'd be generating enough tax revenue to erase the deficit. (The same conclusion was reached by members of the "Citizens' Commission on Jobs, Deficits and America's Economic Future".)
So what should we do? Conduct radical surgery on the economy.
First, there has to be a massive redistribution of income by increasing taxes on both the wealthy and corporations -" particularly financial institutions that profited from 2008's financial meltdown. The guys who built the McMansions should pay for the repairs. That's why it's ludicrous to continue Bush-era tax cuts for the rich.
Second, there has to be another stimulus package that not only supports America's teachers and public safety workers but also strengthens the US infrastructure, in general. For a period, Government needs to become the employer of last resort in order to retrain workers and pump money into the economy, motivate working Americans to consume again. This is why Congress has to extend unemployment benefits for those whose eligibility has lapsed.
Third, the Federal government has to be involved in economic policy. The last thirty years has demonstrated that the free market follows the path of least resistance and dictates economic policy solely based on greed. Creating wealth for a handful of CEOs isn't consistent with the national interest. What are needed now are economic policies that produce decent jobs for average Americans.
Finally, and most important, Liberals must seize the message initiative. Conservative columnists like David Brooks have negatively impacted millions of Americans. Liberals have to take back the political narrative and tell the truth about what's wrong with the economy and what political action is needed.
It's time to talk common sense to Americans. The conservative politicians and rich folks who broke the US economy should pay to fix it.
Unemployment Rate Rises to 9.8 Percent in November
Only 39,000 net jobs were added last month, as unemployment climbed to its highest level since April, showing how weak the 'recovery' is.
The private sector added 50,000 jobs last month. Most of the gain was in healthcare and temporary help services. Despite the Christmas shopping season, retail shed jobs in November. Government employment fell by 11,000 jobs, as municipal governments continue to struggle with budget deficits.
The manufacturing sector also lost jobs for the fourth month in a row, as failed trade policies continue to erode this cornerstone of the economy.
Almost half of people currently on unemployment have been unemployed for over six months. Combined with the people under-employed and who have given up seeking work, the total, true unemployment figure is estimated at 17 percent by the Labor Department.
The economy must add at least 140,000 jobs each month to make any real dent in unemployment figures, due to population growth and other factors.
“The overall pace of job growth is disappointing,” said John Silvia, an chief economist at Wells Fargo. Millions of Americans probably agree, as federal unemployment benefits will expire by the end of the year unless Congress acts. Senate Republicans have vowed to block all legislation until the Bush tax cuts and budget deficit are addressed, leaving no legislation in place to further extend unemployment benefits.
Despite a report from the Department of Labor that unemployment benefits are the most efficient form of economic stimulus the government can provide, many senators are far more concerned about tax cuts. This is ridiculous and petty partisan politics that is destroying America. While the budget is an important issue, such childish behavior is preventing Congress from acting on issues such as this.
To prevent long-term, structural unemployment, we must re-examine our foreign trade polices, and make an active effort to reduce our trade deficit. Through such measures, unemployment can be brought down, and the American economy can prosper yet again.
The private sector added 50,000 jobs last month. Most of the gain was in healthcare and temporary help services. Despite the Christmas shopping season, retail shed jobs in November. Government employment fell by 11,000 jobs, as municipal governments continue to struggle with budget deficits.
The manufacturing sector also lost jobs for the fourth month in a row, as failed trade policies continue to erode this cornerstone of the economy.
Almost half of people currently on unemployment have been unemployed for over six months. Combined with the people under-employed and who have given up seeking work, the total, true unemployment figure is estimated at 17 percent by the Labor Department.
The economy must add at least 140,000 jobs each month to make any real dent in unemployment figures, due to population growth and other factors.
“The overall pace of job growth is disappointing,” said John Silvia, an chief economist at Wells Fargo. Millions of Americans probably agree, as federal unemployment benefits will expire by the end of the year unless Congress acts. Senate Republicans have vowed to block all legislation until the Bush tax cuts and budget deficit are addressed, leaving no legislation in place to further extend unemployment benefits.
Despite a report from the Department of Labor that unemployment benefits are the most efficient form of economic stimulus the government can provide, many senators are far more concerned about tax cuts. This is ridiculous and petty partisan politics that is destroying America. While the budget is an important issue, such childish behavior is preventing Congress from acting on issues such as this.
To prevent long-term, structural unemployment, we must re-examine our foreign trade polices, and make an active effort to reduce our trade deficit. Through such measures, unemployment can be brought down, and the American economy can prosper yet again.
Consumerist Christmas - Can it survive?
It isn’t even important whether you or your family have a Merry or a Happy Christmas – the only important thing is whether corporations have a profitable Christmas. This is the true meaning of Christmas.
The mighty American marketing machine known as Christmas put on a brave front this weekend. Stores across the country opened up earlier than ever – some as early as 2:00 a.m. on Friday morning – and shoppers responded. Some consumers gave up their Thanksgiving Thursday altogether by using that day to stake their position on a sidewalk outside Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Target, or Sears. The rewards were high – those who were first in the store on Black Friday had the best shot at buying at deep, deep discounts. Flat screen HDTVs, which were otherwise priced at $1,000 minimum, were on sale for $300, but only on Black Friday and only to the earliest few into the store. (Image)
It’s a sign of the desperation of American retailers that they even have to market something called “Black Friday.” This used to be an obscure term used by retailers to identify the day after Thanksgiving, when shoppers came to the malls in droves to begin their Christmas shopping, thus guaranteeing retailers would be “in the black” (profitable) for the rest of the year. Most Americans don’t even know this, and are right to think there is something sinister about Black Friday, coming so soon as it does after another great American marketing campaign – Halloween. For every person shopping on Black Friday, two or three consumers stayed home, intimidated by the crowds, or disgusted with the commercial boosterism that has now overwhelmed Christmas. How, they wonder, did things get so out of hand?
If You Think It Didn’t Used to Be this Way
There has been a qualitative and quantitative deterioration in the Christmas shopping experience, but the shopping frenzy is not altogether new. Even in the midst of the Depression of the 1930s, families did their best to provide at least one toy for their children from Santa Claus. By the 1940’s, many of the top radio programs devoted one episode in December to a Christmas theme, and often this revolved around shopping for just the right gift at a department store. Department stores were places of glamour and sophistication, and families would often make a trip “downtown” to see the department store window displays as part of their own Christmas tradition. If you had children you couldn’t leave the store without visiting Santa Claus in his North Pole pavilion, located unsurprisingly right next to the toy section of the store.
Macy’s Department Store played a significant historical role in developing Christmas as a commercial enterprise. In 1927 the store organized its first Thanksgiving Day parade, from Harlem in New York City down to Macy’s store on Herald Square. The parade featured balloons of popular cartoon characters, marching bands, and at the end of it all Santa Claus, who then sat in court at Macy’s 34th street store all the way until Christmas, happy to listen to childrens’ requests for toys. In 1933 Mickey Mouse joined the parade as a balloon; Disney was always on the look-out for commercially lucrative tie-ins and advertising.
These traditions were solidified by the end of World War II, when parents began celebrating Christmas with a relief binge of gift buying. The 1947 movie Miracle on 34th Street told the story of a man hired to be the store Santa Claus at R.H. Macy’s flagship store in Herald Square. The man went by the name of Kris Kringle and honestly believed he was Santa Claus, and of course the movie convinces you he is Santa Claus because he works real miracles, including managing to have R.H. Macy shake hands with his arch-rival at Gimbels.
Christmas binge buying became institutionalized during the 1950s, when the Baby Boomers were growing up in families with four or more children, each of which was entitled to several toys (not counting what they got from their grandparents). Older children were encouraged to buy gifts for their siblings or their parents, and all of this gift buying behavior was reinforced with commercials that aired on the new, popular medium of television. Retailers and manufacturers discovered that the right type of advertising could generate enormous sales, especially if you could create enough consumer interest that the item became a Christmas “must have” blockbuster.
All along, people were complaining that Christmas was being too commercialized, and that the religious meaning of Christmas was overshadowed by all this pressure to buy material goods. Interestingly, you don’t hear these complaints anymore. You do hear complaints about how the commercialism has become excessive and vulgarized, but you have to go to church on Christmas Day to hear anyone talk about the baby Jesus, because he has been completely marginalized in American culture, even on a holiday that carries his name.
Keeping Score on Sales
Not only is Christmas no longer a religious holiday, the whole purpose of Christmas has become the ritual of shopping for gifts. So important has gift-buying become, that the media are fascinated by scorecards and metrics that help Americans understand how well they are doing at their shopping obligations. Of course, there is the ubiquitous clock counting down the days left for shopping. This used to be measured as the days left until Christmas; now it is more purposefully described as “the number of shopping days left until Christmas.”
Retailers have managed to make Black Friday into a secular holiday, so that everyone can wait breathlessly to find out how many millions of people come out to the stores, and what the hot gifts are so far. Lost in all of this is the fact that Black Friday is not technically a holiday, and people are expected to go to work. Few do. Most people take the day after Thanksgiving off, and businesses (except for retailers) are manned by skeleton crews. Even schools now shut down on Black Friday.
Television and newspaper reporters run obligatory stories on the people who erect tents outside of stores, sleeping on the sidewalk for two or more nights so they can be first in line for the Black Friday sales. There are always live reports from television on the early openings, as hundreds of shoppers crowd into the store doorways. If, as has happened, someone gets trampled to death in the onrush, everyone gets to tsk tsk at the foolishness of these crowds, but it doesn’t stop people for participating next year.
It is also very typical for these reporters to remind us of the importance of Christmas. Christmas sales often account for 50% of a retailer’s annual business. Consumers generate nearly three-quarters of all economic growth in the US, so you can obviously see how important Christmas is to the economy overall. Millions of part time jobs are created in November and December, and not just in the retail industry (think how FedEx and UPS benefit from package shipments).
Then the report cards come in for the Black Friday weekend. First it is ShopperTrak to tell us how many millions of shoppers showed up, and what they bought. Then Visa and Mastercard tell us the dollar volume of purchases. Early the next week, retailers begin reporting their sales results, including the important “same-store” sales that strip out sales from stores opened in the past year, so we can get a consistent look at sales growth.
Will it be a good Christmas or a bad Christmas? Meaning, of course, will shoppers open their wallets to provide retailers a profitable December. These have become all-important questions for reporters, and not just those working on Wall Street. It is as if American families cannot have an enjoyable Christmas if retail sales are disappointing. Just as the birth of Jesus has been all but forgotten during Christmas, the mystery of Santa Claus has been relegated to a minor feature of the holiday. It isn’t even important whether you or your family have a Merry or a Happy Christmas – the only important thing is whether corporations have a profitable Christmas. This is the true meaning of Christmas.
Desperation For Profits Pervades Christmas
The ownership of Christmas by corporations – indeed the perversion of Christmas by corporations – seems to be running its course. We may be witnessing the implosion of Christmas as a marketing, retailing, and consumption phenomenon. What are the tell-tale signs?
1) Retailers have not only been forced to celebrate the day after Thanksgiving as a faux holiday, they have been progressively undermining Black Friday by moving their Christmas sales up several weeks earlier. No sooner are shoppers finished with Halloween in October, then the Christmas displays go up in stores and Christmas carols burst forth from the loudspeakers. Retailers are marketing pre-Black Friday sales which take place two weeks in advance, featuring fantastic discounts.
2) Because of this progressive blurring as to the beginning of the Christmas shopping season – much of which confuses most shoppers and dismays quite a few of them – the consumer has become trained to expect Christmas shopping to focus on sales and discounts. Interviews done with die-hard shoppers living in tents in front of stores before Black Friday indicate that people are going through this sacrifice in order to qualify for the fantastic sales, which are products given away below cost in the expectation the consumer will buy other full-priced products in the stores. Consumers are not falling for the bait and switch, and consequently two patterns emerge here. Consumers are caught up in a deflationary cycle waiting only for items on deep discount, and retailers are caught up in profit margin compression as they slash prices in order to keep their sales up.
3) For almost fifteen years now, Christmas in America has consisted of a diet of consumer items manufactured in China, with a little variety provided by Taiwanese or Indonesian goods. The entire China-America symbiotic relationship, which is that of manufacturer to consumer, is based on an American consumer who can buy goods only on credit. Wage growth in America has been stagnant for most of these fifteen years, in part because jobs have been shipped off to China where labor is much cheaper. Now that credit is no longer freely available to the American consumer, or even desired by the consumer, the China-America dynamic is weakening and may unravel altogether, taking away an important prop of Christmas as a consumer extravaganza.
4) Through the media obsession over Christmas sales, the American consumer is now focused on these data to guide them in their mood regarding the economy and the future. As the sales and profit metrics have steadily deteriorated year after year, the American mood has turned increasingly sour, reinforcing this cycle of poor economic performance and gloomy expectations.
5) Although we can never underestimate the bad taste inherent in much corporate advertising, it is possible that Christmas as presented by American media is dredging a trough of vulgarity that cannot get too much deeper. There is no religious meaning left to Christmas, and there is little childhood magic to be found in endless commercials and reruns of Charlie Brown cartoons or The Grinch That Stole Christmas. The attempt by retailers to elongate Christmas into a three-month autumnal spending splurge is failing, and this has only served to erode the Christmas “franchise.”
6) Christmas sales are increasingly being done on-line. This appeals to people anxious to avoid the crowds at stores, but it disadvantages retailers because on-line shoppers are far less prone to the impulse purchases that are an important component of Christmas sales. On-line shopping reduces the magic of Christmas even more, or at least the magic as presented by retailers. People who buy most of their gifts on-line are more likely to focus their buying on the people and the items they really intend to include in their Christmas shopping, and they also have more time to make Christmas meaningful for themselves and their family.
Replacing Consumerist Christmas
If consumerist Christmas is imploding, what replaces it? Does anything need to? This year there has been a movement afoot on the internet to sign people up who refuse to buy anything on Black Friday, in protest to the consumer juggernaut that retailers and the media have created. This movement has some appeal to the 80% - 85% of American consumers who are facing tight economic times; the rest of America can still afford to shop at Tiffany’s, and the luxury side of Christmas will always do well as long as Ben Bernanke can keep propping up the stock market. Everybody else, however, may make something useful and meaningful out of necessity, by turning Christmas into a family event that does not depend on a glut of gifts to be fun or successful. In many families there is already an agreement that at big holiday parties, featuring grandparents, aunts, uncles, and so forth, the adults do not give each other gifts, or if they do, the gifts are limited to nominal amounts of $5 or less. This may be why the dollar stores continue to do well at Christmas.
It is going to take a lot more of this attitude to overthrow the massive presence of corporate self-interest that has overtaken and distorted Christmas, but the foundations are already there in consumer behavior. Consumers are ignoring the advertising blandishments in ways that would have been unthinkable fifteen years ago. They are seeking out bargains, and when they are not in the stores, they are seeking out something intangible, something that will make Christmas meaningful again without the gifts, the debt, the stress, the impossible expectations, the competition for material goods, and the sheer waste of it all.
What they are seeking is unclear. It may be Christ, or it may be the spirit and teaching of Christ as exemplified in drives to feed and shelter the homeless. It may be a connection to family that is hard enough to achieve in a non-holiday season, much less during the tribulations of Christmas. Whatever it is, it is not Jesus as Shopaholic, and it is increasingly unlike the Christmas that has been packaged for us by corporations that have owned the holiday for so long they have stripped it completely of its meaning and mystery.
First published at The Agonist
It isn’t even important whether you or your family have a Merry or a Happy Christmas – the only important thing is whether corporations have a profitable Christmas. This is the true meaning of Christmas.
The mighty American marketing machine known as Christmas put on a brave front this weekend. Stores across the country opened up earlier than ever – some as early as 2:00 a.m. on Friday morning – and shoppers responded. Some consumers gave up their Thanksgiving Thursday altogether by using that day to stake their position on a sidewalk outside Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Target, or Sears. The rewards were high – those who were first in the store on Black Friday had the best shot at buying at deep, deep discounts. Flat screen HDTVs, which were otherwise priced at $1,000 minimum, were on sale for $300, but only on Black Friday and only to the earliest few into the store. (Image)
It’s a sign of the desperation of American retailers that they even have to market something called “Black Friday.” This used to be an obscure term used by retailers to identify the day after Thanksgiving, when shoppers came to the malls in droves to begin their Christmas shopping, thus guaranteeing retailers would be “in the black” (profitable) for the rest of the year. Most Americans don’t even know this, and are right to think there is something sinister about Black Friday, coming so soon as it does after another great American marketing campaign – Halloween. For every person shopping on Black Friday, two or three consumers stayed home, intimidated by the crowds, or disgusted with the commercial boosterism that has now overwhelmed Christmas. How, they wonder, did things get so out of hand?
If You Think It Didn’t Used to Be this Way
There has been a qualitative and quantitative deterioration in the Christmas shopping experience, but the shopping frenzy is not altogether new. Even in the midst of the Depression of the 1930s, families did their best to provide at least one toy for their children from Santa Claus. By the 1940’s, many of the top radio programs devoted one episode in December to a Christmas theme, and often this revolved around shopping for just the right gift at a department store. Department stores were places of glamour and sophistication, and families would often make a trip “downtown” to see the department store window displays as part of their own Christmas tradition. If you had children you couldn’t leave the store without visiting Santa Claus in his North Pole pavilion, located unsurprisingly right next to the toy section of the store.
Macy’s Department Store played a significant historical role in developing Christmas as a commercial enterprise. In 1927 the store organized its first Thanksgiving Day parade, from Harlem in New York City down to Macy’s store on Herald Square. The parade featured balloons of popular cartoon characters, marching bands, and at the end of it all Santa Claus, who then sat in court at Macy’s 34th street store all the way until Christmas, happy to listen to childrens’ requests for toys. In 1933 Mickey Mouse joined the parade as a balloon; Disney was always on the look-out for commercially lucrative tie-ins and advertising.
These traditions were solidified by the end of World War II, when parents began celebrating Christmas with a relief binge of gift buying. The 1947 movie Miracle on 34th Street told the story of a man hired to be the store Santa Claus at R.H. Macy’s flagship store in Herald Square. The man went by the name of Kris Kringle and honestly believed he was Santa Claus, and of course the movie convinces you he is Santa Claus because he works real miracles, including managing to have R.H. Macy shake hands with his arch-rival at Gimbels.
Christmas binge buying became institutionalized during the 1950s, when the Baby Boomers were growing up in families with four or more children, each of which was entitled to several toys (not counting what they got from their grandparents). Older children were encouraged to buy gifts for their siblings or their parents, and all of this gift buying behavior was reinforced with commercials that aired on the new, popular medium of television. Retailers and manufacturers discovered that the right type of advertising could generate enormous sales, especially if you could create enough consumer interest that the item became a Christmas “must have” blockbuster.
All along, people were complaining that Christmas was being too commercialized, and that the religious meaning of Christmas was overshadowed by all this pressure to buy material goods. Interestingly, you don’t hear these complaints anymore. You do hear complaints about how the commercialism has become excessive and vulgarized, but you have to go to church on Christmas Day to hear anyone talk about the baby Jesus, because he has been completely marginalized in American culture, even on a holiday that carries his name.
Keeping Score on Sales
Not only is Christmas no longer a religious holiday, the whole purpose of Christmas has become the ritual of shopping for gifts. So important has gift-buying become, that the media are fascinated by scorecards and metrics that help Americans understand how well they are doing at their shopping obligations. Of course, there is the ubiquitous clock counting down the days left for shopping. This used to be measured as the days left until Christmas; now it is more purposefully described as “the number of shopping days left until Christmas.”
Retailers have managed to make Black Friday into a secular holiday, so that everyone can wait breathlessly to find out how many millions of people come out to the stores, and what the hot gifts are so far. Lost in all of this is the fact that Black Friday is not technically a holiday, and people are expected to go to work. Few do. Most people take the day after Thanksgiving off, and businesses (except for retailers) are manned by skeleton crews. Even schools now shut down on Black Friday.
Television and newspaper reporters run obligatory stories on the people who erect tents outside of stores, sleeping on the sidewalk for two or more nights so they can be first in line for the Black Friday sales. There are always live reports from television on the early openings, as hundreds of shoppers crowd into the store doorways. If, as has happened, someone gets trampled to death in the onrush, everyone gets to tsk tsk at the foolishness of these crowds, but it doesn’t stop people for participating next year.
It is also very typical for these reporters to remind us of the importance of Christmas. Christmas sales often account for 50% of a retailer’s annual business. Consumers generate nearly three-quarters of all economic growth in the US, so you can obviously see how important Christmas is to the economy overall. Millions of part time jobs are created in November and December, and not just in the retail industry (think how FedEx and UPS benefit from package shipments).
Then the report cards come in for the Black Friday weekend. First it is ShopperTrak to tell us how many millions of shoppers showed up, and what they bought. Then Visa and Mastercard tell us the dollar volume of purchases. Early the next week, retailers begin reporting their sales results, including the important “same-store” sales that strip out sales from stores opened in the past year, so we can get a consistent look at sales growth.
Will it be a good Christmas or a bad Christmas? Meaning, of course, will shoppers open their wallets to provide retailers a profitable December. These have become all-important questions for reporters, and not just those working on Wall Street. It is as if American families cannot have an enjoyable Christmas if retail sales are disappointing. Just as the birth of Jesus has been all but forgotten during Christmas, the mystery of Santa Claus has been relegated to a minor feature of the holiday. It isn’t even important whether you or your family have a Merry or a Happy Christmas – the only important thing is whether corporations have a profitable Christmas. This is the true meaning of Christmas.
Desperation For Profits Pervades Christmas
The ownership of Christmas by corporations – indeed the perversion of Christmas by corporations – seems to be running its course. We may be witnessing the implosion of Christmas as a marketing, retailing, and consumption phenomenon. What are the tell-tale signs?
1) Retailers have not only been forced to celebrate the day after Thanksgiving as a faux holiday, they have been progressively undermining Black Friday by moving their Christmas sales up several weeks earlier. No sooner are shoppers finished with Halloween in October, then the Christmas displays go up in stores and Christmas carols burst forth from the loudspeakers. Retailers are marketing pre-Black Friday sales which take place two weeks in advance, featuring fantastic discounts.
2) Because of this progressive blurring as to the beginning of the Christmas shopping season – much of which confuses most shoppers and dismays quite a few of them – the consumer has become trained to expect Christmas shopping to focus on sales and discounts. Interviews done with die-hard shoppers living in tents in front of stores before Black Friday indicate that people are going through this sacrifice in order to qualify for the fantastic sales, which are products given away below cost in the expectation the consumer will buy other full-priced products in the stores. Consumers are not falling for the bait and switch, and consequently two patterns emerge here. Consumers are caught up in a deflationary cycle waiting only for items on deep discount, and retailers are caught up in profit margin compression as they slash prices in order to keep their sales up.
3) For almost fifteen years now, Christmas in America has consisted of a diet of consumer items manufactured in China, with a little variety provided by Taiwanese or Indonesian goods. The entire China-America symbiotic relationship, which is that of manufacturer to consumer, is based on an American consumer who can buy goods only on credit. Wage growth in America has been stagnant for most of these fifteen years, in part because jobs have been shipped off to China where labor is much cheaper. Now that credit is no longer freely available to the American consumer, or even desired by the consumer, the China-America dynamic is weakening and may unravel altogether, taking away an important prop of Christmas as a consumer extravaganza.
4) Through the media obsession over Christmas sales, the American consumer is now focused on these data to guide them in their mood regarding the economy and the future. As the sales and profit metrics have steadily deteriorated year after year, the American mood has turned increasingly sour, reinforcing this cycle of poor economic performance and gloomy expectations.
5) Although we can never underestimate the bad taste inherent in much corporate advertising, it is possible that Christmas as presented by American media is dredging a trough of vulgarity that cannot get too much deeper. There is no religious meaning left to Christmas, and there is little childhood magic to be found in endless commercials and reruns of Charlie Brown cartoons or The Grinch That Stole Christmas. The attempt by retailers to elongate Christmas into a three-month autumnal spending splurge is failing, and this has only served to erode the Christmas “franchise.”
6) Christmas sales are increasingly being done on-line. This appeals to people anxious to avoid the crowds at stores, but it disadvantages retailers because on-line shoppers are far less prone to the impulse purchases that are an important component of Christmas sales. On-line shopping reduces the magic of Christmas even more, or at least the magic as presented by retailers. People who buy most of their gifts on-line are more likely to focus their buying on the people and the items they really intend to include in their Christmas shopping, and they also have more time to make Christmas meaningful for themselves and their family.
Replacing Consumerist Christmas
If consumerist Christmas is imploding, what replaces it? Does anything need to? This year there has been a movement afoot on the internet to sign people up who refuse to buy anything on Black Friday, in protest to the consumer juggernaut that retailers and the media have created. This movement has some appeal to the 80% - 85% of American consumers who are facing tight economic times; the rest of America can still afford to shop at Tiffany’s, and the luxury side of Christmas will always do well as long as Ben Bernanke can keep propping up the stock market. Everybody else, however, may make something useful and meaningful out of necessity, by turning Christmas into a family event that does not depend on a glut of gifts to be fun or successful. In many families there is already an agreement that at big holiday parties, featuring grandparents, aunts, uncles, and so forth, the adults do not give each other gifts, or if they do, the gifts are limited to nominal amounts of $5 or less. This may be why the dollar stores continue to do well at Christmas.
It is going to take a lot more of this attitude to overthrow the massive presence of corporate self-interest that has overtaken and distorted Christmas, but the foundations are already there in consumer behavior. Consumers are ignoring the advertising blandishments in ways that would have been unthinkable fifteen years ago. They are seeking out bargains, and when they are not in the stores, they are seeking out something intangible, something that will make Christmas meaningful again without the gifts, the debt, the stress, the impossible expectations, the competition for material goods, and the sheer waste of it all.
What they are seeking is unclear. It may be Christ, or it may be the spirit and teaching of Christ as exemplified in drives to feed and shelter the homeless. It may be a connection to family that is hard enough to achieve in a non-holiday season, much less during the tribulations of Christmas. Whatever it is, it is not Jesus as Shopaholic, and it is increasingly unlike the Christmas that has been packaged for us by corporations that have owned the holiday for so long they have stripped it completely of its meaning and mystery.
The mighty American marketing machine known as Christmas put on a brave front this weekend. Stores across the country opened up earlier than ever – some as early as 2:00 a.m. on Friday morning – and shoppers responded. Some consumers gave up their Thanksgiving Thursday altogether by using that day to stake their position on a sidewalk outside Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Target, or Sears. The rewards were high – those who were first in the store on Black Friday had the best shot at buying at deep, deep discounts. Flat screen HDTVs, which were otherwise priced at $1,000 minimum, were on sale for $300, but only on Black Friday and only to the earliest few into the store. (Image)
It’s a sign of the desperation of American retailers that they even have to market something called “Black Friday.” This used to be an obscure term used by retailers to identify the day after Thanksgiving, when shoppers came to the malls in droves to begin their Christmas shopping, thus guaranteeing retailers would be “in the black” (profitable) for the rest of the year. Most Americans don’t even know this, and are right to think there is something sinister about Black Friday, coming so soon as it does after another great American marketing campaign – Halloween. For every person shopping on Black Friday, two or three consumers stayed home, intimidated by the crowds, or disgusted with the commercial boosterism that has now overwhelmed Christmas. How, they wonder, did things get so out of hand?
If You Think It Didn’t Used to Be this Way
There has been a qualitative and quantitative deterioration in the Christmas shopping experience, but the shopping frenzy is not altogether new. Even in the midst of the Depression of the 1930s, families did their best to provide at least one toy for their children from Santa Claus. By the 1940’s, many of the top radio programs devoted one episode in December to a Christmas theme, and often this revolved around shopping for just the right gift at a department store. Department stores were places of glamour and sophistication, and families would often make a trip “downtown” to see the department store window displays as part of their own Christmas tradition. If you had children you couldn’t leave the store without visiting Santa Claus in his North Pole pavilion, located unsurprisingly right next to the toy section of the store.
Macy’s Department Store played a significant historical role in developing Christmas as a commercial enterprise. In 1927 the store organized its first Thanksgiving Day parade, from Harlem in New York City down to Macy’s store on Herald Square. The parade featured balloons of popular cartoon characters, marching bands, and at the end of it all Santa Claus, who then sat in court at Macy’s 34th street store all the way until Christmas, happy to listen to childrens’ requests for toys. In 1933 Mickey Mouse joined the parade as a balloon; Disney was always on the look-out for commercially lucrative tie-ins and advertising.
These traditions were solidified by the end of World War II, when parents began celebrating Christmas with a relief binge of gift buying. The 1947 movie Miracle on 34th Street told the story of a man hired to be the store Santa Claus at R.H. Macy’s flagship store in Herald Square. The man went by the name of Kris Kringle and honestly believed he was Santa Claus, and of course the movie convinces you he is Santa Claus because he works real miracles, including managing to have R.H. Macy shake hands with his arch-rival at Gimbels.
Christmas binge buying became institutionalized during the 1950s, when the Baby Boomers were growing up in families with four or more children, each of which was entitled to several toys (not counting what they got from their grandparents). Older children were encouraged to buy gifts for their siblings or their parents, and all of this gift buying behavior was reinforced with commercials that aired on the new, popular medium of television. Retailers and manufacturers discovered that the right type of advertising could generate enormous sales, especially if you could create enough consumer interest that the item became a Christmas “must have” blockbuster.
All along, people were complaining that Christmas was being too commercialized, and that the religious meaning of Christmas was overshadowed by all this pressure to buy material goods. Interestingly, you don’t hear these complaints anymore. You do hear complaints about how the commercialism has become excessive and vulgarized, but you have to go to church on Christmas Day to hear anyone talk about the baby Jesus, because he has been completely marginalized in American culture, even on a holiday that carries his name.
Keeping Score on Sales
Not only is Christmas no longer a religious holiday, the whole purpose of Christmas has become the ritual of shopping for gifts. So important has gift-buying become, that the media are fascinated by scorecards and metrics that help Americans understand how well they are doing at their shopping obligations. Of course, there is the ubiquitous clock counting down the days left for shopping. This used to be measured as the days left until Christmas; now it is more purposefully described as “the number of shopping days left until Christmas.”
Retailers have managed to make Black Friday into a secular holiday, so that everyone can wait breathlessly to find out how many millions of people come out to the stores, and what the hot gifts are so far. Lost in all of this is the fact that Black Friday is not technically a holiday, and people are expected to go to work. Few do. Most people take the day after Thanksgiving off, and businesses (except for retailers) are manned by skeleton crews. Even schools now shut down on Black Friday.
Television and newspaper reporters run obligatory stories on the people who erect tents outside of stores, sleeping on the sidewalk for two or more nights so they can be first in line for the Black Friday sales. There are always live reports from television on the early openings, as hundreds of shoppers crowd into the store doorways. If, as has happened, someone gets trampled to death in the onrush, everyone gets to tsk tsk at the foolishness of these crowds, but it doesn’t stop people for participating next year.
It is also very typical for these reporters to remind us of the importance of Christmas. Christmas sales often account for 50% of a retailer’s annual business. Consumers generate nearly three-quarters of all economic growth in the US, so you can obviously see how important Christmas is to the economy overall. Millions of part time jobs are created in November and December, and not just in the retail industry (think how FedEx and UPS benefit from package shipments).
Then the report cards come in for the Black Friday weekend. First it is ShopperTrak to tell us how many millions of shoppers showed up, and what they bought. Then Visa and Mastercard tell us the dollar volume of purchases. Early the next week, retailers begin reporting their sales results, including the important “same-store” sales that strip out sales from stores opened in the past year, so we can get a consistent look at sales growth.
Will it be a good Christmas or a bad Christmas? Meaning, of course, will shoppers open their wallets to provide retailers a profitable December. These have become all-important questions for reporters, and not just those working on Wall Street. It is as if American families cannot have an enjoyable Christmas if retail sales are disappointing. Just as the birth of Jesus has been all but forgotten during Christmas, the mystery of Santa Claus has been relegated to a minor feature of the holiday. It isn’t even important whether you or your family have a Merry or a Happy Christmas – the only important thing is whether corporations have a profitable Christmas. This is the true meaning of Christmas.
Desperation For Profits Pervades Christmas
The ownership of Christmas by corporations – indeed the perversion of Christmas by corporations – seems to be running its course. We may be witnessing the implosion of Christmas as a marketing, retailing, and consumption phenomenon. What are the tell-tale signs?
1) Retailers have not only been forced to celebrate the day after Thanksgiving as a faux holiday, they have been progressively undermining Black Friday by moving their Christmas sales up several weeks earlier. No sooner are shoppers finished with Halloween in October, then the Christmas displays go up in stores and Christmas carols burst forth from the loudspeakers. Retailers are marketing pre-Black Friday sales which take place two weeks in advance, featuring fantastic discounts.
2) Because of this progressive blurring as to the beginning of the Christmas shopping season – much of which confuses most shoppers and dismays quite a few of them – the consumer has become trained to expect Christmas shopping to focus on sales and discounts. Interviews done with die-hard shoppers living in tents in front of stores before Black Friday indicate that people are going through this sacrifice in order to qualify for the fantastic sales, which are products given away below cost in the expectation the consumer will buy other full-priced products in the stores. Consumers are not falling for the bait and switch, and consequently two patterns emerge here. Consumers are caught up in a deflationary cycle waiting only for items on deep discount, and retailers are caught up in profit margin compression as they slash prices in order to keep their sales up.
3) For almost fifteen years now, Christmas in America has consisted of a diet of consumer items manufactured in China, with a little variety provided by Taiwanese or Indonesian goods. The entire China-America symbiotic relationship, which is that of manufacturer to consumer, is based on an American consumer who can buy goods only on credit. Wage growth in America has been stagnant for most of these fifteen years, in part because jobs have been shipped off to China where labor is much cheaper. Now that credit is no longer freely available to the American consumer, or even desired by the consumer, the China-America dynamic is weakening and may unravel altogether, taking away an important prop of Christmas as a consumer extravaganza.
4) Through the media obsession over Christmas sales, the American consumer is now focused on these data to guide them in their mood regarding the economy and the future. As the sales and profit metrics have steadily deteriorated year after year, the American mood has turned increasingly sour, reinforcing this cycle of poor economic performance and gloomy expectations.
5) Although we can never underestimate the bad taste inherent in much corporate advertising, it is possible that Christmas as presented by American media is dredging a trough of vulgarity that cannot get too much deeper. There is no religious meaning left to Christmas, and there is little childhood magic to be found in endless commercials and reruns of Charlie Brown cartoons or The Grinch That Stole Christmas. The attempt by retailers to elongate Christmas into a three-month autumnal spending splurge is failing, and this has only served to erode the Christmas “franchise.”
6) Christmas sales are increasingly being done on-line. This appeals to people anxious to avoid the crowds at stores, but it disadvantages retailers because on-line shoppers are far less prone to the impulse purchases that are an important component of Christmas sales. On-line shopping reduces the magic of Christmas even more, or at least the magic as presented by retailers. People who buy most of their gifts on-line are more likely to focus their buying on the people and the items they really intend to include in their Christmas shopping, and they also have more time to make Christmas meaningful for themselves and their family.
Replacing Consumerist Christmas
If consumerist Christmas is imploding, what replaces it? Does anything need to? This year there has been a movement afoot on the internet to sign people up who refuse to buy anything on Black Friday, in protest to the consumer juggernaut that retailers and the media have created. This movement has some appeal to the 80% - 85% of American consumers who are facing tight economic times; the rest of America can still afford to shop at Tiffany’s, and the luxury side of Christmas will always do well as long as Ben Bernanke can keep propping up the stock market. Everybody else, however, may make something useful and meaningful out of necessity, by turning Christmas into a family event that does not depend on a glut of gifts to be fun or successful. In many families there is already an agreement that at big holiday parties, featuring grandparents, aunts, uncles, and so forth, the adults do not give each other gifts, or if they do, the gifts are limited to nominal amounts of $5 or less. This may be why the dollar stores continue to do well at Christmas.
It is going to take a lot more of this attitude to overthrow the massive presence of corporate self-interest that has overtaken and distorted Christmas, but the foundations are already there in consumer behavior. Consumers are ignoring the advertising blandishments in ways that would have been unthinkable fifteen years ago. They are seeking out bargains, and when they are not in the stores, they are seeking out something intangible, something that will make Christmas meaningful again without the gifts, the debt, the stress, the impossible expectations, the competition for material goods, and the sheer waste of it all.
What they are seeking is unclear. It may be Christ, or it may be the spirit and teaching of Christ as exemplified in drives to feed and shelter the homeless. It may be a connection to family that is hard enough to achieve in a non-holiday season, much less during the tribulations of Christmas. Whatever it is, it is not Jesus as Shopaholic, and it is increasingly unlike the Christmas that has been packaged for us by corporations that have owned the holiday for so long they have stripped it completely of its meaning and mystery.
First published at The Agonist
It isn’t even important whether you or your family have a Merry or a Happy Christmas – the only important thing is whether corporations have a profitable Christmas. This is the true meaning of Christmas.
The mighty American marketing machine known as Christmas put on a brave front this weekend. Stores across the country opened up earlier than ever – some as early as 2:00 a.m. on Friday morning – and shoppers responded. Some consumers gave up their Thanksgiving Thursday altogether by using that day to stake their position on a sidewalk outside Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Target, or Sears. The rewards were high – those who were first in the store on Black Friday had the best shot at buying at deep, deep discounts. Flat screen HDTVs, which were otherwise priced at $1,000 minimum, were on sale for $300, but only on Black Friday and only to the earliest few into the store. (Image)
It’s a sign of the desperation of American retailers that they even have to market something called “Black Friday.” This used to be an obscure term used by retailers to identify the day after Thanksgiving, when shoppers came to the malls in droves to begin their Christmas shopping, thus guaranteeing retailers would be “in the black” (profitable) for the rest of the year. Most Americans don’t even know this, and are right to think there is something sinister about Black Friday, coming so soon as it does after another great American marketing campaign – Halloween. For every person shopping on Black Friday, two or three consumers stayed home, intimidated by the crowds, or disgusted with the commercial boosterism that has now overwhelmed Christmas. How, they wonder, did things get so out of hand?
If You Think It Didn’t Used to Be this Way
There has been a qualitative and quantitative deterioration in the Christmas shopping experience, but the shopping frenzy is not altogether new. Even in the midst of the Depression of the 1930s, families did their best to provide at least one toy for their children from Santa Claus. By the 1940’s, many of the top radio programs devoted one episode in December to a Christmas theme, and often this revolved around shopping for just the right gift at a department store. Department stores were places of glamour and sophistication, and families would often make a trip “downtown” to see the department store window displays as part of their own Christmas tradition. If you had children you couldn’t leave the store without visiting Santa Claus in his North Pole pavilion, located unsurprisingly right next to the toy section of the store.
Macy’s Department Store played a significant historical role in developing Christmas as a commercial enterprise. In 1927 the store organized its first Thanksgiving Day parade, from Harlem in New York City down to Macy’s store on Herald Square. The parade featured balloons of popular cartoon characters, marching bands, and at the end of it all Santa Claus, who then sat in court at Macy’s 34th street store all the way until Christmas, happy to listen to childrens’ requests for toys. In 1933 Mickey Mouse joined the parade as a balloon; Disney was always on the look-out for commercially lucrative tie-ins and advertising.
These traditions were solidified by the end of World War II, when parents began celebrating Christmas with a relief binge of gift buying. The 1947 movie Miracle on 34th Street told the story of a man hired to be the store Santa Claus at R.H. Macy’s flagship store in Herald Square. The man went by the name of Kris Kringle and honestly believed he was Santa Claus, and of course the movie convinces you he is Santa Claus because he works real miracles, including managing to have R.H. Macy shake hands with his arch-rival at Gimbels.
Christmas binge buying became institutionalized during the 1950s, when the Baby Boomers were growing up in families with four or more children, each of which was entitled to several toys (not counting what they got from their grandparents). Older children were encouraged to buy gifts for their siblings or their parents, and all of this gift buying behavior was reinforced with commercials that aired on the new, popular medium of television. Retailers and manufacturers discovered that the right type of advertising could generate enormous sales, especially if you could create enough consumer interest that the item became a Christmas “must have” blockbuster.
All along, people were complaining that Christmas was being too commercialized, and that the religious meaning of Christmas was overshadowed by all this pressure to buy material goods. Interestingly, you don’t hear these complaints anymore. You do hear complaints about how the commercialism has become excessive and vulgarized, but you have to go to church on Christmas Day to hear anyone talk about the baby Jesus, because he has been completely marginalized in American culture, even on a holiday that carries his name.
Keeping Score on Sales
Not only is Christmas no longer a religious holiday, the whole purpose of Christmas has become the ritual of shopping for gifts. So important has gift-buying become, that the media are fascinated by scorecards and metrics that help Americans understand how well they are doing at their shopping obligations. Of course, there is the ubiquitous clock counting down the days left for shopping. This used to be measured as the days left until Christmas; now it is more purposefully described as “the number of shopping days left until Christmas.”
Retailers have managed to make Black Friday into a secular holiday, so that everyone can wait breathlessly to find out how many millions of people come out to the stores, and what the hot gifts are so far. Lost in all of this is the fact that Black Friday is not technically a holiday, and people are expected to go to work. Few do. Most people take the day after Thanksgiving off, and businesses (except for retailers) are manned by skeleton crews. Even schools now shut down on Black Friday.
Television and newspaper reporters run obligatory stories on the people who erect tents outside of stores, sleeping on the sidewalk for two or more nights so they can be first in line for the Black Friday sales. There are always live reports from television on the early openings, as hundreds of shoppers crowd into the store doorways. If, as has happened, someone gets trampled to death in the onrush, everyone gets to tsk tsk at the foolishness of these crowds, but it doesn’t stop people for participating next year.
It is also very typical for these reporters to remind us of the importance of Christmas. Christmas sales often account for 50% of a retailer’s annual business. Consumers generate nearly three-quarters of all economic growth in the US, so you can obviously see how important Christmas is to the economy overall. Millions of part time jobs are created in November and December, and not just in the retail industry (think how FedEx and UPS benefit from package shipments).
Then the report cards come in for the Black Friday weekend. First it is ShopperTrak to tell us how many millions of shoppers showed up, and what they bought. Then Visa and Mastercard tell us the dollar volume of purchases. Early the next week, retailers begin reporting their sales results, including the important “same-store” sales that strip out sales from stores opened in the past year, so we can get a consistent look at sales growth.
Will it be a good Christmas or a bad Christmas? Meaning, of course, will shoppers open their wallets to provide retailers a profitable December. These have become all-important questions for reporters, and not just those working on Wall Street. It is as if American families cannot have an enjoyable Christmas if retail sales are disappointing. Just as the birth of Jesus has been all but forgotten during Christmas, the mystery of Santa Claus has been relegated to a minor feature of the holiday. It isn’t even important whether you or your family have a Merry or a Happy Christmas – the only important thing is whether corporations have a profitable Christmas. This is the true meaning of Christmas.
Desperation For Profits Pervades Christmas
The ownership of Christmas by corporations – indeed the perversion of Christmas by corporations – seems to be running its course. We may be witnessing the implosion of Christmas as a marketing, retailing, and consumption phenomenon. What are the tell-tale signs?
1) Retailers have not only been forced to celebrate the day after Thanksgiving as a faux holiday, they have been progressively undermining Black Friday by moving their Christmas sales up several weeks earlier. No sooner are shoppers finished with Halloween in October, then the Christmas displays go up in stores and Christmas carols burst forth from the loudspeakers. Retailers are marketing pre-Black Friday sales which take place two weeks in advance, featuring fantastic discounts.
2) Because of this progressive blurring as to the beginning of the Christmas shopping season – much of which confuses most shoppers and dismays quite a few of them – the consumer has become trained to expect Christmas shopping to focus on sales and discounts. Interviews done with die-hard shoppers living in tents in front of stores before Black Friday indicate that people are going through this sacrifice in order to qualify for the fantastic sales, which are products given away below cost in the expectation the consumer will buy other full-priced products in the stores. Consumers are not falling for the bait and switch, and consequently two patterns emerge here. Consumers are caught up in a deflationary cycle waiting only for items on deep discount, and retailers are caught up in profit margin compression as they slash prices in order to keep their sales up.
3) For almost fifteen years now, Christmas in America has consisted of a diet of consumer items manufactured in China, with a little variety provided by Taiwanese or Indonesian goods. The entire China-America symbiotic relationship, which is that of manufacturer to consumer, is based on an American consumer who can buy goods only on credit. Wage growth in America has been stagnant for most of these fifteen years, in part because jobs have been shipped off to China where labor is much cheaper. Now that credit is no longer freely available to the American consumer, or even desired by the consumer, the China-America dynamic is weakening and may unravel altogether, taking away an important prop of Christmas as a consumer extravaganza.
4) Through the media obsession over Christmas sales, the American consumer is now focused on these data to guide them in their mood regarding the economy and the future. As the sales and profit metrics have steadily deteriorated year after year, the American mood has turned increasingly sour, reinforcing this cycle of poor economic performance and gloomy expectations.
5) Although we can never underestimate the bad taste inherent in much corporate advertising, it is possible that Christmas as presented by American media is dredging a trough of vulgarity that cannot get too much deeper. There is no religious meaning left to Christmas, and there is little childhood magic to be found in endless commercials and reruns of Charlie Brown cartoons or The Grinch That Stole Christmas. The attempt by retailers to elongate Christmas into a three-month autumnal spending splurge is failing, and this has only served to erode the Christmas “franchise.”
6) Christmas sales are increasingly being done on-line. This appeals to people anxious to avoid the crowds at stores, but it disadvantages retailers because on-line shoppers are far less prone to the impulse purchases that are an important component of Christmas sales. On-line shopping reduces the magic of Christmas even more, or at least the magic as presented by retailers. People who buy most of their gifts on-line are more likely to focus their buying on the people and the items they really intend to include in their Christmas shopping, and they also have more time to make Christmas meaningful for themselves and their family.
Replacing Consumerist Christmas
If consumerist Christmas is imploding, what replaces it? Does anything need to? This year there has been a movement afoot on the internet to sign people up who refuse to buy anything on Black Friday, in protest to the consumer juggernaut that retailers and the media have created. This movement has some appeal to the 80% - 85% of American consumers who are facing tight economic times; the rest of America can still afford to shop at Tiffany’s, and the luxury side of Christmas will always do well as long as Ben Bernanke can keep propping up the stock market. Everybody else, however, may make something useful and meaningful out of necessity, by turning Christmas into a family event that does not depend on a glut of gifts to be fun or successful. In many families there is already an agreement that at big holiday parties, featuring grandparents, aunts, uncles, and so forth, the adults do not give each other gifts, or if they do, the gifts are limited to nominal amounts of $5 or less. This may be why the dollar stores continue to do well at Christmas.
It is going to take a lot more of this attitude to overthrow the massive presence of corporate self-interest that has overtaken and distorted Christmas, but the foundations are already there in consumer behavior. Consumers are ignoring the advertising blandishments in ways that would have been unthinkable fifteen years ago. They are seeking out bargains, and when they are not in the stores, they are seeking out something intangible, something that will make Christmas meaningful again without the gifts, the debt, the stress, the impossible expectations, the competition for material goods, and the sheer waste of it all.
What they are seeking is unclear. It may be Christ, or it may be the spirit and teaching of Christ as exemplified in drives to feed and shelter the homeless. It may be a connection to family that is hard enough to achieve in a non-holiday season, much less during the tribulations of Christmas. Whatever it is, it is not Jesus as Shopaholic, and it is increasingly unlike the Christmas that has been packaged for us by corporations that have owned the holiday for so long they have stripped it completely of its meaning and mystery.
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