Getting Screwed, with Real Screws!

I would call our readers' attention to one of the blogs listed on our blog roll, an EXCELLENT site for those who are interested in the U.S. economy, in politics, and in issues like unemployment and deficits.  That site is the Alliance for American Manufacturing.  Read it; read it regularly. They have an excellent article on currency manipulation which is pertinent with the G20 meetings coming up soon:

"But what exactly is this currency manipulation problem?

Starting in 1994, China began to explicitly peg its currency, the yuan, to the dollar at a set, low rate. No matter if the dollar rises or falls, the Yuan remains in place with the dollar. And since the Chinese economy has been growing faster than the U.S. economy, the result is that the yuan has remained significantly undervalued. This makes China’s exports to the U.S. relatively cheaper than they should be and also makes U.S. exports to China more expensive.

The main consequence is that a flood of artificially cheap Chinese imports has driven many domestic U.S. manufacturers out of business. In fact, the U.S. trade deficit with China has risen from $30 billion in 1994 to as high as $268 billion in 2008. China's policy of currency manipulation is intentional, and has helped it become the world's leading exporter.

But along the way, it has also earned the ire of the EU, Japan, and the WTO for continuing what is essentially an illegal practice. As long as China's currency remains significantly undervalued, Beijing will continue to enjoy sizeable exporting benefits. Unfortunately, the repercussions of this are a growing distortion in world markets."

In other words, we in the U.S. are having to compete with China on a tilted playing field rather than a level, fair playing field. Our manufacturers have to compete under an unfair handicap of currency valuations. We have had growth in manufacturing, but we should have had more growth for the effort:

The U.S. had the sharpest increase in manufacturing productivity — output per hour of work — in 2009 of the 19 industrialized economies for which the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics keeps data: 7.7%

We are having to struggle with our hands tied, in effect - because of REPUBLICANS.

Currency manipulation and our trade deficit is as important to our economy as our budget deficits; in terms of recovery for our economy, more so.

Campbell Fittings, a maker of precision screws and couplings used by petrochemical, mining, and construction companies, is nothing if not efficient. A typical employee in its factory in Boyertown, Pennsylvania, supervises two machines that each stamp out a new screw every 12 seconds. Yet its Chinese competitors sell nearly identical screws in the US for at least 40 percent less—well below what Campbell pays for raw materials. It's no secret why: For years, the Chinese government has kept the yuan trading at 40 percent below its true market value, making its exports that much cheaper. "I can fight companies," says Joe McGlynn, Campbell Fittings' vice president. "I can't fight countries."

The Bush Tax Cuts, or...What the Hell is Wrong with Republicans' Math?

The Right is pushing the retention of the Bush Tax Cuts like an evangelical preacher pushes the Gospel, at an old fashioned Bible-thumping tent revival meetin'.

Except that the Bush Tax Cuts, for the wealthy, are anything but an economic gospel.  They are ruinous. While an amazing number of middle and working class seem to have missed the tax cuts they already have received under the Obama administration.

George W. Bush is trying to rewrite the history of his two administrations to make it look like he was not an enormous aching, throbbing, hemorrhaging disaster.  He was.

He WAS a walking, talking disaster, one of the all-time worst presidents in history.  The Bush policies left us with disastrous financial collapse, AND some of the worst unemployment in the history of this country.  An approximate total population of more than 300 million, we have in the vicinity of 25 to 27 million unemployed, which doesn't count the underemployed who are qualified for better jobs, but who instead find themselves among the working poor below the poverty line.  These figures represent FAILED REPUBLICAN POLICIES - FAILED TAX POLICIES, FAILED JOB CREATION POLICIES.

The ONLY people who benefit, and then only short term not long term, are a few of the wealthiest 1% to 2% of the population.  THEY have gotten richer while everyone else suffered and struggled and the economy collapsed under these policies.  THEY pay the Republicans (and occasionally a few conservative democrats too) to parrott these lies, and they pay well.  They STEAL elections by funding of these lies. (more on that in a future post)

These numbers have slowly but steadily improved under Democrats and the Obama Administration.  Too change horses in mid stream NOW is folly, it is self-defeating impatience.  The third quarter results for corporate profits are the highest since records were kept; this administration is not, by any meaningful metric, anti-business, (despite the litany of misinformation and disinformation you hear from the right - especially Faked cable News.

Georgie Porgie is making the rounds of the talking heads circuit, bragging about how his tax cuts created 1.1 million jobs.  Hello? That is NOT a good result in job production over EIGHT years in a nation the size of the USA!

What he leaves out are two important things - the good jobs, the factory and other production jobs, the IT jobs, those were being outsourced at unprecedented rates.  The piddling few jobs that were created were almost entirely low paying jobs.

But worse than that - if you look at the numbers, while Georgie Duh-b'ya may have created those  1.1 million jobs in the private sector.........he lost many millions more of those jobs in the final years of his presidency, resulting in an overall LOSS of jobs to our economy that was devastating; it was outrageously, avoidably catastophic. 

AND  'W' and the Republicans saddled us all with monumental national debt.

Want to SEE how badly those losses hit this country?  Click on this:
 http://computationallegalstudies.com/2009/05/29/visualizing-job-losses-from-2007-2009/

We Need Scott Paul, NOT Rand Paul

Many of our readers are probably wondering.....who the heck is Scott Paul?  Is he running for something in the 2010 elections?  No, although he ran for the Indiana General Assembly, way back in1992.

Scott Paul is a former intern with Republican Senator Richard Lugar, an adviser to former House Democratic Whip, Congressman Bonier; he was a staffer for two other Democratic congressmen.  He is a former labor lobbyist, and is more recently (2007) the founder and executive director of the Alliance for American Manufacturing.  He is a widely published author, and has provided his expertise on the manufacturing sector of our economy in numerous media interviews, and has testified regarding it before Congressional committees.  I believe it would be accurate for me to characterize Scott Paul as an advocate for American Manufacturing and for American jobs.