I was perusing The Automatic Earth last night and came upon this encouraging post that we might classify under the heading ‘better late then never’
Summit hears calls for new US economic strategy
By Rob Lever – 11 hours ago
DETROIT, Michigan (AFP) — The United States needs a clear strategy to remain a competitive leader in industry and other sectors of an economy in crisis, business leaders told a national summit that opened Monday.
The three-day summit in Detroit, Michigan aims to develop a national consensus on policies for technology, energy, environment and manufacturing.
"Our goal is to develop a to-do list of actions that will revitalize and revive our economy," said Bill Ford, executive chairman of Ford Motor Co. and co-chair of the summit's opening session.
Ford said the global economic crisis "increases the urgency to begin a national dialogue on the economy."
The meeting reflects growing momentum for the United States to formalize an "industrial policy" similar to those used in Asia and elsewhere to help nurture businesses in a tough global environment. [We could ‘solve’ this problem in a heartbeat by putting an end to ‘currency manipulation’, the driving force behind the ‘cheaper there’.]
The summit also seeks to define policies on energy, environment and technology.
Although industrial policy is often equated with protectionism, Ford and other speakers said the US needs to be tougher with trading partners to maintain prosperity.
"Having no policy is a bad policy," Ford said.
"Other countries understand this and they work hard to maintain a strong industrial base," he said.
"They bend or even break the rules to maintain a competitive advantage over the us. We need to do something different." [Snip]
I abbreviated this piece in the interests of ‘fair use’, TAE may be able to get permission to re-print copyrighted material like this but, me…probably not so much.
While I’m not as careful with stuff taken from the NY Times (it’s already ‘old news’ by the time I ‘Gegnerize’ it) obscure stuff like this post you have to be careful with.
What caught my eye here is the ‘recognition’ that there is no such thing as a viable economic model that works off of imports.
For some bizarre reason, the economists that sold our (idiot) legislators on the ‘benefits of globalization’ neglected to
I was listening to an op/ed piece on the radio where the commentator was ‘defending’ globalization via the price of steel (It was an attack on the ‘buy American’ clause in the stimulus bill.)
Let’s back up a couple of steps and ask a few serious questions that never seem to occur to these ‘educated idiots’.
Where does the components to make steel come from (steel is alloyed iron.)
You mine them from the ground….for free! It doesn’t matter where you dig them up, it’s the same stuff here as it is in Russia. The ‘price difference’ is totally ‘artificial’, it is the product of currency manipulation.
Yet this clown prattled on about how ‘uncompetitive’ it would be to use ‘more expensive’ domestically produced steel than ‘cheaper’ (but imported from thousands of miles away) foreign steel.
Does this make sense to you?
Let me roll out another chestnut I haven’t used in a rather long time…’whosoever controls (the ‘value’) of your currency, controls you.’
Understand good citizen that the ‘value’ of one’s currency is highly ‘subjective’, very much like the ‘hedonics’ used to boost GDP or to ‘wish away’ inflation.
What’s the ‘fall out’ of this practice? It’s the conundrum of being able to buy Chinese Yuan 6 or 7 for a dollar but each of those Yuan has 4 times the purchasing power of the dollar!
Do you think they’ve got that ‘valuation’ correct?
Naturally, this opens up a huge ‘slippery slope’ of who gets to make these evaluations and why they aren’t tried for treason in their respective nations…
Perhaps more disturbing is the fact that these ‘valuations’ are performed almost exclusively by London…and…Wall Street. Which leaves the even more disturbing question of how our moronic government let’s these self-serving bastards get away with this shit?
(Who is protecting 'our' interests because it definitely isn't our 'bought and paid for' elected officials!)
Which brings us to another even more disturbing conundrum, should we allow the same people/agencies that let the banking community run rough-shod over the livelihood of workers around the world continue to ‘supervise’ these entities?
They haven’t done it for more than thirty years so what proof do we have that they’re up to the job now?
Short answer: none.
Just a few short steps away is yet another indisputable truth…we can’t reform the banking system without first reforming the government. It simply ain’t gonna happen.
Like Mr. Ford in the above article says, it’s time this nation had a long, hard look at itself and joins in a conversation about how we will go about repairing our nation.
Thanks for letting me inside your head,
Gegner
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