Posted on 06/19/2006 7:37:30 AM PDT by hedgetrimmer
Airlines are not the most profitable businesses out there. If they can find some sucker to buy them, fantastic. If you don't like it, maybe you should buy one yourself.
Thanks for that. I guess you didn't have a point.
I suppose that makes two of us.
No one steps in to purchase failing businesses without a purpose and there was a definite purpose here -- one is to bypass the regulation in place since 911 that we have to have the passenger manifest before a foreign airline can land in the USA... this allows them to go around that, and doesn't help our security situation.
He doesn't like citizens to control their own sovereignty
I heard the interview, too.... a lot of people should be listening to these reports that, BTW, we are not hearing on FOX.
I should probably add that having a national airline is a matter of prestige, as well as a matter of national security. But the notion that foreign airlines are not subject to our security regulations now, or at some hypothetical time in the future is laughable on its face, and you should be ashamed for suggesting it.
I came away with the same impression. I guess I'm missing something because I love my country and I guess I'm what McCain calls a Nativist, because I don't want to become part of some big conglomerate like the EU, much less part of one that encompasses a corrupt, crime-ridden third world country.
I'm not ashamed, because I've read the background on this for the past few weeks.
Trust me, you are missing something, and not because you are a nativist.
Then it shouldn't be too difficult to tell us which foreign carriers are not subject to U.S. security regs by nature of their foreign ownership? Start with the big ones that fly into the US: Lufthansa, SAS, BA, Air France . . . knock yourself out.
OUT = OUR standards.
Good Lord, another drive-by. Why do I bother?
How would the value of the amero determined?
There are several advantages to making the amero worth one US dollar. First, the cost of conversion would be minimized since, in the dominating, large American economy, all financial assets, liabilities, and other contracts remain unchanged. They do not have to be converted and accounting changes involve only the renaming of the currency. Second, US dollar notes and coins could continue to circulate after the introduction of the common currency. They could gradually be replaced by amero notes and coins as they wear out. Third, the opposition to the amero by Americans would be minimized as their financial transactions and accounting would be virtually unchanged.
Basic economic principles suggest that with the amero worth one US dollar, the Canadian dollar cannot be equal to one amero also. I have encountered persons who argued that such a conversion rate of one for one in Canada would be just and that any other rate would be bad for Canada. This argument is false. If the two dollars were converted at par, it would be equivalent to roughly a doubling of the value of the Canadian against the US dollar. As a result, Canada's trade would be in very large deficit, there would be a recession, and the downward pressure on wages would be very strong. Canada would go through the same difficult process encountered by Germany, which, upon reunification with the formerly communist part of the country, decided that all wages and prices there would be converted at a rate of one East German for one West German deutschemark. The market exchange rate between the two currencies was about six East German deutschemark to one West German deutschemark. The official motivation behind this policy was that it would prevent massive migration to West Germany by workers attracted to higher wages there. In the adoption of the policy, an important role was undoubtedly also played by the pressure of unions and employers in West Germany, who had feared that low wages in East Germany would cause "unfair" competition and threaten living standards in West Germany.
It is ironic that the policy adopted reduced West Germany's living standards more significantly and for a longer period than would have occurred if wages and prices in the East Germany had initially been lower than those in the West Germany. Because of the policy adopted, it was necessary not only to invest large resources in upgrading the infrastructure in East Germany and in bailing out its unfunded pension system. But, as economists had predicted--this is most relevant to the current analysis--additional massive transfers were necessary to keep the economy of the former East Germany functioning at all and unemployment rates at a socially acceptable level. Five years after they began, the subsidies to labour and capital are continuing to flow because the wages paid still exceed the productivity of labour. Private capital still has few incentives to make unsubsidized investments in East Germany.
Most important, to finance these transfers, West Germany had to raise already high rates of taxation. As a result, the economic performance of all of Germany has been poor and there is no early prospect for improvement. There are important unresolved questions about the future. Will it ever be possible to stop the subsidies that have been built into the economic structure and are threatening to become considered a right? Canadians are familiar with the effects of continuous large transfers to the Atlantic provinces and the resultant dependency of the region on such support. Chances are that the same conditions will develop in much of the eastern part of Germany.
For economic reasons, the validity of which is evident from the German experience, the Canadian dollar will have to be valued at a rate that does not affect Canada's international competitiveness in the longer run. Such an efficient rate of exchange by definition would leave unchanged Canada's exports, imports, interest rates, capital inflows and outflows, production, employment, and unemployment.
Unfortunately, it is difficult to determine in practice what such an optimal rate of exchange would be. The market exchange rate is only an imperfect guide since it is distorted frequently by temporary, often speculative, short-term capital flows and random influences on trade in goods and services.
In Europe, conversion rates were established gradually during a period of ten years leading up to the official adoption of the euro on January 1, 1999. During this period, countries progressively co-ordinated their domestic monetary and fiscal policies. Increasingly stricter rules were applied to countries of the European Union aspiring to membership in the currency union with respect to acceptable inflation, deficits, and debts. This process resulted in growing exchange-rate stability and ultimately produced the rates for conversion into the euro.40 We might expect a similar, lengthy process, say, five to ten years, of co-ordination of monetary and fiscal policies to result in more stable exchange rates among the countries of North America, which would reflect national competitiveness as defined above, rates at which the final conversion would take place.
It should be noted, however, that it is not overly important that the exchange rate used for the initial conversion is precisely equal to the theoretical optimum. A deviation of perhaps two percent to three percent from that optimum would probably be eliminated quickly through normal increases in trade and productivity, without requiring changes to current rates of pay.
The external value of the amero against the euro, the Yen, and other currencies will be determined in the longer run by prices, income, and productivity in the amero region relative to those in the other zones. Chances are that the exchange rates with these large trading blocks will be close to those prevailing against the US dollar in the period preceding the union, simply because the trade and capital flows of the United States will be of overwhelming importance in the activities of the amero zone.
During the period before the union is created, speculators may distort the equilibrium dollar exchange rate. Cyclically low or high interest rates designed to minimize unemployment or inflationary pressures might result in capital flows and correspondingly distorted value of the dollar. We might see a repetition of the experience of the euro, which started life at 1.18 against the US dollar but, six months later, had fallen to near parity.
Nevertheless, just as no significant tensions and demands for change of that dollar-to-euro exchange rate have developed since its fall against the dollar, so we may expect that the amero's value will be relatively unimportant for the amero zone. The bulk of the trade of Canada, Mexico, and the United States will be with each other and will not be influenced by the external value of the amero. In 1999, fully 80 percent of Canada's trade was with the United States and monetary union would increase this figure even more.
The advantage of this relative independence of economic conditions in the amero zone from the value of the region's currency is, of course, one of the major benefits. It will allow the North American central bank to make monetary policy with price stability as its most important policy objective while the exchange rate is given even less consideration than it has been by the Federal Reserve since the 1970s.
Welcome to the New World Order.
"Just sounds simply ideal, doesn't it?
LOL, I have something in back of my mind, but naahhh, not now! In the end, I don't think it's going to matter which of the three countries you're standing in.
What will matter though, is how many marbles you have in your pocket when the Social Security System is projected for doom in 2020. I would advise believers and non believers alike, to take President Bush's advice, and open private retirement savings accounts. He is trying to tell everybody something. Because of the millions and millions of illegals that will be infused onto the Social Security System, it will dry up faster than a egg sitting in the Arizona sun...way before 2020.
We again have to bear in mind, the Democrats created Social Security, and eventually Democrats under Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton, with Al Gore casting the tying vote, helped finish it off. The original SS system, if left alone, in a lock box as promised, would today be very, very healthy and solvent.
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