[Sam the Sham]

Since Democrats no longer have a majority in the Senate and there is no way Bush would sign it, that would be a rather stupid thing to do, now wouldn't it ?

The Democratic base never supported free trade. I know you constantly babble about a Democratic Senate passing NAFTA ignoring the fact that THE MAJORITY OF DEMOCRATIC SENATORS VOTED AGAINST IT.

Sure, go ahead. Halve the value of the dollar. Then watch the Fed have to increase interest rates to double digits to sell 30 year bonds the way it did back in the 70's.

[Southack]

"Since Democrats no longer have a majority in the Senate and there is no way Bush would sign it, that would be a rather stupid thing to do, now wouldn't it ?"

No, it is an election issue, per you. If Senator Kerry submitted a bill to repeal NAFTA, then every Senator and Congressman would be put on the spot just months before their elections. Kerry could use it as a club to bash his fellow free trader Bush.

But here's the rub that has to stick in the craw of union rank and files: Kerry supports NAFTA. He ain't submitting a bill to repeal it because he likes NAFTA. He knows that his union bosses will carry (pun intended) his water on this issue, too. With a single phone call Kerry can have union bosses claiming that Kerry is against NAFTA even though he won't submit so much as a bill to repeal it.

[Southack]

"Sure, go ahead. Halve the value of the dollar. Then watch the Fed have to increase interest rates to double digits to sell 30 year bonds the way it did back in the 70's."

Somehow you and I aren't communicating.

The Dollar is artificially propped up today by foreign governments. I want that manipulation to end. I estimate that to end it we'll have to let the Dollar drop an additional 20% against most major foreign currencies. It's already fallen 20%, so the total drop will end up being 40%...not half.

And that 40% impacts 4% of our GDP (i.e. 1.6% of our total economy...or put another way, an inflation rate of .8% each year for the two years it will take to finish this currency revaluation).

But .8% additional inflation is *not* going to cause the Fed to introduce double digit interest rates.

What it will do, vis-a-vis the drop in the Dollar, is make offshore outsourcing price prohibitive in all but a few extreme cases.