As I've been saying for years here.
Posted on 07/19/2005 10:52:08 AM PDT by Willie Green
Washington -- DURING the cold war, as the Soviet economic system slowly unraveled, internal reform was impossible because highly placed officials who recognized the systemic disorders could not talk about them honestly. The United States is now in an equivalent predicament. Its weakening position in the global trading system is obvious and ominous, yet leaders in politics, business, finance and the news media are not willing to discuss candidly what is happening and why. Instead, they recycle the usual bromides about the benefits of free trade and assurances that everything will work out for the best.
Much like Soviet leaders, the American establishment is enthralled by utopian convictions - the market orthodoxy of free trade globalization. The United States is heading for yet another record trade deficit in 2005, possibly 25 percent larger than last year's. Our economy's international debt position - accumulated from many years of tolerating larger and larger trade deficits - began compounding ferociously in the last five years. Our net foreign indebtedness is now more than 25 percent of gross domestic product and at the current pace will reach 50 percent in four or five years .
For years, elite opinion dismissed the buildup of foreign indebtedness as a trivial issue. Now that it is too large to deny, they concede the trend is "unsustainable." That's an economist's euphemism which means: things cannot go on like this, not without ugly consequences for American living standards. But why alarm the public? The authorities assure us timely policy adjustments will fix the matter.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
ping
Truth? New York Times????? Willie you are losing it.
The New York Times says there's a Truth Deficit -- but can I trust them?
First Jacques Chirac (ultraliberalism) and now the New York Times: free markets are the new communism.
From the leading purveyor of truth deficit... the NY Slimes.
Unintentionally hilarious.
"free markets are the new communism"
Day is the new night.
To go is to return.
Bill Greider is a socialist. Free trade and a free economy is what ultimately buried communism in much of the world.
Does this mean the the NYT no longer sells ad space? I wonder, then, how does Mr. Greider get his pay?
Why is the United States one of the few advanced economies that suffers from perennial trade deficits?
Because we have an economy that can support it!
It is not possible for the Global Economy and the United States to both succeed. One or both have to fail. It is not possible to chase the low-wage labor and sustain a middle class in the U.S. When, not if, this fails, we will no longer have a market for goods and services because we will be earning the same as the "efficient" labor pools, namely $1 an hour. How many new Chryslers can you buy on $1 an hour? That is the fly in the ointment. Or the end of America, however you would like to say it.
Well it's not as if I have any reasonable expectation that either of you will attempt to refute the substantive points of this article. LOL! I already know how THAT part of this post is gonna play out.
Did anybody else notice the incongruity of a national affairs columnist for The Nation (which is a long-time supporter of the Soviet Union and fellow-traveler with every cockamamie Communist ideal under the sun) decrying the lying ways of the Soviet leadership that they worshiped up to the day of its collapse (and whose return they long for)?
If you say so, I suppose.
Whatever you say, Gomer.
Proof positive that Zero-Sumists exist not only on the left, but on the Right.
The point of the article???? What is that, that the US is near collasps like the Soviet Union was???? OK, let's just ignore that our economy has been growing at about 4% for the last 3 years, we have had a very low 5.5% unemployment rate forever, we have low inflation and great interest rates, the stock market is doing better. Because some dork at the New York Times says we are gonna collasps does not make it a fact. We have had trade deficits my whole life and it really is not a huge negative the doomsayers have been saying for the past 30+ years.
As I've been saying for years here.
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