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AMERICAN manufacturers no longer make subway cars. They are imported now, and the skills required to make them are disappearing in the United States. Similarly, imports are an ever-bigger source of refrigerators, household furnishings, auto and aircraft parts, machine tools and a host of everyday consumer products much in demand in America, but increasingly not made here. [...] the experts shifted the emphasis from production to design and innovation. Let others produce what Americans think up. [...] But over the long run, can invention and design be separated from production? That question is rarely asked today. The debate instead centers...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The economy is stumbling at the end of 2006, setting off alarm bells that growth might not just slow next year but that the nation could tumble into a recession. The recent trend of slower growth is not expected to be reversed any time soon. Home building and the broader real estate market are both already in a recession by most accounts and are expected to stay there well into next year. Manufacturing could soon follow, according to some recent readings. The details See more More on 2007 Stocks: What to expect On balance, prospects look...

... The portion of national income earned by the top 20 percent of households grew to 50.4 percent last year, up from 45.6 percent 20 years ago; the bottom 60 percent of U.S. households received 26.6 percent, down from 29.9 percent in 1985, according to the Census Bureau. Meanwhile, average pay for corporate chief executive officers rose to 369 times that of the average worker last year, according to finance professor Kevin Murphy of the University of Southern California; that compares with 131 times in 1993 and 36 times in 1976. ...

A report scheduled to be released by the Treasury Department tomorrow is expected to show the true deficit in the Bush administration's 2006 federal budget to be an astounding $3.5 trillion in the red, not $248.2 billion as previously reported. "The Bush administration is running a federal budget deficit at an unsustainable, system-dooming pace of about $3.5 trillion a year, econometrician John Williams, who publishes the website Shadow Government Statistics, told WND. Williams' argument is fully validated in the Financial Report of the United States, a little-known report Congress has mandated that the Treasury Department publishes each year, reporting the...

Foreclosure activity surges in Mass. Numbers up nearly 300% from last year By Kimberly Blanton, Globe Staff | December 13, 2006 Massachusetts experienced the second-biggest increase in foreclosure activity in the country last month, according to a report yesterday from a firm that tracks the housing market. The Bay State came in second only to Alabama in the rise in total properties that entered some stage of foreclosure, including lenders' initial notices that homeowners were in default, foreclosed property sales and auctions, and lenders' sales of repossessed property, said RealtyTrac , an Irvine, Calif., company that researches and provides information...

Wednesday, December 13, 2006 Falling prices trap new homebuyers Neighbors in a new Garden Grove tract say a developer's plan to slash prices by about $140,000 has left them owing more for their homes than they're now worth. By JEFF COLLINS The Orange County Register

An Economic Pillar on the Verge of Collapse By Steven Pearlstein Wednesday, December 6, 2006; D01 It's been more than a year since we've heard from those who denied there was a housing bubble. Since then, the industry boosters, along with the "soft-landing" crowd over at the Federal Reserve, have coalesced around the idea that maybe the market got a bit frothy after all, but now the correction is almost complete, the unsold inventory's been worked off and the worst is behind us. But just when you're feeling hopeful again, you get reports like yesterday's Wall Street Journal piece reporting...

Hundreds of Georgians lost their homes Tuesday. The houses, taken from debt-laden homeowners, were sold to bidders on courthouse steps statewide. The increasingly busy monthly auctions show that not all of the residential market is in decline. Foreclosures are rising. More than 115,000 properties across the country were in the foreclosure process in October — up 42 percent from the same month a year earlier, according to RealtyTrac, a California company that tracks foreclosures. Foreclosures in Georgia are up a stunning 99 percent in the past year...

Toll Brothers hit by housing slowdown By Daniel Pimlott in New York Financial Times Dec 5, 2006 Toll Brothers said fourth-quarter net income plunged 44 per cent as the the largest builder of luxury homes in the US felt the full force of the downturn in the housing market....

Plunging dollar will set world markets reeling Heather Stewart, economics correspondent Sunday December 3, 2006 The Observer The slowdown in the US economy, which has sent the dollar into freefall over the past fortnight, will have devastating knock-on effects in markets around the world, analysts warn. As the US slows, and consumers in the world's biggest economy feel the buying power of the dollar in their pocket declining, global growth will be hit hard, economists say. The greenback took yet another turn for the worse on Friday, after a survey of the US manufacturing sector showed output declining for the...

Prices remain the story in home sales, with Sarasota-Bradenton prices falling 18 percent in October, the second biggest drop in the state. The median sales price in the Sarasota-Bradenton market was $277,900 last month, compared with $340,700 during the same month in booming 2005. The Charlotte County-North Port market was not far behind, with a drop of 17 percent, from $243,900 to $202,800. Only Fort Myers-Cape Coral took a bigger fall, posting a 44 percent decline in median sales price, from $445,100 to $249,200, the Florida Association of Realtors reported on Tuesday. The median is the point where half the...

China Raises Red Flag On Dollar Parmy Olson 11.24.06 Americans may be spending their dollars with merry abandon as the Christmas shopping season begins this Black Friday, and that might be a good short-term strategy: the greenback slid on the foreign exchange markets after a Chinese central banker expressed fears about depreciation of the U.S. currency. “The exchange rate of the U.S. dollar, which is the major reserve currency, is going lower, increasing the depreciation risk for East Asian reserve assets," wrote Wu Xiaoling, deputy governor of the People’s Bank of China, in an academic paper. Wu is ranked by...

While Americans were busy digesting their Thanksgiving feasts, the rest of the world was barfing up dollars. As a result of our massive trade deficits, foreigners certainly have their bellies full of them. This week’s action in the Forex markets indicates that they may have finally eaten their fill. Unfortunately, the bad taste will likely linger as the dollar’s rout has only just begun. As American consumers hit the stores this black Friday, few will have noticed that the most significant mark-down occurred in the value of their currency. If anything can be said to have been blackened this Friday...

AP Home Sales Plummet in 38 States in 3Q Monday November 20 By Lauren Villagran, AP Business Writer Third-Quarter Home Sales Plummet in 38 States During the Summer; Home Prices Also Tumble NEW YORK (AP) -- The feeble U.S. housing market showed more frailty when third-quarter home sales plummeted in 38 states, hitting Nevada, Arizona, Florida and California particularly hard, government data showed on Monday. The once-booming real estate market's persistent weakness over the past year has reined in expectations for economic growth but hasn't been severe enough to offset a rising stock market, lower gas prices and improved consumer...

NEW YORK (Reuters) -- Aluminum producer Alcoa Inc. announced a restructuring of its product operations on Tuesday that will include plant closings and could ultimately result in a 10 percent reduction of its worldwide work force. About 6,700 jobs will be cut in the next year and a further 6,400 jobs will be moved into a joint venture with Norway's Orkla ASA with the intent eventually to spin it off, the Pittsburgh-based company said. Video More video Learn how to assess what health care plan is perfect for your family. (Part 2 of 2) Play video The restructuring program is...

The real estate market continues to go bust as I had predicted in my first major article on the subject in December of 2005. As it continues to rapidly barrel south, don’t tell the Bush Administration, the Federal Reserve, International Bankers, Mortgage Bankers, Mortgage Brokers, Realtors, home builders or even home sellers. Let’s keep it our little secret. Still, none of them want to hear anything about it. They are, the majority of them, extremely myopic to the truth and material facts of what is really going on in the American economy. SEC regulators should take note if they are...

This week it was announced that both producer and consumer prices dropped by 1.3% and .5% respectively, while housing starts unexpectedly increased by 5.9%. Not surprisingly, Wall Street celebrated the apparent good news, sending the Dow Industrials into uncharted territory. As has been its recent tendency, the market is unconcerned with recent bad news, instead championing it as confirming the highly touted “soft-landing.” September’s much weaker than expected non-farm payroll data and the Philadelphia Fed survey that showed an unexpected deterioration in manufacturing, are two recent examples. However, a closer look at the supposed good news reveals just how unwarranted...

'The US housing bubble will disappear' By Laurie Osborne, Editor Published 11th Sep 2006 That the US housing bubble will disappear someday is a certainty. That it will blow up catastrophically is a fair bet, warns The Daily Reckoning's Bill Bonner. Observing recent statistics, Bonner calls the evidence "formidable". The total value of residential property in developed countries rose by more than $30 trillion, to $70 trillion, over the past five years – eclipsing the combined GDPs of those nations. Consumer spending and residential construction have accounted for 90 percent of the total growth in the American GDP over the...

Report Predicts Price Declines In 100 U.S. Cities Over Next Few Years . . . Home buyers have another reason to sit on their hands. In the latest news from the slumping U.S. housing market, a report released this week says that median house prices are likely to decline more than 10% over the next few years in 20 metro areas, including Las Vegas, Tucson, Ariz., and Washington, D.C. The report, by Moody's Economy.com Inc., a research firm in West Chester, Pa., also says that the slump won't end quickly. Indeed, according to the report, prices may keep falling until...

The Sentinel is reporting that in Massachusetts, “State Targeting Abusive Lenders”: “The state Division of Banks is cracking down this month on what it sees as abusive business practices by mortgage lenders and brokers. “The agency issued a series of new emergency regulations earlier this month, requiring better documentation from lenders and prohibiting them from pressuring consumers into taking out mortgages they can't afford or working without their own independent lawyers. “It also forced four companies -- two of them located in Worcester -- to close immediately and place all pending mortgages with another, more established lender. “Commissioner of Banks...