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Meltdown

Started by BachQ, September 20, 2007, 11:35:04 AM

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Coopmv

#3442
September 26, 2009, 03:44:40 PM

Coopmv

#3443
September 26, 2009, 04:21:07 PM
Quote from: dm on September 26, 2009, 05:34:54 AM
Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About The Coming China Collapse...

    * There's more debt in China than common figures suggest.
    * Capital-expenditure driven growth is likely to collapse soon.
    * The China urbanization driver is far weaker than proclaimed.
    * GDP is full of wasteful spending.

link

DM,  Thanks for the link.  That was an excellent analysis.  I have always been skeptical about this China miracle.  My sense is, this worldwide meltdown may not be over yet.  Should there be a meltdown in China and the communists need cash fast and they unload the US treasury bonds left and right, financial markets worldwide will fall into an abyss.

Coopmv

#3444
September 26, 2009, 04:57:10 PM
It is drilling and more drilling.  Now that peak oil was reached a few years ago ...

Arctic Oil Tempts Norway to Seek Drilling at 'Gates of Hell'

Coopmv

#3445
September 27, 2009, 06:18:21 AM Last Edit: September 27, 2009, 06:21:35 AM by Coopmv
Dm,  I like chicken but will never consume any chicken from China.  People have to be desperate to consume the chicken from China.  Do you still remember thousands of pets in the US died two years ago due to the melamine laden wheat gluten, which Chinese companies used to make the gluten to appear to contain more protein than it actually did.  This tiff started because of the tire tariff and the US refused to allow Chinese chicken to be imported.     


China launches probe into imports of US chicken
China launches investigation into imports of US chicken on dumping, subsidy complaints

Coopmv

#3446
September 29, 2009, 04:33:48 PM
DM, A good friend of mine sent me this Bloomberg article.  It cannot describe the middle-class experience in the US over the past twenty years any better.  With the relentless outsourcing of jobs from the US - first the manufacturing, then the computer and other R&D jobs, the rapid decline in the living standard for the middle-class is all but guaranteed.  I think the US is unique in this experience among the western industrialized nation.

Credit 'Neverland' Vanishes as U.S. Dreams of Real Jobs: Books
2009-09-28 23:01:00.2 GMT


Review by James Pressley
    Sept. 29 (Bloomberg) -- Peter S. Goodman is a reporter with
a valuable thesis, reams of anecdotes and a habit of being in
the right place at the right time.
    He puts these assets to work in a persuasive book on an
all-too-familiar topic, "Past Due: The End of Easy Money and
the Renewal of the American Economy." His argument: Americans
became profligate borrowers in recent years partly because the
economy hasn't created enough jobs capable of financing a
middle-class lifestyle.
    The book opens on Dorothy Thomas, a single mother in
northern California who "lived strategically beyond her means"
for two decades, mostly to get her daughters decent educations.
The bill finally came due in early 2008, Goodman writes.
    Thomas lost her car, so she couldn't get to work. She lost
her job, so she couldn't pay her rent. By year end, she was
bunking down in a homeless shelter. Her descent into disaster
was repeated across the land, as Goodman shows by profiling
Americans from Boston to Portland, Oregon.
    "Millions of people have been living beyond their incomes
for the simple reason that those incomes have been outstripped
by the cost of middle-class American life," he writes.
    Extravagance certainly helped stoke the crisis, Goodman
says. Americans didn't really need that special trip to Belize
or those extra flat-screen TVs in their bedrooms.

                     Pernicious Confluence

    Yet Goodman makes the case that many Americans dug
themselves into a hole through a pernicious confluence of other
factors -- notably the failure of real compensation for the rank
and file to keep pace with productivity gains. Easy credit
plugged the gap, he says.
    "For many years, the economy has existed in a state of
Neverland akin to that depicted in J.M. Barrie's classic tale
'Peter Pan'; Americans have operated as if we can fly, borrowing
increasingly enormous sums of money while making believe it need
never be paid back," he writes.
    It didn't help that Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan
kept sprinkling the economy with the equivalent of fairy dust --
low interest rates and assurances that "the magic of market
forces obviated the need for government regulation," Goodman
says. When the magic wore off, Americans were buried in consumer
credit -- more than $2.6 trillion of it by 2008, he says.
    Goodman is well equipped to explain how we reached this
juncture, having covered three of the biggest financial stories
of the past decade, first for the Washington Post and then for
the New York Times.

                       'Limitless Future'

    In 1999, he began reporting on the snap, crackle and pop of
the telecommunications and dot-com craze, which mortgaged the
future to build "an abundant present," he writes. "It wasn't
supposed to be a problem because the future was inestimably
enormous."
    Moving to Shanghai in 2002, he got the uncomfortable
feeling that "the New Economy hadn't really died, but merely
shifted venues across the Pacific, gaining new props with which
to spin tales of another limitless future."
    Returning to the U.S., he watched the housing bubble swell
as Americans turned their homes into cash machines, allowing
them to buy ever more Chinese goods.
    Goodman is particularly good at explaining why China has
acquired so much U.S. debt. Yes, the purchases have allowed
American consumers to keep buying Chinese goods.
   Yet they also have kept some Chinese savings away from
corrupt real-estate deals that have sparked violent protests,
Goodman says. Working together, developers and local officials
have seized rice paddies and wheat fields and turned them into
fairways, factories and office parks with loans from state
banks, he explains.
   So Chinese authorities have found a way to keep some of the
money collected from exports beyond the reach of crooked
operators -- by investing it abroad, he says.
    "In essence, the party delivered China's savings to the
United States to keep it free of the depredations of China
itself, using the U.S. Treasury as a safe deposit box," Goodman
says.

                       Building Windmills

    How can Americans renew the economy? Goodman says we need
to get back to honest work and invest in productive enterprises,
such as biotechnology and renewable energy. To show what can be
done, he takes us to Newton, Iowa, which was hammered by the
loss of its main employer, Maytag Corp. The town has since
gained back jobs by making windmill components.
    Though it's unclear how many jobs can be created this way,
it's hard to argue with Goodman's conclusion: "Rather than
bingeing on finance borrowed against a supposedly fantastic
future, we must figure out how to generate enough income to live
on -- as individual households and as a society."

    "Past Due" is published by Times Books in the U.S. (336
pages, $25). To buy this book in North America, click here.

    (James Pressley writes for Bloomberg News. The opinions
expressed are his own.)

BachQ

#3447
October 01, 2009, 03:19:53 PM
Coop, any doubts about whether "Cash for Clunkers" was a TOTAL, ABSOLUTE FAILURE have now been laid to rest!
Quote from: Coopmv on July 30, 2009, 04:21:20 PM
The stupidity of the American politicians is beyond belief.  Under this program, someone who jettisons an SUV that gets 12 mpg and buys a new SUV that gets 15 mpg will be qualified to receive up to $4,500 in cash.  How does this program encourage meaningful fuel economy improvement?     ???

AP sources: Govt to suspend 'cash for clunkers'

New York Times: Auto sales plunge with expiration of Clunkers program -- Chrysler down 42.1% & GM down 45%

By NICK BUNKLEY
Published: October 1, 2009

DETROIT — After two frenzied months during the government's cash-for-clunkers program, new-vehicle sales fell in September back to the dismal levels seen earlier this year, automakers said Thursday.



link

Coopmv

#3451
October 01, 2009, 06:27:00 PM
Yeah, show me the green shoots and the V-shaped recovery!  It looks more like an L-shaped recovery, which may lead to a double dip ...

Stocks tumble on disappointing reports on manufacturing, unemployment; Dow slides 203 points

Coopmv

#3452
October 01, 2009, 06:28:34 PM
Quote from: dm on October 01, 2009, 03:21:25 PM
Euro zone jobless rate at new 10-year high of 9.6%

link

Most of the former eastern bloc countries must be having 20+% unemployment ...    ???

BachQ

#3453
October 02, 2009, 02:27:01 PM
Quote from: Coopmv on October 01, 2009, 06:27:00 PM
Yeah, show me the green shoots and the V-shaped recovery!  It looks more like an L-shaped recovery, which may lead to a double dip ...

Stocks tumble on disappointing reports on manufacturing, unemployment; Dow slides 203 points

Coop, perhaps it's time for Obama & Pelosi to unveil their 2d stimulus package!  :D  :D  :D

Bloomberg: "U.S. job losses accelerated last month and the unemployment rate climbed to the highest level since 1983"


"The current recession is now the worst recession since WWII in percentage terms"

US Jobless Rate Rises to 9.8%


By JACK HEALY
Published: October 2, 2009

The American economy lost 263,000 jobs in September — far more than expected — and the unemployment rate rose to 9.8 percent, the government reported on Friday, dimming prospects of any meaningful job growth by the end of the year. ... Overall, the report offered little good news for the 15.1 million unemployed people in the United States. The number of hours worked stagnated. Overtime hours slipped in many industries. And temporary help companies — typically, among the first to rebound after a recession — shed 1,700 jobs.

Indeed, while many businesses are making money again and seeing new orders trickle in, most are not ready to hire back the workers they laid off, even part-time.To economists, that suggests that unemployment could remain at historically high levels through next year, if not longer. "It's a little bleak," said Marissa Di Natale, senior economist at Moody's Economy.com. "We're not going to see job growth until the second half of next year. And even when it does start to grow, it's going to be slow."The economy has been bleeding jobs every month, without interruption, for nearly two years. More than 15 million people in the United States are now unemployed, and more are working part-time jobs for less pay, or have given up looking for work altogether.

link

Coopmv

#3454
October 02, 2009, 06:08:46 PM
DM,  Check out this article.  It is a very interesting read ...

NJ, Va. could kill ObamaCare

BachQ

#3455
October 03, 2009, 05:59:05 AM
Quote from: Coopmv on October 02, 2009, 06:08:46 PM
DM,  Check out this article.  It is a very interesting read ...

NJ, Va. could kill ObamaCare

Democrats are going DOWN ...  :D

BachQ

#3456
October 03, 2009, 06:03:31 AM
Quote from: Coopmv on July 16, 2009, 04:49:15 PM
So these are the steps China has been taking in order to achieve its objective of becoming the second nation in the world after the US to put men on the moon come 2017 ...

US gets conviction in 1st economic espionage trial
Man convicted in 1st US economic espionage trial; a key step to guarding secrets, experts say

By Amy Taxin, Associated Press Writer
On Thursday July 16, 2009, 8:14 pm EDT

SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) -- A Chinese-born engineer's conviction in the United States' first economic espionage trial could be an important step to stop the flow of critical trade secrets to China, experts say.

A federal judge on Thursday found former Boeing Co. engineer Dongfan "Greg" Chung guilty of six counts of economic espionage and other charges for hoarding 300,000 pages of sensitive documents in his home, including information about the U.S. space shuttle and a booster rocket.

"The trust Boeing placed in Mr. Chung to safeguard its proprietary and trade secret information obviously meant very little to Mr. Chung," U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney wrote in his 31-page ruling. "He cast it aside to serve the PRC (People's Republic of China), which he proudly proclaimed as his `motherland.'"

Federal prosecutors accused the 73-year-old stress analyst of using his 30-year career at Boeing and Rockwell International to steal the documents. They said investigators found papers stacked throughout Chung's house that included sensitive information about a fueling system for a booster rocket -- documents that employees were ordered to lock away at the end of each day. They said Boeing invested $50 million in the technology over a five-year period.

Rick Fisher, a senior fellow with the International Assessment and Strategy Center, said the conviction -- and potentially lengthy prison sentence -- sends a message that U.S. officials won't let Beijing try to tap into the Chinese diaspora to procure military and security secrets.

"The Chinese communist government is seeking to divide the loyalties of Chinese-Americans," Fisher said. "By defending ourselves in this way, asserting our sovereignty, we are making clear to all those who would be turned by nationalist appeals from China's communist government that there is price to pay."

The judge convicted Chung of six counts of economic espionage, one count of acting as a foreign agent, one count of conspiracy and one count of lying to federal agents. He was acquitted of obstruction of justice.

Chung was taken into federal custody after the verdict. He could face more than 90 years in prison at his sentencing scheduled for Nov. 9, federal prosecutor Ivy Wang said.

"I hope that one of the messages that goes out is if someone is going to steal proprietary information and steal that information for the benefit of another country, they are going to be charged in this country and face very serious punishment for doing so," Wang said after the verdict.

Chung opted for a non-jury trial that ended June 24. During 10 days of proceedings, defense attorneys said Chung was a "pack rat" who hoarded documents at his house, but they insisted he was not a spy.

During the trial, Chung's lawyers argued that he may have violated Boeing policy by bringing the papers home, but he didn't break any laws by doing so, and the U.S. government couldn't prove he had given secret information to China.

In his ruling, the judge wrote that the notion that Chung was merely a pack rat was "ludicrous" and said the evidence showed that he had been passing information to Chinese officials as a spy.

Defense attorney Thomas Bienert said he planned to appeal.

"A big feature (of this case) is not about what China wanted Mr. Chung to do, but about what Mr. Chung was willing to do," Bienert said outside the courtroom. "There is no evidence that China used or benefited from anything in this case."

Chung had been free on $250,000 bail before the verdict. His attorneys asked the judge to let him remain with his family in Orange until sentencing, but the government said a man facing such a long sentence with close ties to China could easily flee.

The Economic Espionage Act was passed in 1996 to help the government crack down on the theft of information from private companies that contract with the government to develop U.S. space and military technologies. The legislation became a priority in the mid-1990s when the U.S. realized China and other countries were targeting private businesses as part of their spy strategy.

Since then, six economic espionage cases have settled before trial. In some of the cases, defendants were sentenced to just a year or two in prison. Another is set for trial in U.S. District Court in San Jose this year.

Steven Fink, president of Lexicon Communications Corp., a corporate crisis management firm, said prosecutors previously have tried cases under a different part of the 1996 act involving theft of trade secrets. He questioned why it took so long for the government to try someone on the economic espionage charges levied in the Chung case, saying he believes officials were too worried about ruffling diplomatic feathers.

"In the past there had been times when diplomacy has trumped national security," he said. "This (verdict) is a spit in the ocean unless it is a sign that the government is going to get aggressive in prosecuting these cases, because there are a lot of them out there."

A message seeking comment was left for officials at the Chinese consulate in Los Angeles.

The government believes Chung began spying for the Chinese in the late 1970s, a few years after he became a naturalized U.S. citizen and was hired by Rockwell International.

Chung worked for Rockwell until it was bought by Boeing in 1996. He stayed with the company until he was laid off in 2002 but brought back a year later as a consultant. He was fired when the FBI began its investigation in 2006.

Dan Beck, a spokesman for Chicago-based Boeing, welcomed the ruling and said the company was committed to working with the government to help prevent the theft and misuse of data.

Prosecutors said they discovered Chung's activities while investigating another suspected Chinese spy, Chi Mak. Mak was convicted in 2007 of conspiracy to export U.S. defense technology to China and sentenced to more than 24 years in prison.

Mak was not charged under the Economic Espionage Act.



Coop, let this serve as a wakeup call to all companies with highly sensitive trade secrets that, during this era of "economic warfare," a person's loyalties to his home country will often trump his loyalties to his company (and to his country of current citizenship).  As such, defense contractors and other high-tech companies must take elaborate and overly-cautious steps to guard trade secrets ... and in this case, Dongfan Chung was allowed to accumulate thousands of sensitive documents in his library -- clearly a sign that Boeing was far too lax with its protocols.

Coopmv

#3457
October 03, 2009, 07:05:09 AM
Quote from: dm on October 03, 2009, 06:03:31 AM
Coop, let this serve as a wakeup call to all companies with highly sensitive trade secrets that, during this era of "economic warfare," a person's loyalties to his home country will often trump his loyalties to his company (and to his country of current citizenship).  As such, defense contractors and other high-tech companies must take elaborate and overly-cautious steps to guard trade secrets ... and in this case, Dongfan Chung was allowed to accumulate thousands of sensitive documents in his library -- clearly a sign that Boeing was far too lax with its protocols.

DM,  The Chinese communists are pulling out all the stops to pilfer technologies that can bring advantages to them.  It matters little where those technologies come from.  Their spy network has members in the EU countries and possibly in Switzerland in addition to having as many as 3000 of them in the US alone.  It is terrible to see the fruits of years of research and tens and often hundreds of millions of research dollars get stolen ...

BachQ

#3458
October 03, 2009, 07:20:43 AM

Coop, one must wonder how much longer this "War on Terror" will continue, and at what cost?  Some commentators estimate a price tag exceeding $3 Trillion (or $5T including "social costs") ... and several hundred thousand (500,000?) US troops ... I wonder if this is a bottomless pit, or if "victory" is possible at some distant point in the future.




U.S. commander warns of "failure" in Afghanistan

WASHINGTON/KABUL (Reuters) - The top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan says in a confidential assessment of the war that without additional forces the mission "will likely result in failure."  A request for more troops faces resistance from within U.S. President Barack Obama's Democratic Party, which controls Congress, and opinion polls show Americans are turning against the nearly eight-year-old war.

Army General Stanley McChrystal wrote: "Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near-term (next 12 months) -- while Afghan security capacity matures -- risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible." ... McChrystal's request [may] include roughly 30,000 new combat troops and trainers ... [and he] paints a grim picture of how the war is progressing and writes "the overall situation is deteriorating."  He calls for a "dramatically" and even "uncomfortably" different approach to fighting a war which requires a cultural change in the way the military fights. "The objective is the will of the people, our conventional warfare culture is part of the problem, the Afghans must ultimately defeat the insurgency." The war in Afghanistan is now at its deadliest in eight years. ... The number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan has almost doubled this year from 32,000 to 62,000 and is expected to grow by another 6,000 by the year's end. ...

link





Christian Science Monitor: Afghanistan will cost US more than Iraq
Funding for war in Afghanistan will eclipse Iraq for the first time in next year's budget.

By David R. Francis  |  Staff Writer/ September 15, 2009 edition

For the first time, the war in Afghanistan in the next budget year will cost Americans more than the war in Iraq. By the end of the next fiscal year, which starts Oct. 1, the total military budget costs for both wars will have exceeded $1 trillion. That's more than the cost of the Vietnam War, adjusting for inflation, or any other US war except World War II ($3.2 trillion in 2007 dollars). 

QuoteIf one looks beyond immediate war costs, the price tag escalates dramatically. Factoring in outlays for such things as veterans' health and other benefits, the replenishment of military hardware worn out or destroyed by war, a higher price for oil, and the interest on debt incurred by the war, the total cost of the two wars will be "significantly more" than $3 trillion, says Professor Bilmes. Costs and utilization of healthcare and other veterans' benefits are running about 30 percent higher than she and coauthor Joseph Stiglitz, a Columbia University Nobel Prize economist, estimated in their 2008 New York Times bestseller, "The Three Trillion Dollar War." Adding in some social costs (such as families caring for the disabled and a diminished labor force), the two economists put a "moderate-realistic" price tag on the two wars of $5 trillion.

link



Classified McChrystal Report: 500,000 Troops Will Be Required Over Five Years in Afghanistan

Read more here

Coopmv

#3459
October 03, 2009, 07:31:58 AM
The Chinese will be owning a large chunk of Austria ...    ???

China's XAC is majority owner of Austria's FACC
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