We don't manufacture much of anything, and from there flow most of our economic problems. No Manufacturing leads to no unions and no bargaining power hence stagnant wages, no savings and debt, not to mention the trade deficit.

Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives. John Stuart Mill

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The U.S. trade deficit set a fifth consecutive annual record in 2006, reflecting a huge jump in America's foreign oil bill and an all-time high for the trade gap with China. The year ended with the December deficit increasing more than had been expected.

The Commerce Department reported Tuesday that the gap between what America sells abroad and what it imports rose to a record $763.6 billion last year, a 6.5 percent increase from the previous record of $716.7 billion set in 2005. For December, the deficit rose a bigger-than-expected 5.3 percent to $61.2 billion.
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/070213/economy.html?.v=6

http://mauberly.blogspot.com/

Christian conservatives have their own idea about the redistrubution of wealth, and its noteven close to the ol' socialist or communist ideal.
"The dubious link between Christian literalism and Christian values is belied by other indices of social equality. Consider the ratio of salaries paid to top-tier CEOs and those paid to the same firms' average employees: in Britain it is 24:1; in France, 15:1; in Sweden, 13:1; in the United States, where 80 percent of the population expects to be called before God on Judgment Day, it is 475:1. Many a camel, it would seem, expects to pass easily through the eye of a needle." Sam Harris 'Letter To A Christian Nation'

This is a rich source of information for which I am really grateful. There are at least two separate themes that these graphs support. One is that Bush has grotesquely mismanaged the federal budget. The second is that the "me generation" Americans are still behaving as if there is no tomorrow. And sadly for their children and grandchildren their attitude might prove self-fulfilling.

Theme I Dubya and the Bridge to Nowhere Republicans

The last chart, trade weighted currencies shows that the currency has slipped in value. On one hand, it should promise beneficial effects. It would, if America's manufacturing base had not been shipped overseas by the free traders. But it is a sign of a weak and worsening economic future for the society.

The previous chart shows how the Dubya administration has doubled American federal government indebtedness to other nations. It took five years for him to do essentially the same damage that it took Reagan and his father 12 years to do. Is this nominal dollars or deflated ones?

The first chart explains how he managed this feat. It is the Republican "Bridge to Nowhere" culture. Democrats waste money on things like education, food, housing, and improvements to infrastructure. Republicans, however, find it more convenient to take on projects that have no redeeming value. In this way they can be as arbitrary as hell in selecting contactors. Halliburton for services in Iraq, for instance. Paid for with wads of fresh printed money. See also, Bridge to Nowhere.

Unfortunately, the graphs fail to illustrate this particular aspect of the problem.

Theme II Spendthrift American

There is a case to be made that Americans are spending money they do not have, but I am unconvinced that these graphs fully succeed in making it. Many of the graphs have subtle prolems. Liabilities-Household credit is one. It is in nominal dollars? It is a 5 decade exponential graph and not on log scale? This hardly scratches the surface of the issues..

Household obligations as a percent of earnings is informative. Interestingly, it establishes only a gradual drift upward. In fact, one would wonder whether that drift is not completely explained by changes in interest rates. In other words, if one calculated what Americans budget to pay down their current level of indebtedness, I wonder whether the trend would still be upward? My guess is that it would. But it would be a weaker trend.

The negative savings rate is of real concern. But one wonders whether this includes all retirement savings such as social security and private pensions. Still, a negative savings rate is really irresponsible; it invites disaster. Ask Dicken's sad character McCawber.

What is not captured here is that most Americans depend on their homes as their primary asset. And by all measures, homes in America, as they are in Britain and Australia right now, are overvalued. In terms of other factors, they ought to be valued at about half of what they are now. When the market correction hits, it will wipe out many, perhaps most Americans.

Conclusion

I think one could be sanguine about either one of these kinds of series of data, perhaps. But taken together they prove a complete lack of fiscal discipline for a whole society. Societies that live this way end up second-rate nations. And the fall generally produces such social tensions that political repression is not far behind. (See Argentina.) Those squiggly lines paint a rather scary picture of the future. America approaches a learning point, I fear.

I simply do not understand how the author can agree with the statement, "nothing bad has happened yet."

What about the hundreds of thousands, no, how about the millions of people who have been thrown out of their careers? Is that supposed to be a good thing because it opened up the economy for jobs for younger people? Maybe so. But then those younger higher wage workers had better hold to the promise that the Boomer Generation bought into and PAID FOR. Social Security.

We supported the aged and poor people of our grandparents generation and our parents and we paid for the education of this generation. All we needed was ten years to re fill our bank accounts for retirement and it would all have been okay.

But instead this government in cahoots with the Corporations that own it, and without the realization of the younger generation, has broken that promise to the Baby Boomers, making sure we all loose our jobs at 55 years old, fully 10 years before we can qualify the high wage Social Security Benefits we have been paying TOP DOLLAR FOR TEN YEARS TO HAVE. We instead will be competing with people just coming off welfare.

All the while listening to 30 and 40 somethings whine about supporting our generation. You had it all on a platter and you gave it to these people.. the corporatists. The anti union Constitution-busting corporatists. After all, how can you reap financial havoc on the globe if there is a government standing in your way to adjudicate it?

By destroying America they will stand alone, the sole owners of this nation. The winners.

This bad thing has already happened and it is really BAD.

So don't tell me that "nothing bad has happened" to our economy yet. It is about to crash and WE THE BOOMERS are the ONLY ones who learned from the Depression Era people who taught us how to live.

And we are ready. We are tough and smart. And we are prepared.

The writer is correct about one big thing (and probably a lot more):
That is that a Depression is coming. Soon.

February 18, 2007
Debtors Search for Discipline via Blogs
By JOHN LELAND
NYT

When a woman who calls herself Tricia discovered last week that she owed $22,302 on her credit cards, she could not wait to spread the news. Tricia, 29, does not talk to her family or friends about her finances, and says she is ashamed of her personal debt.

Yet from the laundry room of her home in northern Michigan, Tricia does something that would have been unthinkable — and impossible — a generation ago: she goes online and posts intimate details of her financial life, including her net worth (now negative $38,691), the balance and finance charges on her credit cards, and the amount of debt she has paid down since starting a blog about her debt last year ($15,312).

Her journal, bloggingawaydebt.com, is one of dozens that have sprung up in recent years taking advantage of Internet anonymity to reveal to strangers fiscal intimacies the authors might not tell their closest friends.

Like other debt bloggers, Tricia believes the exposure gives her the discipline to reduce her debt. “I think about this blog every time I’m in the store and something that I don’t need catches my eye,” she told readers last week. “Look what you all have done to me!”

A decade after the Internet became a public stage for revelations from the bedroom, it is now peering into the really private stuff: personal finance.

The blogs open a homey and sometimes shockingly candid window on the day-to-day finances of American households in a time of rising debt, failing mortgages and financial uncertainty. In 2006, the average American household carried about $7,200 in revolving debt (mostly on credit cards) and $21,000 in total debt.

A blog called “Poorer Than You” (kgazette.blogspot.com) describes the financial doings of a 20-year-old film-school dropout. (Typical post: “Yesterday we ate lunch at Subway for a total of $8.00, and went grocery shopping ... with a list! And didn’t buy anything that wasn’t on it!”) On saveleighann.blogspot.com, Leigh Ann Fraley, 37, provides daily accounts of her escape from $19,947 in credit card debt.

“I teach people how to get out of debt for a living, but I couldn’t do it myself until I started the blog,” said Ms. Fraley, who conducts seminars in personal finance for a bank in Northern California. “I started to write everything down, like, ‘I saved 20 cents today by parking at a meter that still had time on it.’ I tell things I wouldn’t tell my family.” When she got out of debt in December, she said, “The blog was the first people I told.”

A Boston couple who call themselves the King and Queen of Debt started their his-and-hers blog, “We’re in Debt” (wereindebt.com), last March as a way to talk to each other about their debt. They owed $34,155.70 on their credit cards at the time, and an additional $120,000, mostly in student loans.

“My wife and I have good communication skills in every avenue of life except finances,” said the King of Debt, insisting on anonymity because, he said, “We don’t want our parents to find out and kill us.”

Starting the blog, he said, “was a way to communicate.”

Tricia started her blog after reading the online account of another woman, thedebtdefier.blogspot.com, who said she had paid off her credit card debt of $19,794.23 in a little more than a year.

Like other bloggers interviewed for this article, Tricia said she and her husband had arrived at their debt gradually, not by big financial crises but by regularly spending more money than they made, using credit that was offered freely by credit card companies.

more

Most every problem I see with our economy comes from the fact that we long ago gave away our most important power to print money (Federal Reserve Act). That's right, the federal reserve isn't federal at all. It is a privately owned bank...Don't beleive me?...well then believe the man who signed the bill himself.

"I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated governments in the civilized world. No longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men."

President Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924), three years after signing the Federal Reserve Act into law and realising he had given international bankers the mortgage of America (1916)

Until we can motivate our congress to take back this most important power, absolutely nothing of any signifigance is going to change...at least for the good.