Not only are you sexy, but you spell good too! LOL

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A blessed thing it is for any man or woman to have a friend, one human soul whom we can trust utterly, who knows the best and worst of us, and who loves us in spite of all our faults.

Not true.

They devote a LOT of attention and most of their time ........ To getting reelected.

I am SO disgusted with EVERY segment of government, every 'party', the media and my fellow citizen that are focused on an election that is a year and a half away. This they ALL do at a time when our country is in more duress than has ever been present in my life time. ANYTHING associated to actually running the country is only done in relationship to the election.

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What is also really disgusting to me is how the american public in general goes along as our rights as citizens are stripped away. Think about it. We have lost alot. This is why I hope the right to bear arms is never lost....even though it is slowly being taken away. I know people say they are bad but first off an armed population is much more resistant to invasion. (china invading us is a problem due to our military sucking now, being deployed everywhere, oh and the fact that china could throw 10 million at us and not flinch). Also I see the population being armed as a symbol. Part of what the founding fathers said was that the government should be fearful of the people and not the other way around. The government is there for the service of the people. When the citizens are no longer armed they loose their ability to take control of the government again when it goes amuck.

Look at the censorship and lies we are being fed. It is disgusting.

Oh and i forgot to complain about free trade. The government keeps forgetting something. They need to do what is in the best interests of the country it represents. Our trade deficits suck suck suck.

That's in another thread.

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The Rise and Fall of the USA ... I mean Rome

When in Rome ...

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the problem is that's it's called global warming ...that's a very threatening phrase. good grief, people think, it’s whole globe! whatever can we do?! we’re dooooooooooomed forrrreeeeevvverrrr! and then they cry and that’s scary. they just don’t want to be scared.

what the climatologists need to do is get the official global warming wordsmith to get the word out that it’s just climate change...climate change…ahhh…that’s nice. i like it. it’s safe, harmless, vapid. hell, the climate changes every day and that’s not scary. plus i think dubbya could get behind vapid.

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Trees give peace to the souls of men * Nora Waln

The forest would be very quiet if no other birds sang than those who sing the best * Henry van Dyke

some fairly sordid tales, rambles, and anecdotes
Hypothetically Speaking * Something More * Cammy Interrupted * An Experimental Vacation * Masked * so..damn..hot * Thank You * My toy, his idea * no.19 Maple Lane * I Have A Surprise For You * Yesterday * In a Quiet Kitchen * help me decide * untitled prose * more untitled prose

rzande1,

Why do you say that? It seems like an odd claim.

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Eudaimonia

jseal, why is that odd? even taking into account service surpluses, the goods deficit is still huge…about twice as much as the service surplus i think…and the current accounts deficit (macro-wise) is pretty frikkin big, too. foreign income receipts and payments are pretty much a wash, but if confidence in the us dollar drops, those receipts will drop, too. i think it's too much to bank on (no pun intended...ok, yeah it was ) - that the rest of the world's romance with the us dollar will continue. already the us dollar has lost more value relative to the euro and other major world currencies. if confidence continues to fall, it would affect stock prices, the ability of domestic companies to invest in foreign assets, etc. in the past, we've pressured other countries to buy the us dollar to keep its value stable but if foreign countries don't want the dollar anymore, maybe because we've pissed them off too much, what then?

what's not to suck?

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Trees give peace to the souls of men * Nora Waln

The forest would be very quiet if no other birds sang than those who sing the best * Henry van Dyke

some fairly sordid tales, rambles, and anecdotes
Hypothetically Speaking * Something More * Cammy Interrupted * An Experimental Vacation * Masked * so..damn..hot * Thank You * My toy, his idea * no.19 Maple Lane * I Have A Surprise For You * Yesterday * In a Quiet Kitchen * help me decide * untitled prose * more untitled prose

wyndhy,

Well, as the U.S. balance of payments for trade in Goods and Services has been in deficit for 35 of the last 36 years, I’d suspect that if there was some essential suckiness in running a trade deficit, said suckiness would have shown up by now.

Let us make the assumption that running a trade deficit is bad. How has that badness been realized? Are Americans worse off now than they were in 1970? If so, it what way(s)? Is the unemployment rate higher than ever before? Has life expectancy decreased? I note that your concerns above are about what might happen, not what has happened.

Let us invert the argument. Are you suggesting that were the U.S. were to run a trade surplus, that surplus would suck for all the countries which would, by definition, be running a trade deficit with the U.S.?

A net outflow of money from the U.S. has paid for by a corresponding inflow of goods and services. Are you suggesting that Americans be prevented from purchasing those goods at the lowest price? If so, why?

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Eudaimonia

Oh lets not forget to talk about how the government finances itself. They sell tbills and then when they are up they sell more tbills to cover the originals and the interest incured. OMG it is a damn disaster. Show me a bank that will let individuals do this idiotic thing.

rzande1,

T Bills are debt obligations issued by the U.S. government. Corporations issue bonds for the same purpose. The analogue for individuals would be credit card debt. All these debts are purchased (and sold) by banks.

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Eudaimonia

Ok first off our trade deficits are terrible because it is the export of wealth from the country. The wealth is transfered out of the country to others. They now sit on all these dollars. What can they do with it? They buy our debt and then they invest in our industries. They do this and make more money. Then what happens is they reinvest even more and more in the country. This is an endless cycle here. The problem is that at some point people start to loose their confidence in our economy as our debt to others grows. Just like as has been said by jseal a credit card. Well unfortunately....as you build a larger and larger and larger balance you eventually get to the point where hey i cannot make the minimum payment. Well what happens when the us can no longer make that payment and no one will lend us more money to pay the interest? We get screwed. Our dollar value will fall into worthlessness and we will have problems. Then look at for example china. They are sitting on huge amounts of dollars. Why is this a problem? Well sure we get crap cheap from them now....but we weaken ourselves. We loose our ability to manufacture at the levels that we need if lets say there is a war. We loose our high tech and defense manufactures and then we get hurt because we dont make our own tanks etc. Did you know for example boeing is building a plant in vietnam? Well back to china. Imagine what will happen if they were to dump all that onto the market? Down it goes. Also it becomes a weapon. Say we want energy and they want the same. We can afford it. Well they dump enough currency on the market so that ours isnt worth enough. Now we cannot afford it. Or they use it as a threat. Say in war this happen. We can no longer buy from our allies. Shall I continue? BTW jseal your argument doesnt work. At a certain point credit cards run out of available credit. We cannot print money either. Only the government can do this. Only the government can get away doing this without any stopping it.

P.S. Check the amount of that the us actually owns of their own industries and natural resources. U will be very surprised.

Actually, that is a good thing. The foreign investment you refer to builds, for example, manufacturing facilities here in the U.S. The automobile plants of Toyota serve as a useful example. The facilities were built by American construction workers. The facilities employ American workers. The products these facilities produce are sold primarily to Americans. If these products are less expensive than comparable “American” automobiles, then the American consumers benefit. That portion of the output not consumed here in the U.S. is exported, employing additional Americans and increasing American exports.



In your scenario above, as the exchange rate for the U.S. dollar drops, the cost in dollars of imported goods increases, suppressing demand for the now more expensive imported products and redirecting American purchasing towards locally produced goods and services.



The Boeing 747, 767, 777, and now the 787 aircraft are manufactured in Everett, Washington. Which airframes are manufactured in Vietnam?



In order to do that, the debt would have to be sold at a loss. Given that the 2005 U.S. GDP was $12.49 Trillion, and the 2005 Chinese GDP was 2.225 Trillion, which economy do you think would be most severely hurt by that event?




Actually, the government cannot get away with it. The debit will be paid one way or another. If the government prints more money to pay the debts, the supply of money will increase, and with it inflation. For a vivid example of this, ref Weimar Germany circa 1923.



Why does that matter?

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Eudaimonia

jseal, i’m not talking quality of life; i’m talking fiscal responsibility, economic diversity and money management. this old gray mare just ain't what she used to be and we can't keep operating as if she was. it’s not just the trade deficit numbers that act as the sole standard for gauging the economic might of the us, it’s all the stuff i mentioned before plus the need to look ahead at the could happens. when there is no more third world to exploit, when most other major foreign currencies are just as valued as the us dollar, when the technological leverage (where most our service surplus comes from) that we have barely managed to hold onto (and has indeed been slipping since ww2) is gone, when our world has become so amalgamated that there are no longer super powers just superior efficacy, our deficit and overall economic value (as in what can we bring to the table in the form of money, goods or services) is going to be the single biggest factor in where we will fit into this new world.

__________________
Trees give peace to the souls of men * Nora Waln

The forest would be very quiet if no other birds sang than those who sing the best * Henry van Dyke

some fairly sordid tales, rambles, and anecdotes
Hypothetically Speaking * Something More * Cammy Interrupted * An Experimental Vacation * Masked * so..damn..hot * Thank You * My toy, his idea * no.19 Maple Lane * I Have A Surprise For You * Yesterday * In a Quiet Kitchen * help me decide * untitled prose * more untitled prose