One of the enduring arguments of the "free" traders has been that the reason why factory workers and others who lost their jobs to outsourcing was that they lacked the proper education. Now putting aside the evidence to the contrary found in the many unemployed factory workers who used the money the government gave them to get an education to learn how to program computers in the late 1990s only to watch those jobs shift overseas. Today we have evidence that yet another class of workers who were presumed (and often they bought it) to be exempt from having their jobs outsourced are losing their jobs to.
Wall Street banks started cautiously sending research jobs to India a few years ago, hiring employees by the handful and running pilot programs with firms like Copal, Office Tiger, Pipal Research and Tata Consultancy Services.
Speaking of China, look at what CBS Market Watch is reporting:
China is forecast to surpass the United States as the world's leading manufacturer in nominal dollar terms next year, earlier than expected, as the U.S. economy slows down and China's continues to grow at unprecedented rates, according to consulting firm Global Insight.
Corporations. $2.5 trillion in sales. Tax liability, zero
brought to you by your tax code at work
Sounds like a slogan to do business in the US doesn't it? Yet assuredly that is not what is happening when corporations line up like the Oklahoma land rush to move to China and India.
Yet, maybe that multinational corporate land rush has something to do with these results?
The Government General Accountability Office just released a report on how many large corporations do not pay taxes yet have strong sales. AP sums it up:
"The rich rules over the poor, And the borrower becomes the lender's slave."
- Proverbs 22:7 New American Standard Bible
On the night of July 12, Fannie Mae Chief Executive Officer Daniel Mudd was having a quiet night with his wife and a glass of wine when his phone rang. The person calling was Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and he was very worried.
Fannie Mae, the biggest mortgage finance company in the history of the world, was in trouble. It's stock prices had dropped 45% since the start of the year. It's borrowing costs were rising as creditors became worried about the chances of Fannie Mae defaulting on its debt. "We're trying to solve a crisis of confidence," Paulson told Mudd after he explained the taxpayer bailout designed by the Bush Administration. "Would this do it?"
(Please note, this blog has been updated due to a recent story in the Financial Times)
Greetings folks, welcome to another edition of Manufacturing Monday. Sorry about last week, it's normally my goal to have a new edition out on the first day of the week, but sometimes life can be unpredictable and throw you a curve ball. Well, several interesting things this week ranging from manufacturing activity to California looking to gain Tesla's plants.
This is a first review the Democratic Policy Platform Draft in terms of trade, economic and labor reforms, focus on US workers. I'll let you click on the original and decide for yourselves.
What I see is a lot of problem description and a whole lot of vague rhetoric that implies more of the same. We know more of the same is not dramatic policy change in favor of US national economic interests or US workers interests.
Parsing through the pages and pages of rhetoric which describe various problems, I managed to pull out a few hints of actual policy agenda and frankly it's not good.
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