Happy Holidays everyone! Sorry I haven't blogged in a bit, but I've been extremely ill and well the holiday-related madness. Anyways, if it pleases the court, I'd like to talk about the latter. Yes, despite several outpatient surgeries and other things I tried to trudge through that oh-so-Christmas event known as shopping. Ok, I only went out three times, but that was enough for me. Frankly, I am beginning to believe they should change the name of Christmas to Consumermas. There was nothing I could find meriting all the hassle at the stores. Especially didn't feel like contributing more funds to China in the form of some plastic trinket. Seriously, is this what the holidays are all about now?
Damn, talk about a pretty intense week! The auto sector looks like it just...just might get saved. Still, it looks as if the issue of over capacity is being looked on, which means job cuts. Sadly, that seems to be the theme of this week's manufacturing update. Well actually there is something on health care...think of it as "nyceve lite". They say it gets darkest before the light, well this must be a long tunnel then. ISM is saying that '09 will suck as bad as 2008. Well before I dispense with the unfortunates, it's time for the Numbers!
(editor's note: I was planning on publishing this morning, but some major personal business involving a sick wiener dog to one of those emergency vets had to take precedence. )
Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to another edition of Manufacturing Monday...er Tuesday! Originally I wanted to post this on Monday morning, but I wanted to include the latest development from the Boeing SPEEA talks. Outside of this we got news from the steel industry, unfortunately not the good kind. Sticking with steel for a moment, there's an op-ed piece I wish to highlight that I thought you should look at. We have news or alarm bells I should say about pensions. Of course we also have some Green news, some ominous, but some good.
But before we get to those, let's take a look at the Numbers!
This is a cross-post from Grist.org. I thought that the Economic Populist readers might be interested in the intersection between manufacturing and the environment -- please tell me what you think
How to save Detroit
Irony of ironies, the one set of products that could save G.M. is the one that G.M. destroyed -- the electric trolley systems of America. According to the well-known research of Bradford Snell, G.M. killed the electric trolley, because in 1922 they decided that the only way to increase car sales was to eliminate the competition, decent public transit. So they bought systems, pressured railroads and banks, bought public officials, did whatever they could to replace electric -- I'll repeat that, electric -- transportation with oil-based transportation.
Greetings ladies and gentlemen and welcome to a new installment of Manufacturing Monday. Now I would like to do something a tad different this week. You see today we get two important economic indicators released. So, instead of waiting a whole week for me to reprise them here, I would go ahead and write about then today! I will still go over last week's indicators, but figured you deserve to get something more up to date as well. The numbers get released around 9:30 Eastern, so they will be covered first, then last week's stuff.
America cannot survive without an industrial base. We cannot simply be a pure service economy anymore than we can be a pure agricultural one or industrial one. Our nation is too complex, it's needs are too large to adhere to one type of sector. The nation would be more at risk to economic cycles if it were to simply go one route or at the very least put most of its focus on say just services. It would be like many towns in this country where there is only one employer or one type of industry supporting the economy as a whole. One need only read the latest news about how the City of London is not doing so well because its Financial Services Sector has gone downhill. Now take that onto an aggregate scale.
But we have alternative car companies who cares about GM or Ford?
In our first installment, we introduced you to the current battle for the fate of General Motors. We highlighted why they share some if not all of the blame for their current situation. We talked about the various sides involved in one way or another with the situation of GM. Today we tackle the big question, what many deemed “unthinkable” previously, what bankruptcy would mean for General Motors and you.
Now many have called on for General Motors to declare bankruptcy. Many of these folks believe that this filing would completely destroy the company. While this may be a possibility, people tend to confuse between the type of bankruptcy that GM most likely would file and the one they may have in their mind.
Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to another installment of Manufacturing Monday. Today we are going to cover something that has been in the news lately, General Motors. Well to be exact, the potential bankruptcy of GM, and what it could mean to you. For many, this is a non-issue, who cares about another car company and a failing one at that? But indeed, it may just be that a collapse of GM could be worse than that of Lehman Brothers and AIG. Of course we'll cover, as always, the economic indicators for the past week and what they also mean. So without further adieu, the Numbers!
Greetings folks to this special election installment of Manufacturing Monday! Today the big economic figure we're going look at will be the ISM survey on Manufacturing, but afterwards I want to share a bigger story. Now I understand most of us, if not all, are either voting for Barack Obama and/or straight Democratic ticket. But why? Well we can cite environmental reasons, the GOP simply don't get climate change. We can cite civil rights reasons, one need only look up Guantanamo on the map. There's the war in Iraq and America's current imperial ambitions. But we also can cite economic reasons.
Greetings, and welcome to new edition of Manufacturing Tuesday. Normally there is a Manufacturing Monday, but sometimes we just can't get the edition out on time. Still, the show must go on, as they say.
Now if manufacturing were a show, this would probably be either a Greek tragedy or a horror. Because, folks, things aren't looking that great. Some economic numbers out late last week point to industrial activity slowing down or stalling. The current credit crisis is causing delays in payments. Smaller industrial enterprises are suffering the most with their credit lines cut down or completely frozen.
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