Asst. Sc of Treasury under Reagan: America's Has-Been Economy

This is one scary and dismal perspective that unfortunately smacks of the truth:

http://counterpunch.com/roberts03162005.html

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The design and engineering teams of Asian ODMs are expanding rapidly, while those of major US corporations are shrinking. Business Week reports that R&D budgets at such technology companies as Hewlett Packard, Cisco, Motorola, Lucent Technologies, Ericsson, and Nokia are being scaled back.

Outsourcing is rapidly converting US corporations into a brand name with a sales force selling foreign designed, engineered, and manufactured goods. Whether or not they realize it, US corporations have written off the US consumer market. People who do not participate in the innovation, design, engineering and manufacture of the products that they consume lack the incomes to support the sales infrastructure of the job diverse "old economy."

"Free market" economists and US politicians are blind to the rapid transformation of America into a third world economy, but college bound American students and heads of engineering schools are acutely aware of declining career opportunities and enrollments. While "free trade" economists and corporate publicists prattle on about America's glorious future, heads of prestigious engineering schools ponder the future of engineering education in America.
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And in "Counterpunch", OMeffingG! Here is a compendium of his work. If we didn't know who wrote it, we'd think it came from DU!

http://www.vdare.com/roberts/

This stuff is just great!

GettysburgII :yourock:

That's pretty much WingNut Intellectual Headquarters. Apparently this guys finally figured out that the corporate Americas been engaged in a two decade long 'estate sale' of the USA industries. Now with the new bankruptcy laws they will probably start marketing overburdened US workers abroad as 'debt slaves'.

Another recent surprise wingnut economic presentation was:

http://www.energybulletin.net/4733.html
Peak Oil Presentation in the US Congress
by Roscoe Bartlett

What now? Where do we go now? One observer, Matt Savinar, who has thoroughly researched the options, and this is not the most optimistic assessment, by the way, but may be somewhat realistic, he starts out by saying, Dear Readers, civilization as we know it is coming to an end soon. I hope not. This is not the wacky proclamation of a doomsday cult, apocalypse Bible sect or conspiracy theory society. Rather, it is a scientific conclusion of the best-paid, most widely respected geologists, physicists and investment bankers in the world. These are rational, professional, conservative individuals who are absolutely terrified by the phenomenon known as global peak oil.

Why should they be terrified? Why should they be terrified just because we have reached the peak of oil production? Last year, China used about 30 percent more oil. India now is demanding more oil. As a matter of fact, China now is the second largest importer of oil in the world. They have passed Japan. When you look at how important oil is to our economy, you can understand the big concern if, in fact, we cannot produce oil any faster than we are producing it now and there are increasing demands, as there will be, for oil. In our country, for instance, we have a debt that we must service. It will be essentially impossible to service that debt if our economy does not continue to grow. So there are enormous potential consequences, which is why he says that these people are absolutely terrified by the phenomenon known as peak oil.

I'm convinced that with just $100 billion of the Iraq money we could have developed a real alternative to oil for existing vehicles. But nooo, we have to do it the old way. There was a great movie with Marlon Brando that predicted this, exactly. "The Formula" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080754/

Roberts has been trashing Bush for a couple of years. That list of columns is impressive.

Keep the faith.

ideologues. Roberts seems to be a real original thinker.

Hell of a cast in that movie. I love the line mention if the mini-review. "You're not in the oil business, you're in the oil shortage business." The more things change, eh.

The Solar Tower is one possible energy alternative that looks very promising
http://www.enviromission.com.au/

...not very promising at all.

I believe that the plastic over the land acts as like a green house and also recyles moisture such that the land underneath is still arable. Not sure what kind of crop one would grow though

I personally feel a sane platform on the common ground should be
found between the two groups to get these multinational corporations
out of our government.

There is a lot...trade, budget deficits, foreign policy, even global
warming alot of conservatives agree with the environmentalists.

I call it the "people with common sense" and the "bought and paid
for" corporate party.

The corporate party has just grabbed abortion and gay rights in order
to advance their agenda of selling the US down the river for short
term profits.

Unfortunately a good portion of the Democratic Party is also bought and paid for by corporate interests and partake in the pauperization of working America. I think the clearest instances of this is the bipartisan support both of the NCLB Act which very clearly is designed to dismantle Public Education and of the Oil Wars when funneling some of those military-industrial bucks into alternate energy developmentwas clearly the sane course of action.

While Roberts isn't some run of the mill Party hack, make no mistake about it but that he is a profoundly reactionary sort of thinker.

Don't fall too deeply into 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend' sort of thinking. He is no freind of progressive Democrats. Come to think about it neither is Counterpunch.

To get at the heart of Roberts economic thinking read this. I mean really read it.
http://www.policyreview.org/AUG01/roberts.html

It's mostly an analysis of the Depression and its causes filtered thru the lens of Milton Friedmans Moneterism which laid the cause of the Depression at the Federal Reserves door. Mainly their 'allowing' the money supply to drop.

This is a deeply flawed analysis. It is the one that the entire financial world and it's Prince, Greenspan, subscribe to. As the American economy devolves before our eyes in a sea of debt remember this article for within it lies the seeds of what has beomce our great undoing.


If anyone cares I'll repeat some of my views on why this analysis is so wrong. The funny thing is that I don't dismiss monterism. To add to the ironys, and to give you some hint of how weird the world is, Freidman himself abondoned monteterism offically several years ago.

I for one would love to hear them.