Free Trade

The US Government Spending $34 Billion In Europe

March 7, 2008

Elaine Meinel Supkis

As always, the New York Times supports 'free trade' no matter how destructive it is. The owners of the NYT are Jewish. This fact is important to remember when reading the paper. They are very pro-Zionist expansionism. The recent flap over the US using taxpayer dollars to buy inflight refueling jets is a tip of the iceberg here. The US taxpayers are paying for the entire Japan/EU/UK/Israel defenses. We patrol the world's oceans so they can all run their ships everywhere and run up huge trade surpluses with the US. And many Americans are working day and night to enable this. We are going bankrupt, protecting our trade rivals. This is pure insanity. And has to stop.

WARNING: Due to the heavy influence of Jewish ownership of the media, we now have readers muffled in this blanket prohibition to say 'Jewish owners' of anything at all. Especially, the media. The Jewish owned media will happily say 'Christian owned...' or 'Muslim owned' but it is strictly forbidden to say, 'Jewish owned.' I lose Jewish readers who are shocked when I break this iron rule. I was Mrs. Levy in NYC for 20 years. I know the community very well from deep inside. I do this to drag things out into the open to save the Jewish community from its own follies concerning the concept of Israeli colonialization of Palestine.

Buy the Best Tanker

The Air Force’s selection of a European supplier over Boeing for its next generation of tanker aircraft has sparked a frenzy of predictable bipartisan complaints: How could the military outsource these patriotic jobs?
*snip*
Lawmakers from Washington State, where Boeing is a big employer, denounced the decision as a “blow to the American aerospace industry, American workers and America’s men and women in uniform.” Representative John Murtha, the chairman of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, warned that Congress could cut all funding for the multibillion-dollar contract if the Air Force didn’t satisfactorily justify its choice.

Fulminating politicians, unsurprisingly, have avoided explaining the consequences of their arguments: that they would rather have the Air Force buy a more expensive plane, and one that it says doesn’t meet its needs nearly as well, if it were made by an American company.

So, we improve our industrial base by outsourcing it, offshoring it and letting other rivals force down wages, etc. Prices continue to drop as the world spirals down into a depression and the US is overspending on its military and look at the results! The US spends more than the entire world put together on our own military. But we are NOT spending this at home anymore! Not only are we spending US tax dollars to run and keep bases all the nations on earth except for China and Russia, we are now buying our military equipment and arms from the nations we are protecting at our own expense.

80% of US manufacturing today is connected to the military. The rest has been outsourced to death. Our trade deficit is running at over $700 billion a year. A terrible hazard for any nation on earth is to be running giant trade deficits. Ergo: anything that makes this worse is an attack on our sovereignty and our security! So when the Pentagon ships another $36 billion overseas, this is nearly 5% of our entire trade deficit! A huge hunk! HOW DARE THEY DO THIS?

Here is my commentary at the New York Times:

March 7th, 2008 7:52 am

Virtually the ONLY industry we have left is the military/industrial complex. Almost all the rest has been outsourced and offshored. Now we have our military stuff going offshore more and more.

If we spend $34 billion buying European equipment to 'defend the world' while NO ONE in Europe is paying for OUR protection of THEM, we have made the lopsided trade mess ten times worse. This is taxpayer dollars flowing offshore to pay for things we use to protect Europe. In the recent battle between Japan and the US over who pays what for our very expensive protection of oil and trade that Japan conducts with the world, they wanted us to pay for as much as possible. Their share was to be in the form of more loans to our government!

This is how everyone is reaming us out. Our very expensive navy patrols the Seven Seas so all our competitors can move their ships around at our expense. Our native shipping industry has nearly totally collapsed. All the goods from Asia, every last stick, comes here on Asian ships. Every piece of work from Europe comes on European ships.

Free trade has been a total disaster for the US. Eventually we will go bankrupt. Europe should tax themselves and pay for these tankers themselves. Then we will protect them. Simple, eh? And I am very much a 'protectionist'. American can't protect itself at all at this point as we can obviously see. Our national guard is overseas along with most of our military forces.

— Elaine Meinel Supkis, Berlin, N.Y.

The US spends a fortune protecting our trade rivals. No nation should ever fall into this trap we are in. It leads strictly to bankruptcy. Our industries and workers must pay very high taxes in order to fund this security operation. No one in Europe or Asia pays taxes here to do this. If they own businesses here, they pay taxes but they are reaming us out at home because we are stuck with all the bills. They get TAX BREAKS to build factories here while we are not invited into say, Japan. How many factories did we build in Japan lately? Ever?

The debt burden of our military activities is like a lead weight on all American tax payers. It is much worse, actually. Our native companies are now offshoring like mad and tax cheating like crazy because they don't want to support the US government, either! Indeed, the biggest supporters of our national debts are Japan and China. Both, dire trade rivals who are taking us down both domestically and internationally.

Top Iraq contractor skirts US taxes offshore

Kellogg Brown & Root, the nation's top Iraq war contractor and until last year a subsidiary of Halliburton Corp., has avoided paying hundreds of millions of dollars in federal Medicare and Social Security taxes by hiring workers through shell companies based in this tropical tax haven.
*snip*
More than 21,000 people working for KBR in Iraq - including about 10,500 Americans - are listed as employees of two companies that exist in a computer file on the fourth floor of a building on a palm-studded boulevard here in the Caribbean. Neither company has an office or phone number in the Cayman Islands.

The Defense Department has known since at least 2004 that KBR was avoiding taxes by declaring its American workers as employees of Cayman Islands shell companies, and officials said the move allowed KBR to perform the work more cheaply, saving Defense dollars.

These criminals are directly hooked into the power structure via the Vice President---VICE being the operative word here in the sense of criminal activity. They got a $16 billion, no bid contract for our illegal occupation of Iraq. They then turn around and commit treason by refusing to pay the taxes due to our own government. Just as Halliburton decided to relocate to an Arab offshore pirate cove in Dubai. This war is the most expensive war per soldier posted in the war zone than any war in our history. This is a gold-plated war that is bankrupting America. The collapse of our government due to an army of tax cheating, over-billing, offshoring, off-the-bookkeeping gangs is treason. Treason! They should all be instantly arrested and hung like Saddam. Saddam didn't betray Iraq, he misled Iraq. These guys are pure traitors.

And the deal for the US to pay 100% for the jets made overseas in order to be able to fuel our military jets as they patrol Asia and Europe, not America, is insanity. The US was attacked on 9/11 and we didn't have hardly any air force here to protect us. Since then, it is much worse. We lost all our civil liberties but did NOT get back either our army, navy or air force! More and more are overseas working for others. Indeed, even our poor National Guard is no longer here, either! They are now posted overseas. We spend more than the entire world put together and we are the LAST beneficiaries of this largess.

If we taxed our allies, I wouldn't mind so much. But we don't and can't. Recently, the negotiations with Japan got very, very nasty as the Japanese refused to pay our bills in Asia. Forget South Korea or Taiwan. Both have huge trade surpluses with the US and have no intention of paying for our protection of their ships and homes. Waiting until we go bankrupt to solve this problem is pure insanity. It is treason. The fact that the last 3 candidates for President all talk as if we can afford to patrol the planet and pay for it, all three are pro-free trade to boot. All three imagine the status quo can be kept.

It cannot. We are facing bankruptcy. Our banking system is collapsing. Our debts are overwhelming. Our trade deficit is unimaginably high. Our industrial base is collapsing. Tax cheating is rampant to the point that several major tax cheaters could afford to run for President and others are funding the last three candidates. Treason is rampant and we will pay dearly for this. And our media supports this because of Israel. Israel is eating into our military/industrial complex rapidly like a rat eating through cheese. And the desire to make Israel stronger no matter what drives our media into supporting treasonous destruction of our own security.

Aside from the issue of how Israel warps our international diplomacy, we have this serious erosion of our finances even as Israel eats our finances via 'foreign aid' and sweetheart military deals. Tens of billions of dollars a year are eaten this way with no public debate. All the candidates for President who even slightly questioned this were ruthlessly taken down by the media via attack stories or simply ignoring them totally. So the three last candidates support Zionism totally and will continue to destroy our finances and our military procurement just to keep the action going there.

Slap in the Face

May 19, 2005

The complete details of the US aid package to Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority show that Congress is giving only $139.5 million to the Palestinian Authority and not the full $200 million requested by President Bush. And it’s not really going to the Palestinian Authority itself, but rather to USAID approved non-governmental organizations, since Congress is loath to deal with the Palestinian Authority. Clearly, AIPAC’s and Tom Delay’s hysteria about a Palestinian state has resulted in this rebuke to a people that, only three months earlier, Congress had congratulated for carrying out a successful democratic election.

Palestinian agriculture and agribusiness production and marketing---$15M
Trade promotion and capacity building---$24M
Home construction financing---$1M
Job Creation, school and community center construction---$20M
Improved flow of people and goods into Israel---$50M
Subtotal---$110M

The $110 million to Abbas is in contrast to the $12 billion given to the Jews running Israel. It is much worse. $50 million of this money supposedly for the Arabs was actually for building the Berlin Wall of Palestine and the Warsaw Gaza Ghetto Walls. And increasing the number of checkpoints stopping Arabs from moving around. The recent shootings in retaliation for the shootings of children playing soccer in Gaza will increase this penning up of the untermenschen of Palestine. On top of this, US taxpayer dollars were voted for a neo-Nazi style dismemberment of Palestine. The Israeli Jews occupy this land, they don't own it. Yet.

The US has also misspent money in Europe. Europe is as economically strong as the US. Yet they all act as if this were the Cold War and they were ravaged by WWII. This is ridiculous. I would strongly suggest the US withdraw from NATO and force them to pay their own defenses. Especially since this means the return of our military that patrols Europe, not America.

U.S. lawmakers: Don't use Israeli bullets

Israeli-made bullets recently purchased by the U.S. Army should be used for training only, not to fight Muslim guerrillas in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. lawmakers told Army generals.

Since the Army has other stockpiled ammunition, "by no means, under any circumstances should a round [from Israel] be utilized," said Rep. Neil Abercrombie of Hawaii, the top Democrat on the House of Representatives Armed Services subcommittee with jurisdiction over land forces.
*snip*
The Army contracted Israel Military Industries Ltd. in December for $70 million in small caliber ammunition. The Israeli firm was one of only two worldwide that could meet U.S. technical specifications and delivery needs, said Brigadier Gen. Paul Izzo, the Army's program executive officer for ammunition. The other was East Alton, Illinois-based Winchester Ammunition, which also received a $70 million contract.

Our treasonous Congress critters have sneakily voted to have the US buy many important military ordnance from Israel in order to bring more money into the pockets of the rulers of Israel. The US media won't mention all this. Most of my information comes from online sources that publish this news. In the major media, it is all blacked out. The debate here was to cover up where ammo came from to fool Arabs. But they are not fooled. They have their own news sources. This increases the rage in the streets. The only reason they are using is is for the same reason Japan or Europe uses us: we are their military slaves. We do what they want, not what is good for us. But this is with full collusion of the media which is heavily owned by foreigners like Murdoch.

Most media LOSE MONEY. But Jewish owners keep buying up and using media because it MAKES THEM MONEY ELSEWHERE. They know that if they keep a death grip on the media, they will be able to keep in power people who put Israel before America. Note who are our last standing candidates! And note how they are carefully disassembling Obama. He is not 100% Zionist. They will dump him out pretty soon, probably next month. He is under great pressure to surrender to the AIPAC puppet, Hillary Clinton.

Then we get to choose which AIPAC candidate suits Israel best. Both candidates will make many secret promises to the people running the media. Trust me on this. There is a lot of collusion on the part of the media owners and whoever gets to pretend to be President so long as they keep up the treason that is destroying our nation. Of course, when we go bankrupt, all hell will break lose.

The defense spending discrepancy between the USA, Israel and Iran. What could be the reason?

To me this is a good indication of how militaristic the nation of Iran truly is. According to this article, Iran spends 110$ per person in Iran on defense. That amounts to (70 million X 110$) 7.7 billion dollars a year. The article also states that Israel spends 1,737$ per person in Israel. That amounts to (7.241 million X 1,737$) 12.6 billion dollars. Of course, they are both far behind the USA which spends 1796$ per USA person, amounting to (301 million X 1796$) 540 billion dollars.

The US and its freeloading allies get in hysterics over Iran or China or Russia spending money on their own defenses. This is done to egg US tax payers into spending even more money on our wretched system that is deep in debt. Note that no one in Europe is agitating to spend more European tax dollars on defense. Thus, they strong arm us into panic. Oh my, some American outraged by the wars we are engaged in, bombed a recruiting center in Times Square! We have to crush all opposition to our own military adventures. Like in Vietnam. After we lost that war, our trade allies helped us by reaming us out as the dollar died. Ever since the Vietnam war, we have run a trade deficit every year with Germany and Japan, just for example. Never has it been reversed no matter what happens to the dollar.

U.S. Aid to Israel Subsidizes a Potent Weapons Exporter

At an arms trade fair in Paris this week, Israel showed the world’s military shoppers fruits of its high-tech arms industry, including its Merkava tank, unmanned spy planes and the planet’s most sophisticated missile defense system.

With its tourist industry all but shuttered by a 21-month Palestinian uprising and high-tech in a slump, the Jewish state depends deeply on the foreign currency earnings of its weapons industry, now the world’s 10th largest.

Deftly marketed missiles, radar and other products from Israeli companies now compete with those of top-tier arms producers including the United States, reaping about $2 billion of a $27 billion yearly worldwide market, said Kuti Mor, deputy director general of Israel’s Ministry of Defense.

France competes with us, too. So does England and Germany! And they go selling arms around the world and then ask us to protect them and buy their arms! This madness can't last much longer. These same nations gave us loans and more loans as we spend our way to hell. But this is breaking down quite spectacularly. They are willing to lend to us more ONLY if we keep on buying their stuff and keep up the trade imbalance in their favor. The minute this ends, they will kill all loans. And trust me when I say, no alliance is forever. Ask the Russians or Chinese. They have long memories about this sort of thing.

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US Trade Negotiation Failures Continue Unimpeded

December 13, 2007

Elaine Meinel Supkis

The US trade negotiators have always floundered when negotiating in Asia. But lately, the inability to negotiate has been painfully obvious. The US, instead of playing hard ball, is playing wiffle ball. This is because we need 'allies' in our wars in the Middle East and the only way to get this is to have weak trade negotiations in Asia and Europe. I want to concentrate on Japan, the king of hard-nosed negotiations coupled with even suicidal operations set up to kill foreign imports into Japan. All things are one big bundle here and we can't ignore trade while watching the banking system in the West collapse.

I am sorry about not perfecting this article, a blizzard is coming and I have to go out and take my snow plow to the shop to be repaired and am running out of time. I will fix things latter. Thanks.

This is the very latest report on world trade which clearly shows the US negotiators are either traitors or fools or most likely, both.

The ideology of the neo cons is obvious wherever we look. One would think this guy [who happens to be Jewish, by the way] is sincerely happy that our trade is going well because it has been increasing steadily since 1972. The mantra for every news announcement is the same: free trade is increasing jobs in the US and these jobs are high paying. Mr. Schwab has to pretend that we are getting richer and richer on this trade. Of course, there is no mention of corporations based in the US gaining profits. Only workers and ranchers [hahaha] are mentioned! It is as if we are seeing a massive wave of wealth wash over the backwaters of America, making us all the richer.

This is, of course, all lies. Nor should the increase in high-paying industrial jobs be mentioned in relation with global trade when 99% of this is Boeing selling jets. And 90% of the jets sales are sops thrown to the US to keep us in the free trade deals that are destroying our industrial base and wrecking our finances. The jet sales to most countries are actually government-funded or government-controlled situations whereby a government which has a yawning trade surplus with the US such as China and Japan, buy some jets in periodic spurts. But both are also increasingly demanding the US relocate at least part of the manufacturing process in their home bases and of course, the US is doing exactly that.

Mr Schwab boasts that our trade deficit has dropped by 8%. Whoopee. And exports rose by 12%. Double whoopee. If we had a trade deficit that was 1% of our GNP, we could see some hope. But it is not! It is over 6% of our GNP and this is impossibly deep in the danger zone. Indeed, according to the IMF, if a country falls more than 4% of its GNP into the red in trade, they are in danger of default and should be punished. The sole exception being the US. All the nations involved in the IMF conspire with each other to enable the US to run huge trade deficits. The minute the US tries to fix this by increasing our trade, the world trade system breaks apart and we go into a banking crisis as well as political turmoil.

The US refuses to talk about this because our leadership is no longer interested in the facts pertaining to protecting our shores but rather, are out to get themselves and their friends, rich. And I am pointing out the nature of the present negotiator because the US has allowed dual citizenship and the concept of serving not one but two nations at once, as being a good thing. It is, I guess, somewhat OK for citizens of the US to swear fealty to a foreign power [actually, it is not OK] but they can't then also be our international representatives! In Mr. Schwab's case, he lies and evasions that are designed to put us to sleep and assure us all is well when nothing is well at all, means we must look at who he is really serving.

Is he interested in saving America? If so, why isn't he yelling about the gigantic trade deficit? And why is he refusing to talk about all the industrial jobs lost? And why isn't he hammering Japan over trade and banking issues that are killing us rapidly? Why isn't he noticing that Asian powers as well as our European allies are taking over our industrial base here at home while running trade surpluses? Why isn't Mr. Schwab on fire over all the issues I hammer on here at Culture of Life News? It is pretty obvious, what is going on, after all! It doesn't take a genius and I bet Mr. Schwab is very, very smart.

Indeed, as our entire system collapses, we must look at the entire nature of our government. Why has our government been so inept, so weak when it comes to trade negotiations? Our present ruler, Bush, is part of a clan of traitors who go about the planet, making business deals with foreign powers that benefit themselves and not the US. Our vice dictator, Cheney, has closer connections with international arms dealers and has moved his own company's organizational headquarters to Dubai in order to evade taxes and government regulation by Congress. The entire government is now run by traitors and far from having something like the House For UnAmerican Activities hearings, we hear nothing about this. It astonished me back in 2000, how the media refused to talk about the Bush family and their troubling alliances with many foreign governments which seek to either destroy or control the US for their own ends. We can see today that this process has not only fatally weakened the US but will probably cause our destruction in the future.

The flow of inept trade deals has not slowed down, it is accelerating. Ever since the last WTO riots, the strengthening of global police states and the spending on funds to suppress dissent has grown and we no longer see any resistance to globalization. There is a flurry of news this week concerning new trade negotiations.

Japan aide urges US Congress approve Korea trade deal

Japan hopes the U.S. Congress will approve a free trade deal with South Korea that it believes could be a "building block" toward a larger U.S.-East Asian free trade zone, a Japanese official said on Thursday.

"The KORUS FTA (Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement) is one of the models that will facilitate trade liberalization in East Asia and will become one of the building blocks for the FTAAP (Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific)," said Kenji Goto, minister for economy, trade, industry and energy at Japan’s embassy in Washington.
*snip*
But many senior Democrats oppose the pact because they say its auto provisions too heavily favor South Korea, a major auto exporter, at the expense of U.S. car manufacturers.

Why can't the US negotiate trade? This question keeps coming up. Why are we slaughtering our auto making system here in America? I would suggest that the desire to let Asia dominate world and US auto markets is a naked ploy at destroying our unions. They figure, there is no other method available so they made this deal with the devil. Stupidly, this deal has a price. If our clever traitors imagine that after the unions are utterly ruined and helpless, the US capitalists can then restart our industries? Or is the plan to simply move our factories to China and import the cars made there?

Of course it is! So US negotiators don't care if our Asian deals stink as far as US jobs are concerned. The entire point of this is to make things very nasty for Americans! Why do Americans tolerate this? Well, our media seems bent on enabling this process and we can't nail Britteny Spears to the hood of a car and have her babble about free trade. On top of this, Japan, Korea and China are in a three-way battle for market share. When they negotiate with each other, they do it full force. They make hostile moves behind the scenes and wrangle over the smallest details. China, due to its growing power, has forced other Asian nations into serious negotiations over a host of issues. The old Japanese model of simply digging in their heels and yielding nothing is failing them vis a vis China because China moves rapidly to make deals with other Asian nations that are very angry about Japan locking them out.

I noted here the astonishing news that Sanyo, of South Korea, was completely chased out of Japan, a historic mistake by the Japanese since this moved South Korea closer to China. I noted here that China just signed a new trade pact with South Korea and so Japan is now jumping up and down and yelling for more deal with South Korea and you can bet, the business about how Japan managed to kill off all Sanyo's business in Japan will be discussed.

One reason why China's rise in trade and power has been so rapid is due to Japan's dishonesty when it comes to any trade negotiations. Japan, unlike the US, has trade negotiators who are working for Japan, not any foreign powers. The same goes for China. But the Japanese negotiators have been spoiled by the easy deals they have imposed on US trade by either digging in their heels nonstop or by letting in US trade and then strangling it by reducing the purchasing power of the Japanese consumers or other tricks. This hostility to any foreign penetration is producing enemies everywhere but in the US where it has now been totally ignored. Overjoyed by this, Japan has ruthlessly exploited our distractions and is hammering us in trade issues that matter while letting us import, say, apples. Well, sort of. They still fight off agricultural goods with a passion and we are still negotiating beef sales.

South Korea, like Japan, tries to lock out US trade as much as possible. There are various methods they use and here is this week's example:

To save, South Koreans use credit cards

With cards everywhere, the challenge to vendors is to stand out to attract consumers. Gasoline stations, bookstores, airlines, shopping malls, telephone companies, bakeries, amusement parks, KFC outlets - even hospitals - give discounts if a customer presents the right type of card.

The incentives are so many and so diverse that, Park said, "Here a credit card is not just a tool of payment, it's also a way of saving money."
*snip*
Hyundai Card, a joint venture between the South Korean automotive giant Hyundai Motor and General Electric of the United States, plans to expand into the United States, China and India. It hopes that some of the business models developed for the picky South Korean retail market - a graveyard for some of the most competitive global brands, like Wal-Mart, Nokia, Nestlé and Google - will help.

Funny, how all our systems suddenly fail when they try to move into Asia! The hostility which our incursions are greeted is no surprise and our negotiators should have figured this out long ago. Using this knowledge which is painfully obvious at this point, we must set up a counter system: tariffs and barriers. The use of these tools which we threw away during the Cold War in order to cement the power of our empire, have been turned against us. Knowing they can defy us in a wide variety of ways, all our trade partners have set up systems that exclude US trade while enabling their own exports. The only tool we have left is to commit financial suicide. When we go into a bad recession our trade statistics improve. The world knows this which is why they are moving heaving and earth to keep the dollar strong as possible and to keep us spending.

This is no way to run things for it has a fatal flaw: it will bankrupt the US. One reason why I am very suspicious of Mr. Schwab, for example, is because Israel not only gets huge loans and subsidies from the generous US tax payer, Israel runs a huge trade surplus with the US. If the US has a general policy to NOT run trade surpluses and to NOT allow allies to penetrate all our markets, we would have to hammer Israel for doing this. And Mr. Schwab won't do this no will any of the Jewish negotiators do this. So they can't articulate a philosophy or frame trade in such a way that it ceases this endless deficit trading and works towards balance of trade.

This continuing process of flaccid trade negotiations has to have some roots and I would suggest that having our leaders do business with alien powers and profiting personally from this coupled with a host of people who are very well trained in the art of nasty negotiations suddenly collapsing into jelly when it comes to foreign trade and we see something very fishy. For example, when Jews negotiate with Palestinians, they are every bit has hard nosed and difficult as the Japanese! They contest every inch, every olive tree, every tiny word, the slightest change will get them up in arms and they will defy the world rather than give one inch up.

But when Jewish negotiators for America are doing trade deals, they snooze at the wheel. They sign onto all sorts of goofy things without a murmur. I know they have no reason to do this on behalf of Asia. So I suspect their hearts aren't into this project since they are trying very hard to expand Israel's advantages with the US in the field of business, banking and trade. This is never mentioned in the media and if I talk about this, I will be accused of anti-semitism. But seriously, how else can we explain this? Time to look into the past:

US trade negotiator says Japan not ready for free trade deal

Japan is not yet ready to commit to economic reforms and other "bold steps" needed to launch negotiations for a free trade agreement with the United States, a senior American official said Friday.

Assistant U.S. Trade Representative Wendy Cutler, in Tokyo for talks with Japanese officials, said Washington would need to be satisfied there was the political will for such a deal in Tokyo before starting such talks.

"During my meetings here, I didn't sense a readiness from my Japanese colleagues, and so we agreed that we'll just work on ways to deepen our economic relationship," she told reporters at the Japan Press Club.

"A key factor for us in considering an FTA is the readiness and willingness of any trading partner to come to the table with us and roll up their sleeves and say, 'We're ready to do a comprehensive deal,'" she added.

Geeze, so, last October, our negotiators realized Japan isn't ready for 'free trade'? HAHAHA. They never have been ready for free trade. They obviously will not do free trade and this means we should be threatening them with tariffs and barriers and hammering away at Fortress Japan. But does this lovely lady here, Ms. Cutler, pound the table and snarl? Does she storm out of the room and tell the Federal Reserve to start hoarding yen and drive up the value of the yen rapidly? HAHAHA. No! No. The Japanese have lots of political will but it is directed towards increasing exports, not imports. They have zero desire to open their markets. Of course, there are American corporations who want to keep the status quo with small changes. But our government has an obligation to fight any foreign incursions into our markets tooth and nail. Of course, the Japanese then cancel their Boeing contracts just like China threatens to do whenever we try to muscle them.

This should be ignored by our government. We can't let Boeing's sales hobble attempts at hard negotiations. The Japanese are so willing to stop us, they have simply destroyed their own people's ability to buy anything at all rather than let in imports. Car sales are falling in Japan. Exports of cars are soaring! How can anyone expand auto sales in Japan if the Japanese aren't even buying cars anymore? It is a shrinking market so foreigners don't even bother with it. Over and over again, when foreigners penetrate a Japanese market, the government retaliates. In the present case, they keep trying to raise the already high sales tax, higher. If we negotiate hard enough, they will raise the sales tax to 17% and I am not exaggerating, the LDP has actually discussed this just two months ago.

The US negotiators should cut through the fog of Japan's schemes and tell them outright, we are slapping on tariffs on their cars INCLUDING those made inside the US. Until they let us build factories in Japan and they change their system to equalize auto sales, we will close our own markets. But this will kill free trade. And as millions of protestors have noted, this would be a good thing. For us, it has been a total disaster. For the Japanese consumers and workers, the same. They are being rapidly crushed to death by Japan's crude attempts at preventing free trade while endorsing free trade.

U.S and Japan Break Off Trade Negotiations
Published: July 31, 1994

The United States will formally charge Japan with failing to open its Government markets to American telecommunications and medical equipment products after last-minute trade talks today failed to break a negotiating log jam, a United States official said.

President Clinton's Press Secretary, Dee Dee Myers, said that the United States and Japan had failed to reach agreement in the negotiations. She said that Trade Representative Mickey Kantor would probably have an announcement on Sunday.

The formal notification would set in motion a process that could result in trade sanctions against Japan if negotiations over the next two months do not resolve the impasse.

The dispute involves an American effort to pry open Japan's markets as a way of narrowing a huge $59 billion trade gap between the two nations.

The trade gap with Japan remains about the same today as it was back then. Mr. Kantor did pry open the door to Japan a couple of inches but the Japanese used this as a tool to open OUR doors. They came to the conclusion, they most locate enough factories here to keep the US from moving against them. So they sat down and figured out how many cars they can sell here via importation versus how many they build here and sell. A rough estimate of 50% was their goal and they jigger things to keep it at this level as much as possible. There is no political will to stop this since many states [mostly in the Republican south] are now more beholden to Japan than the US as Detroit rapidly dies. This goes back to the 'kill the unions' business. The US leadership wants no unions and letting the Japanese do this is good for that process.

And note the 'log jam' here! There was no log jam. There was systematic refusal to negotiate on the part of the Japanese. I have noted here how Japan and China negotiate. When nothing comes of the negotiations, both go home and retaliate instantly, sometimes, within hours of the failures. I will also note that Japan has been the one giving away ground to the Chinese in the last year. This is why they are caught in a trap of their own making. The more Japan weakens the US, the more they strengthen China! They are having a nervous break down over this and it is partly why their leaders are falling apart, emotionally, in public. Below is a study from 2005:

Still bilateral after all these years: US–Japan trade negotiations in telecommunications

Eiji Kawabata
2005

Telecommunications is a leading industry that occupies a significant part of the contemporary economy and impacts economic development considerably. Since the 1980s, three major trade disputes in telecommunications – the NTT procurement, MOSS/Motorola, and NTT interconnection charge disputes – have developed between the Japanese and US governments. In responding to US pressures, the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications (MPT) has generally been receptive to US demands and willing to contain negotiations to a bilateral format, unlike the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, which has become resistant to US pressures and active in utilizing multilateral arrangements. This paper shows that explicit government involvement in the industry concerned, combined with strong US pursuit of negotiations, made it difficult for MPT to resist US pressure and resulted in its enactment of measures conciliatory toward the United States. These findings are then applied to brief analyses of other trade disputes to show the generalizability of the approach.

I have pulled out some articles at random to illustrate how this process works. Note that in 1995, the US was supposedly making progress in the area of electronics and telecommunication sales in Japan. In 2005, it was still falling apart. There were still resistance! MITI, far from changing, simply changed gears and threw more sand into them. Grinding gears every 5 years is how Japan stalls any penetrations of their markets! Knowing this, we should use their weakness vis a vis China to hammer them about all this. But instead, at all G7 meetings, we support Japan and attack China instead of triangulating. So Japan skips merrily along its chosen path and our own bleeding continues. And lord, the business of the weak yen! That isn't even mentioned, much less, negotiated! To the fury of China who correctly sees this as totally unfair.

By Paul R. Krugman
Published 1995

The realities of Japanese-U.S. trade and investment relations are clouded by mistrust, misinformation, and myth. In what way is the Japanese economic system different, and is it to be emulated or challenged? The contributors, from both the United States and Japan, explore Japanese trade patterns, market structure and trade, financial markets, and industrial and trade policy. Offering analysis of the issues, Trade with Japan is a valuable resource for economists, policymakers, and the business community.

The Japanese, if forced to change, will then continue changing until they succeed at stopping foreign penetration. This process has been painfully obvious for the last 150 years! If they have to start a world war, they will. And pray, why would our relations with Japan be 'clouded'? This is rather, a fog and there is a fog machine in Tokyo. The Japanese learned, with Reagan, how to bribe Presidents of the US. Reagan held dishonest negotiations while President and then, within weeks of leaving the White House, ran off to Japan to collect his $2.5 million bribe under the fiction of giving speeches.

His Altzheimerian recitations were vapid and meaningless as well as short. He was there to collect his cash and then go home again. He didn't make many speeches here, if any, quite frankly. There was no investigation of this astonishing act of treason, by the way. Now, all our leaders and negotiators run off to make money making speeches or working for alien governments or organizations outside of the US. This is also why they won't stop offshore tax havens or the host of other international problems that are rapidly destroying our economic systems.

Typical futile trade negotiations in 1994:

The Honorable Masami Tanabu
Minister of Agriculture,
Forestry and Fisheries
Tokyo, Japan

Dear Mr. Minister:

This letter reflects our joint, serious assessment of where we stand concerning the entry of U.S. apples into Japan following the June 7-8 technical discussions in Washington.

Your technical team has now detailed the remaining technical requirements or entry of U.S. apples into your market. Our scientists understand the remaining requirements and will complete themexpeditiously. However, despite previous oral commitments from the Japanese side, the schedule for completion of the remaining technical work as proposed by the Japanese team will make entry into Japan of the 1993 and 1994 U. S. crop years impossible. This situation is unacceptable.

The U.S. Government and industry have been working on technical issues for over a decade to gain access to the Japanese apple market. This issue has been marked by a series of changing requirements on the Japanese side and by a Japanese lack of flexibility in technical consultations. The U.S. side, for its part, has bent over backwards to accommodate Japanese concerns. For example, at the June talks the Japanese side discussed technical issues that had only been recently raised and that were, in the view of our scientists, of questionable scientific value. Nonetheless, in the interest of moving the issue forward, our scientists agreed to accept the Japanese requirements.

The steps needed now are clear. First, to avoid further misunderstandings, we must have a written list, approved at senior political levels, of all remaining Japanese requirements. We have attached the list agreed upon orally by the Japanese and U.S. technical teams at the June discussions. Unless we hear immediately from you to the contrary, we will assume that you have confirmed that the enclosed document should be treated as the complete list of remaining Japanese requirements.

Italy truckers strike

An aerial view of trucks blocking a highway toll booth during a transport strike on the outskirts of Rome Dec. 12, 2007. Italian truckers defied a government demand to end a three-day-old strike on Wednesday, keeping in place road blockades that have dried up fuel supplies, closed factories and stopped food reaching the shops. The strike, in protest against high fuel costs and poor working conditions, meant supermarket shelves that are usually crammed with fresh fruit and vegetables were running bare, and most filling stations were closed.

Read this letter exchange! My god! And it is about apples? We had to negotiate for YEARS in order to bring apples into Japan? Eh? There were no 'misunderstandings'---the Japanese were locking us out and they didn't care if we wanted in. And they had no intention of making this process easy or helpful. They threw everything in our path to stop us. Instead of simply telling them, we were going to bundle all our concerns and have it out, once and for all or we would toss them into China's lap, no, we patiently 'negotiated' which is what they wanted: time to set up new barriers, devise new systems to stop us. Below is from a government report about trade with Asia:

Click here to see how stupid and clueless our trade negotiators are!

This report notices that our relative power in Asia gets worse and worse as we trade more and more. This should shock our negotiators into action, right? But far from it. The push for more free trade that is reaming us out, that is destroying us, continues relentlessly. Why would anyone from America who is a citizen of this country want to keep on doing what is bad for us? After 15 years of negotiations, our import share in Asia fell from 18% to 10%! One would think this would ring alarm bells. But all it does is trigger the snooze alarm. After 15 years of 'negotiations' we have LOST market shares in Japan, China and Korea!

This failure is historic an important. How can we negotiate so poorly? I want to go back to the issue of the Middle East and Israel's desires there. Israel wants a war with Iran very badly but can't do it themselves. They need the US to be their proxy. The US has bent our entire negotiating system to support this project. Many attempts to spook the world again into attacking a nation without nuclear arms has been ferocious. The recent revelations that the war hysteria was baseless has not stopped this process. The US, despite oil prices killing our economy, has persisted in harassing Iran and restricting trade with Iran which causes oil prices to rise.

This is suicidal but hasn't caused the slightest pause in Washington DC. The negotiations with the Israelis has, as expected, collapsed. This is due to them refusing to give an inch. The need to corner Iran rises so the US has made very bad deals with Japan over support concerning these wars. Japan buys oil from Iran and uses this as a lever to get the US to NOT talk about the weak yen or Japanese penetrations of our markets and them closing Japan to the US. We are sacrificing our domestic markets and running big deficits in order to have Japan 'on our side' in the Middle East! The people negotiating with Japan are willing to let the Japanese win these negotiations if it means, Japan will support our initiatives in the Middle East and this means supporing Israel while destroying anyone who threatens Israel even slightly.

JULY 22,1999.

The U.S. Trade Deficit
Are We Trading Away Our Future?

Look at this chart here! We can see how our trade with Europe has turned into great deficits but our trade with Asia is a total disaster. The US can't allow this yet we seem a veritable Gulliver tied by a thousand threads. Only we tied ourselves up, I would suggest. We want allies for our global games that don't benefit America at all. What are we gaining with our expensive empire? Debts! Loads of IOUs raining down on our heads. We don't see agitation about this only because people are getting a free ride...WHICH IS ENDING.

From Parent 7777, we have a funny chart about how Japan operates versus the US:

Domestic Politics and International Relations in Trade Policymaking: The United States and Japan in the GATT Uruguay Round Agriculture Negotiations 2000

Note that we do NOT negotiate with the Prime Minister or President of Japan, we negotiate with the government drones who protect their political bosses. In the US, it is the opposite.

INTERNATIONAL BRIEFS; Japan Car Deal Pressed by U.S.

Clinton Administration complains that Japan is not honoring 1995 automobile trade agreement and requests intensified efforts by Japan to open its markets; sales in Japan by Big Three auto companies dropped 20 percent during first nine months of 1997
December 5, 1997
**********************************************
Ford Sales Fell 4.3% in April as Big 3 Lost Share to Foreign Makers
By ROBYN MEREDITH
Ford Motor Co says its sales dropped 4.3 percent in April, as Big Three American auto makers lost ground to Japanese auto makers that benefited from favorable exchange rates; Big Three sold 73.3 percent of cars and trucks purchased in US in April, down 2.1 percentage points from April 1996; Japanese auto makers picked up 1.2 percentage points of market share, while German auto makers gained another seven-tenths of a percentage point
May 6, 1997

Note that the negotiations with Japan to open auto sales up ended up with US failure. Instead of happy days with rising sales, they COLLAPSED by 20%! In less than 5 years. And so it goes: free trade continues as the US tries to use recessions as our only tool for improving trade. The chart above shows this clearly. Every recession, we 'improve' but then Asia redoubles their efforts and things get worse and worse, each cycle. Mr. Schwab should know this information. I am assuming, since I can see it, he can too. He is too smart to be ignorant.

This is why I am assuming he and all the others are following a secret agenda they dare not articulate in public.

Culture of Life News Main Page

Korean (COSCO) Ship Carrying Santa's Toys Crashes

11/11/7

Elaine Meinel Supkis

The Chinese ship that hit the Oakland Bay Bridge in California is polluting the entire bay. Today, in another closed waterway, Azor, a Russian tanker split in two under heavy seas and sank totally. Also in today's news about global trade, Samsung, a Korean electronics firm, has been totally driven out of Fortress Japan. Correction on story: the ship evidently is Korean.

Click here to see a lot of good pictures of the shipping disaster in San Francisco.

From the SF Gate:

The Cosco Busan was carrying container cargo bound from Oakland to South Korea. It had just left the dock on the Oakland estuary west of Jack London Square and was proceeding to sea when the accident occurred.

The pilot on board was Capt. John Cota, who has worked on the bay for more than 25 years, said Patrick Moloney, executive director of the San Francisco Pilot Commission. Cota is one of the most experienced of the 60 captains who guide ships into the bay, Moloney said.

Although the ship's own captain has overall responsibility, the pilot controls the navigation of the vessel from the time it leaves the dock until the ship is clear of the approaches to the Golden Gate, about 12 miles at sea.

One of our readers pointed out to me that this ship is South Korean. I first wrote that with this story and checked out the information but then all the news stories talked about COSCO. Which is Chinese. The Asian consortiums are confusing and although my ex-husband worked in shipping and I once worked for a German corporation, this was years ago and the landscape of international commerce changes all the time. Perhaps I should look deeper into this web of deal making in the shipping industry. Obviously, things are consolidating and getting bigger just like in the equally confusing oil industry, for example.

From Xinhua:

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency in the San Francisco Bay on Friday, as oil spilled into San Frnacisco Bay was spreading around the area.

*snip* The cargo ship bumped into the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridgeon Wednesday morning due to a dense fog, leaking about 58,000 gallons of bunker fuel, thick and oily, and difficult to be cleaned up.

Coast Guard officers initially said about 140 gallons of the viscous fuel had oozed out, but they had not updated figures to local officials and the public for more than 12 hours as the spill was failed to contain.

Outraged by the delay, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom threatened a legal action.

The official Chinese news service doesn't mention who owns this ship. Like in the US, the people running the media in China are good at covering stories while leaving out vital details. Way back when I was very young, I used to joke, one needs to read the news of one's rivals in order to learn what is really going on at home. So if you were a Russian in the 1960's, going to the BBC or NYT garners more information about local events than going to Pravda. And if you were an American, the reverse. I used to go to great trouble to get short wave radio shows from communist nations, for example, to see what was going on in the Vietnam war, for example. It usually was quite accurate.

So the Chinese, embarrassed by all the scandals of tainted toys right before Xmas, This whole orgy of importing stuff so we can stuff our stockings with more junk we don't need is turning sour. So on top of all this, I could say, Santa's sleigh is sliding down the slippery slope. Or, watch out for them thar elves, Martha! They are a-comin' to kill the kids! The US used to ship toys via trains. There was virtually no occasion to ship them on gigantic carriers like the ship that crashed this week. Why, I am so young, I even remember when toys were manufactured in New York state!

I even remember 10 years ago when my little town of Berlin, NY, had flourishing businesses that used trains and trucks to ship things all over the USA. Now they are gone except for one that does Pentagon work and another that does that and general plastics manufacturing. So the US is being besieged by many huge ships that restlessly prowl the Seven Seas and this flood of imports are a serious problem for us. We have a trade deficit.

On top of all this, when these monsters get in trouble, they cause huge ecological destruction. If a train carrying toys derails, this can be annoying. The same toys on a huge tanker means lots of dead animals, flithy water and our waterways turned into cess pools. This is one of the hidden costs of global free trade.

Time to visit this huge shipping operation.

China Ocean Shipping (Group) Company (COSCO)

the national flag carrier of the People's Republic of China, is one of the world's premier full service intermodal carriers. The company utilizes a vast network of ocean vessels, barges, railroad and motor carriers to link the international shipper with the consignee.
Founded in 1961, COSCO has consistently been the world's fastest growing shipping company over the past decade and is now one of the largest container operators in the world. The company's core international shipping business is divided between Chinese imports/exports and cross trade cargos.

Bigger Faster Ships

COSCO continues to make major investments in its equipment. New, larger ships have greatly increased COSCO's capabilities. Currently the company owns and operates a fleet of more than 117 container ships for a total capacity of 256,171 TEU.

We can see the downside of bigger, faster ships. There are always hidden costs to doing things and the news this week illustrates one of them. The bigger the ships, the bigger the mess they make when they sink or crash. The clean up is a hidden cost for the US. And of course, the ineptitude of the US Coast Guard is connected to our refusal to protect America. We are spending nearly a trillion dollars, securing the Middle East for Israel and Saudi Arabia while at home, all our systems are collapsing. The Coast Guard was unable to do much after Hurricane Katrina due to underfunding and neglect and now they were unable to prevent a major oil spill due to the fact that our government isn't bothering to come up with better ways or more man power to deal with major oil spills.

Our trillion dollars for oil in the Gulf leaves us engulfed in oil spills here at home.

More news about COSCO:

After only 10 months of implementation, the COSCO Shipyard Group, one of China’s major shipbuilding companies, has already realized significant productivity and quality results to warrant a more rapid deployment of Intergraph SmartMarine 3D™ engineering design software solutions to all five of its yards for ship and offshore projects.

Typical start-up times for comprehensive software solutions use on real projects is one-to-three years, but because of SmartMarine 3D’s ease of use, integration and ability to increase shipbuilding productivity and quality, COSCO is accelerating implementation. SmartMarine 3D streamlines marine outfitting and structure design processes and provides all the functionality needed to design and build many different types of marine facilities and equipment, including offshore platforms, naval and commercial ships, and floating production, storage, and offloading (FPSO) vessels.

The US doesn't build the ships that bring Santa's toys. We don't own them, we don't sail them and we have no control over them. We are not the captains running this Free Trade ship. We are bystanders. Seafaring technology and the fact that China has huge ship-building yards while we have virtually none seals our fates as world rulers. We are a hollow shell now. The fact that we won't be able to force the Chinese to change how they ship here proves this. The US will talk tough and then enable this to continue all in the name of cheap prices and killing US unions. Which are still enemy #1 to our government and the wealthy speculators on Wall Street.

From the BBC:

A Russian oil tanker has split in half during a severe storm near the Black Sea, spilling around 1,300 tonnes of fuel oil. A Russian official said it was a "very serious environmental disaster", which would take years to solve.

The vessel was at the Kerch Strait, between the Azov and Black Seas, when it broke up after being battered by 5m (16.5ft) high waves on Sunday morning.

I wonder where this ship was going? Russia is one of the biggest oil producers on earth. All over the planet, ships sail silently with their huge cargoes of oil, making the news only when they sink and then destroy some shoreline, some habitat. During WWII, many ships were sunk and the mess this caused was still a problem even in my childhood. The oil from this still washed ashore in places like Coney Island, for example. Hard, round, black balls of oil. Then we might get fresh spills in storms. After one storm, a girlfriend of mine and her dog set out to go to the beach at sunrise to see the ocean. Her yellow dog romped ahead of us and then came back over the dunes, pitch black. The mess on the beach took several months to sop up.

These occasional La Brea Tar Pits moments aside, most people are content to continue shipping oil all over the place so we can burn it, a tragic and heroically hideous misuse of this important natural resource.

From Xinhua:

China's quality control watchdog said late Saturday initial investigations had found the bead toys that were recalled in the United States contained toxic substance.
*snip*
The AQSIQ noted a Hong Kong firm, agent of Moose Enterprises, outsourced the toys production to Wangqi Product Factory. The English name of the Hong Kong firm is not yet available.

Investigations showed Wangqi Product Factory used the toxic "1,4 butylene glycol" as softener in the production, and the product contained 14.5 percent of "1,4 butylene glycol".

I say, arrest the executives of the corporations that outsourced the toy making and then didn't bother to patrol the factories making toys in their own names. When unsuspecting parents buy toys, they don't see 'AQSIQ' on it. Just as Mattel talks and talks about 'branding' so I say, brand the executives on their foreheads with the name of their Chinese outsourced sub-groups! Then, when the executives talk, we can be reminded of who they really represent. And the Hong Kong firm: this should remind us that a former Queen Elizabeth pirate cove is now run by the Chinese. But in the pirate days, this whole mess would have happened and it is due to the semi-lawless nature of Hong Kong in the first place.

Responsibility for the downside of global trade rests upon the economic leaders in the US and Europe.

From MSNBC:

About 175,000 Curious George Plush Dolls were recalled Thursday, becoming the latest popular toy made in China found to be contaminated with dangerous levels of lead.

Manufactured by Marvel Toys, of New York, N.Y., the Curious George dolls contain excessive levels of lead in their surface paint, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

An old online joke is that Bush is Curious George. So it is fitting that the toy that represents him is toxic. Marvel Toys is a classic example of executives in America refusing to patrol their own products. Forcing the government of China and the US to do this is wrong. Marvel Toys should be shut down and the executives put on trial for peddling dangerous goods to our beloved children. In the news this week is the ugly fact that the US child death rate is higher than Europe and other 'Western' nations. So it seems we are indifferent to the health and welfare of our children. Let them chew on a toxic Curious George monkey doll!

From Google:

Samsung Electronics Co. said Friday it had stopped selling flat panel televisions and other consumer products in Japan, citing poor profitability.

Samsung has emerged in the past decade and a half as a global force in consumer electronics, taking on and even beating Japanese rivals in places such as the United States and Europe.

But penetrating the competitive Japanese consumer market, home to rivals such as Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Sony Corp. and Sharp Corp., appears to have been a considerable challenge.

Samsung is a major electronics corporation. They export many products to the USA. But this Korean company was chased out of Japan. Not content with making them a small force, the Japanese managed to slam the door shut in their faces. This is how Japan operates. It has a fine trade surplus because it won't let anyone sell anything in Japan if this can possibly be prevented. On top of this, profit margins are very low in Japan due to the moronic need to keep inflation as low as the interest rates used by the industrialists there. They need this financial advantage so they can undercut the Koreans in trade with the US and Europe.

The Koreans are very annoyed by all this. They can't muscle Japan like China can. It is increasingly obvious that there is a counter force building in Asia whereby all the other Asians will eventually beat down Japan. Right now, Japan just wants to keep the US in an armlock. The US investor/speculator class desperately needs the carry trade for cheap money but with cheap money Bernanke dropping rates like crazy, the attraction of Japanese loans lessens.

Here is the financial facts about Samsung showing their profitable business.

Samsung isn't failing in Japan because they are inefficient or priced badly. They were muscled out by the Japanese businesses making profitability there impossible. This dishonest form of free trade is hurting Japanese consumers but the guys running that place don't care. Note how the opposition party in Japan is folding just when victory was in sight. Instead of rallying the Japanese to move forwards and change course, the inflexibility of their system defeats political change.

This means change will happen the hard way, of course. As always. When the winds outside tear off the roof. This is true of the world's #1 economy, America.

Culture of Life News Main Page

Bush Wants Poison Toys For Tots With No Insurance

Chinese newspaper scrap inside a new box of screws we bought today

October 30, 2007

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Astonishing, isn't it? After all the bellyaching over the lead paint on toys, Bush wants to cut even more, the product safety and testing arm of our government! And even as the criminals in the White House allow a flood of defective and dangerous products into this nation, they are yelling about the cheap yuan yet again. Meanwhile, Ford announces they are moving their research and development to China as well as their factories. And Japan's depression deepens as the government turns the screws on the people in order to keep super-low interest rates going. Namely, inflation rages there in the lower levels.

From the NY Times:

The nation’s top official for consumer product safety has asked Congress in recent days to reject legislation intended to strengthen the agency, which polices thousands of consumer goods, from toys to tools.

On the eve of an important Senate committee meeting to consider the legislation, Nancy A. Nord, the acting chairwoman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, has asked lawmakers in two letters not to approve the bulk of legislation that would increase the agency’s authority, double its budget and sharply increase its dwindling staff.

Ms. Nord opposes provisions that would increase the maximum penalties for safety violations and make it easier for the government to make public reports of faulty products, protect industry whistle-blowers and prosecute executives of companies that willfully violate laws.

It was obvious to me from the first day that the racket about China and the lead poison toys was pure propaganda. This racket, this cold-blooded scheme was supposed to cut back Chinese trade with the US but it backfired on Mattel, Disney and Sesame Street. I said back at the beginning, the US government and the US corporations making profits off of Chinese labor and Chinese contractors were 100% responsible for safety and regulations of materials, not the Chinese.

I even pointed out that Bush has enabled this sort of business and this was cheered on by the very same corporations who conspired to blame the Chinese. Now we see that corporate America and the GOP have zero interest in protecting the consumer and keeping our children alive. Coupled with Bush's veto of the Child's Health Bill and we can see where these criminals are coming from: hell. Eventually the government of China will do all the things our own Sovietized government refuses to do. Like any third world nation moving up the ladder, China doesn't have the same concerns we have. But eventually, they will get around to these matters.

Meanwhile, we move down this same ladder. The yelling about bad health toys was really an acknowledgement that we have lost control of production and the refusal to implement controls and testing of products means a continuation of the 'buyer beware' mentality of our ruling elites and the rich who run these corporations. The three child-selling giants all proclaim to be interested in the welfare of our children. But they cynically expose them to danger. All for a buck.

We owe the Chinese the same apology Mattel had to give. Shame on the USA. Bad, bad doggie. No bones for you.

From the NYT:

Tony Fratto, a White House spokesman, said that Ms. Nord had not coordinated her effort to kill the legislation with the White House. But he said that the administration shared many of her concerns and that Allan Hubbard, President Bush’s top economic adviser at the White House, was preparing to send a letter to Congress “that is probably even more forceful than Ms. Nord’s.”

Hubbard is a traitor. He and his ilk have opened the doors to tainted products. He is an advocate for 'free trade.' And what is this letter going to say? 'Not only won't we protect our children, we hope they DIE'?

From the NYT:

General Motors announced Monday that it would build an advanced research center in Shanghai to develop hybrid technology and other designs.

It was the latest research investment in China by a foreign automaker despite chronic problems with purloined car designs.

G.M. already has a 1,300-employee research center in Shanghai with its main Chinese joint venture partner, the Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation. The separate, wholly owned research center announced Monday, for the most advanced vehicle engineering and development, could help G.M. keep greater control over new technologies than through the joint venture.

Here is yet another sign that Chna, not the US, is in the driver's seat. China turns out far many more engineers and designers than the US. In the US, many of the graduates in these fields are now Chinese, anyway. IBM still hires some scientists in the US but they must go to China to do their work since the production is now in China. And all the mega-corporations in the US are tranfering not only their factories but now, their research facilities to China.

Not only does China produce many engineers and others in these fields, many of the graduates are of very high intelligence due to the very simple and obvious rules of evolution: the competition for slots in the universities and colleges are fierce and so this is a true survival of the fittest at work. Always, production is followed by research moving. We didn't move research to Mexico back when we moved our factories there and this was due to the factories being physically very close to the US and thus, easy to keep in a lesser role. China is on the other side of the planet.

Long ago, I explained this but the free traders who lusted for Chinese labor profits pooh-poohed people like myself. Remember all the lies about how we would work 'smarter' and hold 'higher-paying' jobs? This was based on the erroneous belief which is pure racism that the Chinese were inferior and couldn't compete with us for positions requiring intelligence and training! Right now, a Chinese rocket is surveying the possiblity of landing on the moon and exploiting lunar resources. Not that US readers have heard much of this!

China has wisely made it quite clear, they intend to be a top nation and to run things themselves. They are tapping into our free trade system and using it to strengthen China's industrial base and improve their infrastructure. And the end result is going to be them dominating the planet. And why not? After all, this is our goal! Why shouldn't it be theirs?

The NYT:

Honda, Ford, Volkswagen and other foreign automakers have all announced their own research centers in China in recent months, although none have been as aggressive as G.M. in transferring technology to China.

Monday’s announcement coincidentally came after the government’s National Development and Reform Commission disclosed Friday that it was drafting stringent local-content rules for alternative-fuel vehicles to qualify for expected subsidies. The rules will require that major components be made in China.
*snip*
The Chinese government’s move is aimed partly at Toyota, which assembles Prius gasoline-electric hybrid cars in China but ships critical components in sealed boxes from plants in Japan.

The Chinese are very annoyed about this. They want us to move all our technology to China. The Japanese secrecy will, in the end, bite them in the rear as other nations rush to fill in where Japan refuses to go. The Japanese will find themselves cut out of the growing Chinese markets while others will play the Chinese game. Because Japan has decided to literally kill its next generation, I predict here that Japan's ability to produce innovation and outstanding products will begin to collapse in the nearer future starting in about 10 years (assuming we are talking about the Chinese 50 year plans here). The Chinese are in this aggressive Darwinian fight for positions while Japan is giving up the ghost at home, in the lower grades.

The Japanese and Chinese have a long history of pushing each other down. They are very competitive and quite aggressive about this. Right now, the Japanese and Chinese are playing a currency game involving the world's #1 and #2 FOREX reserves. The Japanese want the yen to run at 130 to the dollar and it is now at 114 to the dollar and the Chinese keep raising the value of the yuan step by step. They plan to make the yuan rival the dollar and the euro as a world currency in the end but not because this will be bad for trade but because they will rule the planet. The fact that the US deliberately wants a weak dollar is a sign that we gave up this role.

From Reuters:

The United States is strongly committed to a strong U.S. dollar and financial markets there are recovering from the subprime crisis, some quicker than others, U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said on Tuesday.

Paulson, speaking at a forum in the Indian capital of New Delhi, also said while innovation in U.S. capital markets had contributed to the subprime crisis, innovation was desirable and a contributor to growth in the world's largest economy. "I'm strongly committed to a strong dollar," he said in a moderated on-stage interview at the Fortune Global Forum, adding that currencies should be set in open markets based on economic fundamentals.

We now know that the US was pushed by the other G7 dwarves to make the dollar stronger. The Japanese certainly want this! The other 5 dwarves wanted Japan to strengthen the yen, too. But both the Japanese and the American dwarves refused. This irritable battle has pushed Goldman Sachs into mouthing platitudes about a stronger dollar while the US does everything in its power to kill the value of the dollar and kill domestic markets. Heck, kill small, teething babies. Why leave them out? And what is this about 'innovation in US capital markets?

That, alas, is mostly attempts by a bunch of fraudsters and criminals to circumvent both Great Depression banking and finance rules and evading product safety rules! All these products mainly produced two major goods: a gigantic trade deficit and an even bigger mountain of debt! Trillions of debt dollars! Which are part of the flood of US dollars that are now making the dollar as weak as a peso.

From Reuters:

Paulson, who was not speaking from prepared notes, said China still had some work to do to get to a market-determined exchange rate, and needed more yuan flexibility in the meantime.

And here it is: HAHAHA. Belly laugh time. Paulson wants a strong dollar but also wants even more, a stronger yuan which means a weaker dollar! The G7 dwarves certainly can be entertaining. They want the Chinese to be stronger but they also need the US dollar and the Japanese yen stronger. I would kindly suggest they give it up. The G7 are not on the same team or the same side or sane. Either they finally admit we are in a dog-eat-dwarf world or rather, a dragon-eat-dwarf world or they throw in the towel and admit that all that stupid propaganda about capitalism is all lies.

Except the Chinese believe in capitalism and are practicing it! Ruthlessly! Will wonders never cease? They will even make poisoned toys for the US tots if US corporations want this! The illusion of cooperation the Bilderbergian rules project is all fake. They want a controlled environment whereby they can milk whatever cows they wish and get filthy rich, to hell with everyone including our planet. But they do NOT want ANY real competition or other ways of doing things or other entities in control. Just as Britain is now kow towing to Saudi Arabia, so does the US. This is because SA has sovereign wealth. I wonder when Hu will visit us again? Last time around, the US rulers were very contemptuous.

Now, they will be forced to sing another song. Or maybe not! Maybe now the plan is to milke the Chinese cow while tasering it with electric cow prods? And pray, how long with that work? The answer is obvious.

From Bloomberg:

Japan's wages fell in September as an extra holiday in the month shortened working hours. Summer bonuses dropped, sapping household buying power and sentiment.

Monthly wages, including overtime pay, fell 0.5 percent from a year earlier, a ninth decline in 10 months, the Labor Ministry said today in Tokyo. Summer bonuses, which typically amount to about 10 percent of a worker's annual income, declined 1.1 percent, the first drop in three years.

The Bank of Japan, which is expected keep interest rates unchanged at 0.5 percent today, has said demand for workers should drive pay higher, stimulating consumer spending and sparking inflation. Unemployment climbed for a second month in September and the number of jobs for each applicant fell, reports showed yesterday.

``It's extremely difficult to be anything but pessimistic about consumption,'' said Glenn Maguire, chief Asia economist at Societe Generale SA in Hong Kong. ``The entire notion of the virtuous cycle of production, wages and consumption is completely unraveling.''

The yen traded at 114.76 per dollar at 11:04 a.m. in Tokyo from 114.69 before the report was published.

Wages have declined about 10 percent, or about 400,000 yen ($3,500) over the past decade. The end of tax breaks in June and higher prices of gas and staples such as bread and instant noodles have also eroded disposable income and damped consumer sentiment, which is near a three-year low.

Indeed. Now everyone knows that Japan has inflation. The fake inflation information put out by the criminals running the Bank of Japan and the obvious criminals running the LDP can be safely ignored. Japan's disgusting need to have near zero interest rates for industrialists is beginning to seriously bite into the lives of the people of Japan. Unlike the Chinese who are seeing some rise in income and buying power despite inflation of food, the Japanese are being ruthlessly depressed. Unlike China which has sovereign wealth, the Japanese have massive debts.

The Japanese desire to hold all the cards and treat China as a junior partner is doomed to fail. The US/Japanese desire to keep China below them is doomed if both base this on weakening their own currencies all the time. Eventually they will both have to hand over all world power to China if they both want weak currencies and no responsiblity over the quality of what is sold in their countries. Eventually, just as Japan used to be code for 'cheap and lousy' but now is seen as high quality, so it is with China: they are aiming to be the quality producers, not the cheap sellers.

Culture of Life News Main Page

Hutchinson-Whampoa Tid Bits Of History

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Time to look into a major Chinese conglamorate monster organization, Hutchinson Whampoa/Cheung Kong Holdings. It illustrates clearly, the history of the declining British Empire, the various pirate coves set up by the Crown and how the Chinese took over the Asian off-shore havens and the accumulated holdings there. The Chinese have, since 1970, accelerated their control over business in Asia. As a recession deepens in the West, it pays to look into the doings of the Chinese who happen to have used these recessions in the past to expand their control over the markets in Asia and now, the world. They have sovereign wealth.

The history of Hutchinson-Whampoa:

2000:

@In January, the Group teams up with the US's Name-Your-Own-Price Internet pricing system Priceline.com with a plan to bring buyer-driven e-commerce to Asia.

@In January, the Group and Cheung Kong (Holdings) Limited form a joint venture named iBusiness Corporation with the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited and Hang Seng Bank, with the aim to become the dominant service provider and business facilitator by capitalising on the resources, network and customer base of the four partners.

@In February, the Group accepts a revised offer by Vodafone for all of their Mannesmann shares. The consideration is 3,056,910,365 new Vodafone shares.

@In February, the Group forms a 50-50 joint venture with Computer And Technologies Holdings Limited, to set up an Information Technology Resource Centre with expertise in IT and e-commerce application development.

@In February, the Group and DLJdirect enters into a 50-50 joint venture agreement to expand DLJdirect's on-line investment service throughout Asia to Hong Kong and mainland China, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Indonesia. (The JV is subsequently renamed Hutchison CSFBdirect.)

@In March, the Group's China-related new media mega-portal, TOM.COM, commences trading on the Growth Enterprise Market ('GEM') of The Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited (stock code: 8001).

This is just a small measure of the many actions taken by this conglomerate just 5 years ago. Here is what they did this last years:

2007:

@In February, Hutchison Port Holdings enters into agreements with Saigon Investment Construction & Commerce Company Limited (SICC), to jointly construct, develop and operate a new container terminal in Ba Ria Vung Tau Province, Vietnam, throughout the term of the 50-year concession. The new joint venture company is named Saigon International Terminals Vietnam Limited.

@In March, Hutchison Telecommunications International Limited announces the launch of its Indonesian mobile operation Hutchison CP Telecom (HCPT). The company commits to provide GSM mobile telephony services under the 3 brand with 3G network services overlaid in the key cities of Indonesia.

@In June, Husky Energy Inc has been awarded exploration licenses on Block 5 (2007-22) and Block 7 (2007-24) from the West Disko 2006 Licencing Round, offshore Greenland.

@In July, Husky Energy Inc announces the completion of its acquisition of the refinery in Lima, Ohio, USA from Valero Energy Corporation. The agreement to acquire the refinery was announced on 2 May 2007 and made effective on 1 July 2007.

@In August, Hutchison MediPharma Limited ("HMPL"), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Chi-Med, enters into a drug discovery and development agreement with Eli Lilly and Company ("Lilly"). Under the agreement, Lilly and Hutchison MediPharma will initially collaborate on the discovery and development of pharmaceutical agents focused on targets in oncology and inflammation.

@In October, Husky Energy Inc announces that Husky Oil Operations Limited and Esso Exploration Greenland Limited have been awarded a joint interest in an exploration licence on Block 6 (2007/27) from the West Disko 2006 Licencing Round, offshore Greenland.

@In October, Hutchison Telecommunications International Limited announces that its Macau mobile operation Hutchison Telephone ("Macau") Limited, has launched 3G services using WCDMA technology.

This mega-business machine is located in Hong Kong. Hong Kong was set up by the British to be one of their many, many tax-havens and piratical business invasive operations over 100 years ago.

History of Hong Kong:

The history of Hong Kong begins in 1842 at which time the Island known as Hong Kong, meaning "Fragrant Harbor," became the first British possession in China as a result of China's defeat in the so-called "Opium War" and the imposition of the first of a number of "unequal treaties" (a term used to describe treaties which were imposed upon the vanquished). Prior to Britain taking possession, the island was home to a few fishing communities; lacking good sources of water, it had few permanent residents. Britain had used Hong Kong and other islands as resting and refueling stops in its growing China trade; Hong Kong was also frequented by pirates and the British often colluded with them, especially in the banned opium trade. Britian requested the cession of Hong Kong so that it would have its own colony just as the Portuguese had had Macau for the previous 300 years (since 1557). One of the issues at stake in the Opium War (1839-1841) was the status of Macau as the Chinese had decreed that all ships, from all nations must trade with China ONLY through the offices of the Portuguese on Macau. The British were offended at this and wanted free trade, which the Treaty of 1842 partially provided.

Was it purely accidental that the British set up a pirate cove right next to China? I would suggest not. There is a very strong correlation between running off shore, often illegal operations and the British Crown. Far from being a nice, dithering sort of family, the British Royals, descendants of Viking raiders and invading hordes during the Dark Ages, they never lost this taste for piracy. Just as the Brits lost control of the United States but kept all their little islands intact and useful in various ways, so it was with Hong Kong. Banking and insurance cluster on these many little islands because they have no one watching what they are doing which is why Hong Kong started out as a criminal drug-running outfit.

It is of great interest to me to see Britain co-invading Afghanistan and that place suddenly becoming a global opium producing power. This is as natural as a rock falling due to gravity. Hutchinson Whampoa isn't merely an anonymous organization, the history of British rule and then the degradation of this rule as the Chinese, no slouches when it comes to money and capitalism, gradually and then very suddenly, took over.

From Wikipedia:

Hutchison Whampoa was originally two companies founded in 19th century,namely Hong Kong and Whampoa Dock, established in 1863, and Hutchison International in 1877. Hutchison International, under Sir Douglas Clague, gained controlling interest of Hong Kong and Whampoa Dock in the 1960s.

In 1977, Hutchison acquired all stakes of Hong Kong and Whampoa Dock and became Hutchison Whampoa Limited.

Although Hutchison had a portfolio of valuable real estate interests in docks and retail ventures, the company ran into trouble, and had to be rescued by the Hong Kong Bank. The bank took a 22% stake in the company, and had Clague replaced.

On September 25, 1979, at the close of trade in London, the Bank announced it was selling its stake in Hutchison to Cheung Kong for HK$639 million.

The European name was kept because it is a great mask. The people running this organization are Chinese. Also, note how the organization run by the Europeans fell into difficulties during the 1970's and in 1979, when a recession hit Asia thanks to Volker in the US raising interest rates high enough to kill inflation, killed the various export markets and financial wheels and deals in Asia. Hong Kong, at this time, was the straw that was Communist China's only outlet to the West. China could have easily taken Hong Kong violently but instead, ran around at home, going nuts with the various hysterias launched by Mao and then, Madame Mao.

By 1979, she was a footnote to history and the New China rose from the ashes of some of the most wasteful and possibly psychotic rule on earth and this New China wanted to learn from the Chinese in Hong Kong as well as other capitalists. The Hong Kong people, working under British rule, had absorbed many lessons and they struck with decisiveness. Waiting until the Brits in London could do nothing, the bankers in Hong Kong made the deal. I will note here that the intention is obvious: they wanted only Chinese to run the organization. This is a sort of nationalism that Japan is quite familiar with: they do everything with this in mind.

The Cheung Kong family doesn't just run Hutchinson Whampoa, they run many other entities that have many arms and legs, a veritable army of centipedic corporations.

1. Cheung Kong (Holdings) Limited(Cheung Kong Holdings) ( Chinese: 長江實業(集團)有限公司 Pinyin:Chángjiāng Shíyè (Jítuán) Yǒuxiàn Gōngsī) SEHK: 0001 is the flagship of the Cheung Kong Group, headquartered in Hong Kong, and one of Hong Kong's leading multi-national conglomerates.

2. In Hong Kong alone, the Group has nine companies that are listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
Cheung Kong (Holdings) Limited (長江實業(集團)有限公司) SEHK: 0001, a constituent member of the Hang Seng Index.

3. Hutchison Whampoa Limited (和記黃埔有限公司) SEHK: 0013, a constituent member of the Hang Seng Index.

4, Cheung Kong Infrastructure Holdings Limited(長江基建集團有限公司) SEHK: 1038, a constituent member of the Hang Seng Index.

5. Hongkong Electric Holdings Limited (香港電燈集團有限公司) SEHK: 0006, a constituent member of the Hang Seng Index.

6. Hutchison Telecommunications International Limited SEHK: 2332, NYSE: HTX.

7. Hutchison Harbour Ring Limited SEHK: 0715.

8. TOM Group Limited SEHK: 2383. Previously listed on the Growth Enterprise Market as 8001.

9. CK Life Sciences Int'l., (Holdings) Inc. (長江生命科技集團有限公司) SEHK: 8222, listed on the Growth Enterprise Market.

10. TOM Online Inc. NASDAQ: TOMO, SEHK: 8282, listed on the Growth Enterprise Market.

Physical shipping, internet commerce, communications systems, real estate, business construction, port authorites, on and on, they are many things. The present Communist Chinese leaders are very aware of this family and its dealings. So long as they serve the interests of the Party, they are allowed to accumulate power. I don't know how deep the penetration is within this organization, I would assume the communists have moved some of their sovereign wealth funds deep inside. It would make perfect sense.

Just like the Queen's various pirate coves don't report what they do in the dark, so it is with China. We can guess a lot but we don't really know exactly what is going on. What I do know is, this mega-organization which is now part of China, are opening ports in Mexico. I have reported about them in the past, the controversy over the planned mega-highways running from Mexico to the heartland of the USA, are causing a great stir...on line. For the most part, few leftist organizations have focused on this and the Amero, the future currency we will probably be using for international trade. But the far right or the libertarian areas online have been quite vocal about all this. Whampoa is very much involved in creating this new trade system.

Bush has been financially entangled since the day his dad, right on the heels of my dad leaving China, came there to be the US Ambassador. When the Bushes need to be bailed out of their many financial messes, Chinese benefactors come and buy up dry well oil companies from them or fix banks run by them, etc. The Bushes never go bankrupt, everyone around them goes bankrupt. Except for the Chinese who are smarter than Bush and others around the Bushes. They know how to make money from this relationship.

I keep saying, 'Arrest Bush'. But he won't be impeached over this. Aside from war crimes, he should be raked over the coals over the entire clan being too intimate with these Chinese businesses. The rules for letting Mexican truckers invade the US were shoved forwards by Bush despite the GOP squealing like stuck pigs due to rage within Republican voters who are very much against this. Whampoa needs these truck regulations. The flood of goods from China will soon arrive on cheap, Mexican trucks. And this is the plan for killing inflation. The decoupling of essentials from the inflation stats means value-added manufactured goods will still come here even as our ability to buy food and fuel declines. The fake 2% inflation rate calculations will continue forever while the elderly and poor freeze or starve to death.

This chart, from Wikipedia, shows the layout of the Cheung Kong family organization. They own slightly less than half of the Whampoa part but of the port facility systems, they own the majority, by far.

From Logistics Today;

For instance, the port of Ensenada in Baja California, just 100 miles south of the Tijuana border, is revamping its facilities, dredging its cove to handle larger ships, and has begun intermodal deliveries of containers. Separately, late last year, Hutchinson Ports Holding of Hong Kong signed an agreement with the Government of Baja California to jointly carry out a feasibility study to build a port and a 150-kilometer railroad to connect with Mexicali. The study is due to be completed in July 2005. If undertaken, this would not be a federal Mexican project.>

This map, from the Whampoa Port organization, shows the deep penetration they now enjoy. They intend to control all Chinese trade, they and other Chinese-owned organizations, that is, and they intend to cut the US out from the money flow as much as possible. Except for any politically connected people they need to keep on board, of course.
From Hutchinson Whampoa's web site:

This chart shows the size of the facilities just built in Baja, California. It isn't that large a port compared to say, the US ports in Bayonne, New Jersey. But it is significant in that it is a start. A toe hold that will grow over the years.

For example, Global in New Jersey has many more cranes and it is only one of several huge terminals there. When I read about that port opening, a number of writers made it seem as if it was going to be huge, just huge. But so far, it is still very much a baby in size.

December 7, 2006

A Chinese company with close ties to the communist government owns 49 percent of the Lockheed Martin subsidiary that is negotiating a contract with the North American SuperCorridor Coalition, Inc. – the Dallas-based trade association – to place cargo monitoring sensors along as superhighway stretching from Mexico to Canada.

China's Hutchinson Port Holdings entered into a $50 million joint venture in 2005 with Savi Technology, a Lockheed Martin wholly-owned subsidiary, to form a new company called Savi Networks LLC. Savi Technology owns 51 percent and Hutchinson Port Holdings, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Chinese holding company Hutchinson Whampoa Limited, holds the rest.

This story from almost a year ago illustrates how the Chinese are carefully tip toeing into various organizations and deals they very much want. The Lockheed business interests me because I track this stuff a lot. Boeing and Lockheed have had to go hat in hand to China repeatedly. All our corrupt government negotiators focus on making deals for Lockheed and Boeing because our military/industrial complex is pretty much all we have left and the Chinese can't get access to this technology unless they forge iron ties with US elected officials like the Bush clan. Note how the Chinese kept their purchase at just under 50%. This is so they are not seen out in the open. This can wear an American face for the time being but the people whispering in the back ground speak Chinese.

Like so many Trojan Horses, the Chinese build these entities and then use them to pry open doors. The US talks brave talk about making the Chinese do business our way but I see it all going their way since they, not us, own our government at several important levels.

The right wing likes to focus on the Clintons as beneficiaries of Chinese corruption. Yet they refuse to understand how ALL our leaders are in the same boat. Paddling like mad at the orders of the Chinese communist government. So we go and negotiate with the Europeans about the yuan and then go off to China to collect more money and do more things the Chinese want us to do. Notice how nothing ever changes? The technology the Chinese want will be theirs, slowly, they are encircling all our systems and will gain what they seek for they have Sovereign Wealth Funds! We have SIVs that are worthless. We need them more than they need us.

From Bloomberg:

Bear Stearns Cos. and China's Citic Securities Co. agreed to invest $1 billion in each other in an alliance to pool their businesses in Asia.

Citic will buy the equivalent of 6 percent of New York-based Bear Stearns's shares as the banks collaborate to develop financial products and services in China, the companies said in a statement today. They will also form a Hong Kong-based joint venture to bring together their operations outside of China.

This is a full surrender. The wheel of history, the wheel of fortune, turns and we fall under it.

Culture of Life News Main Page

Deep Port Shipping Growing Greater

Elaine Meinel Supkis

My ex-husband was in the shipping industry. He worked for foreign companies just like I once did, too. Yesterday, I was at the deep water ports in New Jersey and saw some rather interesting things. First, the ports weren't as busy as last spring. Second, all the cars being imported were quite noticable. Time to discuss international auto shipping as well as sales and how they interact with modern 'free trade'.

From World Wide Shipping:

Roll-on/Roll-off

We offer Ro/Ro service from major U.S. ports to destinations worldwide. Ro/Ro vessels are designed with maximum flexibility to transport both rolling and non-rolling stock, including autos, motorcycles, boats and heavy equipment.

Roll On/Roll Off vessels are designed with maximum flexibility and are able to carry a wide variety of wheeled and non-wheeled cargo.The inside of the ship has a basic design of a parking garage. Ro/Ro vessels can carry up to 6600 cars and have up to 12 decks.

Worldwide offers Ro/Ro service from major U.S. ports to ports throughout the world. WSA will arrange delivery to the port for all types of cargo, including cars, pickups, trucks, boats on trailer or cradle, motorhomes just to name a few.

I walked all over the neighborhood, looking at shipping yesterday. Most shipping places now have hard to see through fences unlike in the past where everything was much more open. There were good views from the various bridges or the Polansky Skyway but I don't have a telephoto lens camera and besides, we were swiftly engulfed in fast moving fog and clouds from a huge storm that battered NYC as soon as I drove north.

These deep sea ports where built while my ex was working in NYC years ago, just as I used to watch the work on the WTC, I also would go visit the new port facilities. Ships used to dock at Red Hook, Brooklyn and even Manhattan, etc. But these were mostly pre-WWII ships. Hellenic Lines, for example, was based on this sort of old style shipping. But the revolution of deep port container ships turned sea trade from a small operation into a monster machine. The interstate treaties between New Jersey and New York had to be revised so they could build deep sea ports.

From the NY NJ Port Authority:

Throughout the 19th century, New York and New Jersey waged many disputes over their valuable, shared harbor and waterways. A dispute over the boundary line through the harbor and the Hudson River - settled by the Treaty of 1834 - once led state police to exchange shots in the middle of the river. The impasse eased when the two states agreed that the port area was, in effect, one community and that conflict squandered the port's potential. The states sought a governmental body to oversee port affairs and found a model in the Port of London, administered by what was then the only public authority in the world.

On April 30, 1921, The Port of New York Authority was established to administer the common harbor interests of New York and New Jersey. The first of its kind in the Western Hemisphere, the organization was created under a clause of the Constitution permitting Compacts between states, with Congressional consent. An area of jurisdiction called the "Port District," a bistate region of about 1,500 square miles centered on the Statue of Liberty, was established. In 1972, the organization's name was changed to The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to more accurately identify our role as a bistate agency.

Actually, there was a huge dispute over the Statue of Liberty that took forever to resolve. Tourists had to take this expensive ferry ride from lower Manhattan to the statue which happens to have a road from New Jersey that goes to the statue much easier and cheaper. Disputes over who owned access to Miz Liberty were bitter and long. Today, one can go to the statue from both New Jersey and New York City. But the other huge joint project, the WTC, has been utterly destroyed. Its destruction has spawned even more disputes than visiting Miz Liberty's tiny island.

The fact is, starting with oil tankers which mostly stood offshore to pump oil onshore, the mega-ship building process which began with Europe and Asia beginning to use many more cars than before WWII, caused ships to grow rapidly in size. The technology of ship building went through this revolutionary process of seeking ever-greater volume and girth and alongside this was building huge deep sea ports that can take these ships. New York had to concede this to New Jersey after bitter fights in the sixties because the ports in New York couldn't be made easily accessible to deep port shipping. I once lived on Coney Island and we could plainly see, the ocean was far too shallow too far out from the shore, to be turned into a huge port.

But the New Jersey shoreline south of Manhattan was capable of handling big ships. To develop these ports in New Jersey required not just changing the shoreline but also changing the road and rail interchanges and expanding a lot of services that run to and from ports. This was very successful, of course. And this became one of several important open doors to free trade that took off after this port opened.

Before 1972, there was very little in major trade. If you took all the ships that sailed into NY harbor in 1969 and bundled their cargo inside a modern ship, it would have taken less than a dozen ships to bring everything over. We put goods in wooden crates, this is how I shipped stuff from Asia to Europe and then, to America, it was a slow and tedious process that took months, in 1972, this all rapidly changed. The older shipping companies like Hellenic Lines, stuck with a pre-deep sea port fleet, blew their chances and went bankrupt. Others, like Maersk Lines, grew rapidly. Indeed, the smaller the company, the smaller the fleet, the easier it was for them to switch gears!

Newer Korean, Taiwanese or Japanese shippers got a head start, already using deep sea ports in Asia. The Asian advantage was hastened by their abilty to undercut prices of shipping that funnelled through European or American companies. Proud of their new prowess, these Asian companies color-coded their ships and painted their names in giant letters so everyone could see who was plying the Seven Seas. I used to sit out on the rocks at Grave's End, checking the ships entering the harbor and discussing this with my ex at his workplace.

So I was filled with curiousity as to how things are done today when I walked about Bayonne, New Jersey.

First off: The ships come here with lots of cars and goods but depart with nothing. This is totally different from the old days. In Hellenic Lines, the business of the main office on Broadway, just south of the new WTC, was to FILL THOSE TUBS! If there was an inch of space empty going in either direction, Mr, K., the Greek shipping millionaire, would be very angry and go about the office, prodding everyone to fill that hold!

So the aim of shipping was TWO WAY. All the competitors wanted to not just sail but insure that both directions, the ships were full as possible. This is in stark contrast with today's shipping. Nearly all shippers concentrate on one-way deals. Free trade has driven down prices but not by being efficient. The much older system was far more efficient in that it didn't waste space. Today, there is great volume but if you look at the ships going BOTH ways, the 'efficiency' rating is twice as BAD as it seems if it is calculated going only one way.

And because the ships had to be filled going both ways, this prevented one-way trade which is what everyone is trying to do today by the horrible mechanism of using monetary differentials. Everyone wants one way trade and currency advantage due to weakness! Which will cause the next depression.

I visited the docks for Global Shipping:

They had lots of European containers piled more than 4 stories high. The entire dock was filled with piles and piles of containers. Global Shipping is the modern Hellenic Lines: they take all sorts of containers from all sorts of businesses and pile them on their ships. Right next door was the BMW port of entry. The cars filled that lot. The shipping of cars are hugely responsible for one-way trade for the ships are seldom filled with much of anything on their return journeys to the ports in Europe and Asia. In the US, NOT ONE auto manufacturer was built next to a deep sea port. In Asia, they ALL are built this way. Toyota was most careful to NOT do this in the US, like here, all their factories were built in virgin countryside deep in the heart of the US. For NONE of these are meant to sail anywhere.

From Wikipedia:

Various types of RORO vessels include ferries, cruiseferries, cargo ships, and barges. A true RORO's ramps can serve all of the vessel’s decks; otherwise it is a hybrid type. New automobiles that are transported by ship around the world are often moved on a large type of RORO called a Pure Car Carrier (PCC) or Pure Car Truck Carrier (PCTC).

Unlike elsewhere in the shipping industry where cargo is normally measured by the metric tonne, RORO cargo will typically be measured in the more convenient unit of lanes in meters (LIMs). This is calculated by multiplying cargo length in meters by its width in lanes (lane width differs from vessel to vessel and there are a number of industry standards). Aboard PCCs cargo capacity is often measured in RT or RT43 units which is based on a 1966 Toyota or by car equivalent units (CEU).
*snip*
With the building of of the Wallenius Vilhelmsen's 8000 CEU car carrier Stockholm Faust in June of 2007 the car carriers entered a new era called the LCTC (Large Car & Truck Carrier)[2].

This is very significant: the standard auto unit for shipping is based on specifically, Toyota's cars. From the beginning of the US trade deficit in 1972, the US didn't bother shipping cars all that much but rather, 'expanded' and built factories in Brazil, Mexico and other places. They solemnly swore, this was for the domestic markets in South America, for example.

But that was a lie. The output was shipped here. But not in the vast quantities as the Japanese. For the Japanese, being an island, could easily build their plants right next to deep sea ports. These ports were expanded and sponsored by...hold onto your hats, everyone: the US NAVY! Go, Navy.

We needed deep, complex ports for our aircraft carriers and our subs. Since we decided to leave the US naked to anyone who wants to attack, we spent most of our energy and minds on fixing Japan so it could be a deep sea port power so we could station our fleets over there. To keep Japan as our ally (HAHAHA) we didn't build these very big ports ourselves, we hired the Japanese and took on more debt. The Japanese then developed the tools, technology and skills as well as the corporations, for developing deep sea ports.

Then Fortress Japan, MITI and the LDP teamed up to turn Japan into the world's biggest deep sea port facility! And the need for mirror ports was very strong so they were quite happy that the US Navy made other deep sea ports in California, Washington and Oregon. For a while, the ships sailed there and then the cars were taken by rail to the East Coast. The Germans, our other allies who lost WWII to us but now were part of our empire, wanted the same thing on the East Coast for the same reasons: the Japanese were killing them in the import auto markets in the US. So the US built these fine ports that connect to the hinterlands much more efficiently than the western ports due to the many train links up here.

Wikipedia:

While the characteristics of seagoing RO/RO car ferries have inherent risks, there are benefits to its seaworthiness. For example the car carrier Cougar Ace listed 80 degrees to its port side in 2006 but did not sink, since its high enclosed sides prevented water from entering.

Indeed, as I stood watching the ports, a Toyota ship dropped anchor. It was this HUGE brown box. There were virtually no features on the outside except for a small box on top for the small crew and their captain. I have been on board the early container ships and they seemed more like ships than this monster. The huge ship also was missing something important: a name. Instead of 10 story tall letters like Hanjsin ships, for example, this thing was anonymous. The Toyota docks had a sign but not a pretty one in lights like the BMW lot. It was all very low-key but vast. A huge tarmac desert that rapidly filled up with the thousands of cars disgorged from this giant whale.

Now for a look in the far past: From CNN Money, September 10, 1990

THE NEW 1991 models will soon be rolling out, and all the attention is focusing on the superslick $64,000 Honda NSX, Japan's costliest sports car and its designated Ferrari fighter. Car buffs have all but ignored the relatively mundane Honda Accord station wagon, due to arrive in dealer showrooms in late November with a base sticker price of about $16,000. Don't be misled.

The Accord wagon is a revolutionary vehicle, one likely to excite consumers and unnerve U.S. carmakers. Designed by Americans in Torrance, California, and built at Honda's burgeoning complex in Marysville, Ohio, it is the most American car ever produced by the Japanese. The Accord wagon adds a third dimension to Japan's North American auto strategy.

The Japanese began as importers of their own cars, reaching a peak of 2.4 million in 1986. Their next move was to assemble the cars in America. Today, Honda, Toyota, and Nissan are well on their way to becoming nearly autonomous producers, able to research and engineer as well as to build and design the cars in the U.S. Except for their ownership, these top Japanese automakers are beginning to appear as American as General Motors, Ford Motor, and Chrysler. Already the world's most proficient producers of cars, the Americanized Japanese will reap big gains in marketing acumen, development time, and operating costs. Many industry analysts forecast that the Japanese, who already produce more than one in four passenger car sales in the U.S., could boost their share to one in three in the mid-Nineties -- approaching GM's.

I was frankly shocked. I didn't know these ships were so huge! The displacement of water was minimal considering the great size, the car cargo isn't dense. For example, the weight displacement of containers which are steel and have considerable weight, themselves, and then filled with more or less heavy items, outweighs, per square foot, autos. Also, if a container ship lists at sea, this is a catastrophe. More than one ship has vanished suddenly when hit by a mega-wave. These waves happen at sea in mysterious ways. So much so, back in the seventies, I would watch for ships to come to the harbor to insure they were actually coming in during storms like before hurricanes when the seas get rough.

The cargoes of these tragic sinkings sometimes float around the world for years. Scientists use them to study currents. Once, a ship filled with sneakers lost its cargo to the high seas between Asia and the US. The lose shoes were then tracked to South America, Australia, Asia and the West Coast. There are gyers in the sea where the ocean's currents form circles. In these areas, there are flotillas of debris from sunken ships, mostly plastic, floating around and around.

The 1990 article boasting about how Toyota was designing and building cars in the US, when we look at the huge ships coming in filled with Toyotas made in India, China and other places, we have to remember, this is all about PROFITS. Even with the shipping, the profit value to the Japanese of shipping cars from Asia are even greater today than in 1990. Also, the Japanse 'depression' began interestingly enough, right when they 'outsourced' their cars to the US and incidentally, increasingly to other Asian countries. The Japanese no longer are getting endless good-paying jobs with a paternalistic, benevolent corporation. They are on a long-term, starvation diet that is now being applied to our own auto workers.

From Ship Gazette, Scandinavia:

Emma Mærsk is even bigger according to survey

SSG-RINGKØBING. A. P. Møller-Mærsk’s E-class container vessel seems even bigger than the 14,500 TEUs claimed by several sources until now. AXS-Alphaliner, an international container research company, has done a new counting based on a detailed drawing of the type. Their conclusion on the capacity landed on: 15,200 TEUs with a capacity of 7,004 TEUs under the hatches and 8,208 TEUs on deck. This capacity is still a theoretical number of boxes, but the ships have the possibility to take that many containers. The new figure raises the World record by some 700 TEUs. The E-class now consists of six vessels (Emma, Estelle, Eleonora, Evelyn, Ebba and Elly) Another two units is under construction at Odense Steel Shipyard.
Published: 19.10.07 15.44

There is this race between the European ship builders and the Chinese to see who can make the world's biggest container ships. Even the Japanese have given up on that business. They build their huge car ships and leave it at that. But the push for ever-swifter, ever-bigger one-way ships has not diminished, it is growing. Indeed, the harder it is to make a profit, the more these ships will grow.

Early Hellenic Lines ships had a large crew of dozens of men. First, they were Greek and Eastern European. Then, to save money, North African and then, Bangladesh and Chinese. Finally, this sort of shipping died off and the container ships had on quarter the crew and dropping. The thinking is, if the square feet and tonnage is increased while staffing drops, this will increase profits. This pushes things towards more international shipping. Local shipping makes less money due to smaller ports and smaller loads. It takes a bigger crew to ship locally than internationally.

Another side story from Shipping Gazette:

The ferry Vironia vill sail on its last voyage between Sillamäe in Estonia and Kotka in Finland on 19 October. The service will be closed down after negotiations with Russia to be allowed to pass east of Hogland have failed. The move would have reduced the voyage time by two hours to four hours. Saaremaa Shipping Company’s managing director Tõnis Rihvk says to SSG that the negotiations stranded already this spring and that any hopes of new negiotiations vanished when Russia announced that they will build a radar station on Hogland. The vessel Vironia will be sold.

Russia is squeezing Europe's balls at every turn. He has made it crystal clear, they must negotiate as equals and treat Russia as a major power, not as someone they can push around using the US as their bully boy. I have warned everyone, using the US nuclear arsenal as a diplomatic tool is pure folly, totally insane. The US navy can't stop Russia from destroying all of Europe so they better learn to triangulate fast or we will have serious problems that will make WWII look like a walk in the park. This same warning goes to Japan. The Russians need to build this radar station because Bush wants to build attack missiles all over Europe. So now things will be tough for the Scandinavians who live very close to this very angry Bear.

Another story from Shipping Gazette:

The EU Commission has adopted a strategy and an action plan for an integrated maritime policy in the European Union. The strategy contains steps such as a European maritime transport space without barriers, an integrated network for maritime surveillance and a review of EU labour law exemptions for the shipping and fishing sectors.

Europe is trying desperately to make itself into a Neue Heiligen Romänisch Reich: the New World Order. They think all they must do is build up their naval facilities and missile bases. There was another article about how the Scandinavians can't find enough sailors for their wretched, tiny military navy. Again: they don't have to do this, all they must do is triangulate. During the Yeltsin years, everyone thought triangulation meant strangulation. This is why Putin and not some rich guy is running Russia. Certainly, not Goldman Sachs.

From Bloomberg:

General Motors Corp. posted a 4 percent gain in quarterly global sales, bolstering its bid to hold off Toyota Motor Corp. and extend a 76-year reign as the world's largest automaker.

The 2.39 million vehicles sold set a third-quarter record, Detroit-based GM said today in a statement. Toyota's combined sales in its biggest markets -- the U.S., Japan and Europe -- fell 3.8 percent in the quarter. Toyota will release its worldwide totals on Oct. 22, spokeswoman Mira Sleilati said.

None of these Fords came oveseas via huge box-like carriers. They were nearly universally built overseas. So this 'good news' means squat diddly here in the US. Our trade deficit continues to be very bad. During 25 years of GM's supposed reign, cars poured into the US. From $1 billion a year to $400+ billion a year. This is destroying our economic base in many ways. This doesn't produce all that many jobs. If 6 people can deliver 6,000 cars, this is a very low number versus material goods.

And this is more bad news:

During the quarter, GM again recorded a sales decline in North America, its largest market. Sales there fell 6.1 percent to 1.21 million vehicles.

Not only didn't we export cars, the huge boxes coming in from Japan didn't fill up with American cars going to Japan, GM's market share here continues to shrink. This means, GM might grow...IN CHINA...but this will make our trade deficit worse because they will import these cars...FROM CHINA! Toyota makes expensive cars because this is where the profits lie. But the Chinese are now underselling them, underselling using GM cars made in China, for example.

More Bloomberg:

Industrywide sales in the U.S. may slip to 16.2 million this year, the lowest level since 1998, according to J.D. Power & Associates, based in Westlake Village, California.
*snip*
During the third quarter, Toyota sales in Japan fell 3.8 percent, its U.S. volume dropped 4.9 percent and European deliveries were down 0.1 percent, according to data from the automaker and the Association of European Automobile Manufacturers.

The Europeans sell nearly only very-high value-added cars here. This is why I visited the BMW lots to see how active it was. Japan is desperately crushing inflation at home to keep the fiction of a weak yen and auto sales are collapsing there but not as fast as here! We are IN A RECESSION ALREADY. The news yesterday was all about Wall Street suddenly figuring out this obvious fact. They tried to pretend housing wasn't a problem, they thought the 'consumer' would save the 'economy' which is nearly entirely based on brown, box ships with no name sneaking in from Asia and dropping off zillions of cars made far away from here.

From the China Times:

Chery grew from a small town player into a nationwide player and is now aspiring to become an international player, but Chery has found that shipping is a problem and what seemed like the best solution was to just buy a ship maker.

The Anhui Daily News reported on Saturday that the WuHu Xinlian ship building company held its ‘reopening’ ceremony on Saturday to celebrate its take over by Chery. The company will be building bulk cargo vessels that will be used to ship vehicles, oil, and other chemical products.

Like army ants, the Chinese manufacturers are coming, they won't accept any barriers. And note how they will do what the Japanese, Koreans and Taiwanese did: they will use their own ships to do their deep sea portage. And they will expand into shipping aggressively. I remember when the Asians first hired Americans in the shipping industry. The Americans disliked the long hours and the difficult stresses. To keep offices here, the Asians had to hire some US managers to keep people from rebelling.

Culture of Life News Main Page

Free Trade Kills Unions, Kills America

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Anyone who imagines the Federal Reserve gives a rat's ass about workers should look at the latest press release by the Federal Reserve. Compared to the Nanny State coddling of insane, wild financiers who bankrupt the entire world's banking systems, the Fed feels that US workers should just suck it up and accept free trade as a great bargain: they get to shop at Walmart during the first half of the month and buy cheap stuff from all over the world and the rest of the time, they can work nonstop to barely survive.

From Bloomberg:

Southern U.S. states should improve workers' skills to compete in the global economy rather than look to trade restrictions for protection, three Federal Reserve bank presidents said today.

Barriers to commerce can backfire and hurt the economy as overseas partners retaliate by imposing their own restrictions against U.S.-made goods, the Fed chiefs from Dallas, St. Louis and Atlanta told a meeting of the Southern Governors' Association in Biloxi, Mississippi, today.

Incredible, isn't it? In every story about the goon squad running America, their solution to all the problems assailing the working class is to 'retrain.' Never, do they mention, what one should learn. Dog grooming? Businesses and banks only care about themselves but the Federal government is supposed to worry about the entire nation. Since this is their main job, they should be concerned about the trade deficit which has soared in the last 20 years from $50 billion a year to nearly $800 billion a year. Since this is totally, hopelessly unacceptable for any nation to allow, it is the duty, the PRIMARY RESPONSIBILITY of the Federal government. No matter how loud the wails of the bankers and the importers, the government of the USA should be relentlessly reducing this deficit.

Instead, they trot around America telling us they intend to make things worse! The limits to 'free trade' fall faster and faster and are an increasing danger to our nation. This, above all things, is at the root of our financial break down which is approaching closer and closer as we do the same stupid things over and over.

On top of this there is the logic of the US government working with the Republicans to destroy worker's rights. The American South was allowed to have some of the most stupid laws on earth that they called 'The Right To Work' which was a quasi-slave rule that meant jobs could be set up in states that didn't protect unions but made unions impossilbe. For a long while, the jobs moved from the protected North to the quasi-slave states of the South. Wages in the depressed South rose thanks to this but the work was valued this way only because wages were higher in the North. As soon as the unions in the North were killed by internal competition, the end of high wages in the South loomed.

Since Reagan destroyed the ability of any unions in America to strike by allowing and protecting strike breakers, the ability of unions to gain wage hikes has collapsed. Wages of the bottom 2/3rds of Americans have not only not kept up with inflation this last 20 years, it has fallen behind. The South laughed at the North as factories closed in the North and opened in the South but years ago, I warned them this was going to continue. Back in 1992, Ross Perot talked about the 'Giant Sucking Sound' of jobs moving to Mexico and Central America. He was treated as an alien and was chased off the political stage as his attempt at building a new party collapsed. Then Clinton suddenly passed NAFTA and the jobs not only flowed out of America at a high speed, since NAFTA, illegal aliens have flooded into the USA and wages fell even faster.

Why did the North fight the South concerning slavery in the first place? The formation of the Republican party was based on fighting slavery because it lowered wages of all workers and free land, the 40 acres and a mule business that was used to open the Great Plains. Lincoln was the first Republican President and was assassinated. Grant then shifted the party from populism to the business/Wall Street class. They, in turn, let in a flood of Europeans to lower wages. But within this flood came a flood of political activists mostly from Germany, Ireland and Italy. They, in turn, turned up the heat and began a long series of strikes, union organizing and fighting with troops and goon squads for things we take for granted such as a limit to the hours worked, minimum wages, benefits like vacations, health care, etc. The things we are rapidly losing now that unions are dead.

Thank you, Federal Government.

From the AFL-CIO:

To set the record (and the name) straight, right to work for less doesn’t guarantee any rights. In fact, by weakening unions and collective bargaining, it destroys the best job security protection that exists: the union contract. Meanwhile, it allows workers to pay nothing and get all the benefits of union membership. Right to work laws say unions must represent all eligible employees, whether they pay dues or not. This forces unions to use their time and members’ dues money to provide union benefits to free riders who are not willing to pay their fair share.

Right to work laws lower wages for everyone. The average worker in a right to work state makes about $5,333 a year less than workers in other states ($35,500 compared with $30,167).[1] Weekly wages are $72 greater in free-bargaining states than in right to work states ($621 versus $549).[2] Working families in states without right to work laws have higher wages and benefit from healthier tax bases that improve their quality of life.

Once upon a time, the quasi-slave states were much cheaper places to live than in the North. This has ceased to be true for some time. Indeed, it is cheaper to live in Detroit than in the places where the new factories are scattered. Indeed, the scattering of factories in various sleepy towns across the South was deliberate and malicious. This way, it is nearly impossible for united action against giant global powers that run whole nations, the biggest example being Toyota. They are quasi-rulers of wherever they park their factories and they have a deliberate program to keep unions out while at the same time, keeping production in their American factories at exactly 60% of the cars sold here so they can pour in 40% of their sales without intereference from anyone putting tariffs or barriers up to stop this flood of Japanese value-added exports to America.

AFL-CIO:

More than 40 states are destroying jobs by contracting out state-funded work to companies that ship the jobs overseas. According to a recent study by University of California-Berkeley, the United States could lose as many as 14 million white-collar jobs as a result of the new outsourcing trend, and workers fortunate enough to hold on to their jobs will see decreasing wages and benefits as companies try to keep pace with low-wage countries.

In New Jersey, Acting-Gov. Richard J. Codey (D) signed into law May 5 legislation that ensures taxpayers’ dollars are used to create jobs by requiring contractors who win state service contracts to do that work in the United States.

Aside from the folly of suggesting blue collar workers become white collar workers, white collar jobs were first undermined by bringing in a huge number of foreign workers in the intellectual fields then the manufacturers and the lawyers, etc. all demanded the right to outsource office work to save money so they can have huge fees for themselves while the overhead could vanish into India or Eastern Europe. So now all our jobs except for ones requiring physical labor here, vanished faster and faster. Of course, the Federal Government, deep in debt because the taxes it collects on workers seeing no more wage hikes, doesn't care about all this, evidently.

I saw in the news today, our soldiers being hired this year are all opting for the extra $20,000 bonus if they decide to go to Iraq fast without much training. That hell hole of a war is eating us up financially and spiritually. There are still 'volunteers' due to the lack of opportunity at home. On top of this, the deficit rises higher and higher as the costs of this insane war rage out of control because this isn't a business, they don't care if this cost us an extra $1 trillion, who cares? After all, the World Banks of the Empire in Europe and the US just created a whopping $500 billion in two weeks just to prime the pumps or--heh---pimp the prostitutes---within the collapsing banking system. Which is based, ultimately, on the ability of workers to save money! The problems we are seeing are imperial in nature and identical to the same problems that dragged the United Kingdom's empire under back about 100 years ago.

From Xinhua:

South Korean citizens' credit card spending in foreign countries jumped to a new high in the second quarter of 1.5 billion U.S. dollars, the Bank of Korea (BOK) said Friday.

According to the central bank, overseas credit card spending by South Koreans in the April-June period rose 31.1 percent from a year earlier. The number of credit card users abroad advanced 39.3percent year-on-year to 2.3 million.

"The rise is attributable to a sharp increase in the number of residents going on overseas trips and the won's gain against the greenback," said a statement by the BOK.

For some time, it seems to me that South Korea has given up on the race to play the financial games Japan and China are engaged in. Proof of this is, the won is rising in value. They get the brief joy of travelling all over the place and spending money like crazy and getting easy debts but this is a trap! The lesson Japan learned when they suddenly raised the value of the yen due to the Plaza Accords when the US tried to lower the value of the world's top currency, the dollar, was simple. The Japanese spending boom and rise in value of all assets and rise in debts due to the strength of their currency killed their trade surplus with not only the USA but the world! This caused a depression.

They are well out of that depression but it is so useful, they keep on pretending it is raging out of their control. This reminds me of a true story: I used to live in NYC and bicycled all over the city. People walking the streets would ignore the lights and the bikes. If I wanted to go through an intersection and there was no cars and the light was green, people would force me to stop anyway. So I got in the habit of yelling, 'I can't stop!' as I went past as people stood aside. One day, a man yelled, 'Hey, you are peddling uphill!' Heh. I yelled, 'My legs can't stop!'

Japan is screaming they can't stop as they madly peddle uphill. Why any adult who supposedly is in charge of finances falls for this, baffled me for one second. Then I remember who benefits: the very rich in America and Europe. They are PUSHING the Japanese bike uphill! While screaming to us, they are trying to stop it. This is called 'the Carry Trade.'

South Korea just gave up the fight with China and Japan and is now following the footsteps of the USA/UK empire and is simply, like Europe which is a weak satellite state of the USA/UK empire and will let Japan and China strenghten their currency while the yen and yuan fall in value. Ah well. I hope they enjoy this little period of happy shopping. Because the next act is a depression. This is the new rule for modern trade.

From the Nikkei:

Japan, ASEAN Reach FTA; Tokyo To Repeal 90% Of Tariffs Soon

MANILA (Kyodo)--Japan and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations reached a free trade agreement Saturday, under which Tokyo will immediately repeal tariffs on 90 percent of imports from ASEAN by value to catch up with China and South Korea in intensifying regional FTA races.

This is Japan's eternal promise: they want free trade, they need free trade, they will have free trade...one way only! If they import anything, it is raw materials, food and fuel. And they hate this. Value-added goods must come from Japanese-owned factories, for example. This way, they still get the profits. What the poor trade partners of Japan will discover are two things: Japan won't let its own people consume or go into debt and Japan won't allow direct competition if there is a Japanese business of any sort that might be endangered by trade. They will use all sorts of funny schemes to prevent trade.

Japan is the biggest and most powerful Asean partner, accounting for 12% of the bloc's world trade in 2006. The competition between Japan and China over leadership issues is rising. When China announced it would take over the moon, the US boasted we would do this too but this has obviously vanished into thin air as we misspend our money fighting Iraqis. But Japan suddenly announced last week, they would take over the moon and I suppose, build a Toyota factory there. Whatever China wants, Japan wants too. And note that both have huge FOREX reserves. Unlike the West which relies on printing money and creating inflation, the Asian giants have the reverse.

From the Nikkei:

TOKYO (Nikkei)--Japan exported 1.13 million used vehicles in 2006, nearly 20% more than a year earlier and topping 1 million units for the first time ever, and the uptrend is continuing so far this year, according to the Japan Used Motor Vehicle Exporters Association.

Not that they are EXPORTING used cars! I hooked up to stats from the Bank of Japan. And guess what? Car ownership in Japan is falling! And this is because the workers there aren't able to get loans. So, used cars aren't sold in Japan, they go to the rest of Asia.

From Der Spiegel:

French food conglomerate Danone is embroiled in a bitter dispute with a Chinese joint venture partner. The quarrel reveals just how fragile business deals in China still are today.

The Chinese protestors headed straight for the Portman Ritz Carlton, a Shanghai luxury hotel. They wore yellow caps and yellow shirts, and they were carrying huge protest banners that read, in blood-red characters: "Traitors and watchdogs will come to no good," and "We want Chairman Zong. Under no circumstances do we want Danone."

The Chinese are very interesting. They can have sudden political moments. They are very patriotic. America is filled with immigrants who come here for financial advantage (the freedom issue is increasingly non-operative) but we have severe loyalty problems. So severe, at the top, loyalty is nonexistent. China's population is native, not immigrant. So they don't have the problems of dual loyalties such as the US. Our top offices are filled with dual-citizens swearing fealty to another nation above the US. And it shows.

From Bloomberg:

The yen fell for a fourth day against the dollar and the euro as a rebound in global stocks suggested investors are willing to take on riskier investments funded by loans in Japan.

The yen has declined against all 16 most-active currencies since Aug. 17, when it reached the strongest in more than a year versus the dollar, as investors bought back higher-yielding assets in so-called carry trades. Japan's Nikkei 225 Stock Average rose 1.4 percent in the first 10 minutes of trading and Australia's S&P/ASX 200 Index gained 1.7 percent.

``The yen will head south,'' said Saburo Matsumoto, senior manager of foreign exchange sales at Sumitomo Trust & Banking Co. in Tokyo. ``Rising share prices are likely to give further momentum to the yen carry trade.'"

The Bank of Japan planned for the yen to be 130 to the dollar by October. It got stronger to their tremendous rage. Now it is heading back to the place they wanted it. As the US weakens, they have to drop the value of the yen in order to keep the misaligned economic system going. As the dollar weakens, they must weaken the yen even more. This insanity would end swiftly if the US forced Japan to stop but the whole point of pouring in those hundreds of billions of dollars last week was to KEEP this going! Amazing, isn't it? The traitors running ad ruining America want this to continue, it is making them filthy rich.

From Bloomberg:

Japanese stocks advanced after economic reports from the U.S. relieved concern the subprime mortgage crisis will curb growth in the world's biggest economy.

Komatsu Ltd. paced gains by exporters after a report showed sales of new homes in the U.S. unexpectedly rose in July and durable goods orders climbed more than expected. Mitsui O.S.K. Lines Ltd. led companies most sensitive to the global economy higher.

They need our stupid and useless housing boom to continue. They want us to have super-low interest rates! In Japan, rates are much, much, much lower but has this caused a housing boom? No? HAHAHA. Of course not. No matter how low the loan, if the Bank of Japan won't let anyone access these loans, they don't get them! How simple. And note their glee over the news that the US government is conspiring with them to reset the dangerous trade mess that is unsustainable and is eating up our empire! When will we learn, all the 'good' economic news is TERRIBLE ECONOMIC NEWS!

Bloomberg:

``The U.S. is helping stock markets globally to calm down after a temporary panic that had money fleeing from stocks,'' said Norihiro Fujito, a senior strategist at Mitsubishi UFJ Securities Co. in Tokyo. ``Japan is also a beneficiary of this development, while the weakening yen provides another boost.''

They now openly boast about weaking the yen! How obvious can it all be? How dare the traitors running America ignore this! Why aren't our media yelling about this and who owns our medai, foreigners or Americans? HAHAHA. Yup. We know the truth about that! Japan benefitted from the US pouring hundreds of billions via the magic printing presses in the Federal Reserve. And Japan intends to use this as a sword in our stomachs as Japan disembowels our economy.

Bloomberg:

Komatsu, the world's second-largest maker of construction machinery, jumped 80 yen, or 2.3 percent, to 3,590. Toyota Motor Corp., the world's largest automaker by market value, advanced 90 yen, or 1.4 percent, to 6,750. Mitsui O.S.K., Japan's second- biggest shipping line operator, rose 37 yen, or 2.3 percent, to 1,656.

The shipping will increase. Toyota will take over the moon. And Caterpillar will collapse. Thank you, everyone at the top, for a job well done. You saved Japan. Banzai! Banzai! Banzai!

From Market Watch:

Japanese consumers will likely pay more for noodles and breads this autumn as food producers pass along the effects of a government price increase that will raise the price of wheat supplied to domestic flour mills, according to reports Monday.

The price increase, announced by Japan's Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry Friday, comes as poor weather in major producing nations has resulted in shortfalls, sending near-term wheat futures on the Chicago Board of Trade to an all-time high last week.
The price hike is the second by the ministry so far this year and follows a 1.3% rise in April, its first increase since 1983, according to reports.

The Japanese government buys wheat and other grains under an international trading system and resells them to local millers at a fixed price.

Remember the hypnotism: there is no inflation in Japan, there is no infaltion in Japan, there is no...oh hell! Inflation in Japan!!!!! The lie is obvious. As inflation soars, the Fortress Japan rulers will crush someone to bring it back to zero. Who will die for this? Also, note how free the trade is! The price of wheat is kept at whatever level the government rules! So the price is set..by the goverment, not competition! The government won't let free trade determine prices!

The Japanese government hates free trade and they hate the yen. And increasingly, the Japanese people hate this ruling clique.

Culture of Life News Main Page

H-E-D-G-E and Other You Tube Songs

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Before I go into the grim business of talking about Europe's fate due to Japan and the US conning Europe into resetting the status quo, time for everyone to enjoy some You Tube presentations. One is rather serious, it being about how Walmart lowered prices by going to China and the other two are great parody songs about economics of all things. Relax and enjoy.

A really great parody Country Western song about Hedge Funds brought to our attention by a reader, John---thanks for the laughs!

Walmart movies, one a piece of propaganda straight out of the East is Red factory and the other, critical of Walmart.

Click here for funny I'm a Bear song.

Culture of Life News Main Page

Harry Potter And Homer Simpson Battles The NWO

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Dear readers, I had some young visitors today and being very young compared to me, they spent some time looking at You Tube while their dad and I were messing around with welding a car. They were very happy to find things they thought I should see and I nearly died laughing.

Harry Potter and Lord Walmart:

Hermoine grows up, hubba hubba:

The Simpsons send their children to Hogwarts:

And a classic, Homer is sent to India to outsource his job:

We may have a very wild Fall ahead of us, in both senses of the word so it is good to laugh once and a while. I hope everyone had a pleasant weekend like we had here.

Culture of Life News Main Page

Hedge Funds Are Dying And Bernanke Says Insane Stuff

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Every time Wall Street falls, the entire government system moves everything possible to re-inflate that particular balloon. The Treasury Sec. is pure Goldman Sachsaphone, blowing away on his instrument. I review the stupid, stupid things Bernanke said last month about trade and the economy. And Bear Sterns hell hound hedge fund has rabies and is being taken out and shot by the bankers. Who are foaming at the mouth themselves.

From Bloomberg:

Bear Stearns Cos.'s attempt to rescue its money-losing hedge funds may falter after creditor Merrill Lynch & Co. decided to seize and sell $800 million of bonds held as collateral for loans to the funds.

Merrill Lynch accepted bids for the securities until 4 p.m. New York time today, according to people with knowledge of the offering. JPMorgan Chase & Co. canceled its plans to sell about $400 million of bonds today while creditors negotiate with New York-based Bear Stearns, one person said.

The 10-month-old High-Grade Structured Credit Strategies Enhanced Leverage Fund, run by Bear Stearns senior managing director Ralph Cioffi, has lost about 20 percent this year. The fund and a sister fund called the High-Grade Structured Credit Strategies Fund, which hadn't borrowed as much and was down less, both have faced pressure from creditors. They specialized in mortgage bonds and so-called collateralized debt obligations backed by home-loan bonds and other assets.

In the famous story, 'The Hound of the Baskervilles', Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson heard the howl of the hound and ran outside to capture it but were too late to prevent the huge beast from killing. But at least they were trying to stop it, not feed it! The hell hound hedge funds with all those charming or darkly amusing names of death, piracy and destruction or like this latest one, long and obtuse, were not only unleashed by the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve but also were fed by Congress, the corrupt war criminal President and his gang as well as a bunch of monetarist ideologues and free trade booters as well as nearly everyone with their hands on our economic till put their dirty fists into the national till and now our banks are nearly empty of real money, our trade deficit is through the roof, our debt is a mountain and now people at the bottom of the financial heap are going bankrupt and this simple fact is now moving up the financial chain to reach the criminals who created this mess in the first place and eventually all of them will go bankrupt.

When hedge funds first raised their skull and bones flag, they sounded oh-so mysterious. It certainly took me a while to figure out what they were babbling about and when I did, I began a great hunt of this Baskervillian creature and the more I learned, the more pissed off I got. It was too simple! They took out loans from Japan and other entities who have huge trade surplusses with the USA and they used it to make much higher interest loans here by signing onto these stupid high-interest loans to people with bad credit or eyes too big for the house they were buying and then they resold these bad deals to other people who wanted to make money faster than the rate of inflation which has been roaring along much higher than the Federal Reserve pirates were willing to admit.

They then claimed that if the 'cut up and re-past together' this crazy quilt of ridiculous loans to dead beats who can't pay them back and then resold them...TO EACH OTHER....as if they were high-quality, high-interest bearing certificates of deposit accounts! These stupid things were displayed as superior to 20 year, 20% down, low interest mortgages because they were often hitched to non-fixed rate 30 or 40 year mortgages!

I received a letter in the mail yesterday that offered me fantastic monthly payments if I wanted to put my free property (like hell!) into hock with them---for 40 years! If I outlive that loan, I'd be 95 years old and a dottering fool indeed. I remember when banks didn't offer loans to people after a certain age or they could only get 15 year mortgages because you die. And when that happens, the loan can die too if the property is run down and often, with the elderly, it is run down, so banks avoid this unless they get something big like big interest returns.

But in today's case, a host of crazy loans were given to anyone including prisoners and con artists. And the price of housing was bid up through the roof which is a major cause of inflation of taxes as well as housing and all this is pounding our economy as housing has ceased to be a 'money maker' and is now a 'money eater.' Bear Stearns thought they were all oh-so-clever by having a hedge fund inside their organization. But like all such ventures, they will discover the downside is inescapable.

High-Grade Structured Credit Strategies Enhanced Leverage Fund began with about $600 million. It halted redemptions after investors sought to withdraw $300 million by June 30. The fund borrowed at least $6 billion.

The fund had made $11.5 billion of ``bullish'' investments and $4.5 billion of ``bearish'' bets, the Wall Street Journal reported today, citing documents it reviewed. Using borrowed money, or leverage, can magnify a fund's returns if markets move as planned, or increase losses if investments sour.

Why do they call this 'bullish'? I called it foolish and hark, I was right. When I was very young and had no money, I sold my beloved cello and asked a slumlord to give me a loan so I could buy a brownstone. We worked things out and I bought, he got his money in full when I resold it three years later for quadruple the amount I owed...and this, in a bear market! Since he owned the property before me, if I defaulted, he simply would have taken it back and sold it to someone else.

But the money loaned by these hell hounds isn't like that at all. They gave a huge sum of money, in toto, to someone else who skeedaddled with it and used it elsewhere while they got a piece of paper promising huge interst payments until the cows came home or the buyer defaults. Then they are stuck with a house that is loaded with debt! My friend wasn't in that situation since no one got a penny except if I paid and no one owed a penny on the building except for me!

I have set up such situations for others and this is how we sell stuff when lenders dissappear. It is a form of barter and it is hard to get hurt and the pain doesn't spread. But the hedge funds not only funneled actual money out of their own pockets, they got this in the first place by BORROWING IT THEMSELVES! So instead of performing like the Federal Reserve and Treasury assured us as a way of spreading risk, they INCREASED RISK!

Namely, if Joe Smoe doesn't pay his mortgage and his over-priced hovel is siezed by the lenders, first, they must pay taxes or the state and city takes it! And if they can't get the house sold for the price owed, they are up the creek and they then cease the money payments of any sort and a whole lot of money vanishes. Then the lenders who are actually people funnelling loans from the Bank of Japan, can't pay their bonds and honor their charges so they cease. Then the investors who pooled the seed money for all this expecting a 20% per year return get burned and everyone loses...big time.

From Market Watch:

In recent trading sessions, the Treasury-market yield curve has steepened, thrusting the yield on the 10-year note above that of the 2-year note and placing the 30-year bond's yield above the returns of both shorter-duration securities.

The steeper curve reverses the inverted condition that's marked the bond market during much of 2007, with 2-year yields richer than 10-year yields. The steeper curve brings back the motive for lending money over longer terms.
*snip*
The phenomenon "suggests that the market believes that risk and reward are fairly well-priced versus economic growth and the rate of inflation," according to Kevin Giddis, fixed-income portfolio manager at Morgan Keegan.

"Over the last two weeks we have learned that inflation is under control and that the economy -- [excluding] housing -- is growing," Giddis said. "The general feeling is that when the curve gets this normal, it shows confidence in the economy and growth. It suggests that there is some comfort level in the market."

This is pure insanity. Who controls the world bond markets? The BUYERS of bonds! And who by far is the country in dire need of funds, lots and lots of funds due to a trade deficit that is roaring over $1 trillion a year now? And who has the biggest FOREX reserves on earth bar none?

Of course, the Chinese. And ditto the runner-uppers, the Japanese who have a total upper hand on our economic affairs. If we let them have their stupid yen drop lower than the dollar, they will buy our bonds even at ridiculous interest rates! Indeed, it is pure honey for them, their own rates are near 0%!

The Chinese are demanding something more reasonable which is why interest rates are rising relentlessly. They would be much higher if Japan were not buying bonds at a 'loss' to keep the yen weak! If they defended the yen and instead of dropping 20% vis a vis the euro, it rose against the dollar and tracked the euro, the yen would be at 100 yen to the dollar not the 123+ amount today. This article is typical of what I read in the press which pretends the news from Asia doesn't cause whatever is going on.

We have been in a false bond market for 7 years now! This is why the Fed could drop rates to 1% after 9/11: our Asian bankers gave Greenspan the green light!

Now the Chinese banking light is flashing yellow and will soon turn red. But until then, we can pretend all is well and this curious situation will continue even if the trade deficit rises to $2 trillion or $8 trillion or whatever. Like our budget deficit which was only $1 trillion in the second year of Reagan's misrule. It is now nearly $9 trillion and rising. Rising at a rate of $2.5 trillion a year is insanity. And the trade imbalance is just as bad. Americans are not the biggest buyer of bonds, Asia buys them. This means, if someone over in Asia stops buying, we go bankrupt.

I watched TV, a rare event, tonight and counted car commercials. There were 7 car commercials on ABC during the 15 minutes I watched the weather reports. Every single one was for Japanese cars. Think of that! This is the clue, the instrument of our destruction. All the cars had great 0 intrest loans appended from the Bank of Japan. Try competing with that!

I used the data in my number crunching article tracking interest on CDs and accumulation of new debts and here are the numbers:

From 2000-2001, debt increased by $150,988.78 million, CDs were 5.83%, dropping to 1.75%.
2001-2002, it rose by $112,575.52, CDs dropped from 1.75% to 1.29%.
2002-2003, it rose by another $103,876.90 million and rates fell from 1.29% to an unheard of, historic low never seen in our history of 1.04%!
2003-2004, it went up $115,560.91 million as interest rates climbed from 1.04% to 2.34%.
2004-2005, it went up a lot, $199,121.81 million while interest rates continued to climb to 4.32%.
2005-2006, it still climbed $104,753.86 million while interest rates on CDs rose to where it is now: over 5%.

The rate of going into debt has risen over the years, the most rapid rise has been the last 7 years but looking at the data, it is obvious something is very different now. During Bush Sr.'s reign, the rate of accumulation was near 0% for two years. I got reamed out during that time, this is why I ended up living in a tent when my husband got injured at work! There was no money!

But the growth in debt even in the teeth of rapidly rising interest rates has to be explained. I suggest there are two things at work here just like when the Federal Reserve strangled selling bonds in 1922 but the overflow of funds cranked out during and right after WWI flooded the markets with 'liquidity' which is RED INK, ahem, and this liquidity ran dry in October, 1929!

So we see the excess liquidity created by the Fed and the Bank of Japan...which is now ending, grindingly slowly but ending. The loans people generate from banks have a time-lag. If you want a loan for a house, it takes at least 3 months to get it through the system. As things slow down, it takes longer. The year with the most growth was when rates were already rapidly rising and all the home sellers were frantically closing on their properties to unload them before rates hit 5%. So the price hikes in homes ended around December, 2004 when rates passed the 2% mark. But the overflow of closing on them and the beginning of the panic selling by developers meant from 2005-2006, there would still be growth.

I bet the statistics for this year will be dismal. Already the numbers are running in the negative:
2006-April, 2007, it has dropped by $14,006.92 million! And interest rates are at 5.28% where it has been for the last YEAR! We know that housing is dropping but people are still spending which means they must accumulate more debt but this isn't good news, this is bad news, it means we have that old devil, inflation!

The Northeast was the last place to feel the bite of the drop in house sales but it is here now, I not only see lots of 'For Sale' signs all over everything, today I began to see those darker 'Auction of this property' signs!

The risks and rewards are not good right now nor will they improve. But the risk of the Japanese losing their USA markets is very real and this is what drives them to keep rates here as low as possible by buying our lousy bonds that are still below the real rate of inflation of dollars. I would suggest the number of excess dollars the Fed is creating (they hide this data) is well above 5% a year. And the fact that the FOREX reserves of Japan, if you add the bonds they hold, represents $1,700,000,000,000! That is nearly $2 trillion! An astonishing sum. And add China's bonds and FOREX dollars, that is another $1.6 billion and Russia holds half a trillion dollars so these three alone have around $4 trillion in extra dollars and if you add everrything on earth it comes to, um, about what our budget deficit is. Gads.

This is not good news. How can we have a sane bond market with that going on? But the news today is pure propaganda, as usual. Like the Beige Book which was full of outright lies, these lies will pass through the system and stocks will climb again as everyone thinks, 'It isn't going off the cliff after all!'

Here is an old story from over a year ago from Money Central MSN:

On Mar. 14, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis announced that the broadest measure of the U.S. trade deficit grew to $225 billion in the fourth quarter of 2005. That marked an increase of 21% from the $185 billion deficit in the third quarter of 2005. And the quarter's results drove the deficit for all of 2005 to $805 billion, a new record.

The current account deficit -- defined by economists as the combined balance on trade in goods and services plus income transfers between the U.S. and the rest of the world -- increased in the fourth quarter to 7% of U.S. gross domestic product (the most common measure of the U.S. national income). For all of 2005, the deficit was 6.4% of GDP.

In 1985, when the G7, then the club of the world's seven largest free-market economies, pushed through a major devaluation of the U.S. dollar in the Plaza Accord, the current account deficit was a mere 3.5% of U.S. gross domestic product. The good news is that the world is a lot more tolerant of a massive U.S. deficit with the rest of the globe than it was 20 years ago. The bad news is that we're running a lot deeper in the red than we were in 1985.

The writer of this article tried to raise some alarm but obviously was ignored. The Plaza Accords didn't fix much of anything, the entry of Russia into world oil markets saved us. The price of fuel fell like a rock to $12 a barrel! This killed inflation. But our trade deficit rose relentlessly because China entered our markets and the big rush of Asian goods simply accelerated.

In other words, the GNP% of our trade deficit doubled since we tried to fix it by having our government which is run by traitors who were taking bribes from the Japanese, to lower the value of the dollar and thus save us from our own greed because the dollar would be less than the yen and the DM of Germany. Of course, the Germans moved rapidly to drop their currency and create the euro. Which the Japanese drove up in value to keep their trade benefits.

This money has to recycle into American pockets or the trade system collapses and this is why the Bank of Japan has helped the hedge fund hell hounds and to this day, refuses to protect the yen even slightly. Every time the trade deficit rises as a percentage of our gross national product, we are assured that our economy is very big and can swallow this sword without struggle. But percentages matter! The pro-free traders are stupid if they ignore the growth rate of percentages because if anything 'grows' but the bad stuff grows at a faster rate, it dies! DUH!

Like the Red Queen in Alice Through the Looking Glass, our exports and our economy grows like mad but the imports grow faster and I would suggest, the more we do these things, the more it will grow since a big component of it is energy! Which is rising in price thanks to the falling dollar. For example, one of our bigger energy trade partners is Canada. And the loon is rising in value while the dollar is falling and so the number of dollars needed to buy energy rises for us and worse, the over-all price of energy is rising world-wide!

Here is the testimony by Daniel T. Griswold, Associate Director, Center for Trade Policy Studies, before the Trade Deficit Review Commission:

"The U.S. Trade Deficit: A Sign of Good Times"

August 19, 1999

In the 26 years surveyed, America’s current account deficit as a percentage of GDP grew larger (or, in the parlance of the typical news report, "worsened") in 15 of them and shrank (or "improved") in 11. By almost any measure, America’s economy has performed better in years in which the trade deficit rose compared to years in which it shrank.

During years of rising deficits, the growth of real gross domestic product averaged 3.2 percent per year, compared to 2.3 percent during years of shrinking deficits. In other words, our economy typically grows about 40 percent faster in years in which the trade deficit grows compared to years in which it shrinks.

On the issue of jobs, the story is much the same. During years of "worsening" trade deficits, the unemployment rate has, on average fallen by 0.4 percentage points. During years of "improving" deficits, the unemployment rate has, on average, risen by 0.4 percentage points.

In the politically sensitive sector of manufacturing, the trade deficit again proves to be a companion of better times. During years of rising deficits, manufacturing output grew an average of 4.5 percent a year. During years of shrinking deficits the average growth rate of manufacturing output was 1.4 percent--less than one-third the rate of growth during years of rising deficits. As to manufacturing jobs, those years in which the trade deficit grew saw factory employment increase by an average of 13,100 workers per year. Those years of shrinking deficits were accompanied by an average annual loss of manufacturing jobs of 116,700.

We are in the fix we are in today because of lunatics like Griswold! This neocon clown forget to understand that our trade deficit, which NEVER disappeared but only grew less sometimes, did this ONLY during RECESSIONS! Namely, the only thing that stopped our trade deficit from rising ever faster and growing a bigger percentage of the GDP every year was when our economy fell apart! This doesn't mean that this destructive trade that is eating us alive was making us stronger, it simply meant that whenever we saw any expansion at all, foriegn traders ate more and more of it! And each cycle is worse than the one before which is why the rate of eating into our GNP grows bigger, doubling every 10 years! Gads! This is terrible!

But like all criminals, he likes to hide this obvious fact and clothes this process in a nice flower print dress. He also leaves out the fact that these cycles whereby foreign traders take more and more dollars and slices of market are also where they buy out our own industrial base and our financial base! Namely, they are buying us faster than we are buying them! And at a good clip.

He claims our GDP rises on average 3.5% when our trade deficit rises rapidly. But if you subtract the trade deficit from the GDP numbers then it looks a lot worse! And of course, every one of these dollars becomes part of the pile of money that is warping the world's bond markets and is creating 'liquidity' that is really our trade coming home with compound interest attached. This all leads to bankruptcy. If I were to lose 1% of my money every year for 55 years, I would lose more than half of what I own! Indeed, as trade deficits have widened, the incomes of most working Americans have dropped. Behind inflation. Behind everything.

They may have jobs during these spells but they gain no leverage over earnings and can't force their owners to pay more so wages today are well below where they were, minus inflation, 40 years ago when the trade deficits started.

And this is the deal with statistics: they can say anything but if one wishes to know the truth, one must look at a wide range of data and then correlate ALL of it, not cherry-pick one thing or another. And if the data looks fishy, one must add more information to locate the cause. This is why looking at present housing finance issues is not enough, there is a 6 month's timelag involved and projecting forwards is tricky but not that hard, for me, anyway!

Griswold was hauled into Congress to soothe the savage beast and to basically lie to them so they would keep up this present ridiculous and dangerous course.

Here is Bernanke last month doing the same stupid thing, lying about free trade:

Embracing the Challenge of Free Trade: Competing and Prospering in a Global Economy

Trade is as old as humanity, or nearly so. Archaeological sites demonstrate that ancient peoples traded objects such as rare stones and shells across fairly long distances even in prehistoric times (Guisepi, 2000). Over the centuries, with stops and starts, the volume of trade has expanded exponentially, driven in large part by advances in transportation and communication technologies. Steamships replaced sailing ships; railroads succeeded canal barges; the telegraph supplanted the Pony Express. Today, in a world of container ships, jumbo jets, and the Internet, goods and many services are delivered faster and more cheaply (in inflation-adjusted terms) than ever before.1
*snip*
This is all standard textbook material, and it may well leave you unconvinced of the importance of international trade. After all, the United States is a big country, and we can certainly achieve many of the benefits of specialization by trading within our own borders. How important is it for the health of our economy to trade actively with other countries? As best we can measure, it is critically important. According to one recent study that used four approaches to measuring the gains from trade, the increase in trade since World War II has boosted U.S. annual incomes on the order of $10,000 per household (Bradford, Grieco, and Hufbauer, 2006).2 The same study found that removing all remaining barriers to trade would raise U.S. incomes anywhere from $4,000 to $12,000 per household. Other research has found similar results. Our willingness to trade freely with the world is indeed an essential source of our prosperity--and I think it is safe to say that the importance of trade for us will continue to grow.

Here is the top financial officer of America lying through his fangs. Since when have 90% of American households seen $10,000 pay hikes PER YEAR? I wish! And what percentage of any pay hikes one gets (and not many get these!) are eaten by inflation? Let's do some numbers!

Basic inflation eats up say, 5% a year--though I fear it is closer to 8% at this point---and if you earn $50,000 a year and remove that from the equation, you have only $47,500. Then your boss, General Motors, gives no pay raise and cuts benefits! So, thanks to free trade and the flood of Japanese cars, the income loses value due to inflation and doesn't grow by that magical $10,000! In my own life, I never saw such pay hikes. I made money on investments but not pay hikes. My daughter has not had a pay hike in over two years and benefits were cut and deductions rose so she LOST money! And then LOST MORE due to inflation!

If she got an extra $20,000 over those two years she would jump for joy. And Bernanke knows this! He isn't that totally stupid, he is merely totally EVIL. Only a traitor or an evil bastard would say what he said.

In practice, the benefits of trade flow from a number of sources. By giving domestic firms access to new markets, trade promotes efficient specialization, permits economies of scale, and increases the potential returns to innovation.3 U.S. firms increasingly seek to expand production and profits through new export opportunities; indeed, U.S. exports grew about 9 percent in real (that is, inflation-adjusted) terms last year. Export-oriented U.S. manufacturing industries include producers of aircraft, construction equipment, plastics, and chemicals. The United States also excels in the manufacture and export of sophisticated capital goods and scientific equipment. Outside of manufacturing, a number of U.S. high-tech companies, including software developers and online service providers, are world leaders in their fields. American films and music attract large worldwide audiences. Montana's exports include wheat, metal ores, and high-tech materials that are critical to the production of semiconductors.

Firms that emphasize exports are among America's most dynamic and productive companies. Relative to firms that produce strictly for the domestic market, exporters tend to be more technologically sophisticated and to create better jobs. Among U.S. manufacturers, for example, exporters pay higher wages and add jobs more rapidly than non-exporters (Bernard and Jensen, 1999). A significant portion of U.S. international trade is conducted by multinational firms; studies show that these firms generally pay higher wages than purely domestic firms, both in the United States and in developing countries (Doms and Jensen, 1998; Bhagwati, 2004, p. 172). U.S. firms with a global reach tend to be better diversified and are better able to respond to new market opportunities wherever they may arise.

Exports are important, but so are imports. Without trade, some goods would be extremely expensive or not available at all, such as the Valentine's Day roses of my earlier example or out-of-season fruits and vegetables. Trade also makes goods available in more brands and varieties; examples include automobiles, consumer electronics, garments and footwear, wines, and cheeses. One of the great attractions of globalization is that it brings to consumers the best of many cultures. And of course, global trade allows many types of goods, especially consumer goods, to be purchased at lower prices. Lower prices help all consumers but may be especially helpful to those with tight budgets. Indeed, a number of the large, import-intensive retail chains in the United States are focused on low- and moderate-income consumers, who benefit from being able to buy a wide variety of lower-priced goods.

Let's talk about roses: my village of Berlin, NY, has been hammered on every level by free trade. Every single business here has been either badly damaged or totally destroyed. We had one of the biggest green house complexe, Seagroatt Roses, in New York state. It is gone, the buildings sitting on the hillside, empty. Decaying. This happened in just 10 years! They were expanding and had over 100 people working for them in Berlin when I came here but now have less than 10! Roses shipped in from thousands of miles away have destroyed their local markets. Seagroatt's family has broken apart the organization and one of them just bought shares in a Columbian flower farm and he now makes the trade deficit worse by importing these roses which he used to grow on the other side of my little mountain, our boundries meet at the top of it. Bernanke celebrates the death of my village and the loss of these jobs as a good thing. I also know the workers thus displaced didn't get rich quick, either.

Some had to abandon their homes and we see this all over and now, with the housing boom dead, the sad 'For Sale' signs are turning to 'Auction' signs to 'Seized by the Sheriff for back taxes' red signs! This is not a glowing example of how free trade has been a wonderful thing.

This beastly, evil man also gloats that free trade drops prices! Well, how do American workers earn an extra $10,000 per annum if prices are DROPPING? Eh? In construction, wages have not only stagnated during a building boom, thanks to a flood of illegal aliens, wages have dropped! Now the boom is over, wages will collapse or jobs simply vanish for years and years! How are bricklayers going to get an extra $10,000 a year? I wish! I would be really rich.

And Bernanke has created a lot of inflation so the poor people who can buy cheap imported goods can't since their own wages are eaten up by food, fuel, housing and medical costs. And no $10,000 wage hikes anywhere to be seen despite Congress raising the minimum wage.

To see the irrelevance of trade to total employment, we need only observe that, between 1965 and 2006, the share of imports in the U.S. economy nearly quadrupled, from 4.4 percent of GDP to 16.8 percent. Yet, reflecting growth in the labor force, employment more than doubled during that time, and the unemployment rate was at about 4-1/2 percent at both the beginning and end of the period. Furthermore, average real compensation per hour in the United States has nearly doubled since 1965.

HAHAHA. This man is a good devil, isn't he? He includes wage hike numbers from 1965! And when did the trade deficit begin?

1972! And when did inflation begin to pass the wage hikes workers demanded? Well, for non-unionized workers, that is the year they ceased getting raises faster than the rate of inflation! And for union workers, there was a 7 year time lag when they struggled to keep up with inflation that rose to over 16%! But then Reagan came in and began killing the ability to strike which no longer exists since workers can be fired and scabs brought in with impunity. Since 1984, wages of all working people have FALLEN in real and in inflationary terms. They kept above the water by having all the wives go to work so one-wage families are now 2 or more. But they are counted as households so it looks like wages doubled when they didn't, they simply kept up...barely...but at a price.

To sum up, international trade in goods, services, and assets, like other forms of market-based exchange, allows us to transform what we have into what we need or want under increasingly beneficial terms. Trade allows us to enjoy both a more productive economy and higher living standards.

True, our living standards have gone up...around $9 trillion of this improvement is in red ink in trade AND another $9 trillion in government red ink! $18 trillion in the red isn't the sign of a healthy economy, it is a sign we are bleeding to death!

And Bernanke knows this. He has the same data I have. Maybe because I have had to struggle to live all my life and thus, I know what is going on at the bottom half as well as the top half, having lived at both ends, I know that things are not well at all and the price we are paying for this 'wealth' is going to be more than we can afford in the bitter end.

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