Cheap Oil And Cheap Debts Are Killing US Middle Class

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Cheap oil and cheap loans were a trap for the American and European middle classes. When America and Europe produced energy, this was a key to wealth for the middle classes. But now this is reversed and proof is how OPEC now has great sovereign wealth as well as Russia. And China and India, working as the places where we not wring out energy-caused inflation, are hammering our middle classes as even all white collar as well as industrial jobs are outsourced. And more real estate organizations and moguls are going under, Moody's re-rates them as CCC or worse!

From the NYT:

Americans earned a smaller average income in 2005 than in 2000, the fifth consecutive year that they had to make ends meet with less money than at the peak of the last economic expansion, new government data shows.

While incomes have been on the rise since 2002, the average income in 2005 was $55,238, still nearly 1 percent less than the $55,714 in 2000, after adjusting for inflation, analysis of new tax statistics show.

We knew from day one that the bulk of the tax cuts would flow to the top 10% of Americans. We knew that cutting the taxes for Wall Street's trading stream would cause a huge stock market boom based on little internal logic. We knew that privatizing war would lead to the bankruptcy of our nation. Coupling all these things and stirring into the pot the business of 'free trade' and we get the destruction of the American Empire.

Certainly, bin Laden is endlessly pleased about all this. His entire strategy is to keep Bush in power for a long as humany possible and to encourage the US to attack Muslim countries that stand in the way of his revolutionary dream of destroying the 'Crusaders' and riding into Mecca on a white horse, carrying the banner of jihad. The statistics published by the NYT makes it pretty clear, the US has chosen a course of re-enslavement. All my long life, our nation has boasted that the true power of democracy lies with growing the middle class in size and strength. Not making rich people richer or poor people into slaves. This was supposed to be the foundation stone of our democracy.

The rich want power. And if this means killing the middle class, they will cheerfully do this for this makes them stronger, politically, as well as richer. The rape of the middle class was assisted by these same victims who joined with the upper classes in attacking the poor. The desire to punish 'welfare moms' and to fix public and even more, private morals, lead many middle class people down the path to their own destruction on both points. As morals collapse in the middle class, so does their finances. The re-enslavement of the population of New Rome mirrors the same process that destroyed Old Rome.

When free trade was sold to the middle class as a great way to avoid the effects of inflation caused by oil price hikes and wars, the middle class was sold. Prices for toys like TVs and cars dropped like a rock compared to inflation. So long as wages kept up with or surpassed inflation, the middle class refused to understand the hazards behind their embrace of free trade. One ugly deal the middle made was to follow Ronald Reagan in his quest to destroy unions. This process has been a total success.

Alas, the only route to the middle class happens to be 'union made'! It doesn't matter what trade one is in, globalization is now eating into ALL occupations! From lawyers to accountants, automakers to toy makers, everyone and everything is beingn outsourced in order to make more money for the rich! And the wages of the top staff working on this massive project to destroy the middle class are going up, too. But everyone below the very top are seeing wages fall. This includes many occupations requiring college degrees. Once upon a time when the middle class was much smaller, the main road to the middle class was a college degree which is why the Democratic plan for the GI Bill was a huge boost to creating the middle class after WWII.

Now, it is increasingly a path to lifetime debt and poor pay as wages for workers with degrees now begin to drop.

The NYT:

The growth in total incomes was concentrated among those making more than $1 million. The number of such taxpayers grew by more than 26 percent, to 303,817 in 2005, from 239,685 in 2000.

These individuals, who constitute less than a quarter of 1 percent of all taxpayers, reaped almost 47 percent of the total income gains in 2005, compared with 2000.

People with incomes of more than a million dollars also received 62 percent of the savings from the reduced tax rates on long-term capital gains and dividends that President Bush signed into law in 2003, according to a separate analysis by Citizens for Tax Justice, a group that points out policies that it says favor the rich.

The group’s calculations showed that 28 percent of the investment tax cut savings went to just 11,433 of the 134 million taxpayers, those who made $10 million or more, saving them almost $1.9 million each. Over all, this small number of wealthy Americans saved $21.7 billion in taxes on their investment income as a result of the tax-cut law.
*snip*
Nearly half of Americans reported incomes of less than $30,000, and two-thirds make less than $50,000.

Thanks to inflation, $50,000 is no longer middle class. The rise in value in real estate freed up lots of money for the retiring WWII generation which gave many of them a great retirement. And as this class dies, their children get the benefit of high return on inheritance values. But my generation, what are we planning to give our children? I see only debts being transmitted.

This loss is due to globalization. The wealth of the post-war generation was already being squandered before I became a wage earner. Thanks to the Vietnam war and cheap gas. To keep gas cheap, the US has chosen to import more oil than most nations combined. Ever since 1969, we have been importing oil even as all the other industrial nations pay high taxes on gasoline to stop overconsumption, the US does the exact opposite and the deficit this has caused is the open door to free trade as our government tries to balance trade by trading more. The more we trade, the deeper in the red we go and the root cause is oil but now, to hide inflation and expand profits, all our industries and office white collar jobs are now racing overseas.

From IHT:

Clients are pushing law firms like Jones Day and Kirkland & Ellis to send basic legal tasks to India, where lawyers tag documents and investigate takeover targets for as little as $20 an hour. The firms are part of a trend that will move about 50,000 U.S. legal jobs overseas by 2015, according to Forrester Research in Boston.

"The objective is to have only the most valuable people in London or New York, and the others in India, China or Columbus, Ohio," said Robert Profusek, co-head of the mergers and acquisitions practice at Jones Day in New York.

See how it works! There is NO 'safe' profession. We may as well outsource our elected offices! I notice that everyone requiring paperwork is now departing to far shores. The once-safe white collar jobs are history and this goes all the way down the line. The only jobs that can't be outsourced is plumbing and electrical work. And even these are being undermined via illegal aliens and green card union busters.

From the NYT:

But as the crisis over subprime residential mortgages spills over into other real estate sectors, causing a severe tightening of credit, there is widespread talk in the industry that Mr. Macklowe is in deep trouble — so much so that he could lose control not only of the newly acquired portfolio but also of the G.M. Building and other properties that were used as collateral for short-term debt that must be repaid six months from now.

Through a spokesman, Mr. Macklowe, who lost the Hotel Macklowe in a real estate squeeze in the mid-’90s, declined a request for comment. But his son, William S. Macklowe, expressed confidence that their company, Macklowe Properties, would be able to pay off the debt.

Some real estate specialists say that the February acquisition of the seven Manhattan buildings — a deal consummated in just 10 business days —will be remembered not just as a feat of financial derring-do but also as a watershed that ended two years of frenzy in the commercial real estate market.

Like Donald Trump and his ilk, this rich man is actually up to his toupee in debts. Only, unlike the hapless homebuyers of the former middle class trying to make ends meet while living an hour away from work in some exurb bedroom community, this guy can cause a total crash in our economy. It takes 50,000 homeowners owing a million bucks, going bankrupt in California to equal this one clown going bankrupt. His game is to raise rents on Manhattan properties when the leases are up. But of course, if there is a recession, this can't be done.

Manhattan's top real estate moguls loved 9/11. Interest rates were precipitously dropped to 1%. All the big shots in NYC were estatic because the loss of office space on 9/11 was the biggest loss of office space in one day than any previous time in history since WWII. I remember the WTC being finished. It coincided with the beginning of the great 1970's stagflation/bear market and real estate values of offices in Manhattan collapsed due to excess capacity. The Bridge and Tunnel Authority couldn't fill the offices in the WTC so they strongarmed the steamship companies to move in which is how my husband ended up working there on the 68th floor of the North Tower. Ugh.

For years and years, this was a huge lead weight in NYC real estate and only after 25 years, did it finally finish soaking up office space and building resumed. So, after all this was destroyed, millions of office square footage vaporized in one hour, real estate moguls made a killing in NYC real estate. They, not just the little people bidding up the price of houses, have been the machine that has sucked literally trillions of dollars out of the world's banking system to build stuff just like the condos built in Miami Beach. These towers in Florida are quadrupling the number of condos in the community and have virtually no buyers. They will go bankrupt very soon and this represents hundreds of millions of dollars. The crash and burn of the big real estate speculators will dwarf the collective losses of the small homesteaders.

From Bloomberg:

Standard & Poor's slashed the ratings on debt sold by two European mortgage-backed securities funds to junk from the highest investment grade after investors refused to provide short-term funding.

S&P cut the rankings on $3.2 billion debt issued by funds run by Solent Capital Partners LLP and Avendis Group by as much as 17 levels to CCC, eight steps below investment grade. The credit rankings may be cut further, S&P said today in an e-mailed statement.
*snip*
Portions of Avendis' Golden Key fund were downgraded to CCC from AAA, S&P said. The fund's short-term commercial paper rating was cut to the non-investment grade level of B, from the highest ranking of A-1+. Avendis is based in Geneva.

Ratings on parts of Solent Capital's Mainsail II fell by 16 steps to CCC+ from the highest grade. Mainsail II's commercial paper rating dropped three steps to A-3 from the highest ranking.

Ratings on similar funds operated by London-based Cairn Capital Ltd. and Sachsen LB Europe, may also be cut, S&P said.

Now Moody's is downgrading all those funds that should have been downgraded 7 months ago when the first winds of this storm hit at the end of February. Instead, the entire system tried to re-establish the building boom's good times and this led to the much nastier crash in mid August. They are now trying to correct things while still running as if there is a building boom. This will cause a greater crash around mid-October. The downgrading of Avendis' hedge fund is incredible and rather funny if we remember everything these guys spouted during the building boom. Downgrading from AAA to CCC in one day is amazing. But still a lie! It should be XXX or ZZZ. And it will be. Soon enough. I notice Mainsail has been unable to tack to the winds and is now floundering in the cross waves generated by Hurricane Greenspan.

Hell, we should name hurricanes after hedge funds and Federal Reserve officers. They are equally capricious and destructive. All the hedge funds will see their ratings drop now. And I say, to the cellar!

From International Herald Tribune:

A former U.S. hedge fund president arrested in Greece was freed Tuesday pending an extradition hearing next week, officials said.

Angelo Haligiannis, 35, former president of the Sterling Watters Hedge Fund, is wanted by authorities in New York, where he was convicted of defrauding investors of at least US$27 million (€20 million) by grossly misrepresenting the fund's returns since 1996.

And arrest them all! Note that they run off when wanted. They are not good citizens. They be pirates!

From Daily Times of Pakistan:

Vietnam has enough foreign exchange reserves to cover 20 weeks of imports, a senior central bank official was quoted on Tuesday as saying.

“We have dozens of billions of US dollar in reserves,” the Thanh Nien newspaper quoted Deputy Governor of the State Bank of Vietnam Nguyen Dong Tien as saying.

Absolutely everyone is imitating China. Note that these are all communist nations. Every one of them is doing what China is doing and for the same reasons. Japan, of course, started all this. The game is not to make a currency strong...someone better tell the Europeans...but to make it as weak as possible. This is the exact opposite of what was the philosophy just a mere 12 years ago...except for the US. We have negotiated the loss of value of the dollar over and over again since 1972! Many concords like Bretton Woods II and the Plaza Accords were all about weakening the dollar due to our trade deficit. Each time, the deficit shrinks for about two years until our trade partners abroad and the rich at home conspire to get around all this and continue onwards with the strong dollar.

After all, the dollar is the fiat default currency and thus cannot be weakened in the end! The only time this has not been true is the rise of the euro. And Europeans will figure out in about a year or so, they must weaken the euro or they will be shoved into a vast, ugly depression worse than the one the Japanese endured when the yen got stronger versus the dollar.

From the BBC:

Japan saw its trade surplus fall in July - the first drop in nine months - as higher fuel prices pushed up the cost of imports.

The trade surplus fell 21.1% from a year earlier to 671.22bn yen ($5.8bn; £2.9bn), figures from the Ministry of Finance showed.

Ie: Japan is seeing significant inflation that is increasingly hard to hide. Yet they must keep the status quo running or the US will hit a brck wall and 50%+ of Japan's high-return export trade is with the US and if the US ceases buying, Japan sinks like a rock.

From the Peninsular, Qatar:

As key financers of the huge US current account deficit, these countries have now more reserves in their coffers than they need as a precautionary measure for their short-term liability management. Thus, they look beyond treasuries and money market instruments and have developed an interest in higher yielding equities and strategic investments abroad. China is about to move $300 billion reserves away from the central bank to the newly established State FX Investment Corporation (SFEIC).

Russia has already established its Oil Stabilization Fund in 2004 and has recently enhanced the strategy to invest in riskier and potentially higher yielding assets by announcing the establishment of a Future Generation Fund by February 2008. A first taste of things to come was the Chinese purchase of a $3 billion stake in the private equity firm Blackstone.

A Russian state bank has bought a five per cent stake in EADS in 2006 and Russian gas giant Gazprom has pressed for market entry into the retail energy market of West European countries like Germany. With oil prices likely to stay high and Asian export manufacturing continuing to rise, the expected growth of SWF assets is mind boggling – they already manage $2.5 trillion assets; by 2012, they will have overtaken official central bank reserves in importance; and by 2022, their assets will reach $27.2 trillion, according to recent estimates by Morgan Stanley.

Their size will then be twice the official central bank reserves and their share of worldwide financial assets will have grown from the current 2.5 per cent to nearly 10 per cent. It is likely that this shift in SWFs towards equities will lead to higher P/E ratios, lower bond prices and rising interest rates. If oil prices should fall, the share of Asian surpluses and SWF assets is expected to increase, while a rise in oil prices will lead to rising assets of the SWFs of oil exporters and would set off concomitant declines of the SWFs of Asian manufacturers. The bottom line is that the importance of SWFs in world finance is about to rise significantly in any case.

Just three months ago, public officials in the Federal Reserve and Treasury openly wondered what 'sovereign wealth' meant. I called for them to be arrested for fraud. Anyone running a national banking system or trade office should have a vague idea what is 'sovereign' and what 'wealth' is. It is NOT debt. It is NOT being owned by foreigners! It is all about owning something and controlling it and the route to this is to run a trade SURPLUS something we haven't done ever since I left college.

70% of the Sovereign Wealth Fund entities buying up US businesses, banks and facilities like roads, ports and rail lines is from the Middle East. Slowly but surely, they are buying up as much as they dare The biggest purchase is US politicians. There is this race going on as the oil Arabs compete with the Jews supporting Zionism in the Holy Land, to buy up political power. The Jews are in control of vast real estate in this matter but they have a problem: they need money from taxpayers all the time and on top of that, more than one Jewish financial empire is based nearly totally on mountains of trillions of dollars in debts owed to people who are being taken over by the oil pumping nations.

We can see the end of this story pretty clearly. The struggle over control of the IMF is being waged below the headlines. China and the oil pumping nations are being joined by Russia in demanding move votes and more control. After all, they are the ones with Soveriegn Wealth! Years and years ago, one President after another promised to cease being dependent on Arab or OPEC oil yet here we are, twice as dependent as we were when Jimmy Carter asked us to turn down our thermostats.

From the Qatar news:

Only 14 per cent of people in Qatar and 13 per cent of Saudis expressed high satisfaction with their current salaries. The findings are from the second Consumer Confidence Index (CCI) conducted by Bayt.com and YouGovSiraj.

Sixty-two per cent of people in the region believe their personal financial situations will improve in the year ahead, compared to 59 per cent in a survey carried out in April.

Overall, respondents showed a modest rise in confidence in such areas as job availability, business conditions and inflation. Some 59 per cent of respondents in Qatar said they felt upbeat about their country's economic prospects, a figure that reached a low of 27 per cent in Lebanon and was 55 per cent for the UAE.

They have inflation and don't like it. This is where China steps in. Before China, the G7 nations could steathily raise prices and give its workers wage hikes and the OPEC people had to eat the inflation for us. Today, thanks to China, we no longer have this ability so inflation has to be stripped off the backs of all the working and middle class people. It is a bloody business. The growing number of uninsured in America or the Brits who can't get good health care in that dying ember of an empire, the stagnation of wages and benefits in Europe, all this is connected to our collective inabilty to tranfer energy inflation back to OPEC. Europe is involved in a hysterical attempt to reverse energy inflation and send it back to Russia and Russia has outwitted them and is now the third biggest entity after China and the OPEC financial warehouse in Dubai, in bypassing European and American attempts at exporting inflation. This is due to them having 'sovereign wealth'.

We must change direction, fast. Cheap oil and cheap debts are killing us.

Culture of Life News Main Page

Comments

[TL]

The only jobs that can't be outsourced is plumbing and electrical work. And even these are being undermined via illegal aliens and green card union busters. AMEN my co. does Electrical work and we compete w/ Illegal Aliens who dont have to pay insurance and have no license!!!! Then we have to fix there deadly mistakes so no one gets cooked and still client's bitch "youre to expensive". We have fixed in the last 5 jobs such deadly problems. "Price is an issue in the absence of Value"

[teddy]

TL, I heard the same thing recently from someone on the frontlines. He said that he had lost his house and that he set a bottom rate for which he will work at below a living wage. He nor his family have health insurance. However, the illegals are working for half that amount, so he has little work.

[Elaine Meinel Supkis]

And this is NEVER mentioned in the news! Contractors love illegal labor every bit as much as farmers need illegal aliens, another big story I am planning to do, it is so busy here. Heh. Gads.

The destruction of labor is nothing new. The US rulers did this in the past. Most of us descended from aliens brought over by the boatload during the long late-19th century depression.

[Liberal AND Proud]

"While incomes have been on the rise since 2002, the average income in 2005 was $55,238, still nearly 1 percent less than the $55,714 in 2000, after adjusting for inflation, analysis of new tax statistics show."

The rich get richer, the middle is slipping and the poor are run over. That is what the numbers say.

Take the millionaire athletes and CEOs out of the mix and see where the numbers are...since 1980.

[Elaine Meinel Supkis]

No kidding. I remember when we felt rich if we earned $40,000 a year. That was surgeon wages. My upper class parents felt exposed to financial danger when they bought a ranch and spent a total of $90,000 fixing it up---8 bedrooms, 4 baths, olympic pool, horse stables and all. Shows what a dollar was worth in 1962!

Inflation has been raging like crazy. In the asset world.

[blues]

Portland Inymedia

Thanks To Someone
author: Den Mark, Vancouver

((----- Copy & Paste -----))

http://portland.indymedia.org

/en/2007/08/363809.shtml

On my way yesterday to the small anti-recruiting vigil on Broadway in Portland, i saw on Weidler a series of evil signs which advertised a class on how to buy foreclosed houses.

[Canuck]

Here’s Alberta bucking the trend again:

“Threats of a strike that could halt work on huge oilsands projects have eased after four out of five Alberta construction trade unions that had voted to walk off the job accepted a new contract.”

“Under the tentative agreement, the unions will get guaranteed minimum increases of 23 per cent over a four-year contract. If the Alberta inflation rate is higher than the annual increase, workers will receive that rate plus one per cent.”

http://www.canada.com/calgaryherald/news/
calgarybusiness/story.html?id=8b9a06e5-
0b8d-436e-b0d2-7b6fd904a9a4&k=38108

So much for higher education:

“EDMONTON - The opportunity to earn a fat paycheque after high school is one major reason why many young Albertans are staying out of college and university, a new national report suggests.”

“Of the 1,682 Albertans surveyed, 35 per cent reported they had decided to work after high school prior to entering the post-secondary world. That was significantly higher than students from the other provinces, where the rates ranged between 20 per cent and 26 per cent.”

http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/
news/cityplus_alberta/story.html?id=cf04ec65-25df-4da3-95c9-8a2294605ce9

So much for higher education:
“EDMONTON - The opportunity to earn a fat paycheque after high school is one major reason why many young Albertans are staying out of college and university, a new national report suggests.”

“Of the 1,682 Albertans surveyed, 35 per cent reported they had decided to work after high school prior to entering the post-secondary world. That was significantly higher than students from the other provinces, where the rates ranged between 20 per cent and 26 per cent.”
http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/cityplus_alberta/story.html?id=cf04ec65-25df-4da3-95c9-8a2294605ce9

“In B.C., 425,000 new jobs will be created from 2003 to 2013, and 70 per cent will require post-secondary education. In Alberta, approximately 400,000 jobs will be created in the next 10 years and government is predicting a shortfall of 86,000 workers.”
http://www.nait.ca/portal/server.pt/
gateway/PTARGS_0_99_1743_317_0_43/
http%3B/www/pthosted/News_Portal/
dec2006/job_market.htm

“The shortage of skilled construction workers remains acute, according to the latest survey of 567 Alberta construction companies carried out by the Merit Contractors Association. One position remained unfilled for every 8.5 employees, a slight improvement from June 2006 when one in 7.6 trades positions went unfilled.“

“The total value of Alberta’s major construction projects at the end of 2006 soared to $158.2 billion, an eye-popping 28.5 per cent increase over the $123.1 billion at the end of 2005. Alberta Economic Development statistics count only projects valued over $1 million that are recently completed, under construction or proposed to start construction within the next few years. “

http://www.journalofcommerce.com/article
/20070328700

[teddy]

Canuck, what is the eastern half of Canada's economy like?

[Elaine Meinel Supkis]

Hey, I should move there! Except I am getting to old to climb scaffolding all day long.

[Canuck]

Bearing in mind that all of Canada is buoyed by economic activity in the west…

When you speak of eastern Canada economic conditions you’re really talking about the province of Ontario. Ontario holds what is traditionally considered the essence of Canadian manufacturing and heavy industry production also Toronto is the financial activity center for the country. Western Canada due to energy abundance is tilting this weighting away with both development and large relocations of people to the west to take advantage of the dynamic western economy. That being said Ontario and Quebec hold the largest population percentages and therefore still have a lot of clout. Ontario is experiencing overall positive growth but that may not have been the case without substantial material orders generated by Western Canada offsetting losses in the auto industry.

Western Canada itself is absorbing considerable production of vehicles from Ontario. Particularly well liked are the largest of the 4 door trucks (customized of course) which are constantly seen plying the highways and idling in restaurant parking lots.

Now secondarily when you talk Eastern Canada you would be referring to Quebec. Quebec seems to be holding its own economically. It’s seeing considerably less economic spin-off from western activity. Montreal is known as a head office city in many ways this is generated by Canada’s dual language structure and federal laws regarding the application of these languages. Montreal is occasionally losing some of these head office’s to Ontario and the West but that has stemmed somewhat with the shocking jump in housing costs in Western Canada.

Quebec has been prepared from the orgination of the term “Carbon Credit” to take advantage of the western resource based economy with their “Montreal Climate Exchange”

http://www.montrealmirror.com/2006/
080306/news_climate.html

This is seen in the west as another attempt at a blatant resource grab by eastern carpetbaggers. It’s not the first time it’s happened, see National Energy Program.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
National_Energy_Program

From a western perspective Quebec’s economic status is continuously suspect because it has been granted continual “have not” province status requiring all other productive regions of the country (Alberta, Ontario, occasionally British Columbia) to supplicate it with “transfer payments” which are essentially payoffs to provinces to act as the glue of confederation. In the case of Quebec to stave off separatist tendencies and in the case of Atlantic Canada to falsely invigorate their economy, provide uncommonly generous unemployment insurance terms and deflect the effects of the Federal Government mishandling the fishing industry… in total.

Here’s the main page from statistics Canada regarding economic activity.

http://www40.statcan.ca/l01/
cst01/indi02a.htm

Ontario

http://www40.statcan.ca/l01/
cst01/indi02g.htm

Population 12,726,336
Labor 1.1% YOY
Unemployment 6.6%, 0.1% YOY
Participation 68%
Retail trade 12,294.9m, 5.9% YOY
Shipments -3.8% YOY

Quebec

http://www40.statcan.ca/l01/
cst01/indi02f.htm

Population 7,676,097
Labor 2.3% YOY
Unemployment 6.9%, -1.2% YOY
Participation 65.6%
Retail trade 7,629.5m, 6% YOY
Shipments -1.2% YOY

Just for fun – Alberta

http://www40.statcan.ca/l01/
cst01/indi02j.htm

Population 3,435,511
Labor 5.3% YOY
Unemployment 3.3%, -0.3% YOY
Participation 74.1%
Retail trade 5,208,243m, 11.4% YOY (???- likely a typo 5,208.243-???)
Shipments 4.3% YOY

As of April 1, Canada's population was estimated at 32,852,800, up 75,500 from January 1, 2007. Only the four westernmost provinces had growth rates at or above the national average.
Alberta again led the provinces in growth. Its population increased 0.57% over the first quarter, more than twice the national average. However, this growth was slower than what was measured over the course of the first quarter of 2006 (+0.77%).
The estimates show a slowdown in interprovincial migration for Alberta, a trend that started in the last quarter of 2006. The province, whose population has been booming since the second half of 2004, had a net inflow of +7,400 people in the first quarter of 2007, less than half the net in-migration of +15,600 people observed between January and March 2006.
This slowdown occurred in large part because more people left Alberta for other parts of the country. As a result, net gains from interprovincial migration increased for most other jurisdictions, except for Quebec and Yukon.
British Columbia and Saskatchewan gained population in their exchanges with Alberta for a second quarter in a row.

[marcie]

Pet grooming can't be outsourced, prices and wages are going up, and it is fairly easy to set ones self up in business. I have been totally amazed to see my relatively low status job, business going up in both income and security these last few years.

[teddy]

Canuck, with NAFTA in place, the political change occuring not only worldwide, but in Canada, eg, Stelco, and with the increase in the exchange rate of the Canadian dollar, I think Canada is 15 years behind the US. IMHO, I think that all the GM and Chrysler plants (Cerberus) will close within 10 years in Canada along with a large chunk of its manufacturing base, and the cancerous black boxes will continue their relentless growth, assuming the world does not blow itself up by then.

[Canuck]

If it wasn’t for energy development in Western Canada Stelco would likely have been toast years ago. The Edmonton area is literally littered with worksites which were previously bare lots with construction of heavy steel modular assemblies destined for oilsands, compressor stations and bitumen upgraders. I head up highway 63 to Ft. McMurray every few months and its unusual to not have to pass or wait for massive pressure vessels heading North. Most of this steel comes from Canada. Ditto the Auto industry, even with their global and market challenges without a healthy internal market they’d be toast already too. I’ve pointed out before that we’re overall consuming 70% of our auto production. Demand is extremely high out in the west. You wouldn’t believe the numbers of recreational vehicle retailers, there were huge numbers before and there’s still more going up all the time. It’s quite a site to be on the highways and see all the fancy ass trucks (70K) pulling the fifth wheel (60K) and the ski-boat (40K) (you can pull both at the same time in Alberta, Heh Heh). This is what I mean by the west invigorating the entire Canadian economy. Purchasers place orders far and wide across the country to get these projects accomplished. In a lot of cases the local distributors just can’t get the throughput or purchasers are going direct to the manufacturer’s. Ontario’s challenges in a global marketplace are not going to go away, the Western Canadian economy has held off some major hurt in Ontario. There are a few things that may tank the energy development activity in the west. I get in debates with friends and co-workers about this fairly frequently.

Risk 1. Koyoto; Implementing carbon tax/credits to reduce greenhouse gasses will take a hell of a lot of money off the table real fast – modertate risk. Everyone basically agrees that this would happen IF Koyoto is implemented as the eco-green’s would like. My compatriots don’t agree that there’s a political will to apply Koyoto in this manner. It would be an issue of how much of a reduction in activity it would cause and how long it would take for the oil players to redirect the effects (taxes) to consumers.

Risk 2. Nationalization; The amount of oil we sell to the US is the equivalent of that which is imported by Eastern Canada. Any attempt to re-direct the final destination of energy exports away from US will cause a major contraction in the energy industry. Ontario, Quebec and Atlantic Provinces will howl for oil if they get cut off from Venezuela and or the Saudi’s. Most of my compatriots totally dismiss as a potential risk, they say the east wouldn’t dare. I on the other hand am not so sure.

Risk 3. Pending financial Armageddon, there’s about 150 Billion in projects that have approval and proceeding in Alberta right now. Who knows how much will be left on the table if we play out ’29. Most of my compatriots dismiss my more pessimistic view on this one.

Crystal Balling it… 15 years behind. Hard to say. The level of development in Western Canada is unprecedented at this juncture. How much of the development is leveraged money and how much is bought with oil profits. I’d say the slim majority is oil profit re-investment. Without it I would agree that the Canadian economy would basically mirror the US save for activity in the west, even though we haven’t generated an indigenous sub-prime cesspool the Americans have.

[Elaine Meinel Supkis]

In Texas during the depression, oil fell in value fast. This is the danger of depressions: the price of everything including human life, falls. Fast. Oil benefits from wars. Note the price hikes the minute the US launched wars in the Middle East.

[Gary]

Can't outsource network plumbing either, and when computers are networked, as a corollary of Metcalfe's Law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe's_law), the number of problems expands exponentially.

I've been in computers for 37 years, and the number of computer users who have problems, and need assistance right there on their computer(s), has also increased exponentially. Having said that, I'm still unemployed :-) but of course my age is a factor :-(

[Elaine Meinel Supkis]

They import computer experts from India. And yes, there is age discrimination, too. Stupidly. We older folk can sometimes be pretty smart, I would like to say.

[Gary]

Undoubtably experts come from India, though I don't see many here (Australia), and bound to be fewer after the Haneef fiasco. Sooner or later India will need its own experts to contibute to its own growth, and Indian governments and businesses will make it more and more attractive for experts to stay instead of leave.

But I'm not talking about experts, I'm talking about plumbers. People who can put in a pipe with a broadband connection, dig a trench to install a new drive or graphics card, or unblock a virus infection (a very popular line of work with the market share of the foolish and vulnerable Windows). These are not expert skills, just under-provided for the volume of computers we see today.

No real expert is going to cross the world to spend their time doing simple maintenance tasks and pacifying naive end users, any more than the naive end users are going to send their computers to India for service. They might be naive, but not stupid! OK, a few of them are too stupid to use a computer.

And as for age-related blindness, I suppose it's up to the market to soak up all the twenty-somethings with an order of magnitude less experience, who move on at whim, before there's significant demand for boring old farts who expect to die in harness. But I could be lucky :-)

[DeVaul]

Pet grooming and other service type jobs that cater to the well-to-do will probably do ok. As everyone knows, only wealthy people can afford to groom their pets or send them to a spa for relaxation during a recession or a depression.

This was how my grandfather and his brother made money for their family. They carried the golf clubs of rich people back in the early 20's (aka "caddies"). They also sold newspapers before and after school, but I do not believe they shined shoes. Each location had a price (bribe) that had to be paid in order to shine shoes there.

Those who reorganize their lives to serve the rich will do ok.

[Elaine Meinel Supkis]

Most rich people put the underclasses to work fighting wars. This is why depressions=wars.

[Paul]

You should read Dr. Richard A Levins' booklet Middle Class * Union Made. Dr. Levins is a Professor Emeritus in Applied Economics at the University of Minnesota. He shows the relationship between the rise and fall of the middle class and the rise and fall of labor unions. It's a great read.
http://www.middleclassunionmade.com

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