June 17, 2008
Elaine Meinel Supkis
We see global inflation raging nearly out of control now. Everywhere except for one country and one country only: Japan. The G7 conspiracy to help Japan pretend there is no inflation at that one, singular country is at the heart of the raging global inflation that besets everyone. The need for access to a central bank that can provide super-cheap loans continues. This and this thing alone is at the basis of all international trade and banking! And the central bankers definitely believe that if only they can keep this one window to the Cave of Wealth open forever, they will never, ever see a global recession. This is pure insanity! The flow of news shows us that this is not going to work.
Fukuda Hints At Early Sales Tax Hike, Says Now Is 'Crucial Time'
TOKYO (Kyodo)--Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda indicated Tuesday that an early hike in the consumption tax may be unavoidable to finance rising social security costs, saying now is a ''crucial time'' to make a decision.
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Is M'bishi Benefiting Too Much From Resource Boom?TOKYO (Nikkei)--Mitsubishi Corp. (8058) is busy countering criticism that it is raking in too much profit by taking advantage of spiking prices of resources. It is not just that the firm is on track to post its sixth straight record profit; what is also raising eyebrows is the size of the profits it is racking up.
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MOF Mulls Issuing Lottery Bonds To Bolster JGB Sales To IndividualsTOKYO (Nikkei)--To shore up sluggish sales of government bonds tailored for individual investors, the Ministry of Finance is considering introducing lottery bonds that offer chances to win cash prizes, government sources said.
Since the very first days of Culture of Life's news launching, I have been working hard to prove that the Japanese 'depression' is totally fake. It is a regime imposed upon the lower half of society. Japan was, since WWII and even longer, a one party state. It is run along the lines of states like say, North Korea or China. It is not a modern 'democracy' at all. Since the ruling LDP has no need to please the voters, they have gone further and further out on the limb as they chop finances, social supports and other services to the mass of voters.
After the great bubbles in stocks and housing burst in 1991, the country hunkered down to process out all the excess finance created by these bubbles. The bubbles, in turn, were the results of the Plaza Accords which suddenly boosted the value of the yen against the dollar. The Plaza Accords, in turn, were hammered out with Germany and Japan so the value of the dollar would plunge in a controlled fashion only vis a vis these two currencies. The crisis in the dollar from 1974-1987 was due to the startling truth that both Germany and Japan won the economic war that began in 1933. Both manufacturing powers had succeeded in overpowering the US manufacturing power in world trade. The US, for ideological reasons, didn't want to contest this great victory of the Axis powers because the US was still trying to control international military politics vis a vis Russia and China.
So, here we are today: Japan and Germany utterly dominate the US when it comes to international as well as US domestic trade in value-added manufacturing. If we deduct the Boeing business from the Japanese ledger, the complete collapse of US manufacturing sales in Japan is obvious! Virtually the only high-value manufacturing items we sell to Japan are Boeing jets! One of my very first postings online was about the dishonest use of Boeing jet sales to jigger our trade numbers. Namely, the jets are purchased only as a balm, as a method of keeping the US calm about the real struggle for power in the auto markets, for example. Even with the Boeing contracts, the true value of all this is hidden from the US public. For all the governments who buy our jets want something in return for this favor.
The Japanese make this very clear: much of the Boeing work has to be done in Japan. The deal is, Japan will perform a service to the US finance in order to keep this hideously lopsided trade going. And the deal is painfully obvious at this point: the loans that come pouring out of the Bank of Japan has become the fundamental basis for all US and probably all European banking. Definitely, all the pirate cove islands depend on this source of easy money! The belief seems to be, if only the Bank of Japan can keep up this 'depression' everyone else will ride on the back of this depression and use it as a hobby horse to keep liquidity flowing even in the teeth of rising global inflation of historic proportions.
Indeed, the greater the inflation, the more the other G7 nations need the Bank of Japan's super-low interest rates! So we have a classic 'Outerdarkness' moment: the imbalances in one realm cause imbalances in other realms. As these get increasingly worse, the solution is to make the imbalances worse and worse in the hopes that this can go on to infinity. If we push down hard at one point, at the opposite pole, it goes up higher and higher. I harp on this topic because understanding the greater picture is essential if one wishes to see into the future. This means having some philosophical or intellectual framework which can be used as a guide. To have this, one has to look backwards in history to see what has happened before so we can gage where we stand today, relative to all other events in history.
And on top of this, one has to have a belief system so one doesn't get lost in a forest of details! So I mount Pegasus and go flying off into the celestial star structures of religious beliefs that stretch back to the beginning of story telling of our distant ancestors who were coping with the horrors of the Ice Ages. The present woes we are witnessing are barely a flea bite compared to the grinding nightmare of global climate collapse! One of the things that are at the basis of understanding all things is the concept of death and how wealth is intimately connected with dead plants, dead animals and dead humans.
This is part of the balance between life and death: the ultimate scale balancing here is sex and accumulating wealth for future use. Just as the very first civilizations saw great rulers of the earliest cities being buried in the earth with a number of female slaves, horses, wheeled chariots and lots and lots of loot, the impulse to balance life and death in various fashions has been a human mania. Namely, what is here on earth and used by the living has to be balanced with a mirror amount in the darkness of death.
Back to modern times: throughout history, humans have created entities who 'judge' matters and who 'bring things into balance'. One of the older manifestations of this is Libra. Scales are very ancient. We suspect they came into being when newly-domesticated grains needed to be measured out. When we weigh things today, we use metal measuring devices that are regulated by governments. Such as the metric scales. Using some metal weight as a guide to measure value is very ancient. And for much of human social/civic history, this metal has been gold.
When the world's banking masters decided collectively to do away with this business of balancing the scales against some metal, some outside regulator, things have gotten very seriously out of whack. Starting with Bretton Woods II, the US has sought to use political power to gain some balance. This has utterly failed because the US has no idea what its political objectives are and indeed, is hijacked in this matter as outsiders as well as American special interests use tremendous sums of money as bribes to keep the system totally out of kilter. The US has a grossly out of balance trade deficit as well as a rising budget deficit. Because this has run now for over 35 years, we have accumulated a negative balance to such a degree, our entire banking system is now collapsing.
Which takes us back to the news in the Nikkei today: the US collapse is due to Japanese manipulations of their own banking collapse that was brought on by the Plaza Accords. The Plaza Accords was very dishonest. It was supposed to balance the value of German and Japanese currencies vis a vis the dollar and via this method, it was supposed to balance trade with both rivals and the US! THIS NEVER HAPPENED!
It was obviously a total failure. We knew this back in 1994. We know this today! The US trade deficit with both Germany and Japan GREW. On top of this, both nations began to buy up many of our industries here in the US or they colonized our work force by moving some of their excess production to the US. They worsened the condition of US labor by placing these factories in former slave states that prevent unionization. So even as they had unions in both Japan and Germany, they didn't allow US workers to unionize. This, in turn, drove competition in the US markets and punished any unionized businesses that were native. Over the last 20 years, this process has driven US unions out of work. At this point in time, the ability of US unions to even exist has now basically killed them. With this, the ability to buy Japanese and German manufactured exports to the US has begun to collapse. The only way to balance this was for Germany and Japan to supply US workers with easy loans. With this, they would be encouraged to buy Japanese and German goods.
So the balance in trade has moved into the banking system. The entire concept of banks since the very beginning thousands of years ago, was very simple: banks took the profits or savings of non-bankers or the bank itself and INVESTED THIS in futures which we call 'loans'. And to make a profit off of savings and in turn, to attract savings, the bankers offered to pay for holding these savings. We call this 'interest rates'. The rates paid to savers was always somewhat less than the amount lent to borrowers. To keep all of this in balance, bankers had to insure they had a 'reserve' to use as the basis for lending.
The US financial system got so out of whack, the balance between savings and lending collapsed. The US doesn't save at all at this point, not at a rate that is discernible. We kept borrowing and borrowing. The only way any economy can do this is if there is a 0% interest rate being charged on loans! This, in turn, always cause a collapse in savings. So the only way this can be done is to have NO reserves. And indeed, the US basically has no reserves. The danger of this system is obvious: it causes a collapse in the value of the currency. As the currency is debased, it creates this thing we call 'inflation'. Inflation is really depressing the value of savings. If you save money, it shrinks in value. So this is a depressing factor.
I notice that when I read the news and the central bankers of the G7 nations and in particular, the US, all love to talk about depressions and inflations but they don't mention savings and the effect of both on savings. A balance here is obvious: depressions in PRICES means savings are rising in value even if they get no interest values. Inflation in PRICES means savings are dropping in value no matter what the interest rates unless those rates are very much higher than inflation. Savings shrink! Whenever we have inflation cycles in PRICES, savings collapse. You can't save money if it is vanishing very fast thanks to inflation! We see this today quite clearly: the value of gold has dropped from recent highs due entirely to inflation. The value of the dollar vis a vis other currencies has fluctuated even as inflation roars here at home. This is due to the central bankers artificially trying to keep all currencies in balance despite raging international inflation.
This takes us back to the Nikkei news from Japan: Japan has keep its trade very unbalanced via taxes and various tricky barriers. And restricting incomes of the Japanese people while at the same time, making it nearly impossible for them to borrow money to buy imported goods. This is the most extreme case of manipulating the balance of Libra in modern times. Japan is the world's #3 economy along with Germany, China and the US. Yet Japan will not allow these top trade rivals to penetrate Japanese markets. For the last year, the LDP has been trying to raise consumption taxes in order to cut off even more international trade.
The unbalanced Japanese banking system has been hitched to Japanese export markets. The 'savings' in global banking are no longer the accumulated wealth of the working class seeking banks as a means of protecting their savings, it has collapsed totally. The 'savings' today are FOREX reserves held by the central banks of Asian and oil pumping nations. These savings are the basis of global banking. Since the US banking system has no savings AND VIRTUALLY NO RESERVES, the holdings of these other banks balance the $0 held by the world's biggest trade partner. But this is not balance. Or rather, it is driving the increasing trade deficits in the US as the US has to unbalance trade more and more in order to gain access to the stored value in these massive FOREX reserves.
The LDP is increasing taxes on what the poor Japanese people eat, drink and use in order to KILL INFLATION by RESTRICTING BUYING. If one insists on buying something in Japan, the government takes a bite. Japan, like all other nations, is experiencing terrible inflation in commodities. This has been 'fixed' by dropping wages to make up for rising overhead caused by global inflation. This, in turn, has been caused by a flood of easy lending that comes from the Bank of Japan. The Bank of Japan has a giant FOREX reserve due to the imposition of an insane banking system based on 0% return on savings imposed on the people of Japan in order to fix the sudden rise in the value of the yen via the Plaza Accords. So, to keep the 0% interest regime, Japan must keep prices down in Japan itself. So they can claim there is no inflation and therefore, they don't need to pay savers for their money. Instead, since prices are 'dropping', savings gain value even as they get no returns.
But this fiction is collapsing since the price of many things in Japan are rising! So, to fix this, the Japanese people will be taxed so whatever pitiful savings they have will be soaked up in the sales of items. So the Japanese people are being made poorer in two key ways: their savings are falling further and further behind the real rate of inflation while their wages are dropping like a rock in order to prevent commodity inflation from showing up in prices! This is literally whipsawing the Japanese working classes to death.
Nukaga Says Japan Faces Little Threat From Inflation
Bloomberg) -- Japan's Finance Minister Fukushiro Nukaga said the world's second-largest economy faces little threat from inflation even after his Group of Eight colleagues said rising oil and food prices are their chief concern.``Unlike Asian and European nations, Japan's economy on the whole is not facing inflationary concerns,'' Nukaga said at a briefing today after hosting a gathering of his G-8 counterparts in Osaka, Japan.
The G-8 finance ministers said spiraling commodities prices pose a ``serious challenge'' to the world economy. In Japan, inflation at 0.9 percent is within the central bank's zero to 2 percent range, signaling policy makers are unlikely to raise interest rates as long as costlier fuel and food squeeze companies and households and smother economic growth.
The top Nikkei story above about how the central bank and the government of Japan can't sell government debt unless they 'sweeten the deal' is very telling here. The normal thing to do is to raise interest rates! But this would destroy the ILLUSION of 'no inflation.' Japan must import nearly all of its commodities used by the manufacturing process as well as consumed by the Japanese people. Japan can't even feed itself! And yet, they claim there is no inflation while the entire planet has raging inflation in exactly the very things Japan imports the most? This is PURE INSANITY. And an obvious lie!
The US should not tolerate this. So long as Japan is dishonest about commodity inflation and use their workers as a sponge to sop up inflation at home so they can issue super-cheap loans to the major exporters in Japan...this is a frontal attack on the US markets! It is HOSTILE. It is DEADLY! And the US has one method for dealing with this sort of criminality: we put up tariff barriers to Japanese goods that are priced in this dishonest fashion. We cannot allow any of the top 5 manufacturing powers to gain market share here via slashing worker's wages....only, alas, this is what the US is trying to do!
To balance things out of balance, the US has been ruthlessly cutting worker's wages and destroying unions as fast as possible in a bid to undercut prices of other manufacturers. Japan has retaliated by doing the same, double down. For the US dares not tax its workers to death on top of cutting wages! At first, the Japanese workers benefited from all this via cheaper and cheaper prices despite lack of wage gains. But now they are being hammered by inflation just as the US workers are being hammered by inflation.
Both the US and Japan depend on cheap Japanese loans to provide 'liquidity' to global banking. Why is this?
It is because there is less and less worker's savings to keep the cheaper loans going. And as inflation and depression of wages continue to reduce worker wealth, we will eventually wipe out all the wealth of the working classes who will be bankrupted and stripped of all financial gains in the past. Deep in debt, even if this debt is CHEAP, the workers in the major manufacturing powers will end up impoverished and global trade will collapse because workers can't buy the output of capitalism!
Emerging markets face inflation meltdown
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Central banks across much of Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe will soon have to jam on the brakes or risk a serious crisis as inflation spirals into the danger zone.As the stark reality becomes ever clearer, this year's correction in emerging market bourses and bond markets has now accelerated into a full-fledged rout.
Shanghai's composite index touched a fourteen-month low of 2,900 yesterday. It follows moves this week by the central bank raised reserve requirement yet again, draining a further $60bn from the banking system. Chinese stocks have now slumped by almost 50pc since peaking in October.
In India, Mumbai's BSE index has lost 27pc of its value as the exodus of foreign funds accelerates. The central bank has raised rates to 8pc to curb inflation and halt a run on the rupee, but critics still say the country waited too long to tackle overheating. The current account deficit has shot up to near 3.5pc of GDP. A plethora of subsidies has pushed the budget deficit to 9pc of GDP.
Russia, Brazil, India, Vietnam, South Africa, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Chile - among others - have all had to raise interest rates or tighten monetary policy in recent days. Most are still behind the curve.
The frantic efforts of all the other nations trying to stop this run away freight train is failing. All these other nations, in an attempt to balance the grossly out of balance US/Japan/EU trade and banking relation are failing because they aren't big enough to force half of the global trading system to balance! Note that the nations struggling using classic banking tools are NOT the G7 nations! The G7 have been having many more meetings this last year as they struggle to reassert the old status quo that is hopelessly unbalanced. As the heads of these states conspire to reimpose an obviously broken system upon the rest of the planet, we get global inflation.
Which is the theft of SAVINGS. This cannot continue forever, of course. The US, Europe and Japan hope to translate all the commodity wealth of this planet into paper which they then destroy via their banking schemes. This way, they can hijack all the world's resources and consume it and in turn, have the paper money backing this, vanish into thin air as we collectively burp happily and go on about our business! This criminal desire to cheat our trade partners extends to ourselves: within the G7, the desire to CHEAT AND STEAL is very great and ongoing. Just as the people negotiating our trade deals and running our banks are all criminals, thieves and pirates seeking to enrich themselves at the expense of the American People.
Financial Times: Calls to tear up 'offset' CDS contracts
Dealers in credit derivatives are being urged to "tear up" some of the outstanding trades that could pose a potential risk to the financial system as part of renewed efforts by US regulators to improve the crucial sector's infrastructure.Efforts to tackle operational inefficiencies in the infrastructure underlying the notional $62,200bn market for credit default swaps, which is lightly regulated, have taken on a fresh urgency because of the credit crisis, and is likely to draw more scrutiny in coming months.
The Derivatives Beast is where all the dangers of this out of balance, deadly banking system is packaged. The Beast has grown massively since the day the Bank of Japan dropped interest rates to basically 0%. The accumulation of Japan's FOREX reserves coincides very neatly with the appearance of and growth of the Derivatives Beast. This story above isn't about the entire Beast which is now over $600 trillion in size. It is about the CDS part which is a NOTATIONAL value of $60 trillion but its overall effect is set at $600 trillion. This is 'backwards banking'. In other words, normally, banks attract savings and then lend based on a 10% reserve base. In the Derivatives Beast's universe, this is reversed in a mirror image. This is how the bankers today 'balance' things that are utterly out of whack. NONE OF THIS IS REGULATED. The central bankers of the G7 now want to have some rules because even they can see this thing has gotten entirely out of control. But they cannot fix this unless they fix the fundamentals.
Which is the US budget and trade deficits. Which are getting worse, not better.
Hedge fund flows shrivel in first quarter-data
(Reuters) - Hedge funds attracted $2.6 billion in net new money during the first quarter, marking an 81 percent drop from what they pulled in during the fourth quarter, data released on Monday showed.First-quarter inflows to these loosely regulated funds slumped $11.1 billion from the fourth-quarter figure of $13.7 billion, data from Lipper TASS, a unit of ThomsonReuters show.
As global inflation rages alongside wage cuts of workers, there has to be, ipso facto, less and less 'savings' for the hedge funds to 'grow'. Obviously, the global banking system is in a giant contraction. The great fear is, this will trigger an explosive change in the nature of the Derivatives Beast. To keep this from happening, all the central bankers are LYING ABOUT INFLATION. And frantically trying to drop interest rates in the teeth of one of the biggest inflationary cycles I have seen. This is why Japan is using very brutal or questionable methods of raising revenues for running sub-1% interest regimes. This is why the Federal Reserve of the US has jiggered the statistics to track real inflation. This is why interest rates are ridiculously low yet the banking system continues to spiral down this black hole of nothingness.
G-8 Urges Emerging Markets to Cut Oil, Food Subsidies
(Bloomberg) -- The Group of Eight nations called on emerging markets to cease subsidizing the price of oil and food amid concern such support was propelling demand and prices higher.``It is imperative to remove supply side constraints and export restrictions, replace general food subsidies in developing countries with well-targeted help for the poorest,'' G-8 finance ministers said in a statement after meeting today in Osaka, Japan.
Basically, the conspiratorial piratical criminals of the G7 nations [China is the G8th member and I know they did NOT endorse this demand!] want the rest of the world's governments to STARVE OR FREEZE their people to death! They want the Japanese solution applied without mercy! THAT will kill inflation! HAHAHA. Only it will lead to great violence! Revolutions, wars and hysteria. Pitchforks and all that!
Argentina farm strike turns violent
CNN) -- A three-month standoff between the Argentine government and farmers over export taxes turned violent Saturday.Local reports said there were several injuries and 18 arrests, including Alfredo De Angeli, a farm union leader who has been one of the most outspoken critics of President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner's export tax.
Military police scuffled with farmers as they tried to remove them from a road that protesters had blocked with their trucks.
Just one of many examples from this week's news stream!
Free-Trade Era May Be Nearing End Amid Food, Growth Concerns
(Bloomberg) -- After six decades of ever-expanding international commerce, the high tide of free trade is ebbing.As tens of thousands of South Koreans protest U.S. beef imports, rising commodity prices push nations to keep more food for domestic consumption and the U.S. chooses a new president who might be less supportive of free trade than his immediate predecessors, the world may be facing the end of a cycle that began in the immediate aftermath of World War II.
The liberalization of global trade has come ``to a screeching halt,'' said Fred Bergsten, director of the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. ``It'll take years to rebuild the foundations of free-trade policy.''
The cause is more political than economic. ``This is a challenging time to be in the pro-trade wing of any party in virtually any country,'' U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab said June 12 at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. ``It's hard to be for open trade, whether you are in India or the European Union or in China.''
Free trade has led to a huge imbalance in trade. Libra wishes to reset the scales. She can do it very violently or we can tip toe in and correct it quietly. But we can't correct this unless we understand this process and we understand that the US cannot consumer 25% of the world's resources while paying for all this with eternal, constant IOUs to our trade partners. This is why attempts at making the dollar strong fail. There is NO WAY any currency should be strong if trade is this unbalanced. But Japan conspires to strengthen the dollar and this artificially keeps up the trade imbalances.
And as usual, Paul Craig Roberts tells us the truth:
A Weak Dollar, Bad Fed Policies and Hedge Fund Speculators
By Paul Craig Roberts
In my opinion, the two biggest factors in oil's high price are the weakness in the US dollar's exchange value and the liquidity that the Federal Reserve is pumping out.
The dollar is weak because of large trade and budget deficits, the closing of which is beyond American political will. As abuse wears out the US dollar's reserve currency role, sellers demand more dollars as a hedge against its declining exchange value and ultimate loss of reserve currency status.
In an effort to forestall a serious recession and further crises in derivative instruments, the Federal Reserve is pouring out liquidity that is financing speculation in oil futures contracts. Hedge funds and investment banks are restoring their impaired capital structures with profits made by speculating in highly leveraged oil future contracts, just as real estate speculators flipping contracts pushed up home prices. The oil futures bubble, too, will pop, hopefully before new derivatives are created on the basis of high oil prices.
And in closing to this long story today: Germans have a long group memory about banking woes. The average German is becoming nervous about the relative value of paper money and are taking measures that are frankly, hopeless, in an attempt at protecting themselves and their savings.
Ordinary Germans have begun to reject euro bank notes with serial numbers from Italy, Spain, Greece and Portugal, raising concerns that public support for monetary union may be waning in the eurozone's anchor country.X-factor: German bank customers are favouring notes that start with the distinctive ‘X’ serial numbers, which show they have come from Berlin
Germany's Handelsblatt newspaper says bankers have detected a curious pattern where customers are withdrawing cash directly from branches, screening the notes to determine the origin of issue. They ask for paper from the southern states to be exchanged for German notes.
The German public is a canary in the mine. The bird is trying to fly out of the Cave of Death because they realize that the financial system is shaky, at best. They have been buying up things that can survive inflation and this is across the planet: anyone with savings is hoarding. And the Germans are very suspicious about paper money and they obviously wish their government would severe the euro relationship and thus, the money circulating mostly in Germany would retain value while paper printed in the other EU nations would decline and thus ends the confederation. The recent vote in Ireland to nix strengthening the New Holy Roman Empire and its New World Order aspirations has troubled the central bankers and the G7 conspirators. They don't want any nation in Europe to put all this to a vote! They hate democracy. Just as Japan has no democracy. The Will of the People is to be evaded as much as possible.
This way, the entire banking/trade system of the last 35 years can be reset with little trouble. At least, at the top.
"Sublime" image, Elaine. Nice.
Posted by: Bear of Little Brain | June 17, 2008 at 10:01 AM
Germany still has powerful unions and they do not like free trade. The Industriegewerkschaft Metall has struck to receive a 5% pay hike in February and they are in a militant mood. They have reason. The French, Belgian and Spanish steel industries were taken over by the Indian industrialist Lakshmi Mittal, starting the process of dismemberment of the European steel industry. The European steel workers will now be competing with the Indian workers, directly. Of course this was done over the howling protests of the public in the European producers and the French government. All had the Euro boot stuffed in their mouth to shut up, since India threatened a trade war. The question to ask: who profts from free trade with India? Answer: the American public, hehe, is looking forward, hehe, to enjoying Indian mangoes, hehe. To which the Indian PM Singh nodded approvingly at Curious George and thought that the Indian Public will be enjoying new WEstinghouse AP 1000 nuclear reactors. Nuclear, not nucular. In 97, we werey trying to block Russia from selling two reactors to India. Now France wants to sell the Areva( one third German under Siemens) reactors to PM Singh, so they get the French, Spanish and Belgian steel industries as a kicker. Things have changed.
Posted by: calvino | June 17, 2008 at 10:31 AM
I think I understand how Japan can restart the carry trade again. Iran is now accepting Yen instead of dollar.
So now Iran is partially acting as Japan's Yen reservoir, thus enabling Japan to play the dollar further.
A couple hundred millions a day? That's enough to screw up the planet exchange rate.
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=6322
Iran demands Japan's oil payments in yen, not US dollars
Posted by: Anthony | June 17, 2008 at 10:43 AM
oh btw, boeing jet. the main body is made in japan (Airbus too) I think Japan is few places that can do large high precision composite body.
(of course what makes a plane is still the engine, avionic and integration.)
also, china is gaining rapidly in large airplane. within 2 decade they will start competing with medium body passanger plane. I seriously doubt Japan will then play nice with US. Japan will never hand technological lead to China.
http://www.japancorp.net/Article.Asp?Art_ID=14573
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. (MHI) has shipped the first composite-material wing box for the next-generation super-efficient Boeing 787 Dreamliner. The shipment, completed on May 14 from the Oye Plant of MHI's Nagoya Aerospace Systems Works in Nagoya Prefecture, marks the first time composite material is being used in 30-meter- long wing boxes for jetliners. The first wing box was transported by ship from the pier adjoining the plant to Central Japan International Airport (Centrair) to fly to the Boeing Everett Plant in Washington by Dreamlifter, a special cargo airplane dedicated to transporting 787 components. At the Oye Plant, a ceremony was held on May 13 to commemorate the initial shipment.
Posted by: Anthony | June 17, 2008 at 10:56 AM
As I expected, Anthony. You are there on the floor of Boeing and see close up what is going on here.
The US public is misled by all this. The sales of Boeing jets to Japan are at face value. The labor and materials coming out of Japan are thus, disguised. I have raged about this act of deception for quite a while.
Calvino, you are absolutely right about Germany's militant workers. They are getting agitated but don't underestimate the French, Spanish, Italian and others! They all have a very long history of revolts, revolutions and uprisings. Which they are aware of unlike in the US where these things are covered up.
Posted by: Elaine Meinel Supkis | June 17, 2008 at 01:24 PM
Interesting Calvino. This past weekend I took a scenic drive along Lake Michigan and saw that the Steel Mill in Indiana had changed ownership; Arcelor Mittal in Indiana.
http://wikimapia.org/58072/
Fun facts about Mittal
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcelor_Mittal
Posted by: rockpaperscizzors | June 17, 2008 at 08:52 PM
Yese, Arcelor is expanding like crazy. Will crash like crazy in a downturn, too.
Posted by: Elaine Meinel Supkis | June 17, 2008 at 09:17 PM