The US International Trade Deficit must be corrected by any means possible! This is the basic structural economic foundation problem that will destroy the US economy.
The USA is losing the Economic War! The USA must re-industrialize, or become a third world nation of mostly unemployed beggars.
The USA has lost the World Technology Leadership! The USA must change the emphasis of our education systems back to technology and science if the USA wants to compete in the technology competition.
The USA is Bankrupt! Instead of redeeming our freshly printed US dollars and other currency with gold, the US government is allowing these freshly printed US T-Bills, Bonds, or other Securities to be redeemed for title to privately owned businesses, factories, casinos, hotels, farms, land, ports, breweries, refineries, forests, ports, breweries, refineries, and other privately owned wealth and assets located in the USA (that were created by previous US generations) to foreigners in order to pay foreigners to manufacture our imported products that we consume, rather than have US citizens work to produce the things that we consume and also to pay for growing US government expenses that are in excess of our federal tax collections.
When the USA has no more privately owned wealth and assets to sell to foreigners in industrial countries in return for freshly printed US T-Bills, Bonds, or other Securities, those foreigners will not buy any more of our freshly printed US currency. Foreign manufacturers will then stop accepting US dollars for the consumer products that we continue to import. The US government will then not be able to sell any US T-Bills, Bonds, or other Securities to raise US dollars from these foreign manufacturers to pay for our US government expenses and/or our imported consumer products.
The USA is Committing Economic Suicide! The USA will become a third world nation when our US dollar loses all of its purchasing value.
WRITTED BY
Gerald Roy Spencer, Professional Engineer
President, Spencer Engineers, Inc.
4635 Southwest Freeway - Suite 900
Houston, Texas 77027-7139
1.1. Foreigners continue purchase these freshly printed paper US Bonds (at an increasing discount from face value or present worth) ONLY because these US bonds can be redeemed by purchasing title to privately owned land, hotels, farms, businesses, casinos and other wealth and assets that were created by previous generations of US citizens and located in the USA, before the de-industrialization of the USA, and instead of redeeming US currency with Gold as other foreign nations do.
1.2. These freshly printed paper US Bonds, T-Bills, Dollars and other security instruments that the US government sells to people in industrialized nations have no value, except that they are redeemable for title to privately owned businesses, factories, casinos, hotels, farms, land, ports, breweries, refineries, forests, ports, breweries, refineries, and other privately owned assets located in the USA that were created by previous US generations instead of Gold.
INDEX
CHAPTER 1........... BASIC ECONOMIC PRINCIPLES........... 3
CHAPTER 2........... SUPPORT REQUIRED FOR GENERATING ECONOMIC WEALTH........... 6
CHAPTER 3........... US ECONOMIC POLICY........... 6
CHAPTER 4........... US FOREIGN TRADE DEFICIT........... 9
CHAPTER 5........... US GOVERNMENT SPENDING DEFICIT........... 9
CHAPTER 6........... THE USA IS COMMITTING ECONOMIC SUICIDE........... 15
CHAPTER 7........... FREE TRADE........... 17
CHAPTER 8........... CAN THE US ECONOMY BE SAVED?........... 19
CHAPTER 9........... SCIENTIFIC & TECHNOLOGY EDUCATION OPTION........... 19
CHAPTER 10........... CHINA IS WINNING THE WAR FOR SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL........... 20
SUPERIORITY
CHAPTER 11........... THE USA NEEDS SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICALLY EDUCATED........... 21
CITIZENS
CHAPTER 12........... KNOWLEDGE WORKERS IN A POST INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY........... 23
CHAPTER 13........... US ECONOMIC FUTURE........... 25
CHAPTER 14........... US ECONOMIC STIMULATION PLAN........... 26
CHAPTER 15........... SPENCER'S US ECONOMIC STIMULATION PLAN........... 27
CHAPTER 16........... DID FOREIGNERS CREATE THIS DISASTER?........... 28
CHAPTER 17........... FORECASTS OF FUTURE CIVIL UNREST........... 29
CHAPTER 18........... FUTURE US DOLLAR BUYING POWER........... 30
CHAPTER 19........... HOW CAN THE USA RE-INDUSTRIALIZE NOW?........... 31
CHAPTER 20........... US FINANCIAL PRODUCTS........... 32
CHAPTER 21........... US BUSINESS FUTURE........... 34
CHAPTER 22........... HOME MORTGAGES........... 36
CHAPTER 23........... US ECONOMIC FUTURE........... 36
CHAPTER 24........... US POLITICAL LEADERS........... 37
CHAPTER 25........... US TRADE BALANCE CORRECTION........... 38
CHAPTER 26........... INTERNATIONAL INFLUENCE........... 38
CHAPTER 27........... IF GOD DOES EXIST, HE WILL NOT SAVE USA FROM OURSELVES........... 39
CHAPTER 28........... US ECONOMIC TRADE POLICY........... 40
CHAPTER 29........... NATIONAL SALES TAX........... 41
CHAPTER 30........... ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY........... 42
CHAPTER 31........... GENERAL MOTORS BAILOUT ........... 43
CHAPTER 32........... FUNDING FOR RE-INDUSTRIALIZATION AND FOR THE RE-CREATION........... 45
OF A TECHNICALLY QUALIFIED US CITIZEN RESOURCE REQUIRED
FOR RE-INDUSTRIALIZATION
CHAPTER 33........... IS GREED GOOD OR BAD?........... 45
CHAPTER 1
BASIC ECONOMIC PRINCIPLES
1. Economics, Trade Deficit, Government Spending Deficit, Jobs for Americans, and the Buying Power or value of the US Dollar are all interrelated. Each of these principles generally affect each of the others, and each is very important. These subjects need to be understood by the General Public. Economics is not that complicated. It is interlocked with understandable cause and affect principals of various economic action options that can be totally understood by almost any High School Graduate, and/or most High School Drop outs.
1.1. Real wealth, jobs, industry, and real monetary value is created and/or acquired ONLY when the members of a family (or a nation, city-state, island, tribe, etc.) plant, grow and/or harvest something of commercial value from the earth, extract something of commercial value from the earth, provide professional services (medical, legal, dental, engineering, architecture, accounting, land surveying, technology, etc.) and/or manufactures or constructs something of commercial value that is consumable (or permanently useful for income or rent) and then sells, leases or rents these items and/or services to parties outside of their family, in return for a net transfer of gold, currency or commodities from other parties outside of their family into their own family. The members of that family can reflect their real wealth and financial security with the net positive accumulation of grain, gold, cattle, jewels, land, buildings, factories, jobs, commodities and/or other marketable products for reserve use in times of emergency and/or also to raise the standard of living for the members of that family.
1.1.1. There are almost no islands in the world that do not have trade with parties outside of their politically controlled borders.
1.1.2. Some entrepreneur will buy the bananas from the island grower and then export the bananas to foreigners in exchange for a profit reflected in the foreigner's commodities, gold, silver, and/or sometimes freshly printed currency paid for the bananas.
1.1.3. Maybe a Ship Captain will buy the bananas from the grower or the entrepreneur and then sell them at a place that does not have any bananas (for a profit).
1.2. Various US government environmental and economic laws have encouraged the US companies to cease manufacturing things for US consumption, export US citizen jobs and allowed US citizens to import these consumer items in exchange for titles to existing US wealth such as privately owned land, hotels, farms, businesses, casinos, stocks, equities, securities and other wealth and assets of monetary value that are located in the USA and were created by previous generations of US citizens. This wealth is then transferred to foreigners and governments in industrialized foreign nations where foreign governments elected to industrialize and generate wealth by making and exporting consumer items to the USA and other countries.
1.3. Did the Biblical Jacob squander his wealth and assets unwisely and then became hungry when a famine occurred? Did Jacob sacrifice all of his cattle to his god? Or sell his wealth and assets for food & wine to have a bunch of parties? Did Jacob burn his tents, grain and other wealth and assets as sacrifice to his god? When the Jacob's family faced starvation, Jacob took his family to Egypt where there was grain stored and hoarded by the greedy Egyptians to insure the survival of Egyptians during times of drought and famine. Jacob and his descendants probably submitted themselves to be slaves of the Egyptians in return for food and shelter. Is the US government repeating these actions?
1.4. Since the USA exported all of our gold, products, services, or commodities to pay for our growing US government expenses and our imported consumable products, the USA is now exporting title to our privately owned real estate, factories, casinos, hotels, office buildings, ports, businesses, etc. to pay for government expenses and imported consumer items.
1.5. The US economy is a closed economic system that is defined (more or less) by the area under control of our US government law.
1.6. The US Government only has $11B of gold left in Ft. Knox according to the AP Dec. 21, 2009, 3:44PM, and the US government is continuously allowing our freshly printed US Bonds, US Dollars and other Securities owned by foreigners to be redeemed by purchasing title to privately owned land, hotels, farms, businesses, casinos and other wealth and assets located in the USA that were created by previous generations of US citizens, before the de-industrialization of the USA, instead of redeeming these currencies for gold from Ft. Knox as other nations do to support the value of their currencies. These existing US located wealth and assets are finite, and the industrial nations will stop "loaning back" the US government more and more of their US dollars after the foreigners own (almost) all of the wealth and assets that are located in the USA.
1.7. The value of the outstanding US debt of 12Trillion in Bonds and T-bills plus $829B in currency will equate to very little buying power of the US dollar if foreign nations stopped buying our freshly printed US T-Bills, US Bonds, or other US Securities and/or wanted the US government to redeem our currency in gold (just like other nations).
1.8. Any family, tribe, country, etc. and its individual members can prosper or become debt ridden in accordance with their industrial behavior, government spending behavior, and/or other economic actions of the leaders of that family.
1.9. If any family or nation purchased imported things from outside of their family of less monetary value than the monetary (or otherwise useful value) of the items that they sold and exported to others outside of their family, then that family would have a net positive foreign trade balance of gold, grain, cattle, etc. into that family. Only a net positive foreign trade balance will increase the value of the accumulated real wealth of privately owned wealth and assets within that family.
1.10. People working together in an organized fashion are generally more productive than individuals working alone. An extended family will live better than a nuclear family. A tribe will live better than an extended family. A nation will live better than a tribe, until the tribe or nation's leaders decide to spend the resources unwisely. The US government has decided to spend the US national wealth unwisely for the past few decades.
1.11. The USA government economic policies, environmental regulations, trade policies, free trade policies, labor costs and other recent factors have caused our wealth generating factories to close. These factory closings have caused the lay off US workers for labor cost savings. Anticipated future environmental regulations have also caused US companies to close and leave the USA.
1.12. Transportation, distribution, warehousing, tax collection, sales, marketing, delivery, packaging and other similar services provided within that family (or an organization, tribe, country, etc.) are necessary to enable and support the original creation of wealth by the basic productive efforts within in that country. These costs are added to the cost of the product that was initially created by other basic productive efforts within in that country. These services are necessary for the export of locally made products to foreign countries in return for foreign exchange and to distribute goods within that family. These and other similar services provided for distributing and sale of imported products just stir the economic pot and assist the US importers of imported products that send US dollars to overseas manufacturers.
1.13. Tax payer supported jobs such as police, firemen, teachers, military, finance, social services, welfare, environmental and other tax paid jobs generally do not produce any of the food, shelter, and clothing required to sustain life or create any wealth for the nation. The citizens who work to produce the necessities of life are usually taxed for a portion of the wealth that they generate to pay the government employee salaries of these government jobs that support and protect the citizens that do produce the things that society needs to survive, but a lot of these government jobs could be eliminated.
1.14. The communist form of government where everybody works for the government because the government owns everything does produce the food, shelter, and clothing required to sustain life. Most of the individuals in communist countries want to work at something other than producing the basic food, shelter, clothing and other products required to sustain life. They usually become a nation of non-producers wanting the disgruntled producers to produce more and more so that privileged individuals of the elite can keep themselves busy as musicians, poets, social workers, philosophers, historians, politicians, bureaucrats, administrators, etc. The elite will then let, require, and/or force those that the elite have deemed lower class to work hard and produce the food, shelter, and clothing required to sustain the life of the nation including the elite class of the government employees.
1.15. Consumer spending (consumer confidence) with credit cards is a symptom of economic well-being, not the cause of any economic recovery. The population needs to be employed and able to support their families for economic and political stability.
1.16. New massive borrowed US government funds spent to create additional jobs for temporary employment as police, teachers, military, social services, welfare, environmental, infrastructure, social entitlements, free medicine, subsidized housing, digging holes today then re-filling the same holes tomorrow, constructing pork barrel projects, artists, musicians, poets, historians, various minority rights activists, and other bureaucratic jobs generally do not produce any of the food, shelter, and clothing required to sustain life, create wealth for the nation, and/or reduce the US Foreign Trade Deficit.
1.17. Without businesses and corporations providing jobs, most US citizens would have to live off of the land or be beggars in the streets. Most of the real jobs in the USA are and were created by corporations and private businesses, not created with taxes taken from the local or US government that do not create wealth. You could study hard, work hard, and then start your own corporation (or business) as I did in 1968, or work for someone else who did. The corporation or business does not owe any employee anything beyond what the employee contracted with that business to do for the US dollars that the employee agreed to receive in return for the employee's work.
1.18. US Businesses must now relocate their manufacturing plants and/or outsource labor expenditures to lower employee wage paying countries as much as possible since they have to satisfy the US consumer's demand for the very lowest price possible for each of the US consumer's purchases, or the company will become bankrupt by paying decent wages to US citizens. If a business does not outsource their labor costs overseas, then their competitors will and this will cause the company utilizing US labor to become bankrupt due to high production costs.
1.19. The businesses across this nation are creating new permanent jobs, but these jobs are located in foreign nations because of the existing US government trade laws, labor laws, and the US environmental laws that were created by both major political parties in the last few decades. These laws make creating jobs in the USA un-economical. Labor and environmental costs are almost always much less expensive in foreign nations due to US government trade and environmental laws. US citizens have elected the congressmen and senators who voted for these laws that generally did not exist several decades ago when the USA was a successful industrial giant. Both major parties are in favor the free trade and environmental legislation, which has destroyed US, industries and the industrial employment opportunities for the average US working person.
1.20. I do not know what the Prohibition Party's position is on this issue, or even if that party still exists, But I would even give up my consumption of alcoholic beverages and join the Prohibition Party if they would re-industrialize the USA.
1.21. I would consider joining the Green Party, except that they want an even cleaner environment which means closing down more and more US industries and then exporting more of the few remaining US industries and jobs to overseas countries where the environmental costs and the labor costs are less expensive. We must somehow repeal existing free trade legislation (and environmental laws) in order to re-industrialize and reverse the balance of trade if we desire to somehow employ US citizens instead of foreigners to manufacture the things that we consume.
1.22. Foreign trade balance will accumulate wealth if it is positive, or create poverty if it is negative for any family, for the USA, and/or for any other organization, tribe, nation, etc.
CHAPTER 2
SUPPORT REQUIRED FOR GENERATING ECONOMIC WEALTH
2. Many Other Services are required to support the Agriculture, Mining, Technology, Construction and Industrial Production activities of a family, tribe or nation. Civilized nations have always taxed the productive population to pay for National Security, Armed Forces, Crime Prevention, Police, Fire Protection, and other similar items that assist, support and protect and prevent interruption of the agricultural and the industrial production bases that supplied the things that the entire population consumed.
2.1. Industrial and Agricultural Bases could not exist with foreign invasion, crime, protection rackets, corruption, sabotage, etc., disrupting the production. A portion of the US dollars earned by this producing base has always been taken by taxation to pay for governments to prevent these occurrences that would otherwise interrupt the production of the things that the citizens need to sustain civilized life.
2.2. The US government can no longer afford to spend these hard earned taxes and so many borrowed US dollars on wars, social entitlements, welfare, healthcare, environmental clean-ups, digging holes today then re-filling the same holes tomorrow, pork barrel projects, free educations, free medicine, subsidized housing, humanities, art, music, sculptures, writing poems, make-work schemes, entertainment, etc., and/or similar things that does not contribute positively to reducing our foreign trade balance. These things are nice but the USA cannot afford these expenses until we re-establish our economic strength. These things take tax US dollars and employ people to do things that do not accumulate wealth for the family, tribe, or nation.
CHAPTER 3
US ECONOMIC POLICY
3. The USA has almost entirely ceased to generate wealth for future US generations, and instead support our standard of living and non-productive lifestyle by selling the assets that were created by previous US generations. The US government economic policies has encouraged the sale or export our existing wealth and assets, including title to privately owned businesses, factories, casinos, hotels, farms, land, ports, businesses, refineries, forests, ports, breweries, refineries, and other privately owned wealth and assets located in the USA that were created by previous US generations in order to pay people in foreign countries to manufacture the things that US citizens consume, and also to pay for expanded US government expenses when the expenses exceed the taxes raised by the US government.
3.1. The US government raises money for expenses by selling freshly printed paper US bonds and other US paper debt instruments that promise that our children and our unborn grandchildren will pay off these debt instruments on the date of the bond maturity with US dollars.
3.1.1. The US government is redeeming these freshly printed paper US bonds with title to our privately owned US located businesses, factories, casinos, hotels, farms, land, ports, businesses, refineries, forests, ports, breweries, refineries, and other assets instead of Gold from Ft. Knox.
3.1.2. These privately owned US located assets are our children's heritage and their main means of creating future wealth to pay off these bond obligations that present US citizens have placed onto these future US citizens when they are mature, or when they are born.
3.2. US citizens continuously pay US dollars to people and companies in the industrial nations (through Walmart, Home Depot, and the other imported/distributor/retailers) with US dollars to manufacture and supply the imported products that US citizens consume (instead of US citizens producing these products ourselves). This creates a constant flow of wealth from the USA to foreign industrial nations.
3.3. The US government does not really borrow US dollars from US banks to pay for its expenses that are greater than the taxes that they collect.
3.3.1. The US congress periodically passes laws that authorize the Federal Reserve Board (FED) which is a Special Purpose Government Entity created by the Federal Reserve Act via Chairman Ben Bernanke to buy some paper and then print a bunch of new interest bearing paper currency instruments (US Bonds) in varying amounts with the promise of US government repaying these loans in US dollars at the future dates specified (when they become due). This total congressional authorized amount of US debt instruments that is in excess of the value of the Gold Reserves stored at Ft. Knox is normally referred to as the "National Debt".
3.3.2. The FED then auctions off and sell these freshly printed paper US Bonds, and other Debt Instrument Securities at periodic US Federal Reserve Bank public bid auctions AT DISCOUNTS LESS THAN CURRENT VALUE AND/OR PRESENT WORTH to mostly foreign manufacturers, foreign banks and foreign individuals in China, India, Brazil, Pakistan, and other industrialized countries in return for the US dollars that these foreigners earned by making consumer goods for US citizens.
3.3.3. The US government then spends these US dollars, plus US dollars collected by taxation, on various government expenses and acquisitions.
3.3.4. These US government expenses include government payrolls, hiring of the unemployed to dig holes today then re-fill the same holes tomorrow, pork barrel projects constructed with foreign made imported construction materials, free educations, free medicine, subsidized housing, humanities, art, music, writing poems, make-work schemes, entertainment, roads and bridges to nowhere, and/or similar things that does not contribute positively to correcting the basic structural problems with our economy.
3.4. Foreigners continue purchase these freshly printed paper US Bonds (at an increasing discount from face value or present worth) ONLY because these US bonds can be redeemed by purchasing title to privately owned land, hotels, farms, businesses, casinos and other wealth and assets that were created by previous generations of US citizens and located in the USA, before the de-industrialization of the USA, and instead of redeeming US currency with Gold as other foreign nations do.
3.5. These freshly printed paper US Bonds, T-Bills, Dollars and other security instruments that the US government sells to people in industrialized nations have no value, except that they are redeemable for title to privately owned businesses, factories, casinos, hotels, farms, land, ports, breweries, refineries, forests, ports, breweries, refineries, and other privately owned assets located in the USA that were created by previous US generations instead of Gold.
3.6. The US government is going to have to start printing and selling more and more of these freshly printed paper US Bonds, and other debt instruments to foreign industrial manufacturers FASTER AND FASTER AT GREATER AND GREATER DISCOUNTS to get back enough foreign held US dollars from foreign individuals and foreign manufacturers in sufficient quantity to pay for the growing US government expenses that are in excess of our US federal government tax collections and also to pay for all of these new government entitlement expenses.
3.6.1. These US government expenses includes high-speed rail projects, environmental cleanups, roads, bridges, utilities, and other pork barrel projects in politically contested areas that will create temporary employment and make President Obama appear to be improving the economy by spending more and more borrowed dollars to win re-election votes and improve his approval ratings.
3.6.2. The US government also needs more and more US dollars to pay for wars, military jets with active duty military USAF pilots for the personal use of specially privileged members of congress (Pelosi), government bureaucrat payrolls, government retirement checks, courts, federal police, failed business bailouts, cash bonuses to the various Wall Street forgers of SEC documents that contributed to political campaigns, Las Vegas corporation junkets for failed corporation employees, foreclosed house mortgages for big spenders with bad credit, new multi-million dollar French manufactured personal corporate jets for political contributor's bankrupt corporations, pork barrel projects, high speed rail projects, research contracts, Welfare, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, SSI, expensive corporate vacations, new infrastructure, wealth re-distribution, mental health services, foreign aid and any other thing that congress and the president decides to use taxpayer US dollars to acquire, build or just give to their political campaign contributors and various other privileged individuals.
3.7. Productive industrial nations like China, India, Brazil, Pakistan, and other newly industrialized foreign nations grow wealthy and secure the value of their currency by producing and creating enough products to support the needs of their populations with their farms, factories and mines, plus they earn additional currency and additional wealth from foreign nations by exporting additional products that they manufactured in return for foreign currency, foreign gold, title to foreign located assets, and other valuables. The economic health of every other business in that country depends upon their productive industries. These industrious individuals, companies and some governments will soon own title to most of the privately owned assets and other wealth located in the USA.
3.8. Future generations of our children and future unborn generations of US citizens will have to work hard to pay off these US bonds and T-Bills when they become due and also buy back these privately owned assets if that is even possible.
3.8.1. US citizens apparently believe that we are entitled to sit idle and not work in some dirty factory making the things that US citizens consume, when US citizens can obligate our grandchildren to work and pay for our easy non-productive lifestyle.
3.8.2. This situation might end when the USA runs out of privately owned US property and other assets that foreigners will accept in return for the cash that US citizens paid to foreign workers in foreign factories to make the things that US citizens purchased and consumed.
3.9. The US government is living like some creative American families that charge all of their expenses to credit cards, buy new autos, take expensive vacations, buy new designer clothes, eat out at expensive restaurants, rent instead of buying a house, pay the minimum credit card payments every month, and quit working at their jobs. Why should anyone work if they can live off of continuous borrowed US dollars? This is the new American Way. It cannot ever end! Financial Freedom Forever!
3.9.1. Maybe my wife & I could get a divorce with her awarded all of our assets, and then we could travel around the world living the high life, buy some new cars, a bigger house in a more expensive neighborhood, and quit my second job, stop saving any money at all, spend all of my life's savings, always hire someone to fix things that break, never work to fix anything myself, and take up heavy drinking with my credit cards until my credit cards were "maxed out", and then I could file bankruptcy and not pay for our good times. We could then get re-married.
3.9.2. But what if she wants a newer, better-looking and younger man instead of me. Maybe I had better not suggest that.
3.10. Most US citizens, including most of my immediate family members are unconcerned about the overall big picture. They believe that the party will go on forever with the citizens of industrialized nations paying the bills for the high lifestyle and excessive consumption of US citizens in return for title to everything of value in the USA. They believe that our government has secret economic policies that they will implement in order to prevent another great depression.
3.11. If our economy collapses, there will not be any jobs for anyone at present wages. When we have destroyed the purchasing value of the US dollar, you might make $3,000.00 per hour but a loaf of bread might cost $35,000.00 if you can find one for sale.
3.12. Let us not make foreigners in foreign industrial countries mad, because they might not loan back any more US dollars to our government for creation of temporary jobs for unemployed US citizens to construct "Pork Barrel" projects, or rake leaves, or dig a hole today and then refill the same hole tomorrow, or play music in the park, or write poems, or perform in a play, or have a photographer take a picture of a Crucifix in his own urine, or pave roads, or teach school, or plant trees, or clean up the environment, or paint pictures, or make sculptured statues, or conduct foreign wars.
CHAPTER 4
US FOREIGN TRADE DEFICIT
4. The US government has created an economic situation that US gold; US currency; stocks, title to US real estate, businesses, jobs, stocks, securities, and other privately owned US wealth and assets created by previous US generations are leaving the USA to pay people in foreign countries to manufacture the things that US citizens import and consume, and also to pay for our US government spending when the US government spends more than it collects in taxes. These amounts of dollars leaving the USA are greater than they would be if US citizens in the USA were manufacturing more of the things in the USA that US citizens were consuming rather than paying foreigners to manufacture the things that US citizens consume. We must change this economic situation or we will become a post WWI Germany economically where our currency has no buying power. This could happen overnight as soon as we have sold title to all of our privately owned businesses, factories, casinos, hotels, farms, land, ports, businesses, refineries, forests, ports, breweries, refineries, publically traded securities and other privately owned assets located in the USA that were created by previous US generations in return for the foreigner's US dollars that they earned by making things for US citizens to consume, and then we will have nothing else of value left to sell to the foreigners in the industrialized nations.
4.1. A Trade Deficit is created when the USA importing, transportation, distributing and retail sales companies pay companies and individuals in foreign countries like China, India, Brazil, Pakistan, and other industrialized foreign nations with US dollars to manufacture the things that these US businesses import, distribute, and then sell to the US consumers in currency amounts greater that foreigners buy from us.
4.2. Manufacturers of vehicles, appliances, and equipment made with imported parts that they paid the people working for foreign companies in foreign countries with US currency to manufacture a large portion of the parts and assemblies that are imported for final assembly of the finished product in the USA that is then sold to US consumers as "Made in the USA".
4.2.1. If only the nameplate is attached in the USA to an imported product, is that product really "Made in the USA"?
4.3. The average consumer (maybe all consumers) will always pay less for a foreign made product than pay more for a more expensive American made product if he has a choice.
4.4. We must re-industrialize now, at any cost, and stop borrowing US dollars from industrialized foreigners to pay for the things that we consume and also to pay for US government expenses.
CHAPTER 5
US GOVERNMENT SPENDING DEFICIT
5. The US government does not really borrow US dollars from US banks to pay for its expenses when expenses exceed taxes, and this is defined as the GOVERNMENT SPENDING DEFICIT. The US congress passes laws that authorize Federal Reserve Board chairman Ben Bernanke to buy some paper and then print a bunch of new interest bearing paper currency instruments (mostly US bonds) in varying amounts with the promise of US government repaying these loans in US dollars at the future dates specified (when they become due). The FED then auctions off these freshly printed US T-Bills, Bonds, or other Securities at US Federal Reserve Bank public auctions (at discounts less than face value and/or present worth) to mostly foreign manufacturers, foreign banks and foreign individuals in China, India, Brazil, Pakistan, and other industrialized countries in return for the US dollars that these foreigners earned by making consumer goods for US citizens. The US government then spends these US dollars, plus US dollars collected by taxation, on various government expenses.
5.1. These US bonds are US government promises to pay the face amount on the date that they mature in US dollars. This debt is called the “National Debt” that obligates the future generations of US citizens (our children and unborn future generations) to work hard and repay the holders of these US debt instruments the stipulated Face Value amount on the date that these currency instruments mature. The purchasers are no longer sure that all these freshly printed US currencies will be repaid in the future, so these industrious foreigners deposit these currencies in US banks (actually sell these instruments to US banks at a discount for US dollars) and then spend these US dollars to acquire title to real estate and other US wealth and assets that were created by generations of previous US citizens.
5.2. The US government is paying off the existing national debt when existing bonds mature by borrowing more money, and/or printing more US bonds and selling them for US dollars, at a discount, and using those dollars to pay off the debt instruments. This is an over simplification, but when these existing US bonds come due, the US government redeems these bonds with US dollars that are raised by selling more freshly printed new paper US Bonds at the periodic US Federal Reserve (FED) auctions, or trading the matured US bonds for new freshly printed paper US Bonds (at some discount).
5.3. Only the FED, at the direction of the chairman Mr. Bernanke, is allowed to legally print brand new US dollars, US bonds, and other currencies and debt instruments in the amounts authorized by the US congress, and then sell these instruments to the public to raise US dollars for the US government to spend paying government expenses.
5.4. Only the FED is authorized by congress to create US dollars by printing and selling freshly printed US bonds, and other dent instruments to various people holding US dollars, mostly foreigners that were paid by US citizens with US dollars to make the things that the US citizen consumed, in order to get back US Dollars to spend for US government expenses that are in excess of the money raised by US federal taxes.
5.5. Chairman Ben Bernanke cannot disobey congress, or Congress would fire him and find another person to continue the Ponzi scheme that finances our US government's financial activities and expenses.
5.6. Maybe the US government should hire Jeff Skilling, Bernard Madoff, Scott Rothstein, Eddie Fastow, Norman Schmidt, Sholam Weiss, Sir Allen Sanford plus some of the lesser known Wall Street Master Criminals and financial wizards as consultants to advise the US treasury department and the Federal Reserve Board concerning "How to operate a Ponzi Scheme"! These gentlemen might be the best qualified individuals in the USA with the specialized knowledge and skills required to run the US Treasury department.
5.7. A large dollar value of US bonds that were printed and then sold in the past decades to get back US dollars to sustain US government deficit spending are maturing soon and these bond owners expect redemption for these US bonds with US dollars (or other US or equivalent foreign currency of gold).
5.8. Foreigners continue purchase these freshly printed paper US Bonds (at a discount from face value or CV) only because these US bonds can be redeemed by purchasing title to privately owned land, hotels, farms, businesses, casinos and other wealth and assets that were created by previous generations of US citizens and located in the USA, before the de-industrialization of the USA, and instead of Gold.
5.9. As long as foreigners are able to easily and quickly redeem these freshly printed US T-Bills, US Bonds, and other US governments instruments for title to existing privately owned businesses, factories, casinos, hotels, farms, land, ports, businesses, refineries, forests, ports, breweries, refineries, and other wealth and assets that were created by previous US generations, instead of redeeming US dollars for gold, these foreigners in industrial countries will continue to buy our freshly printed US T-Bills, Bonds, or other Securities, and US citizens will not have to work to pay for our imported consumer goods and our US government activities.
5.10. Exchanging freshly printed US T-Bills, Bonds, and other instruments for title to privately owned US assets instead of gold has created value for buyers of our freshly printed debt instruments that allows the US government to raise US dollars to pay for all of this US federal government spending that is in excess of US Federal tax collections. THIS CAN LAST ONLY UNTIL WE HAVE NO MORE US ASSETS (THAT WERE CREATED BY PREVIOUS US GENERATIONS) AVAILABLE TO SELL FOR FOREIGN EARNED US DOLLARS.
5.11. Many of these US paper bonds were purchased by foreign industrialists at some past FED auction (at a price that was less than the present worth of these US bonds) with the US dollars that were paid to the foreigners by US import/distribution/retail companies for US consumer goods for retail sale and US manufacturers who imported parts and assemblies for final products that were labeled "Made in America, or in the USA, or in Texas".
5.12. Many US manufacturing companies are assembling foreign manufactured parts and subassemblies into final products in some US located plant using US labor, and then these products are labeled "Made in America", even if only the nameplates added to the product in the USA by US workers.
5.13. These foreign owned paper US bonds are deposited into US bank accounts that redeem these US bonds into US dollars in these foreigner's bank accounts.
5.14. The foreigners then withdraw these US dollars from these bank accounts to purchase title to existing privately owned businesses, factories, casinos, hotels, farms, land, ports, businesses, refineries, forests, ports, breweries, refineries, and other privately owned wealth and assets located in the USA that were created by previous US generations before the USA stopped generating wealth.
5.15. The US currency purchasing power might diminish when the foreigners cease buying our freshly printed US bonds, T-bills, and other instruments.
5.16. Did Greece provide their population with all sorts of government provided services, government payroll jobs, and pay for all of these government expenses with "borrowed" funds? Did the Greeks stop generating national wealth, and decide to start deficit spending to mimic the US financial operations which appeared to be very successful?
5.16.1. Will the US face similar consequences when working individuals will no longer purchase any of the freshly printed new paper US Bonds at the periodic US Federal Reserve (FED) auctions to continue our US government operations, or purchase these freshly printed US bonds at for the equivalent of a fraction of a penny on the dollar?
5.17. The US government declared that the US dollar and these freshly printed paper US Bonds, and etc. are now backed by the "full faith and credit of the USA" (aka Junk Bonds).
5.18. This allows US citizens to sell the US located privately owned assets that were created by previous US generations to foreigners for US dollars, in lieu of US citizens having to work to produce the things that US citizens consume. These privately owned US located assets are finite. The USA will soon run out of various assets created by previous generations that we can to sell to foreigners to keep US citizens from working.
5.19. After the foreign individuals and foreign governments have purchased title to everything of value in the USA, the US government will no longer be able to raise as many US dollars from these foreign manufacturers, as they do now, by selling foreigners more and more of our freshly printed US T-Bills, US Bonds, and other US governments instruments without GREATER AND GREATER CASH DISCOUNTS FROM FACE VALUES and/or Present Worth to pay for our ever increasing US government expenses.
5.20. If we disallowed purchase of title to privately owned US assets to redeem our freshly printed US T-Bills, US Bonds, and other US governments instruments, the foreigners would not buy our freshly printed US T-Bills, Bonds, or other Securities when the FED offers them for sale at auctions, or else these US currencies will be purchased for the equivalent of a fraction of a penny on the dollar, and the buying power of the US dollar in the USA would approach zero.
5.21. US importers, US retail distributors, and US retail outlet stores pay foreign manufacturers in the industrialized foreign countries with US Dollars to manufacture the products that US consumers purchase at US retail outlet stores. These foreigners in the industrialized foreign countries do not buy very many US dollars worth of anything from the USA because US manufactured products are much more expensive than foreign made products, and sometimes US manufactured products are not as good.
5.22. US citizens are racing to sell title to everything in the USA of value that was created by previous generations in order to keep from working. This will keep the USA from re-industrializing and allow US citizens to not work as required to produce the things that US citizens consume. This is "sort-of like" US citizens selling our body parts to keep from working! The US government calls this "Investing in America". US citizens are racing to sell title to everything in the USA of value that was created by previous generations in order to keep from working today.
5.23. The day will come when there will be (almost) nothing of value left to sell to foreigners, and then the USA will then have to re-industrialize because US citizens will then no longer be able to print paper currency to pay industrialized foreigners to work and make the things that US citizens consume. At that time, the USA will probably have no remaining assets to sell to industrialized foreigners in order to raise US dollars for any kind of re-industrialization of the USA by selling existing US assets that were created by previous US generations.
5.24. The USA is selling our children's legacy, including title to most all of the US wealth that previous generations worked for and accumulated, in order to pay people in foreign countries to work and produce the things that US citizens consume. This keeps the USA from re-industrializing and keeps US citizens from having US jobs to work and produce the things that US citizens consume.
5.25. The FED publicly received bids of almost 4% interest for $100 billion of freshly printed paper US Treasury securities that were printed and sold at the May 2009 public auctions. This was about double the rate expected by the Treasury Department. The US government will need to "borrow" at least $6 trillion more US dollars back from the industrial manufacturing countries that earned US dollars before the end of 2009 by conducting more of these FED auctions to sell more freshly printed US T-Bills, US Bonds, and other US credit instruments in return for US dollars that are mostly held by people in the industrialized nations.
5.25.1. Who knows how high the interest rates and/or face value discounts will be bid at these future FED auctions. China, India, Brazil, Pakistan, and the other industrialized wealth generating nations already hold a large portion of these US federal debt securities, and they are exchanging these instruments for title to privately owned businesses, factories, casinos, hotels, farms, land, ports, breweries, refineries, forests, ports, breweries, refineries, and other privately owned assets located in the USA that were created by previous US generations that they do not already own, as fast as they can, since the US government will no longer redeem their dollars and other US government financial instruments for gold in Ft. Knox.
5.25.2. Foreigners know that the US currencies, freshly printed US bonds and other US credit instruments that they earned by making the things that the USA population consumed can not redeemed in gold, but foreign individuals and their foreign governments know that they are presently allowed to redeem their freshly printed paper US government currencies by purchasing title to privately owned US assets, instead of exchanging their dollars for gold bullion from Ft Knox. If we stopped allowing this exchange of US currency for US property, the buying value of the US dollar would diminish to the point that it might take a whole day's wages to buy one loaf of bread. Only a positive foreign trade balance will correct this situation. The US is redeeming title to all of the wealth accumulated by previous generations for our freshly printed US bonds.
5.25.3. Some sources estimate that the title to 25% of privately owned US located assets with recorded deeds and/or titles are now listed as foreign owned (http://economyincrisis.org/articles/show/1072) and this percentage is increasing rapidly. Our payments for foreign oil, foreign manufactured assemblies, foreign parts, foreign manufactured sub-assemblies and foreign raw material are paid for in essentially this same manner. What will we do when we have nothing of value to sell to the foreigners who work to make the things that we consume? I do not believe that they will work for free.
5.25.4. These privately owned US located assets are finite, and the day will come when there is nothing left to sell to foreigners, and then we will then have to re-industrialize.
5.25.5. The discounts/interest rates offered by the public at public FED auctions to purchase our freshly printed US securities by people in industrialized manufacturing nations that have accumulated US dollars will depend and reflect upon the confidence that the USA instills these foreigners by our economic actions. (What if we made our currencies more pretty, or maybe used psychedelic colors to improve their appearance. This might improve the value of the paper that they are printed on).
5.25.6. Many countries are losing confidence in the dollar as the benchmark for world trade and currency values. Other currencies, like the Chinese Yuan with a more stable value, are now being talked about as a replacement for the US Dollar as the benchmark for international currency values. The Chinese Yuan might be the last man (currency) standing after the US government destroys the US Dollar.
5.26. If taxes taken in each year are not sufficient to pay these expenses, The US congress passes laws that authorize Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke to buy some paper and then print a bunch of new interest bearing paper T-Bills, Government Bonds, etc. and then sells them at FED auctions to people who are holding US dollars (foreign industrial manufacturers and foreign governments) in exchange for these freshly printed T-Bills, Government Bonds, etc. The US government deposits these US dollars into banks to redeem the government checks written for various US government expenses.
5.27. Why can't the US government just buy some more paper and print more US dollars (faster and faster) to pay our expenses like Mexico prints pesos? Every time that we print dollars or US Bonds, the value and buying power of each printed dollar reduces proportionately. One US Dollar that would buy about 8 Mexican pesos in 1960 can now exchange for as much as 15,000 of the 1960 Mexican pesos today. This is equivalent to about 187,500% inflation over that period. A $2.00 USA loaf of bread would then cost $3,750.00 if the USA implemented Mexican type economic monetary policies.
5.28. Why do we have to borrow US dollars from foreigners, and not our own financial institutions? The Chinese, Indians, Pakistanis, and Brazilians are very industrious people that have created a continuous flow of incoming US paper dollars that they earn from US importers/retailers for making the things that US citizens consume. Only small percent of these freshly printed paper T-Bills, US Bonds, etc. are bought by US citizens and US organizations.
5.28.1. The US government wants these industrial nations to spend their US dollars to purchase the freshly printed new paper T-Bills, US Bonds, etc. at the periodic US Federal Reserve auctions. These foreign industrial countries are now offering less and less than the face value or present worth of our freshly printed-paper T-Bills, US Bonds, etc. as the industrial nations confidence in the USA economic system diminishes.
5.28.2. When the USA runs out of privately owned real estate, businesses and other assets in the USA to sell to foreigners in return for the wealth (T-Bills, US Bonds, etc.) that foreigners created by working to manufacture the things that US citizens consumed, these productive foreign industrial nations will then pay less and less US dollars for our freshly printed paper T-Bills, US Bonds, etc. that the US government wants foreigners to buy.
5.28.3. How did these industrialized nations get so much of our US currency, Dollars, T-Bills, Bonds, and other government securities? The US importers and retail distributors pay foreign manufacturers in foreign countries with US currency (Dollars) for the products that US consumers purchase. These foreign countries do not buy very many dollars worth of anything from the USA because our products are much more expensive than foreign made products, and sometimes US products are not as good.
5.28.4. China already is the USA's biggest foreign lender (creditor) of US Dollars to the US Government to pay government expenses. China owns an estimated $1 trillion of this U.S. government debt consisting mostly of freshly printed-paper US T-Bills, US bonds, US securities and etc. If China wants Gold instead of printed-paper currency, a weaker dollar will result.
5.28.4.1. If the Industrial nations only wants to pay only pennies on the dollar for any of our future freshly printed paper T-Bills, Bonds, Securities, currencies, etc., this will cause great inflation in the USA, and/or also cause great reduction of the buying power of the US dollar within the USA for imported and domestic products.
5.28.4.2. If the foreigners decide to only pay a few pennies or less on the dollar for our freshly printed paper US T-Bills, US bonds, and other US securities, then the USA will have to print up many times as much paper US dollars, and the inflation could then become astronomical, ala Mexico.
5.29. Chinese Premier Wen Jerboa stated, "Of course we are concerned about the safety of our assets. To be honest, I'm a little bit worried." Wen said at a news conference (13MAR09) after the closing of China's annual legislative session. "I would like to call on the United States to honor its words, stay a credible nation and ensure the safety of Chinese assets." This message is unlikely to be misunderstood at the White House. The Obama administration is counting on Beijing to loan the US government US dollars to pay for our TARP, wars, social programs, environmental cleanups, and various other economic stimulus packages by buying our freshly printed paper U.S. bonds (at hopefully close to face value or not too much of a discount) with the US dollars and other US currency that China earned from the USA population by manufacturing the things that the USA citizens imported and then consumed.
5.30. If I owe the bank $500,000.00 and cannot pay, I am in real trouble. If I owe the bank $50,000,000.00 and cannot pay, then the bank is in real trouble. China is probably worried that the future generations of US citizens will not re-pay the T-Bills and US Government Bonds that finances our non-productive high consumption US lifestyle of today, and our fast growing government expenses. The US government must have assets available for the foreigners to purchase with their freshly printed paper U.S. bonds or the foreigners will not buy our U.S. bonds on the next occasion that we print some more of these paper U.S. bonds.
5.31. The only reason for any foreigner to purchase any freshly printed-paper U.S. currency is to redeem that currency for title to existing US located assets that were created by previous generations of US workers. The foreigners know that this exchange of currency for US assets needs to happen as soon as possible since the buying power of the US dollar is diminishing rapidly.
5.32. The USA must re-industrialize now, at any cost, and stop borrowing US dollars from industrialized foreigners to pay for US government expenses and also for the things that we consume.
5.33. "The principle of spending US dollars to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale." - Thomas Jefferson
CHAPTER 6
THE USA IS COMMITTING ECONOMIC SUICIDE
6. When and if foreign individuals and governments stop buying freshly printed US paper T-Bills, US paper bonds, and other paper US securities at Federal Reserve public auctions so that the Federal Government can raise US dollars to pay for US government expenses, and/or if foreigners start buying these items at the foreign currency exchange equivalent of a few pennies or less on the dollar face value, the government checks, social security checks, government bureaucrat payroll checks, and private paychecks will then not buy very much food or anything else that we consume. Your life savings might only sustain you for only a couple of weeks.
6.1. After we have sold title to all of our privately owned US real assets that have any value to foreigners as required to settle our foreign trade obligations and government expenses, there will not be anything left that the foreigners will want to buy with their freshly printed paper US T-Bills, US bonds, etc. The US government will then not be able to raise any funds for any possible future re-industrialization of the USA, and the US citizens will not have any possibility of employment in their future to buy back the assets that will be foreign owned.
6.2. Foreign entities will very soon own everything of value in the USA and then foreigners will become the major (only) source of employment for US citizens.
6.2.1. The USA population will then become employees; possibly indentured servants; or maybe even beg to become slaves owned by the foreign countries and/or foreign individuals that will own everything of value in the USA in the very near future if the US government continues to destroy the US economy.
6.2.2. US citizens might have no options if they want to feed their families? Our children and our grandchildren might also have to change to the religion (probably not Christian) of the business owner if they want a job.
6.3. The USA is selling our children's legacy, including title to all of the wealth accumulated by previous generations in order to pay people in foreign countries to work and produce the things that US citizens consume, so that this will keep the USA from re-industrializing and having US citizens working to produce the things that US citizens consume and to pay for federal government spending. This is "sort-of like" US citizens selling our body parts to keep from working! The US government calls this "Investing in America". US citizens are racing to sell title to everything in the USA of value that was created by previous generations in order to keep from working.
6.4. Foreigners continue purchase these freshly printed paper US Bonds (at a discount from face value) only because these US bonds can be redeemed by purchasing title to privately owned land, hotels, farms, businesses, casinos and other assets that were created by previous generations of US citizens and located in the USA, before the de-industrialization of the USA, and instead of Gold as other nations do.
6.5. What will be the buying power of the US dollar when there are no remaining privately owned US assets that the foreigners want to exchange for the US dollars, T-Bills, and bonds that they earned by manufacturing the things that US citizens imported and consumed? The USA will very soon run out of title to any assets that foreign manufacturers will want to purchase with their freshly printed US government currencies and securities that they purchase at Federal Reserve auctions with the US Dollars that they earned by making items for US consumers.
6.6. The USA needs to direct the remaining funds that will be derived from the sale of the remaining privately owned US real property assets toward investing in activities such as technical education and re-industrialization so that US citizens can get the Gold, property titles, and US dollars back from these foreign countries and into the USA economy via re-industrialization. Wall Street and Banking Business bailouts will not accomplish anything to correct the basic flaw in our economy, which is the foreign trade deficit. Do you think that the Chinese buy title to Dogpatch? I think that the US government at one time declared Dogpatch to be the most worthless property in America! What if we packaged the title to Dogpatch into a LLP with title to other low value US properties, do you think that anyone would notice that there really is no Dogpatch property in the USA?
6.7. Industrialized countries view the United States of America as borrowing and spending huge amounts of US dollars (actually FED printed US Bonds, US Securities, US T-Bills, etc. sold to foreigners to get the US dollars back from the people who made the things that we consumed) with the careless abandon of a drunken sailor on shore leave, who only is concerned about today and will not plan anything or think about tomorrow. This US government attitude is very disturbing to those very same foreigners in industrialized nations that the US government hopes will buy more and more of our freshly printed US bonds and securities (hopefully at not too much of a discount and/or not very high interest rates) to pay for our economic stimulation, our trade deficit, our wars, our social programs, our environmental activities, our free medical care, our bureaucrat payrolls, and other (necessary and) unnecessary various government expenses with the US dollars that the foreigners earned by making things for US consumers and then loaned to the US government.
6.8. The US government currently uses these borrowed US dollars to pay for government expenses including wars, military jets with active duty military USAF pilots for the personal use of specially privileged members of congress (ala Pelosi), bureaucratic government payrolls, government retirement checks, courts, federal police, failed business bailouts, cash bonuses to the various Wall Street forgers of SEC documents that contributed to political campaigns, Las Vegas corporation junkets for failed corporation employees, foreclosed house mortgages for big spenders with bad credit, new multi-million dollar French manufactured personal corporate jets for political contributor's bankrupt corporations, pork barrel projects, research contracts, Welfare, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, SSI, expensive corporate vacations, new infrastructure, wealth re-distribution, mental health services, imported consumer goods and any other thing that congress and the president decides to use taxpayer US dollars to acquire, build or just give to their political contributors and various other privileged individuals with borrowed US dollars including high-speed rail projects and other local pork barrel projects that will create temporary employment. These are cosmetic economic stimulation changes that do not correct the structural problem that is the Foreign Trade Deficit because these expenses produce nothing.
6.9. The free US dollars previously passed out or loaned to the financial "industries" by the US government did absolutely nothing to create any real jobs or to reduce the foreign trade deficit problems with the US economy. Maybe it created industrial business pressure to out-source more US jobs to reduce manufacturing costs and thus reduce business losses and/or to increase business profits.
CHAPTER 7
FREE TRADE
7. Free World Trade of products and commodities means that every US business must compete internationally based mainly upon price of the product to the final customer (and/or by bribing various government officials). Labor cost is normally the greatest cost component of most products and commodities. The country with the lowest labor cost normally gets the product sale and the manufacturing jobs, and the import of foreign exchange currency in exchange for these products. Free Trade does benefit the US importers, US distributors and US retail sales outlets of foreign made products with jobs for supplying US average citizen with less expensive products, but this is at the cost of losing jobs in the USA to make these products, and the increase in the Balance-of-Trade Deficit. If the USA had innovative products that foreigners did not have, then the USA could get higher prices for those products, until the foreigners copy the US inventions. The US government has also destroyed the US Technical database that used to create those innovations, patents, and inventions. And it will take generations to re-create that capability.
7.1. The labor intensive US tire manufacturing companies have closed most of their plants in Ohio, sold the tire manufacturing molds and equipment to foreign citizens who relocated this tire manufacturing equipment into their (foreign) countries where their labor costs are very low compared to US labor costs. These foreigners then re-constructed and re-started these plants using foreign workers that are happy to be paid only a tiny fraction of the pay that US citizens would accept. As a result, these foreign companies now manufacture almost all of the tires that are consumed in the USA. There are not very many other industries or jobs remaining in the USA for the labor cost reason. This is typical of how free trade has affected all of our industries.
7.2. The USA importers and distributors pay the foreign manufacturers in foreign countries with US currency (US Dollars) for these products, and these foreign countries do not buy very much of anything from the USA because our products are much more expensive than foreign made products, and sometimes US products are not as good design or manufacture.
7.3. US businesses know that even if they can economically survive the current environmental regulations, more and more environmental legislation and regulations will certainly be "piled onto" them in the future. If a US business prepares an economic life cycle cost analysis that would allow their US factory to stay in the USA today, the business managers should fire their US workers and relocate that factory to a foreign country in order to escape the costs of future environmental regulations that the US government will almost certainly create and "pile onto" their US operations.
7.4. Foreigners will continue buy the remaining US located businesses, natural resources, casinos, and the other US located assets that they do not already own with the US dollars that US importing companies pay them for the products that they make for consumption by US citizens.
CHAPTER 8
CAN THE US ECONOMY BE SAVED?
8. The only thing that will create/save US jobs and preserve/restore the buying power of the US Dollar is reversing the US trade deficit, cease US government deficit spending, and reducing the US government costs in order to start re-building the USA gold reserves which is the basis of the buying value of the US dollar, or any other currency. Only a positive balance of trade will eventually restore the value of the dollar, and we must accomplish this by any means possible, or we shall have to accept third world poverty for the majority of our citizens. The only way to do this is to produce and export more (dollar value of) things than we import. The only way that we can accomplish exporting US made products is to re-industrialize and make these products, hopefully with mostly US materials & Labor. The only way that our products will be sold abroad is if these products are either technologically superior, or cheaper. US citizens must manufacture and sell things to foreign countries in order to get US currency back from foreign nations in order to buy back the privately owned US assets sold to and are now owned by foreigners.
8.1. Tax payer supported jobs such as police, teachers, military, finance, social services, welfare, environmental and other bureaucratic jobs generally do not produce any of the food, shelter, and clothing required to sustain life or create any wealth for the nation. The citizens who work to produce the necessities of life are usually taxed for a portion of the wealth that they generate to pay the government employee salaries of these government jobs are that are needed to support and protect the citizens that do produce the things that society needs to survive, but a lot of these government jobs could be eliminated. The communist form of government where everybody works for the government because the government owns everything does produce the food, shelter, and clothing required to sustain life. Most of the individuals in communist countries want to work at something other than producing the basic food, shelter, clothing and other products required to sustain life. They usually become a nation of non-producers wanting the disgruntled producers to produce more and more so that privileged individuals of the elite can keep themselves busy as musicians, poets, social workers, philosophers, historians, politicians, bureaucrats, administrators, etc. The elite will then let, require, and/or force those that the elite have deemed lower class to work hard and produce the food, shelter, and clothing required to sustain the life of the nation including the elite class of the government employees.
8.2. What is preventing the USA from re-industrializing? The US citizens do not want to work for the extremely low wages that are paid in foreign countries to manufacture the things that US citizens consume. This is the main reason why the US manufacturers have closed their US factories, and relocated the manufacturing facility to a country with less expensive labor. The constant US government activity of "Piling on" more and more environmental regulations with the associated compliance costs onto our industries is also a great incentive to relocate US industries from the USA to various foreign countries.
8.3. Import Tariffs: Only US import tariffs high enough to prohibit imported products from being imported and sold in the USA will create re-industrialization, stop the flow of title to privately owned US assets from the USA, re-create the value of the US dollar, and also create manufacturing jobs for US citizens. Yes the consumers will have to pay many times the current price of each item if these items are made with US labor in the USA, but maybe this can avert a second USA revolution that might be more bloody than 1776.
CHAPTER 9
SCIENTIFIC & TECHNOLOGY EDUCATION OPTION
9. If US citizens are not willing to work for lower wages than the foreigner workers employed in foreign countries are paid, then the USA cannot compete globally based upon lower product costs. If we cannot compete on lower product costs, then maybe we could be competitive internationally through other areas such as superior technology, as the USA did to win WWII and create good jobs for a few of the decades following WWII.
9.1. The USA is no longer the World Technology leader that the USA was until maybe the early 1970's. Asian countries are now are the technology leaders. The best & brightest students in the USA have pursued the more financially rewarding non-scientific financial careers, instead of educations that might have created technically innovative products that people in foreign countries might purchase.
9.2. Asia is now the primary source of the most advanced scientific talent because their public technical education process starts early and continues to produce a stream of highly qualified young people that is quite large compared to what is produced by the US undergraduate programs. American students will generally not endure the hard work and intense focus that is required for science and engineering degrees, especially since there is such limited financial rewards and respect for that effort after graduation.
9.3. Existing Science and Technology will not save the USA economy because in the last few decades the US government has apparently decided that science and engineering educations should not be financially rewarded as much as the other less demanding educations. Asian countries are now producing large quantities of technically educated and competent scientists and engineers that are probably better technically qualified than the US engineering graduates, while the USA produces Historians, Poets, MBAs, Economists, Social Scientists, Political Scientists, and etc. The Asian and other industrial countries produce very few of these non-technically educated students.
9.3.1. Many entrepreneur owners of Restaurants and retail stores here in Houston are former engineers who decided that engineering was no longer financially rewarding and left the Engineering profession for more lucrative professions and businesses. My personal dentist is an ex NASA electrical engineer.
9.4. Only if our products are technically superior can we export those products in return for their foreign payment (gold and US dollars) to the USA, unless we can somehow produce these products cheaper than the foreigners. We must also prevent foreign countries from pirating and/or copying our new innovative products. We might need to use the force of law and/or the force of our military might to prevent any pirating of our technology, or the jobs to produce any new technology will be exported to foreign countries as all of the other jobs to produce US engineer invented products have been exported. The Unions should promote legislation that would keep jobs for production of US developed products in the USA.
9.4.1. If we had technically innovative products that foreigners did not have, then we could get high prices for those products with excessive profits (until the foreigners copy our inventions and/or infringe upon our patents). As we have purposefully reduced our human scientific and technology resource bases, the USA has stopped being the country that is creating any new inventions or products.
9.5. The USA must create superior engineers, medical doctors, dentists, and scientists if we want to regain the technological edge that the USA has lost and purposefully destroyed in the last few decades. This will not be easy, but it must be accomplished immediately before it is too late. US financial resources should be spent on regaining the technological edge on the rest of the world, rather than the US government paying borrowed US dollars for buying Wall Street toxic assets and constructing US government pork barrel projects.
9.6. We must somehow create funds to finance the re-creation of a superior Human Technical Base that is required to win any technology war.
9.7. We need to reverse course of our educational system and re-emphasize science and engineering to create many more medical doctors, engineers, scientists, and educators as the US educational system did prior to the 1970's. The USA scientists, medical doctors, engineers, and educators must also become much better educated, much more intelligent, and otherwise much more superior to any foreign educated engineer and/or scientist in order to design, create, innovate, and produce new technical products that foreigners do not have, so that the foreigners will then buy these new products from the USA, in exchange for their foreign gold and US currency which could then be sent to the USA companies.
9.8. Our computer programming technology and expertise (ala Microsoft etc.) helped our balance of payments considerably in the past, but the lack of technical education in this country today has been reduced and will soon totally destroy this export capability. The foreign countries have become better than the USA at creating new computer software programs, since the USA has chosen to de-emphasize technical and scientific education in our universities. Asian Countries are now the producers of new computer technology, not the USA.
9.9. Visit the Texas Medical Center (mostly the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston) and witness the percentage of women wearing Burkas to get a clue or to estimate the percentage of foreign medical service income currency that is received at the Texas Medical Center. I do not believe that any of these women wearing Burkas are US citizens. Foreign currency paid to our US located Medical Doctors, Laboratories and Hospitals by foreigners improves our foreign trade balance. I think that most foreigners still believe that US educated medical doctors are much superior to their own in-country educated medical doctors, and that is the reason that they seek the best medical care available which is in the USA. We must maintain the US leadership in the medical field.
9.10. Engineers who are working in Foreign Countries and sending (most of) their dollars home to the USA improves our balance of trade. In the past, foreigners believed that US educated and trained Engineers were superior to their in-country educated Engineers. This advantage has almost disappeared since the USA stopped emphasizing engineering education, science education, and other technical education in our Universities. I have been the engineer of record for the construction of projects in Asia, Europe, Middle East, Caribbean, and South America. US citizens are unaware of the lifestyle advantage that we are accustomed to and take for granted. If our economy collapses, we can become a starving third world country overnight.
CHAPTER 10
CHINA IS WINNING THE WAR FOR SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL SUPERIORITY
10. China is going to achieve tremendous progress in the world science and technology in the next 30-40 years." This is a remark by eminent scientist and Nobel laureate Chen Ning Yang in his speech on "Science and Technology of the 21st Century" delivered at the opening ceremony of the 6th World Chinese Entrepreneurs Convention in Nanjing on September 17, 2008. In his speech, Yang said that modern science and technology were introduced into China only in the 20th century. Within a time span of just one century with efforts by merely several generations, China has started from scratch to having attained the level of being able to launch and recover its Shenzhou Spaceship, an incredibly rapid development with no precedence in history. So he believes China's scientific and technical level will surely reach the foremost front of the world advanced science level by the year 2030 or 2040.
10.1. China is stepping up research of particle accelerator on its own, according to reports from the ongoing 2nd Asia Accelerator Conference. It is said that the Institute of High Energy Physics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences is making an active effort in design and research of positive-negative electron impinging machine in Beijing, and hopes for a 100-fold increase in the brightness of the machine.
10.2. As China increases their Nuclear Research, China will soon surpass the USA in Nuclear and other advanced scientific technologies and capabilities.
10.3. China is using their hard earned and newly created wealth to accelerate their scientific capabilities, including their nuclear and rocket delivery systems.
10.4. Chinese nuclear technology and capabilities will soon surpass the USA scientific technology. The Chinese now have had the Rocket Guidance technology (purchased from Hughes Aircraft in the 1990's in return for a political campaign contribution via Chinagate bagman Johnny Chung) for intercontinental ballistic targeting anywhere in the USA (and anywhere else around the world). The Chinese missiles would not fly on course before this technology purchase.
10.5. The USA must fight and then win the war for Scientific and Technological Superiority! If we lose the scientific and technology lead to China or any other country, the USA will rapidly decline into a third world nation, and our citizens will have to work for the Yuan equivalent of US pennies per hour after the total economic collapse of the USA and the buying power of the US dollar goes to zero.
10.6. The USA is no longer the scientific and technical world leader that it once was just a few decades ago.
10.7. The US government elected to cease construction if the US Super Collider at Waxahachie, Texas a few decades ago, but decided to spend many times that amount to bail out various Wall Street financial business Master Criminals. As China increases their Nuclear Research, China will soon surpass the USA in Nuclear and other advanced scientific technologies and capabilities.
CHAPTER 11
THE USA NEEDS SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICALLY EDUCATED CITIZENS
11. There is very little economic incentive for US citizen college students to major in any of the science or engineering fields at this time. This needs to change for the benefit of the US economy. I believe that most students today want to study business and/or economics in order to become one of the wealthy Wall Street (master criminal) business tycoons. No person in his or her right mind would major in science or engineering since the pay scale has eroded so much in the last few decades and the study is so demanding compared to several other less demanding and more rewarding fields of study.
11.1. Asian countries are now outdistancing the USA in producing very large numbers of competent scientists and engineers that might be even more creative and more competitive than the US educated scientists and engineers. China, India, Brazil, Pakistan, Taiwan, Singapore, and other industrial foreign nations are producing large numbers of scientific graduates because their technical education process starts early and continues through university levels to produce a large number of very technically qualified young technical graduates, while the USA produces large numbers of MBAs and liberal arts graduates.
11.2. These total numbers are many times in excess of the number of science and engineering graduates that the US undergraduate programs produce. Average American students refuse to endure the hard work and the intense study required for technical and scientific educations, when higher paying less strenuous fields of study are available, and the scientific and engineering jobs after graduation are so stressful and demanding when compared to other jobs.
11.3. The USA must somehow reverse this process and begin to create engineers, medical doctors, scientists and technicians that are superior to and without equal to any of the others produced anywhere else in the world so that the USA can start to regain the technological edge that the USA lost and/or purposefully destroyed in the last few decades. This will not be easy, but it must be accomplished immediately before the last remnants of our technological capabilities are destroyed and out of date when compared to the average Asian technology. If not, the USA will become a third world country.
11.4. This erosion of economic reward for engineers is also caused by the import of (H1-B visa) foreign engineers who will work for just slightly above minimum wages and a Green Card Visa. These Foreign Engineers might be much less as productive as US educated engineers, but since they are willing to work for such a small fraction of the pay that US educated engineers demand (or used to be paid), it is much more economically effective to employ several foreign educated engineers when compared to the total cost of employing one U.S. educated engineer (except maybe for the additional legal liability costs of their design failures).
11.5. The USA needs to create a demand for, and provide more financial incentive for US students to major in the medical, technical, mathematical, engineering and scientific subjects that are needed to create the technical human capability intelligence bases that will be required to re-industrialize the USA and re-create the US technology base needed for re-industrialization. We need to demand a return to scientific and technical excellence in all levels of our education systems that we purposefully destroyed in the past few decades. It is necessary to re-create the technology bases that are necessary before re-industrialization can occur in order to correct the US balance of trade payments.
11.6. We can only export technology if our products and technical services available for export are either superior and/or cheaper when compared to the services available in that particular foreign country. This will first require that our best and brightest students study science and engineering instead of other subjects in our education system. This needs to begin in elementary school and continuing through graduate school.
11.7. Resources should be spent on science and engineering educations rather than spending borrowed US dollars for Wall Street bailouts and government bureaucrat payrolls, which does almost nothing to benefit any part of the US economy.
11.8. According to the National Science Foundation and the National Society of Professional Engineers, less than 5% of the current undergraduate college students in the USA studying for a degree in science, medicine, mathematics or engineering are US citizens. In the Asia the vast majority of the college students are majoring in science or engineering. We need to increase the percentage of USA citizen college students studying science and engineering from 5% to more than 70%, in order to emulate the economic industrial successes of the Asian countries. We must emulate the educational systems of China, India, Pakistan, and other Asian countries or the USA will die economically.
11.9. The USA needs to replace our current "dumbed-down equal outcome" educational process with some sort of selective process in order to allow selection of only the best and the brightest to qualify for science, technology and engineering educations. We must provide financial incentives for these students want to study science and technology instead of other less difficult pursuits of study. The financial salary rewards to study science and technology in the 1950's made science students respected by other students, and this inducement/reward needs to be re-introduced. Today, students make fun of and demean science and engineering students.
11.10. We could provide scientific and engineering services to foreign nations and foreign individuals in return for the foreigner's currency, US dollars, gold and/or other commodities in order to improve our balance of trade, except that both India and China have surpassed the USA in technological capability. US services would have to be provided by doctors, scientists and engineers who are very much superior to any foreign educated doctors, scientists and engineers, or the foreigners will use their home grown or some other more technically advanced foreign country's medical, scientific and engineering talent, and then not buy the services of US doctors, scientists and engineers. Foreign countries will always seek the most technically advanced scientific and engineering resources if they do not have these resources locally available.
11.11. Existing US Science and Technology might no longer save the USA economy after we completely destroy our technology base. Asian countries are producing very competent scientists and engineers that are probably more technically qualified than the US educated engineers, while the USA produces MBA's, psychologists, poets, artists, musicians, historians, economists and other non-scientific graduates that will not contribute to anything to improve the Foreign Trade Deficit. The Asian countries produce very few non-technically educated students. Student loans should be available for only those fields such as science, engineering, education, and medicine that do contribute to our industrial base that will help our international trade balance by re-creating our technical knowledge base necessary for re-industrialization.
11.12. Most of the large US engineering construction firms here in Houston outsource the CADD drafting and the detailed engineering effort to India and/or Pakistan. There will soon no technical design capability when US recent graduate engineers are not trained as engineers by performing detailed engineering and CADD drafting under the direction of an older and experienced engineer in an apprentice/mentoring type experience as required for a professional engineering license. We need legislation to impose prohibitively high import duty tariffs to prohibit the import of technical engineering services and CADD drafting services.
CHAPTER 12
KNOWLEDGE WORKERS IN A POST INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY
12. Some academic "economic experts" think that the USA can become a "post-industrial" society of "knowledge workers" consisting of software developers, data analysts, technicians, editors, scientists, lab technicians, teachers, doctors, nurses, architects, accountants, engineers, inventors, lawyers, poets, musicians, historians, philosophers, etc, and still somehow generate sufficient wealth to continue payment to foreigners for them to manufacture the food, shelter, clothing and other things that US citizens consume.
12.1. How does anyone think that US citizens can get foreigners to pay for (buy) the services of these "US knowledge workers" if their home grown local "knowledge workers" are equal to, or maybe technically superior to, our "US knowledge workers", especially if their home grown local "knowledge workers" will work for less US dollars than US citizens?
12.2. I do not think that any foreign individual or foreign country would ever purchase any of the services of any US educated liberal arts graduate, MBA graduate, history graduate, philosophy graduate, English graduate, foreign language graduate, economics graduate, musical, artist, social worker, government graduate, political scientist or any of the other similarly educated US citizen at any price because their services are not practically useful.
12.3. Maybe in the future the USA could produce better "knowledge workers", but only if US citizens totally overhauled and changed our educational system to emphasize science, engineering, and technical education instead of the other various non-technical degree majors that most of the US citizen students study today.
12.4. How can US citizens earn enough US dollars to pay for the import of the products from foreign countries that we consume unless our education system completely changes course and re-emphasizes science and engineering similar to the 1940's and 1950's, instead of other studies that do not contribute positively to our balance of trade? We need to stop the net foreign flow of US dollars, US gold and title to privately owned US assets out of this country. All of these privately owned US assets will all soon be foreign owned.
12.5. After we have sold foreigners the title to all of our privately owned wealth and assets, US citizens will not be able to pay foreigners to manufacture the things that US citizens consume. US citizens might have to start making these products in the USA. US citizens cannot make the products that we consume unless US citizens re-industrialize and manufacture these things ourselves, or just stop consuming these products. Re-industrialization will be much easier now than later. Later, we no longer have any privately owned assets to sell in order to raise US dollars to construct any of the industries needed for re-industrialization.
12.6. We have lost the technology wars to China, India, Brazil, Pakistan, and other industrial foreign nations. China will very soon become the predominant source for "knowledge workers" when other nations need technology, not the USA.
12.7. Nations grow wealthy and secure by making enough food and products to support their needs (real or perceived) on their farms, factories and mines, with an excess of those products to sell abroad to pay for the imports we need or want. The health of every other aspect of our economy depends on these principals. It is silly to speak of a "service economy" without presuming some one else will work to create the food, clothing, energy, transportation, and other products that US citizens consume without (just) compensation.
12.8. Foreigners do not have any use for our "knowledge workers" if they are a liberal arts graduate, MBA graduate, history graduate, philosophy graduate, English graduate, foreign language graduate, economics graduate, musical, artist, social worker, government graduate, political scientist or any of the other similarly educated US citizen
12.9. Many of my (college educated) friends tell me that this modern economy needs the consumers who do not produce anything but sit idle and consume the things that the workers produce. I think that they also believe that a slave needs an owner to sit idle and consume the things that the slave works hard and produces. I believe that a slave does not need an owner.
12.9.1. I believe that some US citizens think that Americans are special and that other people in other countries would happily work to make the things that we consume while we sit idle and consume the things that they made for us in return for title to our privately owned property and other assets that were created by previous generations of hard working Americans.
12.9.2. We have killed and eaten our cow, and we are now complaining that we no longer have any milk available for our children. We now have to borrow US dollars to pay our neighbors for his milk from his cow, and our family is running out of things to pawn and/or sell for US dollars so we can continue to eat. I really do not want to work in some dirty factory and make something to sell in return for US dollars to buy milk for my family, until I run out of things to pawn for US dollars.
12.10. Why can't the USA just print more paper US T-Bills, bonds and other paper securities (like the Mexican Government) and sell them to people in other countries to get the US dollars back that we paid these foreigners for working to manufacture the things that US citizens consume? We can remain idle and refrain from working while our children can then work hard when they grow up and pay off these US bonds, T-bills and other paper debt instruments at some later date when payment becomes due to various foreigners. Will our children be happy to work hard when they grow up and then pay for our privilege of consuming and producing very few of the things that we consume?
CHAPTER 13
US ECONOMIC FUTURE
13. How could the USA re-industrialize and also pay decent wages to US citizens to manufacture the things that we consume? We could provide extremely high import tariffs on the products that we desire to begin manufacturing in the USA. The tariffs would be high enough to prohibit the import of these selected products. This would allow the US manufacturer to employ US citizens at some pay scale several times higher than foreign country citizens get paid. The US government could select one product at a time for prohibitive tariffs. The US government might start with steel, automobiles, auto parts, tires, washers, dryers, refrigerators, computer chips, building materials, computers, data processors, and then other selected manufacturing industries. The USA should repeal all free trade legislation and international trade treaties. Our consumable products will cost several times as much as they cost now, but this is necessary. Otherwise the USA will become a third world nation of unemployed street beggars ala Asia.
13.1. Is there anything made in the USA anymore? When you go to anywhere in the USA to buy anything, look to see where is it made? Nothing is made in the USA anymore. When you buy $1,000.00 tools, parts, materials, etc at Home Depot, they send a very large percentage of that purchase in US Dollars to China, India, Brazil, Pakistan, and other industrial foreign nations to purchase these products from the people who actually worked and manufactured these items. This is how the US dollars leave the US economy. The USA only makes a few things that people in other countries want to buy in order for the US to earn some of this US currency back into the US economy and banking system, but off hand, I cannot think of one single thing foreigners would buy from the USA.
13.2. How can we preserve the economic miracle that has given US citizens one of the highest living standards in the world? The Agricultural and Industrial Base that won WWII and then gave us today's bountiful way of life and created the standard of living that US citizens enjoy today has been destroyed.
13.2.1. This industrial and agricultural base produced the food, goods, services and other items that we consumed, plus an excess of these goods & services that were produced and then sold to other foreign countries in order to accumulate the US gold reserves at Fort Knox through a positive balance of trade surplus payments has been purposefully destroyed in the last few decades.
13.2.2. This industrial and agricultural base must be re-created at any cost.
13.3. Wall Street financial manipulations, innovative "financial products", Junk Bond Creations, did not contribute to this economic miracle.
13.4. US citizens are selling the US National Wealth that was created by the previous generations of agriculture, mining and manufacturing sectors of our economy during and after World War II to pay for our non-producing but high consumptive lifestyle of today.
13.5. Paying people to rake leaves, pave roads, teach school, build infrastructure, plant trees, dig holes today and then refill the same holes tomorrow, clean up the environment, write poems, paint pictures, bailout financial investment failures, etc. with US dollars borrowed from industrialized nations is nice, but these jobs will not be useful or contribute anything to correcting the basic USA economic foundation problem which is borrowing US dollars back from foreign industrialized nations to pay for the foreign trade deficit and the Federal Government Spending deficit.
CHAPTER 14
US ECONOMIC STIMULATION PLAN
14. The current proposed US government economic stimulation plan is apparently to print up a bunch of new paper US Bonds and other similar paper US securities and then sell them at public auction as needed to get US dollars back from the foreign industrialized countries that we paid in US dollars to make the things that we consumed and then use these dollars for payment to US contractors (probably Republican Industrialists) to re-build and expand the US infrastructure (Pork Barrel Projects) and environmental in order to reduce unemployment. These US dollars will probably be spent on imported earth-moving machinery, imported materials (Steel, Cement, Equipment, Pipe & Wire), new imported French manufactured private executive jet airplanes, illegal alien labor, outsourced engineering, outsourced CAD drafting, etc., and the US workers will still be mostly unemployed. Any Economic Stimulus Spending should also prohibit any imported products (even if we no longer manufacture those products) from being purchased with these funds, and also prohibit all outsourcing of the Labor Required. What happens after the project ends, and these temporary jobs disappear? This is a short term solution that will mostly economically benefit foreign manufacturers of industrial and consumer goods, salesmen of the foreign manufactured equipment, materials, airplanes, etc., and the other people working in the distribution of the imported things for our infrastructure improvements, but the balance of trade will still require sending borrowed US dollars back overseas to pay for these things that we import.
14.1. Will President Obama also now offer the Republican Congressmen and Senators ear marked "Pork Barrel Projects" and "Green Projects" such as high speed rail, bridges to nowhere, etc. in their districts paid for with federal taxes in return for supporting and voting for his legislative agenda, as he did for the Democrats?
14.1.1. These "Pork Barrel Projects" will have to be paid for with more and more US dollars that are borrowed back from foreigners who were paid with US dollars to manufacture goods by US importers for US citizens to purchase and consume.
14.1.2. President Obama will now need to print and sell more of these freshly printed US T-Bills, US Bonds, and other currencies faster and faster to industrious foreigners for their US dollars in order to pay for the growing US government expenses that are in excess of our federal tax collections, including new Pork Barrel project spending to create temporary employment to make President Obama appear to reduce unemployment.
14.1.3. Most US citizens seem to follow the US government example and just keep borrowing US dollars to live as high on the hog as possible by using credit card debt. US citizens think that we deserve to have everything that we desire, right now, and that we can use US dollars borrowed back from people in foreign industrial nations who worked to earn US dollars to pay for the things that US citizens want today.
14.2. The current US government plan will still require sending more and more US dollars and title to privately owned US assets overseas in exchange for purchase of the materials that we will import for our infrastructure rebuilding and other pork barrel projects.
14.3. After we have sold title to all of our privately owned US assets to foreigners as required to settle our foreign trade obligations and re-pay the US bonds that we sold to raise stimulation and bailout money, there will not be anything left for the foreigners to buy and then US government not be able to raise any funds for any re-industrialization of the USA, and the US citizens will not have any possibility of any employment in their future.
14.4. The US dollars passed out to the financial industries did nothing to create any jobs or eliminate the problems with the US economy. Maybe it did help pay for the sales commissions of the US salesmen for the expensive new French manufactured private Jet Airplanes with the bailout funds, and these salesmen spent most of that US dollars in expensive Bars and restaurants. The French people making these multi-million dollar (Dasault Falcon 20-25) airplanes are probably very thankful for the US government's generosity.
14.5. The newspapers say that some foreign industrial nation economies are re-bounding with fresh manufacturing orders. How many of these orders will be paid with free or loaned US government bailout US dollars given to the automobile and other badly managed industries to purchase a larger percentage of each automobile with foreign manufactured auto parts and subassemblies? The US workers and manufacturers won not benefit at all from most of this economic stimulation?
14.5.1. Additional US dollars loaned to existing businesses might finance more and more relocating of jobs overseas to make the US businesses more profitable, and increasing US unemployment.
14.6. The number of people added to the unemployed rolls each month is probably reducing because fewer and fewer US citizens are employed, and therefore there are fewer employed US citizens available to be terminated in order to reduce labor costs when their jobs are shipped overseas. How many workers are really added to the un-employment total each month? Should the unemployment statistics also consider the unemployed whose unemployment benefits have expired and are still unemployed? If the monthly job losses as reported by applications for unemployment were 250,000 and another 200,000 had their unemployment benefits terminated, should this number of total unemployed be increased by 450,000? The number of unemployed should be the "bottom line" or the actual total unemployed to be considered.
14.7. Outsourcing of labor to foreign companies is apparently the easiest way for a manufacturing company to increase its profit or reduce its losses.
CHAPTER 15
SPENCER'S US ECONOMIC STIMULATION PLAN
15. Without extremely high USA import tariffs, US workers must compete with foreign workers at very low foreign wage scales. Maybe the US government should/could build manufacturing plants to make various consumer products, in sequence, one product at a time, i.e. refrigerators, washing machines, clothing, TV's, electronics, tires, auto parts, hand tools, power tools, machine tools, appliances, and etc. How about also passing laws to prohibit the import of services (exporting the jobs) such as accounting, telemarketing, customer service, computer aided drafting, engineering, etc. that are now easily provided by workers overseas through the internet. Maybe most all of the consumer goods that we import could eventually be made in the USA. The US government could impose extremely high import taxes that are high enough so that these US made products are always less expensive to the consumer than the same imported product.
15.1. These plants should periodically and/or constantly be for sale based upon periodic open public competitive bidding, but at a minimum sale price at least equal to as much as the government investment, and with terms of cash only without any creative financing. There should not be any leveraged or other creative financing for purchase allowed by the government. Only cash sales should be allowed.
15.2. The management should know about making the products, not creative accounting and/or creative financing.
15.3. The US made products could not compete with foreign made products, so there would not be any US export of US products, unless these products are new, innovative and not available on the world market.
15.4. Yes, the consumer will pay several times the price for the particular US manufactured product than he would pay for an imported product, but maybe this might avert a second bloody American revolution.
15.5. This might be better than the US government borrowing more and more money from the industrial nations in order to pay unemployed people not to work
CHAPTER 16
DID FOREIGNERS CREATE THIS DISASTER?
16. It is not the foreign manufacturer's fault that this economic condition exists. US citizens are at fault for electing legislators of both political parties that caused relocation most of our industries to overseas locations which caused unemployment of all of their employees in order to comply with the various environmental, free trade, and economic laws that our US congressmen created and our past presidents administered.
16.1. Our recent elected Congressional leaders have apparently decided that we could get people in other countries to work and make these things for our consumption if we paid them with US dollars that were redeemable to purchase freshly printed-paper T-bills, US Bonds, and other types of freshly printed-paper securities that they could use to purchase title to any of the privately owned businesses, factories, casinos, hotels, farms, land, ports, breweries, refineries, forests, ports, breweries, refineries, and other privately owned assets located in the USA that were created by previous US generations.
16.2. Our Congressional legislators of both political parties, importing companies, consumers (including myself) that purchase imported products because these products are cheaper than US made products, Ignorant Government Employees, Self Serving Corporate Managers, Wall Street Financial Genius Master Criminal type management, NAFTA, EPA, WTO, OSHA, and the buying public just to name a few, have created this situation. The Government needs to reverse the existing negative trade balance by any means possible.
16.3. THE US CITIZENS WANT TO PAY AS LITTLE AS POSSIBLE FOR THE THINGS THAT THEY CONSUME. The US Businesses must relocate and/or outsource labor expenditures as much as possible to reduce labor costs if they want to satisfy the US consumer's demand for the lowest price possible for the US consumer's purchases.
16.4. If US citizens want those businesses that are exploiting the Labor Work Force of other competing. industrialized nations to be held to the same rules - environmentally and human rights wise - that our country's Corporations are required to adhere to - on these shores or overseas, then US citizens need for the US congress to repeal the various legislation the US congress passed that enabled US businesses to outsource their jobs and relocate their plants to overseas locations.
CHAPTER 17
FORECASTS OF FUTURE CIVIL UNREST
17. Riots and insurrections are predictable, ala the French Revolution and the Russian Revolution, when the people find their situations economically hopeless. Mass unemployment will foster mass civil unrest, crime, anger, riots, revolution, starvation, etc. Future federal nationalization of foreign owned US property and other foreign owned US business assets, ala Mexico, Venezuela, etc., is another topic for discussion on another day.
17.1. If any future US revolution to overthrow the US government occurs (maybe to change the economic situation), where will all of the food, fuel, water, sanitation, medicine, and other necessities to support the population come from after the revolution? These necessities will not exist after the revolutionary hostilities start.
17.2. Chaos and total lawlessness will prevail during and long after any US revolution. Only the very meanest and the most evil will survive in this climate. We will have then totally destroyed our civilization. We will live like people in Africa, and we will have to comply with the will of any and every armed person that we encounter. Will all of the city residents starve after a revolution? Most of the US urban population is not knowledgeable enough to live off of the land anymore. The city dwellers might foray into the country, kill the farmers, and steal the farmer's food to feed their own families. Food might become more valuable than freshly printed paper US dollars.
17.3. We are approaching that point of no return, which I will define as the point where we have sold all of our privately owned assets to foreign owners to pay for our imported products that we consumed and our various US government expenses. After foreigners own all of our wealth and US locates assets, we will no longer have any economic or intellectual resources available for re-industrialization.
17.4. In the 1960's the USA was worried about surviving a Russian nuclear attack, and I took a U S Army course called "Environmental Engineering". The Army course was not about the earth's ambient environmental quality, but about administrating the environment within a nuclear fallout shelter during and after a global nuclear exchange (atomic war). This included survivors taking turns foraging outside of the shelter after the radiation levels reduced to levels that would allow short duration forays out of the shelter, and how to re-establish civilization after radiation levels decayed to levels allowable for re-establishing civilization.
17.4.1. The instructor taught us the official course material that indicated human beings would compete with each other (like animals) for the scarce amount of remaining canned goods and the other few remaining resources, and that these competitions for resources would result in death struggle animal behavior between the remaining human beings for the few available remaining resources. The course material implied that only the strong and most resolute (the most evil, ruthless and determined) would ultimately survive.
17.4.2. The Officer teaching the course stated that his personal belief was that human beings would rise to the occasion and take care of each other, in lieu of the deathly competitive behavior predicted by the psychiatrists who wrote the course material. I also look for the best in human behavior, but I have deliberated over this question ever since, and have not really made up my mind as to who might be the most correct.
17.4.3. I believe that human behavior after an economic collapse might be similar to human behavior after emerging from a nuclear fallout shelter.
17.5. US citizens no longer believe that we are our brother's keeper. We have become a mobile society that has no permanent neighborhood roots or sense of human community relation to one another.
17.6. If any future US revolution to overthrow the US government is successful and occurs for If any future US revolution to overthrow the US government is successful and occurs for some reason, will foreigners hire the unemployed US military (and maybe some of the various city policemen) to keep the US population under control, or to regain control, and/or to re-establish law & order after an economic collapse and the resultant civil unrest? some reason, will foreigners hire the unemployed US military (and maybe some of the various city policemen) to keep the US population under control, or to regain control, and/or to re-establish law & order after an economic collapse and the resultant civil unrest?
17.7. After the US economy is totally and completely destroyed by both political parties and when the vast majority are unemployed with no prospects for future employment, and when the citizens have no confidence in the government, the US citizens might listen to a charismatic politician who will promise the nation into a new government (German Reich) that will correct all of the real and imagined injustices that are hurting the citizens in return for absolute political power and suspension of the US Constitution.
17.8. Fixing the economy RIGHT NOW might prevent a future second American Revolution.
CHAPTER 18
FUTURE US DOLLAR BUYING POWER
18. The Chinese Yuan paid by Chinese business owners to their US employees in the future might be the only currency with any value (to buy food, rent or anything else) after the US dollar's buying power goes to zero due to the current US government economic policies.
18.1. The foreign owners of US businesses will probably be the only source of currency with any buying power to pay the unemployed ex-US military to install and/or enforce some foreign version of law and order upon the US citizens. If the unemployed and hungry US military are available and their families are hungry, they will accept food from any source in return for their allegiance and services.
18.2. Chairman Mao supposedly said something similar to, "Power only comes out of the barrel of a gun". He was only partially correct because a strong economy is also necessary to arm, feed, support, house, pay and otherwise maintain a strong military force. The soldiers need to be happy, or they might overthrow whatever government might be in power at that particular time. China now has the strong economy and is rapidly building their military technology and military might that will surpass the military capability of the USA in the very near future.
18.3. If the USA decides to pirate (steal or nationalize) all foreign owned property, ala Mexico in the 1960's, Venezuela in the 1990's, etc., China will probably be able to enforce their property rights with appropriate punitive military action against US citizens on US soil if their military capability exceeds the USA military capability, especially if they can provide food and pay in some valuable currency to the US military for their services.
18.4. If our economy collapses, there will be not be any jobs for anyone at present wages. When we have destroyed the purchasing value of the US dollar, you might make $300.00 per hour but a loaf of bread might cost $5,000.00 if you can find one for sale.
18.5. Most US citizens, including all of my immediate family members are unconcerned about the overall big picture. They believe that the party will go on forever with the citizens of industrialized nations paying the bills for the consumption of US citizens in return for title to everything of value in the USA.
CHAPTER 19
HOW CAN THE USA RE-INDUSTRIALIZE NOW?
19. How can the USA ever possibility restart our industries (re-industrialize) to re-create jobs and also generate a positive balance of trade that will restore our economy? Most of the people who knew how to operate the US basic industries and factories were discharged or fired decades ago and might now be long dead and buried. There are no books that completely tell everything about how to do most of the things that we knew how to do years ago when we created the industries that won WWII and then gave us this bountiful way of life.
19.1. The USA needs more technical and science oriented citizens that will be able to create many innovative new products and services that we can sell or exchange worldwide in return for foreign owned currency and/or Gold. We need to import foreign owned US dollars, foreign owned foreign currency, and foreign owned gold in return for purchase of these new US produced products and services that future US manufacturers might export, instead of exporting our dollars and gold in exchange for foreign manufactured (imported) products. When the time comes that people in foreign nations no longer accept our freshly printed paper dollars to pay for our imported products (and our government activities), we will be in deep trouble with no quick way out.
19.1.1. We must act now while we can still buy foreign made materials and foreign made equipment for the re-industrialization of the USA with the remaining purchasing power of the dollar before we have redeemed all of the exported currency for title to all of the remaining existing privately owned US assets.
19.1.2. The buying power of the dollar will become zero when there is nothing left for the foreigners to buy with the dollars that they earned by making our consumer goods.
19.1.3. I do not have confidence that the USA citizens still have the knowledge and technical capability to re-create our factories for manufacturing, innovating and designing any new products for export as required to reverse our trade balance and restore the value of the dollar, as we did to create the US industrial machine and win WWII.
19.2. After the American revolution, the USA instituted extremely high import tariffs to encourage the industrialization of the USA, and it was successful in establishing a positive balance of trade, accumulating Gold reserves, creating a manufacturing base, creating a technical data base, and making the USA independent from England for technology.
19.2.1. One way or another we must stop the selling of title to everything of value that is privately owned in America as required to raise US dollars to pay for government expenditures plus pay for the things that we import and then consume.
19.2.2. We must create a positive balance of trade by any means possible. If not, we will destroy the purchasing power of the US dollar.
19.2.3. Without import tariffs, most all products will continue to be available for less US dollars if they are manufactured in foreign countries where labor costs are minimized than if the same products are manufactured in the USA with higher paid US labor. The US labor force has no future without high import tariffs to prohibit foreign imported products.
19.2.4. Without high import tariffs, US workers must compete with foreign workers at or below foreign wage scales for employment in the USA. Most USA citizens do not want to work for wages that the same job in a foreign country would pay.
19.2.5. Until we re-industrialize and correct our foreign trade imbalance, and eliminate our federal government borrowing to pay expenses, we cannot afford to have free trade because it will destroy the US Economy.
19.2.6. After the American Revolution there were probably many shopkeepers that imported goods from England and they probably objected to having to deal in more expensive US manufactured goods.
19.2.7. The US importers and retailers of foreign manufactured imported retail products will probably object strenuously when and if the US Government prohibits them from importing the foreign manufactured products that they sell to US consumers.
19.3. Until the USA can re-industrialize and correct our foreign trade deficit, and eliminate our federal government borrowing to pay for government expenses, maybe we cannot afford to have free trade because it will continue to totally destroy the US economy.
CHAPTER 20
US FINANCIAL PRODUCTS
20. Maybe all of the recently created new financial products, and similar new toxic asset products created by the master financial geniuses that created various derivative and other junk bond type freshly printed paper securities out of the thin air should require a separate application and a separate license granted by the SEC for the creation, existence and/or sale of each and/or any new financial product. Maybe the SEC should grant license only to those that have intrinsic collateral value, are easily understood, are transparent, forthright, and are not deceptive in their sworn financial statements filed with the SEC. Maybe the SEC should also require a study to justify the need and define the value of any new derivative type instrument created, similar to an Environmental Impact Statement. When the financial risks are several layers or completely removed from the title to the actual asset that has some actual collateral value (like a Mortgage, Bond, Stock Share, Promissory note), and this instrument is insured from most of the investment risk, how much due diligence will an investor perform before he will commit to purchase, as compared to the investing into a primary mortgage or similar instrument that is collateralized for the event of failure? If I were driving a car without insurance, I would probably drive more carefully than if I had insurance since my exposure for loss is lessened with insurance. Maybe the USA would be better off without any of these recently created new financial (Toxic Asset) products that required the US government to guarantee to the foreign parties that bought them, and US taxpayers had to redeem them when they were discovered to be without value. These recent "freshly printed" financial products similar to a virus, because once they are created, they infiltrate, contaminate and destroy the basic economic foundations of the US economy, and then other Wall Street financial geniuses will then emulate these successful criminals and create even more of these various new attractive toxic assets.
20.1. I believe that Martin Luther King stated something to the effect that "Everything that Adolph Hitler did in Germany was legal." I believe that all of these financial transactions were probably legal. We need to change the laws if we want these actions to be illegal.
20.2. Financial Institution Bailouts: The industries that employ people to produce actual products and commodities for consumption and plus an excess of these products for foreign export in exchange for foreign currency contribute to the basis of the National Wealth as reflected in the purchasing power of the US dollar should have government support. Wealth that should be created for future US generations, and not sold to foreigners so that we can afford to not work. The US government policy is apparently to destroy the manufacturing of consumer goods in the USA through Free Trade. There is not much industry left in the USA.
20.3. These Wall Street financial genius failures are spending the Toxic Asset Recovery Program (TARP) bailout US dollars so that they can continue their reckless behavior without any penalty for any of their past or future financial mistakes and/or failures. The federal government TARP economic bailout US dollars is currently being wasted to pay for the golden parachutes, private parties, expensive vacations, new jet airplanes and bonuses to these same highly paid incompetent (maybe criminal) executives that caused these economic problems. These incompetent, arrogant, stupid, and selfish executives took so much personal US dollars from the financial markets that they caused the systems to fail. The lowly paid US citizens is paying his hard earned taxes to them to continue their bad, inept, stupid, and maybe criminal business policies that caused this crisis? Should taxpayer US dollars pay off the bank loans that occurred when these financial geniuses borrowed US dollars to pay stock dividends, in order to artificially drive up the stock prices, which personally enriched themselves through their stock option plans? How can we get rid of these financial geniuses that caused these problems without costing the taxpayer any more of his/her hard-earned tax US dollars? They are still on the job when they should be unemployed and living under a bridge.
20.4. The financially astute and highly successful Arthur Anderson/Enron group and their leaders here in Houston, filed fictional, false, and/or deceptive financial statements with the Security Exchange Commission that they swore to represent the truth. They successfully perjured themselves when testifying about financial facts, and generally lied about almost every compliance document that they created and submitted to the SEC for many years. It was a miracle that these criminal actions were even discovered. The officers and leaders suffered very little penalty when they finally did get caught and subsequently convicted. They will not rot in prison until they die as a deterrent to future prospective Financial Genius "Master Criminals".
20.5. The financial practices of our Houston Enron executives, Bernard Madoff, Allen Stanford, Scott Rothstein, and many other Wall Street financial wizards are also examples for the current business school students to study and learn how these people got rich, to emulate these people in their own financial careers without being caught. These Students will study to learn how to avoid being caught while amassing their own financial fortunes.
20.5.1. Did Ken Lay really die in Colorado and then be cremated, or was there some homeless person that fit Ken Lay's general description cremated instead of Ken Lay?
20.6. The management of these failed financial institutions should have been fired, especially their CEOs and leaders, and not rewarded with cash bonuses by the US government with borrowed US dollars. This bailout is rewarding these incompetent managers with continued employment and even large cash bonuses to these managers that caused the failures. Why should these managers work hard to investigate anything to do with their financial decisions and/or investments if the US taxpayer will pay for their mistakes? They will still get their big cash bonuses. Did their friends get commissions for selling these bad investments? Were there any kickbacks to financial institution employees who approved these transactions? Why are the financial institution personnel that made these bad decisions still employed? Why is it necessary for financial institution not to become bankrupt? Why does the taxpayer have to pay for these bad judgments and stupid actions? If they went bankrupt and all of these managers were out of work, it would be an incentive for managers of other companies and other future managers (and individual investors) to become more cautious of what they buy in the way of mortgages, securities, bonds and other investments. TARP and other bailouts using taxpayer US dollars should not have ever been paid as bonuses to anybody, as some financial institution apparently did with some of their TARP US dollars. The amount of TARP US dollars should also not have depended upon how many dollars in political contributions that financial institutions gave to either and/or to both political parties. Some of these political contributions were even "donated" to various politicians after these same companies received TARP US dollars.
20.7. None of the Wall Street financial firms should have ever gotten any of the free taxpayer bailout US dollars. The US government rewarded their irresponsible, stupid, inept, careless, and maybe criminal Wall Street actions with free taxpayer US dollars. A financial failure and loss of investment would be an incentive for these and other future investors to become more cautious of what they buy in the way of mortgages and other investments. A financial failure would cause the investors to become more skeptical concerning anything that the financial experts have to say (usually lies). We need for this financial penalty to happen. They are spending the TARP bailout US dollars on bonuses for themselves, and new larger (foreign manufactured Dassault Falcon) private jet airplanes so that they can continue their reckless behavior without any penalty for failure.
20.8. The Stock Markets are just gambling Venues for the public to make gambling wagers (investments) in ownership of publicly traded companies, securities, loans, and other investment vehicles. Investors just lost some of value of their investments, and there is nothing wrong with this loss since the value was speculation over and above the Balance sheet value of the companies. The investors should not have believed anything that their brokers told them about those or any other investments. If you review almost any of the SEC filings (on the EDGAR database) you will find almost all of the sworn information filed with the SEC is extremely false, most especially when you get away from the "Blue Chip" stocks.
20.9. It irritates me when my banker refers to Banking, Stock Trading, Insurance and other financial businesses as "industries", since they do not create anything, except worthless paper toxic asset financial "products". The Wall Street Stock Exchanges and Banks are essentially corrupt and should be allowed to close in Bankruptcy. Wall street is too corrupt and inept to be salvaged. Stocks should be delivered to the registered owners.
CHAPTER 21
US BUSINESS FUTURE
21. Successful CEO’s and other executives with stock options (to buy a defined amount of their company stock at the price it was when they were hired, and then sell the stock if they elevate the price of the stock during their employment) have incentive to inflate the stock prices by any means possible, especially borrowing US dollars and mortgaging various assets to pay increasing stock dividends in order to make the Price/Earning ratios more and more attractive even though the net worth of the assets per share is diminishing by their actions. These executives usually cash in their stocks at the inflated prices and then exit their companies to let others watch the stock prices fall when the limits of the asset loss becomes noticeable and operating maintenance costs increase due to deferred maintenance. These executives will also inflate the book value of real estate assets, goodwill, and other intangibles to offset the increase in liabilities such as loans on assets that are dispensed as dividends. This practice should be outlawed and the incentives for executive performance should be based upon increases in the net worth of the company, not the amount of hype, lies, forgeries, and public relations that inflated the company stock price.
21.1. The Economics and MBA educated executives running our Large Public traded Corporations usually know nothing about making the product that they are in business to produce, but they do know how to borrow US dollars and re-finance existing assets, pass out US dollars to pay increasing dividends in order to run up the company stock prices that inflates the value of their stock options, stop/postpone or minimize maintenance costs to increase profits, and then leave the corporation with large performance bonuses before the postponed maintenance requires massive plant equipment replacements.
21.2. I believe that all of these various public traded US Corporations should abandon Wall Street, buy and sell their company stocks themselves. This would then allow new stock brokerage firms to be created and evolve with tighter regulation and more penalties to prevent future Wall Street type criminal atmosphere of entitlement and above the law attitude. These new trading exchanges should evolve, preferably in cities other than New York City such as Houston, Atlanta, Dallas, Chicago, or some other different location that might be a better location for a clean new start with much less of the prevalent Wall Street culture of criminal activity, self worth, and financial entitlement. These new stock trading exchanges could evolve with new and different rules and regulations that would prohibit the criminal excesses of the Wall Street Master Criminals.
21.3. We need new federal legislation to make one single individual (President, CEO, Chairman, etc.) in each corporation criminally responsible for the accuracy of each of the company financial statements that are filed with the SEC, whether the filing is intentional or not intentional, knowingly or unknowingly false or misleading. This person needs to go to prison for a long term if there are any intentional or un-intentional false statements sworn to as a part of any SEC filing.
21.3.1. Many more crooked CEOs need to be in prison for long periods of time.
21.3.2. A CEO stating that he did not know anything about the company or that he relied on others should not be a "get out of jail free" card as it is now.
21.4. We also need to new legislation to re-create the Glass-Steagall Act (GSA). The Glass-Steagall Act (GSA) was enacted during the Great Depression in 1933 and it protected bank depositors from the additional risks associated with security transactions (gambling on the stocks). This act was repealed in 1999 by congress and approved into law by President Clinton. (If George Bush was president, he probably would probably have also repealed the GSA if his political campaign contributors had also requested that he repeal GSA). Consequently, the distinction between commercial banks and brokerage firms is not distinct, and many banks own brokerage firms and provide investment services to their customers. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act repeal eliminated the restrictions against affiliations between commercial and investment banks. This country does not need more Enron Type Master Criminals and Arthur Anderson type criminal accounting firms that will submit more perjured SEC filings to create more economic miracles. Furthermore, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act allows banking institutions to provide a broader range of services, including underwriting and other dealing activities.
21.5. Accounting Standards: Why does the US Accounting standards allow "Goodwill & other Intangibles" to be placed onto a financial balance sheet. These are almost as bad as listing Enron un-audited LLP's as assets on their balance sheet that was certified by a CPA that was supposedly stating the financial value of that particular company at that time with their SEC financial statements. These sworn financial statements were later discovered to be fiction. Maybe a company whose customers tattoo company logos onto their bodies (ala Harley-Davidson) could claim some Goodwill, but I cannot think of any other situation where brand name or goodwill has any monetary value at all. (well maybe Coca Cola, Tide, and a couple of others).
CHAPTER 22
HOME MORTGAGES
22. Many people got loans for houses they could not afford, and these people should lose their houses in foreclosure. The Federal Government might have pressured the Mortgage Markets to give mortgages to people with bad credit histories. Financial Managers combined multiple numbers of these low quality loans into packages (of low quality loans) and sold them to investors at (almost) face value. These Financial Managers got multi-million dollar (non-refundable) bonuses for their efforts. As more and more of these sub-prime non-credit worthy mortgagees defaulted, the value of these packages of multiple mortgages diminished drastically. The US Taxpayer is now being asked to pay for these financial mistakes.
22.1. The California real estate values should plummet to a fraction of their present sales prices. The $500,000.00 South LA crack house with a $495,000.00 mortgage, roof leaks, no air conditioning, and no plumbing owned by an unemployed person (i.e. crack cocaine supplier) might now sell for $15,000.00 and that might be closer to the actual retail market sale value. No more "Flipping Houses". No more real estate financial geniuses. No more get-rich-quick real estate seminars.
CHAPTER 23
US ECONOMIC FUTURE
23. We have met the enemy and it is ourselves. There is nothing more saddening or devastating than mass unemployment such as existed in countries such as Mexico or Asia in the last century. I have visited Asia several times on Business in the last part of the 20th century. Crime, family abandonment, divorce, selling your own 12 year old (and younger) daughters for the equivalent of about $45 in the 1990's for 10 years of indentured servitude to the brothels, selling your 12 year old sons to the rug weavers for about the same price, and other bad things increase during these periods of economic difficulty. Our basic industries such as steel, computer chip manufacturing, petrochemical refining, appliance manufacturing, tire manufacturing, automobile parts manufacturing, aircraft manufacturing, textiles, and etc. have been decimated and/or totally eliminated from this country by US government environmental laws and trade treaties.
23.1. The USA must re-industrialize. Even if we started to re-industrialize today, it would take decades to re-create the scientific, engineering, manufacturing and industrial technology to re-create the production bases that we destroyed in the past few decades with free trade.
23.2. Without re-industrialization, the USA is destined to become an impoverished nation of unemployed, starving, and homeless musicians, poets, historians, literature experts, philosophers, social workers, psychologists, MBAs, economists, political scientists, journalists, and other individuals that cannot contribute to correcting the economic problems of the USA. We needed to correct the Foreign Trade Deficit, which is the structural foundation portion of the US Economy that has failed.
23.3. New environmental cleanup jobs created by the EPA are nice, but they are about as economically useful to correcting our negative trade balance of payments and re-building our industrial base as paying people for raking leaves, digging holes and re-filling the same holes, flipping hamburgers, selling insurance, etc. These actions do not produce anything economically useful that we can consume and/or export.
23.4. The arts are less important than food & shelter. The arts are less important than security (Army & Police). The arts are less important that the balance of trade that affects our value of our dollars. The arts are less important than manufacturing products for export that will improve our balance of trade position. The arts must take a back seat to necessities. We must set our spending priorities upon the basis of what is necessary, not what is nice to have.
23.5. Is the good life in America gone forever? Both major political parties act at the direction of paid lobbyists in the interests of the importing companies who profit by importing, transportation, distributing and retail sales of imported foreign manufactured products. These US importing companies pay companies and individuals in foreign countries with US dollars to manufacture things that these US businesses import, distribute, and then sell to the US consumers. Manufacturers (such as GM, Ford, GE, Chrysler, GE, Westinghouse and etc.) manufacture vehicles, appliances, and equipment made with imported parts that they paid the companies in the foreign countries with US currency to manufacture these parts for assembly of the finished product in the USA that is then sold to US consumers. A very high dollar value (percentage) of USA assembled products are made with imported foreign manufactured parts and/or sub-assemblies. The consumer is also guilty of destroying US manufacturing.
23.6. The US public needs a bigger economic pie, not a bigger piece of the remaining economic pie that is shrinking daily. The US government is selling title to everything of value in our country to foreign manufacturers and their governments, and the US government is calling this "Investing in America".
23.7. Taxes on overseas earnings will be just the incentive needed for more US corporations to relocate their headquarters overseas. (It is not really that simple)
23.8. My wife believes that the government has secret economic plans that they implement will prevent any economic collapse, and that we do not need to worry. Most people believe that all they need to do is to be optimistic and things will take care of themselves.
CHAPTER 24
US POLITICAL LEADERS
24. Selecting USA political leaders: I remember a guy named Ross Perot who looked like Alfred E Newman from the Mad Magazine comic books and talked through his nose. He ran as a third party candidate against President Bush 41 and President Bill Clinton, I think that it was 1992 and he got almost as many votes as either of the major party candidates. He had the right message but he was the wrong messenger. He was also not attractive, and I sadly believe that a lot of the American people vote based upon looks more than intelligence or policy. He had a lot of graphs and charts to indicate his points. I remember him saying that "NAFTA will suck the remaining jobs out of the USA". He might have been the last chance to preserve the US jobs, US industry and the US economy.
24.1. I remember presidential candidate McCain stating something to the effect that he was not interested in economics during the first part of the 2008 presidential campaign shortly after he was nominated, so I voted for President Obama, I respected McCain, but he was no choice for the economy of this country.
24.2. Both political parties are responsible for the enormous foreign trade deficits, the even larger federal spending deficits, and for allowing Wall Street to create of our economic business mess. Neither of the major political parties seems to understand the problem, and the solutions are so simple.
24.3. Years ago engineers, medical doctors, farmers, and people in professions other than lawyers also became politicians. Jimmy Carter was probably the last engineer president, and he was a disaster for everything. Congressman Ron Paul is a MD.
24.4. We must replace the "Free Trade" legislators with new people who will install Import duties that are high enough to prevent imports.
CHAPTER 25
US TRADE BALANCE CORRECTION
25. It does not matter how we reverse the balance of trade as long as we stop the flow of gold, dollars, T-bills, Government Bonds, title to US located properties, and other privately owned US assets from the USA to other countries, in payment for the things that they make for us to consume, and stop borrowing additional quantities of their US dollars to pay for our government operational expenses.
25.1. After industrial nations and foreigners own everything of value in the USA, the USA will become a third world nation of unemployed beggars.
25.2. We will soon have sold foreigners title to all of the US property and businesses in return for their making things for US citizens to consume and to to pay for our government operational expenses.. US citizens will keep busy cleaning up our environment, suing each other, and inventing new (worthless) financial products until the very end, and then the US citizens will ask each other, "What happened?" when there is no food or gasoline available.
25.3. Everything of value in the USA will very soon be owned by citizens, businesses and governments of foreign industrialized nations. The purchasing value of the dollar will go to zero as the US government speeds up the printing presses to cover US government expenses. Our military, police, firemen, and etc will get paid in freshly printed US dollars that will not be accepted in grocery stores or any other retail venue. These public servants will probably walk off of the job, and somehow try to feed their own families. Chaos and total lawlessness will prevail. Only the meanest and the most evil will survive in this climate. We will have then totally destroyed our country.
25.4. The Chinese Yuan might be the only currency with any purchasing value (to buy food or anything else) when the US dollar's buying power goes to nothing.
25.5. "Power comes out of the barrel of a gun?" I think that Mao was only partially correct because a strong economy is also necessary to support and maintain a strong military. The soldiers need to be fed and paid, or they might overthrow whatever government might be in power. China now has the strong economy and is rapidly building their military technology and military might that will probably surpass military capability of the USA in the very near future. If the USA decides to pirate (steal or nationalize) all foreign owned property, ala Mexico in the 1960's, China will be able to enforce their property rights with appropriate punitive military action onto US citizens on US soil.
25.6. The USA is approaching the point of no return, which I will define as the point where we have lost the economic capability to re-industrialize.
25.7. Fixing the economy right now might by reversing the trade deficit might prevent a future revolution.
CHAPTER 26
INTERNATIONAL INFLUENCE
26. Is there a New World Intellectual Order conspiracy? If there is, how does any member of any silly New World Intellectual Order think that they can rule without economic and military might? If there is a great social upheaval, ala French Revolution or Russian Revolution, there will be total anarchy, and only the evil, the strong, the unscrupulous, the most determined, and the most unmerciful will survive. If these New World Order Illuminati, Bilderbergs, etc., are not personally armed, and/or protected by heavily armed mercenaries, they will probably become some of the first casualties of any such revolution. Europe is becoming more impotent than the USA, and both will very soon be of no consequence in world affairs. Why would anyone care anything about the NWO, Illuminiati, Bilderbergs, and/or any of the other silly intellectual conspirators if these conspirators are not backed by an armed force? Would the anyone even return their telephone calls? I think that most intellectuals believe that they can reason with an angry rebel and/or bandit who wants the intellectual's food, weapons, house, wife, daughter, or etc. These intellectuals will probably be killed at their very first verbal contact with an anarchist. They need to keep their voices quiet and submit to the armed and the violent people if they desire to live, or become armed and able to defend themselves.
CHAPTER 27
IF GOD DOES EXIST, HE WILL NOT SAVE USA
27. I am convinced that religion, superstition and other supernatural beliefs have very little to do with whether or not the USA survives. I believe that the founders of this country wanted freedom from religion, not the official forced European taxpayer supported state religion. The signers of the Declaration of Independence were mostly atheists and agnostics. There were a very few practicing Christians and no known clerics of any religious denomination that signed the Declaration of Independence. Most of these signers were also Masons. The Christians that participated in the founding of this country were only a tiny minority of the participants. I am a Christian, but I do not believe that this country was founded as a Christian nation. The constitution prohibits the establishment of any religion, and this implies that taxes cannot be used to support any religion.
27.1. I never thought about it, but churches really are entertainment businesses that collect funds from senile little old widowed ladies (like my 97 year old mother) and then use these dollars to buy expensive vacations, luxury cars, grand large houses, support for expensive mistresses, services of prostitutes, pedophile sexual activity lawsuit settlements, and/or other similar expenses. They might spend a little bit for religious activities, but most of the donations are probably are spent on salaries paid to the clergy. This is a very great sin in my opinion.
27.2. I am not convinced that religion, superstition and other supernatural beliefs contribute any positive benefits to the USA. I believe that the founders of this country wanted freedom from religion, not any official forced European type taxpayer supported state religion. The signers of the Declaration of Independence were primarily atheists and agnostics. There were only a very few practicing Christians and no known clerics of any religious denomination that signed the Declaration of Independence. Most of these signers were also Masons. The Christians that participated in the founding of this country were only a tiny minority of the participants. I am a Christian, but I do not believe that this country was founded as a Christian nation.
27.3. The US Constitution prohibits the establishment of any religion, and this implies that taxes cannot be used to support any religion. The exemption of any religion or any other entertainment venue from paying their fair share of taxes to pay for the various services that they use means that my taxes are increased to pay for the public services that they are provided with my tax payments.
27.4. I do not know much about the Masons except that I have heard (on the History Channel) that they were founded to protest the murder and physical torture of innocent people (including the Knights Templar) by the various Christian religions of Europe. The History Channel hints that maybe the Masons are somehow associated with the Knights Templar. I would like to learn more about this.
27.5. The Catholic Church conducted Inquisitions in Europe that resulted in torturing people until they confessed and then executing these innocent people for various religious violations. All of those were probably innocent of the charges that the church trials convicted their victims of committing.
27.6. As an ex-Baptist, I believe that some of the Baptist preachers could make the Catholic Inquisition Court members look like amateurs when it came to spilling the blood of sinners and/or those that questioned their dogma by torturing the accused until they confessed and then burning these people to death when they are not in agreement with the particular Bible interpretations of these self appointed clergy.
27.7. There were various Protestant religious groups in the US that were torturing and executing innocent people for various religious reasons at the time of the American Revolution. I believe that the founders wanted freedom of religion to also mean freedom from allowing various religious Christian people to burn people alive, to hang people, to crush people, to drown people and use other unusually cruel and inhumane methods to inflict horrible punishment and death upon those that they considered to be sinners, witches, heretics or etc.
27.8. We should fight to eliminate the income tax deductions and the property tax exemptions that are granted to religious groups by the federal government and by the various states, counties and municipalities. These free rides increase the tax burdens onto all of the non-exempt taxpayers. Church property should not be exempt from paying local property taxes. The Churches call police when they are the victims of a crime, call the fire department when they have a fire, demand city water and sewer services, street lighting, paved streets, etc. Most local authorities provide exemptions from local taxes for religious owned property and charge the remaining property owners an increased amount to pay for serving the church properties. This is then taxpayer state supported religion.”
27.9. The Clergy enjoys the rights and freedoms that are guaranteed by our government with our armed forces. They should pay their fair share for the support of the military forces and the judicial system. They should also pay for the government welfare programs that all other taxpayers are forced to support. The Clergy should pay taxes upon the value of all of the things that they get as perks from the churches such as free housing. The remainder of the taxpayers must then pay more taxes in order to make up the amount of taxes not paid by the clergy. The next thing the clergy will want is to be a part of the government with legal power to burn, torture and kill those who do not agree with their brand of religious beliefs.
27.10. The Roman Empire grew and prospered until Constantine established Christianity as the state preferred religion in about 312AD. The Empire ceased to exist a few decades after it accepted the altruistic principles of the Christian religion. Adopting Christianity as the preferred state supported religion was probably the main cause of the collapse of the Roman Empire.
27.11. I believe that when any tax exempt organization collects funds from senile little old widowed ladies (like my mother) and then use these dollars to buy expensive vacations, luxury cars, grand large houses, pedophile sexual activity lawsuit settlements, expensive mistresses, prostitutes, and/or other similar expenses, this is a very great sin in my opinion.
27.12. I believe that all churches and all other non-profit organizations should pay property taxes on all of their property plus sales taxes on all of their purchases to pay their share of the public services that they use, instead of everybody else's taxes paying for the cost of the services that the churches and non-profit organizations use.
27.13. I believe that preachers, choir leaders and other church employees should also pay income taxes and social security taxes on their salaries and other compensations, the same as any other person in order to pay for the benefits that they and everybody else living in the USA receives.
27.14. This tax exemption for churches (and non-profit organizations) means that the government takes money from me and in essence gives that money to churches to support that church with the increase in my taxes that went to support various churches. This is probably not allowed as a part of the US Constitution.
CHAPTER 28
US ECONOMIC TRADE POLICY
28. The USA needs to withdraw from all international trade treaties and place a high import duty or tariff on all imported products in order to re-create the manufacturing industries and the jobs that these trade treaties and our government destroyed over the last few decades. Yes, everything will cost the consumer seven times as much, but this might prevent another revolution.
28.1. The US government has allowed, and maybe even encouraged, US Importing Companies, US Corporations, Wall Street Financial Geniuses, Business Manipulators, Enron-Arthur Anderson type Master Criminals, and others to out-source most US jobs to foreign countries where labor costs are a small tiny fraction of US citizen wage and benefit expectations.
28.2. Both of the major political parties are responsible for this unemployment rate. Maybe it is time for a third political party if the two major political parties believe that unemployment and re-industrialization are not important to the USA economy.
28.3. Our political Leaders must lobby loudly and become persistent in their quest for implementing extremely high import tariffs on all imported goods, and repeal of the NAFTA, WTO, and IMF treaties. We might also consider and threaten complete withdrawal from the United Nations.
28.4. The US government is "piling on" more and more new environmental costs to the factories that remain in the USA every year after year. "Cap and Trade" will not be the last environmental cost that the US government will "pile onto" the remaining US located industries.
28.5. The remaining US industries can expect that the US government will continue to add more and more environmental regulations and costs until all of our US located industries have been relocated to foreign countries, and all of their employees are laid off and unemployed.
28.6. US industries probably anticipate that new environmental regulations will be piled onto their operational costs in the future by the EPA, and this subjective attitude might finalize their economic decisions to relocate their US plants overseas and then lay off their US employees.
28.7. If the various industries can produce their products cheaper in foreign countries with reduced environmental and labor costs, why would they ever elect to stay in this country?
28.8. China is the largest holder of $800 billion of freshly printed paper US bonds because the Chinese accumulated this wealth by creating a trade surplus with the USA (and other de-industrialized countries). They bought these US Bonds at a discount from the Federal Reserve Public Auctions with the US dollars that the US retail outlet stores paid foreign manufacturers in the industrialized foreign countries with US Dollars to work and manufacture the products that US consumers purchased at US retail outlet stores.
28.9. US citizens including myself want the least expensive price for the items that we purchase, so we shop at these US retail outlet stores that feature foreign manufactured products.
28.10. There will not be any Middle Class in the USA without Jobs. The US government passed "Free Trade" laws that allows US businesses to move their US factories overseas and lay off all of the US employees in order to reduce their product prices to meet US consumer demands (and increase their profits). Why blame the businesses? If a business's competitors take advantage of cheaper foreign labor costs, then the competitor will have less expensive products, and the business with the more expensive products made with US citizen labor will go bankrupt because the US consumer will not buy the more expensive US made product. Both political parties and their political contributors (and the various importers lobbyists) directed our lawmakers to remove import tariffs that protected the jobs of US citizens working in US industries. This action then created "Free Trade" which is the cause of most of the US factory closings and job losses to overseas locations. The US jobs are not going to be recreated without "Extremely High Import Tariffs" that are high enough to prevent imported products. What do you think that the future of the US worker will be? I do not know where to buy any US made products anywhere any more.
CHAPTER 29
NATIONAL SALES TAX
29. Do not replace the existing tax system with anything that is subject to easy revision such as a flat (income) tax. This will only be modified by congress until we get back to what we have now. Why not have a national sales (Consumption or Value Added) tax, disband the IRS, and fire most of the IRS employees. Call this a "Value added tax" or a "Consumption Tax" and it will be easier to sell to the US public.
29.1. Make New Products, New Vehicles, New Houses, New House Additions & Improvements, Fast Food, pre-prepared food from grocery stores, Restaurant Charges, Sports Tickets, Entertainment Expenses, New Vehicles, New Boats, Building Materials, all labor, and other similar new purchase items taxable.
29.2. Make uncooked food, used clothing, rent up to a minimum amount, and any similar items exempt to help the poor.
29.3. Businesses would also pay these taxes on new plant constructions, new plant expansions, plant maintenance supplies, replacement parts, consumable office supplies, and other similar expense items that are used in the manufacture of products (and not re-sold).
29.4. Utilities consumed in manufacturing products for retail sales, maintenance labor, operating labor, administration Labor, manufacturing labor, would be exempt from consumption taxes since these tax costs will be collected at the retail sales level.
29.5. Wholesale materials, parts, etc. that are re-sold should not be taxed until the final sale is made to the end user or retail consumer (like state taxes). If you buy a used house, you pay no sales tax, but when you remodel and/or improve it, you pay sales taxes on the material, and on the labor as you obtain these items to improve the value of your property. You do not pay taxes on the increase in appreciation value, and this might be a break or incentive for people to buy houses rather than rent.
29.6. Foreign Exports could be taxed at a different rate, or maybe not taxed at all to make our export products less expensive to foreign buyers and this might improve our balance of trade,
29.7. Generally each item produced shall pay taxes only one time when that item is newly manufactured and sold into the market to the final user and/or retail consumer. Pay the states to collect these taxes (these systems are generally in place) and minimize the number of federally paid employees collecting taxes.
29.8. Make the sales tax one time on new cars, and then no additional sales taxes on the subsequent times that the used vehicles are sold. Tax new parts and maintenance labor as these expenses are applied to these used cars.
29.9. Make the sales tax one time on new Houses, and then no additional sales taxes on the subsequent times that the used houses are sold, except on the amount that the sale increases above the previous sale price. Tax the material and labor used to improve, operate and/or maintain these houses after the initial purchase purchased, and reduce these taxes from the taxes due for the next sale.
29.10. Repeal the Tax Code with its special tax breaks for various special interests, farmers, tobacco growers, dairymen, etc.
CHAPTER 30
ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY
30. The USA is now almost completely de-industrialized and the industrial companies have fired all of their US employees and relocated their factories overseas rather than comply with the expensive EPA regulations. Public pressure is being applied to destroy the remainder of our industries and US jobs with the proposed "Cap and Trade" legislation, existing environmental laws, and the anticipated costs of future environmental legislation that will be "piled onto" our remaining US located industries that stay in the USA.
30.1. Industries located in the USA know that there will be many more future Environmental Regulations implemented by the EPA that will require expensive cost outlays of investment for compliance. Our US businesses know that even if they can economically survive the current proposed environmental legislations, more and more environmental legislation will be "piled onto" them in the future. If there is an economic life cycle cost analysis that would allow some US factory to stay in the USA today, the business managers should fire their US workers and relocate that factory to a foreign country in order to escape the costs of the anticipated future environmental regulations that the US government will almost certainly create, and also to take advantage of lower labor costs and more productive labor work rules that are available in foreign countries.
30.2. Foreigners are now employed in foreign factories as they make more and more of the things that US citizens are consuming, instead of US citizens making them in USA located factories. The US located plant owners have since relocated those factories, equipment, and those jobs to the foreign countries that have fewer environmental regulations than the USA.
30.3. At least US citizens now have cleaner air to breathe after we have closed down most all of our remaining basic industry factories and terminated the employment of most of those US citizens that were employed there! Foreigners are now employed in those relocated foreign factories as they make the things that US citizens were/are consuming. The plant owners have since relocated those factories, equipment, and those jobs to the foreign countries that have fewer environmental regulations than the USA to meet the US consumer demand for the lowest possible consumer item prices.
30.4. There was an era in the 1960's when people living in Pasadena, Texas would say that their refinery pollution smelled like jobs, US dollars, food, housing, and college educations for their children.
30.5. New Green Environmental jobs are nice, but paying US citizens with US dollars borrowed from industrial producing nations to then pay US citizens to keep busy raking leaves, performing environmental cleanups, government bureaucrat payrolls, social services, art, poetry, music concerts in the park, digging a hole in the ground today and then filling the same hole tomorrow, does nothing to correct the Foreign Trade Deficit that is the basic economic structural foundation defect of the USA.
30.6. I do not like it when a few of us die from polluted air, but this is better than the majority of us starving to death from economic chaos.
30.7. The EPA, if it is not disbanded, must be re-organized with orders not to hamper any re-industrialization of the USA - If the EPA had been created in 1865, the USA would be a third world country of unemployed beggars today, or maybe a part of Germany or Japan.
30.8. Some percentage of US citizens are harmed each year by our industrial pollution, but when US environmental regulations cause total collapse of our US economy, most all of our US citizens will be unemployed, homeless, hungry, angry, hopeless and otherwise more seriously harmed.
30.9. If the US economy implodes, the USA will probably resemble India, Mexico, China, etc., as these countries were in the decades before they industrialized. I do not believe that any of these foreign countries will help the US citizens if we are in distress. They view us as fat, lazy, incompetent, not productive and somehow self entitled "to not have to work".
30.10. If all of our Ship Channel industries close and then fire all of their employees, Houston will have clean air to breathe. There might be soon and there might then be enough unemployed people nationally to cause civil unrest.
30.11. What if I start a wind driven electrical generator factory in the USA? What if I import wind driven electrical generators from China and then hire a couple of US citizens (or illegal aliens) to remove the Chinese nameplates and then attach a new nameplate with my factory name, address, serial number, with "Made in the USA" on the nameplate in my factory, and then that product will be "Made in the USA"?
30.11.1. What if I make political contributions to a sufficient number of congressmen to have a law passed to require that only "US Made Products" be installed on all of the federally funded "Green Energy" projects, then I will be able to sell these wind driven electrical generators at any price that I desire, and the US unemployment statistics will not be changed.
30.11.2. If the government objects, then I will have the wind driven electrical generators delivered to my factory without nameplates and then they will be parts for final assembly in the USA by Americans when US citizens add only the nameplate to each of the Chinese wind driven electrical generators.
30.11.3. I will pay the Chinese with US dollars for these wind driven electrical generators, and the Chinese will then buy more privately owned businesses, factories, casinos, hotels, farms, land, ports, breweries, refineries, forests, ports, breweries and other privately owned wealth and other assets located in the USA that were created by previous US generations.
CHAPTER 31
GENERAL MOTORS BAILOUT
31. I believe that GM should have gone bankrupt before their US dollars from the US taxpayers bought ownership in their company. I guess that GM will not give back any of the US dollars that the US Government took from me previously and gave to purchase GM. Is there anything of value going to be left after the auto industry executives and the auto union members bleed GM to death? The banks probably have mortgage lien on the title to most of the remaining factories and other assets anyway. Since they have been allowed to continue to go to the public feed trough again and again, they will never stand on their own two feet.
31.1. It is very offensive for the President of GM to brag on TV that he has paid back the loans from the taxpayers on time and with interest. The US Taxpayer is still saddled with 61% of the responsibility for paying for the union financial obligations of GM such as healthcare, retirement, benefits, etc.
31.2. Should the taxpayers via congress continue the auto Industry's bad behavior and outright theft of company US dollars with taxpayer funds? The additional billions of Taxpayer funds given to the US Auto Industry will only encourage the continuation of the arrogant, stupid, and selfish bad business policies of both the US Auto Industry executives and the UAW members. Why are these same highly paid incompetent executives and the overpaid union workers continue their featherbed deals, job banks, perks, private jet airplanes, stupid business decisions, and etc. with taxpayer US dollars.
31.3. These are the same selfish people that are responsible for the company failures and should be fired, unless they know something about making cars instead of creative finance. Let other parties buy their assembly plants and re-start these plants. Maybe we have to let the GM Executives disappear with the large amounts of US dollars that they took from the US Auto Industry, but do not let them have more billions of taxpayer funding to continue their bad business practices and personal thievery. GM is probably already in debt up to their ears. Let GM disappear, especially as a lesson to all of the other financial geniuses that caused these problems. If these financial geniuses that caused these problems disappear then the UAW feather beds that they created will also disappear with them.
31.4. These taxpayer billions for the auto Industry are funding the golden parachutes and bonuses of the auto industry executives that caused the crisis. Should taxpayer US dollars pay off the bank loans that occurred when these financial geniuses borrowed US dollars to pay stock dividends, in order to artificially drive up the stock prices, which personally enriched themselves through their stock option plans? How can we get rid of these financial geniuses and the UAW feather beds that caused these problems without costing the taxpayer some of his/her hard earned tax US dollars?
31.5. They do not need any more Financial Genius Master Type Criminals to manage their affairs. Are there any more Lee Iacocca type people in that industry that could revive these sick Auto Manufacturing companies from their impending deaths? Is Lee Iacocca still alive? CAN LEE IACOCCA BE DRAFTED INTO THE U S ARMY AND THEN BE ASSIGNED TO HEAD GM BY THE US GOVERNMENT, IF HE IS STILL ALIVE? Lee Iacocca was a mechanical engineer that knew how to design, market, and manufacture automobiles. He supposedly fought the Ford financial management tooth and nail to let him build the financially successful Ford Mustang. Later in his career he was credited with saving Chrysler from their MBA financial geniuses. I tend to believe that GM is probably managed by MBA financial geniuses that know how to drain company assets into their own pockets, but know very little about making automobiles.
31.6. I guess that the US Government will not get the previous taxpayer billions of US dollars out of the GM assets before all other creditors get theirs. The US taxpayer should have had priority over union retirement contracts, union benefits, union medical plans, bank mortgages, bond holders, preferred stock, medical benefits, etc. and other claims. But maybe it is like the financial institutions and banks that got TARP US dollars depending upon their political contributions to the congressmen controlling the distribution of who gets the free taxpayer earned US dollars.
31.7. The Clunker Buy Back Program was similar to the US government buying cows and killing them during the great depression when the US population and their children went to bed hungry. The local auto repair garages probably saw a drop in their business, and caused an increase in the unemployment of automobile repairmen.
CHAPTER 32
FUNDING FOR RE-INDUSTRIALIZATION
32. Funding for re-industrialization and for the re-creation of a technically qualified US citizen resource base that is required for re-industrialization must be provided as a first priority budget item, if we really want to rebuild our industries and create jobs for the working man. We will need funding to do this. Do you really think that any other country in the world will loan us any additional funds to re-build our manufacturing capability, especially when they know that we will then compete with them for world markets?
32.1. Foreign individuals and foreign governments will probably become loan sharks after we have sold all of our privately owned assets to them and other foreigners to pay for our trade imports of the products that we consumed plus our growing US government expenses? I just hope it is not too late already.
32.2. The TARP Funds that the Government borrowed and handed out should have been spent re-industrializing the USA. The TARP US dollars just allowed those Master Criminals that created those "toxic assets" and also created the financial crisis to keep their jobs.
CHAPTER 33
IS GREED GOOD OR BAD?
33. Please let me repeat the general dictionary definitions of economic greed as "excessively or inordinately desirous of wealth, profit, etc," in addition to these normal definitions of greed that refer to desiring excessive amounts of food and/or drink. I believe that the desires for sexual pleasure, alcoholic and narcotics euphoria should be added to the few dictionaries that I consulted. I only checked a few of the on-line dictionaries and did not find those items included in the definitions of greed.
33.1. I have heard some people say that one of the problems with the USA today is that people are greedy. Were people always greedy in the past? When were people not greedy? What is the definition of greed?
33.2. I do not consider your working hard and producing things of value and selling them to others outside of your family in order to enrich your family as being greedy? I do not consider that if you start a business and hire some people to assist you to help make these things and then make yourself more US dollars defines you as being greedy.
33.3. I do not believe that I am greedy when I do not share the "fruits of my Labor" with others who might not have worked as hard as I did, and especially if they spent their assets on expensive food, drink, new cars, big houses, vacations, concerts, entertainment, women, and drugs.
33.4. I believe most all people are economically greedy, and this is not primarily evil. I believe that greed without evil is a wonderful motivator for individuals to produce wealth for themselves and their family. When greed is combined with evil it is not acceptable, and should be punished.
33.5. I believe that economic greed without evil is acceptable and should be encouraged in my opinion. I believe that most all of the technical advances in the lifestyles of human beings throughout history have been caused mostly by the greed of the creators of these scientific and economic advances that benefitted most all human beings.
33.5.1. I believe that the Ancient Egyptians were greedy and hoarded their Grain in Storage as wealth and security for use in times of famine. Did the Ancient Biblical Jacob squander his assets unwisely and then became hungry when a famine occurred? The Bible states that when the Jacob's family faced starvation during a famine, Jacob took his family to Egypt where there was grain stored and hoarded by the greedy Egyptians to insure the survival of Egyptians during times of drought and famine. Jacob and his descendants probably submitted themselves to be slaves of the Egyptians in return for food and shelter. The Egyptians might have kept the Israelites as slaves to build and increase their infrastructure, and that probably increased their agricultural production capacity for the production of food.
33.5.1.1. The Ancient Egyptians probably also used Israelites to construct pyramids, but this action did not benefit their civilization economically or accumulate any national wealth. This effort was as economically beneficial to their society as digging holes today and then filling the same holes back with the same earth that was removed to make the original hole tomorrow. There is probably a financial benefit to Egypt of today from the tourist dollars spent to see the pyramids.
33.5.1.2. Is the USA repeating the actions of the Ancient Israelis?
33.5.2. I believe that Henry Ford started mass manufacturing because he was greedy for more US dollars. I believe that Henry Ford probably worked 16-hour days seven days a week to start mass-production assembly line production industry to earn more US dollars to enrich himself financially for the benefit of his family financially. I do not think that Henry Ford enjoyed it or that he did it to improve his health or the welfare of his workers, even though this was a side benefit to the US citizens.
33.5.3. I believe that the same is true for Thomas Alva Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Guglielmo Marconi, George Westinghouse, Lee Iacocca, and all of the other smart and industrious individuals that produced the weapons and industries that won WWII and then employed so many Americans for a few of decades after WWII.
33.5.4. I started to include Albert Einstein, but I believe that he was greedy for recognition as a Nobel Prize Winner plus the associated monetary award to settle his divorce action. The History Channel stated that he conceded his divorced wife a share in any future Nobel Prize award as a part of their divorce settlement.
33.5.5. George Washington Carver, Thomas Davenport, George Eastman, Philo Taylor Farnsworth, Benjamin Franklin, Robert Hutchings Goddard, Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper, Edwin Herbert Land, Cyrus Hall McCormick, Elijah McCoy, Samuel Finley Breese Morse, Elisha Graves Otis, Jonas Salk, Wilbur Wright and Orville Wright were also more than likely motivated by greed for financial rewards, but they also created new technology, benefits and employment for many US citizens. US citizens benefitted from their greed for wealth.
33.5.6. I started to include Dr. Oppenheimer, but according to most of what I have seen on the History Channel about him, Tanquray Gin Martinis and Lucky Strike cigarettes motivated him when he was in charge of developing the Atomic Bombs that won WWII and saved the lives of millions of American Soldiers. Some historical data indicates that those two items were his main source of nourishment. (It apparently worked). US citizens benefitted greatly from dr. Oppenheimer's greed for Tanquray gin martinis and Lucky Strike cigarettes.
33.5.7. I believe that the men that started Texas Instruments with their invention of the semi-conductor worked long workdays, probably took no holidays or vacations, to satisfy their greed and desire for US dollars, in addition to satisfying their scientific curiosity. US citizens benefitted from the creation of a new electronic industry that employed millions and was caused by their greed for wealth.
33.6. I guess that I could call some people greedy if they do not give me part of the fruits of their labor while I sit idle and not work.
33.6.1. Why should anyone work hard for the benefit of others that are not for themselves and the members of their family?
33.6.2. Are the workers greedy for not sharing their products with me?
33.6.3. Am I greedy for some of what the worker produced while I sat idle?
33.6.4. Am I greedy to tax the worker and threaten him with prison if he does not give me some of the products that he produced?
33.6.5. Am I evil to demand that he work while I consume what he produces?
33.7. There are some people in this world that I would describe as evil, in addition to being greedy. I consider those individuals that take advantage of their wealth and/or position to ruin the lives of others for their own personal pleasure and gratification to be evil when they show no compassion or concern for people that they cause injury or death. This could also be defined as greed for sex, but I believe that evil more aptly describes these people.
33.7.1. I believe that Homosexual Pedophile Priests and their Bishops, Cardinals, and Popes that knew of these activities but did not drum these priests out of their church and also did not have the police arrest those priests for their crimes are evil. The Catholic Church called these individuals "troubled priests". Those pedophile priests ruined the lives of countless numbers of children that the parents entrusted the care of their children to these priests. These priests were totally evil. Why were they allowed to continue private contact with other children at other parishes when transferred around by the Catholic Church? How and why did these priests escape punishment by the law? (I am a Catholic).
33.7.2. People that create and/or sell new worthless toxic financial products and create junk bond type paper securities out of the thin air and then certify and swear that these paper products have some value are primarily evil. I do believe that if someone creates and sells freshly printed paper securities that the seller knows to be worthless, perjured, falsely sworn to misrepresent the stated facts, and that the seller presents, swears by his god, and certifies to the SEC that his freshly printed paper securities have some monetary value in order to take a persons US dollars is theft, greed, and also evil, ala Enron/Arthur Anderson, Madoff, Sanford, Scott Rothstein, etc. These people are also greedy, but they are primarily evil thieves and criminals. These people are also greedy for US dollars without producing anything useful, but they are primarily very evil for lying, cheating and stealing US dollars from people that listened to them lie.
33.7.3. Senator Edward Kennedy was known as the hero of Chappaquiddick in 1969 when he caused the death of the unmarried pregnant passenger in his car, Mary Jo Kopechne. I remember how Edward Kennedy repeated refused to explain what had happened that night. I remember the special treatment that he received from the local police. His family had the body of Mary Jo Kopechne quickly interned without an autopsy. I remember that a later autopsy after her body was exhumed determined that she was pregnant. Ted Kennedy might have been drunk while he was driving, but that was no excuse for him to let that girl drown in his car after he drove his car off of that bridge. He called the authorities many hours after he first made many multiple telephone calls to his various political advisors. Senator Kennedy was primarily evil. He was also greedy for protection of his political future at the expense of the life of Mary Jo Kopechne. He had plenty of US dollars from his inheritance trust fund, so maybe he thought that he was special and entitled to more consideration than some average US citizen.
33.7.4. Most of the other members of the Kennedy Family also inherited great wealth, never held a beginning job, became big shot politicians, and/or just fooled around with women and consumed large quantities of alcohol and narcotics. They were greedy for sex, drugs, food and drink, but not necessarily for US dollars.
33.7.4.1. They basically caused no harm to anybody, except for the people that died when they happened to be in a motorized vehicle operated by a Kennedy.
33.7.4.2. Some member of the second generation Kennedy apparently raped a local neighborhood girl and then killed her with his golf club. I would define these actions as greedy for sexual gratification plus consumption of large quantities of alcoholic beverages and illegal narcotics.
33.7.4.3. Other members of the second generation are also reported in the newspapers to get arrested for using illegal narcotics.
33.7.5. Mr. "Creepy Phil" Phillip Garrido of Antioch, CA abducted and then forced an 11-year-old child into slavery as his sex object. This action is very close to murder as far as the harm caused to the victim in my opinion. Mr. Garrido was previously convicted once before for kidnapping, served a few years, got out on parole and then kidnapped this young girl soon after he was released on parole from prison. Mr. Garrido determined that "THE PRICE IS RIGHT", so he re-committed the same crimes over and over.
33.7.5.1. I read in our local newspaper (02 or 03SEP09 Houston Chronicle) that he escaped conviction in yet another kidnapping/rape of another 14 year old in Antioch, CA when that 14-girl year old refused to testify. Mr. Garrido probably murdered many other women and these crimes were probably un-detected.
33.7.5.2. Mr. Garrido's punishment in prison was not sufficient deterrent to prohibit Mr. Garrido from repeating these activities when he was released from confinement on these occasions. Mr. Garrido probably from repeating these activities several other occasions that escaped detection by local authorities.
33.7.5.3. There needs to be some appropriate legal deterrent to prevent this horrible type of criminal activity. These people need to suffer horrible executions to end their lives, even if they did not take a life.
33.7.5.4. We need special legislation to prevent future similar crimes. Mr. Garrido was greedy and evil when he forced children to have sex with him.
33.7.5.5. How can anybody be against the Death Penalty, when repeat offenders such as Mr. Garrido keeps repeating these activities.
33.7.5.6. How can anybody believe that insane and/or retarded persons should not be executed for these types crimes. Mr. Garrido would more than likely be found to be insane, but I still believe that Mr. Garrido should not be allowed to breathe.
33.7.6. I consider the financially astute and highly successful Arthur Anderson/Enron groups here in Houston, with Jeff Skilling, Ken Lay, and Fastow as their leaders along with Bernard Madoff, Allen Stanford, Scott Rothstein, and the other lesser financial wizards to be considered to be evil, because they produced nothing of actual value to increase the common wealth of the USA. These individuals were also greedy, but they are primarily evil, because they did lie, cheat and steal to get US dollars from others.
33.7.6.1. These financial wizards produced false and fictional financial statements that they swore or certified to be true and accurate, and the SEC accepted these false statements. These financial products were actually liars, cheats and thieves.
33.7.6.2. I believe that almost all of the remaining Wall Street financial wizards are studying these master criminals to learn how they got caught. I believe that the remaining Wall Street wizards will learn how to avoid themselves from getting caught while creating their own financial empires.
33.7.7. I consider most of the current US citizens, including myself, to be evil because we are living off of the efforts of previous generations of Americans that worked and created the assets and wealth that US citizens are selling to foreigners in order to pay for imported products to keep US citizens from working to make the things that we consume, and also to raise US dollars to pay for our excessive government expenses today that are in excess of our taxes collected.
33.7.7.1. This is evil to make our children work and pay for our idle, consuming and non-employed lifestyles. Most of the US citizens are very greedy, and want to live off of the efforts of the previous generations of US citizens.
33.7.7.2. The US population does not want to work in some factory making the things that the US citizen consumes. The US citizens have elected to pay industrious people in foreign countries with US dollars from US importers that the industrious foreigners can use to buy title to privately owned US located property assets, instead of redeeming these dollars for gold from the US treasury.
33.7.7.3. Those industrial people in foreign countries can use these US dollars to purchase title to any and all of our privately owned real estate, farms, agri-businesses, food supplies, dairies, forests, industries, breweries, hotels, factories, casinos, financial institutions, retail businesses, and all of the other privately owned assets located in the USA that were created by previous US generations that worked to create that wealth.
33.7.7.4. This process can continue until we will have nothing else of value left to sell to the foreign industrialized nations and their citizens.
33.8. With the approval of the US citizen voters, and at the direction of US citizen elected representatives, the US government also sells freshly printed US paper T-Bills, US paper bonds, and other paper US securities at Federal Reserve public auctions in return for the foreigner's US dollars that they earned by making things for US citizens to consume. The US citizens are spending these borrowed US dollars with the expectations that their children and unborn grandchildren will pay off these US bonds when they become due. US citizens are greedy and evil.
33.9. Bill Gates might be an exception now, but was he greedy when he started Microsoft? Probably, or he would not have been successful. He was not evil. He did not lie, cheat or steal as the current generation of Wall Street executives do.
33.10. Is Greed the main motivator for people to work hard? This is why I worked hard to start a business and accumulate wealth so that my children and grandchildren could have an easier life than myself.
33.11. I have witnessed a few friends and acquaintances that inherited great wealth (multi-millions) and then became big shot investment bankers (in every hair brained scheme that was proposed to them) until their inherited wealth was all gone. Some declared bankruptcy (some several times). They were greedy along with the people to whom they "invested" their inherited US dollars. They all wanted wealth without working.
I believe that the US government should borrow back some of the US dollars from the same foreigners that US citizens paid with US Dollars to make the things that US citizens consumed, and then throw these US dollars at these same incompetent wall street financial master geniuses that created this financial disaster? That should stimulate the economy! Are you telling me that this is what President Obama has been doing for the last few months? Why is this not working? Why are US industries accelerating the factory closings and speeding up the discharging their remaining US employees.
How many workers are increasingly added to the un-employment rolls each month? Should the unemployment statistics also consider the unemployed whose unemployment benefits have expired? If the monthly job losses as reported by new applications for unemployment were 450,000 and another 400,000 had their unemployment benefits expired, should this total of both categories be added to the existing number of unemployed and that resulting number should be defined as the new total number of unemployed. The number of unemployed should be the "bottom line" that to be considered.
I am a 71 year old engineer still working because I think that engineering is fun, even though it is no longer profitable. I have always been interested in economics since Texas A&M required this course for engineers, along with business law and accounting in the 1950's. The Economics instructor taught us preposterous lessons to the effect that no one had to work as long as we just manipulated the economy. The business law and accounting courses also benefited me greatly in by career. I also cashed in my stock market investments in the spring of 2008 and avoided the loss of assets that most folks endured when they listened to their professional financial advisors. I held onto my real estate investments.
I have never participated in journalism, except for an occasional letter to the editor. I am concerned that the political leaders of both major (maybe all) political parties are leading this country into becoming a third world economy, if action is not taken rapidly. Journalists must learn about economic principals and then become the saviors of this nation by publicizing, educating and/or preaching sound economic principals to the general public. Who else has the capability to disseminate this information to the general public? Our political leaders are talking as if they never studied or read anything about economics. It is not that complicated. It is only interlocked with understandable causes and affects of various economic actions.
To r