| The World on a knife edge.
Posted: 5/14/2008 12:42:53 AM | http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/05/11/business/11goodman.php
This article perfectly highlights how much so.
It points out that if the Chinese sold it's dollars it could bring western ecconomies to their knees.
This would be against their own interest has it needs to keep selling its wears to maintain it's own ecconomy.
My question is, after so many years of tinkering , with so many well educated people involved, how come the worlds ecconomy is still teetering on a knife edge, reliant on the privileged fews spending power and credit rating.
How come we can't find a better way? | |
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| The World on a knife edge.
Posted: 5/14/2008 1:43:12 AM | Interesting article.
Funny how a country like America is (someone care to correct if I'm wrong here?) a free-market economy, yet, their dollar is allowed to be bought & sold in order for others to achieve their own short/medium term needs (ie the article), thereby effectively fudging the free market really (in a nut shell).
Yes, it will one day come to a point where something will give, and when it does, it won't be pretty. And given the size, population & economies of the world now, it'll be a great deal more worse than what happened in the 1929/1930's stock market crash & depression. The funny thing is, then like now, that the powers that be (namely economists) actually believed the system(s)/laws/rules in place were the ones that were necessary or that's how the market/economy worked, when they couldn't be more wrong - hence the crash & depression.
There will never be a perfect or even close to perfect system. Why: because the (individualistic) human touch never really gets taken into consideration. It's always about numbers, interest rates, inflation, employee wages, employer costs etc etc on a (usually broad) scale. And when you do things in just such a broader proportion, things start to become (very) skewed. | |
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D_lily
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Joined: 11/25/2007
Msg: 3 | |
| The World on a knife edge.
Posted: 5/14/2008 1:59:10 AM | Well, I know the USA had the warning-----But only American made produsts. that was years ago, now here we are. We can blame the government all we want, but we bought the cheep stuff China was ans is peddling, now because "we" refused to "take care of are own" it's coming back to haunt us.
Sure it's not the only reason companies loaded up and went away, it's a total sell out all across the board. If we would have stuck together as a Nation, and refused to buy outside the US, it would have got attention. It wouldn't matter so much about what government wheel and deals said it was up to us to buy or not to buy.
First came the oversea products, showing no loyality, then it was good bye jobs. After all if we'll buy all the foriegn goods might as well get it made there too, who cares right? Go figure. | |
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| The World on a knife edge.
Posted: 5/14/2008 6:41:52 AM | While China sells manufactured goods, the United States sells dollars. It can only go on for so long. Soon, the United States will have to make some painful adjustments, and it's not going to be pretty.
so many well educated people involved
Don't blame economists; blame politicians and, indirectly, voters. The United States will soon have a new president. Will the new administration reign in government spending, raise interests rates and take additional measures to restore the nation's finances and improve the productivity and competitiveness of the American economy? Don't bet on it. It would cause short term pain, and voters, especially the Baby Boomers, won't tolerate that. The United States isn't going to take firm action to solve its problems until it's too late. | |
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NERO1
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Joined: 3/8/2008
Msg: 5 | |
| The World on a knife edge.
Posted: 5/14/2008 8:08:06 AM | ^^ I have a feeling the US is kind of like a large corporation that's been having a run of bad quarters and is on its way into an irreversible decline, economically speaking at least. Granted, the US is (and likely will remain for at least another generation or so I'd guess) quite powerful militarily, but I think the days of its hegemony economically over the hemisphere and the world are coming to a close, and that is what is so difficult for so many of the people here (in the US) to deal with. Developing economies such as India, China, and Brazil, are on the rise. The dollar's dying in comparison to the Euro (and if the oil industry , OPEC namely, ever switches over to the Euro for its generally preferred currency, our dollars will truly be just dirty green paper). Petroleum prices have skyrocketed; partly due to higher global demand as a result of (ironically) more and more people in other parts of the world doing better and those large countries' economies starting to take off.
The days when people here could happily cruise around all day burning a full tank of gas in a big SUV or souped-up muscle car, paying 1.25/ gallon, while everyone in those other countries were living poor under strict Communism (like China before Deng Xiaoping) or India, etc. Now they're all doing better so ironically that's helping raise the international demand on petroleum as well. Interesting Newsweek article from last week about this
http://www.newsweek.com/id/135380 | |
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| The World on a knife edge.
Posted: 5/14/2008 8:54:36 AM |
How come we can't find a better way?
The better way is better for whom, exactly?
The way we have now is based on the pesky fact that with some degree of freedom to pursue happiness, people wind up after different things, which makes for a lot of competition and conflict, for which they need some sort of regulation or government, creating a set of rules, to be exploited better by some than others, making of us winners and losers. | |
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| The World on a knife edge.
Posted: 5/26/2008 3:33:48 PM | We all want to be top dog.
We all want to have more then our neighbour
As long as we are people, and have our one up manship the world will be in trouble | |
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