RE: GM repays LOANS
Bottom line: The American economy has been sick since LBJ tried to have guns and butter at the same time in the 1960s. Wall Street has been moving paper around to hide the problem for 50 years, but they are about to reach the end of their rope on this. We have a shell game going on with our economy, and we are losing. We're on the brink of disaster, because we've done about all the getting progressively worse that we can do.
Ross Perot understood a lot of the problems in 1992 (although I think his opposition to NAFTA was more of a personal thing because of his investment in Alliance Airport, and not well thought out). Go back and read his books from that period and you will be surprised how far ahead of his time he was. Unfortunately, not one thing has been done to address about 95% of what Perot saw wrong, and it's 18 years wronger now.
Like it or not, we are in a global economy. We can't close our borders and isolate ourselves, if nothing else we are too dependent on foreign oil. We have to compete on the playing field that is out there, and p!ssing and moaning because that's not the game we want to play will avail us nothing.
We have to compete with the rest of the world for jobs. We can compete with lower labor costs (no), higher labor productivity (need a major upgrade to education, including holding teachers and students accountable), lower taxes (in the areas that businesses consider), better infrastructure (Obama has mentioned this, and it would have been a great focus for the "stimulus" package, but instead it went to handouts to political allies), relaxed environmental standards (no), more rational regulatory processes (a big opportunity here, but we aren't doing anything about it), less risk (used to be our biggest advantage, we were okay on political risk until GM/Chrysler, and today's rant at Wall Street didn't help the perception there).
Our Keynesian focus on demand over the last 50 years has led us to become the largest debtor nation and the largest importer in the world; it ain't the demand side that's broke, dude. We need real, meaningful help for the supply side; otherwise, it's going to be nothing but a parade of jobs overseas. Keynes always assumed a closed market--generating demand energized domestic supply. Today, generating demand means going to Wal-Mart and buying electronics made in China; Wal-Mart does okay, and so does China, but American workers don't. And aren't, until we shift our focus.
You make not like those apples, but those are the ones we've got. And what we've done to respond to this downturn makes those problems worse, not better.
|