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- Superior Biotechnology Leads to Superior Drugs
- The Delusion of Regulating Risk
- Talk of a Greek Exit Gets Louder
- Doug Casey on Taxes and Freedom, Part II
- Is Facebook the Rusty Hinge of the Stock Market?
- Fitch Downgrades Japan
- Doug Casey on Taxes and Freedom
- Greeks Run on Banks as Euro-Confidence Wanes
- To the Class of 2012
Obama signature creates ‘continental perimeter’
Move described as key step in advance of North American Union.
Barack Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper quietly have taken a major step toward erasing the border between the two nations with a new “Beyond the Border” bilateral declaration.
In a ceremony designed to remain below the radar of national public opinion, Obama and Harper bypassed Congress to sign on the basis of their executive authority a declaration that put in place a new national security vision defined not by U.S. national borders, but by a continental view of a “North American perimeter.”
It happened Friday, the day the Obama administration usually pushes through issues that it prefers the media ignore.
By signing the declaration, the Obama administration has implemented without congressional approval a key initiative President Bush began under the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America, moving the United States and Canada beyond the North American Free Trade Agreement, commonly known as NAFTA, toward a developing North American Union regional government.
The declaration signed by the two heads of state and titled “Beyond the Border: A Shared Vision for Perimeter Security and Economic Competitiveness,” was described as “For Immediate Release” on the websites of the White House and the Canadian chief executive.
Harper followed Obama’s lead in signing the declaration as a form of executive order, deciding to bypass the Canadian parliament, much as Obama had decided against taking a proposed bilateral “Beyond the Border” declaration to Congress for prior review and approval.
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Why Not Print More Money?
In the past we have jokingly discussed the creation of a Death Star as the way the world can save itself by printing an almost infinite amount of money to support growth. As almost everyone, especially the MMT crowd it seems, can plainly see, if printing some money is good (well it must be, markets are up) then printing more money must be better, right? Well, no (as we discussed in detail here). There are unintended consequences and as we pointed out recently, we are already seeing less and less effervescence in the real economy from QE’s impact and the spectre of the inflationary pressures that implicitly limit the ‘benefit’ of this action is nowhere more painful than in energy prices (and in fact the price of anything in relative limited supply as opposed to cash which is printed daily). Professor Antony Davies, of Duquesne, takes this subtle concept to task in this exceptionally straightforward 206-second video on money as an IOU and its solution to the caveman’s ills providing the background for why money’s inherent value is relinquished once it becomes printed en masse. Printing more money doesn’t make more goods and services appear, simply spreads the… Continue reading
There’s No Painless Way Out
Uncle Sam’s bills of almost $4tn per year relative to his income of just over $2tn means that he does what most American’s do – he borrows money – and it is this simple fact that underpins the reasoning that there is no painless way out of the mountain of debt that we have amassed over the last few decades. While none of this is new, the straightforward nature of this video’s message makes it hard to argue, from anything other than an ivory tower, that this supposed self-sustaining print-and/or-borrow-fest can go on forever. Paying off your mortgage with your credit card remains the clearest analogy of what is occurring and while the Mutually Assured Destruction case is made again and again for why the analogous credit-card-providers will never halt our limit, it seems increasingly clear that the fiat money fiasco has switched regimes to chaos rather than the apparent nominal calmness of the great moderation.
The Deindustrialization Of America
The United States is rapidly becoming the very first “post-industrial” nation on the globe. All great economic empires eventually become fat and lazy and squander the great wealth that their forefathers have left them, but the pace at which America is accomplishing this is absolutely amazing. It was America that was at the forefront of the industrial revolution.
The deindustrialization of the United States should be a top concern for every man, woman and child in the country. But sadly, most Americans do not have any idea what is going on around them.
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Not So Fast On That Whole Economic Recovery Thing
Not so fast. Those that are publicly declaring that an economic recovery has arrived are ignoring a whole host of numbers that indicate that the U.S. economy is in absolutely horrendous shape. The truth is that the health of an economy should not be measured by how well the stock market is doing. Rather, the truth health of an economy should be evaluated by looking at numbers for things like jobs, housing, poverty and debt. Some of the latest economic statistics indicate that unemployment is getting a little bit worse, that the housing market continues to deteriorate, that poverty in America continues to soar and that our debt problem is worse than ever. If we were truly experiencing the kind of economic recovery that the United States has experienced after every other post-World War II recession we would see a sharp improvement across the board in most of our economic statistics. But that simply is not happening. Sadly, this is about as much of an “economic recovery” as we are going to get because soon the economy will be getting much worse. So enjoy this period of relative stability while you can.
The Obama administration would have us believe that unemployment in the United States has declined, but the truth is that the percentage of working age Americans that are employed has stayed very, very flat for more than two years and now there are some measures of unemployment that are actually getting worse.
For example, according to Gallup the unemployment rate in the United States has risen from 8.5% in December to 8.6% in January to 9.1% in February. The Obama administration would have us believe that it is actually going the other direction.
Initial unemployment claims are rising again. For the week ending March 3rd, they increased by 8,000 over the previous week to 362,000. This is not the kind of good news that people were hoping for.
What the U.S. economy could really use are millions of good jobs. But those are being shipped out of the country at a staggering pace.
Right now there are millions of Americans in their prime working years that are sitting at home wondering what to do with their lives. The average duration of unemployment in the United States continues to hover near a record high, and if we were truly experiencing an economic recovery it should have been falling by now.
U.S. losing high-tech manufacturing jobs to Asia
The report comes as the Obama administration is seeking to make U.S. manufacturing more competitive through engineering and innovation. In June, it announced its Advanced Manufacturing Partnership and sank $500 million into the effort.
But as the National Science Board publication shows, vast government efforts in Asia are working along similar lines. It offered abundant evidence Asia’s efforts to attract and develop engineering outfits, and not just low-wage factories, have paid off. Since 2000:
•Research-and-development expenditures in China and nine other Asian countries have risen to match that of the United States.
• The number of doctoral degrees in engineering awarded in China has more than doubled, and now far exceeds the number awarded in the United States.
• The number of research workers for… Continue reading
