If you lose the middle class, you lose the country.
Category: Economics and trade
DAX
I’m wondering if the DAX in Germany is about to collapse. The German 10 year has fallen sharply and quickly to a negative .251%, which is much worse than even the Japanese bond. And the German bank DB looks like it’s disintegrating, despite the merger plans. Would not be surprised to see a sharp collapse soon in the DAX like 1929 — when there are suddenly lots of sellers but no buyers.
Of course the entire easy money economic system in Europe is a complete fraud. A currency that pays no interest has no value. But when will someone step forward and say the emperor has no clothes? You’ve got literally mountains of debt but no growth. Sound familiar?
Socialism
You have to be a complete fool to espouse socialism. But there is no shortage of fools in this world, especially among the young and inexperienced.
Price Fixing
I’ve been situated in the same location now for some 7 years and have consistently tried to get service from Verizon for television and internet access, but to no avail. Verizon is simply not available anywhere in my area. The service that is common in my area — you see their trucks everywhere — is Comcast.
Which makes me wonder how much indirect price fixing there is between Verizon and Comcast, not in terms of making their prices more or less equal but higher than would normally be the case — your garden variety price fixing — but in terms of a covert agreement between the two giant cable companies concerning which territories each will have absolute control over because the other agrees not to offer services in that area? So now I’m paying Comcast more than twice the cost if those same services were supplied by Verizon. Obvious price gouging.
And stepping back a bit for this issue of territoriality, there’s also the issue that these same cable companies offer their services, not based on a fixed price for everyone, but based on YOUR zip code. Isn’t that also a form of price fixing? The car companies do the same thing. The price of a Toyota in Kalamazoo is different from the price in Boston, i.e., richer locations end up paying a premium. More price fixing, in my opinion.
But where is the government to look into these abuses? Nowhere to be found.
Economic Warfare
Playing hard ball with Iran over their oil exports.
Slavery
There may be as many as 40 million slaves in the world today.
Slavery happens when the local economic system cannot absorb the size of the population, i.e., the surplus population is much bigger than the number of salaried jobs. That is true in many locations around the world.
According to the link below, slaves are much cheaper today than there were at the height of American slavery in the 19th century.
France
Nightmare Scenario
A terrorist sets off a suitcase nuke in a major city somewhere in the world, and the world economy collapses. We see a Weimar-like inflation in the cost of all goods because of chronic shortages. There’s widespread starvation everywhere.
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Republicans and Climate Change
I understand why the Republican are in denial about the human impact on climate change, what with their focus on economic development with fossil fuels playing such a key role. But it’s still denial.
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Decades-Long Trade Imbalance with China Coming to an End?
Finally we have a president willing to actually do something about the disastrous trade imbalance that we now have with China, which has been growing steadily for decades. Back in the mid 1990’s, the annual trade imbalance with China was merely $10+ billion — a manageable amount — but it has ballooned from those modest levels to $375 billion for 2017 — that is, at the end of a 2017, China, for that year alone, was net $375 billion richer and we were that much poorer.
Frankly, given how gigantic this trade imbalance has become, if we had zero trade with China, the United States would be better off — because we would no longer see this massive wealth transfer from our shores to theirs. Of course, a balanced trade with China where they buy as much from us as we buy from them would be ideal, but short of that, I say we would be better off without any Chinese goods.
Think of all the American production that would cause if the Chinese goods we currently buy from them were instead American made. What a boon that would be! And no more gigantic wealth transfer to another country and to one that may not have our best interest at heart. And, oh by the way, did I forget to mention that China is still a totalitarian, communist country, with an ever expanding military, and a country where people who have fallen out of favor with the regime simply disappear. That’s the country we have been enriching — at our expense. Why?
Trump Slaps Fresh Tariffs on 200B of Chinese Goods
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Henry's Views 