Contract manufacturers vs board stuffers

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Nobody is going to be able to retire at 65 for much longer - unless they are engaged in jobs that physically damage them.

Retiring at 65 made sense when the average life expectancy was about

1. It's now at 80 and above in countries with decent health care - the US still has a way to go - and the period of terminal decline is getting shorter too.

It's one more thing that the Greeks are going to have to get used to - along with paying their taxes.

rn

It's all described in terms of emergency support and under-writing loans. There's no straightforward subsidy, though it certainly comes close.

The link demonstrated the the Saudi and Chinese governments weren't buying the bulk of the securities, which isn't what I'd claimed, so it doesn't establish any factual inaccuracy in my claim.

You might like to think that nothing happens in China and Saudi Arabia without explicit instruction from their governments, and this might even be true (though it strikes me as unlikely) but this doesn't mean that US securities are only going to be bought by the Saudi Arabia and China through their governments.

0

You evidence merely demonstrates that it isn't being done on a large scale by the relevant governments, which isn't what I claimed.

Try to work out who else has got the cash to buy up billions of dollar's worth of US securities, and enough interest in keeping the US afloat to want to put their money into a decidedly risky investment.

s me why they do

Nobody is running a balance of trade deficit on the US scale, or has been doing it for anything like as long.

There's absolutely nothing to suggest that the US will do anything to improve its balance of trade whoever is elected in November.

The last Republican president you elected made the situation rather worse by spending a lot of money on a pointless war in Irak, so putting your hopes on Romney is rather betting against history, but it's your country and you can screw it up any way you want to, though the rest of us would be a bit happier if the world's largest economy was run by people who answered to a slightly better-informed electorate.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

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Geert Wilders has been articulating this kind of disquiet in the Netherlands for some time now. He had 24 seats (out of 152) in the Dutch lower house before the elections on the 12th September. He's still the third largest party - on votes - but he's been reduced to 15 seats.

The Germans have more experience of short people with funny hair-cuts and a poor view of foreigners, and his German equivalents don't seem to be doing quite as well.

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Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Having sat through the Thatcher years in the U.K., when the iron- headed lady was all for giving business the freedom to make money, I'd like to remind you that she managed to get less economic growth out of the UK economy than her less reactionary continental neighbours got out of theirs.

Right-wing nitwits are bad for the economy - they like to think that they are pro-business, but they also like to believe in bizarre economic theories and the nett effect isn't helpful.

Electing someone like Paul Ryan - who takes Ayn Rand seriously - would seem to be a mistake.

You don't starve if you don't get a building permit.

San Francisco to Los Angeles is a train-route to nowhere? It won't start off a high speed train going all the way, but you might as well use the bits as you complete them.

It's going to take a while to complete - rather longer than the attention span of the average US politician - but it does seem to be an unusually constructive idea. Bit of a change from economising on bridge maintenance until they fall down, but the idea could grow on you.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

How do you know that the absence of QE3 would not have resulted in a steep plunge rather than a modest short-lived bump, which is what happened? You don't. Personally, I don't think it would have made much difference either way- they're mainlining neat adrenaline into a twitching corpse and each successive stimulus has resulted in a less robust response. It may (or may not) be necessary, but it's clearly not sufficient to really boost things. It's a well-telegraphed holding action by the (nominally independent) Federal reserve.

IMHO, things will get better, or not, on their own timetable, and the jokers^H^H^H^H officials who happen to be at the helm at that time will attempt to take credit (or deflect the blame).

Not much is going to change regardless of the administration. AFAICT, there's zero substantial difference between the two main US parties on what is going to be done (and not done) wrt to the economy. Lots and lots of hot air but not much difference.

AFAICT, the non-rhetorical differences on the economy amount to returning individual income tax rates for the top couple percent to what they were a few years ago, or not, and how exactly to aid small business (the Obama administration has given tax cuts (the Small Business Jobs Act), the Republicans promise to somehow reform the tax code).

Nothing really earth-shaking there, and nothing that will much affect anyone's decision to invest or divest.

It could get a _lot_ more hostile. I don't think you would compare it to Europe, especially for companies with a bunch of employees. What has Governor Moonbeam done that Arnold would have done differently? IIRC, both the other candidates were basically proposing the same strategies. If the national/world economy was better, few would be complaining.

Yeah, I am doing less (but still substantial) business in California these days too. The downsized currency and the bad economy are not being very helpful atm. OTOH, Texas seems to be doin' purty good.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

--
"it's the network..."                          "The Journey is the reward" 
speff@interlog.com             Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com 
Embedded software/hardware/analog  Info for designers:  http://www.speff.com

Sure, but if there is a consensus among the technocrats, then the hoi polloi will not be offered a political choice. The Herr Doktors do seem to understand the situation.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

--
"it's the network..."                          "The Journey is the reward" 
speff@interlog.com             Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com 
Embedded software/hardware/analog  Info for designers:  http://www.speff.com

rate

See, now you finally realize it that it is largely the population that has to clamp down and live within their means. Or increase their means, it's their choice. But it isn't going to happen when people retire and

60 and a disproportionate number of people work for the government.

It's money that in all likelihood will not come back, ever.

They are bought mainly by private investment companies around the world. That is what the link evidences.

You should at least read the papers from your old home turf, then you'd have known that even your pick of countries was wrong. China is not the largest buyer anymore since a long time, they are actually holding off. It's Japan, South Korea and Taiwan who are buying the most US Treauries. Saudi Arabia is usually not even mentioned among the top buyers.

why they do

Take a look at a few Southern European countries.

We know what's good for our country :-)

--
Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

What's this got to do with foreigners?

--
Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

That's IMHO one of the major shortcomings of the German democratic system: No ballot measures. They did not even get to vote on whether they wanted the Euro or not, it was foisted on them.

--
Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

The unemployment numbers under the current administration speak volumes.

It's silly, goes from one location in the Central Valley to another, where hardly anyone wants to go. And you betcha that it'll cost north of

100 billion. The already had admitted a "minor" error in the cost estimate. To the tune of roughly 100%. Up, of course ...

--
Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

I talk to biz folks a lot, the people who actually create jobs or don't create them. So I know a little bit about what stuff like that does. or doesn't. Unavailability of cheap money is not what's holding this economy back. Making money even cheaper isn't going to jump start it either.

I know people who personally told me that it does. These are real movers and shakers, decision makers. Big "wait-and-see" sticking points, among numerous others:

a. Will the capital gains tax jump up or will it stay and make investing and taking a risk worthwhile?

b. Will Obamacare and the tax/punishment that comes with it be repealed or not?

Union appeasement, failure to push real pension reform, supporting high-speed rail, doing nothing against shake-down lawsuits, and on and on.

Exactamente! Because TX is a fairly biz-friendly state.

--
Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

It's about as independent as the mainstream press is; an arm of the DNC.

It *won't* get better as long as Obama keeps his boot on the economy's neck.

Nonsense. If Obama would simply do *nothing*, the economy would rebound on its own, in time. It's consistently going downhill because that's where Obama wants it. I could rocket, if there were someone in there who knew what the hell he was doing. 1980 was worse in many ways and the economy shot up for the 20 years following.

Nonsense. It's also about spending. The taxes (above) will do *nothing* to close the deficit. The only hope is to cut spending back to the pre-Obama levels (and more), put the coal (literally) to the economy, and grow.

Nonsense. Money is sitting on the sidelines looking for somewhere to go. It's going to continue to sit until they know what the hell the government is going to do.

The Governator was no prize; certainly not a conservative.

It's the current g5overnment's policies that have the economy flat on it's back (and sliding backwards - many believe a recession has already started and will show in the numbers by the end of the year, probably just after the election).

I wonder what the difference is? ;-)

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Since when have I not realised this?

The Greek population does have to get into the habit of paying their taxes, but cleaning corruption out of the government will probably mean that they get better value for the taxes they do pay; "clamping down" isn't by any means the only thing going on.

Getting a less corrupt and more efficient government is going to help them increase their means - good infra-structure makes everybody more productive.

The Dutch and the Germans do much better than the Greeks and they seem to retire between 60 and 65 - the Greeks have only 18% that keep working where the Dutch have 22% and the Germans 23% - the UK has 40% ad the US 43%.

The proportion of people working for the government is not - of itself

- any indicator of economic inefficiency. The question is what they are doing when they work for the government, and what counts as "working for the government". In the UK the national Health Service is entirely government controlled and government run, but the people who work for the NHS aren't civil servants? Are they "working for the government"? Since the NHS delivers public health statistics that the US health system at about half the cost per patient, there an argument that you should have more of your population working for the government in the same way.

In your expert opinion.

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The link just said that only a small portion of it was being bought by governments."Private investment companies" don't have that kind of money. Public companies do, but in place like Saudi Arabia and China (not to mention Japan, Taiwan and South Korea "public companies" tend to have close ties with whoever is in power (and those who are in power tend to in the pockets of the large public companies, probably to an even greater extent than in the US, where there's a greater diversity of large public companies).

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Perhaps. It doesn't get around the fact Japan, South Korea and Taiwan are now doing for you what Germany is doing for Greece. They aren't under the same obligation to keep doing it, and they don't get to tell you that you can't afford to import as much oil as you do, though that's just as stupid as the Greek government failing to collect its taxes.

eats me why they do

They are already being heavily scrutinised. What's to learn?

Really? You elected - and re-elected - Dubbya and Regan.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

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The Germans do regard the Greeks, Italians, Spanish, Portugese and even the Irish as foreigners. They don't like seeing them get tax money that's been collected from German nationals. The smarter ones do see what that spending is buying, but not everybody who lives in German is all that smart - half the population has a below-average IQ.

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Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

The German constitution is relatively shiny and new - by 1948 constitutional lawyers had had a fair time to examine other constitutions in action, and design a system that didn't have the faults that earlier models had displayed. Australia and Canada had gone through the same process some fifty odd years earlier, with rather less history to work on.

If something is not in the German constitution, it probably means that whatever it was didn't work the way it's inventors had hoped.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

You should fit in. Bet they have plenty of cross eyed, window licker, drooling bus transportation there too. You'll never be left walking and you will blend in.

Have a good day sunshine.

Jamie

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They say a couple of things - the main one is that the US banking systen screwed up big-time in 2008. Unemployment went up rapidly in the last three months of Dubbya's administration - everybody knew what to do, which was to stimulate the economy - but it took a while for that to get on-stream, and all the stimulation you were game to deliver was just barely enough to stop unemployment rising, and eventually to deliver a slow recovery, which is still going on.

n

the first leg

But your federal subsidy rules forbid you spending money on commuters. So start where you can get some federal subsidy ...

No high speed rail link pays off big until it's high speed from end to end. If you've got to pay the full price for the bits that help commuters, don't build them until the bits where you can get subsidy have all been built and can deliver extra revenue from long distance passengers on the the full price bits as soon as they are working.

So what. High speed rail links are expensive, but Los Angles to San Francisco - when the links finally gets there - is busy enough to justify the investment. Claiming that the first link doesn't go anywhere rather misses the point.

The first link never goes anywhere much.

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Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

there.

And no small part of the point is that there is employment blended in with residences. Makes a huge difference.

?-)

How did you get the impression that the politricians would ever let a "technocrat" that is not hoi polloi ever get near them?

?-)

It's "the great unwashed". Technocrats are not members of the hoi polloi, though UK politicians often acts as if they are; technocrats in England are members of a different elite class, while in Germany education of any kind is valued.

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Bill Sloman, Nijmegen