In 2001 the government changed horses in midstream by switching from reporting GNP to GDP. Gee, I wonder why. In March of next year they will cease "computing" M3. Gee, I wonder why. Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neil resigned and replaced by John Snow. Gee, I wonder why. Well.....at least I know what the phrase "snow job" now is. WWII involved a lot of rationing and other sacrifices and funded to a large degree by the sale of war bonds. The present war isn't funded accordingly. Gee, I wonder why. All indications are both Social Security and Medicare will be near defunct by 2030. Gee, I wonder why. The National debt stands at over $8 trillion. The 30 year T-Bond was ceased to be issued only to be recently resurrected. Gee, I wonder why. After decades of lobbying by the installment lending establishment, bankruptcy reform was finally enacted. Gee, I wonder why. Housing, until recently, was a record prices and diametric to purported benign inflation. Gee, I wonder why. Throughout history, all dynasites have basically, collapsed. Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Persian, Ottoman, Napoleanic, Isabelle, Czarist, and Victorian. Gee, I wonder why.
US went to irak as a "long term" investor. jejeje. in history of human kind, only One empire got so much power (cultural,economic,military,idological etc etc).. USA and Rome, and rome last 2000 years... US is Not a disnaty, is a Empire. (europeans have been talking trash for the last 60 years.. in the 70's frenchies was talking about the "end" of USA...) until Ronald Reagan took office. Never in history, one empire went down and then again became a empire. everybody look at china... IF you understand history, you'll know that China never will be the "empire"... japan or korea dont want that, not even singapur o tailand... I look down under.. australia-new zeland. THATs the future... southamerica is moving to the left, everytime they doing that, US will make money.. and get stronger... cause, socialist need consumer... jejejejeje. BTW... China has everything to do with the commodities bull market....
A couple of points: With respect to Barrett's comments ..... Any company HQ'd in Silicon valley can not afford to locate its own people there .... to survive in the valley you need to be making a minimum of 200K. So, of course he is saying that only the highest payed managers will stay there. Many other companies are simply moving their HQ out of state - along with operations. For the time being, companies are using labor arbitrage to lower their costs. This however is a temporary thing - costs will rise elsewhere and the advantage will be not large in the future and more importantly, information will have been spread to a hungry world of competitors. Bill gates- and any other executive that states the US workers are "unqualified" for most IT jobs - are simply marketing their own positions. What they really are saying is that they want 10 dollar per hour PhDs labor costs, and that they are crying that they cant find that in the US. And by the way, you DONT need a PhD to design and develop high performance superior software - without using $softs dumbed down frameworks and tool sets by the way. Here is another clue about jobs: if the requirments spike to require a PhD for a not so well paying job then you must realize that the market is saturated and heading down for those skills and you need to take action to remove yourself from that endeavor. As far as the original poster ...In a sense the poster is correct. Real wages are not growing the US primarily due to labor arbitrage. Like any type of arbitrage eventually the advantage will be lost. US citizens need to understand that fact and realize that jobs paying higher wages will eventually be eliminated or changed to reduce the costs: its the number one priority with any large public listed employer - short term the CEO gets millions for this but long term the move usually cripples the company. ...But nursing is another matter - move to california here is plenty of work... of course when you add up the hours and schedule the numbers are not really all that impressive... you wilkl get a job however.
Healthcare jobs are plentiful, an RN can make 50k tostart but must work 60+ hours a week plus shifts, not great if you have a family. As far as jobs available I think there are far less. Prior to 2002 the help wanted was always 14 plus pages, now it is never more than 6-8. Including Monster or Hotjobs is nuts, I regularly look at those and 60% of the listings are the same telemarketing or work from home jobs. Most people I know are not seeimg wages improve, actually many have had wage cuts along with requirements of more workload. And costs to live are soaring, every week there are stories about tax increases plus just this month tv+8% ,gas heat +another 18%, electric+28%. Maybe the economy is strong but there are problems.
Gold is going higher cos there aren't many asset classes for foreign nations (China, asia, etc) to park cash. They continue to seek safe havens like US treasuries, which explains why the ten year yield has failed to rise. This is more a sign of global inflation than economic weakness.
Here we go! Another Kindergarten tale today: Associated Press -- The productivity of American workers shot up at the fastest pace in two years during the July-September quarter, helping to ease fears that inflation pressures were threatening to get out of hand.