What happened to all of the doom and gloom economic threads?

[Wat_Tyler]

Is he the one on the left?

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

He's the only one left.

All the others bugged out, flew the coop, found new shit...,

 

[Wat_Tyler]

Got fired . . .


which is easier than be fired at, especially when you get hit.

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

He's unflappable...

 

[Wat_Tyler]

. . . and in no itchin' hurry.


*spit*


What did they put in this tobacco anyway???

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

Just a little something I got off an old Yaqui Comanchero...

 

[RightField]

File this under the heading of "Another politically-motivated government folly" destructive to the nation and the economy. Good money thrown after bad. Subheading...."Another good example of cronyism".


September 4, 2011
Solyndra Debacle Spotlights Obama's Folly
By Debra Saunders

Last year, President Barack Obama came to the Bay Area to tout "green jobs" at an event at solar panel manufacturer Solyndra's Fremont plant. Quoth the president: "The true engine of economic growth will always be companies like Solyndra."

On Wednesday, Solyndra announced it was shuttering its remaining Fremont factory, laying off 1,100 workers and filing for bankruptcy. It was a sorry day for the Bay Area.

I remember the day Obama came, May 26, 2010, vividly. Then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger came to greet the president and wave to the hard hats. Venture capitalists preened. Just to show how brainy and farsighted the solar crowd is, Obama reminded the audience that his energy secretary, Steven Chu, is a Nobel Prize-winning physicist.

Rube that I am, I didn't understand what Obamaland was thinking. Solyndra had not turned a profit since it was founded in 2005. The plant in which Obama stood was bankrolled with a $535 million federal loan guarantee. Two months before, PricewaterhouseCoopers questioned Solyndra's "ability to continue as a going concern."

If the president wants to send a positive message on the U.S. economy, I wondered, then couldn't his people have found a California company that doesn't rely on a federal loan and actually makes money?

Bad advance work, I figured.

A month later, Solyndra canceled a planned $300 million public offering. In November, Solyndra closed its older plant and cut its workforce. Today Solyndra's lights are out.

Now I am wondering: Isn't there some graybeard in the White House who -- knowing that the president won't look good if the tax-funded solar plant folds -- does some digging to make sure the president's choice of venue will not come back to haunt him?

Or could it be that Team Obama is composed of like-minded green true believers who insulate themselves from other points of view -- much like the way, critics contended, George W. Bush was surrounded with yes men?

Consider: The administration continues to cling to its belief that green jobs are the jobs of the future, despite evidence to the contrary. A July study by The Brookings Institution found that green jobs account for 2 percent of American jobs -- and Brookings used a generous definition, which included public-transit and waste-management jobs as green. Even still, Brookings found that green jobs grew at a slower rate (3.4 percent annually) than the national economy (4.2 percent) between 2003 and 2010.

Some Democrats have clued in. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., recently observed, "Of course we want to be part of the new innovation and green jobs. But you know, the green jobs have been about a lot of talk, and not a lot has been happening on that."

But Team Obama won't give up the dream.

Then again, the administration has friends in the green-titan community. Enter Oklahoma oil magnate George Kaiser, who raised at least $50,000 for the 2008 Obama campaign and is a frequent visitor to the White House. Kaiser was a top Solyndra investor.

In September 2009, Solyndra became the first recipient of an administration energy loan program that was part of the president's stimulus package. A 2010 Government Accountability Office audit of the program found that five applicants, including Solyndra, bypassed required steps for funding. A Department of Energy spokesperson told The Washington Post that the GAO got it wrong.

The Solyndra decision baffled some industry experts, who questioned the viability of the company's solar technology. "To think they could compete on any basis, that took a very big leap of faith," solar analyst Ramesh Misra later told the Post.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee has been investigating the Solyndra deal -- with little cooperation from the administration. Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., who chairs the investigative subcommittee, noted in a statement, "In an apparent rush to push stimulus dollars out the door, the Obama administration wasted $535 million in taxpayer funds in guaranteeing a loan to a firm that has proven to be unviable in the global market."

Thursday, White House press secretary Jay Carney defended the loan program with its goal to "invest in cutting-edge technologies."

The president, his Nobel Prize-winning energy secretary and Vice President Joe Biden (via satellite) participated in events that promoted Solyndra's brand. In addition, Solyndra got to spend a half-billion in taxpayer dollars -- and still the solar company couldn't succeed.

Stearns and the committee's chairman, Fred Upton, issued a joint statement that rang true. They said, "We smelled a rat from the onset."

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

I see collapsing world markets.




Good thing we've a communist holiday breathing space to calm the fear...
__________________
If you ask me, I think what we're experiencing isn't in fact closer to a "growthless" recovery than to a jobless one. Because GDP started to grow more than a year and a half ago, but with the exception of just a couple of quarters, growth has not been noticeably above its trend rate of about 2-1/2 percent a year. I don't rejoice at the news that we added 216,000 jobs in March. About a hundred thousand of that 216,000 is needed every month just to keep up with the growth in the labor force. At this rate of job growth, it would take most of the decade to replace the eight 8-1/2 million jobs that were lost in the recession.
Christina Romer
Chairwoman of Obama's White House Council of Economic Advisors

"We own the economy. We own the beginning of the turnaround and we want to make sure that we continue that pace of recovery, not go back to the policies of the past under the Bush administration that put us in the ditch in the first place."
Debbie Wasserman Schultz

 

[Beco]

The stock market is stable today.

It's closed for the holiday.....

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

September 5, 2011
China Trade Policy and the Fallacy of 'Idea-Land'
By Greg Autry

It is becoming painfully obvious that our China trade policy is deindustrializing America. Even our latest "green technology" firms like Massachusetts' Evergreen Solar have packed up their manufacturing bags and fled to Wuhan in search of huge subsidies, the freedom to pollute, and a union-free work force held down by jackbooted cops. So how does a "free trade at any cost" pundit slap a happy face on the reality of 10% unemployment?

Well, many a cockeyed optimist has been quick to assert that America will triumph as the "land of ideas!" In Idea-Land we will design and market fantastic products and not worry about what goes on in Chinese factories. Fareed Zakaria, the patron saint of globalization, recently posted this on CNN's GPS blog:

In America's case, we have all the ingredients to succeed in the 21st Century. We have the most innovative companies in the world such as Facebook, Apple and Google.

He goes on to conclude that America's problems are consequently the fault of our own dysfunctional domestic political system (no argument), not the fault of unfair Chinese competition. Mr. Zakaria's three exemplars of American innovation offer the perfect opportunity to analyze Idea-Land.

Facebook is a classic example of China's non-tariff trade barriers at work. The Social Network is illegal in China, and its website is blocked as part of China's social repression system. Yet, Beijing actively supports the growth of its Chinese competitor Renren, which just had a successful IPO on the NYSE. While Facebook's idea has no access to the Chinese market, American capital pours into a firm that stole it!

...

Americans need manufacturing because we have varying skillsets, and it offers the highest value-add career for people who are not product-innovators. And it isn't just assembly jobs; it's the aforementioned production engineers, as well as the safety officers, HR staff, plant services, janitorial crew, and cafeteria cooks. As we abandon manufacturing, we are being forced to embrace either a highly stratified social order or enact a massive and inefficient wealth redistribution scheme. Both are already happening as the jobs that our stimulus "created" pay far less than the ones we packed off to China and we extend unemployment to those completely displaced. In Idea-Land, America's future looks a lot like Latin America's past.

Greg Autry is the co-author of Death by China. He teaches macroeconomics at the Merage School of Business, UC Irvine. He writes and speaks on China, space, economics, investing, and business strategy.
The American Thinker
__________________
"The request of Industry to the Government is as modest as that of Diogenes to Alexander: Stand out of my sunshine."
Frédéric Bastiat

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

Wired for Overregulation
Washington's latest regulatory power grab
Steve Chapman | September 5, 2011

http://reason.com/assets/db/13151939684655.jpg

Outside the Washington headquarters of the Federal Trade Commission is a sculpture of a powerfully built, shirtless man forcibly restraining an unruly horse. It's called "Man Controlling Trade," and it captures a common attitude in government: Oftentimes, capitalist firms need to be saddled and broken.

That assumption underlies an antitrust suit filed Wednesday by the Justice Department to block a merger between AT&T and T-Mobile. They want to join forces for mutual advantage in their competition with Verizon and other wireless carriers. The Obama administration claims that fewer providers will mean higher rates and worse service.

But the regulators overlook the obvious benefits of the deal. AT&T, unlike the Justice Department, seems to grasp that it will have to compete against the market leader, Verizon, regardless.

It wants T-Mobile for the cellphone towers and wireless spectrum that AT&T needs to overcome the lousy reputation of its network. Besides upgrading performance, it says the merger will allow a $40 billion reduction in costs—which in a functioning market is bound to be passed on sooner or later to consumers.

"Many analysts agree with AT&T's argument that the combination could improve the quality of voice calls as well as data service," reports The Wall Street Journal. That need has become more pressing since the carrier lost its exclusive right to the iPhone.

The lawsuit argues that losing T-Mobile would be a devastating blow to competition. But there are plenty of other, lesser-known cellphone companies, including U.S. Cellular, MetroPCS, and Leap. In fact, 90 percent of Americans can choose from five or more cellphone companies.

The Justice Department scoffs at the importance of these smaller operators because they don't compete nationally as the larger carriers do. It's a strange position that misunderstands the nature of the wireless marketplace.

Joe's Burger Shack doesn't compete with McDonald's nationally, but McDonald's still has to compete with it and thousands of other single-site restaurants across the country. If prices go up under the Golden Arches, patrons have plenty of options besides Burger King.

AT&T faces a similar landscape of small and large rivals. If it loses customers who resent being gouged, it's cold comfort to see them sign up with rivals that don't buy Super Bowl ads.

Just because a small carrier doesn't operate coast-to-coast today doesn't mean it won't tomorrow. If big companies boost their rates, they give upstarts the chance to build their business with alluring discounts. They also encourage the entry of new rivals. The market has its own ways of deterring rip-offs, and those methods are typically faster and surer than federal intervention.

Justice says it particularly wants to keep T-Mobile around because it has been "a disruptive force through low pricing and innovation by competing aggressively." It sounds like a great business formula. But the virtues the government lawyers cherish seem to have less appeal with consumers.

If those are such wonderful attributes, why has T-Mobile been losing customers instead of gaining them for the past year and a half? Maybe many of them prefer the better options that go with the higher rates at Verizon and AT&T.

Besides, it's not as though keeping T-Mobile around is a long-term possibility. Its owner, Deutsche Telekom, has made it clear it wants out of the United States. "This market is going to consolidate one way or another," Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett told The New York Times.

Nor is it true that fewer carriers are bound to mean higher prices. As the Federal Communications Commission noted in its June report on the state of wireless competition, the industry has gotten significantly more concentrated in recent years—but rates for both calls and text messages have declined.

It's a development that should give pause to anyone inclined to meddle in this business. The telecommunications marketplace is a dynamic environment that has repeatedly produced surprises.

Reason.com (Libertarian)

 

[unregistered]

 

[mercury14]

http://koskovia.files.wordpress.com/2008/02/polish_communist_propaganda_poster.jpeg

It's Labor Day!

I see the usual suspects have been laboring hard at C&Ping their usual partisan bullshit. Not even taking a day off for labor day.

 

[unregistered]

 

[Beco]

I have every day off. I no longer need to labor.

lucky bastard!

 

[unregistered]

 

[richard_daily]

I have every day off. I no longer need to labor.

As if you ever did...

If you had ever worked, you'd value your time more than wasting so much of it on here "tossing libs".

 

[richard_daily]

I know it's tough, but somebody has to do it.

"Welfare for me, but not for thee!"

 

[Beco]

I know it's tough, but somebody has to do it.

f off...

 

[Beco]

"Welfare for me, but not for thee!"

The man probably worked, saved and then retired. What are you talking about or do you just like to spew unrelated slogans to try to make yourself look good??

 

[unregistered]

 

[unregistered]

 

[koalabear]

As if you ever did...

If you had ever worked, you'd value your time more than wasting so much of it on here "tossing libs".

Says the single dateless Lit stud Chihuahua.

 

[koalabear]

I have every day off. I no longer need to labor.

You shouldn't rub it in Vette. They will never be able to retire.

 

[richard_daily]

The man probably worked, saved and then retired. What are you talking about or do you just like to spew unrelated slogans to try to make yourself look good??

collecting SS and VA benefits while not working is welfare...

Like I said; "welfare for me, but not for thee".