Houghton Mifflin companion In 1901, under the leadership of J. Pierpont Morgan and Elbert H. Gary, the United States Steel Corporation, the largest industrial enterprise on earth, was established. Capitalized at $1.4 billion, it controlled more than 60 percent of the American market.

The steel industry continued to be the measure of the size and strength of national economies until well after World War II. American steel production peaked in 1969 when the country produced 141,262,000 tons. But new, more efficient steel plants with much lower labor costs were being built abroad, and these, helped by a sharp drop in transportation expenses, began to give American steel companies increasing competition.

A major shakeout of the industry ensued. By 1975 American steel production had plunged by 37 percent to only 89 million tons. The industry, however, still employed 457,000 workers at very high wages. By 1988 production had rebounded to 102,700,000 tons, but the number of steelworkers had declined to 169,000. Annual steel production per worker had more than tripled in thirteen years.

American steel was once again competitive on world markets. But steel would never again hold the central place in the economy it had held for a hundred years. The age of steel had ended; the age of the computer had begun.

LCA letter
On a level playing field, cost is correctly the deciding factor, but we live in a world where subsidies are rampant. Foreign steelmakers have not sold nearly 120 million tons in the United States in the past three years because they are more efficient than their American counterparts, but because they receive massive subsidies, both direct and indirect, from their governments. The results are horrific: 16 American steel companies have filed for protection under the bankruptcy laws since 1998 and 15,000 steelworkers have lost their family-sustaining paychecks. Given that the potential for similar developments in our iron ore industry is very real, it is indeed appropriate that the Department of Commerce is conducting this investigation!

PDF file from an American iron/steel company, pg.4 in December 2003, the company partnered with Laiwu Steel of China to reopen a bankrupt and closed operation in Minnesota. Brinzo explains this was very significant to the company. "We were able to put 400 people back to work," he says. "It was great because we created jobs in North America to move product to Asia, instead of the other way around. We are very proud of this deal."
-and-
. . . in the industrial age, he says, the United States depleted its supply of high-grade ore, so it is left to mine the lower-grade ore. "We have to use technology to get it to the same high grade," he says. "We are the world leader in employing this processing technology that transforms low grade iron ore into high-quality iron ore pellets."

Ferrominera Orinoco owns a 3.3 million metric ton pellet plant located in Puerto Ordaz, Venezuela, where it processes high-grade ores that are produced from its main iron ore deposits in Ciudad Piar. Cliffs notes production from the mine and pellet plant is for both domestic consumption and sale in the international markets.

PPI data
Trade agreements that work receive little publicity -- but can get pretty remarkable results. The Clinton Administration's 1999 "Agreement on Agricultural Cooperation" with China, covering Chinese treatment of imported citrus, meat and western wheat, is an example. It ended a long-standing Chinese ban on imports of oranges and other citrus fruits, requiring science-based pest inspection standards and bringing Chinese Agriculture Ministry technical officials to the United States to inspect a series of American orange and lemon groves. As a result, by early 2000 American orange growers were free to export to a market almost totally closed for the past fifty years.

Since the agreement, U.S. exports of oranges to China have grown by approximately 7,500 percent, or well over 20 million kilos. The experience for other citrus fruits is similar: since 1999, exports of lemons to China have grown from 37,000 kilos to 646,000 kilos; exports of grapefruit from 21,000 kilos to 517,000 kilos; and exports of citrons from zero to 34,000 kilos. In total, this means about $15 million in additional export income a year for citrus growers in Florida, California and Arizona.

US Embassy
Washington - The U.S. trade deficit jumped 21.5 percent in 2002 to a record $435,200 million, reflecting continued weakness in the global economy and a strong U.S. dollar.

Throughout the year rising imports, particularly for such consumer goods as pharmaceuticals and video equipment, combined with slumping U.S. exports to set the stage for the widening gap, the Commerce Department reported February 20. Services exports, long a strong sector in the U.S. economy, rose just 4 percent during the year.

. . . the depreciation of the dollar should help to stabilize and, ultimately, turn around the trade deficit. As shown in the bottom chart, the gap between growth rates of real exports and real imports has narrowed . . .

quote]Originally posted by ServoHahn
Could you imagine being taxed 50% of your wages or more? Sure, more people would live longer but do you think the upper class (the most powerful in our country) would support that? In may leftward leaning opinion, it won't be possible because our country has too much emphasis on capitalism (and I don't care what you say, capitalist societies look almost the same as aristocracies to me). Should the lower class take sticks and rocks and revolt in the streets of Beverly Hills?

What is your address? I have an old used keyboard with a working 'enter key' that will assist in forming paragraphs.

Those long, one paragraph posts are really hard to read.

Back to the thread- don't know about 50%. While the 'upper class' may be the most powerful they also are in a precarious position and they know it. The French Revolution serves as a prime example of what happens when class warfare erupts. Watts, CA got close.

A chiropractor?

Good dough!

having worked at the VA, I know that our nurses and (most) doctors work their butts off for 12 hours at a time!

props

The problem is with the health care system, not with our nurses and doctors. I mean hospitals are run like a business... one which can't be outsourced. I'm concerned that if we socialize health care, our local citizens won't see the point in going to school for 7 or 8 years if they're not going to get paid as much as our doctors are getting paid today.

By taking the $$ out of much of health care and the malpractice insurance extortions perhaps Doctors and Nurses would be able to take home a bigger piece of the pie?

It is our SOCIAL security.. it's meant to be for all of us!

Anyway, I'm rambling. How much money is there in the world? I want to see how our national debt compares.

Here,

Fractional money
With only $27.93 of cash reserves for every $10,000 of assets (as of June 1999) the bank has just created the remaining $159,553 of that interest-earning money out of thin air. When, after 25 years of hard work, you pay off your mortgage, the $159,553 vanishes back into thin air. Not so the interest however. It vanishes into the banker's pocket. Chartered (i.e. privately owned) banks, such as The Bank of Montreal, The Royal Bank, The CIBC, etc. have created about 95 percent of our total money supply ($589.1 billion as of Sept 1999) in exactly this way. But the cash reserves in their vaults amount to only a paltry $3.893 billion. (About $32 billion of cash circulates in public hands.) This is called fractional reserve banking, and it's the greatest scam of all time because it creates debt for no reason other than to enrich the banking class. Its long term effect – as becomes clearer every day – is to steadily suck wealth out of the community and into the hands of a few people, a fact that bankers and most politicians stubbornly refuse to admit.

Originally posted by JoeDoaks

In the U.S. (1999) there was around 7 trillion dollars.

.

Originally posted by ServoHahn
Take note of when the ammount started to rise the most rapidly since 1959
What year are the numbers about half of what they are currently?
Compare the info on that page to a population graph... note correlation (or lack thereof). Compare to rising cost of girls scout cookies... coinsidence? I think not.

Information on the U.S. Government Deficit and Deficit Forecast
Marketvector side trip Look at the number on the deficit- right after the U.S. election jump.
GDP 'thought' to be more meaningful than GNP. Up as well.
Unemployment- dramatic drop!

Hummel pages


The narrowest definition, M1, includes only the transaction deposits of banks. A broader definition, M2, adds savings accounts and small term deposits at banks plus retail money market funds. The broadest definition, M3, adds large term deposits, institutional money market funds, repurchase agreements, and eurodollars. The concept behind these three categories is that they represent decreasing levels of activity, M1 being the most active.

Discount Rate Policy Group
The Discount Rate Policy Group is composed of senior officers at the BOG in Washington. The purpose of this group is to review and assess the impact of current discount rate policy and policy alternatives on the financial markets and economic activity. The functions of this group are:

1. to oversee the operation of the discount function and uniform application by the district banks;
2. to assess the impact of discount policy on domestic and international economic activity and on the banking system;
3. to study operating and regulatory matters pertaining to the discount function;
4. to anticipate emergency situations that may call for more liberal credit at the discount window; and
5. to evaluate trends in types and volumes of discount window credit.

Information on the U.S. Government Deficit and Deficit Forecast
.
Yes, this is good news in other parts of the world as well. But you're probably one of those who thinks the USD will make a huge comeback, no? (over China's dead body)
Here's a more right wing source if you don't believe the King of the Britons.

^ "The US trade deficit - a key concern for President George W Bush's second term - exceeded $50bn for the fourth month in a row in September." I heard on KNX Money 101 today that it is a record high (and it always will be as long as we have a growing economy) but that a surplus left from Clinton (due to severely cut government spending) will be enough to "get us over the hump" as it were... even though I thought it was squandered.

And then unemployment did go down, but then... back up. 5.6% is where it Clinton picked it up on his second term... handed it over at 5.4 then down to 5.2... but then... well, it's on there. Overall in the past 12 years, UE's stayed about the same... it's not like the changes have been severe... 2 , million? Is that severe? I'm haveing a hard time putting it into context.

And how many of those jobs were volunteer jobs? Sure, the information is dated, but what about the jobs initially lost? What about those lost since then?

go crazy

"In the first two years of the Bush Administration, 2 million workers lost their jobs - the worst job loss record for an administration since World War II. And the President’s newly unveiled tax cut proposal would create fewer than 200,000 jobs, according to economists. In addition, the President failed to personally weigh in last year to force Congress to pass an extension of the unemployment insurance program before it expired for 800,000 unemployed workers this past December." Ew.

D'oh!

So, our money supply is going up. That means inflation is going up. It means stocks are going up. It means rich people and companies are getting richer. What I wanted to point out is that with a bigger money supply and stronger, sturdier companies, we get inflation (and a million friggin' bucks at the pump! I doubt drilling in Alaska is going to help us here), higher minimum wage and a larger gap between the upper and lower class (by all accounts the middle class should stay the same, maybe losing some on the upper and lower end).

"This isn't going to be a discussion about the in-appropriateness of the actions of the Federal Reserve or the future ramifications to our financial health of a hyper inflating broad money supply."

The federal reserve isn't supposed to manipulate the market? What are the future ramifications of this, and who are they going to hurt?

Ok, so Bush's administration can't be single-handedly responsible for the ENTIRE country's economy, but given the record of Bush and his administration's, into whose hands do you think this money will fall? At the cost of who?

Yes... all kinds of numbers went up for the Bush administration. Just remember, you can make the numbers go down too. Just reverse your graph. Unemployment isn't up, it's just that employment is down! I got a new job this year and it's not as a prison guard, government volunteer, or a computer technician!
-S
P.S. I can look up a lot of useless biased crap on the internet too.

Oh, yeah, I forgot. Ok, so we have a powerful new money supply, up to a trillion dollars, right? But then we've forgotten about our little friend The National Debt. Doesn't it mean something that we have a good new supply of cash, but that our new debt far outwieghs it? Is most of our "M3" on loan? I see where it comes from, but the debt owed is just as scattered.

[post never edited... ignore the following]



[edit on 21-3-2005 by ServoHahn]