EU attacks 'Buy American' clause, page 6
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ATS Members have flagged this thread 2 times


reply posted on 5-2-2009 @ 09:34 AM by marg6043
reply to post by SLAYER69


You know 300 billions of the stimulus package that will go into stimulating consumer spending via stimulus checks, will still end up in the hands of WTO countries, so I don't see what in the heck more they want


reply posted on 5-2-2009 @ 12:06 PM by SLAYER69
reply to post by marg6043


True that.
The whole worlds economies takes a dump and we have to bail everybody out?


If we dont get ours going then there is not much worth argueing over now is there.

It's not a perfect system and in my opinion it needs to be replaced but it's what we have and we will have to work within the system even if it's flawed. Lets get back to work then later go about fixing it.


[edit on 5-2-2009 by SLAYER69]


reply posted on 5-2-2009 @ 12:16 PM by Dermo
reply to post by The Bald Champion


I know what you are saying is dead right.. and it is.. by right everyone should retire and regroup.

BUT....

You also have to remember how much the US (in the form of corporations) has gained from these agreements, especially during the period after WW2 when Europe was completely destroyed and Japan was suffering from Radiation poisoning.. and by partially stepping out of these pacts/agreements/contracts, the US can then be subjected to the same activities by the other two main economies... almost principally because of the fact that US corporations gained so much by taking advantage of the destruction caused by WW2. This would wreak even more havoc on the US.. see how Obama backed down as soon as the issue arose.

Even though it is only commodity trading, it would still be a case of the US giving a finger to the rest of the world with whom it has both helped and hindered over the past 50 years. And though the US is by far the most superior in military standing, it could not cope with a trade embargo of sorts from the EU and/or China.


What looks kind of likely to have happened by the end of this crises is that the EU and US will be even more intertwined in a slightly regulated free market cross atlantic economy.. this is likely to be the next growth stimuli and would be pretty impressive and extremely robust.. albeit pretty stressful for both sides at the start.

Most EU members (the non english speaking 400million of them) would be pretty skeptical and possibly even against having an open market with the US.. as would most Americans with the EU but you can already see this starting to happen in certain areas, especially seeing as both economies are almost identical in per capita gdp (except for the Developing EU eastern bloc 100 million).

We'll just have to wait and see.

It'd be like a massive corporation merger that would account for over half the worlds money

Scary.



reply posted on 5-2-2009 @ 12:30 PM by Dermo
Originally posted by SLAYER69
reply to post by marg6043


True that.
The whole worlds economies takes a dump and we have to bail everybody out?



The fact that the majority of the rest of the worlds wealthy countries have also given bailouts and liquidity obviously slipped your attention.

Explain to me exactly how this US bank bailout is going to benefit ME plz.

Also, remember that the US is giving its institutions more bailout money than most is because its institutions and investors had driven themselves into the ground along with the help of a catalyst. This caused the global cascade.


reply posted on 5-2-2009 @ 01:00 PM by Illusionsaregrander
reply to post by Dermo


How do you know America is the reason there is a "cascade?" Could it not be equally likely that there is a cascade because greedy people in your own country were doing the exact same things that greedy people in ours were doing?

Even if the game started here, who held a gun to the greedy people in your countries head and made them play along? No one. Your countries are suffering too because your leaders are as short sighted and self serving as ours are, and they are too heavily influenced by business interests just like ours are.

If your leaders are so much better than ours, why didnt they just stand back and watch us hang ourselves? And not get neck deep in the same stupid economic policies? Surely that would have been better for you guys?

Maybe its because none of these dorks running economies have any clue what they heck they are doing. Their economic models are based on theories that do not reflect reality. And they refuse to change the models because they WANT it to be true that they can endlessly siphon off wealth from the bottom tiers of society without any repercussions? When any sane person can clearly see that if you undermine the foundation of something it will bring down what rests upon that foundation in due time. And the higher you build on that foundation, the bigger the crash when the foundation finally fails.

Your countries arent in this mess because of what we did. Your countries are in this mess because of choices YOUR leaders made. It just so happens that these boneheads all made the same choices based on the same economic delusion. If your leaders had used a different approach, you would not be in this mess along with us.

Dont mothers over there tell you guys some version of;

"Well if so and so jumps off a cliff, are you going to do it too?"

[edit on 5-2-2009 by Illusionsaregrander]


reply posted on 5-2-2009 @ 03:23 PM by Dermo
Originally posted by Illusionsaregrander
reply to post by Dermo


How do you know America is the reason there is a "cascade?" Could it not be equally likely that there is a cascade because greedy people in your own country were doing the exact same things that greedy people in ours were doing?
[edit on 5-2-2009 by Illusionsaregrander]


Firstly, I wasn't attacking your country so no need to think that.

Secondly, Lehmen brothers started the cascade when they followed on from AIG and the sub prime mortgage crises which dried up the funds in the US - and they were a major US bank... hence > It started in the US.
Its common knowledge, I don't know why you would deny that. I have absolutely no other reason for saying it except that - Its fact. If it happened in China or the UK, then I would be saying it happened there.. but it didn't.. so im not.

So after the Lehmen Bros fiasco.. which IMO was orchestrated , the similarly corrupt and badly managed financial institutions in other countries, (firstly those who were intertwined with the US banks that folded, then those that were intertwined with the banks that were intertwined with the US banks that folded) including mine, found themselves in difficulty, then loss of market confidence, share prices dropped, liquidity crises, bailouts, recessions, more bailouts, job losses etc etc

Thirdly,, my country's leaders are complete idiots. I know more about economics that those muppets.
And in fact, at this stage, my country is probably a good bit more screwed than yours - I think its third in the list of countries that are most likely to default as a result of the crises. Oh well.

Lastly, The reason we we are all in such a bad way is because we use the AngloSaxon model of investment banking. Sustained explosive growth until the ability to expand stops.. then crash.. then restart with more regulation. This system has been in place since before the US was even a country so rest assured, we cant blame yez for that. Nobody seems to know how to change the model and the big trillion Dollar investors/banking families aren't going to allow it to be changed because it suits them down to the ground.

anyway.. back to the point.. it started in the US.. so its your fault. Not your country's, or your leaders, not your bankers.

YOURS!


reply posted on 5-2-2009 @ 08:05 PM by Illusionsaregrander
reply to post by Dermo


It is a long argument, and it goes against what you have been "sold" regarding globalization, so bear that in mind. I am going to start with an analogy to avoid having to bore you to death with an economics lecture.

The working class is a dog. The ruling class, and the superwealthy, I am going to analogize to ticks.

The working class (dog) produces blood, (wealth) through its actions. The goal of a tick is to siphon off this blood for itself. If there are too many ticks, siphoning off blood at too great a rate, the dog will die. If the ticks are wise, they will leave enough blood in the dog to continue the game indefinitely. Which means that the ticks have to have some measure of self control.

When a country has a people who are producing, the portion of their product that they are allowed to keep (wages) is the blood the dog has for itself. The portion of the product produced by the people that is "profit" to its wealthy and leaders is the blood that is siphoned off. The wealthy never spend all their wealth. They hold it, save it, via many different means, the amount siphoned off is always higher than the amount the ticks put back into the economy.

What has been going on for the last 20 years or more, via globalization, is that jobs have been shipped off to countries where the cost of labor is lower. Increasing profit. This has a two fold effect. It creates higher competition among the workers at home for the remaining jobs, (which supply and demand dictates lowers wages) and it robs the workers of that country of the money those jobs that are now missing would have brought in. This allows the siphoning of wealth to the wealthy and powerful to increase quite a bit, and quite rapidly. They benefit from both the lower wages at home cause by increased supply of workers, and from lower wages abroad. But the working people are not gaining more wealth. A smaller amount of wealth is now being distributed over a greater number of workers. Raising some up a bit, and lowering others down quite a lot.

Overall what is happening, (even those some see an improvement such as in developing nations) is that more and more wealth is being shifted upwards out of the hands of the workers. And this has been going on for decades. However, the wealthy need someone to buy their products. They seem wholly unaware that by shifting more and more wealth from the bottom they are undermining the "health" of the working class everywhere. However producing only garners wealth if there are consumers. So what the wealthy have really been doing over these decades is reducing the ability of the working class to consume. And they have noticed this. So they began lending. But the lenders arent altruists, they want blood too. So now there are even more ticks removing blood. At this stage, the cycle of borrowing to buy, begins to accelerate and the dog is soon hemorrhaging so much blood it falls over. Thats where we are now.

Now what bailouts do, as they are happening at the moment, is give the infusion of blood to the tick, not the dog. And they dont address the underlying problem. Too many ticks, siphoning off too much blood at too fast a rate. In fact, these bailouts are being paid for in "future blood" that they are counting on the poor bled out dog to somehow produce.

The ticks want their cake and to eat it too. They need the consumer to consume, (because it is wealth to them if they do) but they also want more wealth on the other end, and so they lower wages overall. This is what happened just before the Great Depression according to Marriner S. Eccles, who was chairman of the Federal Reserve under Roosevelt, and what he attributes the depression to.

en.wikipedia.org...

As mass production has to be accompanied by mass consumption, mass consumption, in turn, implies a distribution of wealth -- not of existing wealth, but of wealth as it is currently produced -- to provide men with buying power equal to the amount of goods and services offered by the nation's economic machinery. [Emphasis in original.]

Instead of achieving that kind of distribution, a giant suction pump had by 1929-30 drawn into a few hands an increasing portion of currently produced wealth. This served them as capital accumulations. But by taking purchasing power out of the hands of mass consumers, the savers denied to themselves the kind of effective demand for their products that would justify a reinvestment of their capital accumulations in new plants. In consequence, as in a poker game where the chips were concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, the other fellows could stay in the game only by borrowing. When their credit ran out, the game stopped.


And that is also an apt description of what has been happening in America for certain for the last 20 odd years. ( I know less about what has been happening to jobs in the EU) If the collapse began here, I would argue it is because we have been tearing down trade barriers and exporting jobs faster and longer than you have.

Until the EU, many of your countries have been quite protective of their industries, and their labor forces. And, overall, countries did quite well under that scheme. However, globalism has champions. It was promised as a way to make the rich even richer, faster. And it did. Until the dog fell over. Hence my argument that the bank collapses are not the cause of the problem but the first symptom the big guys heeded. The people have been making noises about how much blood they have been losing for years. The ticks didnt pay any mind at all till the dog fell over and squashed some of them.

I hope that wasnt too simplistic an argument. There are lots of technical aspects that could be elaborated on, and supported with quotes, theory, etc. But I think that is a pretty good laymans terms illustration.


reply posted on 6-2-2009 @ 04:01 AM by Dermo
Originally posted by SLAYER69
Again true.

On one hand they say the US is no longer all that.
Then on the other it seems that many around the world put their hand out when the US Government starts to talk about Stimulus and start quoting WTO agreements.


Well which is it?
Are we broke? Yes.




[edit on 5-2-2009 by SLAYER69]



I think you may be forgetting that the dollar is the worlds reserve currency. That being one of the reasons the US was so much wealthier than the rest of the world until 15 years ago... The reserve currency must have liquidity or else it is useless... hence possible pressure from outside.

Also, I am unaware of any other countries looking for Stimulis packages from the US.. everyone seems to be in the same boat at the moment and sorting out their own countries. If there has been, enlighten me.

The WTO thing - If the EU wanted to pull out of the WTO for a while to lick its wounds after obviously using it to gain massive momentum on the global markets... can you honestly say the you and your government would not voice concern and discontent? Honestly?

If the answer is yes, you may be a big liar
If the answer is no, you may be a big hypocrite

I see your point but your past governments have put this pressure on your country in return for rapid expansion and global dominance. Now its time to bite the bullet because if the US pulls the carpet out from under the rest of the world, it will also do it to itself and the rest of the world will not let it back on so easily.

Times will be harder for the US than most countries but thats the penance it must pay for the economic plundering it has done since ww2.. what booms must crash.


reply posted on 6-2-2009 @ 04:23 AM by Dermo
Originally posted by Illusionsaregrander
reply to post by Dermo


It is a long argument, and it goes against what you have been "sold" regarding globalization, so bear that in mind. I am going to start with an analogy to avoid having to bore you to death with an economics lecture.


TBH, I have the same views, I take that for granted but look at the actual point of the global banking collapse as instigated purposefully.
When it comes to corporatized globalization, outsourcing has always been the killer. Once a nation is wealthy, it is outsourced, therefore creating economic difficulties, job losses and and poverty.. this leads back around to lower wages, jobs and wealth... and because the modern infrastructures are in place in the northern hemisphere countries, these processes are cyclical and common so it will come back around.. but with big differences after this occurrence... especially with those that use the banking investment model that we use.

While the banking collapse in the US shows over saturation of the market of lenders and banks, it also uncovered a deviousness in the market where bad debts were being packaged as good mid yield investments and sold overseas to investors/banks/corporations etc. This shows how profiteers were trying to offload their problems onto the world instead of dealing with them themselves. This is also one of the big reasons why the problem is global.





I hope that wasnt too simplistic an argument. There are lots of technical aspects that could be elaborated on, and supported with quotes, theory, etc. But I think that is a pretty good laymans terms illustration.



I could have taken the jargon. Thx for the incite.



[edit on 6/2/09 by Dermo]



reply posted on 6-2-2009 @ 12:15 PM by Illusionsaregrander
Originally posted by Dermo

I could have taken the jargon. Thx for the incite.



It wasnt intended to incite. It was just the shortest route I felt I could take without knowing your personal history in terms of economics terms and stuff. I already tend to write posts much longer than many care to read.

If you also agree that globalization and what you call "outsourcing" preceded this collapse, I just dont understand how it is helpful, (in terms of analysis and problem solving) to choose to focus on the actual collapse.

In my view, that is the problem. People become fixated upon what immediately precedes a collapse, and then they cease to really examine the entire dynamic. Which is why I would argue, we are right back in this place less than 100 years after the last failed attempt to globalize. People simply will not look at the dynamic itself in its entirety. There may well be a way to globalize without collapsing the whole mess. I would argue that we could, but we could not do so with the amount of income disparity the mega wealthy have become accustomed to.

In my opinion, picking the point and location of the first sign of collapse is like saying Pompeii was the reason the volcano erupted. It would be ignoring all the details like magma building up, movements of the plates, etc. and just saying "Well Pompeii did it."

I completely disagree that the collapse was orchestrated. The difference in our view on that is that you seem to be assuming evil genius, and I simply dont see it. I see people who really do not understand why their model keeps failing. And the reason they do not is because they refuse to look broadly enough at the underlying mechanics.

Greedy people who were trying to get as much as they could as quickly as they could did trigger the collapse, they did deal the final blow, and they knew they were being self interested, but where I disagree with orchestration is that they had no idea that their greed would bring the whole thing to a grinding halt. They (the wealthy and the leaders) really do seem to be operating under a very real (to them) delusion that infinite expansion is possible within a finite system like the Earth and her resources.

Why it isnt Americas "fault" is that the same bubbles in housing (say) created by the cycle of pulling wealth from the people and then lending to keep their spending up was occurring in the UK as well. I do not know as much about every country in your Union, but I know the same pattern was going on there.

And, had it been America alone who was participating in this, our collapse would not have had as profound an impact on other nations. We would have hurt your manufacturing and exports, in time, but your governments were doing the exact same thing. The reason your EU was formed was so that you could do the exact same thing. It happened here first because we had a head start on it, NOT because your countries are blameless.

Which is why I said in an earlier post, dont your mothers over there tell you some version of,

"If so and so jumped off a bridge does that mean you have to as well?"

We may have been the first to jump off the bridge this time, but your countries jumped too. I personally think that the "its your fault" part is non-productive, and ultimately is what will assure us that this cycle will repeat in the future. If people do not look at every element of what happened, including their own part in it, we have no chance of coming up with a conscious plan to prevent it happening again.

What our governments are trying to do now is a perfect example. They dont want to examine how much blood can really be extracted from a dog before it falls over, they want to resurrect the ticks as quickly as possible and get right back to the business of sucking blood. Its insane.
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