In 2005 the US became a net food importer based on trade numbers.

In 1999, with the purchase of Case, New Holland NV (European) became the world's largest manufacturer of farm and construction equipment.

GE is still the world's largest manufacturer of medical imaging equipment and Baxter the largest medical products suppler to hospitals and medical offices, with most manufacturing for both companies now completed offshore and imported into the US.

I'm not trying to be pessimistic, just pointing out the reality of our lost manufacturing industry. That's the reason our wealth is leaving us for other countries as evidenced by our payment imbalance. While cooked government GDP and employment numbers might pacify the general public, just the fact that those who exhaust benefits are not recorded in any manner and the new jobs are service industry positions at far less money than lost manufacturing jobs speaks volumes.

US - 80k engineers graduated annually
India - 215k
China - 644k
(Duke University, all engineering and scientific disciplines, excluding medicine)

On a per-capita basis the US is about even but US electrical engineers alone are at a 7% unemployment rate due to outsourcing to India and other countries. Get into computer sciences and you're over 12% unemployment. As a side note, GE now outsources all but the general ledger portions of their accounting. I consider this a trend in line with past statements by both China and India to dominate world engineering expertise, China for internal development and India internal and as a cost effective service industry.

The primary US export is now USD, based on issuing debt to sustain Petrodollar demand. That's now called elastic debt by our government, sustainable only by military dominance, also provided by debt.

To me the only question is how far does our standard of living have to drop to again make the US a competitive exporter attracting investment capital to modernize our facilities and again bring wealth into our country and is it going to be a gradual decline or an abrupt drop.
The way we're accumulating debt service doesn't forecast a gentle decline.

 

QUOTE by georged: I'm not trying to be pessimistic


LOL!!!!! georged you are the most pessimistic person on this whole forum!!!! Everything you say about the US is negative, with the most dire consequences yet to come!!!! If everything is so bad, why are you building a new house? Why not just just hide in your vault counting all your gold like Scrudge McDuck?!!!!!!! You must really spend a lot of time on moonbat central!!!!!!

 

Pessimistic? Depends on one's viewpoint. As our industrial sector continues to decline and dependency on internal transactions driven by abnormal debt grows, sooner or later the general population's standard of living will drop. Delphi and GM are almost textbook examples of future 'good job' wage levels due to market forces. When the general standard of living reaches a competitive point on a global basis, then come bargains and opportunities.

What is moonbat central?

 

Georged--"In 2005 the US became a net food importer based on trade numbers."

--I haven't seen those "numbers." I know that China imports soy beans from us, and that corn production is at such a high level that prices have been driven down to where I just bought 100 pounds of shell corn for $7.50. Quotas have been placed on production of commodities such as wheat to artificially keep prices high. If we are a net importer of food, it must be because of stuff like caviar.

Georged--"In 1999, with the purchase of Case, New Holland NV (European) became the world's largest manufacturer of farm and construction equipment."

--I was thinking of such companies as Caterpillar and John Deere. A European company may be the largest single manufacturer of farm and construction equipment, but I thinks U.S. companies are the dominant players in those markets.

In the medica field, I was referring to companies like Medtronics, which make pacemakers and other high-tech medical devices...in U.S. plants.

I agree that there is reason for concern. But, I've been hearing this stuff for years, although not to the degree of pessimism you express.

 

The US has one primary growing season for fresh vegetables, fruits, produce and other seasonal food items, but they're available at markets all year. I have strawberries or raspberries on my breakfast cereal every morning even living far away from any major city. Wine is also a big import number. Farm subsidies are a big congressional pork barrel, allowing agribusinesses to just about put the small farmer out of business. Most of the small farmers where I live have city jobs to make ends meet.

I have a friend with Deere, they did a little over $5-billion in 2005 and are facing profitability problems with 2006 production to drop from 2005. When sold in 1999, Case had revenues of $5-billion. Cat, one of our success stories, did $36-billion in 2005, over half outside the US with over half of their production facilities and employees overseas. They're known for Yellow Iron, but their big gun is being the world's largest manufacturer of high speed diesel engines and other, non-gasoline engines.

Concern has been present for some years, but as a creditor nation we've never let our deficit spending, debt and payment imbalance get so far out of hand in such a relatively brief period of time with no industrial exports to balance the books. Smaller companies like Polaris are experiencing what the US vehicle industry, furniture, and almost any consumer product producer has been pummeled with for more than a decade. All of a sudden cheap Chinese ATVs are threatening their bottom line and they're looking to their bought and paid for politicians for help.

US consumers are being financially squeezed due to a variety of circumstances. What makes the dollar go farther has become much more important than brand loyalty, and even brand names now produce their products offshore to remain competitive. Polaris is a medium sized company, $1.7-billion in sales primarily due to brand loyalty with high production costs, and they see the danger of new, cheap competition eventually eroding their product line sales. They're not large enough to go offshore because they have no market other than mature European countries to expand, so they have to attempt protecting their market share by any means, the fate of a niche market.

China's per-capita income is still far below allowing ATVs as a household toy, so ATVs are primarily export fodder at entry level prices. For now, and that's what worries Polaris. How China's first exported car fares in the US will be watched very closely by all manufacturers of all motorized vehicles. China plans on taking five-years to establish their dealer network and I'd think other motorized products will follow as their per-capita income rises to afford domestic luxuries like ATVs in their domestic market.

 

georged: I still think you are overly pesimistic. Our polititions should be protecting our industries, just like all other countries, including our friends the Brits and French. The Brits have demanded we share our technology with them.
The French have industrial spies in the States, and the Chinese use all sorts of tricks such as currency controls keeping their currency down, they don’t allow free trade, they don’t allow you to set up you own company over there without a “partner” or allowing close government watch, and they have a huge spy presence in the US.

 

One sure thing about opinions is that everyone has them. France certainly isn't our friend after we destroyed their Iraqi capital investments with no compensation and the UK is a negligible at best world economic factor watching their Brent oil production decline. Europe has its own problems trying to cope with a global society, similar to those of the US as mature nations with high standards of living but in most cases without our abnormal debt.

Spies, military and industrial, have been around since the beginning of competition. Considering the size of NSA, CIA, etc., we certainly field more than our share. We borrow more money to spend on NSA than most nations spend on their entire military.

If you understand the currency market, current administration's hollow demands that China float the Yuan would be a US disaster. China is now the second largest holder of US debt and one of our largest suppliers of consumer goods. Prices to US consumers would skyrocket as would our debt service. And US investment capital would hasten its flight to nations with lower operating costs. There's zero demand for industrial investment expansion capital in the US. Since we're now raising the debt ceiling purely to service debt to keep this thing afloat, it doesn't take much imagination to forecast what would happen to the USD if China did foolishly float the Yuan.

As to politicians protecting inefficient, high operating cost US industries, that's fine if you want to pay those inflated prices or need the job. At this point in time, due to wage stagnation and food/energy inflation, most consumers need the lower costs of imports just to make ends meet. A 27% tariff to protect aging, inefficient US industries still located in the US would save a few jobs but increase the cost of those products to the general population by 27%. That's something everyone below the level of high personal wealth would feel, many in a disastrous manner. And those industries would still be competing with China and others who use US and other capital to increase their production efficiency based on state of the art infrastructure.

I don't view business circumstances as an optimist or pessimist as that limits the options and encourages emotional viewpoints. I prefer business plan terminology of best, worst and most probable scenarios without emotional attachments.

 

Georged--you may be a bit quick to base your opinions on bad news, and too readily dismiss anything postive. ("... cooked government GDP and employment numbers.")

You sound a lot like a friend of mine who used to spend a lot of time online reading left-wing bloggers. Even he got tired of it after awhile.

 

Never read blogs, I prefer financial statements.

 

You do have a sense of humor.