Where is the US economy headed?

And how many of those were sold to Fannie and Freddie, ci? They are involved in how many trillion of loans? Thats the point I have made before. The government influenced this process because people sensed the government would be good for these kinds of loan practices and it evolved into standard practice over a period of time for much of the industry. I think they served as a pattern, a template. And your congress wanted to use Fannie and Freddie to help every American to achieve the American dream, to own their own home. Just ask Barney a few years ago, or Dodd. If the loan business had been left to totally private enterprise to make loans, to sink or swim, I do not believe the situation would have become this leveraged as it is.

Amen to that. This is exactly what I have tried to point out to ci, that all we are doing is dipping pails of stale water out of the lake and pouring it around the edge. We need new influx of water, creation of new wealth. To do that, we need to fix the things that keep us from competing in the market. Obama paying off and pandering to his union contributors is just the opposite that is needed, just one example. This is so basic and so plain to see, yet the blind lead the blind in Washington D.C.

since it's all opinions and speculation anyway I will opine that the GDP will be +2.0 for 2009.

China's will be +5.7. This will be cause for a revolution.

okie, YOu have pointed out no such thing; quit lying. All you have claimed was that Freddie and Fannie were responsible for our current crisis. You don't understand anything about economics; that's a given.

It's not 'plain to see,' Okie, because your 'solutions' are bullshit.

Getting rid of unionism and health regulations won't bring manufacturing back to America; forcing companies who are stationed in America, to locate their plants here, would be more effective.

The solution isn't to create a bunch of shitty jobs here in the USA...

Cycloptichorn

okie's knowledge about most things are nil; his so-called solutions are never supported by facts or past history - or even how they would solve real problems.

Only his creative imagination works overtime, and he's always stuck on one issue: like Fannie and Freddie without understanding the global causes of why the world economy is in crisis.

Okie--Cyclopitchorn evidently either knows nothing about past American Labor History or refuses to acknowledge it.

The greedy Unions at GM priced their workers out of the market.

The non-Union shops in the South are still doing fairly well despite the downturn.

President Obama, who must give obeisance to the Labor Union goons who helped elect him will force corporations to do one of two things if the Obama sponsored Union sign off plan is made law.

l. Materially reduce the jobs available.

2. Export work offshore where decent profits can still be made.

Cyclopitchorn wrote:

Getting rid of unionism and health regulations won't bring manufacturing back to America; forcing companies who are stationed in America, to locate their plants here, would be more effective.

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Cyclopitchorn obviously does not know that the Supreme Court of the United States, even after it is packed with left wing idiots like Ginsburg by President Obama, would NEVER "F O R C E companies to locate their plants here."

Talk about deprivation of liberty and property without due process!!!!!!

genoves can only criticize the union shops at GM without understanding why unions are necessary to protect their workers. He/she also fails to understand how unions have helped non-union workers to better their wages and benefits.

okie and genoves falls into the same conservative trap by parroting the conservative playbook, and not understanding the history of economics or the positive aspects of how unions have played in this country and others.

Force companies to stay in America? What if a company needs a material that does not occur here? Just one of many questions I can think of to start with. Are you so depraved as to have to force your ideas onto other people?

How about taking a vacation to other countries, would that be illegal also? You are going off the deep end, cyclops.

cicerone imposter writes and writes and writes but hardly ever gives evidence or documentation for his blatherings.

He obviously does not know that the GM Unions have priced themselves out of the market and has no clue about the difference in costs because of the idiotic demands of the GM Unions.

Note below:


Business - Written by Philippe Gohier on Thursday, December 18, 2008 11:33 -
Do auto workers make too much?
Are labour costs to blame for the Detroit Three’s collapse?
Late last week, Ontario and Ottawa agreed to extend a lifeline to the country’s struggling auto industry. The provincial and federal governments pegged their bailout package at “about 20 per cent” of the amount the U.S. will commit to the beleaguered trio of Chrysler, GM, and Ford. The Bush administration announced on Friday that it would sign over US$17.4-billion to the Detroit Three, meaning Canada’s contribution figures to be in the $4.3-billion range. But rescuing car makers with taxpayer money hasn’t proven to be a universally popular idea on either side of the border, with auto workers’ wages attracting much of the scorn. On average, Canadian auto-sector workers make about $35 an hour"$72,000 a year"plus benefits. The average wage of a Canadian manufacturing-sector employee, by comparison, is $20.75 an hour, or $41,500 a year. Could the auto workers comparatively high wages be to blame for the Detroit Three’s collapse?


Earlier this year, Magna International CEO Frank Stronach warned that high wages at Canadian auto manufacturing plants threatened the industry’s long-term prospects and insisted that both the companies and the unions “have to change.” Industry analyst Tony Faria has also cautioned that Canadian auto workers could soon price themselves out of the market if they resist clawbacks to benefits and wages. And in an editorial on Monday, the National Post blamed the economic quagmire facing the domestic auto industry squarely on labour relations at the Detroit Three: “It’s not their design and development that lags behind the rest of the world, it’s their human resources management [...] The unions are going to have to make concessions"big concessions"if they want the companies they work for to survive.” The Canadian Auto Workers, however, have already said “no way.”

Though wages may be part of the problem, a reduction won’t suddenly make the Detroit Three profitable again. After all, the gap in take-home pay between unionized employees at Detroit Three plants and those non-union workers toiling for Japanese builders like Toyota, Honda and Nissan works out to only $2.50 an hour, or about $5,000 a year. And yet, Japanese car makers"known as ‘transplants’ in manufacturing parlance"aren’t in nearly as dire a situation as their North American rivals. The total amount, however, spent on unionized employees by the Detroit Three is considerably higher than what transplant builders spend on their workers. According to CAW data, workers at GM, Ford and Chrysler cost their respective employers about $77 an hour. This figure includes employer-paid benefits like health and dental insurance, the company’s contribution to a pension fund, and the payroll taxes it assumes when it hires workers. By contrast, assuming an 80-cent loonie, their counterparts at transplant car mills in the U.S. come in at a much cheaper $61.25 an hour. The biggest contributor to the disparity is legacy costs, i.e. payments and benefits doled out to former workers. These add $10 an hour to the overall labour costs at unionized plants, while better vacation and other wage-related benefits at union shops makes up the rest of the difference.

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NOTE--WORKERS AT GM, FORD, AND CHRYSLER COST THEIR RESPECTIVE EMPLOYERS ABOUT $77 DOLLARS AN HOUR--

Unions are great...unless they are so stupid and greedy that they cause their employees to lose their jobs.

But Cicerone Imposter never figured that out!!!

Okie- Cycloptichorn is not of our world. He works at Berkeley--described by some as the last Communist outpost in the Western Hemisphere.

You see,Okie, Cycloptichorn would tell you that he is a LIBERAL, committed to Free Speech and Due Process. However, he is not a LIBERAL but rather a LIBERAL FASCIST, who would expropriate property from people without due process. He is, of course, a Socialist. I am sure that he thinks that the rest of the world would go to hell if it were not for thinkers like those at Communist Berkeley.

genoves, Your big brush criticism means nothing; please show me where I have failed to back up my statements? Attack what I say, if you can. Leave the ad hominems in your play ground.

Your article by "Philippe Gohier" is full of BS. If the Detroit auto makers kept up with the needs of the consumers in terms of quality and efficiency, they would still be in business. Quit blaming it on something you know very little about.

Labor is not the problem. It is that the big three make lousy cars, or did in the past. They spent virtually nothing on R & D.

Japan car makers always had a big advantage, which is that they have no health care cost. Japan has universal health care, where the risk is spread out over all workers in the country.

genoves, et al, do not know what they are talking about most of the time.

http://www.aftermarketnews.com/Item/28594/uaw_losing_pay_edge_foreign_automakers_bonuses_boost_wages_in_us_plants_as_detroit_car_companies_struggle.aspx

Advoc ate- You may indeed be correct when you say that the Big Three make lousy cars. That is but one factor which has led to their demise. However, almost every source you can find will indicate that the high costs laid on the auto makers by the greedy Unions was a MAJOR factor in their failure.

Note:

l. It is a fact that the big three costs are an ASTONISHING $77.00 an hour per worker. This has been documented over and over.

2. The Big Three have spent a great deal on R & D.

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Research and Development Expenditures by Size of Company

In 1993, 125 companies with more than 25,000 employees spent more than $1 million each on R&D in the United States (SRS, 1995b). Prior to 1990, this group of companies accounted for more than half the nonfederal R&D total. That share has fallen below 50 percent because the R&D expenditures of firms with fewer than 500 employees have been increasing faster than those of companies in the other size-groups.7 Small firms' share of the total increased from 10 percent in 1990 to 15 percent in 1993. (See appendix table 4-9.)

U.S. industrial R&D expenditures are heavily concentrated in a relatively small number of firms. In 1993, the 4 largest R&D performing companies (in terms of nonfederal funds) accounted for 17 percent of the total amount spent; the 20 largest, 33 percent; and the 200 largest, 71 percent. (See appendix table 4-12.)

Over a 10-year period, 1984-94, some major membership changes occurred in the annual list of 100 leading R&D-performing companies according to Standard & Poor's Compustat Services, Inc.8 (See appendix table 4-14.) The four largest R&D-performing companies, however, were the same in both years (although their order changed). That may be one of the few constants revealed by comparing the lists from 1984 and 1994. There were some major changes in rankings among the remaining 96 entries. For instance,

Six companies moved into spots 5 through 10, and the former occupants of those places moved down. Among the six new entrants, Motorola made the largest leap; it moved from 21st to 6th place. Of the companies that fell out of the top 10, ITT made the largest plunge - from 8th in 1984 to 42nd in 1994. Three of the 4 other companies that fell out of the top 10 are major defense contractors.

More pharmaceutical companies are among the largest R&D performers. At least 6 drug companies were among the top 25 in 1994; 10 years earlier, only 1 of those firms was in the top 25.

Almost all petroleum and chemical companies fell sharply in rank. For example, the largest oil company dropped from 10th to 34th place.

The "Big Three" automakers are all now in the top 10.

Many more computer hardware and software companies - some of which did not exist or barely existed in 1984 - are now among the leading R&D-performing companies. For example, Microsoft and Apple, ranked 29th and 33rd, respectively, in 1994, were not on the list in 1984, and Intel jumped from 54th to 15th place.
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3, Japanese car makers are in the USA. They do have health costs. The Universal health care in Japan is irrelevant to their costs.

There are, at this time, AT LEAST ELEVEN AUTO COMPANIES IN THE USA WHICH ARE PRODUCING JAPANESE AUTOS. All of those companies provide Health Care Insurance for their employees.

Cicerone Imposter- I don't think you read the article well.

Note from your link--

From Detroit Free Press

The UAW is losing its edge in pay compared with non-unionized U.S. assembly plant workers for foreign companies, even as Detroit automakers aim for deeper benefit cuts to trim their losses.

In at least one case last year, workers for a foreign automaker for the first time averaged more in base pay and bonuses than UAW members working for domestic automakers, according to an economist for the Center for Automotive Research and figures supplied to the Free Press by auto companies.

In that instance, Toyota Motor Corp. gave workers at its largest U.S. plant bonuses of $6,000 to $8,000, boosting the average pay at the Georgetown, KY, plant to the equivalent of $30 an hour. That compares with a $27 hourly average for UAW workers, most of whom did not receive profit-sharing checks last year. Toyota would not provide a U.S. average, but said its 7,000-worker Georgetown plant is representative of its U.S. operations

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The average pay at the Georgetown Plant is "$30.00 a hour, HOWEVER, AS YOU CAN FIND OUT ALMOST ANYWHERE, THE COST OF EACH UNIONIZED WORKER FOR THE BIG THREE IS $77.00 AN HOUR!

The reason is that the greedy Unions negotiated for and won a procedure which pays GM, Ford and Chrysler workers almost their full pay WHEN THEY ARE LAID OFF!

Okie, don't be such a dunce.

We can require companies which are stationed in America, and enjoy the benefits of our nation, to locate their factories here - if we wish to do so. This doesn't mean they can't import raw goods from other countries.

There is very little downside to doing this, other than to profits to corporations of course. And I think they will do just fine. In the meantime, it should help more manufacturing jobs return to the States, which we need.

We're certainly not going to get rid of environmental and labor regulations, if that's what you were going to suggest. Make things dirtier and less safe, in order to attract businesses back? No thanks.

Cycloptichorn

No, you're the one missing the fundamental message; Detroit lost because they failed to build quality and consumer preference into their cars. FYI, people are willing to pay more for better cars; it's not the union payroll that failed Detroit.