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Your gap is showing

By Owen Paine on Tuesday March 20, 2007 05:46 PM

We indeed have one real crisis brewing, as I never cease noticing here, and that's our trade gap. Among other effects, it's rapidly destroying our domestic industrial platform, and piling up foreign held debt by the hundreds of billions each year, with no end in sight given current and foreseeable future trends.

Brad Setser's is the best site I know of to follow this protracted nightmare. Here's a recent snippet:

http://www.rgemonitor.com/blog/setser/183938#readcomments

The US current account deficit with Asia... is still rising, while the deficit with Europe and the NAFTA countries is heading down. Why? .... European currencies -- and the loonie -- have appreciated, while Asia has resisted currency appreciation....This pattern -- adjustment with Canada and Europe, but not with Asia -- was quite apparent in the monthly trade data....
Now, since balance of payments overlays trade patterns, what are they up to? Brad:
US imports from China are still growing at a 20% y/y clip. Overall US imports from the Asia-Pacific are up by around 12% -- ....the US trade deficit with Asia is still rising.

What of old Europe? US imports from Europe.... up a bit less than 3% y/y in January.... The US trade deficit with Europe is falling.

And then there is Canada.... US imports from Canada in January 2007 were about 6% below what they were in January 2006. December 2006 imports were 10% lower than December 2005 imports."

Could the divergence be clearer? Or could the solution be more obvious? So what do the prog dems have to say about this dire exporting of jobs across the Pacific?

Answer: they mostly leave it to their Wall Street owned Dem colleagues to take care of stuff in that area -- which leaves them enough time and "juice" to focus on tea and sympathy for its victims here.

Comments (5)

David Emanuel:

Let's not forget folks like me (PC Tech) and your own Michael J. Smith (Computer Programmer). Slaves to coal-powered machines. Enablers of and salesmen for corporations by definition.

Pointing fingers on high is all well and good but at the end of the day we-the-people are the fuel for plutocratic, imperial fire. Equally responsible for attendant consequences. Fanning the flames with insatiable desires.

There is, I believe, no moral high ground on such issues.

We feed the profligate, rapacious, murdering beast simply by living our energy-addicted lives.

Blood is on our hands. In fact, we're up to our necks in it.

Day-to-day it all feels so innocuous. Going through our daily motions. So normal. So innocent. So benign.

Flipping switches, driving machines, twenty-four-seven, three-sixty-five.

Entropy by any other name.

Lives and energy circling the drain.

So ordinary, so vain.

Lives and energy circling the drain.

owen p:

D.E.:

all so true

and to imagine this ending
by souls changing from brown to green
in ones and twos....
yikes !!!!

fortunately
we have a deeper motion to ourselves
in my estimation

we and our actions
are products of
the history of our selves
and as if by miraculous inspiration
from time to time
there are wide awakenings

sudden massive
mutually corrective arisings

they came in the past
they'll come again

Brian:

Too many people. 50 million Americans leading our lifestyles-ok. 300 million? Not possible.

Sadly, Mr. Paine, I feel the massive mutually corrective arisings will involve a lot of starvation and death.

owen paine:

"I feel the massive mutually corrective arisings will involve a lot of starvation and death"

advents are the cruelest of times

but nothing makes them
unnecessary

tragedy begets salvation

Brian:

Road Warrior? Maybe High Plains Drifter is an even better cinematic metaphor?-a shabby, isolated crumbling town of boosters, with a victim of said town returning from beyond the grave to exact his revenge.

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