Kieran: You might be right. I was under the delusion we were the world's largest consumer of manufactured goods.
True. We are consuming $500 billion worth every year giving nothing in return.
I suppose if that well runs dry the rest of the world's economies will be hunky-dory, with nary a blip on their stocks. Or maybe not.
Well is a source. We are sink. When chinese $100 bil a year well runs dry and Japanese $100 a year well runs dry and evan French $10 bil a year runs dry, we will end up with less stuff.
Our dollar is not backed up by goods or taxing power of US economy, it is backed up by goods and taxing power of Chinese and Japanese and other economies. The dollar only holds as high as it is because they artificially support it - by buying it out. They may stop.
GScholz: I think what Miko is trying to say is that you're consuming more than you're worth.
Than we produce. About 25% more according to my calculations. And asians and europeans of course consume that much less. So we can strut all uppity and boast how much better we live here.
Kieran: I'm just learning here, but... even if we do consume more than we produce, it's a market no one really wants to lose
It's a market that politically-influential exporters (labor and industry) of those countries do not want to lose - even though it is paid by the taxes collected from their countrymen.
Instead of paying people welfare for not doing anything, like in US, they end up paying "welfare" to their export industries to produce stuff for US. Do we want to rely on this continuing? Do you even think that our government is trying to preserve this situation? We have our own special interest groups that do not want our consumers get cheep foreign goods.
So our government raises tariffs on lumber and steel and other stuff and just recently demanded chinese to stop supporting dollar.
Those people are completely oblivious to the operation of the economics principles.
threedays: nice post miko
but tell me.. do you realy belive that Coalition have enough power to start war with Iran ?
Iran is a bit diferent country that Iraq..
I am not sure. We certainly do not have troops left to occupy it. we could destroy them in a matter of weeks.
But we do not even have to defeat them in order to make them stop accepting Euro for their oil. We could just find some excuse and blockade their ports until they behave.
AKIron: Common sense, you know it's not true how?
Right. SH was bad so he oppressed. SH oppressed so he was bad.
SH was evil, so he must have lied. SH lied, which proves he was evil.
Your common sense is nothing but circular logic.
We find no WMDs and no mass graves in Iraq but a population that have been armed with millions of AK-47s and an army composed of oppressed majority and and are supposed to believe he was oppressing them.
miko
