a theft from those who hunger and are not fed
Yep, weapons building starts it's own paranoia, where it becomes a sustaining chain reaction by itself.
Instead, if that guy who could otherwise be fed, might want to buy a TV, car, telephone, or whatever. We have enough capacity to deliver silcon chips and all sorts to every man, woman and child on the planet, may as well go the full hog and create a market for these items -g-
re link below..
capacity utilisation rates in manufacturing remain below historical averages in all three major regions
Well, we knew manufacturing rates were unsustainable, maybe things are about right for now?
reuters.com
World economy almost lost investment overhang-OECD
Thu April 24, 2003 06:22 AM ET
FRANKFURT, April 24 (Reuters) - Purging past investment excesses is key to a world recovery, the OECD said on Thursday, but it reckons that this painful process is largely complete and this will allow business spending to start picking back up.
"Following two years of retrenchment, the bulk of the excess capital stock has in all likelihood been worked off," the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development said in its semi-annual Economic Outlook check-up on world growth.
The Paris-based agency has trimmed its forecast for world growth this year to 2.0 percent, from 2.2 percent estimated in November, and sees a recovery to three percent in 2004.
A technology bubble in the late 1990s led to massive over-spending, particularly in countries like the United States, Italy, Britain, Sweden and Spain, and this spending collapsed as the tech-bubble burst and world growth slowed in 2001.
The OECD measured a six percent cumulative decline among industrialised countries over 2001 and 2002 and said that, barring pockets of local excess in telecommunications or U.S. commercial property, for example, overcapacity had shrunk.
"We believe that the purging process has already gone quite a long way...it probably bottomed at the end of last year in the United States," OECD chief economist Jean-Philippe Cotis told a news conference following the release of the report. In addition, a catch-up process in investment levels by some countries, together with a structural adjustment to higher trend output growth, may mean that the overhang was not as large in the first place as some simple measurements had implied.
Indeed, U.S. spending on hi-tech equipment began to recover moderately from the spring of 2002.
But machinery and equipment investment fell in the euro zone in 2002 and the pick up in Japanese capital spending in the second half of last year was not likely to be sustainable.
"Moreover, capacity utilisation rates in manufacturing remain below historical averages in all three major regions (though most significantly so in the U.S.) suggesting that some excess capital still exists," in some sectors, the OECD said.
In addition, corporate debt levels would probably prevent a decisive investment recovery, it said. |
