Date: Wed May 05 2004 14:10
trotsky (frustrated et. al @ China) ID#377387:
Copyright © 2002 trotsky/Kitco Inc. All rights reserved
'they are losing jobs to whom?'
not to whom - to what. machines. as to which sectors, everything the state has a big hand in, regardless of sector.
btw., the concerns about the boom in China are of course well founded. obviously, there is a lot of malinvestment taking place on account of a breath-taking credit boom. one of these days China WILL go ker-splat and have it own version of 1929, or the Russian crisis. as Apollo has said, there's no transparency, the banking system is rickety, the transition from central planning to capitalism is difficult and fraught with dangers.
the only real question relates to the TIMING of it all. i used to be convinced that the end must be close - the main reason why i'm not anymore is that it's on everybody's lips. per experience, every major economic boom in history has ended when practically everyone had accepted that NOTHING could stop it. this 'bear resignation stage' has not yet arrived in China's case - instead we seem to be having a 'wall of worry' building, a strong sign that the boom still has some life left.
Date: Wed May 05 2004 14:29
trotsky (Hambone@'debt is debt') ID#377387:
Copyright © 2002 trotsky/Kitco Inc. All rights reserved
that is not entirely true - there clearly are different qualities of debt. debt employed in productive endeavors is clearly of a different quality than debt wasted on consumption or other non-wealth generating activities ( like defense spending ) .
note btw. that how this spending is financed is immaterial regarding the point i made. regardless of how the production of defense goods is financed, it STILL takes REAL resources to build them. it takes steel, plastic, labor, etc.etc. to build a bomb. it follows that the resources employed in the building of bombs can NOT be employed elsewhere, where they might be employed more productively.
Date: Wed May 05 2004 14:33
trotsky (RIP@Yuan) ID#377387:
Copyright © 2002 trotsky/Kitco Inc. All rights reserved
by the time the decoupling actually occurs, the Yuan's relative position vis-a-vis the USD may well be different. at the moment, far more Yuan than dollars are printed, which is the reason why i doubt that an appreciating Yuan is a 'slam dunk' case. a strong hint here is also that EVERYBODY seems to believe it IS a sure thing. at this particular moment in time, i for one don't believe it is.
Date: Wed May 05 2004 14:46
trotsky (traff) ID#377387:
Copyright © 2002 trotsky/Kitco Inc. All rights reserved
i heard about the hamburger reclassification ( i'm not sure if it was actually done ) . ridiculous in the extreme imo...but not surprising. commerce and BLS have come up with wheelbarrows of data massaging ideas, one more ridiculous than the other. i'm sure 'good intentions' started the process...an attempt to make the data more reflective of the modern-day economy. but as with all government projects, this one has gone awry to an incredible extent. about the only advantage has in fact accrued to the state and the statist apologists. the rest of us suffer from having to wade through reams of useless data in an attempt to reinterpret them so as to get a glimpse of reality. and of course, anyone depending on COLA adjustments is well and truly fecked, as they say here.
Date: Wed May 05 2004 15:01
trotsky (flash) ID#377387:
Copyright © 2002 trotsky/Kitco Inc. All rights reserved
the political transformation of China will follow the economic transformation as day follows night...it's inevitable. there will of course probably never be a system conforming to Western ideas of what 'democracy' should look like, on account of vast cultural differences alone.
but with communism well and truly dead, the winds of change can't be stopped anymore imo. |
