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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (131774)	2/6/2001 8:38:12 PM
From: hmaly	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1570862

Ted Re...Why were interest rates at 13% then, and at 7% now?<<< Volker raised the interest rates to control inflation cause by opec boycott in 1972, which in turn resulted in increasing sales of Japanese cars, throwing our auto workers out of a job. That would be the easy explanation. There was a Russian scientist who discovered that most countries run on 75 yr economic cycles. While it has been awhile since I read the article, I will try to explain it. His explanation was that many countries develop new technologies and start to rebuild their country around that technology for the first 25 yrs. For the next 25 yrs. your country has a decided productivity edge over other countries who are still building. For the final 25 yrs. your country starts falling down because your industries are 40 yrs old and have been surpassed by other countries, who have built more modern factories. After 75 yrs you are so inefficient that you start rebuilding all over again starting the rise again. Our trains, autos, steel and big oil were all built in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Europe could have surpassed us when they rebuilt after WWI but got entangled in WWII before they could surpass us. Japan, meanwhile rebuilt entirely after the war and was ready 25 yrs later to challenge us economically. All it took was the oil shock to throw our inefficient industries; oil, steel and automobile into a major decline. The oil shock and inefficient businesses caused high inflation and high unemployment caused a major recession. As much as Scumbria wants to denigrate the tax cut, the simple truth is this country needed to be revitalized at that time. Luckily by 1978 a fledgling semiconductor industry was ready to once again start us on our next 75 yr. cycle. One major exception to the theory is Japan which was rebuilt after 1945 but started to decline within 40 yrs rather than 50, so our cycle may have been speeded up also. However some of this could be attributed to Japans targeting money to certain select industries while protecting others.