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Strategies & Market Trends : Booms, Busts, and Recoveries -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (9921)	9/20/2001 10:32:46 AM
From: elmatador	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

I just came back to have a go at CB's PM'd question: CB, the help to the airlines has nothing to do with economic sense. Airlines were technically bankrupt BEFORE the attacks. They are using this moment as an excuse to extract rent from the tax payers. Why they aren't exposed for what they really are? They are asking for governments to bail them out of the structural problems they have. Only domestic airtravel is open in the US. International airtravel is a government-sanctioned cartel called IATA. Break the IATA cartel that we see progress in airtravel. But all countries want their flag carriers to profit at the expense of the traveler. Let me go back to the Financial Collapse and Beyond Thread. Too many Shiitas in this Thread here.

To: Ilaine who wrote (9921)	9/20/2001 10:37:04 AM
From: smolejv@gmx.net	Respond to of 74559

>>We know where the cash flow went<< - it stopped flowing. There's no customers (!) No consumption in the form of business flights etc. That hurts the airliners. And because the customer does not spend, bingo, its also GDP that gets depressed. Re GM factory in Brasil - either it is Brasil (imports) or its US (a plain vanilla domestic flight;) And eventually its J6P who buys the final product - doing the ever important job of consuming. If the goods are exported, however, no consumption, but the account balance gets a little push back towards the neutral middle. dj

To: Ilaine who wrote (9921)	9/20/2001 11:03:30 AM
From: Don Lloyd	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74559

CB - Yesterday I started playing with an idea about measuring an economy, but without much progress. ... That is the only possible honest result. All of the economy reduces to aggregations of one individual exchanging goods and services with another, either directly or indirectly, either individually or in cooperative groups. Truly meaningful measurements are impossible. Prices are little more than random data points that only seem to have any consistency at all because of the statistics of a large sample size, and a typically limited day to day variation. All economic values are subjective and subject to diminishing marginal utility for every individual. For example, the price of cars will depend on the particular mix of one and two car families, as the transportation use value of a second car will typically be far less than the use value of a first car. This means that the automobile manufacturers must price low enough to attract a subset of the potential second car buyers unless they are going to be satisfied with first car buyers alone, leaving both revenues and profits on the table. Regards, Don

To: Ilaine who wrote (9921)	9/20/2001 11:32:37 AM
From: Moominoid	Respond to of 74559

Yesterday I started playing with an idea about measuring an economy, but without much progress. Because GDP measures price, it doesn't really tell you much about output. When prices go down, GDP goes down. When prices go up, GDP goes up. I've stated before, and it's obvious, that GDP isn't a good way to measure an economy. With GDP you have a volume index and a price deflator, in principle inflation isn't problematic for measuring GDP. Of course there are problems in getting that exact breakdown in a way everyone agrees on but an approximation is possible. GDP measures total net output, expenditure, or income. It doesn't measure things that are not monetized of course unless they are imputed in some way (e.g. housing services to owner occupiers) and as Don points out in a message it doesn't measure utility (though economists assume that more GDP (with some extra income for everyone) increases utility). General Motors imports car parts from Brazil from a GM subsidiary, that has a lot of similarities to getting the same part from a GM subsidiary in Michigan. A Brazilian made the part, but the value is added in the US. Here comes in the distinction between GNP and GDP. The part made in Brazil adds to Brazilian GDP and takes away from US GDP when imported. The remitted profits from GM are however added to US GNP. "where did the money go?" I'm not sure what you mean by that. I see money as stuff in banks and people's pockets. If making widgets is productivity Productivity is GDP volume divided by labor hours. It doesn't matter what is produced. David