To: GraceZ who wrote (16725 ) 2/5/2004 11:08:42 AM From: Wyätt Gwyön Respond to We're the ones who have a strong internal economy not dependent on exports. I already know I might be the only one on this thread who believes this so you don't have to remind me. you look at economies like South Korea you find an enormous percentage of the working population is self-employed as we were prior to the world wars What you had here with the large number of people making a great salary working for these large corporations was a growing middle class whose great salary was inflated away by their own carefree spending and their reliance on high asset prices [equity extraction] to increase spending in lieu of reliance on income gains . the effect i am anticipating is debt deflation, i.e., net reduction of debt, either through net paybacks or liquidation. neither option is beneficial to asset prices, and the housing equity extraction model falls apart rather quickly. what's left is slackening demand on the part of the almighty American consumer. this can be seen in the declining rate of change in personal consumption expenditures.we'll get more competitive by the painful process of becoming a supply of low cost labor contracting industries have higher salaries than expanding industries in 48 out of 50 states.
