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Politics : Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Kerry -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (3378)	2/20/2004 4:19:02 PM
From: JakeStraw	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 81568

>>this is the kind of IP protection I am looking for from a new administration. What makes you so sure a new administration is going to do anything about it? Campaign promises are worth spit...

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (3378)	2/20/2004 4:29:04 PM
From: Jagfan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 81568

LET'S TALK ABOUT "YOUR" JOBS Jobs .. and the economy. Those seem to be the issues that are driving many, if not most, of those who are supporting the Kerry candidacy. First of all ... I'm going to repeat this simply because it makes the whiners so unbelievably angry. Listen up. They're not your jobs! The jobs belong to the employers .. not to you! You have job skills and, presumably, a willingness to work. Your task in a free economy is to get out there and find some employer with a job who needs your skills ... and strike a deal. If you do not have the particular set of job skills that an employer needs, or if you have priced your labor out of the marketplace, guess what? It's not the employer's fault. The fault lies with you. Either develop a new set of job skills that are actually in demand, or adjust your pricing. The employer knows what he's looking for. If you're not it .. it's your problem, not his. Now ... you say you're going to vote for a Democrat this year because of jobs? You mean to tell me that you're going to vote against George Bush this year because you don't have a set of job skills that are in demand in our free marketplace? Yeah .. that makes a lot of sense, doesn't it? Tell me. Just what do you want the president to do? You information technology people out there .. just what are you demanding? Do you want companies to stop outsourcing IT jobs to India? OK ... tell me how to do that. These companies aren't shipping parts overseas and completed products back. All they do is ship information overseas by phone lines or the Internet. Then that information is modified and shipped back the same way. What do you want the government .. the president to do? Do you want some federal law that prohibits companies from transmitting information overseas by the Internet, having that information transformed or modified, and then shipped back? And tell me just how do you enforce that law? Does that law then apply to you also if you seek information from a company that is located overseas, thus depriving a domestic company of your business? Ditto for manufacturing. I've already told you the story about the California company that makes computer mouses. (computer mice?) This company ships the components to China. The mouse is assembled in China and shipped back, then sold for around $40. Why? Because the assembly is cheaper in China than it would be in the US. So, you say you want the president to force this company to have that mouse assembled in the US? Fine .. then the price for the mouse goes up to about $70 a pop and sales drop. As the sales drop the jobs of the people in this country who manufacture the components for that mouse go away. Then the 100 marketing jobs this company supports in California also go away. You see, perhaps you can succeed in forcing this company to assemble these mouses in the US, but there just isn't any way you can force the American consumer to pay 80% more for the "made in America" version. As Bruce Bartlett says in an article listed in my reading assignments, "No nation has ever gotten rich by forcing its citizens to pay more for domestic goods and services that could have been procured more cheaply abroad." What we are seeing here is a demonstration of the "government owes me" mentality of far too many Americans. Every time you arrive at a speed bump in your life's journey you start screaming to the government for help. Sure, the speed bump is going to slow you down a bit ... but just keep moving forward and things inevitably pick up speed again. Americans are becoming helpless whiners. The more helpless you are, and the more you whine, the more likely it is you're going to vote for a Democrat. Democrats specialize in stroking the malcontent. Congratulations, whiners. At a time when America is fighting World War IV, the war against Islamic terrorism ... you're going to vote for a candidate who wants to treat terrorism as a freaking law enforcement problem because you've made some pitiful jobs choices. Pitiful. boortz.com

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (3378)	2/20/2004 5:53:17 PM
From: ChinuSFO	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 81568

Excerpts fro John Mauldin's weekly e-newsletter: Repeat: The Fed is Not Going to Raise Rates And now I come back to one of my constant themes: The Fed is not going to raise rates for far longer than the mainstream thinks. Certainly not this summer or before the fall elections. Until employment numbers begin to rise and new jobs are being created at a clip of 200,000 per month for several months, it is just not in the cards. Plus, inflation must be somewhere north of 2%. Going back to Greenspan's speech of last August where he said we must pursue policies which avoid the worst possibilities, even if we allow for some problems, the die was cast. The worst possibility for a central banker is an "unwelcome" deflation. Raising rates in the current environment, where consumer sentiment is slipping, is far too risky, in the current Fed view. As an aside, I find it somewhat odd that consumer sentiment is falling as housing prices and the stock market rise. I am not certain what that means. Perhaps it is merely a reflection of all the negative speeches by Democratic candidates, blaming everything but tooth decay on President Bush, screaming (literally) about lost jobs, the worst economy since Hoover, etc. I know I get depressed when I listen to them. But this is something that bears watching. Now that we've peeked into my worry closet, where is that sound coming from? It is the stubborn refusal of the trade deficit to show even the slightest hint of declining in the face of a declining dollar. If we are to come to a peaceful conclusion to our imbalances, that must happen and happen soon. But with all of Asia seemingly bent upon keeping their currencies competitive and selling their products for whatever dollars they can get and for now willing to take the hit on dollar devaluation in order to keep their factories humming and employment growing, we plod along. China is the linchpin. When they allow their currency to rise, assuming it does, the rest of Asia goes along with them. There should be no illusion about this fact: we are no longer in control of our currency. We are subject to the tender self-interested mercies of the world, and especially China and Japan. Of course, this fits in with my overall theme that we are in a Muddle Through Economy for the remainder of the decade. The forces mentioned above, plus the global labor arbitrage, will serve to keep us below an average of 3% growth, plus produce a probable two more recessions this decade. Peter is right. "The current excess of imports and the trend toward job losses in services can stifle the animal spirits Americans need to turn the situation around and to continue attracting foreign risk capital. Central banks [and private foreign investor -JM] will not eat our Treasury bonds indefinitely." Unless job growth and income picks up significantly, we will slowly see the current spurt of growth, spurred by stimulus, begin to fade. The next recession will eventually emerge, as there is always a next recession. Will it be one in which we start from 1% rates with little room for Fed maneuvering? Anything the Fed does at that point to provide the necessary stimulus to keep us from deflation will take us into unknown policy territory. History Suggests a Bump in the Road I have done a lot of thinking and studying about trade deficits. I can find no instance where a country saw its trade deficit rise to 5%and had a smooth landing. There was always a rough patch which followed. I invite readers to show me one case where that observation is wrong. I really would like to know. We are in a situation without precedent. I continue to believe that we are ok for most of this year, as more stimulus from tax rebates is now ready to flood the economy. But there is an end to that road. Retail sales are slowing. We have just come through the biggest and most massive stimulus for any economy in world history, and we have not been able to create enough jobs or increase business investment much beyond replacement. (As noted in previous letters, much of the improvement in the unemployment rate is from the removal of millions of people from the unemployed side of the ledger, as they have stopped looking for jobs, and thus, by government reckoning, are not unemployed.) It seems to me to be setting us up for a recession beginning sometime next year or 2006 at the latest. It is hard to tell, because with the Fed artificially holding short term rates down, the most reliable predictor of recessions, an inverted yield curve, cannot be definition happen. (An inverted yield curve is when short terms rates rise above long term rates, and since WW2, has always been followed within four quarters by a recession.)