To: mishedlo who wrote (49423 ) 4/8/2006 4:18:01 PM From: shades Respond to Possible triggers for a recession next year, besides a miscalculation by the Fed, include an oil supply interruption, a precipitous drop in inflated home prices, or a crisis in foreign confidence that slowed the inflow of investment dollars the U.S. has come to depend on, driving long-term interest rates sharply higher. And the latest recession at the beginning of this decade was particularly tough on telecommunications and electronics companies - and on millions of investors who bought stocks in the speculative boom that preceded the bursting of the market bubble. "Technology today makes it more efficient to outsource many of the things done internally by traditional companies," he said, and those companies are saddled with legacy costs for health care and other employee and retiree benefits. cfr.org So, an FTA is a non-starter; and we have every reason to oppose, not merely an FTA with the US but also the one by the US with Pakistan unless the ’most-favoured nation’ concessions are made by the US in all products where Pakistan and India compete. In fact, if the US proceeds with the FTA with our sub-continental rivals in trade, we should accelerate the proposed signing of one with Japan which makes no demands for inclusion of trade-unrelated requirements and is keen on developing closer relations with us. We can also remind President Bush that we too can play the game of discrimination: their Boeing orders can be switched to Airbus, for example. In fact, the United States is being taught a good example on such tit-for-tat in Asia. Having pursued FTAs in South America, and also FTA for the Americas as a whole, the US is now being repaid in the same exclusionary coin by many Asian nations who would have the US excluded from their own emerging FTA arrangements.
