Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RJA_ who wrote (60602)	2/1/2010 6:33:45 PM
From: Secret_Agent_Man	Respond to of 220134

Citroen GT- youtube.com

To: RJA_ who wrote (60602)	2/1/2010 11:20:37 PM
From: energyplay	Respond to of 220134

I was thinking of the DS - en.wikipedia.org

To: RJA_ who wrote (60602)	2/3/2010 10:23:26 AM
From: elmatador	Respond to of 220134

How best to boost U.S. exports goal of doubling exports over the next five years. As always the professors follow what Elmat has been saying here for the last couple of years "transform the US in an export juggernaut" to pay for its imports of good and services. Either become export JUGGERNAUT or be Japanized. T.I.N.A There Is No Alternative Message 24267644 How best to boost U.S. exports By C. Fred Bergsten Wednesday, February 3, 2010 President Obama has smartly suggested that a new export strategy could support 2 million very good American jobs, more than created by his stimulus initiative. The United States already sells about $1.5 trillion worth of goods and services annually to the rest of the world, which creates about 10 million high-paying jobs. Every $1 billion of additional exports will produce about 7,000 very good jobs. Robust export expansion would also reduce our large trade deficits and resultant need to borrow abroad to finance them. USD plunge means US commodities exporter JUGGERNAUT. US economy will grow fall is arrested. Message 24410854 Last week the president suggested an ambitious but realistic goal of doubling exports over the next five years. An effective U.S. export strategy must focus on four variables: the exchange rate of the dollar, trade agreements, our own export controls and tax policy. First, the exchange rate. This is the most important factor in determining U.S. export competitiveness. Every increase of 1 percent in the dollar, averaged against other major currencies, reduces our exports by about $20 billion annually and destroys about 150,000 jobs. The recurrent overvaluations of the past 30 years, when the dollar became overpriced by 30 to 40 percent, contributed significantly to the decline in manufacturing jobs and was the major cause of the huge current account deficits of most of that period. The policy goal should be a competitive exchange rate that produces a sustainable trade balance, rather than a "strong dollar." This would help both sides of the trade account, strengthening the ability of U.S. firms and workers to compete with imports as well as to export. Fortunately, the decline of the dollar since 2002 has virtually restored equilibrium in its value against most other industrial countries' currencies. We do not want an undervalued rate, but it will be essential to avoid any renewed general rise of the dollar. The remaining large misalignment is the undervaluation of at least 25 percent of China's renminbi and the currencies of several important economies surrounding it (Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan). Correction of all the Asian undervaluations would cut the global U.S. deficit by about $100 billion and generate at least 700,000 jobs. If China continues to block any rise of the renminbi, the administration should label it a currency manipulator and escalate pressure, including by taking China to the World Trade Organization. Second, trade agreements. Such agreements increase U.S. imports, but virtually all of them substantially favor the United States in job terms because the partner countries maintain much higher trade barriers than we do. The most obvious cases are the pending free-trade agreements with Colombia and Panama, whose sales to the United States are already virtually free of duties but whose own tariffs limit our sales to them. Implementation of the Colombia agreement and the pending pact with Korea would save about 300,000 U.S. jobs, one recent study concluded. The administration should propose that Congress promptly pass all three agreements as part of its new jobs program. More broadly, major countries are busily signing trade agreements that exclude the United States. East Asia's large and rapidly growing countries are creating a regional bloc that will discriminate against our exports and will increasingly force U.S. companies to source their Asian sales from their Asian plants rather than from factories here. The European Union is working out preferential deals with Asian powerhouses, including India and South Korea. Obama has entered into negotiations for a Trans-Pacific Partnership with seven Asia Pacific nations, a group that could shortly expand to include a critical mass of countries in that region and eventually evolve into the Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific that President George W. Bush proposed in 2006. The administration should aim to conclude these talks when the United States hosts the annual summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in 2011. Third, address the disincentives to U.S. exports embodied in our own regulations. Export controls maintained for alleged national security and foreign policy purposes were choking off $25 billion to $40 billion of annual U.S. sales in the early 1990s and might be more substantial today. These restrictions are under review and, consistent with legitimate security concerns, their substantial liberalization should be part of Obama's initiative. Fourth, tax policy. At a minimum, the administration should abandon its plan to increase taxes on the overseas activities of U.S. firms because their foreign investments clearly increase U.S. exports. Several modest tax reforms could enhance our international competitiveness, including to attract direct investment here by foreign companies that would then access many of their global markets from the United States and create jobs here. The administration and Congress must avoid hurting U.S. competitiveness when they inevitably move to raise tax revenue substantially over the next few years to help curb the budget deficit. Increases in corporate income tax rates would jeopardize exports by raising U.S. production costs. By contrast, a value-added tax or national retail sales tax, or better yet a gasoline or carbon tax, could be fully rebated at the border on exports (and imposed at the border on imports) and thus avoid such harm. Positive export and job expansion would be fostered by replacing some or all of our current income tax system with these alternative devices. The writer is director of the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

To: RJA_ who wrote (60602)	8/19/2011 4:24:00 PM
From: elmatador	Respond to of 220134

West shows worrying signs of ‘Japanisation’ The big question for many investors these days is one that could scarcely have been thought about a few years ago: is the west turning into Japan? Either become export JUGGERNAUT or be JAPANIZED. T.I.N.A There Is No Alternative Message 24267644 West shows worrying signs of ‘Japanisation’ By Richard Milne The big question for many investors these days is one that could scarcely have been thought about a few years ago: is the west turning into Japan? The response to that will determine the future direction of western economies as well as of shares and bonds. To date, the tentative answer has been that the developed world is heading Japan’s way as government bonds have far outperformed equities. “This is looking like a Japan-style scenario. I am more nervous than I have ever been before about it,” says Sushil Wadhwani, founder of the eponymous hedge fund and a former member of the Bank of England’s rate-setting monetary policy committee. The most striking example of the “Japanisation” of countries such as the US, UK and Germany is in their benchmark borrowing costs. If you take 15 years off 10-year Treasury, gilt and Bund yields there is a remarkable similarity with Japan’s performance from 1988 to 1996. What happens next will be crucial. Since Japanese yields breached the 2 per cent barrier in 1996, they have never risen above it for any sustained period. In the most striking move of another brutal week for markets, US Treasury yields on Thursday fell below 2 per cent for the first time since 1950. But they have since recovered slightly to stand on Friday afternoon at 2.08 per cent. Many investors, however, believe they could fall further, with some targeting yields of 1.75 per cent. Believers of the west-is-turning-into-Japan argument point to several similarities. In both cases, large debt burdens mean sluggish growth after a stock market crash. Meanwhile, the political response to the troubles is confused and does little to alleviate the pain. “It is blatantly obvious that those comparisons are valid,” says Jeffrey Gundlach, chief executive of US fund manager DoubleLine. “[We have] over-indebtedness and banks with bad assets that they are not writing down because otherwise they would be insolvent. Instead, you try to grind it out on a multi-year horizon.” Andrew Milligan, head of global strategy at Standard Life Investments in Edinburgh, points to eight characteristics he feels contributed to Japan’s inexorable decline: stock market and property crashes; zombie banks; deflation; zero interest rates; political stalemate; poor demographics; and a high debt-to-GDP ratio. “In a very flippant way you can say the west has all of these components,” he says. But study any individual country closely and the comparisons become less clear. Take the US: it might tick the twin crashes boxes, political stalemate and zero rates but it doesn’t have deflation or declining population numbers. Others point to more fundamental differences. Jim Reid, a strategist at Deutsche Bank, notes that when Japan ran into trouble it was an isolated case in a rapidly growing world in the late 1990s. Now most of the western world is in the same boat together. That could be read as bad news as it means the drag on global growth will be stronger. “It is a difficulty. Japan had the backdrop of a strong world economy,” says Keith Wade, chief economist at Schroders, the UK fund manager. But it could also provide a possible, if controversial, way out as developed countries could simply print money en masse. Many investors believe western authorities will be more pre-emptive in policy terms than their Japanese counterparts, although there are deep worries about the efficacy of any measures such as quantitative easing. Mr Wadhwani believes that the stock market reaction to any future stimulus by the US Federal Reserve will be crucial. “How long the rally lasts will be dependent on if the economic data pick up. If they don’t, that would be like Japan and a very bearish signal,” he says. Already investors have had a taste this year of the topsy-turvy world experienced by Japan in the past 20 years where government bonds outperform equities. Japan’s two decades of low growth, deflation and rock-bottom interest rates prompted a marked shift in investor allocations in favour of government bonds even as Tokyo’s credit ratings were cut from triple A. Many long-term investors abandoned shares for bonds, leading to a much higher degree of domestic holding of debt than in the west. The Nikkei 225 index is still 75 per cent below its peak from 1989 while its 10-year bonds now yield 0.99 per cent. Hajime Takata, chief economist at Mizuho Research Institute, says the introduction of new capital regulations for banks and insurers in Europe and the US will lead to similar asset allocation shifts. “These new rules will exacerbate the Japanisation,” he says. Additional reporting by Lindsay Whipp in Tokyo and Nicole Bullock in New York