The good news is, and the bad news is:

We have Chinese cars efor sale.. at about 20% if not 30% cheaper than the norm..

Big sales ??? Yeah right..

Chines sales are in the same position as Japanese in the seventies..

Of course they will be faster as all things are today..

Not tomorrow .. The day after is when they will be ok..

Put your money into BYD today as Buffet has ??..

 

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Err... do you not understand that "consumption" includes the purchase of things like, say, cars and computers and appliances and so on? Things that not only "have value" years later, but are frequently means of generating more of such?

About 50% of China's GDP is investment, if that's what you mean. Not sure how you get the 2/3 figure unless you're saying that everything that isn't consumption is "long term value creation." Except I don't see how exports would qualify for that.

And said investment is only "long term value creation" if the loans made actually turn out to be productive. Which many of them do not - it isn't really possible to put half of your entire economy into investments in fixed assets, and expect them all to pay off handsomely. Hence, the brand-new ghost towns and empty mega-malls, the repeated transfers of loads of non-performing loans from the commercial banks back into government holding tanks, the speculative real estate bubble, the export enterprises whose margin is substantially below the currency manipulation margin, etc. This kind of insane level of investment is great for papering over slumps in external demand for a few years (and reinforcing authoritarian control of the system), but in the long run most of it is less useful than consumption spending - it just buys you idle production, empty housing and a banking system clogged with toxic waste.

This whole line of revision is basically crankery. There's a reason that no economist accounts such things in the way you suggest.

So the statement you wish to advance, then, is not "no nation can survive >90% debt-to-gdp" but rather "no government can survive > 90% external-debt-to-gdp." Okay.

Now, are you talking about external public debt? Or all external debt? Because for the USA, the former is only about 1/3 of GDP.

Also, are you talking about the gross external (public?) debt, or the net external debt position? Those being very different things as well.

Well, if 45% of GDP is "little" then okay...

I'll point out here that this exact same analysis applies directly to mainland China. Which is not surprising, given that what they've pursued is the exact same development strategy as Japan, just on a bigger scale. And, like Japan, they'll soon find out that you can't over-invest indefinitely without engendering a crisis of overcapacity and non-performing loans (especially, when you're tilting into demographic decline).

Err... not sure what you're talking about there. The data I've seen on the composition of Brazil's auto market features a bunch of European, American, Japanese and Korean brands, with Chinese brands barely even making a dent (<1% market share). The only ones selling better than the American brands, are European brands.

Maybe you're talking about something else? Like where the cars are assembled, or comparing imports of finished Chinese cars to imports of finished US cars (most of the US brand cars sold in Brazil being assembled there, after all)? Or, what?

 

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Quad: Rather than reply specifically point by point I’ll just clarify my POV and answer your questions:

I agree economist do not measure GDP as I think it should be and yes some parts of consumption, like your new car or computer, do have lasting value, but much of the consumption included in the US’s GDP has none. Most economist do agree that US GDP, as they measure it is consumption. I am sure you have read dozens of times that the US economy (or GDP) is 2/3 based on consumption (or Joe American’s spending as I state when pointing out that GWB's reduction of Joe's purchasing power is why GWB had two recession.) But do you not agree, to take my prior example that the cost of tickets to last week’s NFL ball game,etc. is not the same contribution to US’s GDP as the cost of a new wind farm. Etc.?

I would suggest that all costs, like haircuts, tickets to events, even movies, etc. that hardly anyone even remembers when they happened less than year later and certainly have no market value a year later, should never have been counted it the GDP. Thus I would recommend cost on items that have their original market value Y years latter get counted by the factor Y/10 but Y< 10. I.e. calculate GDP by:

GDP = 0.1 x C1 + 0.2 x C2 + … + 0.8 x C8 +0.9 x C9 + C10 where Cx is the initial cost of items (spent in the year the GDP is being calculated for) with expected useful life of x years. C10 is the cost of all items that last for 10 or more years. That makes cost of restaurant meal not count equally with new road or repaired bridge cost. What is currently done, treating these cost equally, is IMHO, silly beyond words.

You are free to call it: “This whole line of revision is basically crankery."
And to point out that: “There's a reason that no economist accounts such things in the way you suggest.”
But I do not agree with your POV and would like to know the "reason" you refer to.

Now to address your questions:

Yes by “external debt” I refer to the net external debt of both public and private borrowers. In the case of China I suspect this net debt is negative. And in the case of USA, I suspect this net debt is not much smaller than the total debt the US owes, but I am just guessing. Please correct my guesses if significantly wrong.

Yes, by "Brazil imports more cars from China than the US" * – I meant exactly that. I am not stating the GM, Ford, etc sell few cars in Brazil. They with Fiat and VW dominate the local market. China’s sales are growing so much that they will build a production plant here too, like these other “foreign” makers have. I put “foreign” in quotes as much of the cars is of local design – Flex fuel and LNG, especially for taxis

Now I’ll ask you a question:
If Japan’s debt is only 45% held by Japanese, (including the Japanese banks, the Japanese “FED,” The Central Banks, etc. of course) who is main holder of the 55%?

------------
*I am however just quoting what I recently read in a financial newspaper. If China does build a plant here, that may no longer be true - They may now just be testing the depth of the local market for Chinese cars before building their factory.

 

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I have not given you your just credit for known what the fuck your talking about . I think you do and the things that chap my behind are hidden right there in your post response . Like Yeah Ditto !!

 

I don't understand how you exclude markets ? That was whacked . I would for any reality checking include all markets . Are you throwing out Vegas, or the big 3 all together . I think we keep pretty good tabs on Disney as a financial institution . O.K. You know I get confused at funny math .

Housing is tied intimately to the economy . I know some don't want to give the industry its just do and I seen the math that shows it is not that big a contributor . Bogus weed is all I got to say.

 

The thing is that what you seem to want to measure, is not "Gross Domestic Production." But rather, something more like "Gross Domestic Investment." Which is exactly one of the standard components of GDP.

If you want to talk about investment, then just talk about investment. There's no need to reinvent GDP in order to make it look like investment. We already have measures of investment, accounted exactly because they're an important component of GDP.

The only reason I can discern for you doing this, is rhetorical: you have a bunch of assertions about how debt relates to GDP on the one hand, and the fact that China (a developing country) has a larger investment share of GDP than the USA (a developed country), and you want to add the two together to make an exaggerated point about American debt. This is dishonest; first because it pretends that investment is the only meaningful part of GDP, and second because it conflates differences between developing and developed countries with differences in their ability to service debt.

Sure. They also agree that this is a good thing, and that China should strive to drastically increase consumption as a share of GDP.

No, I do not agree. Production is production, whether you're producing a cheeseburger or a fixed asset. And that's what GDP measures.

If you want to talk about investment specifically, then talk about investment specifically. Stop trying to make GDP mean something other than what it does. "Production" is just that. It doesn't refer only to the production of fixed assets.

Moreover, I reject the industrialist position that investment is necessarily valuable and desireable and should be maximized (as a share of GDP) while consumption is not. They are both necessary, valuable aspects of an economy. Absent a lot of consumption, there is insufficient final demand to fuel the usage of the infrastructure that your investment gets you - you end up with empty mega-malls, vacant highrise apartment complexes, idling steel plants, etc., just as China is discovering in the wake of its recent investment glut. That is not "productive." It's a bunch of bridges to nowhere, and it demands exactly that China drastically reverse its over-investment, in favor of increased consumption, or face nasty consequences.

Investment is of course also important. But it is not appropriate to compare levels of investment between developing countries and developed ones. A developing country needs to devote a large share of its economy to building up new infrastructure (hence, "developing") while a developed country only needs to replace existing infrastructure as it breaks down, or occasionally invest in new technologies. Note that this does not imply that investment spending in developed countries is small in absolute terms (investment in China is similar to that in the USA, in ER terms) - but rather that the level of consumption that a developed country can support is vastly larger than what a developing country can support, and so dominates GDP on a percentage basis.

Why not? Were those things not "produced?" Did people not freely exchange money for them? What, exactly, is it that you are trying to measure here? Because it is not "production." You should be excluding agriculture from GDP, under this sort of reasoning.

What you are suggesting is something along the lines that things get accounted into GDP on a net-present-value basis (excluding this arbitrary suggestion that things which last two years are therefor twice as valuable as things that last one year, and so on).

What you don't seem to get, is that this is essentially how it already works. The prices paid for goods, services, and fixed assets (which is what gets rolled into GDP) will all basically converge to something like net present value, at least in a free market. And the net present value of a non-durable item, is exactly its present value, while that of durable goods and fixed assets reflects expected future productivity. People already pay more for cars that they expect to last longer, in exact accordance with the actual value of that longevity (as opposed to your arbitrary linear dependence on time), so we can simply use the prices actually paid directly, and completely capture this effect in a more accurate, elegant way than your suggestion (which would actually exaggerate and distort the future-expected-value information already present in the market valuations).

As I've said, you overestimate the inherent value of investment spending (especially, in cases where it is suspiciously high as a percentage of GDP), and underestimate the inherent value of consumption spending. You are also trying to redefine clear-cut terms without any defensible rationale - "production" gets turned into "investment," we're supposed to think that product life and productive value aren't already factored into market prices, etc.

Then you shouldn't have been throwing around the gross external debt numbers - the net external debt (better known as the Net International Investment Position) of the USA is around -17% of GDP. Nowhere near the -90% level you've been warning against.

Correct. Also the case in various other places (Germany, Russia, Switzerland, Japan, etc.).

It's radically smaller. Americans (and their government) own all kinds of foreign assets. A few minutes on Wikipedia would clear all of this up for you.

Except that isn't what you wrote. You didn't use the word "import."

So your point about American companies losing out on the auto market share in Brazil - you admit that it was inaccurate and misleading?

Those designs are foreign-owned, wherever they may have come from, and so that question is irrelevant to the profitability of the companies in question.

No, what I said was that Japan's external debt is 45% of its GDP. Since Japan's total public debt is like 225% of GDP, that would imply that something like 80% of it is owned by Japanese entities.

Again, it would be 20% - and I'm not sure, offhand. I'd expect that American entities probably hold a decent amount.

 

I agree; however, GDP is often assumed to measure the relative strength of a nation. It is that "miss-use" of GDP that is my real objection. That is why, so long as GDP is used as an index of a nation's strength that I want to change how it is calculated to more accurately reflect the nation's strength.

I think nations that produces mainly things of no lasting value, domestic consumption things that cannot be exported, like NFL ball games, rock concerts, etc. is weaker than one which makes tangible items which other nations want. Possibly the US could have a large GDP by having half the workers dig holes and half of the workers fill them in? I see little difference between this silliness and for example, to name just one of a million similar trades of consumption service that dominate the US's GDP, the barber using his day's earnings to enjoy a fine restaurant meal. In both cases, a month later there has been no increase in the strength of the nation. The US is so focused on consumption, that it does not adequately maintain its essential infrastructure. For example, NYC gets most of its drinking water via 100+ year old leaking pipes running along the Hudson River. - A disaster just waiting to happen

True I did not use the word "import" originally. I said:
"The US is losing market share. For example, Brazil now buys more cars from China than the US and a decade ago bought none from China."

Clearly if Brazil is getting more of X from nation N, then it obviously Brazil is importing X from nation N, so my failure to specifically say X is "importing" from N is an unimportant quibble.

No I don't admit that. My point was focused on the loss of "market share." I only used cars as an example. My point is that as the US loses market share (in Brazil or any foreign country) the US is losing export related jobs it once had.

Too many out of work is the central problem the US has. If all who wanted jobs, had productive ones making items the world wants to buy (not just jobs satisfying domestic consumption like cutting each other's hair, or making NFL games, etc.) then perhaps the growing debt need not destroy the US, but I see no hope of that so long as you and many others think that making Big Macs (to eat) is just as valuable as making Big Macs (the heavy trucks) that can be exported.

 

First of all, that's weasal words.

Second of all, there's nothing particularly objectionable about that, provided "strength" is understood to refer to "production." If you want to talk about something other than "production," then by all means do so. And stop complaining that nobody else wants to call it "production."

Investment spending isn't the sum total of "national strength" by any sensible rationale that I can see. Any sensible measure of "national strength" should include a bunch of other stuff - production, military spending, human capital, level of development, political stability, etc. etc. etc. There's the old adage that an army marches on its stomach - food production (the most consumable of all consumption production) has long been a key strategic aspect of national strength, and looks to remain so well into the future.

You're wrong. A quick glance at the world order should be sufficient to demonstrate this.

Nope. Nothing of value gets produced that way, so who is going to pay for any of that? Are you just being silly?

Again, you seem to mean "strength" to mean some kind of purely industrialist measure. Which is dated and wrong. It's important to a nation that people's hair is cut, and nice dining experiences available. That's why people pay money for those things, in a free market system.

It's also really, really important to national strength that one doesn't over-invest in production. A big mass of, say, idle steel plants - and non-performing loans that financed them - will take a major bite out of any nation's strength.

Also wrong.

All industrial infrastructure is a disaster waiting to happen - witness recent events in Japan, or the high-speed train wrecks in China, etc.

So, you miss the point, which is that said disasters are more than balanced out by the benefits provided during the non-disaster times. NYC has been enjoying safe, clean, cheap drinking water for decades - an almost incalculable benefit. And it's not like plenty of money hasn't been (or isn't being) invested to maintain and improve said system. There is, again, the distinct issues faced by a developed country - that you need to wring as much utility as possible out of existing infrastructure before investing in replacements.

Meanwhile, China is so focussed on investment that it is quickly poisoning vast swaths of its fresh water supplies in the mad rush for ever-more industrial infrastructure. According to the World Bank:

-More than half of China’s 660 cities suffer from water shortages, affecting 160 million people.
-The per capita water volume in China is one fourth of the world average.
-90% of cities’ groundwater and 75% of rivers and lakes are polluted.
-As a result of widespread water pollution, 700 million people drink contaminated water every day.
-Waterborne diseases have created a rising number of premature deaths.
-Between November 2005 and January 2006, three large-scale incidents occurred, halting water supply for millions of people.

Does that sound like "national strength" to you?

No, that is emphatically not obvious in the context of an auto market featuring a bunch of foreign companies who built factories in Brazil, and in the context of a discussion about the profitability of said companies as such (rather than their export performance). I'll also note that you frequently use the same verbiage to refer to other non-import scenarios (cars sales in China, also with manufacturing there, for example).

How about you quit worming around and just suck it up and admit you blew it on this one? Next time, try providing a source - then there'll be some actual data, and people can figure out what is and is not being referred to (despite your sloppy wordings).

Except you didn't cite an example that featured a US company losing market share, nor one that featured "export-related jobs." You cited an example of a market where the USA is very strong (and China almost non-existent), and not doing "exports" because the production has been offshored to the target market.

Why? What difference does it make, provided the unemployment rate were to come down? Does the tax revenue from a resteraunteur somehow pay less bills than the same amount of tax revenue from a machine shop?

A Mack truck sells for maybe $100,000. A Big Mac costs maybe $4. That means you can feed 25,000 people a meal for the price of one Mack truck. Can you explain why this is wrong? Exactly how many people's worth of meals, should a truck be valued at? 250,000? 2.5 Million? And how is it that the free market gets this so wrong? A cultural defect in the American psyche, apparently, that causes them to over-pay for cheeseburgers by vast margins? In which other countries can we observe a different relative valuation of lunch vs. trucks, if this is supposed to be culturally specific?

Meanwhile, you seem to neglect the huge sums of money that Americans are making - in foreign markets - exactly by selling Big Macs. That money is just as good for paying taxes and debts, as revenue from auto exports, no? In fact, most foreign countries pay a higher price for a Big Mac, than Americans do - indicating that Americans value Big Macs less than others.

Meanwhile, according to your logic, petrostates should have really terrible problems paying their debts, because they produce almost nothing except for goods that are meant to be consumed (in the most literal sense - actually burned) in short order. And yet, you'll find that most of them are creditor nations. How do you account for that?

 

A couple points and questions:

Correct if I'm wrong but say there were companies in the US being paid to dig holes and other companies being paid to fill them. Wouldn't the income from their operations be counted in the US GDP. I'm talking about strict mathematical calculations here, not our individual perception on the value of digging and filling holes.

I could just as easily point out industrial revolution era Britain and the US, both with major health problems. IMO, these are "growing pains" a country takes during modernization and not really indicative of strength or weakness.

This is true, but the problem we are facing now is that these "American" companies aren't patriotic at all. They don't pay a lot of taxes and most of their workers are foreign (i.e. in China, India, etc.) Only the top brass are located in the States and I don't think they have enough positions for the millions of unemployed. I can just as easily see these companies ditch their US headquarters and move to other countries should the US raise tax rates. i.e. There's nothing American about many of these companies.

 

You are absolutely and historically correct. ALL nations that convert from marginal agriculture (small family farms) to industrialized giants of urbanites living in million plus cities go thru a phase where they are terrible polluters of the air and water. China is no exception.

When I was young boy, my father took me with him to Pittsburg, to see: "The steel capital of the world."{1} I saw long lines of brick coking ovens converting the good anthracite coal into coke (and air pollution smog) and a blast furnace in operation but when we went to where the Allegheny River join with the Monongahela River to form the Ohio River, a triangular point of land later called the "Golden Triangle Point Park," I could not see across the wide street as there was no wind to blow the smog away. Everything on the other side of the street, less than 35 yards away, had disappeared in the thick smog. Here is what that area looks like now that the steel industry is gone:

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Also now that H2SO4, etc. is not dumped into the rivers, fish swim in them again.

In London, houses were heated with coal {2} even before coal powered the industrial revolution; evolutionary selection transformed a white moth into a black one as everything was covered with black dust and /or soot. - This did reverse about 250 years later when coal heating was replaced and the industrial revolution cleaned up its act.

Filling starving bellies always has a higher priority than keeping air and water clean in early stages of great advances in GDP. China has closed approximately 10,000 coal mines {3} and now is building >112 "super-critical steam" coal fire power plants,{4} which get nearly 50% conversion of coal’s chemical energy into KWHs. {5} China has more than 400 new nuclear plants in the budget of this and next 5 year plan. {6} China was a late starter in "going green" (except for hydro-power); but now is ahead of schedule on a wind farm that will be 25 times larger than any in the US {7} and already leads the world, with capacity still doubling every year. {8} China will have more than 11% of its electric power from non-nuclear green source by 2015! World's largest maker of wind machine has closed it five plants in Denmark and open more than five in China, whose entire production will be installed only in China. In addition three others of the 10 largest wind generator makers in the world are Chinese companies! China will soon be the "greenest energy country" in the world with a "smart grid" and more PV + Wind generation than the rest of the world’s total!. Because of US's financial problems Congress has not passed the subsidies for wind that were expected and the rate of wind machine installation is now down more than 50% from last year. China already makes more than half of all the world's large wind machine and 48% (by power capacity) of the world's PV cells - more than half in 2011 but does not lead in solar-thermal power generation, at least not for few years, yet.

Yes, many companies are expanding in China, selling more there than in the US and paying taxes there (I think more than in the US)

Several years ago, I suggested a drastic revision in the US tax law. Income was income - did not come in 45 differently taxed "flavors." Corporations paid zero taxes, but had to distribute their profits to taxpaying citizens in less than 10 years (They need to be able to retain working capital) or else send 100% of the profit (and interest earned on it) made 10 years earlier to the IRS.
My tax plan had progressive rates and an annually set multiplying factor that in peace time made the total collected revenue little greater than the total expenses in the budget. (A "pay as you go" system, except in war time.) It is so simple that my tax law fits on a 3by5 inch index card (but the definitions and examples do occupy both sides of an 8x11.5 inch sheet of paper).

I think a zero corporate rate will bring jobs back to the US, but my motivation for writing this 3x5 card tax law was to get taxes back to their proper role in society - raising revenue, not supporting 10,000 special interest groups whose lobbyist got special sections written into the tax code for their benefit.
Read full details here:
http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=1792841&postcount=1

A secondary objective was to put armies of tax law leaches out of business. No jobs for tax lawyers at corporations and simple 6-grade math does your taxes!


References:
{1} “Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, The former steel capital of the world is indeed a city on the move. …” From: http://healthcaretraveler.modernmedicine.com/healthcaretraveler/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=154535

{2} London had more than 1000, full time chimmey sweep in a strong union and many “independents” - http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sour...04ibBw&usg=AFQjCNG0xsQfaREjRErjXeW1w5fEicaytA {Many of them died of directly related cancers.}

{3} China closed 7,000 or its 24,000 coal mine, mainly for safety reasons – From BBC report now 6 years old here - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/4199648.stm Also last year China started to enforce pollution controls at all it Rare Earth mines, including the storage facilities for the radioactive water (after a dam retaining it broke – making a valley radioactive). The US’s mine in California, now re-opening as MolyCorp, was also closed for years after more than one large spill of radioactive water.

{4} “…Since 2004, China has begun construction on 112 ultra-super critical 1000 megawatt units and put 20 into operation, according to Siemens, which claims more than half the generator market. China derived over 68% of its power production needs from coal in 2009 and is unlikely to pull the rate below 60% in coming years, despite massive deployment of alternatives, according to Siemens. … and
{5} It now boasts to be the most efficient plant in its class world-wide …achieving a peak 46.3% efficiency rate last year.”
... {4} &{5} Both from: http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2010/03/10/behind-a-power-plants-efficiency-drive/

{6} In 2011,14 reactors are operational and 27 are under construction to raise the percentage of China's electricity produced by nuclear power from the current 1% to 6% by 2020 (US, which started 40 years erlier, has 20% of its electric generation nuclear but has zero new plant for 30+ years). China is also involved / participating in the ITER project, and has its own independent fusion effort known as EAST located in Hefei, as well as research into the thorium fuel cycle. From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_the_People's_Republic_of_China

{7} Gansu Wind Farm is one of six national wind power megaprojects approved by theChinese government. It is expected to grow to 20,000megawatts by 2020, at an estimated cost of 120 billion Chinese yuan ($17.5 billion). … As of November 2010 the installed capacity is 5,160 MW (on schedule and already is six times larger than any in the US) From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gansu_Wind_Farm

{8} China’s wind power industry is expected to grow to mammoth proportions and already leads the world (in total installed capacity, not per GDP or per capita wind power capacity). In 1010, China added 18,928 MW of wind power capacity while the U.S. added 5,115 MW. In total, China has 44,733 MW installed, while the U.S. has 40,180 MW installed. {Billy T notes that in 2011 the US will install less than half what it did in 2010 due to budget problems and Congress not passing the subsidy bill as expected.} From: http://cleantechnica.com/2011/06/01/china-wind-power-blowing-up-in-2011-as-expected/

 

Following is "good news" for Brazil & China but "bad news" for US auto makers:

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China Daily may no longer upload photo of car (and good looking lady by it - go to link below to see both if not showing here.)

“…Chery Automobile Co, China's biggest auto exporter, {expects} to triple its market share by 2015, said Luis Curi, the chief executive officer of the Brazilian unit. … after production begins at a $400 million factory the company is building in Jacarei, in Sao Paulo state.

{Chery} expects to sell about 30,000 vehicles in Brazil this year. The new plant, scheduled to start production in the second half of 2013, would add capacity to make between 150,000 and 170,000 cars annually, ...

"The Chinese market already guarantees Chery its profitability, so here in Brazil we're at the stage of buying market, working with insignificant profit margins," Curi said. "For the next 10 years we don't see, we don't expect, a financial return. These will be 10 years of investment.
The profit margins come only after that." ..." From: http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/business/2011-08/20/content_13156299.htm

Billy T comment:
Jacrei (which means alligator) is on the main Rio - Sao Paulo highway. Both Ford and GM have large car plants nearby and many smaller auto industry plants are there too. (All legally in Jacarei as Brazilian cities typically adjoin – there is no county level of governments.) If Chery does sell a fine, lower cost car, for a decade at no profit, Chery’s local alligator probably will eat Ford and GM’s lunch, and when Cheri expands its Jacarei plant, offer jobs to the workers of the nearby Ford & GM plants as they shrink their production.

More quotes from above ChinaDaily link:
"The Brazilian market share of Chinese automakers has expanded to 3.29 percent this month, from virtually zero in April 2010, according to data from the national car dealers association known as Fenabrave.

Chery was the first of the new wave of Chinese car manufacturers to set foot in Brazil, in May 2010, and was followed by Chongqing Lifan Auto Co in December and Anhui Jianghuai Automobile Co's JAC Motors in March.

Chery has 82 dealers in Brazil, Curi said, and expects to boost the number to 150 next year. The company foresees sales of between 30,000 and 35,000 cars in 2012. Chery increased its market share to 1.1 percent in mid-August from 0.15 percent in May 2010, according to Fenabrave. In 10 years there will be significant changes in the top ranking of automakers in Brazil, Curi said. By then, Chery expects to have reached enough production momentum to scale down costs, improve margins and attain its goal of being among the top five automobile companies in the country. ..."

 

The Bad News Continues For Housing,The Worst States Where No One Wants To Buy A New Home. August 21,2011:




1. Rhode Island
Building permits/total housing units: 0.07%
Decline in building permits (2005-2011): -70.81% (22nd largest)
Building permits 2011 YTD: 312
Total housing units: 463,388

Foreclosure filings increased 4% in Rhode Island from the first six months of 2010 to the first six months of 2011, according to RealtyTrac. Foreclosures dropped by 29% for that same period on the national level. Rhode Island home sales decreased 20% from one year ago in the second-quarter, according to the Rhode Island Association of Realtors. Additionally, median home prices have dropped 2%. These numbers indicate that Rhode Island's housing market is not recovering at the same pace as the majority of the country. For the first six months of this year, the state has issued a mere 312 building permits, the smallest number in the country.

2. West Virginia
Building permits/total housing units: 0.09%
Decline in building permits (2005-2011): -72.71% (17th largest)
Building permits 2011 YTD: 774
Total housing units: 881,917

West Virginia's decline in building permits has slowed to almost a crawl. In the first six months of 2005, the state issued almost 3,000 permits. For the first half of 2011, that amount decreased to 774. If every permit were to result in a new housing structure, those homes would represent less than 0.1% of the total housing units in the state. Despite all this, construction is one area that is benefiting the state. According to the organization, WorkForce West Virginia, 700 construction jobs were added in-state this past July — the largest amount of jobs added in the private sector.

3. Illinois
Building permits/total housing units: 0.09%
Decline in building permits (2005-2011): -84.18% (3rd largest)
Building permits 2011 YTD: 4,897
Total housing units: 5,296,715

Illinois has seen an almost 85% decrease in new housing permits since 2005. This is the third largest drop in the country. There are a number of initiatives being made across the state to improve the housing markets. In Chicago, for instance, Mayor Emanuel has made a number of changes to increase the speed with which building permits are issued. Additionally, a “Micro-Market Recovery Program has been introduced to slow the city's foreclosure rate.

4. Michigan
Building permits/total housing units: 0.09
Decline in building permits (2005-2011): -82.19% (7th largest)
Building permits 2011 YTD: 4,250
Total housing units: 4,532,233

Michigan is one of the states that has suffered the most from the recession. The state's unemployment rate peaked around 15% in 2010. It is now at 10.5%, which is still significantlyhigher than the national average of 9.2%. The state has a vacancy rate of just under 15%, which is one of the highest in the country. New building permits have also decreased by over 80% since 2005, also one of the highest rates in the country. The state may now be more focused on tearing down old buildings than building new ones.

5. Connecticut
Building permits/total housing units: 0.09%
Decline in building permits(2005-2011): -74.06% (14th largest)
Building permits 2011 YTD: 1,403
Total housing units: 1,487,891

Connecticut has had one of the greatest declines in the number of new building permits in the country. This trend saw a small turnaround in June — the first monthly year-over-year gain in 2011 in new construction, according to the Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development. However, the Hartford Courant reports that for the first six months of the year, residential construction was down 30 percent compared with the same period in 2010. June was also the first increase in home construction in five years.

6. Ohio
Building permits/total housing units: 0.12%
Decline in building permits (2005-2011): -76.61% (12th largest)
Building permits 2011 YTD: 6,184
Total housing units: 5,127,508

Ohio has suffered, and continues to suffer, greatly from the housing crisis. Over 8,000 homes were foreclosed in July 2011, the ninth-largest amount in the country, according to real estate company RealtyTrac. With such a high foreclosure rate, currently at one in every 608 housing units, housing is already too inexpensive for people to want to build. Ohio has therefore had one of the greatest decreases in building permits in the country over the past six years. Median existing home sales are also down in many areas of the state, according to data from the National Association of Realtors. In Toledo, prices are down 17% from one year ago, the third largest rate in the country.

7. Massachusetts
Building permits/total housing units: 0.12%
Decline in building permits (2005-2011): 69.55% (24th smallest)
Building permits 2011 YTD: 3,402
Total housing units: 2,808,254

Despite having a healthy economy compared to much of the country, Massachusetts' housing market is beginning to face serious troubles. In June 2011, sales of single-family homes in the state decreased 23.5% from the year before, reaching the lowest level since 1991, according to the Warren Group, a New England real estate research firm. With so few home sales, it follows that not many new homes are being built. Year-to-date, building permits for 2011 are about one quarter of what they were in 2005.

8. New York
Building permits/total housing units: 0.14%
Decline in building permits (2005-2011): -61.85% (12th smallest)
Building permits 2011 YTD: 11,033
Total housing units: 8,108,103

New York State's housing market is among the largest in the country. As a result, the number of permits is minuscule when compared to the state's total housing units. Although new home sales decreased in the first half of 2011 from 2010, the number of permits actually increased slightly during that period, from 10,189 in 2010. This is significantly lower than 2005's 28,921 permits.

9. Maine
Building permits/total housing units: 0.14%
Decline in building permits (2005-2011): -77.09% (11th largest)
Building permits 2011 YTD: 1,000
Total housing units: 721,830

Maine has seen one of the largest decreases in building permits in the past six years. This is not surprising as home sales in general declined substantially. Home sales for June 2011 decreased 21.39% from June 2010, according to the Maine Association of Realtors. The state's median sales price also decreased 1.37% over this same period. According to numbers from the Census Bureau, Maine has the highest vacancy rate in the country, reaching 22.8% in 2010. However, this number also includes empty vacation houses.

10. Pennsylvania
Building permits/total housing units: 0.15%
Decline in building permits (2005-2011): -60.29% (11th smallest)
Building permits 2011 YTD: 8,136
Total housing units: 5,567,315

At the beginning of 2011, a number of new, restrictive building codes went into effect in Pennsylvania. This caused a rush among builders to secure permits, with housing permits increasing a massive 117.8% between November and December 2010, according to the Philadelphia Federal Reserve. The state's housing market has not been doing well since. Permits issued from January to June 2011 fell 16% compared to the same six-month period one year earlier. The national average for permits issued in the first six months of 2011 compared to the first six months of 2011 is a decrease of 6%




http://tinyurl.com/3ud4av2

 

Good news for the economy and >95% of tax payers.
Bad news for the most wealthy and the "No new taxes" Republicans (See end of post.) in the US:

"President Barack Obama will propose a new levy on U.S. taxpayers making more than $1 million to help trim the nation’s debt, adopting a suggestion from billionaire investor Warren Buffett, according to an administration official.
The tax will be among recommendations the president makes to a special congressional committee charged with finding ways to cut $1.5 trillion from the nation’s long-term deficit, according to the official who wasn’t authorized to speak on the record. Obama is set to unveil his deficit-cutting proposals tomorrow.

The president hasn’t settled on the top earners’ new minimum tax rate, which is designed to make sure the wealthiest taxpayers don’t pay a lower effective rate than middle-income earners, the official said. Obama has already proposed limiting some deductions for those in the highest income brackets, taxing carried interest as regular income and ending breaks for gas and oil companies to pay for a $447 billion jobs package. ..."

From yesterday's NY Times but quoted on line here today: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-...t-buffett-idea-for-new-tax-on-mega-rich-.html

Here is why "taxing the very rich" is also good politics for the Democrates and bad news for the Republicans:
"... The typical U.S. family got poorer during the past 10 years due to a decade-long income decline. Median household income fell to $49,995 last year, and is now 7% below where it was in 2000. The number of people living in poverty has risen to 15.1%, the highest level since the U.S. Census began tracking this information in 1959. ..."

Billy T notes: that 7% drop is nominal - as far as what typical Joe American can buy, his purchasing power is down by more than 10%. Or even worse if he is buying food - then he is down more than 20% in part because 1/3 of US's corn now makes alcohol, instead of feeding pigs and chickens!

Joe is angry and he is not going to take it any more. - He will not stand by while the super rich have nearly twice the purchasing power they had in 2000 and his kids are reduced to "franks and beans" twice a week as their only protein.

 

The good news is layoffs in the Pharma industry are slowing:

"...Last year, pharma eliminated 53,636 jobs, down from 61,109 in 2009, when annual layoffs peaked. So far this year, pharma layoffs have totaled 19,076, and this includes the 13,000 job cuts planned by Merck, which is actually eyeing many foreign positions, therefore, swelling the latest tally. ..." From: http://www.pharmalot.com/2011/10/so-many-jobs-are-gone-pharma-layoffs-dwindle/

The bad news is that is because 133,820 have been sacked in less than three years, the industry is no longer big enough (at least not in the US) to keep laying employees off at that high rate.

More from same link (on Asia's growth in this industry too):

"...The real issue is the extent to which industry investment is being made in the US as compared with overseas. As more facilities for research and production are purchased, opened and expanded elsewhere - notably, Asia - the demand for pharma people in the US is likely to remain under pressure. ..."

 

. . . the good news is . . I'm reading Scifrums for new ideas/discussion . . .
. . . the bad news (for you!) is . . . many of you folks are reading my posts!

 

The Good News is : The Government will step in and fix it. The Bad News is : The Government will step in and fix it.

 

Normally that is true, but until the next election of POTUS, the Republicans will block any Democratic efforts that might "fit it" - For example Obama's Jobs bill (even just the part which will reduce the layoff of teachers and firemen!) They, like most out of control of the government, believe: "The Worse things get, the Better"(for their election chances).

 

The bad news:
The social security fund program serving 44 million Americans will drain its trust fund by 2035 — three years earlier than previous estimates.

The good news is I will be dead by then.

But there may be bad news for me too:
Social Security’s disability program will exhaust its trust fund in 2016.
Medicare will dry up in 2024.

When these funds go dry the SS & medicare become a increase of government costs, not the current source of funds to borrow from.

 

The good news is that the many benefits of extended breast feeding babies (even one year olds, etc.) are now more widely known:

"... The percentage of babies exclusively breastfed at three months rose to 35% in 2008 from 30.5% in 2004. However, those rates drop precipitously over the ensuing months of a baby’s life as mothers return to the workplace following maternity leave, with just 14.8% of babies exclusively breastfed at six months. ..."
From: http://www.moneyshow.com/investing/article/1/tptp062112-28253/The-Essential-Baby-Boomer-Stock/

The bad news is that more new mothers now must work, often several part time jobs, to keep the family economical solvent. This data only goes thru 2008. (The "great recession" started in last quarter of 2008.)

Billy T is guessing that after three months the fraction breast feeding may be only 10% for those still going out to seek a job, but may be above 20% for those no longer looking for work. Breast feeding is cheaper than formula cans as well as more healthy for baby.

 

Nothing in your post, nor in the material it linked to, substantiates that assertion. There was nothing about "several part time jobs," nor anything about motivations "to keep the family economical solvent." The only statement I could find said that women in both developing and developed countries are "increasingly" returning to work after childbirth (italics mine). In fact, the linked article is generally positive on this fact, since they attribute it to the growth of the middle class (i.e., the women not returning to work, or not working in the first place, are not middle class mothers being supported by their husband's income - they're poor).