Reply #10: Please don't offer me the kool aid; I'm not thirsty.

[arendt]

You say two things:

1. The US is an attractive place to invest. It's become a lot cheaper for foreign investors because of the weak dollar.

2. The problem in the US is more one of income distribution and wages for the bottom half of workers.

But, this is the heart of the problem. They have turned the U.S. into just another third world country (i.e., a place with labor rules that brutal capitalists like). They have done this via a twenty-year long, succesful "Eastern Airlines bankruptcy maneuver" on the whole U.S. economy. By shipping U.S. jobs overseas, where our wage and environmental laws don't apply, they were able to lower prices and drive our home industries into the ground (close the factories, declare "bankruptcy" within the U.S.). Then they came back and offered our workers the same shitty deal they already extracted from the Chinese workers. Same job as before, but for much lower wages and benefits. They used Chinese labor as scabs for all the good jobs in America.

So, I agree its about income distribution. But, that is the effect and not the cause. BTW, I notice your last graph ends in 2004 (well before the current real-estate bubble showed problems), and its mostly about acquisition, not growth.

-----

You say: "New models are really needed to evaluate the new economy".

I say this is BS. The new economy is a Ponzi scheme, like every "new economy" since the 1920s. It is all about financial manipulation. How can ANYONE evaluate an economy where derivative contracts are "opaque"? where the Fed refuses to publish M3 numbers? Where all the lessons of 1929 have been repealed (Glass-Steagal, an SEC with teeth, a Fed that regulates the dollar instead of bailing out hedge funds)? No one can, because its not an economy; its a racket. The entire Bush administration is nothing but a mob "bustout" on America.

I say: arrest these crooks; try them for fraud and theft. Then put honest, transparent rules back in place and run an old economy.

FZ is just the latest Pied Piper for suckers.

arendt