economy

Banks, Cars, Class wars, frustrations, and petty politics

Amazing, simply amazing.  For the past two days I've been watching these hearings on the automakers, and find myself more aghast than anything else.  Actually, it's more than that.  I think I've had this almost sickening feeling, a feeling where anger is meshed in with a humiliation and sadness.  It isn't just the automakers that has been the cause of this, but that they symbolize how far we've fallen.

Manufacturing Tuesday: Week of 12.02.08


(editor's note: I was planning on publishing this morning, but some major personal business involving a sick wiener dog to one of those emergency vets had to take precedence. )
Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to another edition of Manufacturing Monday...er Tuesday! Originally I wanted to post this on Monday morning, but I wanted to include the latest development from the Boeing SPEEA talks. Outside of this we got news from the steel industry, unfortunately not the good kind. Sticking with steel for a moment, there's an op-ed piece I wish to highlight that I thought you should look at. We have news or alarm bells I should say about pensions. Of course we also have some Green news, some ominous, but some good.

But before we get to those, let's take a look at the Numbers!

The Numbers

Manufacturing Monday: Week of 11.24.08

Greetings folks, first day of the workweek, and welcome to another edition of Manufacturing Monday. I had planned to put this out earlier in the day, but had to deal with a turkey situation (hint: dogs); plus other holiday-related madness. So anyways, we got some good stuff for you today. First on our highlighted list is a story on GM's board. Then we got two industrial-esc jobs updates, first on coal then in green-collar world. Finally, I want to finish off today's edition with something special, a music video! No...not me singing, but a reader sent it to me and thought you should all see it. So a shout out to Amber for bringing this to my attention, you rock! And with that we go to...the Numbers!

The Numbers

UPDATE 8 : NEWSFLASH: Geithner nomination and the return of Lawrence Summers?

NBC is reporting that Federal Reserve Bank of New York President, Timothy Geithner has been nominated by President-elect Obama to be the new Treasury Secretary.

As new developments occur, I will update. Below is a brief from Wikipedia about the nominee.

After completing his studies, Geithner worked for Kissinger and Associates in Washington, DC, for three years and then joined the International Affairs division of the US Treasury Department in 1988.

In 1999 he was promoted to Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs and served under Treasury Secretaries Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers.

What comes around goes around?

Submitted by on

This is a cross-post from Grist.org. I thought that the Economic Populist readers might be interested in the intersection between manufacturing and the environment -- please tell me what you think

How to save Detroit

Irony of ironies, the one set of products that could save G.M. is the one that G.M. destroyed -- the electric trolley systems of America. According to the well-known research of Bradford Snell, G.M. killed the electric trolley, because in 1922 they decided that the only way to increase car sales was to eliminate the competition, decent public transit. So they bought systems, pressured railroads and banks, bought public officials, did whatever they could to replace electric -- I'll repeat that, electric -- transportation with oil-based transportation.

Manufacturing Monday: Week of 11.17.08

Greetings ladies and gentlemen and welcome to a new installment of Manufacturing Monday. Now I would like to do something a tad different this week. You see today we get two important economic indicators released. So, instead of waiting a whole week for me to reprise them here, I would go ahead and write about then today! I will still go over last week's indicators, but figured you deserve to get something more up to date as well. The numbers get released around 9:30 Eastern, so they will be covered first, then last week's stuff.

Much Ado about GM, Part 3 of 3

America cannot survive without an industrial base.  We cannot simply be a pure service economy anymore than we can be a pure agricultural one or industrial one.  Our nation is too complex, it's needs are too large to adhere to one type of sector.  The nation would be more at risk to economic cycles if it were to simply go one route or at the very least put most of its focus on say just services.  It would be like many towns in this country where there is only one employer or one type of industry supporting the economy as a whole.  One need only read the latest news about how the City of London is not doing so well because its Financial Services Sector has gone downhill.  Now take that onto an aggregate scale.

But we have alternative car companies who cares about GM or Ford?

Manufacturing Monday: Week of 11.10.08

manmonday-logo

 

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to another installment of Manufacturing Monday. Today we are going to cover something that has been in the news lately, General Motors.  Well to be exact, the potential bankruptcy of GM, and what it could mean to you.  For many, this is a non-issue, who cares about another car company and a failing one at that?  But indeed, it may just be that a collapse of GM could be worse than that of Lehman Brothers and AIG.  Of course we'll cover, as always, the economic indicators for the past week and what they also mean.  So without further adieu, the Numbers!

 

 

The Numbers

Manufacturing Tuesday: Special Election Issue

manmonday-logo

Greetings folks to this special election installment of Manufacturing Monday!  Today the big economic figure we're going look at will be the ISM survey on Manufacturing, but afterwards I want to share a bigger story.  Now I understand most of us, if not all, are either voting for Barack Obama and/or straight Democratic ticket.  But why?  Well we can cite environmental reasons, the GOP simply don't get climate change.  We can cite civil rights reasons, one need only look up Guantanamo on the map.  There's the war in Iraq and America's current imperial ambitions.  But we also can cite economic reasons. 

He was shocked, I tell you, shocked!

Man oh man, if there ever was a prime example of a revelation of the greatest flaw in libertarian economic theory, it had to be Alan Greenspan's speech.  For those not in the know, the former Federal Reserve Chairman spoke before a Congressional committee yesterday.  Long one of the grand proponents of laissez fair capitalism, his decisions, ironically, probably has lead to the complete discrediting of such economics. 

 

"Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholder's equity (myself especially) are in a state of shocked disbelief," said Greenspan, who stepped down from the Fed in 2006.

- excerpt from Greenspan: I was Partially Wrong on Credit Crisis, CNBC.com, 2008.

Pages