Monday, August 20, 2012

Thanks NAFTA!


Click to enlarge.

North American Free Trade Agreement

The agreement came into force on January 1, 1994.

Save Your Job, Save Our Country, by Ross Perot

Long-term US trade strategy: focus on debt & jobs

We're certainly focused now. Woohoo!

See Also:
Sarcasm Disclaimer

Source Data:
FRB: Flow of Funds Accounts of the United States
St. Louis Fed: CPI
St. Louis Fed: Population

10 comments:

Stagflationary Mark said...

Robots to Rule the World? Taking All Jobs? Replace Women?

If you want to blame something for the loss of manufacturing jobs, blame increased productivity, not China or NAFTA.

Our massive and unsustainable trade deficit is definitely contributing to job losses in other ways. What would the price of oil be had we not flooded the world with dollars? What does a high oil price do to jobs in our service economy? I'd argue nothing good.

Mr Slippery said...

OK, we can blame NAFTA, but Mish got one thing right. Robots might replace women (and men) in the future.

Behold the Lucy Liu bot.

Stagflationary Mark said...

Mr Slippery,

No single Lucy Lui bot believes it is to blame for the flood! At least not yet. Advanced artificial intelligence might fix that someday, lol. Sigh.

Scott said...

I think I might write in Ross Perot on my presidential ballot this November. ;)

AllanF said...

RE: Ross Perot

Genius! Elections here in the PacNW are all vote by mail so I had to suffer smug friends wanting to be a part of history taking phone cam pics of their ballot with Obama's bubble filled in. I thought to myself, "Darn, I shouldda done that writing in Ron Paul."

I voted for the other R.P. in '92. Felt a little sheepish about it for the next 8-12 yrs. Not anymore. In fact, now that I think about it, I think I'll vote for him again. This time I'll take a picture.

Troy said...

You can vote for Mickey Mouse but it's going to be Obama or Romney on the TV doing stuff next year.

While trade with nations that operate below our labor and environmental protections is problematic ("race to the bottom"), IMV the bigger, present, issue is the $600B/yr being sucked out of our economy.

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/BOPGSTB

That's something nobody seemingly understands.

Or maybe my Physiocrat-level understanding of the situation is faulty, but I don't see how.

Half the trade deficit is due to energy, and half to mfg imports. Both are flows OUT of the middle class, not coming back as wages TO the middle class any time soon.

No money, no spending. No spending, no demand. No demand, no production. No production, no work.

No work, no money.

We can use credit -- the poor borrowing from the wealthy -- but that only works until it doesn't.

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=9Fe

and boy did that stop working in 2008.

Good thing the Feds can borrow money instead!

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=9Ff

Troy said...

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=9Fg

is the last graph with the Fed printing component in red, cuz it's interesting.

They way I heard it, Fed adds are considered "high powered money" because they can set off that whole money multiplier thing as government spends the hot money into the economy.

While Treasury selling new debt is just draining cash from the economy -- mostly from factors who apparently have more cash than they know what to do with but that is another topic.

Troy said...

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=9Fh

is the above changed to quarterly change, zoomed into the present.

The dip in Fed holdings of USTs in 2008 was them trading them to banks for AAA-rated stuff IIRC. I don't pretend to understand that so that's all I'll say about that.

The 2011 jump was the QE infusion that gave us what feel good we have now, and it shows how it boosted cash in the system as non-Fed buying went away for a while.

AllanF said...

"You can vote for Mickey Mouse but it's going to be Obama or Romney on the TV doing stuff next year."

That's my point... voting is not a choice of picking Mickey's, it is a choice between conscientious objection and self-delusion?

Stagflationary Mark said...

Great comments!

I think I found the perfect write in for the election.

What Famous people have the initials RP?

Answer #1 seems perfect, lol. Sigh.

(WTF!)