SOME ECONOMICS

The worriers about America's foreign debt are answered systematically here. A small excerpt: "The U.S. economy, according to doubters, rests on an unsustainable accumulation of foreign debt. Fueled by government profligacy and low private savings rates, the current account deficit -- the difference between what U.S. residents spend abroad and what they earn abroad in a year -- now stands at almost six percent of GDP; total net foreign liabilities are approaching a quarter of GDP. Sudden unwillingness by investors abroad to continue adding to their already large dollar assets, in this scenario, would set off a panic, causing the dollar to tank, interest rates to skyrocket, and the U.S. economy to descend into crisis, dragging the rest of the world down with it. Despite the persistence and pervasiveness of this doomsday prophecy, U.S. hegemony is in reality solidly grounded: it rests on an economy that is continually extending its lead in the innovation and application of new technology, ensuring its continued appeal for foreign central banks and private investors. The dollar's role as the global monetary standard is not threatened, and the risk to U.S. financial stability posed by large foreign liabilities has been exaggerated".

Outsourcing CREATES jobs: "The fact of the matter is, the most successful companies are outsourcers. And a Dartmouth study found that outsourcers are the bigger job creators. Since 1992, America has lost 361 million jobs, but during that same time, it also gained 380 million jobs - millions more than it lost. "Oh, I love my job now!" That's Shirley Bernard talking - the outsourcing "victim" the AFL-CIO wanted me to interview. At her old job at Levi's, the work was hot, noisy and physically difficult. Now, she's a secretary. She's paid more, too. She worries about the long term, and she's still an opponent of outsourcing, but she admits that many of her co-workers have moved on to better jobs. "Some of them have got, really got excellent jobs that they would never have even left Levi's for if the plant hadn't closed," she says. "This kind of forced them to ... to make a decision what they wanted to do and ... and they're really happy at what they do.""

From this article it looks like Latin America is continuing its policy of shooting itself in the foot -- attacking private enterprise and thus cutting off investment. They seem to be instinctively socialistic. Great way to stay poor! Excerpt: "Even less certain is how she and 130 million other Latin Americans will get clean water anytime soon in a region where providing basic services remains among the most pressing public health and political issues. Governments like Bolivia's tried the task themselves before, abandoned it as too costly, and turned to private companies in the 1990's. Today as privatization is rejected, foreign investment is plummeting across the region and the challenge is being returned to states perhaps less equipped than a decade ago. The trend is not unique to Bolivia, where a lack of clean water contributes to the death of every tenth child before the age of 5, and it has presented Latin American leaders with a nettlesome question: what now?"

*******************************

ELSEWHERE

The Federalist have just used the notorious "Berkeley study" of conservative psychology as a jumping-off point for a good rant about leftist psychology. Excerpt: "Liberals are almost uniformly defined by their hypocrisy and dissociation from reality. For example, the wealthiest U.S. senators -- among them Kerry, Kennedy, Corzine, Kohl, Rockefeller, Feinstein, and Rhode Island RINO Lincoln Chaffee -- fancy themselves as defenders of the poor, but they have no idea of what it's like to live without a bloated trust fund. Liberals speak of unity, but they appeal to the worst in human nature by dividing Americans into dependent constituencies. Just who are these liberal constituencies? They support freedom of thought, unless your thoughts don't comport with theirs. They feign tolerance while practicing intolerance. They resist open discussion and debate of their views, yet seek to silence dissenters. They insist that they care more about protecting habitat than those who hunt and fish. They protest for nature conservation while advocating homosexuality. They denounce capital punishment for the most heinous of criminals, while ardently supporting the killing of the most innocent among us -- children prior to birth."

The Federalist does however seem to have missed my systematic demolition of the "Berkeley" study. Academics define expertise on any given subject by the number of articles the person has had published about that subject in the academic journals. By that criterion I am actually the most expert person there is on the matters raised by the "Berkeley study".

There is a VERY disturbing article here about the American Federal justice system that makes me glad I am an Australian and not an American. Australia still has some of the protections against injustice that America has lost. American Federal trials do seem to be remarkably like Stalin's show trials -- particularly in their use of coerced testimony.

No connection, of course: "Rape attacks are increasing rapidly in England and Wales, but the number of cases that end in a successful prosecution has fallen to a record low. According to government figures published yesterday,only one in eighteen rapes reported to police ends with the suspect being punished, although government ministers have pledged to increase the number of convictions.... According to a study by the Home Office, groups of predatory men are now targeting drunken women to rape and sexually assault. Jo Lovett, one of the authors, said: "There are people who are undoubtedly targeting women who are drunk." The report, published by the Home Office yesterday, disclosed the latest rape figures and that some men are now trawling bars looking for drunk women to rape. It also estimated that the actual number of rapes in England and Wales is more than four times higher than the 11,700 reported to the police in 2002."

A pretty good bias study: "Applying a novel approach based on frequently used ratings of the liberal or conservative leaning of politicians, a researcher at the University of Missouri-Columbia discovered that most mainstream media outlets do exhibit a strong liberal bias. "We found that most of the mainstream media view events through a 'lens' that is very similar to that used by Democrats in Congress," said Jeff Milyo, MU associate professor of economics and public affairs. "That is, most major media outlets and Democrats cite similar sources of expertise, such as particular think tanks and advocacy groups. This suggests that popular complaints about a liberal bias in the media are well-founded. To determine the bias of media outlets, Milyo and colleague Tim Groseclose, a political scientist at UCLA, applied the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) scoring system. ADA scores are used widely in political science to describe the placement of an individual member of Congress on an ideological scale"

I have just transferred here Chris Brand's latest batch of exceedingly incorrect posts about race and such matters.

My latest posting on MarxWords shows that Marx saw all capitalists as "Jews". My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks at 1 Corinthians 15 and the spiritual nature of the resurrection again.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

**************************

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the 2004 Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist"

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

********************************