The Chickens Come Home to Roost - Open Thread

The stock market is tittering, the financial sector is imploding, real estate instead of a place to live for families, is now a gambling chip, the deficit is rising and the dollar is tanking.

So, how long can the United States be only seen as a consumer market and not as a nation to invest in her people and infrastructure?

On a mile high level, it seems the great generation, that of WWII , understood what happens with unfettered capitalism, no regulation and no power to workers and we have stood idly by while all that was built has been under attack for over 30 years. Now the United States stands not as an economic world leader, but more of a fat cow to slaughter. Hungry nations prey, salivate and take the prime cuts.

Today we hear answers that are completely out of touch with what kind of change this country really needs. The selling off of the United States is not mentioned by both major Presidential candidates and often the agenda seems to be selling the United States the same bad policies, only repackaged with new public relations and marketing techniques.

Consider this an open thread. What investments in other nations have you read about? How many U.S. assets have been sold off to foreign investors? How many jobs have been offshore outsourced?

Meta: 

Comments

User Guide

May I just point to the User Guide, over in the right hand column. There is a rating system on the site (which I spent a lot of time writing I might add!) which will demote posts from the front page, promote forums to the front page, give users increased positive juju and also has the ability to hide particularly not insightful comments.

One can also track on your comments to see who has replied and all sorts of goodies.

I bring this up because few are using any of these features.

Controlling what is on the front page by member consensus is the Democratic way.

Spell check please...

.....'tittering'?

'When you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you do not wait until he has struck to crush him.'

nervousness

as in a nervous giggle. For future, typos, wrong word, "spell check" just email people and don't use the comments.

Studies

There is a page here which lists critical studies that were damning, revealing and in depth. For example, Blinder's estimate of how many US jobs are vulnerable to be offshore outsourced was a milestone in analysis.

If you know of studies on this level, we should include them on this page.

middle column nominations, come reply, suggest

If you haven't noticed the middle column has other blogs where the writing is insightful, expert, sometimes topic specific, or....a "personal friend of mine" (just kidding).

There are a couple where they aren't adding too much content though and it's also covered on a couple of others so I'm thinking of pulling in some other blogs.

Anyone have any suggestions? They should be heavy anything to do with $$$ (trade, economics, labor, middle class, taxes, policy, globalization, consumer rights or lack thereof, and so on), we don't have and nor have I found a blog covering all things economic with respect to government policy, which would be a great addition.

Thing to avoid: "philosophy" where number spin is presented as an afterthought. Corporate propaganda of any kind, you know the drill.

Also useful would be truly insightful, unusual coverage, writings that is more obscure. After awhile these blogs become kind of incestuous and if one isn't in the "ring" then really good stuff doesn't get as much traffic when it should.

What blog have you found that is amazingly in depth and has updated content at least 2x a week?

retirement

I had another topic, almost void in the blogosphere for any real insight on the robbing of pension funds, the 401k, scam no corporate contributions and the cancellation of retirement health benefits, the disappearance of traditional pension plans and so on.

Anybody know of a real watchdog blog on this topic, that would be a great addition. I've looked and all you find are those "personal finance" yada yada stuff that isn't talking about the great financial wipe out that's going on to the middle class and this area is one of the biggest places.

Try this again - keeps bombing out

I like American Economic Alert by Alan Tonelson

it offers a summary and commentary on the weekly news concerning trade, manufacturing and the economics therof

Tonelson is great

and they are working on a blog, but to date don't have an RSS feed. I should have mentioned they must have a RSS or some sort of XML feed. Anyone else reading this American Economic Alert.