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Forum Post: Will the United States exist for a thousand years?

Posted 10 years ago on July 18, 2013, 3:56 p.m. EST by JackHall (413)
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Formerly - Will the United States still be here in a thousand years? Part III

The Obama administration allowed millions of dollars in federal stimulus funds to go to foreign companies, despite recent statements by President Barack Obama that he opposes “shipping jobs overseas."

Obama’s 2009 economic stimulus spending law--the $787 billion American Recovery and Reivnestment Act--gave millions of federal dollars to foreign companies or funded domestic companies that built factories in foreign countries or bought foreign products. For example, there is the North Carolina LED manufacturer Cree Inc. Cree was awarded $39 million through a stimulus-funded tax credit program in January 2010. However, half of the company’s employees are in China and the company opened a manufacturing plant in Huizhou City, China in November 2009.

Cree CEO Chuck Swodoba said he did not consider Cree Inc. to be run like a completely American company. “Cree management never runs this company as a US company. We consider Cree to be a global company with local wisdoms.” Swodoba also said he would continue expanding into China, adding that Cree would keep creating jobs there because it could take advantage of both China’s human resources and its “state-of-the-art technology.” “We will continue to invest here [China] for both human talent and the most state-of-the-art technologies,”

Taking advantage of both China’s human resources and its “state-of-the-art technology?” The computer, transistor, telephone, television, Internet, are American inventions, invented in the United States.

Another example of stimulus outsourcing is Japanese wind energy firm Eurus Energy, whose U.S. subsidiary, Eurus Energy America, received $91 million in stimulus funds to build a wind farm in Texas, according to a 2010 report from American University. That wind farm reportedly was built with wind turbines manufactured by another Japanese company – Mitsubishi. “Eurus Energy America, the U.S. subsidiary of a Japanese firm, received $91 million in stimulus money for its Bull Creek wind farm in Texas. The farm consists of 180 Mitsubishi turbines,” the American University report said. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty, files) Eurus told American University that the wind farm was actually built by British firm RES Americas and is now being run by EnXco, an American subsidiary of the French energy firm EDF Energies Nouvelles.

Perhaps the best-known example of Obama administration funding of foreign companies is its $500-million loan guarantee to Finnish automaker Fisker Automotive. That loan, part of the Energy Department’s electric vehicle lending program, was made to help Fisker establish a U.S. manufacturing presence.

However, the company never established an American factory, choosing instead to shutter its U.S. operations and continue building cars in Finland.

Obama Outsourcing

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/obama-administration-outsourced-jobs-stimulus-funding [right click]

If anyone thought the Democratic Party would follow in the foot-steps of Franklin Roosevelt during the Great Depression, they were misled. The sluggish economy in the United States can be attributed not only to Wall Street, and the 1% elite private investments overseas, but also economic betrayal by our own government, led by President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party.

In the summer of 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Governor of New York, was nominated as the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party. In his acceptance speech, Roosevelt addressed the problems of the depression by telling the American people that, "I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people." In the election that took place in the fall of 1932, Roosevelt won by a landslide.

The New Deal Roosevelt had promised the American people began to take shape immediately after his inauguration in March 1933. Based on the assumption that the power of the federal government was needed to get the country out of the depression, the first days of Roosevelt's administration saw the passage of banking reform laws, emergency relief programs, work relief programs, and agricultural programs. Later, a second New Deal was to evolve; it included union protection programs, the Social Security Act, and programs to aid tenant farmers and migrant workers. Many of the New Deal acts or agencies came to be known by their acronyms. For example, the Works Progress Administration was known as the WPA, while the Civilian Conservation Corps was known as the CCC. Many people remarked that the New Deal programs reminded them of alphabet soup.

By 1939, the New Deal had run its course. In the short term, New Deal programs helped improve the lives of people suffering from the events of the depression. In the long run, New Deal programs set a precedent for the federal government to play a key role in the economic and social affairs of the nation.

Roosevelt New Deal

http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/presentationsandactivities/presentations/timeline/depwwii/newdeal/ [right click]

The New Deal has had its detractors throughout the following 7 decades.

Who Repealed Glass-Steagall

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0k2PmF-o5Q [right click]

How could New York elect Franklin Roosevelt to the Governor’s office in 1928 and then elect George Pataki nearly 70 years later? Pataki served three consecutive four-year terms from January 1, 1995, until December 31, 2006.

The middleclass has witnessed the New Deal being dismantled for the “good of the country” by Republicans and Democrats from Reagan through Obama. Yet how would the population of the United States be faring without social security, food stamps, Medicare, Medicaid, FDIC, and unemployment benefits?

“Today we see how utterly mistaken was the Milton Friedman notion that a market system can regulate itself. We see how silly the Ronald Reagan slogan was that government is the problem, not the solution . . . I wish Friedman were still alive so he could witness how his extremism led to the defeat of his own ideas.”

— Economist Paul Samuelson (January 2009)

How the Government Caused the Great Recession

http://www.american.com/archive/2010/december/how-government-failure-caused-the-great-recession [right click]

The Great Recession (also referred to as the Lesser Depression, the Long Recession, or the global recession of 2009) is a marked global economic decline that began in December 2007 and took a particularly sharp downward turn in September 2008. The initial phase of the ongoing crisis, which manifested as a liquidity crisis, can be dated from August 7, 2007, when BNP Paribas, citing a "complete evaporation of liquidity," terminated withdrawals from three hedge funds. The bursting of the U.S. housing bubble, which peaked in 2006, caused the values of securities tied to U.S. real estate pricing to plummet, damaging financial institutions globally.

The global recession has affected the entire world economy, with greater detriment to some countries than others. It is a major global recession characterized by various systemic imbalances and was sparked by the outbreak of the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis and financial crisis of 2007–08. The economic side effects of the European sovereign debt crisis, austerity, high levels of household debt, trade imbalances, high unemployment and limited prospects for global growth in 2013 and 2014 continue to provide obstacles to full recovery from the Great Recession.

Formerly - Will the United States still be here in a thousand years? Part IV

http://occupywallst.org/forum/how-will-the-united-states-exist-for-a-thousand-ye/

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