wdhalgren
| Favorite team: | Georgia  |
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| Number of Posts: | 3828 |
| Registered on: | 5/27/2013 |
| Online Status: | Not Online |
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re: Rand Paul says he helped gather votes with Dems to stop Trump tariffs
Posted by wdhalgren on 4/29/25 at 5:52 pm
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Trump will make our national debt so much worse.
It's quite likely that our debt will get worse under Trump. His attempts to cut spending have been blocked at every turn by the courts. His attempts to rectify 4 years of costly illegal immigration have also been blocked by the courts. Interest expense is a massive and growing line item. The dollar is at risk. The congress seems disinclined to cut spending. The left and the right have their favorite wars queud up on the agenda.
If Trump can't cut govt spending, then debt/GDP will most likely continue to rise rapidly, like it has for the last 30 years. We can't outgrow these debts. They're too big now.
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Worrying about trade deficits is nonsesne.
No, it's not. Our twin deficits, budget and trade, are an ongoing and increasing threat to the US dollar. Our foreign dependence is a threat to US sovereignty. Despite the consistent ignorance about this topic here, trade deficits and budget deficits are related and when run in tandem for 50 years, and growing larger faster, like we've done and are doing, they can destroy even a global reserve currency.
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I am happy to get a better value for my money, which allows me to increase my personal wealth. Your nationalism is bleeing into socialism. You are restricting free trade. You aren't a capitalist.
If you live in the US, your happiness will be short lived because we've been on a destructive course for a long time and the accumulated damage is extreme. But I did get a laugh out of the last part; opposing unfair/damaging/manipulated trade with a marxist autocratic adversarial state means I'm not a capitalist. That almost seems like intentional projection on your part.
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re: Here’s proof the Woke Left are liars, in denial and truly evil.
Posted by wdhalgren on 4/29/25 at 12:46 pm
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JEEZ!!!!
My apologies, shouldn't have singled out your effort. I prefer more written details inside the thread, but the message board is set up to accommodate differing preferences on how to pass along information.
re: Rand Paul says he helped gather votes with Dems to stop Trump tariffs
Posted by wdhalgren on 4/29/25 at 8:55 am
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Even though the US is currently #2 in manufacturing, you want us back at #1.
I want us to provide for our own necessities, even if it costs more to make them at home. I want' us to balance our trade instead of shipping more and more dollars offshore, because it puts the US dollar and the country at risk.
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Now, we all know that this process will be painful. It will get ugly. I personally don't think it is worth it, but you do.
It's a matter of survival. And believe it or not, it's going to happen anyway because the rest of the world doesn't have infinite capacity or desire to provide for our excess consumption. Sooner or later they'll choose an opportune time and cut the US off.
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Every trade deal we negotiate KEEP MANFACTURING OVERSEAS. IT PUTS OUR INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AT RISK. IT BREAKS TRUMP'S PROMISE AND GOES AGAINST EVERYTHING YOU POSTED.
Not sure what you mean by any of that. I want the US to fix our budget deficits and our trade deficits. Tariffs aren't the best way to bring industry back, but they do have a role to play. If the Congress and the judiciary fight every attempt to fix our fiscal affairs at home, every attempt to lower costs and regulation, then tariffs are a brute force way to bring production of more essential goods back home. Either do that or the US run as a sovereign country is headed for a rough end.
re: Rand Paul says he helped gather votes with Dems to stop Trump tariffs
Posted by wdhalgren on 4/29/25 at 8:23 am
I'm all for transparency as long as it's complete transparency. If companies want to list the tariff cost, tell them to list the US manufacturing jobs lost over the last 30 years. List the differences in environmental and other regulatory costs faced by Chinese manufacturers vs US manufacturers. List the Chinese industries subsidized by the CCP, and theft of intellectual property by China. List all of the products that we need, like medications, but no longer make in this country and are completely dependent on foreigners to provide.
Go ahead and explain how much "free trade" with China has damaged this country. Explain that a few days of China and others dumping treasury bonds (bonds they bought using proceeds from their US trade surplus) has US "news media" screaming for Trump to "cave" in to China's demands. If Americans still feel like tariffs are too painful, ask them which CCP official they'd like to see appointed as Chairman of the Peoples Republic of America in 2036.
Go ahead and explain how much "free trade" with China has damaged this country. Explain that a few days of China and others dumping treasury bonds (bonds they bought using proceeds from their US trade surplus) has US "news media" screaming for Trump to "cave" in to China's demands. If Americans still feel like tariffs are too painful, ask them which CCP official they'd like to see appointed as Chairman of the Peoples Republic of America in 2036.
re: Rand Paul says he helped gather votes with Dems to stop Trump tariffs
Posted by wdhalgren on 4/29/25 at 8:07 am
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Rand is correct. Tariffs are taxes, and Congress is the one with that power in the Constitution.
Tariffs are intended to regulate foreign trade and Congress has passed laws giving that ability to levy tariffs to the president.
re: ABC, NBC and CBS slap Trump with 92% negative coverage
Posted by wdhalgren on 4/28/25 at 8:32 am
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Only 92% negative? They are getting soft
I only use the internet, but I almost never see any positive coverage, or even non-committal, on legacy media sites (other than Fox occasionally). Even the article above has a potential slant. They cite Trump's 92% negative rating vs Biden's 59% positive over their first 100 days. What was Biden's negative number? Did either of them have any "informational" coverage that had no obvious positive or negative slant. I'm guessing Biden got plenty of that and Trump almost none.
You don't even have to agree with Trump to know media coverage is nonsensical. The fact that they handled Biden (and Obama, Clinton, Harris, etc.) with kid gloves is all the evidence you need that legacy "journalism" is pure propaganda.
re: Here’s proof the Woke Left are liars, in denial and truly evil.
Posted by wdhalgren on 4/28/25 at 7:58 am
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Hey down voters, watch the video and melt. fricks up your narrative, doesn’t it?
I didn't down vote, but some of them may be because of no details in your post. Details let people know if they're interested in the subject. Can't speak for everyone, but I prefer reading over videos by a long shot. In the time it takes to get past the intro to a youtube video, I will have finished scanning multiple topics in print. If I find something interesting, I read more and maybe look elsewhere to get a different point of view, still in less time than it takes to watch one video. Watching videos to get information is like watching the evening news, inefficient and one sided.
re: I’ll save you the trouble of replying this is what you voted for
Posted by wdhalgren on 4/27/25 at 10:42 am
What's "deeply messed up" is that we have people who voted for Biden's massive illegal immigration importation. And they voted to overwhelm our social welfare system and our healthcare system with those illegal immigrants. And they voted for politicians and judges who are fighting every effort to reverse that economic damage to the country. And they continue to vote for politicians who have no idea that we're lurching toward economic failure because we can't afford our reckless govt spending. Definitely deeply messed up.
re: Luntz is stunned by these Trump voters on the stock market 'crash'
Posted by wdhalgren on 4/27/25 at 9:50 am
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Second, the Americans that do have big enough portfolios to feel an impact have enough brains to know this was a temporary dip and not something to panic over like a true collapse.
I know it's heresy to say this, but fixing the US economy will most likely entail a collapse of the stock market, in inflation adjusted terms at the minimum. Even though the S&P 500 has been steadily rising for decades with only short sharp pullbacks, if we ever do what it takes to reduce debt fueled consumption, that will change
re: 4 months into Republicans controlling Congress, and they've accomplished nothing
Posted by wdhalgren on 4/27/25 at 8:37 am
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They need money for facilities to get mass deportations underway. Just one more reasons the rinos are stalling. No reason they couldn’t have past it a month ago. The stall is on purpose.
Spending more money is not the answer; it's not working. Cut spending is the answer. Pass laws to end funding. No federal funds for illegal immigrants. No federal funds to states or cities that provide benefits to illegal immigrants. No federal funds to companies that hire illegal immigrants, or universities that give scholarships to illegal immigrants or schools that provide free education, hospitals that provide free care, etc. Give more money only to ICE to facilitate transportation, so they can help illegal immigrants make their way back home immediately.
Trump was right, we're in an economic emergency. The spending has to be fixed first. When dollar downside gets momentum, we're done.
re: 4 months into Republicans controlling Congress, and they've accomplished nothing
Posted by wdhalgren on 4/27/25 at 7:57 am
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They are literally about to vote in the tax cuts and budget deal next month.
Tax cuts won't fix anything. The govt will continue to get bigger, borrow more, print more. Congress needs to slash and burn govt spending, which they apparently will never do until the US dollar is dead. What they should do is pass a law that raises taxes, collect enough taxes every year to balance the budget. You'd see spending get slashed in about one year.
re: Home Prices start to drop due to rates, lack of sells, and more inventory!
Posted by wdhalgren on 4/25/25 at 12:47 pm
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Then you said it's an inflation hedge. You're all over the place.
No. I said housing price appreciation is inflation. I said a house can serve as an inflation hedge.
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By that token, the fact that people buy TSLA at $400 as an "investment" doesn't actually make it an investment either.
Correct. People buying shares of TSLA stock on the secondary market is speculation. It does not change the level of production or the the stock of capital in Tesla corporation. All that happens is an existing asset derivative and money change hands. The investment was made when someone deployed capital to create the company. If the company itself did a share offering to raise new capital, that would be an opportunity for new investment in Tesla corp. The company could use those proceeds to expand operations, modify capital structure in an attempt to reduce costs, conduct R&D, etc.
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Goodness
I assume that means you disagree. Noted.
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So if Mar-a-lago had been offered at the naked judge's assessment of $18M, would a purchase of that property at that price constitute "speculation"? How about $1.8M? $180K? $1.80?
As I said, you simply don't know what speculation is.
I told you what speculation is. As I said, it's a term that has been defined many different ways, so I use a definition I believe fits best to define it and distinguish it from investment. What's your definition?
As for your detailed POV, I don't disagree with some of that. It lacks an explanation for how our govt and private sector were able to get so deeply in debt, which crucially involves Federal Reserve policy dating back decades. Otherwise, the bond market would've had its day long ago.
And the Federal Reserve hasn't been suppressing inflation, they've been causing it for the last 100 years by increasing (or allowing banks to increase) the money supply too fast. Occasionally they make a show of raising rates to slow it down, but never enough to stop the inflation in asset prices, like stocks or houses. Never enough to threaten the rapidly growing volume of debt. Their attempts have gotten weaker over time, with lower interest rate peaks at every cycle. They've done that for so long that they're losing the ability to control inflation by adjusting short term rates. They compromised their own balance sheet.
re: Home Prices start to drop due to rates, lack of sells, and more inventory!
Posted by wdhalgren on 4/25/25 at 11:44 am
So basically what I read above is you disagree. You could've just "nu uh". But I'll try a couple of points
Where? I said the increase in home prices is inflation and it is. I said purchasing a home is not an investment because it isn't, it's buying shelter, along with comfort, etc. I said the fact that people buy homes as an "investment" doesn't actually make it an investment; to the extent they purchase their home for price appreciation, it's speculation on future inflation, or intended as an inflation hedge. I said adding leverage to speculation increases risk, both downside and upside.
No.
The Fed's inflation target is meaningless if they run contrary policy. If you don't understand that monetary policy is the genesis of general price inflation, I'm not sure how much I can help. If you don't understand that loose monetary policy enabled and incentivized deficit spending and overconsumption, and discouraged saving and investment, it's unlikely you'll understand what's coming.
Many people have debated the difference between speculation and investment. Some focus on the level of risk involved, or the time frame, etc. Those aren't useful distinctions because there's no agreement on how they apply to specific examples. For me, the distinction is much easier and more clear than that.
1) Speculation is betting on a price change of an asset or asset derivative. As such, speculation is a zero sum game, buyers and sellers offset; one benefits from the higher price received while the other suffers from the higher price paid. Their transaction doesn't change the overall level of capital or production.
2) Investment uses capital to create more capital or add value to existing capital. Investment can produce a positive net gain in wealth for the entire economy, not just an individual. That's how an economy grows in real terms. Investment is not a zero sum game.
Too late. I started studying these things 45 years ago. I've studied them from every possible angle. I'm okay with disagreement though, we've all had a different path to get here.
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You've been all over the place on inflation vs inflation hedges
Where? I said the increase in home prices is inflation and it is. I said purchasing a home is not an investment because it isn't, it's buying shelter, along with comfort, etc. I said the fact that people buy homes as an "investment" doesn't actually make it an investment; to the extent they purchase their home for price appreciation, it's speculation on future inflation, or intended as an inflation hedge. I said adding leverage to speculation increases risk, both downside and upside.
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You're confusing terminology
No.
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Fed policy, speculation. E.g., now you're conflating the Fed hurting Americans with inflation. The Fed inflation target is very low. That drives Fed policy and protects the very folks you're intimating are getting hosed with inflation.
The Fed's inflation target is meaningless if they run contrary policy. If you don't understand that monetary policy is the genesis of general price inflation, I'm not sure how much I can help. If you don't understand that loose monetary policy enabled and incentivized deficit spending and overconsumption, and discouraged saving and investment, it's unlikely you'll understand what's coming.
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again, you're confusing terminology, or you simply don't understand what speculation is.
Many people have debated the difference between speculation and investment. Some focus on the level of risk involved, or the time frame, etc. Those aren't useful distinctions because there's no agreement on how they apply to specific examples. For me, the distinction is much easier and more clear than that.
1) Speculation is betting on a price change of an asset or asset derivative. As such, speculation is a zero sum game, buyers and sellers offset; one benefits from the higher price received while the other suffers from the higher price paid. Their transaction doesn't change the overall level of capital or production.
2) Investment uses capital to create more capital or add value to existing capital. Investment can produce a positive net gain in wealth for the entire economy, not just an individual. That's how an economy grows in real terms. Investment is not a zero sum game.
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You need to step back and start over. Start with basics such as what drives Fed policy, or the delineation between speculation and investment.
Too late. I started studying these things 45 years ago. I've studied them from every possible angle. I'm okay with disagreement though, we've all had a different path to get here.
re: UK crawfishing on sending troops to Ukraine
Posted by wdhalgren on 4/25/25 at 10:38 am
Starmer is acknowledging the political reality that there's no public support at home for fighting this war. Same for America.
re: Home Prices start to drop due to rates, lack of sells, and more inventory!
Posted by wdhalgren on 4/25/25 at 9:38 am
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Goodness. It's easy to see how that line of reasoning would leave an entire generation of Americans beholden to landlords. Assuming a renter is disciplined enough to put his wouldbe downpayment money into other investments, rather than starbucks, bar tabs, vacations, and flash, renting might work. Certainly avoiding homeownership could work, and it would be the right choice in a RE market downturn....But in reality, that's not the normal course, is it. The normal course is renting for the sole reason that ownership seems too expensive, too lifestyle limiting, only to find that after a period of time, the initial affordability situation has worsened.
Not sure what your point is. Of course renting something longterm is more expensive than buying, whether its a home, car, sofa, tuxedo, or anything else. Renting is borrowing. If I rent a home, I'm borrowing it and the lender is going to charge "interest" in excess of their cost of financing and maintaining their property. It's essentially double financing; the renter pays excess "interest" on top of what the owner pays. I said earlier that renting out a home can be an investment because it can generate net income over time. Owning a home to live in is not an investment that generates income. A house is a depreciating asset and if the future value exceeds the current value plus improvements, that's due to inflation.
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E.g., the beach home in question was a second residence purchased within an investment portfolio. There was no requisite DP. Essentially it was an arrangement to function as one's own lender. A portfolio in that account served as collateral with IBLR-based rates running in the 1.5%-3% range for most of the period, all while keeping the portfolio invested.
The fact that you purchased your home as part of an investment portfolio doesn't change what it was. People call lots of speculative endeavors investments, but end the end what they're doing is speculating on price changes. Call it an inflation hedge if you like; some people use precious metals, land, art, or even tankers full of oil floating offshore. All of those things have a cost of carry, so buying a 2nd home as an investment is speculating that inflation of the asset price will exceed cost of carry.
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The purchase was made at a point where RE prices were down following the '08-'09 recession...We sold this past summer at a couple million in profit.
RE prices were down at that point because our debt/inflation system blew up. Home prices deflated, temporarily. Congrats on your good speculative timing, but if the Federal Reserve hadn't printed trillions of dollars over the last 17 years, the price of your home would not have risen. Wage earners and the elderly and savers paid for your gain. I'm not making a moral judgement of you or your speculative success, just a statement that inflation does not create wealth, it redistributes wealth and eventually destroys the incentive to save. That's the difference between investment and speculation. One can create a net gain in wealth across a population and other cannot.
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Success in life entails adaptation. Your oversimplification and misconception of the Fed's actions notwithstanding, the environment is what it is. You can either whine about it and not participate, or assess lay-of-the-land and take advantage of it as best as possible.
I think you misunderstand my ramblings here. I'm not whining or complaining about unfairness. I'm discussing our misguided monetary and fiscal policies as they pertain to the health and even survival of the US. Redistributing wealth, whether it's done via taxes or inflation, is counterproductive to the efficient functioning of an economy. It destroys the ability and the incentive to save and it impedes productive investment. We've done it on such a scale, especially since 2008, that the economic damage has been and will be extreme. If we don't stop soon it will be insurmountable, may be already.
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However, let's clear at least one aspect of this up for you. It is you and I, the voters, who've seated one spendthrift Congress after the next for decades. That ain't the Fed's fault. Blame transference might feel good, but it neither changes the result, nor does it diminish likelihood of a repeat mistake.
We live in a financial environment created by our monetary system. We always have, which makes it difficult to see how that system influences our lives. Have the American people and our elected governments been massively irresponsible, of course. But it was the monetary system that permitted that level of irresponsibility. Sound money is discipline, but we've been swimming in an ocean of unsound money for a long time. Govt borrowing would have ground to a halt many decades ago in a sound money system, due to a combination of higher interest rates and "crowding out" of private investment. Private borrowing for consumption would have never thrived. The actions of the Federal Reserve thwarted financial discipline and cleared the path to our current perilous financial and economic condition. They were the enabler and incentivizer of our stupidity.
re: Home Prices start to drop due to rates, lack of sells, and more inventory!
Posted by wdhalgren on 4/24/25 at 7:04 pm
(No Message)
re: Home Prices start to drop due to rates, lack of sells, and more inventory!
Posted by wdhalgren on 4/24/25 at 7:04 pm
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No.
It's price appreciation, and there is a difference.
In the case of property, the principle of scarcity applies. As our realtor put it when we were weighing investing in a beach place vs other locations, "No one's making more beachfront. This property will do well over time." He was right.
It's inflation. Read the last three paragraphs again. If your beachfront home value appreciates, so do all the similarly valued beachfront homes. You pay costs to live there and you don't receive income from the home while you live in it. You can sell it later but the proceeds will only buy you one equivalent home. You can downgrade to a cheaper area or home when you sell it, but that's like receiving no incomes from the widget factory, paying overhead the entire time, and then selling it to buy a smaller widget factory and calling the price difference a profit.
Making a positive return from leverage is a different matter. Any profit from using leverage to speculate on the future rate of inflation, either in housing or across all prices, is profit from speculation and risk. It can work for individuals, but not for an entire population. If inflation rises faster than the interest rates charged on debt, borrowers are making a profit by using leverage, but lenders (namely, savers) are losing an equal amount of purchasing power. The demand for borrowing will rise faster, which means either the money supply must rise faster (more inflation, fewer savers) or interest rates must rise to compensate lenders and eliminate borrowers' profit from inflation speculation.
That's the problem our entire economy faces, not just the housing sector. As leverage in the US economy increased over multiple decades, the federal reserve has kept interest rates artificially low by increasing the money supply to reduce borrowing costs. The cost of those low rates is borne by savers/depositors. The advantage has been gained by borrowers and levered speculators. This is bound to fail because the fed hasn't actually reduced the downside of leverage, they've transferred it to savers and lenders, and to the federal reserve itself. What your realtor was telling you was that he thought mortgage rates were too low to restrain future inflation/compensate savers. He was right, they've been too low for too long, but either that will end or the US dollar will end.
re: Home Prices start to drop due to rates, lack of sells, and more inventory!
Posted by wdhalgren on 4/24/25 at 2:56 pm
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FYI, this is a real, not nominal, residential property index.
That "real" housing price index uses some general inflation number (say CPI) to adjust the nominal number lower. What the chart shows is that housing inflation rate has generally exceeded CPI over the time frame shown. If you reread my post you'll note this sentence.
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Existing home prices have inflated more than some other prices in our economy (partially because of govt subsidy of mortgage lending), but it's still inflation.
The chart you posted shows that existing home prices have inflated faster than the general price level, but it's still inflation (there may be an effect of larger homes being built over time, but even same home prices have inflated faster than the general rate of inflation over that time frame).
If you buy a factory, maintain it and operate it to produce widgets at a 10% (just a random number I picked) annual ROI, eventually (maybe 10 years depending on what you do with your earnings) you'll have enough saved to buy a 2nd equivalent factory. Now you have two factories making widgets. That's an investment.
If you buy a house, maintain it and live in it for 10 years, or 50, you still only have one house. And you also have paid maintenance, taxes, etc. over the years which, along with financing, were the costs of living in your house. You could sell it, but an identical well maintained house in the same neighborhood would cost about the same amount, so you still only have one house and you haven't recouped the costs you paid to live in your previous house. There was no ROI, because it wasn't an investment.
You can obviously rent a house, or a car or just about anything, to get some positive ROI, but most people just use their homes to live in. They may be a good inflation hedge (until home price inflation outstrips affordability for new buyers), but they're not an investment.
re: Home Prices start to drop due to rates, lack of sells, and more inventory!
Posted by wdhalgren on 4/24/25 at 1:05 pm
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Oh good. Luckily Americans don't look at housing as an investment that will grow over time.
Houses aren't investments. Houses are a depreciating asset that we use and maintain, like a car. Existing home prices have inflated more than some other prices in our economy (partially because of govt subsidy of mortgage lending), but it's still inflation. Your mistake is confusing decades of housing inflation with a true investment that produces a positive ROI with or without inflation.
re: The line of demarcation has been defined, Submissive Globalists vs US Sovereignists.
Posted by wdhalgren on 4/24/25 at 12:04 pm
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This is true, but it's due to social welfare programs, not our military spending.
Our public debt is due to more govt than we can afford at every level and every department, including defense. And those defense numbers will increase by hundreds of billions more with every unnecessary war we fight. But if we need to cut social welfare spending, lets start with non-citizens receiving govt benefits. And if politicians want to cut welfare, food stamps, medicaid, medicare, social security for US citizens, put that plan out there. Announce it on the evening news that we're cutting social programs to fund our foreign wars. It still won't work because when transfer payments shrink, the economy shrinks too and we still won't be able to afford a global military presence. A shrinking economy is inevitable, but it will also inevitably include shrinking the scope of our military engagements.
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And global trade has made good cheaper, so we would be in even more debt if goods were more expensive and we had to raise SS and welfare payments for the poor.
Running trade deficits because of cheaper foreign goods has damaged our own economy over the last 50 years, to the point that we're dependent on foreigners to provide necessities. The cost is more than just the amount we pay at the point of transaction. Trade deficits reduce our domestic production and our tax base. The fact that we can't afford our own production is testament to the fact that regulatory excess, constant fiscal and monetary laxity have driven prices up even as we exported jobs and made more people dependent on govt assistance. This treadmill ends one of two ways, either we voluntarily live within our means and bring production back home, or it happens by force when debt destroys the country.
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It's simplistic to think what's going on in the world doesn't affect our economic security.
It's simplistic to think we can police the world. We can't because our our economy won't support that. If other countries want the US to fight their wars, they'll have to fund our military, including retirement and lifelong healthcare for our soldiers. Denying our economic limitations doesn't make them go away.
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We need a market for our goods. 350 million people can't support a GDP the size of America's, and our birthrate is on the decline.
Yes, we need a market to sell our goods so exports equal our imports. We don't need to become dependent on other nations to provide for necessities. That's not exceptionalism, it's loss of sovereignty.
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Global communications closed the book on economic and military isolationism. That's not coming back.
You're confusing isolationism with economic failure. We can't afford to fight their wars. And we can't afford our trade deficits. Right now they're lending us money to support the dollar but that too shall pass. Perpetually consuming more than we can produce, including the US military, isn't an option. Consuming less is a necessity because compounding debt is destroying our economy.
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We're dependent on foreigners because their products are either cheaper or better. If they're better, then Americans need to do better. If they're cheaper, it's because American labor, regulations, taxes and cost of capital is much higher than in other places and need to be addressed.
Nobody is arguing with that. Of course we need to do better. It's been debated for decades and it's still getting worse. Hard solutions are at hand. The size of govt has to decline. Domestic consumption has to decline. Production of essentials has to increase. How will we know when our economy is on a track to sustainability? Debt to GDP stops rapidly increasing and starts to decline. Trade deficits turn into balanced trade. We have a long tough road ahead. It'll get worse before it gets better but we have to start taking steps to reverse the root cause, debt and deficits. In the interim, American standards of living are going to decline because the overconsumption has to end.
You seem to think globalism is a future promise that the US can continue on its current course and its current standard of living. I'm sorry, it's not because the rest of the world won't perpetually support our overconsumption. If American capitalists want to sell here, they'll have to create jobs here and produce here. If they can't do that, they'll have no market. If by Globalism you mean balanced international trade for the US, great. If you mean we continue consuming more than we produce, import more than we export, fighting and/or paying for foreign wars, that's ending very soon no matter what.
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