02/13/09 Tampa Bay, Florida Unbelievably, the abject stupidity of protectionism, in this case the so-called “Buy American” protectionism, is now resurfacing after all these decades of everything “going global” so that now the stupidity of protectionism is even more glaringly stupid since the globe has grown into a huge, incestuous, corrupt labyrinth interwoven with the tentacles of everything else grown foul and corrupt, all stitched together by zillions of contracts, deals, “arrangements”, schemes and scams, both private and public, all leveraged at huge multiples of a little speculative capital, and which is all now teetering on the edge of collapse after the global economy has lost untold tens of trillions of dollar’s worth of wealth in the last few months alone! Yikes!
Such profound stupidity is perfectly characterized by the cover of the Economist magazine this week, with the title “The Return of Economic Nationalism” overlaid on a picture of a decomposing arm and talon-like hand arising from the spooky, foggy graveyard where economic stupidities and monsters are buried, one day hopefully joined by the rotting corpse of the loathsome neo-Keynesian econometric theories adhered to by the laughable Federal Reserve and taught by the majority of the nation’s universities, which together comprise what George Ure at UrbanSurvival.com calls “the current crop of formulaic trance-masters and economystics”, which has now laid us to ruin with their stupidities, which is in itself a sad, sad commentary, indeed, on the real value of America’s universities and school system, infested as it is by millions of apparent halfwits, where not ONE of them was the least bit conversant about the last 4,500 years of economic history as pertains to a fiat currency, children’s elementary arithmetic disproving “investing for the long-term” as a viable theory, the Constitution, or even common sense, much less about the One True Economic Theory, which is the Austrian Business Cycle Theory which is free to everyone at Mises.org, so they can’t use “cost” as an excuse.
Which is not to even mention the repellent-yet-willing cooperation of the worthless “news media” which was given special protections in the Constitution so that they would be able to ferret out and expose such governmental stupidities and corruptions, like the corporate “whistleblower protection plan” we have at work that is currently protecting one Miss Sallie Mae Suggins, from the accounting department, for squealing on me for, ummm, certain “irregularities” surrounding a nifty check-kiting scheme between the honor-system coffee fund and the office’s petty cash balances.
But this is not about how we have been led down the path of destruction by the corrupt news media and the lapdog universities not doing their jobs, failing miserably, just as miserably as the Federal Reserve and the worthless trash in Congress have failed us, but about protectionism, which may be ostensibly about “saving jobs”, but it is actually about retaliation and massive tit-for-tat protectionist legislation, which makes everything that anyone buys cost more and more, making everything worse and worse, inflations spiraling until you are bankrupt and starving, which only underscores just how stupid Congress really is in considering protectionist legislation, and how it is imperative that you, your family and your friends and neighbors form into a mindless mob of maniacs to descend on Washington, D.C. in a foul mood, wreaking a terrible vengeance, while I stay here in the Mogambo Bunker Of Womb-Like Security (MBOWLS) and monitor the airwaves for news of your progress and for Bewitched reruns.
Even Jim McTague in Barron’s agrees with me without knowing it, as he reports that “The Buy American provision is intended to create jobs here, but it could cost taxpayers a heap of money. It generally mandates that supplies and equipment used in tax-financed infrastructure projects contain at least 50% American content, and that project managers (are also mandated-ed) buy goods and services from Americans as long as their bids are less than 25% higher than those from foreign rivals. In other words, taxpayers could pay a 25% surcharge.” Hahahaha!
Did he say, “Could”? Hahaha! That’s the whole point of the thing, dude! Better you should say, “The Mogambo is right! We’re freaking doomed, and if you are not buying gold, silver and oil, then you are Truly, Truly Screwed (TTS)!
Whee! This investing stuff is easy!
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Hello Mogambo Guru:
I am 73 years young, I reside in Broken Arrow (Busted Stick) Oklahoma, I have been reading your words of warning and wisdom for a very long time, and I do enjoy the hidden humor among the words of wisdom and advice which you pass to mostly deft ears. It does appear to me that not all leaders of world nations are I-DOTS. Some are talking EURO DOLLAR and it does appear that King Obama and the super stupid Demo Congress don’t hear the drumb beat and death march of the U.S. Dollar. Just a guess, but I’m thinking somewhere between April and August 2009, the E.U, Russia, China, Iran, our little fat buddy down south, Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías, and others will announce to the world that the Euro will then be the world currency and cast the U.S. Dollar to the four winds. I wonder how many peoples in the U.S. can spell third world country? Great hordes must then bend over and kiss their butt good by. Should we warn them? YEP! Guru, you might be correct. Gold, Silver, Gold, Gold, Oil, Gold.
Thank You.
C.R. Coleman
Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. The dust bowl capital of the world.
good stuff. I will check out mises.org, but there is a “cost” for that – just like there is a cost for EVERYTHING! in this case its the time it takes to write this comment and go to that website….
Hello Mogambo Guru:
It does appear to me that not all leaders of world nations are I-DOTS. Some are talking EURO DOLLAR and it does appear that King Obama and the super stupid Demo Congress don’t hear the drumb beat and death march of the U.S. Dollar. Just a guess, but I’m thinking somewhere between April and August 2009, the E.U, Russia, China, Iran, our little fat buddy down south, Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías, and others will announce to the world that the Euro will then be the world currency and cast the U.S. Dollar to the four winds. I wonder how many peoples in the U.S. can spell third world country? Great hordes must then bend over and kiss their butt good by. Should we warn them? YEP! Guru, you might be correct. Gold, Silver, Gold, Gold, Oil, Gold.
Thank You.
C.R. Coleman
Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. The dust bowl capital of the world.
The islamic finance system is what the world needs, I think
The Founding Fathers believed that reasonable tariffs were necessary to favor home-grown businesses.
Completely free trade among nations is one of the reasons for the problems we have today. It’s hard to put the genie back in the bottle now that the economic crisis is upon us but in the future free trade needs to be scaled back.
So you are saying that tariffs to prevent the flood of cheap goods from slave wage labor countries without insurance, pollution controls, or retirement benefits would not have kept the American industrial base from being shipped overseas? In point of fact it is about moral corruption. The elimination of tariffs is a major sign of total moral failure of the leaders which in turn corrupts the values of the citizens then the lifestyles of said people. Which is the fruit we are now seeing. Putting a 100% tariff on manufactured goods from most oriental nations would do nothing but good for the average American. The mindset that would do such a thing would put our leaders in jail for financial treason where they belong.
there ain’t no free lunch
Buy American, HAHAHAHAHA, IBM is American yet look closely inside and you will see “Made in Taiwan”.HAHAHAHAHAHA
Sad for you to say we have to keep importing what use to be made here, seemed we could afford it back then, just not 10 of everything like we do now (TV in every room etc). Do not worry it will never change, except nobody will have jobs to buy the cheap imports. I would rather the sheeple have jobs and not afford a 300 dollar wii or 80 dollar game to play on the wii. I rather the sheeple have a job and not afford cable to lay on the couch and watch sports with their free time. Americans are fat, lazy, pusses and deserve all that is in store for them.
PS dailyreckoning.com forum why is it down, fix your SQL, tards.
Where in the U.S. can you buy American clothes, cars even food. I will buy American If I can find American.
I’m greatly disappointed in the readers here.
Colman, the Euro is even more worthless than the dollar.
There are only 3 economies in the world that are worth a spit: Luxembourg, Ireland, and Australia.
I fear that Australia could be hurt badly by the depression because of its disadvantageous geographic location. When economies fail, cities on the periphery of the transportation hub are the hardest hit.
Protectionism – All this talk about “morals” when it comes to trade are for communists, socialist, fascists, and supply siders who want to push their tyranny in the place of rational thought. There are religious web sites and places like Salon.com for those sorts of opinions.
To put it simply for those who do not understand – after WWII the U.S. accounted for over half the world’s economy. Everyone sent their resources here because we could turn it into something useful to them. This led to a boom in the standard of living for working class people never seen before in history, and it shall never be seen again.
The world has grown since then. But the U.S. still receives a greater share of the world’s resources then is found on its territory. This happens because the U.S. can utilize those resources more efficiently then the countries where the resources came from. We then sell the finished goods for a profit.
The U.S., obviously, does import a lot of things, but it is still the world’s largest exporter. We import things that can be made more cheaply abroad precisely so that we can invest more resources into making things that we make more efficiently in the United States.
Protectionism will mean that we will no longer be able to import things made with fewer resources from abroad and will have to make them using more resources here. That inevitably means that we will have to make fewer things that the Unites States is best at making, which will lower our standard of living, lead to a net job loss, and have a snowball effect on everything else – a complete disaster. Protectionism is one of the fundamental causes of the great depression.
Actually, I’m oversimplifying, it is sometimes better to obtain things made with more resources abroad than domestically if it allows us to make more things that have a higher resource markup in trade value – it’s called comparitive advantage.
So Forest, protectionism would have lessened the degree to which our industrial base was shipped overseas, but at the cost of preventing the growth of “high markup” technology and research jobs here.
We can never return to what once was because the Unites States doesn’t make a majority of the world’s manufactured goods anymore. Nothing can change that, and nothing could have prevented it.
I have one major issue of apostasy with libertarian thought, I think the gold standard, or “gold by fiat” as I call it, is as much hooey as the Federal Reserve.