"America's economic policy mix is a threat to the world"

[agamemnus]

For wiggin and aggie. Commodity inflation:

http://www.econbrowser.com/archives/...y_infla_2.html

*Strokes moustache*

Here, for example:
http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2010/...ar-debasement/

Ha, nice try. You almost had me, there. It's a trade-weighed index... Well, we're buying more cheap goods from China than before, and fewer goods from Europe (edit: RELATIVELY), so obviously it wouldn't fall as much.

Source?

I'm saying that the overall effect of a flood of cheap goods from another country is to lower the CPI (versus those cheap goods NOT coming in), even if commodity prices increase (otherwise, why buy those goods?). I don't see why you are asking me for a source for this...

*yawns* We want inflation, it's the hyperinflation that's the problem.

Or deflation, as you were saying. But I don't think we have deflation.

So? Doesn't have anything to do with Fed policy.

I'm saying that the Fed has to look at both the CPI and the entirety of the economic situation.

Uh, not true. Deficits increased steadily from 1991 or so to 7.4% of GDP in 2000. Regardless, I recognize that Japan and the US are hardly similar, but they're a lot more similar than the US and, say, Greece.

Hmm, not sure. What's this, then? http://www.tradingeconomics.com/Econ...spx?Symbol=JPY

In the long run, with trade like this, we are harmed. It immediately exports jobs overseas. That's fine, as long as the benefits of trade diffuses into the economy and creates even more jobs, but does it?

This is the same argument made about immigrants taking our jobs. It's simply wrong. This is not a zero sum game.

That's not my point... My point is that trade does not benefit everyone in the economy equally if the wealth does not diffuse through.

Let's just forget the debt problems created by maintaining a constant country deficit... Given the shrinking middle class (ie: more and more people falling below the mean income) as a percentage of the population, and continually falling income mobility since the late 1980s or so... what conclusion can we draw from these figures...?

Those numbers are disputed. See my earlier thread about this.

O? Which one?

What does structural unemployment have to do with China?

The trade deficit!! AAAAAAAAAAAARHHHHHHHGGGKIGY&N(G^&*VD%^VD^&VW$%BExw v5erase7f8e4t <---- I make my passwords like this... in a fit of indescribable insanity!