Today's
Stories
February 11 / 12, 2006
Ralph Nader
Bringing Democracy to the Federal Reserve
February 10, 2006
Carl
G. Estabrook
A US War Plan for Khuzestan?
Sen.
Russell Feingold
A Raw Deal on the Patriot Act
Roxanne
Dunbar-Ortiz
How Did Evo Morales Come to Power?
Saree Makdisi
The Tempest Over the Hamas Charter
Website of the Day
The
New York Art Scene: 1974-1984
February 9, 2006
Dave Lindorff
Bush
and Yamashita: War Crimes and Commanders-in-Chief
Mike Marqusee
The
Human Majority was Right About Iraq
Paul Craig Roberts
How Conservatives Went Crazy: the Rightwing Press
Peter Phillips
Inside
the Global Dominance Group: 200 Insiders Against the World
William S. Lind
Rumsfeld the Maximalist: the Long War
Christine Tomlinson Innocent
Targets in the "Long War": False Positives and Bush's
Eavesdropping Program
Will Youmans
Church of England Votes to Divest from Israel
Robert Robideau
An American Indian's View of the Cartoons
Richard Neville
The Cartoons That Shook the World: All This from the Danes, the
Least Funny People on Earth
Peter Rost
The New Robber Barons
Website of the Day
Eyes Wide Open
February 8,
2006
Ron Jacobs
The
Once and Future Sly Stone: Soundtrack to a Riot
Stan Cox
Making
and Unmaking History with General Myers
Sen. Russ Feingold
Why
Bush's Wiretapping Program is Illegal and Unconstitutional
Robert Jensen
Horowitz's
Academic Hit List: Take a Class from One of the CounterPunch
16
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
Bush Should Have Wiretapped FEMA and Chertoff
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Alberto Gonzales Channels Mark Twain
Don Monkerud
Covenant Marriage on the Rocks
David Swanson
Inequality and War
C.L. Cook
Nuking Ontario
Christopher
Fons
Chill Out Jihadis: They're Just Cartoons!
Jeffrey Ballinger
The Other Side of Nike and Social Responsibility
Website of
the Day
Encyclopedia of Terrorism in the Americas
February 7,
2006
Edward Lucie-Smith
An
Urgent Plea to Save a Small Estonian Museum from Neo-Nazis
Robert Fisk
The Fury: Now Lebanon is Burning
Paul Craig Roberts
Colin Powell's Career as a "Yes Man"
Neve Gordon
Why Hamas Won
Joshua Frank
The Hillary and George Show: Partners in War
Peter Montague
The Problem with Mercury: a History of Regulatory Capitulation
Jackie Corr
The
Last Best Choice: Public Power and Montana
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Rumsfeld's
Enforcer: the Secret World of Stephen Cambone
Website of the Day
Negroes with Guns
February 6,
2006
Christopher
Brauchli
Spilling
Blood: Two Sentences
Robert Fisk
Don't
Be Fooled: This Isn't About Islam vs. Secularism
John Chuckman
What Did Stephen Harper Actually Win?
Jenna Orkin
Judge Slams EPA for Lying About 9/11's Toxic Air
Paul Craig
Roberts
Who
Will Save America: My Epiphany
February 4
/ 5, 2006
Alexander Cockburn
"Lights
Out in Tehran": McCain Starts Bombing Run
Mike Ferner
Pentagon
Database Leaves No Kid Alone
James Petras
Evo Morales's Cabinet: a Bizarre Beginning in Bolivia
Alan Maass
Scare of the Union: Dems Collaborate with Bush on Surveillance
Fred Gardner
Annals of Law Enforcement: a Look Inside the San Francisco DA's
Office
Ralph Nader
Bush's
Energy Escapades
Bill Glahn
RIAA Watch: Speaking in Tongues
Saul Landau
Freedom 2006: Buying Sex on the Net or Those Older Freedoms?
Laura Carlsen
Bad Blood on the Border: Killing Guillermo Martinez
James Brooks
Our Little Shop of Diplomatic Horrors
Mike Roselle
Hippies and Revolutionaries in Carcacas
John Holt
Black Gold, Black Death: Canada's Oil Sands Frenzy
Sarah Ferguson
Cops Suing Cops ... for Spying on Cops
William S.
Lind
Beware the Ides of March
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Price of Globalization: Free Trade or Free Speech?
Seth Sandronsky
The Color of Job Cuts in the Auto Industry
Derrick O'Keefe
Rumsfeld's Hitler Analogy
Michael Donnelly
Hop on the Bus
Ron Jacobs
Religion and Political Power
Elisa Salasin
RSVP to Bush
St. Clair / Vest
Playlists: What We're Listening to This Week
Stew Albert
God's Curse: Selected Poems
Poets' Basement
Guthrie, LaMorticella and Engel
Website of
the Weekend
Killer
Tells All!
February 3,
2006
Toufic Haddad
A
Parliament of Prisoners
Heather Gray
Working with Coretta Scott King
Tim Wise
Racism,
Neo-Confederacy and the Raising of Historical Illiterates
Conn Hallinan
Nuclear Proliferation: the Gathering Storm
Eva Golinger
Rumsfeld and Negroponte Amp Up Hositility Toward Venezuela
Daniel Ellsberg
The World Can't Wait: Invitation to a Demonstration
Dave Zirin
Detroit: Super Bowl City on the Brink
Robert Bryce
The
Problem with Cutting US Oil Imports from the Middle East
Website of
the Day
The Chavez Code
February 2,
2006
Winslow T.
Wheeler
Pentagon
Pork: How to Eliminate It
Stan Cox
Outsourcing
the Golden Years
Rachard Itani
Danes
(Finally) Apologize to Muslims (For the Wrong Reasons)
Mike Whitney
Afghanistan Five Years Later: Buildings Down, Heroin Up
Amira Hass
In
the Footsteps of Arafat: an Interview with Hamas' Ismail Haniya
Norman Solomon
When Praise is Desecration: Smothering King's Legacy with Kind
Words
Michael Simmons
Stew Lives!
Christopher
Reed
Japan's
Dirty Secret: One Million Korean Slaves
Website of the Day
State of Nature
February 1,
2006
Sharon Smith
The
Bluff and Bluster Dems: Alito and the Faux Filibuster
Jason Leopold
Enron and the Bush Administration
Cindy Sheehan
Getting
Busted at the State of the Union: What Really Happened
Joseph Grosso
Oprah
and Elie Wiesel: a Match Made in "Neutrality"
Earl Ofari Hutchinson
Coretta Scott King was More Than Just Dr. King's Wife
Steven Higgs
Life After Roe. v. Wade
Robert Robideau
"God Given Rights": Palestine and Native America
R. Siddharth
Tales of Power: When Gandhi Rejected a Faustian Bargain with
Henry Ford
Jim Retherford
Remembering Stew Albert: the Quiet Genius
Rep. Cynthia
McKinney
The Legacy of Coretta Scott King
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
True State of the Union
Website of
the Day
Candide's Notebooks
| Weekend
Edition
February 11/12, 2006
Forget Iran, Americans Should
be Hysterical About This
Nuking the Economy
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
Last
week the Bureau of Labor Statistics re-benchmarked the payroll jobs
data back to 2000. Thanks to Charles McMillion of MBG Information
Services, I have the adjusted data from January 2001 through January
2006. If you are worried about terrorists, you don’t know
what worry is.
Job
growth over the last five years is the weakest on record. The US
economy came up more than 7 million jobs short of keeping up with
population growth. That’s one good reason for controlling
immigration. An economy that cannot keep up with population growth
should not be boosting population with heavy rates of legal and
illegal immigration.
Over
the past five years the US economy experienced a net job loss in
goods producing activities. The entire job growth was in service-providing
activities--primarily credit intermediation, health care and social
assistance, waiters, waitresses and bartenders, and state and local
government.
US
manufacturing lost 2.9 million jobs, almost 17% of the manufacturing
work force. The wipeout is across the board. Not a single manufacturing
payroll classification created a single new job.
The
declines in some manufacturing sectors have more in common with
a country undergoing saturation bombing during war than with a super-economy
that is “the envy of the world.” Communications equipment
lost 43% of its workforce. Semiconductors and electronic components
lost 37% of its workforce. The workforce in computers and electronic
products declined 30%. Electrical equipment and appliances lost
25% of its employees. The workforce in motor vehicles and parts
declined 12%. Furniture and related products lost 17% of its jobs.
Apparel manufacturers lost almost half of the work force. Employment
in textile mills declined 43%. Paper and paper products lost one-fifth
of its jobs. The work force in plastics and rubber products declined
by 15%. Even manufacturers of beverages and tobacco products experienced
a 7% shrinkage in jobs.
The
knowledge jobs that were supposed to take the place of lost manufacturing
jobs in the globalized “new economy” never appeared.
The information sector lost 17% of its jobs, with the telecommunications
work force declining by 25%. Even wholesale and retail trade lost
jobs. Despite massive new accounting burdens imposed by Sarbanes-Oxley,
accounting and bookkeeping employment shrank by 4%. Computer systems
design and related lost 9% of its jobs. Today there are 209,000
fewer managerial and supervisory jobs than 5 years ago.
In
five years the US economy only created 70,000 jobs in architecture
and engineering, many of which are clerical. Little wonder engineering
enrollments are shrinking. There are no jobs for graduates. The
talk about engineering shortages is absolute ignorance. There are
several hundred thousand American engineers who are unemployed and
have been for years. No student wants a degree that is nothing but
a ticket to a soup line. Many engineers have written to me that
they cannot even get Wal-Mart jobs because their education makes
them over-qualified.
Offshore
outsourcing and offshore production have left the US awash with
unemployment among the highly educated. The low measured rate of
unemployment does not include discouraged workers. Labor arbitrage
has made the unemployment rate less and less a meaningful indicator.
In the past unemployment resulted mainly from turnover in the labor
force and recession. Recoveries pulled people back into jobs.
Unemployment
benefits were intended to help people over the down time in the
cycle when workers were laid off. Today the unemployment is permanent
as entire occupations and industries are wiped out by labor arbitrage
as corporations replace their American employees with foreign ones.
Economists
who look beyond political press releases estimate the US unemployment
rate to be between 7% and 8.5%. There are now hundreds of thousands
of Americans who will never recover their investment in their university
education.
Unless
the BLS is falsifying the data or businesses are reporting the opposite
of the facts, the US is experiencing a job depression. Most economists
refuse to acknowledge the facts, because they endorsed globalization.
It was a win-win situation, they said.
They
were wrong.
At
a time when America desperately needs the voices of educated people
as a counterweight to the disinformation that emanates from the
Bush administration and its supporters, economists have discredited
themselves. This is especially true for “free market economists”
who foolishly assumed that international labor arbitrage was an
example of free trade that was benefitting Americans. Where is the
benefit when employment in US export industries and import-competitive
industries is shrinking? After decades of struggle to regain credibility,
free market economics is on the verge of another wipeout.
No
sane economist can possibly maintain that a deplorable record of
merely 1,054,000 net new private sector jobs over five years is
an indication of a healthy economy. The total number of private
sector jobs created over the five year period is 500,000 jobs less
than one year’s legal and illegal immigration! (In a December
2005 Center for Immigration Studies report based on the Census Bureau’s
March 2005 Current Population Survey, Steven Camarota writes that
there were 7,9 million new immigrants between January 2000 and March
2005.)
The
economics profession has failed America. It touts a meaningless
number while joblessness soars. Lazy journalists at the New York
Times simply rewrite the Bush administration’s press releases.
On
February 10 the Commerce Department released a record US trade deficit
in goods and services for 2005--$726 billion. The US deficit in
Advanced Technology Products reached a new high. Offshore production
for home markets and jobs outsourcing has made the US highly dependent
on foreign provided goods and services, while simultaneously reducing
the export capability of the US economy. It is possible that there
might be no exchange rate at which the US can balance its trade.
Polls
indicate that the Bush administration is succeeding in whipping
up fear and hysteria about Iran. The secretary of defense is promising
Americans decades-long war. Is death in battle Bush’s solution
to the job depression? Will Asians finance a decades-long war for
a bankrupt country?
Paul
Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in
the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street
Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review.
He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached
at: paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com |
Now Available
from CounterPunch Books!
The Case Against
Israel
By Michael Neumann
Click Here to Advance Order Philosopher Michael
Neumann's Devastating Rebuttal of Alan Dershowitz
Coming This
Fall
Grand
Theft Pentagon:
Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror
by Jeffrey St. Clair
|