16-Feb-11 News -- Tunisian refugees flood into Italy

[John]

16-Feb-11 News -- Tunisian refugees flood into Italy

Commodity and import price increases signal lower corporate earnings

** 16-Feb-11 News -- Tunisian refugees flood into Italy
** http://www.generationaldynamics.com/cgi-bin/D.PL?xct=gd.e110216#e110216

[OLD1953]

Imported commodities, oil, food and building materials. The first two I understand, but the last one is a bit of a puzzler. Are we really that locked into buying foreign everything, that we just can't bear to buy from the US any more? Exactly what building material do we not produce in quantity sufficient to meet the demand today? It can't all be Carrara marble and Finnish soapstones.

Of course profit margins will decline, and the drop in stock prices will eventually set off the long decline of the bored and no longer trusting that ends when stocks are just too good a deal to pass up.

The world will shortly shock itself, as the number of refugees grows and tolerance for them decreases as economies decline. And soon people who could never understand the M.S. St Louis will come to know how and why the people of the time acted as they did. (I do not condone or promote discrimination against anyone, but to expect nations under economic stress to happily accept unlimited numbers of immigrants is not realistic.)

[quest]

Imported commodities, oil, food and building materials. The first two I understand, but the last one is a bit of a puzzler. Are we really that locked into buying foreign everything, that we just can't bear to buy from the US any more? Exactly what building material do we not produce in quantity sufficient to meet the demand today? It can't all be Carrara marble and Finnish soapstones.

We import huge quantities of concrete from Mexico, much of our lumber comes from Canada, China is sending literally boat loads of plywood,sheetrock, steel etc.........not to mention wiring and other electrical components as well as plumbing components.

sy

[OLD1953]

While we send huge loads of raw lumber, barely trimmed trees, to Asia. I suppose it makes a perverse sort of sense to someone, somewhere, who isn't planning on paying any of the social costs of such idiocy, but I have to pay it and from where I sit, it's insanity.