I should point out,
that, when you are gradually, inch by monthly inch,
slowly, annually, becoming a third world economy, trading down, down, to cheaper
and cheaper produced goods, to the bottom;
reducing prices, down, down,
to cheaper and cheaper priced goods,
to the bottom, you tend,
almost by inertia,
to steer a path, because you have to,
between little blips of inflation, or deflation,
sort of looking
for a daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, perpetual 'soft landing',
at the
'greatest good for the greatest numbers' airfield (let's not call it an
airport).
That is what the US 'economy' if one can speak about such a
thing, has been doing.
That is why we haven't had much 'overt' inflation,
because we have been buying, and producing offshore more cheaply, goods made
offshore.
That also is why we haven't had deflation, because their
offshore costs were less, for a little while, and printing fiat money to buy
them, so long as the money is accepted, wards off symptoms of
deflation.
Keeping prices, and wages, gradually 'trickling down' (a
different idiom: UNPROSPERITY TRICKLING DOWN) more or less together,
WHERE'S THE BEEF?
Krugman has put his finger on it, domestic
jobs, that is the 'sticky wicket' in the whole sordid process, inasmuch as more
and more work, of whatever kind, goes offshore, there remain fewer jobs, of any
kind, to fund purchase of those cheaper offshore goods.
The other aspect
of the situation, re currencies, aside from inflation/deflation, is that these
producing countries have begun to realize that US currency is really backed by
nothing anymore, no productivity, no specie, nothing.
One takes it, as a
medium of exchange, largely hoping to prop up temporarily (self interest) the
stultifera navis, and/or to get something of real value from third
parties (the old eurodollar situation now globalized).
The Bretton Woods
system, flawed from the outset, gold standard even abandoned by US in '71-72(?),
a prescription for market sloth, and manipulations of all kinds.
It is
not that complicated, really.
MAYBE SOMEONE, LIKE KRUGMAN, SAY, CAN CORRECT MY JAUNDICED VIEW OF THIS ECONOMIC HISTORY..........
Never, in the field of human conflict,
has so much been given away to so many, by so few, for so little, so quickly.
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