JIM: Yeah, if we take a look at either the United States in the 30s or Japan in the 90s, first of all, the US in the 30s was a manufacturing powerhouse. We were the manufacturing kingpin of the world. We were self-sufficient in manufacturing; we made almost everything that we consumed.
Secondly, the United States was a creditor nation; we had savings, we were the world’s largest creditor, which is one of the reasons we accumulated the world’s largest holdings of gold.
Third, we were self-sufficient in energy; we were, in the 1930s, the Saudi Arabia of the world. We produced most of the world’s energy output, our reserves were as big as Saudi Arabia’s reserves if not bigger; and we had so much energy, so much commodities that we had surpluses and the government was coming in with price supports. That’s when you had the Texas Railroad Commission.
You contrast that with the United States today where we import most of the things that you buy or see in the stores; whether it’s a department store, electronics store, even a hardware store – the stuff you see there isn’t made here. And so we're no long self-sufficient at manufacturing, we're reliant on the rest of the world to produce the goods that we consume; and then we're also reliant on the rest of the world for the money to pay for those goods since we run a trade deficit.
We're no longer a creditor nation. We are a debtor nation, so we're reliant of the rest of the world for payment of the things that we buy from them. And third, we are no longer an energy self-sufficient nation. We now import 70 percent, or nearly 700 billion dollars of our energy needs, and that number will get bigger, and our reliance on imports will get bigger. As we get into the next hour, the position of both candidates on energy – both of them, in many ways, are clueless. So the conditions today are worse; and the outcomes for debtor nations, creditor nations, is always hyperinflation. The unfunded liabilities of the United States today are now 70 trillion dollars. This reflects once again Laurence Kotlikoff’s article Is the US going broke: who will bail out the US out? And certainly, they’re already talking next year of a trillon dollar deficit for the United States, we’re talking about even a current account deficit that is going to be 700 to 800 billion dollars, and that’s why at some point in the next 12 to 18 months you’re going to see a major devaluation of the dollar. That is one of the ways you solve your debt problems, one of the way that you solve your asset deflation problems: A massive devaluation of the US currency. And that’s what’s ahead of us. [24:12] http://www.financialsense.com/fsn/BP/2008/1018.html
För den som vill sätta sig in i vad som eg hände under 30-talet rekommenderas följande bok:
America's Great Depression (Hardcover) by Murray N. Rothbard (Author)
Product Description Applied Austrian economics doesn't get better than this.
Murray N. Rothbard's America's Great Depression is a staple of modern economic literature and crucial for understanding a pivotal event in American and world history. The Mises Institute edition features, along with a new introduction by historian Paul Johnson, top-quality paper and bindings, in line with the standard set by The Scholars Edition of Human Action. Since it first appeared in 1963, it has been the definitive treatment of the causes of the depression. The book remains canonical today because the debate is still very alive. Rothbard opens with a theoretical treatment of business cycle theory, showing how an expansive monetary policy generates imbalances between investment and consumption. He proceeds to examine the Fed's policies of the 1920s, demonstrating that it was quite inflationary even if the effects did not show up in the price of goods and services. He showed that the stock market correction was merely one symptom of the investment boom that led inevitably to a bust. The Great Depression was not a crisis for capitalism but merely an example of the downturn part of the business cycle, which in turn was generated by government intervention in the economy. Had the book appeared in the 1940s, it might have spared the world much grief. Even so, its appearance in 1963 meant that free-market advocates had their first full-scale treatment of this crucial subject. The damage to the intellectual world inflicted by Keynesian- and socialist-style treatments would be limited from that day forward. About the Author Murray N. Rothbard, the author of 25 books and thousands of articles, was a historian, philosopher, and dean of the Austrian School of economics. The S.J. Hall Distinguished Professor of Economics at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, he was also Academic Vice President of the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Ala.
http://www.amazon.com/Americas-Great-Depression-Murray-Rothbard/dp/0945466056/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1224410087&sr=8-1
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