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Sorry, that should be Doug Casey. The URL for his piece is http://www.caseyresearch.com/cdd/lessons-argentine, the table is near the end.

I got it from http://howardleeharkness.com/2013/01/how-did-we-get-in-this-mess/. He's an old friend. Note that he corrected one of Casey's numbers, where Casey slipped a decimal point.

Lots of replies to your post! The bank collapse could have been contained had government enforced existing laws. There is/was a massive amount of fraud in the bubble, which the FBI was aware of at the time, as well as others who paid attention.. At the least, fraudulent loan applications could have been pursued. At a better level, bank/finance firms clearly misrepresented to investors about the underwriting standards when they sold the bundled products. We also have fraudulently signed and notarized documents on titles. So, lots of low hanging fruit in the real estate bubble.

The Federal Reserve has injected massive amounts of money into the system to try to contain the crash, and bubbles still persist. In the stock market, only chumps are getting prosecuted. The major players (Goldman Sachs and other HFT firms) are untouched.

The fine article states (on page 7): "The thing is, the SEC already has rules against placing orders not intended to be filled. Obviously, it doesn’t enforce them very well."

http://www.hsdl.org/?view&did=456724 is a nice PDF from where on page 126 we read:

"The FBI significantly reduced its investigative efforts for fraudulent activity involving financial institutions (such as banks). Principally, the FBI scaled back its handling of lower dollar cases [SENSITIVE INFORMATION REDACTED]. We agree that the FBI must prioritize its investigations and first address the most egregious criminal activities. However, discussions with USAOs and analysis of USAO data revealed that no other federal agency has replaced the reduced FBI effort in this crime area. Therefore, an investigative gap exists for financial institution fraud (FIF), [SENSITIVE INFORMATION REDACTED]."

This is also found at http://www.justice.gov/oig/reports/FBI/a0537/chapter13.htm

Michael Burry made billions (with a b) betting on the downfall of the CDO's. After writing an op-ed in the New York Times asking why the government (including the Federal Reserve) didn't see the same things he did, he was audited by the IRS. So, again we're looking at a massive financial system where the rules are not being enforced.

To repeat my comments from just a few days ago , the fine article states on page 4:

Many HFTs will make near-simultaneous trades on different exchanges and profit because of the delay in one of the exchanges. An example will help me explain: let’s use the NASDAQ and EDGE exchanges, and say that ABC stock is trading at $1.00. The HFT will send a bunch of quotes (offers) to NASDAQ and EDGE, trying to sell ABC stock at $1.01. Once the NASDAQ order is accepted, the HFT can simultaneously cancel the $1.01 sell order on the EDGE exchange and replace it with a buy order at the original price of $1.00. EDGE immediately accepts that $1.00 order, because its system has not caught up to the new price of $1.01, and the HFT’s net position becomes zero. This is possible because of latency, which is jargon for delay in the system. The net result is, the HFT captures a $0.01 arbitrage. By scalping this tiny amount from many trades, the profits add up quickly

Let's repeat: the HFTs are putting orders on the system for which they have no intention of fulfilling. This is a violation of SEC rules, yet the SEC does nothing. There was an AC responder to my post who made a blanket denial cancellations were happening. Care to respond?

This is how the author makes his living - everyone has to support themselves somehow, you know. If he gave his insights away for free, he wouldn't have nearly as much time to devote to his specialty as he does.

I wrote a diary on k5 a few years back which referenced Shadow Stats, which linked to an interview that links to a fuller interview of John Williams, the guy behind the Shadow Stats site.

My impression is that while Mr. Williams is quite right about the government mangling the statistics, he's wrong about the long-term implications (inflation forevermore). I like Mish of the Global Economic Analysis blog's take: he's been saying for some time that the end-game of current economic developments is massive deflation, as all the loans in the economy go bad one at a time, in a sort of cascading system failure. We're now seeing the deflation prediction come to pass - while Gas & food are skyrocketing, other assets (housing, etc) and prices are dropping fast, as homeowners and businesses struggle to find buyers at any price. This is what you'd expect if the amount of money available in the economy (read: available for the everyday working Joe to spend - the trust fund manager who made $1billion last year doesn't count) was decreasing.

For the record, I don't subscribe to Mr. Williams' newsletter - much too poor for that right now.

What's so bad about restricting international trade? I know the free-trade propaganda dictates that any restrictions on trade is 'bad, mkay?', and I used to believe it too, but then I started to realize who benefits.

Free trade has definitely lowered the cost of goods across the spectrum. The price of shoes, clothes and electronics have all moved down decisively since free-trade policies were implemented (NAFTA circa 1993, and the WTO circa 1995 or 1996). But at what cost? What happened to the americans who used to put shoes, clothes, and electronics together? Perhaps they're now a part of the United State's stealth unemployment epidemic (if our government measured unemployment the way most European countries do, it'd be around 12%. See Shadow Statistics).

Free trade benefits the corporate middleman - Walmart et. al, who can keep their trinkets' prices low in the inflationary monetary environment we find ourselves in today. It only benefits their customers temporarily, because since their job has moved overseas, they'll only be able to afford Walmart's trinkets until their savings run out.

Patrick Buchanan New Deal For U.S. Manufacturers covers how the government's tax policy actively encourages production to flee the United States.

canary in the coal mine, and 1970's, redux both apply here too.

The question we should be asking, is why is US growth so low, and how can we fix it.

Your post has the answer to your question:

Contrary to popular belief, a substantial amount of engineering for Dell is done in the US, not in Taiwan. Employees have constructed an effective wall to foreign design centers and have actually left the company any time mgmt has tried to tear it down (thanks to HP for showing employees what to be afraid of).

Dell is an exception, rather than the rule. Jobs have been fleeing the United States for years... First it was manufacturing, then engineering/technology too. Foodservice and low-level Health Care positions don't pay nearly as well as manufacturing, IT, or engineering used to. Wages in the jobs that are still in North America are being squeezed by competition from low-wage China and elsewhere.

There's no chance of fixing the economy now - the time for action was in 1992/1993, when Traitor Bush the Elder first negotiated the North American Free Trade Agreement and Traitor Clinton pushed the NAFTA implementation bills through the congress. Or in 1995 when the World Trade Organization was first organized. Or in the 80's, when Reagan (really, Puppet Master Bush the Elder) was printing money to pay for his military buildup. Or in the late 60's/early 70's, when the Feral Government was printing money to pay for the Vietnam war. Or even more recently, when Traitor Bush the Junior negotiated the Central American Free Trade Agreement (and others).

There's also the hordes of illegal immigrants (encouraged by the corptocracy) depressing working class wages... But vdare was yesterday's story...

The best we can do now is elect a congress who will impeach/convict the Bush/Cheney junta. Tell your friends - Fire the [republican] incumbents, the Bush depression has already begun.

Economic restructuring is a good thing, because many of us are miserable in the current political/economic climate. Look at the people you see out in WalMart's isles: fat & sick, and looking for satisfaction in meaningless trinkets. Going to get a little rough, but it will certainly be worth the struggle in the end.

I've some earthboxes and seeds, so I won't be entirely dependant on produce shipments from far away, picked by mexican slave labor.

These earthbox pictures are from 3 weeks ago (start with the last picture). The plants are coming along nicely, and I'll be harvesting my first lettuce & tomatos soon (I'm in the desert southwest, so the plant-killing summer heat has just recently abated).

We only have ourselves to blame for that.

I don't agree. IMHO, the government was used to rig the economic playing field. See 1970's, redux. Summary: federal reserve has been inflating the money supply since 1995. First came the dot com bubble, then the dot com crash. Recession! Then there came a "terrorist" attack, and Alan Greenspan and his merry band of fools cut interest rates to next-to-nothing. Because production had already been moving offshore (fleeing teh inflation), this new injection of money flowed into ... housing. If teh government hadn't already screwed the economy up, stimulus would've fincanced new production lines & the like. Now the media is finally picking up on the fact that there is a problem with housing bubbles, but they're a little late to realize such, and they still don't realize that the inflation in prices was directly caused by

I agree but it isn't just about cost. 30+ years ago "Made in the USA" meant quality. Does anyone see it that way today? Often people are willing to pay more for things produced overseas because of higher quality.

It's not that they have higher quality in Japan/China/Germany/etc, but that they've been getting all the investment for new equipment. New equipment and production processes result in higher quality.

As an interesting aside, note those three countries' position on the CIA's ranked order of Current account balance. Then read the list until you find the United States. Is it any wonder that companies try to move as much as possible offshore? (Link courtesy of the latest What We Now Know).

See Shadow Statistics for more on how the government cooks the economic reports.

US Trade Deficit: When the Sausage comes home to Roost has some good discussion on the coming consequences of the trade deficit, and how we got here. Particularly pertinent is the section at the end about the 1987 book The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, and how the U.S. has definitively entered the "fall" stage of the power cycle.

But as you seem to indicate, few people seem to know that the federal reserve system is at the root of our poor nation's economic struggle. See the 1983 book The Misdirection Conspiracy: Or Who Really Killed the American Dream for a good history behind how the banking class (not your friendly neighborhood banker, but the Rockerfellers/Morgans/other globalist shysters) are sucking the lifeblood from the working class.

Also worth mentioning that Michael Mandeville, author of The Coming Economic Collapse Of 2006 (2003) says that the predicted collapse is well underway. The current trouble at Ford and General Motors marks an acceleration of the decline.

The present economic calamity was, of course, set in stone as soon as Nixon closed the gold window back in 1971, removing all incumbrances to out-of-control monetary growth (monetary inflation), or perhaps even as early as the establishment of the Federal Reserve system in 1913... See 1970's, redux for more on how globalization & the federal reserve bleeds america dry.