Obama Says Offshoring Fears Are Unwarranted

alphadogg writes "The perception that Indian call centers and back office operations cost US jobs is an old stereotype that ignores today's reality that two-way trade between the US and India is helping create jobs and raise the standard of living in both countries, US President Barack Obama told a gathering of business executives in Mumbai on Saturday. President Obama's remarks come after some moves in the US that had Indian outsourcers worried that the US may get protectionist in the wake of job losses in the country. The state of Ohio, for example, banned earlier this year the expenditure of public funds for offshore purposes. US exports to India have quadrupled in recent years, and currently support tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs in the US, he said in a speech that was also streamed live. In addition, there are jobs supported by exports to India of agriculture products, travel and education services. President Obama, who is in India on a three-day visit, said that more than 20 deals worth about $10 billion were announced on the first day of his visit."

Comments

Apparently Obama knows not Grigsby & Cohen

[sethstorm]

The H1-b fraud is what kills it for most Americans that stumble upon offshoring's negative qualities.

You don't go to India for US jobs, especially when you're millions of US jobs in the hole.

Re:Apparently Obama knows not Grigsby & Cohen

[Ritchie70]

Indeed. I work with a lot of people who I assume are here on H1-b, with Patni claiming they can't find qualified Americans to fill these positions.

And yet the tiny US-based consulting firm we use doesn't seem to have any problem finding qualified Americans.

Of course, their people are mostly 40 - 50+ Americans, who are no doubt more expensive than 20-something Indians. But they also know what they're doing.

I'm pretty sure the billing rate to my company is about the same for both of them. So you apparently can make money pimping out Americans, too.

Re:Apparently Obama knows not Grigsby & Cohen

[cob666]

I agree that H-1B seems to be more of an issue than outsourcing in general. There are a LOT of US citizens that are unemployed right now and there are many firms that are still hiring H-1B visa workers. The H-1B program should be cut back in areas where the US workforce has unemployed workers.

Re:Apparently Obama knows not Grigsby & Cohen

[something_wicked_thi]

The H-1Bs seem to me to be more of a distraction. However, I'm biased: I'm a Canadian in the US on an H-1B. But, as an H-1B holder, I know something of the process involved.

There are annual limits on the number of H-1Bs that the US hands out. That number is 65k plus an additional 20k for people with masters degrees. I know in 2008, they got more than double the cap on the first day and instituted a lotter, but in 2009, there were very few applications because of the failing economy. I'm pretty sure that most years, the 20k masters cap is never reached, and I think the 65k in 2009 wasn't reached, either.

Anyway, H-1Bs are good for 3 years, extendable up to an additional 2. This means that the theoretical maximum number of legal H-1Bs in the US at any one time is 5 * 85k = 425k. That's less than 0.2% of the population and seems unlikely to me to significantly affect the unemployment rate.

Another point is that H-1B workers are required, by law, to be paid at least the "prevailing wage" based on their work and geographical location. While this is by no means perfect, it does provide some protection against wage depression.

Am I saying the H-1B program is perfect? God, no. There is a lot of abuse. People apply for H-1Bs on false pretenses, the green card application process is dubious to say the least, and the spouses of H-1B holders cannot work unless they acquire their own visas.

The number I quote can be inflated a little because H-1B holders who are applying for green cards can basically keep their H-1Bs indefinitely until the green card application is fully processed. This process can take years. One simple way to reduce the number of H-1B holders is just to process these applications faster.

Of course, there are lots of green card holders in general who are immigrants and you could argue that people with permanent residence status are taking US jobs. I think that's actually a more defensible position, since there are simply more of them. And there are more undocumented workers than H-1B holders, too. Lots more. Therefore, my point is that while the H-1B program is not perfect and is certainly abused, I am dubious of kneejerk claims that it is this fraud that in any way hurts "most Americans". With millions of jobs being lost every year due to the economy, there simply aren't enough H-1B workers to account for very much of it.

Re:Apparently Obama knows not Grigsby & Cohen

[iluvcapra]

Of course, their people are mostly 40 - 50+ Americans, who are no doubt more expensive than 20-something Indians. But they also know what they're doing.

Knowing what you're doing is SO 20th century. Next you'll be telling us the 50-year-olds don't spend 70% of their day on AIM and Facebook...

Re:Apparently Obama knows not Grigsby & Cohen

[commodore64_love]

You don't understand.

Limiting H-1B is logical if you desire to help unemployed americans, but President Obama wants to *redistribute* the wages away from the "rich" americans towards poorer india, china, et cetera workers. He's said as much in his old college & other lectures. So he probably thinks H-1B visas are a great way to accomplish the goal, as it hands the money to much poorer non-americans. It's a way to spread the wealth.

"The message I take away from this election is very simple
"The American people are still frustrated & still want change."
  - Obama, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DV4j2URWNo

Re:Apparently Obama knows not Grigsby & Cohen

[TheEyes]

The H1-b fraud is what kills it for most Americans that stumble upon offshoring's negative qualities.

You don't go to India for US jobs, especially when you're millions of US jobs in the hole.

Yeah, you might think that, but you'd be completely wrong.

The unemployment rate for college graduates is 4.7 percent this year. That essentially means that, for college graduates, there is no recession: 5 percent unemployment is the national rate you see during boom years.

What's more, three years ago the unemployment rate for college graduates was two percent, which is far too low to be sustainable. In other words, the lack of college graduates--people with the qualifications to work the jobs this country was producing--was stifling growth in those areas.

The conclusion is clear: we need more highly educated college graduates in this country, and we need them three years ago. Long term that means education reform, which the President got done by putting it on a rider on the healthcare bill, but short term what it means is importing qualified workers from overseas, until we can legitimately produce them here. The idea that H-1B is robbing Americans of jobs is a myth: the data-driven facts say that we don't have enough highly educated Americans to do the jobs our economy is currently producing, and until we can legitimately make up the gap the H-1B visa program is a barely passable stopgap.

Re:Apparently Obama knows not Grigsby & Cohen

[walterbyrd]

Because H1Bs can not easily quit. A US worker can go to his/her boss and say "I'm way over due for a raise, either increase my salary, or I will be forced to look for work elsewhere." If an H1B does that, he/she is on the next airplane back to India.

There is nothing US employers hate worse than "training somebody for his/her next job."

Re:Apparently Obama knows not Grigsby & Cohen

[walterbyrd]

There are annual limits on the number of H-1Bs that the US hands out. That number is 65k plus an additional 20k for people with masters degrees.

Let's not forget that number was 195K, not long ago, and those workers are still here. Also, that 85K number does not include the unlimited OPT visas. That number also does not include the dozens of other visas such as L-1 and J-1.

Anyway, H-1Bs are good for 3 years, extendable up to an additional 2. This means that the theoretical maximum number of legal H-1Bs in the US at any one time is 5 * 85k = 425k. That's less than 0.2% of the population and seems unlikely to me to significantly affect the unemployment rate.

I think that's 3 years + an additional 3 years. Also, the cap used to be much higher. Also, don't forget about all the other visas. Also, don't forget that the H1B is hugely disproportionately targeted to US STEM jobs, especially IT. And let's not forget that in 2009, US IT jobs were absolutely slaughtered. Practically every major US IT employer announced major layoffs - i.e. 10,000 layoffs from IBM, 6,000 layoffs from MS, etc.

Another point is that H-1B workers are required, by law, to be paid at least the "prevailing wage" based on their work and geographical location. While this is by no means perfect, it does provide some protection against wage depression.

"Less the perfect" hardly describes the situation. In some career fields, jobs are very well defined, in IT it is just the opposite, i.e. a sysadmin may also be the DBA and/or a developer; or a developer may work as an admin, or a network engineer. In IT, the phrase "prevailing wage" is completely meaningless.

And there are more undocumented workers than H-1B holders, too. Lots more.

It is a very different problem. Undocumented workers do hold jobs that US workers typically aspire to have. But, what happens to the US technological lead when Americans say themselves "why study for a STEM career, just to get replaced by an H1B worker?

Therefore, my point is that while the H-1B program is not perfect and is certainly abused, I am dubious of kneejerk claims that it is this fraud that in any way hurts "most Americans". With millions of jobs being lost every year due to the economy, there simply aren't enough H-1B workers to account for very much of it.

You are dead wrong. The number of H1Bs is extremely significant. In many IT departments, the H1Bs have completely taken over.

Re:Apparently Obama knows not Grigsby & Cohen

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Because H1Bs can not easily quit. A US worker can go to his/her boss and say "I'm way over due for a raise, either increase my salary, or I will be forced to look for work elsewhere." If an H1B does that, he/she is on the next airplane back to India.

No. That's no longer true. In fact, it hasn't been that way for a while. The H1B program was amended around 2000 to enable people on an H1B visa to move from job to job without being forced out of the country.

What has not been changed is the green card process. If you want a green card, it can easily take 4+ years and the system requires you to stick with one employer during the application process. If you change employers, you have to start the entire process all over again. The thing is that the H1B visa is only good for 6 years - after which you gotta leave the country for an entire year and then start the green card process all over again.

So, if the H1B holder wants to become a permanent citizen, he generally can't go job shopping after the first year or so of employment. Which is really quite perverse since, presumably, these guys are highly skilled and there is a dearth of people like them in the US labor market. So we ought to be doing everything we can to make it easier for them to become citizens, not harder.

Re:Apparently Obama knows not Grigsby & Cohen

[Antique Geekmeister]

And then there is this video, documenting how a law firm _advised_ their clients on how to avoid the H1-B requirements to avoid finding a qualified US worker.

You can make money providing Americans as consultants, but because our expenses are so much higher, we do tend to cost more. So a consulting agency can make a much higher margin of profit, and face far less stringent work safety or harassment policies.

Re:Apparently Obama knows not Grigsby & Cohen

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Another point is that H-1B workers are required, by law, to be paid at least the "prevailing wage" based on their work and geographical location. While this is by no means perfect, it does provide some protection against wage depression.

"Less the perfect" hardly describes the situation. In some career fields, jobs are very well defined, in IT it is just the opposite, i.e. a sysadmin may also be the DBA and/or a developer; or a developer may work as an admin, or a network engineer. In IT, the phrase "prevailing wage" is completely meaningless.

Also, there is zero budget allocated for enforcement. Nobody in the government even bothers to check if employers are complying. But, the numbers that have been reported are indicative of massive violations: In 2007 the medium wage for new H1B hires was $50K, less than what new grads with zero experience make. Furthermore, 90% of H-1B employers' prevailing wage claims for programmers were below the median U.S. wage for that occupation and location, with 62% being in the bottom 25%.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=201000479&pgno=3&queryText=&isPrev=

Re:Apparently Obama knows not Grigsby & Cohen

[Anonymous Coward]

> Anyway, H-1Bs are good for 3 years, extendable up to an additional 2. This means that the theoretical maximum number of
> legal H-1Bs in the US at any one time is 5 * 85k = 425k. That's less than 0.2% of the population and seems unlikely to
> me to significantly affect the unemployment rate.

H1-Bs are good for 3+3=6 years. Also, once you have greencard pending the H1-B can be extended ad-infinitum. Which is why you
sometimes see posts like this:
http://forums.immigration.com/showthread.php?292018-Help-10th-Year-H1B-Extension-Visa-Stamping-Advise
Add other visa's like L1-B and we soon talking 1million-plus total workers here... And dont compare that with the population
of the US, compare with the number of people in the IT profession.

The real problem though is not just that H1-Bs are allowed here, its that they dont have the same freedoms (ability to change
employers etc) that citizens and permanent residents do. This forces them to work at hte mercy of the employer, who cna then
push down their wages which depresses the complete market. We *do* need the best and the brightest to come over here and work,
we just need to provide them the same protection from employers that native born workers have.

Re:Apparently Obama knows not Grigsby & Cohen

[silas_moeckel]

Yawn degrees, 4 years of school is about as useful as 2 years at a real job, at least that's what my state says in it's hiring practices. I've hired plenty of people what degree you have is important for maybe your first or second job after that it's a check box at best. The big issue I've seen with h1b visa labor is the majority are study for the test types they have no passion for the work it's just a means to have a better life. It's the same thing as the kid in school that crams before a test to get a grade and has forgotten most of it a week later forget several years. I don't care to know what large corps are looking for besides replaceable cogs. When I'm hiring I'm looking for one of two things a star that can solve the hard problems so they don't happen again or the guy with an attentive eye that will take the time to get the grunt work done right every time. I've never interviewed a h1b that fit either category, I've worked with them but they were hired by an Indian owned start-up and they has as much trouble finding good people as I did.

Re:Apparently Obama knows not Grigsby & Cohen

[sapped]

This is not quite true either. I have been in the Green Card process for almost 11 years now and have been steadily renewing my H1 every time it comes around. This is because they realized (to some extent) that they completely jumped the shark on the immigration process and allow us to keep renewing our H1 visa's while we are still in the Green Card process. For the first 9 years of that process I was stuck with a pig of an employer that made sure he abused me as much as he could because I was unable to switch jobs. So once I hit the Employment Authorization phase I was out of there like a shot.

Re:Apparently Obama knows not Grigsby & Cohen

[Lobachevsky]

The H1-B issue is somewhat moot because that visa transitions into a permanent residence and citizenship over the years. I've been reading Slashdot since 1998 and reading about those "evil H1-B workers" since the beginning -- guess what? Those very same H1-B workers from 1998 are now all citizens. So, at some point, the argument devolves into, "yeah those brown citizens are stealing our jobs!" Which, honestly, is a horrible racist argument.

Criticism over L-1 visas (does not lead to citizenship) or outsourcing is more valid, because that is money exiting the country. However, we, the U.S., have balanced trade with India (equal money flows out to India as money flows in from India). The largest trade imbalance is what we have with China (for a variety of reasons, mostly due to the China suppressing the value of the Yuan/Renminbi). For that reason, our economists and think tanks prefer industry and trade to move to India from China, because it will greatly reduce the American trade deficit.

Re:Apparently Obama knows not Grigsby & Cohen

[Grishnakh]

It might be more about wage-slavery than the actual wage. I.e., you offer them a decent wage, but then when they're locked in and working for you, you force them to work 16-hour days 7 days a week, because they can't quit or go work for someone else.

We U.S. Citizens, by contrast, can't be abused so easily. If we get fed up, we can walk out of work that day with zero notice (like I did two months ago), totally screwing up the employer's release schedule.

Re:Apparently Obama knows not Grigsby & Cohen

[Lord Kano]

Anyway, H-1Bs are good for 3 years, extendable up to an additional 2. This means that the theoretical maximum number of legal H-1Bs in the US at any one time is 5 * 85k = 425k. That's less than 0.2% of the population and seems unlikely to me to significantly affect the unemployment rate.

You, sir, have forgotten anchor babies and arranged marriages.

The problem that I have with H1Bs is that they drive down wages. Many employers quote industry average wages when posting for a job. That would be all well and good, but a few H1Bs earning $30k/yr will drive down the average.

LK

Re:Apparently Obama knows not Grigsby & Cohen

[elrous0]

"Can't get qualified Americans to do the job" is business speak for "Can't get qualified Americans to do the job for minimum wage or some other joke salary." Imported labor artificially drives down wages, then hides behind the excuse that no American wants to do it. When I was in college, you could get $7 an hour cutting tobacco on local farms, and a lot of us did it during the summer. A few years later, the farmers started to bring in illegals and H1-B's from Mexico, and the pay suddenly dropped from $7/hour to $4-$5/hr., with the farmers complaining they just couldn't get us lazy Americans to do it.

As an Ohioan, I'm proud the state banned it

[sethstorm]

The state of Ohio, for example, banned earlier this year the expenditure of public funds for offshore purposes.

One of the many things that was possible with Governor Strickland, and not Head Banker-elect Kasich.

The only shame is that Kasich got elected as Head Banker, instead of the state retaining Governor Strickland. Now we get a Wall Street banker that compares himself to an East Coast thug. By how he's talking to the media, he's not going to step aside; the Head Banker's simply going to exact revenge.

Re:As an Ohioan, I'm proud the state banned it

[Anonymous Coward]

It's ironic that people like you voice dissent at the Indian off shoring situation when you had no problem off shoring our manufacturing jobs to China by lining up at Walmart's feeding trough.

Re:As an Ohioan, I'm proud the state banned it

[sethstorm]

It's ironic that people like you voice dissent at the Indian off shoring situation when you had no problem off shoring our manufacturing jobs to China by lining up at Walmart's feeding trough.

Go to Northeast Ohio, and you'll find out how job losses to foreign countries are handled.

Actually, I haven't a single transaction at that store post-NAFTA. Walking in Wal-Mart is like walking in a foreign land.

Here's todays reality:

[larry bagina]

Harley Davidson is building an assembly plant in India to assemble American parts. Why not ship the entire (pre-built) motorcycle to India? Well, because India has tariffs that essentially double the price

Re:Here's todays reality:

[DCstewieG]

And Toyota and Honda assemble cars in the U.S. Sometimes you just gotta do stuff locally.

Re:Here's todays reality:

[kimvette]

Solution: Why not raise our import tariff rates to match that of our so-called trading partners?

Re:Here's todays reality:

[FauxPasIII]

Solution: Why not raise our import tariff rates to match that of our so-called trading partners?

Because, obviously, that would be Communism.

Re:Here's todays reality:

[Koby77]

Solution: Why not raise our import tariff rates to match that of our so-called trading partners?

Because the politicians (and make no mistake, I'm talking both major parties in the U.S.) are bought and paid for by the multinational corporations. They have absolutely no consideration for the trade deficit, or the standard of living for citizens, as long as they can profit from the situation.

Unfortunately, meaningful economic changes will not occur in the U.S. until there is a large shift in the way voters choose elected officials which allows outside independent candidates without connections to lobbyists to succeed at the ballot box.

Re:Here's todays reality:

[falconwolf]

Solution: Why not raise our import tariff rates to match that of our so-called trading partners?

Because the politicians (and make no mistake, I'm talking both major parties in the U.S.) are bought and paid for by the multinational corporations.

That's a great idea, if you want to start another Great Deprerssion. Protectionist laws like the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act virtually shutdown international trade causing the world's economy to collapse. US exports themselves declined by 61%, falling from "US$5.4 billion to US$2.1 billion". Before Pres Herbert Hoover signed it more than a 1000 economists warned him not to, but of course he did. In retaliation other national governments passed their own protectionist laws.

Falcon

Re:Of course it ignores today's reality.

[Bloodwine]

I am a software developer and I was hired for my current job to bring back all development from India. I was tasked with bringing all development back in-house because the offshore projects were behind schedule and suspect quality, not to mention the communication issues.

What we do now is do a combination of in-house development and rural sourcing, which is hiring U.S. developers in the midwest and midsouth in areas of lower cost of living. They are more expensive than offshore developers, but much cheaper than developers in major cities and these rural developers are in the same timezone.

I think you will see more and more rural sourcing cutting in to the offshoring of jobs. I don't think there will ever be a full reversal of offshoring jobs, just that rural sourcing will become more and more viable and desirable.

yeah right

[bartok]

"Create job abd raise the standard of living in both countries".

This statement is only true if you count the rich getting richer in the US. I fail to see how losing your middle class income job to outsourcing raises your stadard of living.

Re:yeah right

[Charliemopps]

Because, while some jobs leave our country, goods made in their country are cheaper. If shipping a job to India lowers the average wage here by 10% but the price of goods goes down by 20%, that's a net gain.

Re:yeah right

[Rakarra]

Because, while some jobs leave our country, goods made in their country are cheaper. If shipping a job to India lowers the average wage here by 10% but the price of goods goes down by 20%, that's a net gain.

Only past a certain level. If someone is right on the line and the wage lowering pushes them below the poverty line, it's a great blow to standard of living, as they can't afford those goods anymore, even at a low price.

Basic expenses, food, electricity, gas, even rents in most areas have not, and do not, as a trend, go down. There is a certain minimum that is required, and if wages go below that point, then that person is screwed. Oh, a new TV or a new car cost 20% less now? That's great, except they can barely make rent.

So you have an expanding upper class, an expanding lower class, and a contracting middle class.

Re:I think he is mostly right

[mrnobo1024]

The developing world will keep developing and net flows of capital and standards of living are going to flow from more developed to less developed.

If I live in a more developed country, why the fuck should I tolerate this? Being a sovereign nation means having the ability to regulate trade up to and including stopping it completely. Since, as you freely admit, foreign trade is utterly screwing us over, that sounds like a pretty good idea right now.

Re:Of course it ignores today's reality.

[Sir_Sri]

because no matter what anyone says, india is still rife with corruption and incompetence on a scale completely unheard of in the US. When you're there, immersed in it, you develop certain strategies to deal with it, but for a western company that is used to saying 'built to this spec/design, and at this time' and actually getting something close to it, either from china or other western companies, doing business in india is very frustrating. It's usually preferable to pay more, but actually get what you want, when you want it, and have some way to resolve contract disputes in a reasonable fashion.

IBM & company

[Anonymous Coward]

Obama should gather a little bit of data on the tech sector. IBM alone has hired 80,000 people in India in the last 8 years. Meanwhile, my colleagues and I have not had raises in the last 5 years. We aren't a group of chump manufacturing people putting tops on bottoms either. We develop a lot of the firmware in the high end systems, and do high level hardware design. We've been told no back fills in the US. The only new people are in cheaper regions.

I'm sure our friends at HP, Oracle, Dell, etc are up to the same nonsense.

Re:IBM & company

[roman_mir]

If I were IBM top brass, I'd do the same thing exactly.

Why hire and keep people in USA rather than anywhere in Asia, now in India, later in China, the in Mongolia, I don't care?

The USA has stupid income taxes, it has stupid payroll taxes, it has regulations that would force me to overpay the employees. The stupid regulations that would make me responsible for employees' healthcare! All the unions, etc.etc.

Of-course I'd get rid of as many people as possible in the shortest time frame and hire people all over the world where I wouldn't be faced with the same regulations and rules.

That's just pure common sense and pure liquidity.

--

Now, of-course everybody is aware that large corporations have always enjoyed disproportionate access to gov't officials by buying politicians through campaign donations, fundraisers, lobbying, etc. IBM has gained plenty through all of this, so IBM is in a cushy place compared to any new start up that would aim at any part of IBM's business.

But now realize, that while IBM is a massive company, like most companies that are backed by gov't, protected by gov't from any new competition, and at the same time the same rules apply to small start ups, where they are in disproportionate disadvantage to the existing company because to an existing large compnay/monopoly, the rules and regulations are trivial cost of business, since they are established and have solid cash flow.

A start up does not have a cash flow. A start up would have to comply with rules and regulations that would make it impossible for a startup really to take off.

IBM is not even an interesting example of this, if you want to start your own hedge fund, you are screwed. You have to be a millionaire already to be able to pay all the compliance costs for all the new regulations that are constantly coming out.

Bills that force you to collect data about the customers, effectively turning you int an IRS and a CIA agent, an unpaid agent, an agent that has to pay out of his own pocket to set up all the system necessary to keep track of all transactions and report them to IRS and the rest of the gov't.

The Patriot act alone probably made start ups in hedge funding impossible.

--

So honestly, USA is not a country that is conducive to new business and that's exactly what it needs - new business. But it's overloaded with bills and rules and laws and regulations and various expectations and lawsuits, it's just too much red tape.

Obviously it makes much more sense to start a business in Asia.

Today, ironically, China is a much more free place to start your own business and succeed than USA. People used to come to US to be more Free and to try and achieve something because the system was created to allow people to achieve success, now it's nowhere near anything like that. China now is more Free in an economic sense than the US.

Oh oh, and all this inflation, all this money printing, it's not helping at all. Inflation and eventual destruction of USD and US consumer, why start a business in US unless you are masochistic?

Re:IBM & company

[SashaMan]

While I understand your position, the statement "We aren't a group of chump manufacturing people" highlights the problems with many people's thinking. For decades we off-shored manufacturing jobs, and the general sentiment from college educated white collar workers was "Sorry, that's the way a dynamic economy works, you need to upgrade your skills." Thus, given that this way of doing business is now biting you in the ass, I'm surprised that you still think you are so different from "chump manufacturing people".

The problem with our economy is that we are growing the classes of people who are fundamentally unemployable. While it's nice to say you need more training, the fact is that many people will never have the skills to be a software architect or a Hollywood director or a Wall Street banker. For millions of minimum wage people, blue collar workers, and growing number of white collar workers like paralegals, programmers, etc., capitalism is not working (and that doesn't mean I think any of the other ...ism bugaboos are the answer)

Re:IBM & company

[roman_mir]

Inflation is low?

---

here are some REAL numbers, as opposed to the ones you eat up from the gov't:

October 1 2010

Gold: new high
Silver: new 30 year high
Gold stocks hit 52 week high
Oil: strong day and strong week
Dollar: dropped 13 percent from peak 3 months ago

September is done, media says: this is best September in 71 years. Dow gained 7.7%, S&P gained 8.8%.

However this month of September.

CRB Index (commodities): gained 8.7% - beat DOW and just under S&P
Soy beans: up 9.5% - beat S&P
Copper: up 10% - beat S&P
Rice: up 10% - beat S&P
Oil: up 11% - beat S&P
Corn: up 12% - beat S&P
Silver: up 13% - beat S&P
Frozen concentrated orange juice: up 13% - beat S&P
Cotton: up 17.5% - beat S&P
Sugar: up 19.3% - beat S&P

Currencies:
Swiss Frank: up 4.6%
Euro: up 7%
Australian Dollar: up 9% - beat S&P
-
this is all inflation and the prices hikes will hit your local shelves too in not too distant future, your gov't is working on it.

--

Houses are overpriced, their prices should all drop by a large factor.

The gov't doesn't want to see the banks fail, banks who are now all insolvent, since they are still holding toxic mortgages and the rest of their 'money' is used to buy gov't bonds, all of which have low interest on them. So if the house prices actually fall where they belong (and where it would be excellent for the economy) the banks would fail first on mortgages, and then on the interest going up, because the money they have in bonds would yield much lower interest than what the banks would have to return this money at.

Your favorite Fed helicopter prints money now to lend it to the US gov't, the so called QE2 is not even about economy, it's about the US gov't borrowing exactly the same amount as the Fed will be printing all by June.

The Fed has become the lender of last resort to US gov't. It's broke, it's actually bankrupt now.

The US gov't and the US media are even saying that if the debt ceiling is not raised, the global economy will be destroyed, which is:
1. Nonsense. The global economy is producing, it's the US who'll suffer because all it produces is inflated currency.
2. Shows the world that US is never going to pay its debts out, it's never intending to.

--

Intellectual property shouldn't even exist.

Gov't protection of "intellectual property" is part of the problem, not part of any solution. It should not happen, it's bad for economy, not good.

--

In the early nineties even almost out of college students could start hedge funds in US, it is now absolutely impossible without huge money to cover all compliance and regulations costs.

--

So, are you starting a business in USA?

And MY Personal Costs?

[mim]

Is President Obama taking into account MY personal costs when I require internet tech support and have to use my cell phone minutes? Not to mention the difficulties of the language barrier when you can hardly understand what they're saying due to their thick accents that further complicates matters and takes up yet more of my valuable time? Does he understand that they can hardly understand me either, so we go back & forth repeating ourselves trying to resolve the issue, taking up yet more time and costing ME more money?? I think not.

Historic reality

[hackingbear]

What he said about India could have well applied to China more, as the US exports more products to China than to India. But he, and the other politicians, did not say the same things to China. The only reason being that China is now the main competitor and so we have to demonize it and please countries like India and Vietnam, exactly like how we pleased China 30 years ago -- opened up our market without asked for the equivalent level of opening up, established relation with Mao's regime which was a million times more suppressive than the current one, and kicked out Taiwan from th UN, in order to fight against the then biggest competitor -- the Soviet Union. The problem with this strategy is that while we may constraint one competitor, we are creating another new major one for ourselves down the road. And we the common people pay the costs. History repeats itself again and again.

Re:Automation versus offshoring

[Compaqt]

The canonical article on this topic, by the founder of HowStuffWorks:

http://www.marshallbrain.com/robotic-nation.htm

Re:Ten Billion?

[evolve75]

That is $ 10 Billion coming in to the US - by exporting products (33 planes from Boeing, 414 Jet Engines from GE, etc.) to India. RTFA ... oh, wait, this is Slashdot.

India Trade Deficit: $4-12BILLION Annually

[Doc Ruby]

The US trade deficit with India is already over $7B this year through August; heading to top $10B this year. That will be among the highest annual deficits, though Bush/Cheney got deficits as high as $12B+. August 2009 saw the only monthly trade surplus with India in well over 20 years, $34 million; the rest of the months total to something like a quarter $TRILLION more spent on India than India spent on the US. It's obvious that the parallel growth in the US and India leaves the US with less money from our jobs and more money in India for its jobs.

Of course, the corporate profits on all those jobs are not counted in trade stats. The real competition isn't between US labor vs Indian labor. It's between labor in either country, and the corporate owners who run the system, keeping the profits among themselves and their banker partners.

Outsourcing just sucks

[dave562]

It is getting to the point where outsourcing will start costing US companies money. In my current employment situation, we outsource the management of the network infrastructure to AT&T. They manage the firewalls, load balancers and switches. However everything is managed from Singapore. Whenever I need to discuss network design decisions or changes with a real Cisco certified engineer, I have to do it on Singapore time. They don't have any engineers in America anymore. All of their project managers seem to be in India. They must be a getting a great discount, because my PM doesn't know jack. Every time I need a question answered, he has to ask someone else.

Anyone who has dealt with AT&T knows that getting change orders processed is a complete PITA. When you add a 12 hour time difference on top of it, it is amazing that anything gets done at all.

Our solution is that we are going to hire a network engineer here in America. AT&T can bugger off. We are an American company. We are hosting our servers in an American data center on US soil. Our vendor should have people who can work with us during our regular business hours. I'm all for having people on the other side of the world who can do things during a midnight (local time) maintenance window. I'm not all for having to wait until 9pm to have a conference call to discuss things. I'm even more put off by dealing with people who barely speak my language and don't have the technical competence to keep up.

Re:Outsourcing just sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a disaster, it's always been a disaster. Managers get their bonus based on cost savings regardless of how much it wrecks their company in the mid-long term.

Re:Of course it ignores today's reality.

[krswan]

I have a friend who just flew to India for a month to clean up an outsourcing mess for his company. Months behind schedule, 1/2 million over budget... from what he told me folks there had been promoted way above their ability level resulting in really substandard management and unsurprising results.

25% US Unemployment

[beaker8000]

Yes, thats the actual US unemployment rate when you take into account those who gave up looking. And in return for outsourcing jobs he cites $10B in export deals. Really? That's 1/8 of AAPL's yearly revenue. That's 1/60 of what the Fed just printed to buy Treasury bonds.

Re:Ten Billion?

[jo_ham]

Sure you can ask those questions. You'll just look stupid, because the answers are in the fucking article.

Re:Automation versus offshoring

[0123456]

Logically if there is a future when robots do all our jobs, you'd be better off in the countries which treat their jobless well.

How long do you think the robots will 'treat their jobless well'?

Why do Americans think

[drgregoryhouse]

they deserve jobs India can do for a cheaper price?

Re:Why do Americans think

[mrnobo1024]

Why do companies think they deserve to sell the same product to Americans for 10 times the price it sells for in the third world? Once you start talking about products rather than jobs, suddenly all the bullshit rhetoric about "free trade" disappears. It's obvious that the purpose of "free trade" is to screw over the average American for the benefit of the few rich - we're forced to compete with third-world wages, but don't have the option of paying third-world prices.

Besides, the whole concept of "deserving" a certain standard of living is bogus. A medieval peasant had a shitty standard of living. How do we "deserve" a standard of living so much higher, just for being born a few centuries later? We don't "deserve" it, but we take it anyway, because we can. The rich are already taking this line of thinking to its logical conclusion... the working class would do well to do the same.

Re:Obama is not the Great Leader that many wish hi

[TheNucleon]

You lost me at "tax and spend". We should get past bumper-sticker assertions, especially when they're not even right. I guess "tax less but spend more" isn't as catchy, but it seems to work for the Republicans.

Re:Obama might be pulling an Arafat

[0123456]

You know, Arafat would say one thing in English, and then
another in Arabic.

The linked article quotes him speaking against outsourcing,
and then he goes to India and speaks favorably of it. He's not
using a different language; but it's the same idea.

I believe we have a word for this in English: it's called 'lying'.

Re:I think he is mostly right

[Kjella]

The rest of the world is evolving rapidly into highly educated, highly industrialized, highly technological countries that resemble the west - in certain parts and certain ways, anyway. The more similar their productivity is, the more similar standards of living they can demand but for a long time a series of favorable conditions and network effects have kept the US in a solid lead. The balance is shifting, but to say that it actually flows from one country to the other is fairly misleading. You could halt trade but it wouldn't halt these countries from modernizing, and they would also retaliate.

The US currently has a very negative trade balance, meaning it imports far more than it exports. If it were to close the borders, the US would hurt the most. Medium to long term that could mean opportunity for domestic industry, but the short term would be a substantial drop in the standard of living as many goods become expensive or even unavailable. There was a time when a trade boycott with the US would be dire but today if you can maintain trade with the EU, Japan, China, India, Taiwan, Russia and so on most countries would do fine. Alternate suppliers of almost everything now exist outside the US.

In short, the US is no longer in a position where they would have anything to gain from going protectionist. They'd be their own little isolated market of 300 million people while the world market - even subtracting the billions that are too poor to really participate - is much larger and would simply outpace the US. That's the nastier parts of the free market, once you've let it loose you might in the end become the victim of it, having to adjust your wages and standard of living to fight for jobs just like everyone else. But if there's one country that has no right to complain, it would be the US...

Re:Of course it ignores today's reality.

[Maxo-Texas]

Don't get too comfortable. The indians are doing a very good job at my company. We have hundreds of them. They are extremely competent, good communication skills, and pleasant.

Fact is, at $100k a year, the US salaries are going stagnate or drop while indians and chinese who can do the same things salaries will rise from $20k a year. There are a lot of them. The average is going to be on the lower end.

Re:Obama is not the Great Leader that many wish hi

[nloop]

He is what he is, another tax-and-spend Democrat with delusions of grandeur like all the rest of the Washington crowd, and we're getting precisely the leadership for which we cast our votes. I did my research, and had a pretty good idea how he was going to turn out, and alas, I was not wrong.

You sure did your research. For the past 30 years every Republican president has increased the debt while every Democrat has decreased it. Damn those tax and spending Democrats and their lowering of the national debt. Here's a clue: stop repeating unfounded talking points.

Re:This Grigsby & Cohen

[commodore64_love]

That was not clear. Here's a description. It's pretty despicable how corporations bend-over backwards to disqualify Americans, just so they hire cheaper imported workers:

"Immigration attorneys from Cohen & Grigsby explains how they assist employers in running classified ads with the goal of NOT finding any qualified applicants, and the steps they go through to disqualify even the most qualified Americans in order to secure green cards for H-1b workers. Microsoft, Oracle, Hewlett-Packard, and thousands of other companies are running fake ads in Sunday newspapers across the country each week."

outsource college

[roc97007]

> Oh... and considering that-- how the hell does a college justify charging $20k a year for a degree which is only going to pay $60 to $70k?

Perhaps we should consider outsourcing college. I'm pretty sure tuition at the University of Mumbai is significantly cheaper than here, and the cost of living is but a fraction of any area around a US university campus. If you wanted to take it further, you could expat and then come back on H-1B.

Re:You're trying too hard

[ScrewMaster]

You didn't say shit for two paragraphs. "Tax and spend Democrat?" You left a little Limbaugh vomit dripping from your cheek. Might want to hit that with some sanitizer.

Wow. Just wow. I didn't make a single positive statement about Bush in my comment, actually was rather derogatory, and you accuse me of ... what? Dude, I don't particularly like Obama, I didn't particularly like George Bush, and you really need to keep a civil tongue in your mouth. I'm entitled to my opinion as much as you are (unfortunately) entitled to yours. Here's a friendly piece of advice: you might want to stop reading now, just as I stopped reading your missive after you chose to be unpleasant (which, as it happens, is not the way to have your views given serious consideration by those with whom you might disagree.)

Still with me? Okay, well, you were warned.

Since you opened the door to namecalling, insults and general fucktardiness, let's really get into the spirit of this: you're an asshole. You know it, and I know it. True, I'm not being civil either, but since you're obviously not interested in civil discourse, why should I bother? I might as well enjoy myself as much as you obviously did. Yes, my friend, I am attacking you, not your commentary, nor any facts you may or may not have presented because, honestly, I didn't get past the first line of flowing semi-liquid excrement. I had no reason to, since anything you said is obviously crap, and even if it's not, why should I waste time giving you a serious reply? Ad hominem for the win, dirtbag!

So, let's recap, Mr. or Mrs. Copponex. Go fuck yourself . Fuck yourself with a big rubber dick. Really, if there's a disgrace in this thread, you just defined it, you witless jerkoff. Have a nice fucking day. Oh, and don't forget to kick yourself in the ass on the way out. I hope you choke to death on that nice steak you're having for dinner. Nope, no Heimlich for stupid motherfuckers like you: as Larry Niven once said, think if it as evolution in action. Average human intelligence just went up by a fraction of a percent.

There, I feel MUCH better now. Was it as good for you as it was for me?

"Are we learning yet?"

Re:Obama is not the Great Leader that many wish hi

[Johnny Mnemonic]

Explain to me the effective differences in terms of actual fiscal policy between modern Democrats and Republicans.

When the GOP demonizes "tax and spend" as the other party's problem, they mean "spend on domestic social programs" and deliberately exclude US military spending. I think that's a pretty accurate summary, actually.

When you include US military spending as part of "spend", you will find that the GOP is worse on "tax and spend" than the Dems. They started a war that costs the US $1B a day, that has lasted 8 years, and provided no way to pay for it. That is a more egregious "tax and spend" program than any social program the Dems have initiated, "Obamacare" included.

If the GOP proposes a balanced budget that included the military budget and preserving Social Security, they'd be worth listening too. I expect that if they fail to produce an actual budget like that, they will again be voted out in 2012.

OTOH, if they do produce such a budget, Christ, I'll vote for them myself.

Re:Obama is not the Great Leader that many wish hi

[TheEyes]

You lost me at "tax and spend". We should get past bumper-sticker assertions, especially when they're not even right. I guess "tax less but spend more" isn't as catchy, but it seems to work for the Republicans.

Fine. How about "borrow and spend"? Because that's what he's doing. Is that an improvement over "tax and spend"? The reality is he's doing both.

"He" who? George Bush? George H. W. Bush? Ronald Reagan? Each of these Presidents tripled, doubled, and quadrupled the national debt while in office, and each pretended to run on a platform of fiscal responsibility. The only one who hasn't in the past thirty years is Clinton and, to be fair, that really only happened because he got lucky with the economy.

Right now Obama is running up the debt because that's what you do in a recession. Now, will he turn around in two years or so and put the brakes on spending? Maybe he'll try, but I doubt the "fiscally responsible" Republicans will let him, unless the Tea Partiers break ranks and actually let taxes rise and spending fall like they were elected to.

Re:I think he is mostly right

[yelvington]

If I live in a more developed country, why the fuck should I tolerate this? Being a sovereign nation means having the ability to regulate trade up to and including stopping it completely. Since, as you freely admit, foreign trade is utterly screwing us over, that sounds like a pretty good idea right now.

Because if you had to post on Slashdot using only domestically developed CPUs on domestic motherboards with domestic memory chips running domestic software communicating over domestic networking systems, speaking domestically developed languages and sharing domestically developed ideas, and so on and so forth, you'd be roasting wild squirrel over a cave fire and grunting.

Human beings advance together or not at all.

end the U.S. offshore tax credit

[Dan667]

It encourages companies to move U.S. jobs overseas. I have seen first hand the decisions being made due to this terrible law.

Re:You still don't get it.

[hairyfeet]

Hear Hear! I frankly don't care about the numbers, I care about what I'm seeing with my own two eyes. About half the people in my apt building aren't the same ones from a year ago NOT because the old tenants found a better place to live, but because they lost everything. Some may be lucky enough to sleep on someone else's couch, the rest are probably living in their cars.

Between the illegals and H1-Bs we've seen flooding the area there are pretty much NO jobs for Americans except McJobs, and unless you are living in your mom's basement you can't even feed yourself on one of those. When I was young a man with a good work ethic that couldn't afford to go to school or didn't have the aptitude for it could go into construction and feed his family. Now the local teens play a game called "Deer run" where you walk by a construction site and yell "Immigra!" and watch as the ENTIRE SITE turns into a ghosttown, with illegals running everywhere.

I personally had hoped to get my bachelors followed by my masters in either Comp Sci or maybe Information Security, but after going to job interviews in the state capital where it is obvious they've rigged the game for H1-Bs (requirements like 10 years experience, program in 2 languages, 4 certs required, for a $19k a year job? Obvious much?) convinced me there simply isn't a future long term in IT and the amount of debt I would have had to add at 40 simply would bury me. Basically the only "computer jobs" open to Americans I've seen are likewise Geek Squad McJobs. My friends in IT are going to interviews where there are 400+ guys applying for a single job, and most are so far in debt they will most likely die broke. Year before last the guy down the hall committed suicide simply because there was no way out of his student debt with the pathetic jobs being offered to Americans.

And THIS is the chilling effect seen by Americans from illegals and H1-Bs. My oldest is going to pre-med and at his school the IT dept is nearly 100% foreign, simply because no kid with eyes would want to pile on 60k+ worth of debt for a 20k a year job. Looking out my apt window at the tons of empty businesses and homes that have lain empty with for sale signs for over a year I personally think we are getting ripe for a revolution. You have HUGE teeming masses of unemployed Americans, growing ever larger by the day, and for most of them the American dream is long dead. I could very easily see a radical protectionist hardcore Joe Stalin type easily gaining power, because the people are fed up, they're frustrated, and they have NO future if they aren't in the top 3%. The few guys I know still in IT are looking for ways out as fast as they can, because more and more they are surrounded by Indians with degrees they paid a hell of a lot less than we did. This shit just can't keep up, something has got to change.

No it doesn't but your worry DOES show the real pr

[SmallFurryCreature]

No it doesn't but your worry DOES show the real problem the US has.

There is some believe working in the US that makes it value to top. The interesting jobs, the well paying jobs. But that is not what the economy, the boring local economy, runs on. It runs on truck drivers, factory workers, construction, repair. This is what keeps that majority of the population employed. Silicon Valley, Redmon, Wall Street do not.

Obama, and he is hardly the first, seems so pleased with 10 billion in orders. But how much of that money flows straight back out again because to produce those orders the US needs foreign goods? And those 10 billion are petty cash for the US. Meanwhile far more money is lost with outsourced call centers year in year out.

And no, outsourcing a call center will NOT cost the country a fortune, just a local community. A local community that can't then tax the local salaries and use those taxes to fund local education, local road maintenance etc etc. Outsourcing is not about a cripling injury that instantly kills the economy. This is a slow bleed that isn't stopped.

The call center goes, the local catering van can't break even anymore. The locals find far lower paying jobs and make ends meet by buying cheap Chinese imports instead of higher quality American goods. More and more American business got to cut costs to be able to meet the lower prices. They do so by outsourcing production to China and yet more Americans have just a bit less to spend.

It ain't complex to see, but if you believe in Wall Street as a religion then this can't be. This is not how the market, the magic fairy market, is supposed to work. Obama, and democrats and republicans with him, is saying "let them eat cake". The famous saying that started the revolution showing that the ruling elite didn't have a clue about what was really happening. It is after all not in Washington or Redmond or Wall Street that the job cuts are hurting the most. Oh, they might have a bad year, but not decade after decade in which a factory town turns into a ghost town. How many of the powers that be come from Detroit?

Yet the simple people, like the poster above think H1-b is the issue. Yeah right. The US has 300+ million citizens, and how many immigrants on these things? They are irrelevant. This is just the Redmond, Silicon Valley etc job. The get a lot of attention, but they don't keep the heartland working. Producing.

Scream at the immigrant worker while another factory is shipped lock stock and barrel abroad including every single job. SethStorm is like a frenchmen who reacts to "let them eat cake" with: "But I don't like cake."

But you don't have bread let alone cake.

IT has done this a lot. Thinking that they would be save from the export of jobs and then it turned out those dirty filthy foreigners could not just knock out cheap goods but cheap code. Boohoo, now our jobs are going...

Well, you didn't protest when every item in Walmart came from China, who is now supposed to care the next version of Windows comes from China?

And don't you worry, the decline will be so slow and the average American so attached to his large house and larger car that he will bend over backwards to keep up with payments rather then protest. Because if you strike or protest, you miss a payment and then that SUV is gone.

American citizens have managed to enslave themselves to Wall Street thoroughly. Willing slaves with guns. If you wrote this down in a book of fiction, nobody would believe it.

Re:That doesn't help the US citizens.

[Eunuchswear]

Why are you demanding protectionism?

Don't you trust the invisible hand?

Are you some kind of commie?

Re:So how do you like your fraud?

[TheRaven64]

We need an intimate familiarity with DCTs, Fourier, and hardware micro-architecture

You won't get that intimate familiarity from a new graduate, so you have two choices:

• Pay enough that you can steal them from your competitors.
• Hire people without those skills and train them.

My guess is that you're not doing either. Are you offering internships to bright graduates who have a somewhat less than intimate familiarity with those subjects, but the ability to learn them?

Re:This Grigsby & Cohen

[nbauman]

When hiring is at will, they don't have to give you an excuse for not hiring you.

Yes, but this is not hiring at will. They're documenting that they tried and failed to hire U.S. citizens, in order to meet the administrative requirements for hiring H1-Bs. If you can prove it's not bona fide employee search, then you can prove they're breaking the law.

It's not easy to prove, but something like that Cohen & Grigsby video, or similarly incriminating emails, could prove it.

Even when they are caught red-handed, I'm not sure what happens next. I don't think you can force the employer to hire you. I imagine the INS might be able to fine the employer (though not as much as the damages for downloading music). If it's fraud they might be able to send the employer to jail, but there's a very high evidence standard to convict someone of a crime.

They might be prosecuted by an honest federal attorney, and tried before an honest judge. Stranger things have happened.

Well, maybe not.

The ICE is busy deporting Mexican college students who have been in this country since they were 5 years old.

Re:How about holding them to one qualifcations std

[Walt Dismal]

Inflated or for that matter deliberately impossible requirements. I've seen job ads that were packed with enough requirements that no one was likely to fulfill them, including one that demanded "experienced with FrameMaker 7.7". Adobe never issued a 7.7, they went from version 7.2 to 8. I called the shop to ask them about this.The recruiter insisted that 7.7 was absolutely necessary and mandatory and the client used it and specified it. Clearly this was a phony screening excuse in operation. I've also seen ads requiring 6 or 7 years of experience with Web technologies that have existed for only 2 years. All too often see such ads from Indian-run agencies so I expect there's a hidden agenda to bar all but the desired pre-selected candidates.

Re:So how do you like your fraud?

[kennykb]

Just where in India, China or Russia are you finding folks who can do Fourier-domain image processing on hardware microarchitecture? I could use a few, and don't much care if they're American, Chinese, Indian, Russian, or beings from Aldebaran IV with green and purple feathers. Incidentally, I don't think that people like that are getting any rarer: we've always been few and far between. But the code monkeys are getting commoner, and the slushpile of CV's gets bigger and bigger with only the same few really promising candidates buried under all the others. (Summary: I'm an American, MSEE/PhDCS, and *can* do all the things you mention. I'm also, uhm, on the high side of fifty, quite expensive, and not in the market at the moment because I've had no trouble finding customers.

Re:So how do you like your fraud?

[HermMunster]

That's total bullshit. Certainly there are people in any technologically advanced country that would know that, especially the US. We aren't imbeciles that lucked into what we have. We learned and earned and we worked HARD to get there.