Bleeding Edge

Thanksgiving is a time to be grateful.

Being Grateful is like having an Open Heart – a supple heart that allows all that is good, and all that is great, to come inside.

Because sometimes we just have to be wise enough to open up, to go with the flow, awaiting without expectation, without letting up your work, always allowing for good things to come to us.

In fact we have to put our trust in life and let the current of life carry us on to the big river that will lead us to the Ocean where we all shall meet again…

That doesn’t mean we should take our focus off where we’re going, or that we should stop swimming hard. If anything trust in God and keep up with our hand over hand in continuous strokes and keep our feet pushing…

That’s swimming.

And in our Public Life we need to be always swimming with the flow if we want to get quality jobs for the American people.

We need quality jobs and that is what got Trump the victory before anything else. Trump won the White House addressing our need for quality jobs.

Good jobs for Good People.

Not the crappy Walmart or Amazon stocker, warehouse kind of jobs, but QUALITY JOBS that fill houses in middle class streets of cities and towns full of happy people.

And on the basis of that promise more than anything else, Donald Trump an astute observer of reality, and a keen reader of the public sentiment, came into the White House for a sea change.

Of course many others have spoken about it before Trump, because it is hardly a secret, or an original observation, and in fact Trump’s very predecessor in the White House, a man best remembered as Barack Obama, the husband of Michelle — had made this case for quality jobs back in 2010. And then he went back to puffing his medical maryjane and allowed the wall street corporate lobbyists to translate this all too human desire for good jobs to the Franken Trade Agreement called TPP and TTPI that actually would kill almost all the American Quality Jobs in exchange for a Global Scheme of imaginary surpluses that would turn Americans into beggars same as all the other 6 Billion beggars around the Globe living on $2 a day or less.

Clearly Obama’s pitch and tone are far different than Trump’s, who is focused on fixing all the shortfalls in the nation’s trading relationships by tearing up the old Democrat and Globalization induced unbalanced so called free-trade deals and starting over from a clean slate.

If you look for specifics, Michelle’s Obama had called in his 2010 State of the Union address for doubling exports by the end of 2014. This, he said, would create 2 million jobs, and they’d mostly be good-paying jobs in manufacturing. In other words, it might have made America great again, but of course it didn’t because in the White House, they were all busy French kissing their doobies.

Logical trade experts who questioned Obama’s plan, noting that such a dramatic change in a short period of time would require disruptive changes in exchange rates between the United States and its trading partners — were shunted aside and shut down. The cloudy thinking of the Michelle Obama administration went on to say that this method would be punishing those US companies operating overseas, and making untaxed profits keeping them abroad, and therefore it would be counterproductive for the expensive lobbyists of the scofflaws. And they further scared Michelle’s little boy in chief, by claiming that if we were to engage in “Buy American” incentives, we would invite retaliatory measures by China and others. So the big pussy in chief, went back to hiding in his cloud of phat oily smoke — inhaling deep on his doobie — and thus any measure of change towards creating quality jobs — went up … in smoke.

All clearly thinking and logically imbued human beings looking at those over the top Obama manifestations, thought that these guys must be smoking something really good. And probably something rather powerful. Something that was probably illegal.

And they were right.

The Obamas were puffers of excellent quality weed, and thus the Clear Thinkers were justified.

By the end of 2014, US exports had risen just 28.2% compared with 2010 levels, according to Census Bureau data. That was far short of Obama’s goal, which was 100% growth. Even exports of services, which included tourists traveling to the United States, just rose by 31.9%. Exports of goods & products manufactured in the United States, were up just 26.6%. And in fact US exports have actually declined since then, with the pace of exports through the first 10 months of 2016 just 8.3% higher than during the same period in 2010.

So where are the jobs?

Forget Quality Jobs. We are now fighting for jobs of any kind…

Of course the one thing that frustrated Obama’s goal for exports was the continuously and artificially strengthening dollar —- something the president can’t really control, and perhaps shouldn’t even try to do although we know that our major trading partners are rigging the game to their advantage. When the Chinese drop the value of the Yuan drastically in order to sell more plastic bathtub toys and weapons to the world — the dollar appreciates sharply against the Reminmbi and by a snow gal effect against all the other currencies. Thus by starting in 2014, as the Federal Reserve began to wind down its aggressive monetary stimulus plans and investors anticipated higher interest rates in the United States, the dollar strengthened and American exports became more expensive in comparison to other nation’s product and thus our jobs tended to decline. Imports became cheaper, and the trend became self feeding on a never ending loop, that took jobs away from America instead.

Imports have risen by the same portion that exports have fallen since 2010, which means the overall trade deficit of $500 billion at the end of 2015 is now the same as it was in 2010 and growing.

Donald Trump, correctly saw this and promised that as the incoming Republican President, he will hammer away at America’s trade deficit during his Administration, correctly saying that China and Mexico have been stealing American jobs. If his smart appeal for Quality Jobs for Americans, works in the same way that brought out the masses of voters in the Rust Belt states — we are in a good way going forward.

And as you can see in all the states where Quality Jobs have evaporated, such as Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Ohio, who have struggled to hold onto blue collar jobs that have helped put Trump over the top in these elections — they are going to be the biggest beneficiaries of Trump’s Trade Imbalance Correctional Policy.

The shortfall of good blue-collar jobs—several has been seen but not spoken for. It was observed by many smart economists, ordinary workers out of a job, and regular people for many years. But nobody from the Clinton or the Bush administration, or even the Michelle Obama presidency had bothered to do anything about it yet. The earlier we address trade imbalances — the earlier we can fix them. But if they are left unchallenged — they get to fester and become cantankerous cancer sores.

So had Obama or anyone else before him bothered to actually create some quality jobs, we might not have been in today’s dire straits.

Still the lesson shouldn’t get lost on us.

Because now, the failure of Obama’s and his predecessor’s export plans should serve as a well read cautionary tale for incoming President Trump too.

But above all, it should serve us a lesson to us.

Do what you promise like a man and not like a pussy…

Yours,

Dr Churchill

PS:

The incoming president says he’ll “get tough” with trade partners like China and Mexico, negotiating new terms that are more favorable to the United States.

His overall goal is to create 25 million new jobs within a decade. But there’s no reason to think Trump will be any more successful than Obama at manipulating an immensely complex part of the global economy to America’s advantage.

Presidents tend to come into office thinking they can pull the levers of the economy more effectively than their predecessors.

They often leave chastened. And Trump has promised a lot more than those who came before him — but something tells me that he can and he will deliver on all of his promises.

That little something is not a little birdie but the rising and record breaking American stockmarket that has seen and has conquered the highest peaks, ever.

And that simply on the news of Trump coming in as the New President.

Imagine what will happen when he actually takes the reins of power…