View Full Version : Evidence that the US is a failed state is piling up faster than I can record it.
"Are You Ready for the Next Crisis?"
By Paul Craig Roberts
Evidence that the US is a failed state is piling up faster than I can record it.
One conclusive hallmark of a failed state is that the crooks are inside the government, using government to protect and to advance their private interests.
Another conclusive hallmark is rising income inequality as the insiders manipulate economic policy for their enrichment at the expense of everyone else.
Income inequality in the US is now the most extreme of all countries. The 2008 OECD report, “Income Distribution and Poverty in OECD Countries,” concludes that the US is the country with the highest inequality and poverty rate across the OECD and that since 2000 nowhere has there been such a stark rise in income inequality as in the US. The OECD finds that in the US the distribution of wealth is even more unequal than the distribution of income.
On October 21, 2009, Business Week highlighted a new report from the United Nations Development Program concluded that the US ranked third among states with the worst income inequality. As number one and number two, Hong Kong and Singapore, are both essentially city states, not countries, the US actually has the shame of being the country with the most inequality in the distribution of income.
The stark increase in US income inequality in the 21st century coincides with the offshoring of US jobs, which enriched executives with “performance bonuses” while impoverishing the middle class, and with the rapid rise of unregulated OTC derivatives, which enriched Wall Street and the financial sector at the expense of everyone else.
Millions of Americans have lost their homes and half of their retirement savings while being loaded up with government debt to bail out the banksters who created the derivative crisis.
Frontline’s October 21 broadcast, “The Warning,” documents how Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, Deputy Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, and Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Arthur Levitt blocked Brooksley Born, head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, from performing her statutory duties and regulating OTC derivatives.
After the worst crisis in US financial history struck, just as Brooksley Born said it would, a disgraced Alan Greenspan was summoned out of retirement to explain to Congress his unequivocal assurances that no regulation of derivatives was necessary. Greenspan had even told Congress that regulation of derivatives would be harmful. A pathetic Greenspan had to admit that the free market ideology on which he had relied turned out to have a flaw.
Greenspan may have bet our country on his free market ideology, but does anyone believe that Rubin and Summers were doing anything other than protecting the enormous fraud-based profits that derivatives were bringing Wall Street? As Brooksley Born stressed, OTC derivatives are a “dark market.” There is no transparency. Regulators have no information on them and neither do purchasers.
Even after Long Term Capital Management blew up in 1998 and had to be bailed out, Greenspan, Rubin, and Summers stuck to their guns. Greenspan, Rubin and Summers, and a roped-in gullible Arthur Levitt who now regrets that he was the banksters’ dupe, succeeded in manipulating a totally ignorant Congress into blocking the CFTC from doing its mandated job. Brooksley Born, prevented by the public’s elected representatives from protecting the public, resigned. Wall Street money simply shoved facts and honest regulators aside, guaranteeing government inaction and the financial crisis that hit in 2008 and continues to plague our economy today.
The financial insiders running the Treasury, White House, and Federal Reserve shifted to taxpayers the cost of the catastrophe that they had created. When the crisis hit, Henry Paulson, appointed by President Bush as Rubin’s replacement as the Goldman Sachs representative running the US Treasury, hyped fear to obtain from “our” representatives in Congress with no questions asked hundreds of billions of taxpayers’ dollars (TARP money) to bail out Goldman Sachs and the other malefactors of unregulated derivatives.
When Goldman Sachs recently announced that it was paying massive six and seven figure bonuses to every employee, public outrage erupted. In defense of banksters, saved with the public’s money, paying themselves bonuses in excess of most people’s life-time earnings, Lord Griffiths, Vice Chairman of Goldman Sachs International, said that the public must learn to “tolerate the inequality as a way to achieve greater prosperity for all.”
In other words, “Let them eat cake.”
According to the UN report cited above, Great Britain has the 7th most unequal income distribution in the world. After the Goldman Sachs bonuses, the British will move up in distinction, perhaps rivaling Israel for the fourth spot in the hierarchy.
Despite the total insanity of unregulated derivatives, the high level of public anger, and Greenspan’s confession to Congress, still nothing has been done to regulate derivatives. One of Rubin’s Assistant Treasury Secretaries, Gary Gensler, has replaced Brooksley Born as head of the CFTC. Larry Summers is the head of President Obama’s National Economic Council. Former Federal Reserve official Timothy Geithner, a Paulson protege, runs the Obama Treasury. A Goldman Sachs vice president, Adam Storch, has been appointed the chief operating officer of the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Banksters are still in charge.
Is there another country in which in full public view so few so blatantly use government for the enrichment of private interests, with a coterie of “free market” economists available to justify plunder on the grounds that “the market knows best”? A narco-state is bad enough. The US surpasses this horror with its financo-state.
As Brooksley Born says, if nothing is done “it’ll happen again.”
But nothing can be done. The crooks have the government.
http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/Archives2009/RobertsUSFailedState.html
Meck77
11-04-2009, 06:46 PM
Mexico has always been a failure.
I told you guys before Obama was elected he will show himself to be the anti-Christ. And I was right!
Mexico has always been a failure.
You are so predictable
You have shown to know nothing about Mexico so why don't you tell me how Mexico is a failure exactly.
watermock
11-04-2009, 07:10 PM
After all this, absolutely nothing has been done to regulate this colossal casino.
But like Geinther said, "The banks (big ones: aka fed members) are doing great!"
For now.
Rohirrim
11-04-2009, 07:17 PM
Unfortunately, the Right is working as hard as they can to protect the income inequality. In fact, I have no doubt they would like to give the uber-billionaires even more tax breaks.
And then there is this;
"Our produce or die culture is killing us"
By Joe Bageant for JoeBageant.com
Editor's Note: Joe Bageant is author of the book, Deer Hunting With Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War which is available at a deep discount by way of the LATOC Amazon Store. -Matt
Every afternoon when I knock off from writing, after I suck down a Modelo beer and take an hour nap, I step out onto the 400-year-old cobbled street, with its hap-scatter string of vendors lining both sides. All sorts of vendors -- vegetable vendors, vendors of tacos, chicharrones, chenille bedspreads and plucked chickens, cigarros, soft drinks, sopa and suet. Merchants whose business address consists of a card table in front of their casita.
Here in this working class neighborhood on Calle Zaragoza, tourists seldom venture, and the neighborhood merchants' customers are their neighbors. Their goods are the common fare of daily family life in Mexico. Today, at a table less than two blocks away, I purchased a dozen brown eggs, with the idea of making huevos rancheros. The purchase took three quarters of an hour, and included stumbling but cheerful half English/half Spanish conversations with the six vendors between my casita and the table of Gabriel, the old egg and cheese vendor with an artificial leg and wizened smile who assures me that rooster-fertilized eggs make a man go all night. "I am too old to care about that," I half speak, half gesture in that rudimentary sign language understood everywhere. "Hawwww" he chortles and says something in Spanish I cannot understand. An English speaking bystander, a teenager with a backward baseball cap and dressed in "L.A. sag," translates: "He says his pendejo is as hard as his plastic leg. You still alive! You never too old!"
These vendors are not poor people or peasants. They own homes, drive cars, watch cable television, send their children to college and do most of the things North Americans do. But their jobs are their livelihoods, not their lives, and every transaction is permeated with the ebb and flow of daily neighborhood and family life. "Is Maria going to graduate after all? Si! But by just by the hair in her nose! Who is going to sell fireworks for the Feast of Saint Andrew?" (Saint Andrew is the patron saint of Ajijic.)
Behind the plastered brick walls along the street mechanics fix cars, dentists pull teeth and teachers cheer preschoolers onward in a chirping Spanish rendition of Eensy Weensy Spider. The entire street is busily, but not hectically, engaged in making a living, most of the people doing so within 50 feet of where they will sleep tonight. But before they sleep they will sit out on the street, or perhaps the tiny neighborhood plaza, gossiping with the same neighbors who've been their customers all day. The same families into which their children will marry and whose sick elders they will burn candles for in the ancient stone church, founded as a Spanish colonial mission to civilize the Huichol Indians who've since retreated up into the mountains to honor their "god of the opening clouds" in peyote rituals.
Obviously work and commerce have their problems here, just as anywhere else. The peso rises and falls. Cheap Chinese imports crowd out domestic goods. People work hard, especially tradesmen and laborers, but there is a complete lack of obsession and stress that characterizes North American jobs. Which, of course, many Canadians and Americans retired to Ajijic take for laziness.
It may be my bias, or my imagination, or my distaste for toil, but from here America looks like one big workhouse, "under God, indivisible, with time off to ****, shower and shop." A country whose citizens have been reduced to "human assets" of a vast and relentless economic machine, moving human parts oiled by commodities and kept in motion by the edict, "produce or die." Where employment and a job dominates all other aspects of life, and the loss of which spells the loss of everything.
Yeah, yeah, I know, them ain't jobs -- in America we don't have jobs, we have careers. I've read the national script, and am quite aware that all those human assets writing computer code and advertising copy, or staring at screen monitors in the "human services" industry are "performing meaningful and important work in a positive workplace environment." Performing? Is this brain surgery? Or a stage act? If we are performing, then for whom? Exactly who is watching?
Proof abounds of the unending joy and importance of work and production in our wealth-based economy. Just read the job recruitment ads. Or ask any of the people clinging fearfully by their fingernails to those four remaining jobs in America. But is a job -- hopefully a good one -- and workplace strivance really everything? Most of us would say, "Well of course not." But in a nation that now sends police to break up the tent camps and car camps of homeless unemployed citizens who once belonged to the middle class, it might well be everything.
In one of those divine moments of synchronicity writers pray for, I just saw reinforcement of the above. Checking my email web browser, one of those annoying ads masquerading as advice, popped up. It reads: "Doing good work is no longer enough! Ten tips to keep from being laid off your job." Shown is a cheerful young woman at a desk, feeling deliriously safe about her job, judging from her hysterical bug-eyed smile, thanks to "These Ten Tips!" from a commercial jobs agency. When personal employment fears, job terror and insecurity, can be captured and turned into a job for someone else, there's not much room left for the general spirit of commonality, or a sense of a shared commons (such as this Mexican street) of the nation's work-life. Not when any of us could become indigent at a moment's notice.
But you won't hear anyone complaining. America doesn't like whiners. A whiner or a cynic is about the worst thing you can be in the land of gunpoint optimism. Foreigners often remark on the upbeat American personality. I assure them that our American corpocracy has its ways of pistol whipping or sedating its human assets into the appropriate level of cheeriness.
Appearing cheerful is vital in a society where all of life is monitored by an employer, a credit rating bureau or the media's projection of the world, and mediated by the financialization of life's every aspect. Every action and movement is a transaction, some as large as the mortgage, others as small as the purchase of a bus token, or the cost of a cell phone call, gasoline, vehicle maintenance and parking costs for movement within the sprawling asphalt grids we call communities. Even respite from work with its vacation "leisure destinations" put on the credit card, and even the greatest commons of all, nature, has a cost of access, whether it be admission to national parks or the cost of camping and other "recreational equipment."
In the background a tabulator relentlessly calculates our bill for the thoroughly transactional and mediated life. Quit paying the bills and you are disappeared. Erased from the screens of a society of watchers watching each other -- or watching celebrities, those godlike creatures dwelling on the Olympus of the most watched ... and dreaming of perhaps being watched on Oprah by even more watchers than already watch us for some fleeting few seconds.
There is a flickering screen or monitor in front of and between every citizen of the mediated society of watchers. Whether we watch television or other media matters not, we dwell among the watchers in a surveillance society of our peers. We dress appropriately, speak middle class English, not urban street slang or redneck, and look as prosperous as possible, or as hip as possible, or as learned or pious or whatever within our peer groups, and for outsider groups. No jokers, smokers or midnight tokers allowed in Mainstream American society and culture, which consists of working, consuming and "appearing to be," but never purely being.
We flow willingly through the transactional circuitry of the wealth economy like ghosts, optimistic and eerily cheerful, encountering one another through the hierarchical commodity affinity groups we call our peers, people who consume the same things we do, and have the same purchased identity and "lifestyle" we do. Swimmers in a sea of mass produced goods and mass produced identities through consumption of those goods, we strive for uniqueness, but not very hard, lest we lose the commodities we've acquired.
This is stamped deep within our American being by the greater forces of commodity capitalism; we seem to carry it with us wherever we go. We want to experience uniqueness. Thus Americans and Canadians complain that there are now "too many gringos" in Ajijic," implying that they are different than the rest of their own kind.
But the truth is that we are all very commonly issued products of a profit driven workhouse where no human commons is allowable, lest the workers find meaning and joy in each other as human beings, and perhaps become less work driven, less productive and less profitable. Best that their lives remain mediated, disembodied from the great commons of the human spirit, unmoored from the great natural commons binding all living things called Earth, images of which will be provided for your delight on The Nature Channel at 9 PM tonight.
Until then, stay cheerful.
Pay your bills on time.
http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/Archives2009/JoeProduceOrDie.html
Meck77
11-04-2009, 07:18 PM
You are so predictable
You have shown to know nothing about Mexico so why don't you tell me how Mexico is a failure exactly.
Why don't you ask the tens of millions of illegals who have fled the third world living conditions down there.
Course Meck the professed family guy says Mexico is a failed state.
I impressed Meck at your knowledge of Mexico, wow!
"Evidence that baja is a certifiable loony is piling up even faster than his OM posts".
Yeah, I can see that.
epicSocialism4tw
11-04-2009, 07:58 PM
"Evidence that baja is a certifiable loony is piling up even faster than his OM posts".
Yeah, I can see that.
These types of posts are the only thing that you can ever manage?
Sad.
Rohirrim
11-04-2009, 08:07 PM
There is a reason America leads the world in Prozac consumption.
epicSocialism4tw
11-04-2009, 08:11 PM
There is a reason America leads the world in Prozac consumption.
Yeah...its because Psychiatrists arent really doctors. ;D
epicSocialism4tw
11-04-2009, 08:11 PM
Mexico has always been a failure.
Ron Mexico?
Why don't you ask the tens of millions of illegals who have fled the third world living conditions down there.
The US has been a grand land of opportunity for a very long time.
What I am saying and you refuse to see is America has been sold out to the global corporations. Life as we knew it growing up in the United States is under siege NOW. The memory of America that you defend is not there anymore Meck and I totally get you do not want to see that. It's amazing what we can 'not' see when we want to.
I know you'll react with indignation and dash off a few examples of how your world is still the same as ever but you will be either in denial or lying.
Anyway Watch this;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VebOTc-7shU&feature=player_embedded
Why Mexico is not a failure Meck is because the family is strong here. It is all they have, no food stamps, no welfare and not a lot of work. largely due to NAFTA and the US selling subsidized corn to Mexico at prices the small farmers here can't compete with so the men leave their little plot of land and their families whom the love to find work and for many that means the United States. You see Mexico doesn't have the freedoms that Americans are giving up without a fight.
You would do well to know money is not the measure of anything real.
Meck77
11-05-2009, 08:15 AM
Why Mexico is not a failure Meck is because the family is strong here.
Oh so we don't have strong American families now? You mean to tell me the Spider's, Ro's, LABF's, and the rest of Americans don't have strong families?
Just who in the hell do you think you are to insult every American family?
The mexican government and it's corruption failed the hard working people of Mexico long ago. That is why they have been fleeing to America for decades and decades.
Oh so we don't have strong American families now? You mean to tell me the Spider's, Ro's, LABF's, and the rest of Americans don't have strong families?
Just who in the hell do you think you are to insult every American family?
The mexican government and it's corruption failed the hard working people of Mexico long ago. That is why they have been fleeing to America for decades and decades.
Like I predicted you would not understand the post and scream personal outrage.
The three generation household was the norm in the USA, today you are lucky if you live in the same state as your parents or your grown children
How strong can a family be if the divorce rate is 60+%
Nice try at a recruit support by trying to personalize a national trend that has been taking place since the 70's. I'm pretty sure Spider, Roh and LABF would agree the family unit in America has taken a big hit the last 30 years or so.
BTW Women's lib was the beginning of the destruction of the American family.
BTW Women's lib was the beginning of the destruction of the American family.
Don't get laid much, do you?
PS - Without paying, that is.
24champ
11-05-2009, 11:03 AM
Why Mexico is not a failure Meck is because the family is strong here.
Thousands and thousands of Mexican men bail on their families to come to America and make money for them only. So the notion the family is strong in Mexico is crap.
Garcia Bronco
11-05-2009, 11:03 AM
Yeah...Mexico is where everybody wants to live. They have gangs and warlords roaming it's borders. A poor economy. Bad sanitation in it's cities. And they wouldn't even exist anymore without our money, trade, and influence. The US is far from perfect, but holding up Mexico as a comparsion is amusing.
Rohirrim
11-05-2009, 11:12 AM
Yeah...its because Psychiatrists arent really doctors. ;D
You're being glib. :~ohyah!:
24champ
11-05-2009, 11:15 AM
A recent (November 14 2003) article in El Universal tells the story of Sara Garcia, who lives in Jerez, in the Mexican state of Zacatecas.
Sara and her five children were abandoned by her husband in 1985.
This deadbeat dad is believed to live in Texas. Since his emigration, he has not sent one cent to his family!
Señora Garcia related to the reporter, Angel Amador Sanchez, that many other women were in her situation. In a town like Jerez, where emigration is a part of the culture, that’s not surprising, and as Sara puts it, “...these men abandon their wives and children as if it were nothing.”
The problem of emigrants abandoning their families is so bad that some of these poor Mexican women have actually written to VDARE.COM for help! One of them told us (my translation) that
“...my husband is an illegal alien, and has been for approximately a year and a half. I haven’t seen him for 3 years and I would like him sent back to Mexico, where he was born... I am a desperate woman with 4 children and I can’t provide for them, we live in poverty...Help me...”
This desperate lady wants the U.S. to deport her husband, and she actually included the guy’s address in California.
Another article in El Universal (Entre niños y piedras, by María de Lourdes Martínez Gonzaléz, May 6th, 2002) describes the heartbreaking situations in a rural region of Michoacan state, where emigration has devastated family life. It’s the municipio (roughly equivalent to a U.S. county) of Susuapan, where, according to El Universal, “the women are like the land, semi-abandoned by the men who go to work in the United States.”
Many men leave Susuapan, return every few years to beget children, then go back to the U.S. On average, the women in these parts bear from 5-10 children. So there are a lot to care for.
One of the towns in Susuapan is Tremecino:
“In Tremecino 25% of the mothers are left alone with their children, expecting a husband who may return this year, in 2 years or more, if at all.”
By the way, in Tremecino, the average age of marriage or cohabitation is 14!
One of the inhabitants of Tremecino is Rosa:
“...She had 4 children when her husband emigrated to Tucson. She was expecting him to send her money but it never arrived, because the man became an alcoholic and found another woman.”
Eventually, after 3 of her 4 children also emigrated to the U.S., Rosa took up with another man. And that finally provoked her husband’s return after 7 years. Despite the fact that he himself had already taken up with another woman, he returned from Chicago to hit and scold her for shaming him.
So this man’s “family values” are: (1) abandonment; (2) adultery; (3) the double standard; and (4) hitting his wife. (As for Rosa, she is now being supported by her children living in the U.S.)
The article also tells us of Herminda, a 17-year mother of at least two children, whose husband lives in Chicago. She hasn’t heard from her husband for the past year, but word has it on the grapevine that he’s found another woman in Chicago.
http://www.vdare.com/awall/deadbeat_dads.htm
Strong family values right there folks...Hilarious!
A few statistics are in order about these small towns. In 2002, Tremecino had 180 families, of which 45 male heads of families had emigrated. Of those 45, 3 heads of families had completely abandoned their families.
In El Salitre, in 2002 there were 45 families, of which 25 male heads of families had emigrated. Of those 25, 3 heads of families had completely abandoned their families.
That means that in Tremecino, 1 out of 15 male emigrants with families have abandoned those families. And in El Salitre, 3 out of 25 (12%) of male emigrants with families have abandoned their wives and children.
Tremecino and El Salitre are only two towns, mind you. There are towns all over the length and breadth of Mexico where you could hear similar depressing stories.
Meck77
11-05-2009, 11:24 AM
Thousands and thousands of Mexican men bail on their families to come to America and make money for them only. So the notion the family is strong in Mexico is crap.
It's a joke.
I was curious to what other expatriots were saying about mexico and I found this baja related forum. Apparently the party is over in Baja. There are threads about Americans being killed, ripped off, you name it.
http://forums.bajanomad.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=1&page=1
Bronx33
11-05-2009, 11:33 AM
Zetas is the main problem for the mexican people and soon they will be our problem heck i have read that these little **********s are are already all over the united states and most likely will get amnesty.
ya ya ya i know it's glen beck reporting it but that seems to be the only news outlet to even mention it.
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Course Meck the professed family guy says Mexico is a failed state.
I impressed Meck at your knowledge of Mexico, wow!
Every country has its problems, Mexico included. I think that what makes the US situation different is that (I think) our standard of living will start to go down for the first time in many years. We are the one's headed toward a montary cliff so to speak, and to solve this problem most folks in both parties seem to think that the best way to solve the problem is to increase the speed.
I spent some time reading about the Carter administration last night and how they delt with inflation. At the beginning of his admin the fed chairman was pretty loose with the money supply and increased it by 12% for two years running, but naturually inflation spiked (to about 20% one year if memory serves) to Carter's credit he dealt with it when he appointed Paul Volcker, who raised interest rates (by raising over-night lending rates, etc) in the attempt to grab some of these dollars back -- like any big ship it takes time to turn something around, or feel the effects a a new course. This admin has increased the money supply by 120% in the past year, when that money hits, they wont be able to grab it back, so we will have the inflation you have spoken about.
Mexico's troubled oil industry
How many Mexicans does it take to drill an oil well?
Oct 1st 2009 | MEXICO CITY
From The Economist print edition
More than 140,000, and even then they’re not very good at it. For this, now acute, problem, blame the politicians
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<!--back-->IT IS bad enough that Mexico’s economy is in deep recession, triggered by its close links to the ailing United States. To make matters worse, the country’s oil industry, its fiscal cash-cow for the past three decades, is declining swiftly (see chart). As recently as 2004 Cantarell, the country’s main offshore field, produced 2.1m barrels per day (b/d) of crude. Now its output is just 600,000 b/d. There are no obvious replacements: 23 of the 32 biggest fields are in decline. Barring big new finds, the world’s seventh-largest oil producer is forecast to become a net importer by 2017.
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</td></tr></tbody></table> The Mexican treasury is ill-prepared for this. Taxes and royalties from Pemex, the state-owned oil monopoly, have accounted for almost two-fifths of federal revenues in recent years, compensating for one of Latin America’s weakest tax regimes (which collects just 11% of GDP). If oil output drops below 2m b/d, as many industry-watchers fear, the government would be forced to cut spending by more than 10%—or jack up taxes correspondingly, to avoid an unsustainable budget deficit. This might threaten economic recovery.
There is no mystery behind the decline. The constitution bans private investment in hydrocarbons. Ever since Lázaro Cárdenas expropriated foreign oil companies in 1938, the state oil monopoly has been seen by many politicians, especially from the formerly ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and its offshoots, as the untouchable bone marrow of Mexican sovereignty. To make matters worse, Pemex has been run more in the interests of its workers and their trade unions than of the Mexican people, its notional owners.
All this has curbed the country’s ability to capitalise on its geological wealth. Since many oil-exploration projects take longer than the six-year presidential term to bear fruit, the politicians have a powerful incentive to spend oil revenues rather than reinvest them. From 1983 to 2000 Pemex’s annual investment budget was a paltry $3 billion. Until recently Cantarell’s bounty disguised this. After the conservative National Action Party (PAN) broke the PRI’s seven-decade grip on power in 2000, Pemex started to invest more. But higher labour and equipment costs absorbed much of the increase. Much of the new money was ploughed into Chicontepec, a project in the state of Veracruz that Pemex hoped would replace Cantarell. But this is yielding just 29,000 b/d so far.
<cf_floatingcontent></cf_floatingcontent> Opportunity beckons beneath the deeper waters of the Gulf of Mexico, where some 50 billion barrels of oil are thought to rest. In the American part of the Gulf, 300 or so deepwater wells are drilled each year. Last month Britain’s BP found a big new field (with perhaps 3 billion barrels) there. Pemex has drilled just ten deepwater wells, but found little oil. It lacks the expertise, technology and capital it needs.
Even if Mexico allowed private companies to explore for oil, they would have to invest $10 billion a year to halt the decline in output, reckons David Shields, who edits a specialist magazine on Mexican oil. Under today’s law, in which private firms can only act as service providers for Pemex, that investment would be much higher, he says.
Felipe Calderón, the president, has tried to address the problem. A law approved last year is supposed to make Pemex more agile, by appointing independent directors and separating its contracts from government-procurement procedures. But to gain the opposition’s votes in Congress he dropped a key proposal that would have allowed contract prices to vary according to the success or failure of exploration. Pemex will be able to pay extra in some circumstances, but is explicitly barred from linking these incentives to production.
To implement this vaguely worded legislation, Mr Calderón last month appointed Juan José Suárez Coppel to head Pemex. He was once its finance director, and has private-sector experience. His job will be to pilot the negotiations with private oil-service firms. The government has not yet published guidelines for these contracts, and no deals are expected until next year. Few are optimistic about them. “Companies are used to calling things by their names,” says Luis Miguel Labardini, an energy consultant. “This game of syntax, of finding a semantic formula to match ‘productivity improvements’ or ‘cost efficiencies’ to output, is going to be too much for them.”
Mr Calderón last month called for a second energy reform. Much could be done even without changing the constitution, by linking the value of service contracts to production and slimming Pemex, where the payroll of 143,000 is at least 30,000 too big. But it is hard to see discussion on a new law before the previous one has even been implemented, and harder still to foresee its approval, since the PRI and its allies gained a majority in the lower house of Congress in a mid-term election in July. Some PRI leaders have ties to the oil workers’ union. And big lay-offs in the trough of recession would anyway be politically toxic. Sooner or later fiscal reality will force change. But by then the oil age may be over.
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At least us here in the US can feel better knowing that if we fail, every economy in the world will fail. That is especially true for Canada and Mexico.
Also, there is to much made of the difference between poor and rich here. First off, that is what being here is all about. Second, there are reasons for this. One of the biggest is how much we allow foriegners to move here. Lots of countries don't. A lot that move here are poor. The other big difference is what this country is all about. You have to work to get paid. If you are poor, that is your fault. Anyone can make good money here if they go to school and try. Some decide they would rather be lazy and they are poor because of it. That is their right, they are Americans.
Also, this crap about the rich getting all kinds of tax breaks is crap. Rich people pay the majority of the taxes in this country. They are also taxed far more. The only way they get around that is by cheating the system. If they cheat the system, they are breaking the law. There isn't much the government can do about that other than try catching them.
I do think we need to stop spending so much though. This country is about working for what you get. We are creating far to many social programs. It is getting close to socialism. I say screw the poor.
Thousands and thousands of Mexican men bail on their families to come to America and make money for them only. So the notion the family is strong in Mexico is crap.
Sending Dollars to Mexico Is a Big, Lucrative Business
(Good for Mexico -- but lost dollars for the American Economy)
The New York Times, September 14, 1996
By BRENDAN M. CASE
MEXICO CITY -- Where billions of dollars flow, can Wall Street be far behind?
The migration of Mexicans across the border with the United States is now producing what some experts estimate is an annual transfer of $4 billion to $6 billion back to family and friends who are shuttling to Mexican banks and wire transfer agencies to pick up money that helps them make ends meet.
For folks like Felipe Morales, who is unemployed in Mexico City, the equivalent of the $100 to $200 in pesos he gets from his son, who is a construction worker in New York, is a godsend.
http://reconquista.tripod.com/MEXICO/bigbuckstomexico960914.html
Yeah...Mexico is where everybody wants to live. They have gangs and warlords roaming it's borders. A poor economy. Bad sanitation in it's cities. And they wouldn't even exist anymore without our money, trade, and influence. The US is far from perfect, but holding up Mexico as a comparsion is amusing.
So who is doing that? Some timers I wonder if you guys can read.
rastaman
11-05-2009, 05:52 PM
I told you guys before Obama was elected he will show himself to be the anti-Christ. And I was right!
How so?8')
rastaman
11-05-2009, 06:24 PM
Every country has its problems, Mexico included. I think that what makes the US situation different is that (I think) our standard of living will start to go down for the first time in many years. We are the one's headed toward a montary cliff so to speak, and to solve this problem most folks in both parties seem to think that the best way to solve the problem is to increase the speed.
I spent some time reading about the Carter administration last night and how they delt with inflation. At the beginning of his admin the fed chairman was pretty loose with the money supply and increased it by 12% for two years running, but naturually inflation spiked (to about 20% one year if memory serves) to Carter's credit he dealt with it when he appointed Paul Volcker, who raised interest rates (by raising over-night lending rates, etc) in the attempt to grab some of these dollars back -- like any big ship it takes time to turn something around, or feel the effects a a new course. This admin has increased the money supply by 120% in the past year, when that money hits, they wont be able to grab it back, so we will have the inflation you have spoken about.
Meanwhile 28 years of Republican Supply-Side Economic failures, incompetencies, and unsustainabilities ususally results in high inflation. Maybe Bush can make a brief appearance and tell the nation to GO SHOPPING!
Remember! Reagan started America on the road to financial ruin. And the primary reason for this explosion in debt is Reagan never balanced a budget; he continued to increase government spending. Bush of course tried to take America into financial armageden.....he just ran out of time all he needed was a 5 year second term in office and he would have succeeded.
mhgaffney
11-05-2009, 07:13 PM
Why don't you ask the tens of millions of illegals who have fled the third world living conditions down there.
Meck,
What you apparently fail to understand is that those third world living conditions did not just happen.
Long ago -- the neo conservatives and no liberals wrote off the world's poor. Worse, the neo liberal economists have done everything possible to further impoverish and enslave the third world.
Worse yet -- US foreign policy has done the same. When our CIA stages coups in Honduras (this recently happened) to prevent land reform and to keep the rich elites in power -- the result is a self fulfilling prophecy.
The poor in those countries are deprived of all hope. No wonder that some among them flee the horrible conditions -- and try to reach the US -- to find work and a better life. That is only human nature./
Did it ever occur to you -- that if we supported freedom and democracy in those nations -- instead of tyranny (Coca Cola, United Fruit, etc) that those people would get control over their own countries -- and greatly improve conditions.
But this can never happen so long as the US intervenes to prevent true progress..
Meck,
What you apparently fail to understand is that those third world living conditions did not just happen.
Long ago -- the neo conservatives and no liberals wrote off the world's poor. Worse, the neo liberal economists have done everything possible to further impoverish and enslave the third world.
Worse yet -- US foreign policy has done the same. When our CIA stages coups in Honduras (this recently happened) to prevent land reform and to keep the rich elites in power -- the result is a self fulfilling prophecy.
The poor in those countries are deprived of all hope. No wonder that some among them flee the horrible conditions -- and try to reach the US -- to find work and a better life. That is only human nature./
Did it ever occur to you -- that if we supported freedom and democracy in those nations -- instead of tyranny (Coca Cola, United Fruit, etc) that those people would get control over their own countries -- and greatly improve conditions.
But this can never happen so long as the US intervenes to prevent true progress..
**** off, you Nazi SOB.
**** off, you Nazi SOB.
Every word Mark typed is true and you know it.
Meck77
11-06-2009, 07:18 AM
Thanks for making my point Gaff and since you agree with what he said baja then it's settled. There is no hope for Mexico and it is a failed state. Back to post two of the thread.
Every word Mark typed is true and you know it.
No. gaff-o hates the US and every principle that's part of our nation.
Everyone else who hates us is also a good friend of his, no matter how truly odious or despicable.
Anything he says different about his beliefs is a lie.
No. gaff-o hates the US and every principle that's part of our nation.
Everyone else who hates us is also a good friend of his, no matter how truly odious or despicable.
Anything he says different about his beliefs is a lie.
I don't think he hates the principles of the USA (Constitution & Bill of Rights). What he hates is the forces that are systematically eradicating those principles that we all cherish but alas most of us have become soft and complacent about.
Keep in mind Wags all of the founding fathers warned us citizens to be forever diligent in watching over our government lest we have more motivated individuals steal our precious freedoms from us for their personal gain in wealth & power.
Keep in mind Wags all of the founding fathers warned us citizens to be forever diligent in watching over our government lest we have more motivated individuals steal our precious freedoms from us for their personal gain in wealth & power.
That's true.
What that has to with gaff-o is undefined.
That's true.
What that has to with gaff-o is undefined.
Rather real or imagined mark is warning about the same type of threats the founding fathers warned against. Personally I am glad he is concerned and wish more people put forth the level of effort that Mark does, we might be a better country for it. What is it that you do to keep your beloved country strong and true to the founding principals besides complain about any and everything.
Rather real or imagined mark is warning about the same type of threats the founding fathers warned against. Personally I am glad he is concerned and wish more people put forth the level of effort that Mark does, we might be a better country for it. What is it that you do to keep your beloved country strong and true to the founding principals besides complain about any and everything.
gaff-o isn't warning us about anything - he's just being a good little Nazi.
Thanks for making my point Gaff and since you agree with what he said baja then it's settled. There is no hope for Mexico and it is a failed state. Back to post two of the thread.
All countries stand at a precipice Meck that is what you fail to see no matter how clearly it is shown. You are blind and deaf
I picture you standing by you computer shouting na na na - I love my country Na na na .......
labronx
11-06-2009, 05:55 PM
Mexico has always been a failure.
wow..lol...
mhgaffney
11-06-2009, 09:25 PM
Meck,
What's your point? Mexico has been in the US sphere of influence for so long -- that the corruption here and there are cut from the same piece of fabric.
The national security state calls the shots here in the US. Mexican leaders are bought and paid for -- and so, dance in lock step to that same tune.
The implication by W*gs (above at top) that the Mexicans are somehow ethnically stupid shows who the true Nazi is.
Mexico's troubled oil industry
How many Mexicans does it take to drill an oil well?
Oct 1st 2009 | MEXICO CITY
From The Economist print edition
More than 140,000, and even then they’re not very good at it. For this, now acute, problem, blame the politicians
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<!--back-->[FONT=verdana,geneva,arial,sans serif][SIZE=-1]IT IS bad enough that Mexico’s economy is in deep recession, triggered by its close links to the ailing United States. To make matters worse, the country’s oil industry, its fiscal cash-cow for the past three decades, is declining swiftly (see chart). As recently as 2004 Cantarell, the country’s main offshore field, produced 2.1m barrels per day (b/d) of crude. Now its output is just 600,000 b/d. There are no obvious replacements: 23 of the 32 biggest fields are in decline. Barring big new finds, the world’s seventh-largest oil producer is forecast to become a net importer by 2017.
A perfect example to the alternative to having large companies run the country. Large government running your country is much worse.
Unless they are running a cartel or breaking the law more power to the large companies because they support thousands and thousands of small companies. Coke has supplied hundreds of thousands of jobs worldwide that wouldn't otherwise be there at all. So have our oil companies. For most of this last century oil was cheaper than coke and both are cheaper than bottled water.
I really don't understand the I hate companies mindset of so many people. Big successful worldwide companies mean you have a big successful economy and a business environment that allows companies to grow.
The great thing and marvelous thing about the US economy though is that it really is not dictacted by the big companies. It is the small ones that dictate job growth and often new innovation. The big company list is constantly changing in America due to nearly unfettered competition. This doesn't happen in Europe where the big companies remain the big companies decade after decade.
Like I predicted you would not understand the post and scream personal outrage.
The three generation household was the norm in the USA, today you are lucky if you live in the same state as your parents or your grown children
How strong can a family be if the divorce rate is 60+%
Nice try at a recruit support by trying to personalize a national trend that has been taking place since the 70's. I'm pretty sure Spider, Roh and LABF would agree the family unit in America has taken a big hit the last 30 years or so.
BTW Women's lib was the beginning of the destruction of the American family.
To be fair you may want to compare the adultery rates and spousal abuse rates as well. One can interpret the high divorce rate as women not taking **** anymore.
rastaman
11-07-2009, 05:38 AM
Keep in mind Wags all of the founding fathers warned us citizens to be forever diligent in watching over our government lest we have more motivated individuals steal our precious freedoms from us for their personal gain in wealth & power.
Keep in mind Baja its not just the Gov't per-say, the founding fathers loathed corporations because of meddling by corporate enterprises such as the East India Tea Company (tea party, anyone?). Corporations were illegal for the first 50 years of our nation except for the rarest circumstances until the 1830's.
The whole "Andrew Jackson/Bank of the United States/impeachment" thing was pushback by the big business interests to make Corporations legal as soon as the founding fathers started to die off. It wasn't until the 1870's that Corporations gained full "personhood," and the result was the Robber Baron monopolies of that era.
I suggest people actually -read- Adam Smith "The Wealth of Nations" and his position on these matters instead of quoting the rehashed misquotes printed in modern MBA books and toted by so-called "free market" advocates.
Never at any time in our history, except the Colonial Revolution and later when Teddy Roosevelt took on Standard Oil, has our American economy been so out of whack.
rastaman
11-07-2009, 06:06 AM
A perfect example to the alternative to having large companies run the country. Large government running your country is much worse.
Unless they are running a cartel or breaking the law more power to the large companies because they support thousands and thousands of small companies. Coke has supplied hundreds of thousands of jobs worldwide that wouldn't otherwise be there at all. So have our oil companies. For most of this last century oil was cheaper than coke and both are cheaper than bottled water.
I really don't understand the I hate companies mindset of so many people. Big successful worldwide companies mean you have a big successful economy and a business environment that allows companies to grow.
The great thing and marvelous thing about the US economy though is that it really is not dictacted by the big companies. It is the small ones that dictate job growth and often new innovation. The big company list is constantly changing in America due to nearly unfettered competition. This doesn't happen in Europe where the big companies remain the big companies decade after decade.
What's ignored is Unregulated profit-seeking corporations cannot be trusted to protect the Public, because their main objective is to make profits, not to be a do-gooder for the Public. Whenever profit-making conflicts with the Public interest, profit-making wins! Thus they become Predators on the Public, not Protectors of the Public.
Profit-seeking corporations exist to make a profit, and the more profit, the better. Anything which increases profits is good for them; and anything which decreases profits is bad. So they try to do whatever is necessary to make profits. This is the essence of Laissez-faire Capitalism: that profit-seeking corporations should be left alone to do whatever they choose to do in order to make profits.
UNREGULATED PROFIT-SEEKING CORPORATIONS HARM THE PUBLIC THESE FIVE WAYS
Unregulated profit-seeking corporations harm the public these five ways. We are talking mainly about the larger, publicly-traded, profit-seeking corporations like those whose stocks are traded on the stock exchanges. But the same ideas can apply to any unregulated profit-seeking corporation, even the smaller ones and the private ones.
We recognize that profit-seeking corporations can be a great force for good in the world, creating and providing wonderful goods and services that would be unavailable by any other means. But we also recognize that if they are unregulated, they harm the public these five ways. An unregulated corporation is like a loose elephant in your neighborhood. Who can stop it from trampling over whatever it chooses?
1. NOT PAY TAXES -In order to maximize profits, they always seek to avoid or minimize their taxes.
2. ELIMINATE COMPETION -In order to maximize profits, they always seek to eliminate or control their competition.
3. CUT WAGES AND SALARIES - In order to maximize profits, they always seek to reduce their labor costs.
4. DISREGARD THE ENVIRONMENT - In order to maximize profits, they always seek to avoid all environmental restraints.
5. SELL DANGEROUS, HARMFUL PRODUCTS - In order to maximize profits, they are tempted to sell dangerous or harmful products. So what should we do?
The answer is GOVERNMENT REGULATION! Yes, Government Regulation of profit-seeking corporations. Reasonable regulations, applied fairly, so that all the companies are in the same boat and nobody gets any special advantage. This is not difficult to do, but it does require some effort. And it requires going against the current right-wing Republican policies of Laissez-faire Capitalism: that profit-seeking corporations should be left alone to do whatever they choose to do in order to make profits.
orangeatheist
11-07-2009, 06:07 AM
These types of posts are the only thing that you can ever manage?
Sad.
http://www.long-sunday.net/long_sunday/images/product_detail_u_irony.gif
The implication by W*gs (above at top) that the Mexicans are somehow ethnically stupid shows who the true Nazi is.
You're clinging worse that a Taco-Bell-caused turd clings to one's ass.