by David B. Brooks   

“News Alert: CEOs tell The Washington Post why they're not hiring
07:13 PM EDT Friday, August 20, 2010
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Democrats say we need more stimulus, and Republicans say we need less regulation and lower taxes.  But CEOs say the real problem is that they simply don't trust American consumers will open their wallets in the coming years.

For more information, visit washingtonpost.com:
http://link.email.washingtonpost.com/r/RRHKUP/C55JKY/1XVK2/L8SB1Y/GPG54/AZ/t

The corporations and their CEO’s don’t trust Americans? Americans will not open their wallets because there is too little in them to waste on anything they don’t need, and who has credit or anything to hock like a house that has little collateral value if any? If they are that unaware of why people aren’t over-spending and going into more debt, the managers of corporations and companies are isolated from reality (that’s also known as schizophrenia) and trying to run something from within a vacuum or they are just plain dissembling a fantasy. It has to be considering corporations have doubled their own wallets’ contents counted in trillions of $ since the recent economic crisis began.

And should we be inclined to look to Wall Street and the corporate world for a solution to the public economy and unemployment. As long as they are doing profitable business and paying out less for their workers, they have no incentive unless they finally realize they are Americans too. Americans are spending though, as retail sales are only slightly lower in absolute terms and even enough that our balance of payments for imports has risen just recently! So what does that say about the problem and the solutions to unemployment.

It says one thing not one pundit in the news organizations has dared go near; and that is that there aren’t any jobs because Americans aren’t making what Americans are buying. US consumers are still buying, but mostly goods that are manufactured in Asia and some other 3rd world countries where labor is cheap. Just because a product has an ”American” name, from a familiar US company does not mean it was made in America, or for that matter the company is still operating in America. The company could be a file cabinet on a Caribbean island and the factory could be in Central America or Vietnam - and that is where the jobs in America have gone. They have been exported by American consumers themselves, so big-box stores can sell them cheap imported products.

So why are Americans buying all these products that used to be made in America. I can remember how many dirty looks I used to get when I was a student for driving a VW bug. But no more, some VW’s and Toyotas, even some Mercedes and BMW’s are made in the US. So why can’t we also make all the things we used to manufacture and bring those jobs back to America? All it would take is for consumers to look at the label on the product, and if it was made by low-paid labor in the 3rd world, show the product to the store manager and tell him to get that product made in America.

Will these US products cost more? Very likely yes, but they should have better materials and workmanship so the product will last longer. All of the cheap imported products I have had to purchase because that’s all the stores have, don’t last very long and have to be replaced frequently, so in the long run they actually they cost more than the American products I used to buy. American consumers need to get a lot smarter and wiser and quit exporting jobs in exchange for cheap prices for poor quality products.

What is silly is believing in a fantasy about free markets that don’t exist. Everyone pays one way or another if they believe in something unreal. Good times will come back when we realize they are earned by our own ideas and efforts, not by a promise of a free ride to nowhere.

Sunday NYT: Inside the Knockoff-Tennis-Shoe Factory
By NICHOLAS SCHMIDLE

In southern China, making fake shoes has become a very big business. Chinese authorities are slow to enforce the law, and it’s becoming harder and harder to tell which shoes are real.