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Thread: post election commentary - 'pure coincidence' ?

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    Default post election commentary - 'pure coincidence' ?

    (snip)"Friday, November 10, 2006
    HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam — Intel Corp. (INTC), the world's largest computer chipmaker, announced Friday that it will more than triple its initial $300 million investment in Vietnam, dramatically expanding the size of a chip assembly and testing plant that it is constructing in the country's southern business hub.

    The company plans to spend $1 billion on the plant and expand its size from 150,000 square feet to 500,000 square feet, a company official said Friday"(snip)


    Again one has to wonder about the 'highly coincidental' timing of such an announcement, given that the new direction stemming from the recent election results is likely to include stated goals of higher taxes on corporations, increased US labor rates/costs etc.

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    Default Re: post election commentary - 'pure coincidence' ?

    and this must be 'pure coincidence' as well ...



    (snip)"WASHINGTON - Legislation to normalize trade relations with Vietnam was defeated in the House Monday, four days before President Bush makes his first visit to the only country ever to defeat the United States in a major war.

    The measure failed to win the necessary two-thirds majority it needed to pass under a procedure House Republicans adopted in an effort to rush it through with limited debate. It received 228 votes in support — 32 short of what was needed. There were 161 votes against it.

    Ways and Means Committee aides, however, said Republicans planned to bring the measure up again Wednesday under normal procedures which will require only a majority for passage. The proposal gained 228 votes, 10 more than the 218 majority that would be needed under the normal process."(snip)

    "Vietnam, which was cleared last week to become the WTO’s 150th member, also agreed to open up telecommunications, financial services and energy to competition by American and other foreign companies.

    The Vietnam trade bill was heavily supported by U.S. business executives who are anxious to get into one of the fastest growing markets in Southeast Asia. It was just the latest milestone in a two-decade effort to normalize relations that had been severed by the Vietnam War.

    Through September, U.S. exports to Vietnam have totaled $724 million while Vietnamese shipments to the United States totaled $6.4 billion, giving the United States a $5.7 billion trade deficit with Vietnam.

    Opponents cited this gap and America’s soaring trade deficit, which is on track to set a new record close to $781 billion this year, as reasons to oppose granting normal trade status to Vietnam.

    They warned that the new measure, by lowering barriers to Vietnamese goods further, will put more American workers in jeopardy to low-wage foreign competition. Nearly 3 million U.S. manufacturing jobs have been lost since Bush took office in 2001.“(snip)

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    Default Re: post election commentary - 'pure coincidence' ?

    Doubt it. I think people just wised up because they were pissed off about the war, the (supposedly fiscally conservative) GOP government spending way more than it was taking in and making government even BIGGER and voted out the people they felt were responsible.

    And all the other political stuff that probably doesn't really belong in Dollar Den. Besides, Fox News is biased as all fuck.
    "She has written so well, and marvellously well, that I was completely ashamed of myself as a writer...But this girl, who is to my knowledge very unpleasant and we might even say a high-grade bitch, can write rings around all of us who consider ourselves as writers"

    Ernest Hemingway on writer, aviation pioneer and horse trainer Beryl Markham


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    Default Re: post election commentary - 'pure coincidence' ?

    ^^^ I would make the point that, while changes in gov't policy after elections are no doubt politically based, that the potential economic impact, unintended economic consequences etc. are certainly 'fair game' for DD discussion. Certainly, the decision by the current gov't to grant Vietnam 'normalized trade relations' thus removing tariffs against Vietnamese imports into the USA before the new congress convenes in January, and the coincident decision by Intel to quintuple the size of their new chip plant in Vietnam, all within a few days of the election, arguably fall in the category of 'unintended consequences'. This Intel offshore move will undoubtedly have significant future economic / white collar employment impact on certain locations in the USA (silicon valley, Albuquerque etc.) as well as bringing significant pressure to bear for AMD, NVidia etc. to do the same or be priced out of the market.


    As to the election results, I made no commentary whatsoever as to why people decided to vote the way they did ... and you are probably entirely correct in the reasons that you stated. However, the point of this thread was that a change in political direction can certainly cause changes in economic policy that produces reactions in the US economy. As to the Fox news stories cited in this thread, they were pretty much factual reporting and made essentially no one-sided political commentary (position of both sides was included in the story).

    If you're seeking politico-economic commentary, the following is from a Wall St. Journal piece about another likely economic aftereffect of the recent election that IS rather one-sided.



    (snip)"That was fast. A mere two days after Democrats capture Congress claiming they wouldn't raise taxes, former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin tells them they should do so anyway.

    "You cannot solve the nation's fiscal problems without increased revenues," declared Mr. Rubin, the Democratic Party's leading economic spokesman, in a speech last Thursday. He also took a crack at economic forecasting by noting that "I think if you were to increase taxes right now, you would have probably about zero negative effect on the economy." The economics and politics here are worth parsing.

    We suppose it's reassuring that Mr. Rubin now thinks the economy is strong enough to withstand a tax increase. That's a switch from his opposition to the 2003 Bush tax cuts, which he predicted would bust the budget and do little for growth. The U.S. economy proceeded to grow by an average of nearly 4% a year for three years following mid-2003, until the recent slowdown due largely to the housing slump.

    Everyone makes mistakes, but raising taxes amid a housing decline doesn't sound like brilliant policy to us. Depending on inflation signals in the coming weeks, the Federal Reserve may not be done raising interest rates. The best hope for avoiding a recession next year and into 2008 is that strong corporate profits and the tight job market will lift business investment and consumer spending enough to offset the impact of tighter monetary policy. The last thing the economy needs now is a tax increase, too.

    And what are the urgent "fiscal problems" that justify a tax increase, anyway? As the nearby chart shows, federal revenues in fiscal 2006 were 18.4% of GDP, higher than the 18.2% post-1965 average. In October, the first month of fiscal 2007, revenues rose by 12% from a year earlier. Mr. Rubin thinks this windfall isn't enough; perhaps he wants to return to the late Clinton years, when the feds grabbed a record 20.9% of GDP and taxpayers demanded a refund by endorsing George W. Bush's tax cut proposal in the election of 2000.

    By the way, the federal deficit for fiscal 2006 was only 1.9% of GDP, which is lower than all but eight years since 1975. Add in the budget surpluses at the state level, and the overall U.S. fiscal "deficit" is economically trivial. It is all but irrelevant to Mr. Rubin's complaint that the U.S. borrows too much from "foreigners." Those foreigners invest here because of safety and soundness and the expected after-tax return. The quickest way to drive away those investors is to reduce that return by raising taxes."(snip)
    ~
    Last edited by Melonie; 11-14-2006 at 10:44 AM.

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