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News :: Economy : Media |
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Amid Bad News, Stocks Rally |
Current rating: 0 |
by Joe Futrelle
Email: futrelle (nospam) shout.net (verified) |
10 Feb 2005
Modified: 12:25:58 PM |
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Today North Korea announced it has nuclear weapons, oil pirces edged up, and the U. S. trade deficit set a new record. And recently, scientists have concluded that serious consequences from global warming resulting from human activity are inevitable. Stocks rallied anyway. |
The trade deficit stands at $617.7 billion (about $162 billion of which is with China), pumping more air into the dollar bubble. China is currently not budging on its monetary policy, and the Bush administration has done little to push China towards changing it, apparently content to balance the attendant deflation against the rising cost of non-importable economic necessities like health care. Some economist correct me if I've got this analysis wrong.
NYMEX oil is up to $46.90/barrel, which at least temporarily reverses its recent trend.
North Korea announced that it has nuclear weapons and will not participate in talks.
On the positive side, unemployment numbers were relatively good this week, which is not to say that wages are keeping up with the cost of living or that the labor market is at all prepared for the dollar's inevitable decline, given how dependent we obviously are on imports.
With respect to global warming, scientists and policymakers--everyone, that is, except U.S. policymakers--are issuing more and more dire warnings, at this point saying that warming and serious consequences caused by past human activity are inevitable, even if we start to reduce emissions today. Which suggests that we should reduce emissions even more than we would if we thought that doing so would enable us to avoid any consequences.
So what should we invest in? If the latest reports on global warming and environmental destruction are even partially correct, then the only growth industries are the ones that will be needed to replace our current energy-inefficient global economic structure with a dramatically more efficient and more localized technological and economic infrastructure. Profits should be reinvested in any economic activity that reduces our dependence on non-renewable resources and helps build a sustainable economy that does not tie people's access to basic necessities to borrowing and the global financial industry. That latter strategy has proven itself to favor short-term profit over sustainability, and we are quickly running out of non-renewable resources to profit off of.
We're far from accomplishing these goals, but stocks are rallying anyway. |
This work is in the public domain |
