Trade

Any renaissance of American manufacturing must begin by fundamentally reversing our trade policies—both in general and in particular toward China. Over the past two decades, leading U.S. manufacturers, both the venerable (like General Electric) and the new (like Apple), have offshored millions of jobs—by one recent estimate, 2.9 million—to China to take advantage of the cheap labor, generous state subsidies, and low currency valuation that are linchpins of China’s mercantilist development strategy.

At the last World Economic Roundtable, Michael Kumhof, Deputy Division Chief of the Modeling Division of the International Monetary Fund, and Raymond Torres, Director of the International Institute for Labour Studies of the International Labour Organization, came to discuss the relationship between inequality and financial crises. 

-- This is a guest post by Jay Pelosky, Principal, J2Z Advisory, LLC.  It was originally posted on the Huffington Post. --

While much has transpired in financial markets over the past quarter, much remains unclear about the road ahead. Bond yield melt down, equity trap door decline, financial repression, sovereign debt infection, all have become front-page news. Does this mean all is in the price and one can go bargain hunting? Not so fast remains the counsel, not so fast.

This is the second column in a series by Bruce Jentleson, Professor at Duke University, and Jay Pelosky, Principal of J2Z Advisory. It originally appeared on the Huffington Post.

In today's Huffington Post, Bruce Jentleson, a policy wonk, and Jay Pelosky, a seasoned global investor, argue that the public and private sectors in the United States must cooperate if the country is to "revitalize domestically and compete globally."

President Obama's budget speech was one part Obama, one part Clinton, one part China. The Obama part came at the end. It was a gesture toward recapturing the image he enjoyed between 2004 and 2008: As the guy who didn't hate and wasn't hated, the guy who could help red and blue America get along. "This sense of responsibility—to each other and to our country—this isn't a partisan feeling," Obama declared. "It isn't a Democratic or a Republican idea. It's patriotism."

The Doha round of World Trade Organization talks is teetering once again on the edge of total collapse, about to miss yet another absolute and final deadline for an agreement.

While U.S. companies are among the world’s leader in energy-efficiency technology and in oil and gas services, the United States has yet to put these technological advantages to full use domestically.  Indeed, one of the glaring weaknesses of the U.S.

-- This is a guest post by Jay Pelosky, Principal, J2Z Advisory, LLC --  Japan’s massive earthquake, follow on tsunami and subsequent nuclear power plant upheaval have reinforced uncertainty regarding the strength of global economic activity and the appropriate financial assets prices to reflect that activity. The Arab Spring and EU debt crisis meant such uncertainty was already in the air in the weeks preceding the March 11^th earthquake.

As was suggested in an earlier post, China has an unusual low level of consumption and unusual high level of investment and savings.  The high level of savings is not, as is often assumed, attributable only to an increase in household savings, but to a rise in savings in the corporate and government sectors.  From 2000 to 2008, 80% of the increase in China’s gross national savings took place in the government and corporate sectors, not among households.  (The savings rate data for this post is based on the