Charlie Rose

doodah  06/09/2011 07:24 PM Report

Robots have already started trying to take over the world. 'Reagan Robots'(demented republicans on acid) got together and started the tea party, and now trying to infect as many humanoids as possible with their defective genes, so they'll be easier to enslave. It appears to be working

lewisfowler  06/08/2011 08:02 PM Report

High-tech manufacturing and the return of presently defined low level value added jobs to America. Obviously, we need the cash flow. Fewer labor units per product offset by higher product volume meeting increased world-wide demand.

Like Spence implies, Production Asset Ownership is still the key to economic success in the Tradable arena. I think the trick is to turn the low value adds into high value adds by increased production-technology gains. Basically make robots smarter, cheaper, and more adaptable against the least expensive human labor. The numbers are there, like the moon.

A productivity race to claim productivity share is economic success.

Technological advantage leverages middle class income.

ShalomFreedman  06/02/2011 12:35 PM Report

This was a very good informative interview. Charlie Rose reads the books and asks questions which are based upon what he has learned. He conducts these business- economic conversations in a good way. Spence is the mild- mannered reporter the pragmatist and non- ideologue who aims to address present reality. As I understand he does this in part through his reading of economic history, while understanding the 'journey' as he calls it is always a unique one. The picture of a multi- lateral power- structure economically in which the U.S. is first or perhaps second among peers is increasingly the one forecast. The major question of restoring proper work, income, and dignity to a good share of middle- class America is answered by Spence with a piecemeal strategy. I wonder if he believes it truly will be done, or we are going to move more and more to the situation where the winners win big and the losers at the bottom end of the scale multiply.

doodah  05/31/2011 05:02 AM Report

That was fascinating, Shark. Thanks.

Gelles is absolutely right, "we must be strong enough to deter world war III.". So we shouldn't throw the middle-class under the bus; however that can be avoided.?.

Are you listening China?!

SharkswithfrikingLazers  05/31/2011 03:21 AM Report

Please look at this YouTube video:

http://youtu.be/p8LE-HGyrpw

It looks like the US already has flying cars.

So the rest of the world will look like the US? And this is reasonable?

The US consumes about 25% of the world's energy with a share of global GDP at 22% and a share of the world population at 4.59 %. (from the UN 2011-02-07)

You are correct Michael Spence--we do need a less energy intensive globe.

SharkswithfrikingLazers  05/31/2011 03:15 AM Report

'So we are in a zero sum game but we lose the jobs to globalization.'

Sorry, no we are NOT in a zero sum game. China will need 6 million more barrels a day--more roads (5 million more kilometers), more buildings, more airline flights--expanding to 15 million barrels a day.

China is on the move and has wrapped this future demand up with the highest bid on future contracts--first loans to State oil companies totaling $120 billion over the last three years. So China is using their loan program to lock in oil for their growth.

This would mean gas lines for America due to current production levels worldwide.

Here is the speech: http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/ArabUSE

As long as we all want the same oil it is NOT a zero sum game.

JohnGelles  05/30/2011 06:35 PM Report

The leaders whose debate will help us over the current crises in jobs and pollution will be between Obama and Huntsman. Other politicians are idiots.

William Spence is not yet asking for enough demand to meet produceable need. Nor is he asking for protected savings to keep demand in check until shelves are full. Nor is he asking for consumption taxes only -- and only if actually needed. Nor is he explaining the urgent need for global QE.

Otherwise he's better than some others.

JohnGelles  05/30/2011 06:28 PM Report

Austerity is the worst cure for our problems. But tax reform is also urgently needed. If we want industry to supply all we need, we must make such supply welcome and rewarded.

Corporations now buy the law. They have fully corrupted lawmakers. Both must be made to see the merit in full employment budgeting.

War will be the last institution we reform. Until we do, we must be strong enough to deter world war III.

JohnGelles  05/30/2011 06:22 PM Report

You might say that if fiat money and indexed savings are so obviously necessary, all nations without them would remedy the fact. You would be wrong.

Obvious need must still be be filled by change resulting from innovation and invention. CHANGE is always resisted.

On TV I saw a new beer dispenser for draft beer in bars. It is a radical improvement from past dispensers. But it was not invented until a few years ago.

No one resists it now. But they did until they did not.

JohnGelles  05/30/2011 06:14 PM Report

This is the best discussion I have run into on Charlie Rose. It justifies my staying with the program -- through lesser moments of problem identification and problem solving.

The immediate problem is global unemployment -- very large in poor nations, too large is all others.

No doubt there are also the problems of supply of water, food, fuel, shelter and the industry, agriculture and mining, necessary to enrich all individuals to establish a decent minimum standard of living.

The problem was viewed as mostly political by communists. It was viewed as mostly economic by Keynesians. Both, of course, recognized the total problem involved all of history, language, law and custom: you could call it cultural--or political-economy. Makes not difference -- but I call it first logistical, and then common-sensical.

We now have the information systems to reform language, law and accounting, to make private property and public purpose work together as an efficient team.

As we ended debtors prison we must end debtors negative effects on full employment. Full employment can create both the supply and demand to make free economies work. Slave economies do not work for those of us who are enslaved.

Full employment budgets for each and every nation are possible when fiat money replaces debt-based money.

Fiat money is made-inflation proof when supply is allowed to exceed demand until the two are balanced.

Supply starts out far below need. But it is also far above monetized demand in our systems now in use.

By raising demand to meet supply, you lose some "market" discipline. But mass production via the hard sciences and engineering more than make up for that.

We have an immediate need for inflation proof savings (like TIPS securities) and for QE 3,4,5,6,7,etc.

We have an immediate need for zero taxes on production, income, work and gain, and taxes, only if savings and output are too small too prevent inflation, put on consumption and sin alone.

Enough for now.

(Correrct minor errors as you would decode a secret message.)

doodah  05/30/2011 04:26 PM Report

A lot of these economists try to put the best face forward for the economic situation and the future. I think this 'reinventing government' wishful thinking is a big pipedream. Let's get real, the government is NEVER going to change, it is what it is, the citizenry is the there to serve them. That is their mentality, and it will never change, as long as it remains stacked with CAREER bureaucrats living in their shallow bubble of reality with no concept (or Care) of how the real world works.

They would have to overhaul from the top down; and there ain't no way in hell that's gonna happen. So get ready for the soup lines folks.

If you already have yours, then congratulations (the costs of labor will be coming down for your conveniences), if they never raise taxes, how can you lose.?. If not, then good luck (spending your whole paychecks on gas).

The rich is getting richer and the poor is getting poorer faster than ever before. 20 Years ago, those words were just a cliche. Now it is Really Happening, and there will be no stopping it.

laupan  05/30/2011 02:53 PM Report

I agree with many of Mr. Spence's observations and points, however I think he understates the financial mess we as a country are in and the importance of austerity programs that need to be inplamented. We need to increase the austerity aspect of his solutions as we waste way too much of our resources.

Charging up your credit cards, tapping your home equity to the max borrowing with reckless abandon and you can keep the party going as long as you have enough cash to make the minimum monthly payments.

Lose the revenue and income stream or have it reduced, miss those payments and the banks will slash your credit.

After we were taken off the Gold Standard and were free to increase our debt, run free printing programs of the dollar, increase government spending on entitlement programs, ill concieved military programs, nonsensical social programs, huge waste projects for special interest groups and total disregard for the prudent management of our assets and country.

We are now in a situation of denial of the problem, our cost of labor, inefficiency of management and union obligations make us less competitive in the new world economy, we are reaching for solutions that are not what we need to solve the issues at hand and we are lacking in leadership in this country to steer us to finding the right solutions. We really need to address the leadership issues in this country…now. The world is a different place today and we need to be current in our way of working in it.

Mr. Spence has written a book to show us some options in finding our way; maybe he can form a group to helping to lead the way.

Ricardo_Amaral  05/30/2011 11:51 AM Report

Regarding the US economy I just posted information on my new blog:

Monday, May 30, 2011

"The U.S. Military Industrial Complex"

http://thefinalcollapseoftheusdollar.blogspot.com/2011/05/us-military-industrial-complex.html

Red Flag:

After reading all the above material and watch the videos, then you will understand why the United States might be setting the stage to create another Vietnam war this time around in South America.

The U.S. is setting the stage to wage war against South America

http://thefinalcollapseoftheusdollar.blogspot.com/2011/05/collapsing-us-economic-and-financial.html

.

REMant  05/30/2011 10:59 AM Report

You will find I think most all of what must be in Prof Spence's book at the Project-Syndicate.org website (http://www.project-syndicate.org/series/the_new_wealth_of_nations/description)

Spence is apparently one of those who want to keep the present system, but use political power to regulate and direct it, an unusual position I'd think for someone at a B-school, or Hoover. But he questioned "QE2," and shows an excellent understanding of the underlying global problems and the real causes of our own depression.

But like most economists he seems to think there is only one path to development, that followed by nations following a Hamiltonian plan of central banking and mercantilist trade policy. Surely it is just this that has caused the cycle of continuous boom and bust, and I am not at all sure it is viable especially since it is really an institutionalized Social Darwinism at odds with Smith and Say, and the kind of global balance Spence urges. Tocqueville made quite a lot of the perceived American desire for equality, but do we really care about others, or is it rather just fueled by envy and a matter of cut-throat competition in whose absence there would be anything but equality? I would say that like most Friedman-inspired "monetarists" he tries to straddle Keynesian and classical economics, but they are antithetical and always have been. I know it seems difficult for some, but individual independence and real equality is not achieved by coddling, which rather produces only dependence and inequality.

These contradictions show up as well in his analysis of China. Altho clearly industrialization involves a change from subsistence farming, I would not characterize it as synonymous with urbanization. While it is true that industries often followed trade and thus developed in port cities, agriculture itself became industrialized, and factories appeared at the source of existing population and resources, which we still call comparative advantages. It took a process of deindustrialization to destroy American cities, and Germany chugs along quite nicely without much cosmopolitanization. I would not argue the Chinese must decentralize, altho I would favor it for libertarian reasons and assume that it would have a beneficial effect on productivity as well as trade. They are still confronted with the hostile currency policies of the inflationists. If we want decentralization, we will have to stop the Keynesianism. Too, what matters in development is productivity increase, which more financially-oriented types somewhat misleadingly or self-deceptively call value-added, implying that it is a matter of demand instead of actual efficiency. I'd like to point out, too, that Friedman's point about political union only applies with regard to bank notes not backed by savings or hard money.

This all has little to do with what Prof Spence, along with Stiglitz, was given the Nobel for, but it is related to Keynes and not only because both of them started out as mathematicians. In life there is no need to create complex models with respect to stuff you do not actually know or have in hand, and little more to do it incrementally. This strikes me as little different from the fellows in the area of risk management. If there is any point to economics it is not to say what to do, but what to avoid doing, rather like an extension of the maxim that truth is not proved, but untruth disproved. The question is not that there are institutions, but whether they are moral (i.e. "true") or not, because for science institutions cannot be considered as preexisting, but rather experimental constructs, or ones whose ultimate design is yet to be realized. When Marx inverted Hegel, he did more than argue that conditions directed history, he said that the world emanated from, rather than evolved toward, an end. In other words he replaced philosophy with voluntarism, much as it was supposed Darwin did. But a closer examination of natural selection shows rather that it evolves design, not power, Spencer's mumbo-jumbo being much more to the point than Huxley's agnosticism, William James notwithstanding, and that the hullabaloo over evolution is actually simply a continuation of the ancient debate over will and idea, religion and nature, innate ideas and education, etc, which would have been familiar to Aristotle or Heraclitus.

doodah  05/30/2011 07:17 AM Report

It's no surprise he's an associate of Stiglitz. I'd rather have people like them "EXPERIMENT" with the economy, than the one-way, backwards politicians. What a Clusterfuck the politicians would DO if they had ALL the power.

And That's the BIG FLAW in Ron Paul's IDEOLOGY.

SharkswithfrikingLazers  05/30/2011 12:50 AM Report

Austerity and then investment huh?

Time to bring in the man from Krug for a wee bit of panel discussion.

charlizecourriers  05/29/2011 04:07 PM Report

I doubt it-all of it.

deja  05/29/2011 02:40 PM Report

NO doubt he is very focused and calculating about his answers. He is cautious and yet optomistic and real

doodah  05/28/2011 09:57 AM Report

I LIKE how this guy THINKS. He KNOWS His Business inside and out.

Would like him to be a regular on the CR.