Jumping off point

Not orginally being from Texas I've pretty much missed who is going to what bowl game, or the race for the NFL playoffs. Football just doesn't do it for me.

However, the closest thing I have to a home team in a real sport are the San Antonio Spurs. They won the championship last year. They are a real character team on and off the court. Now they have won 10 straight.

Go Spurs Go!

Finally one of my pet peeves takes a hit.

http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/npr/stream//my/av_pl_npr//SIG=42p2c2/*http://www.npr.org/dmg/dmg.php?prgCode=ATC&showDate=20-Dec-2003&segNum=9&mediaPref=RM

The title speaks for itself, what a great link:

PowerPoint Makes You Dumb

New York Times article about China's stretch to keep the Yuwen pegged on the dollar. As I alluded to before China's economy is balanced on the edge of a knife.

Also I looked and from Feb 2002 to this month the Euro has gained 40% on the dollar. Most other currencies have done similar things. At those prices for dollars we should really be able to export anything to anybody.

If I hear the term "buggy whip industry" one more time in an article I'm going to hunt the author down and make them beg for forgiveness.

The Washington post article

Many of my readers (if indeed that is plural) may think there is nothing more boring than steel tariffs. Let me make this more real. Steel is used everywhere in everything. Lower steel prices affects obvious things like cars, but non-obvious things like Milk. Almost all equipment and most everything else is made of steel. Lowering steel tariffs saves you money on everything you buy.

Let me ramble for a bit.

I think the Bush administration imposed the steel tariffs as a stop gap measure while they planned out how to increase manufacturing jobs in the US. They have already implemented their plan. They have abandoned the strong dollar policy that was followed since economics became a policy. This raises exports and hence jobs making stuff to export.

Let me explain the strong dollar policy. The strong dollar policy says that the dollar is gaining against all currencies all the time. So if you have a dollar it would be worth say 5 pesos today, 6 pesos next year, 8 pesos the year after, etc. Basically that the dollar will be the defacto international currency and American's will seem very rich when visiting the rest of the world. This is great for American consumers who have dollars because the countries making our stuff for us don't need a lot of dollars (translated into local currencies like pesos) to make a profit.

So with a weak dollar things from China, Mexico, and Europe cost more to buy. If the dollar is worth 10 pesos the item will be half the price of when the dollar is 5 pesos.

But on the other hand a weak dollar makes it easier for us to sell things to other people. We need less pesos (or yen or euros) to make a dollar and make a profit.

So steel really still has tariffs, just the same ones everybody else has. And the tariffs are in the form of weakened dollars.

Which brings us to China. China has pegged their currency to the dollar, only they pegged it low. So when the dollar goes up the Chinese currency goes up, and when the dollar goes down ditto. That is why everything we buy is made in China. The Chinese government is making sure that China has an unfair advantage. They manage to do it because they print the money, own everything in the country, run the banks, etc.

So when we had a strong dollar China was essentially subsidizing their exports to the US with money from exports to other countries by fixing their currency. Now that we have a weak dollar China is subsidizing their exports to the US with whatever money they can find.

Which brings me back to the weak dollar. Besides helping exports from the US it also helps apply lots of pressure to China. We are essentially playing a game of chicken at this point. China is trying to keep its currency pegged as long as it can, without bankrupting the country while we are keeping the dollar low as long as we can stand to relinquish our defacto international money title to the euro.

And to help matters Bush started quietly adding tariffs to some Chinese goods like textiles (read clothes). Just to add a little heat to the fire.

Within the next year expect some major changes in US China relations including a very different trade policy.

I'm shopping for tires. The tires I currently have (some kind of Wal-Mart brand Douglas tires) are terrible and worn out. So I thought I'd post some useful links if you too are looking for tires.

tirerack.com is the most useful
ntb.com claims to have the lowest price or your tires are free
discounttire.com has good prices too
costo.com has prices of most of their stuff online including tires, limited selection good prices
bridgestone-usa.com will help you find a firestone dealer near you (no prices)

Happy that generic versions of drugs are cheaper? Maybe rethink that stance. If generic drugs were sold at a reasonable markup the brand names would be forced to lower their prices too. It starts to seem to me that spreading around some facts would do a lot more to fix rising health care costs than legislation.

http://www.detnow.com/news/0207221204.html

Make sure to look at the chart after reading the article. Good stuff.