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"Moreover, if one looks at long-term plots of both the trade deficit and interest rates, it is very clear that there was no sudden break in either of these series that could possibly be seen as standing out in a historical perspective. Virtually nothing happened to either the trade deficit or interest rates. The proposed tax legislation that the Brady Commission mentions had completely escaped my notice as an important news story to include on my list." - Brian Fagan, Floods, Famines, and Emperors: El Nino and the Fate of Civilizations (Get the book.) "Based on the results of my study, the news stories that the Brady Commission mentions about the merchandise trade deficit and about new highs in inter- est rates cannot be considered central to investors' thinking. In my survey, I included these in my list of news stories and got a lukewarm response from respondents (mostly 4s). Moreover, if one looks at long-term plots of both the trade deficit and interest rates, it is very clear that there was no sudden break in either of these series that could possibly be seen as standing out in a historical perspective." - Brian Fagan, Floods, Famines, and Emperors: El Nino and the Fate of Civilizations (Get the book.) "Virtually nothing happened to either the trade deficit or interest rates. The proposed tax legislation that the Brady Commission mentions had completely escaped my notice as an important news story to include on my list. The news had broken on October 14, five days before the crash, and it had not seemed to me to be the subject of significant public comment in the days leading up to the crash. Representative Dan Rostenkowski's House Ways and Means Committee was considering tax changes that would have had the effect of discouraging corporate takeovers." - Brian Fagan, Floods, Famines, and Emperors: El Nino and the Fate of Civilizations (Get the book.) "They wrote in their summary the following explanation for the crash: The precipitous market decline of mid-October was "triggered" by specific events: an unexpectedly high merchandise trade deficit which pushed interest rates to new high levels, and proposed tax legislation which led to the collapse of the stocks of a number of takeover candidates. This initial decline ignited mechanical, price-insensitive selling by a number of institutions employing portfolio insurance strategies and a small number of mutual fund groups reacting to redemptions." - Brian Fagan, Floods, Famines, and Emperors: El Nino and the Fate of Civilizations (Get the book.)

"Consumers used the dollars to overspend. The trade deficit soared as Americans spent roughly $1.07 on foreign goods for every dollar's worth of goods and services they exported. The trade deficit and rising household debt had the curious effect of increasing U.S. business profits. Because consumers were still buying things (by borrowing against booming house prices), U.S. businesses could still increase their profits even though they were reducing their wage bills by sending jobs overseas. Usually, businesses can't do that, because taken as a whole, their wage cost is also their income." - William Bonner, Lila Rajiva, Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets: Surviving the Public Spectacle in Finance and Politics (Agora Series) (Get the book.)

"In the 1990s, when the global economy grew increasingly robust, the U.S. trade deficit climbed from $19.4 billion in 1990 to $164 billion in 1998. The entire U.S. trade deficit is traditionally in the manufactured goods sector; the United States runs a small surplus in the services sector. Its exports of goods have not kept up with imports, in part because the strength of the dollar makes its goods more expensive for foreign nations to buy, while people in the U.S. have more money to spend on cheaper imports." - The New York Times, The New York Times Guide to Essential Knowledge: A Desk Reference for the Curious Mind (Get the book.)

"That trade deficit, predicts Mike Wilson, the environmental health scientist at University of California-Berkeley's School of Public Health, will increase as the market for U.S.-produced "basic chemicals"—a menu of substances that has changed little in thirty years—diminishes under the public glare offered by REACH and as consumers' sensitivity to environmental consequences increases. "The Europeans are already gaining an advantage over us in clean technology," said Wilson. "As the market shifts, that will put them into an advantageous situation." - Mark Schapiro, Exposed: The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products and What's at Stake for American Power (Get the book.) "Why would the Europeans be working to aid their competitors in China, with whom both Europe and America share a significant trade deficit? I asked this question of the one other European diplomat whose post is akin to Robert Donkers' in Washington: Magnus Gislev, a Swede, who was appointed the EU's environment counselor in China in early 2006." - Mark Schapiro, Exposed: The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products and What's at Stake for American Power (Get the book.)

"When the trade deficit climbed to 6.6 percent of GDP by the second quarter of 2006, it had reached a dangerous stage. Americans had spent way more than they could afford for far too long and had relied on a staggering amount of borrowed money to pay for it, with much of the financing coming from foreigners. As attitudes toward the United States change, more foreigners will question the dollar's longstanding role as a global reserve currency and international unit of account, especially when they realize how many of these paper promises have actually been created and put into circulation." - Michael J. Panzner, Financial Armageddon: Protecting Your Future from Four Impending Catastrophes (Get the book.)

"The trade deficit, too, has more than quintupled since I've been at the Fed, from $150.7 to $756.8 billion, and will reach $830 billion in 2006. When I came to power, the United States was still a creditor. Now it is a debtor. When I left, out of all Federal government debt owed to the public as Treasury bonds and T-bills, around $2 trillion was owned by foreigners, up about 10 times from $0.2 trillion in 1987.7 Who can argue with such a record? Who can compete with it? Who would want to? But that is the smooth, perverse pleasure a cynical old man takes in his achievements." - William Bonner, Lila Rajiva, Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets: Surviving the Public Spectacle in Finance and Politics (Agora Series) (Get the book.) "The real estate bubble. The trade deficit bubble. The American Empire. They are useful only as evidence of conspicuous consumption; they wink to the opposite sex that the animal is fit for procreation and game for a little hanky-panky. If he can carry around all that extra baggage and still survive, he must be tough. So, too, if a person can live in a McMansion and drive a Hummer without going bankrupt, he must be a good prospect for a date. But it's all relative. If everybody on the block buys a Hummer and puts in a swimming pool, the man who has those things already loses his edge." - William Bonner, Lila Rajiva, Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets: Surviving the Public Spectacle in Finance and Politics (Agora Series) (Get the book.)

"China trade deficit. Environmental Protection Agency administrator Stephen Johnson announced talks with Chinese officials to develop an emissions-trading market in sulfur-dioxide emissions, a market-driven strategy that has been highly successful in reducing acid rain in North America but has had little effect on greenhouse gases." - Mark Schapiro, Exposed: The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products and What's at Stake for American Power (Get the book.)

"The opposite is the case in China and other Asian economies: they have a growing trade surplus, as the value of their exports is consistently above the value of their imports. At present, the Asian economies are financing U.S. overspending, but not voluntarily: central banks with large foreign exchange reserves, like China, Japan, and other Asian countries, are captives of America's fiscal policy. This trend cannot unfold indefinitely: the financial imbalance is growing toward untenable dimensions." - Ervin Laszlo, Quantum Shift in the Global Brain: How the New Scientific Reality Can Change Us and Our World (Get the book.)

"Reduce our trade deficit. • Rebuild aging infrastructure. • Improve social equity for low-income workers by increasing job access and mobility. How much will it cost, you wisely ask? A modest investment of $300 billion, or less than one year's budget to prosecure the Iraq War. This seems a paltry sum given the opportunity to eliminate the need for such wars to begin with, save our environment, and reduce our energy expenses. In the Right-Side Up world, we'd already be How to be green? implementing Apollo. So what's the hard part?" - David H. Rippe, Jared Rosen, The Flip: Turn Your World Around (Get the book.)

"Only an empire can run such a trade deficit for many years. Only an empire can maintain so many expensive outposts all over the world. Only an empire's money will be accepted by so many people in so many different places. The American empire, circa 2005, still sets the trends in fashion, arts, style, and manners—but it neglects engineering, science, and homeland-bound industries. It depends on the periphery states for its savings and its consumer goods. As an empire matures, its center weakens and its backbone bends under the weight." - William Bonner, Addison Wiggin, Empire of Debt: The Rise of an Epic Financial Crisis (Get the book.) "In the bubble economy of the early sixteenth century, Spain developed a trade deficit similar to that of the United States today. People took their money and bought goods from abroad. By the time the New World mines petered out, the Spanish were bankrupt. The Spanish government defaulted on its loans in 1557, 1575, 1607, 1627, and 1647. Not only was the damage severe, it was long-lasting. The Iberian Peninsula became the "sick man of Europe" and remained on bed rest until the 1980s. If empires are to endure, they must pay. But if they pay too well, success ruins the homeland." - William Bonner, Addison Wiggin, Empire of Debt: The Rise of an Epic Financial Crisis (Get the book.) "The great old man said he thought shares and houses in America were too expensive and that the United States was cruising for trouble with its trade deficit and U.S. federal deficit. He said he anticipated a long bear market in shares, falling residential real estate prices and a serious slump in the economy. Implicitly, he advised investors to hold cash.10 The person who wrote the article then asked local analysts and stockbrokers what they thought of Templeton's opinion." - William Bonner, Addison Wiggin, Empire of Debt: The Rise of an Epic Financial Crisis (Get the book.) "Plus, it bears the indirect costs of its own con-sumerist excesses—another $700 billion or so per year in trade deficit. Together, they represent a cost of empire of more than 10 percent of GDP . . . more than $1 trillion each year. Instead of collecting tribute, the United States finances these costs by borrowing. Here, Alan Greenspan and the paper dollar were immensely helpful. There is no theoretical limit to the amount of debt that can be taken on. The problem is a practical one. The dollar must maintain a reasonable value or lenders will be unwilling to lend." - William Bonner, Addison Wiggin, Empire of Debt: The Rise of an Epic Financial Crisis (Get the book.)

"The trade deficit and rising household debt had the curious effect of increasing U.S. business profits. Because consumers were still buying things (by borrowing against booming house prices), U.S. businesses could still increase their profits even though they were reducing their wage bills by sending jobs overseas. Usually, businesses can't do that, because taken as a whole, their wage cost is also their income. In a strange way, they can increase demand for their products only by increasing wages; otherwise consumers won't have the money to buy the things they make." - William Bonner, Lila Rajiva, Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets: Surviving the Public Spectacle in Finance and Politics (Agora Series) (Get the book.)

"The entire U.S. trade deficit is traditionally in the manufactured goods sector; the United States runs a small surplus in the services sector. Its exports of goods have not kept up with imports, in part because the strength of the dollar makes its goods more expensive for foreign nations to buy, while people in the U.S. have more money to spend on cheaper imports. Tariffs and Quotas One way to protect a country's own producers, especially when they are inefficient compared with the international competition, is with import tariffs—taxes on goods that are produced abroad." - The New York Times, The New York Times Guide to Essential Knowledge: A Desk Reference for the Curious Mind (Get the book.) "China, oblivious even to the superiority of European military technology, would soon suffer badly from its imperial self-satisfaction, as Britain began balancing its China trade deficit with a massive trade in opium from Bengal to Canton. In Japan, the splendid isolation of the Tokugawa period continued. But the internal peace that they enforced left the samurai warriors functionless, increasingly dissolute and in debt to the thriving merchant class." - The New York Times, The New York Times Guide to Essential Knowledge: A Desk Reference for the Curious Mind (Get the book.)

"Trade barriers are usually protectionist; that is, they are erected to protect domestic producers who would not be able to compete successfully with foreign producers in a free market or in free trade. trade deficit The condition that exists when the value of what a country imports exceeds the value of what it exports; also called an unfavorable balance of trade. fa Trade deficits, because they imply that capital is leaving a country, can cause higher interest rates. tradeoff What must be given up, and what is gained, when an economic decision is made. {See opportunity cost." - E. D. Hirsch, Joseph F. Kett, James Trefil, The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know (Get the book.)

"Trade barriers are usually protectionist; that is, they are erected to protect domestic producers who would not be able to compete successfully with foreign producers in a free market or in free trade. trade deficit The condition that exists when the value of what a country imports exceeds the value of what it exports; also called an unfavorable balance of trade. fa Trade deficits, because they imply that capital is leaving a country, can cause higher interest rates. tradeoff What must be given up, and what is gained, when an economic decision is made. (See opportunity cost." - E. D. Hirsch, The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy (Get the book.)

"A permanent trade deficit exists between this region and the rest of the world. There is an absence of know-how, a disrespect for the connection between hard work and profit, between the long haul and success, and between problems, incentives, and solutions. Who can blame the inhabitants? They have faith in flash remedies for social and political despair, and a tendency to favor the less rational forms of religion, including various forms of Black Islam, voodoo mixed with Catholicism, spiritualism mixed with Protestant sects of various kinds, and animism mixed with God knows what." - Henry Hobhouse, Seeds of Change: Six Plants That Transformed Mankind (Get the book.)

"Trade barriers are usually protectionist; that is, they are erected to protect domestic producers who would not be able to compete successfully with foreign producers in a free market or in free trade. trade deficit The condition that exists when the value of what a country imports exceeds the value of what it exports; also called an unfavorable balance of trade. fa Trade deficits, because they imply that capital is leaving a country, can cause higher interest rates. tradeoff What must be given up, and what is gained, when an economic decision is made. {See opportunity cost." - James Trefil, Joseph F. Kett, and E. D. Hirsch, The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know (Get the book.)

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