The Lost Decade

Update

August 6 , 2011:  Although I did not vote in the last election (my vote in Texas would not make a difference), I was happy that America would choose "a Barack Obama" for president. Maybe folks would finally accept that as a nation, we are not a racist people. Individually, there are racists, but corporate America, political America, social America is not racist. So I was happy to see Barack Obama, the man, elected president. I wished him well; and if America did well, I would do well.

But with the market in free fall and the nation's credit rating downgraded for the first time in history, and he still doesn't get it, I may become more political on this blog. I try to hold back, but his policies have become a disaster. The nation is not headed in the wrong direction by accident. It took specific actions to move us to where we are headed.

The president simply does not get it. New link here.

Original Post

Some months ago -- has it been a year? -- I started referring to the folly of government betting on the "global warming" scam and all that followed from it as the "Lost Decade." Of course, others will argue there was much more to it, and that's fine. I won't argue.

But with regard to energy policy in this country, all I can say is that the past ten years represents a "Lost Decade."

The National Journal reports a story today with a "mystery":

Taming unemployment starts with solving the mystery of the jobs that were supposed to have been created in the past ten (10) years but weren't.

The article is titled: "The Phantom 15 Million."

It's a four-page article in the National Journal so it would be a great article for high school social studies and college economic students to read.

This is the soundbite the author of this article uses for this story: "The Lost Decade." (Most likely this is a thesis for an upcoming book.) As noted, I've been calling this the Lost Decade for quite some time now.

I scanned the article pretty quickly, but did not see the oil industry mentioned. I'm not even sure if the energy industry was mentioned.

For every one million barrels of oil produced in United States, one can expect about one million jobs. I do not know if that figure is "direct" jobs or all jobs related to the oil industry. I will be conservative and assume it is all jobs related to the oil industry. So, without even much research, I can account for about two million jobs lost due to decrease of oil production in the US.

As you approach the end of the article, looking for conclusions, explanations, and/or thoughts where "we" go from here, we read this:

A recent paper by researchers at the Asian Development Bank Institute concluded that the iPhone, one of the United States’ top innovations of the past decade, actually contributes nearly $2 billion to our trade deficit because it is almost entirely produced and assembled in Asia. The paper also raises a conundrum for lawmakers and business leaders alike: If Apple moved its assembly line to the United States and created domestic jobs but didn’t raise the cost of the iPhone, the company would still turn a 50 percent profit on every one it sold.

Maybe Apple’s greed is at fault.

"Apple's greed"? Apple, Incorporated, is a publicly traded company owned by its shareholders. It has a fiduciary responsibility (and legal duty) to maximize shareholder return.  Apple was supposed to sell their iPhones for a loss?

It never ceases to amaze me how mainstream media is so anti-fossil fuel, they cannot even address it. If this -- that "maybe Apple's greed is at fault" for the 15 million unemployed/underemployed -- is the takeaway message for those setting policy in Washington, there is little hope that the unemployment problem will be resolved in my investing lifetime.

The word "unions" was not mentioned in the article. But plenty of folks submitting comments did not miss that oversight.

The legal system was not mentioned.

But I digress. As far as I am concerned, one can argue that the folly of chasing the "global warming" scam set the tone for the "Lost Decade."

For more posts on the "Lost Decade" go to the "Labels" at the bottom of this blog and click on "LostDecade."