Reply #19: There is also a building boom in the US [View All]

[Tansy_Gold]

Remember that housing starts and housing sales have been booming for the past couple years, the infamous "housing bubble." As noted in an NYT article today, much of the refi boom has gone into home improvement. New developments in areas of the country like Phoenix (where the original poster noted the problem) and Vegas are eating up resources like you wouldn't believe. Houses in the development being constructed immediately north of my house use almost no solid lumber; 2 x 4s and 2 x 6s are all "fingerjointed" and there is no plywood, only OSB. There is probably more truth in the shortage being caused by the lack of an agreement with Canada than because China is gobbling everything up. But I cold be wrong.

The U.S. doesn't have much of a steel industry left and probably isn't supplying much of anything to China. U.S. steel companies refused to modernize 30 years ago (I believe they wanted govt. subsidies for their modernization) and the business all went to Japan, where the govt. subsidized the industry. If China were buying up everything and the U.S. had the capacity to turn it out, I'm sure we'd be selling something to China.

One of the "scandals" coming out of the Iraq reconstruction was the cement plant that was going to be rebuilt for $23 million by Bechtel but the Iraqis themselves rebuilt it for a fraction of the estimate.
(see http://www.taxpayer.net/TCS/wastebasket/nationalsecurity/2003-12-12iraq.htm)

What puzzles me, in a way, is how the booshies (my generic term for the VRWC neocon greedmeisters) have managed to ignore the very clear and present threat China presents to their plans for global American hegemony. One would think that GHWBoosh would have some better sense of where the real power lies but maybe it's just his generally racist mindset. Doesn't think all them little yeller people amount to much, I guess.


But I could be wrong, too.

Tansy Gold