The Largest Exporter

I've been trying to get a handle on this chart. This chart shows the 10 largest exporting countries in the world.

The largest exporting country in the world is Germany, not China! After all the talk about China being the largest exporter to America and how American jobs are moving to China, I expected China to be the largest exporting country, certainly not a small country like Germany.

I have lots of questions. How can Germany be the largest exporting country? China has 10+ times the population of Germany. How can a country the size of Germany (45 million workers) have enough resources to out produce China (808 million workers) and the United States (155 million workers)? One third of Germany is still covered by forests. Notice that Germany's exports are greater than its imports. How is Germany able to export so much material goods and not require a greater import of raw materials? You would think Germany would be draining all of its natural resources since the output is greater than the input. What is it that Germany is exporting that the US doesn't appear to buy a lot of ? Germany doesn't rank high on the import list for the United States.

I also have lots of questions about the US. Why does the US and the UK import so much more than they export? These two countries look distorted on the chart especially the US. People do things for a reason. Why does the US and UK choose to import so much more than it exports seemingly to its harm? What belief mechanism is causing this that the other countries in the world don't see? Are the US and UK becoming more efficient and getting lower prices for its goods? According to economic theory distortions become self-correcting. Why has this imbalance not corrected in 20+ years? What drives it one way? Is the US in some kind of transitioning to a better economy moving away from manufacturing to higher level types of work or to a more failing economy to balance out the difference between incomes in the US and China/India?

Why is the US no longer a technological leader in many fields? If we want to upgrade our harbors to more efficiently load and unload cargo containers ships, we have to buy from the Chinese or Japanese. They have the best equipment, software, and experience for managing this process. If we want the best TVs or cars, we buy either Japanese, Korean, or German. Fortunately, we still have the prowess in computer processor design but how long will we maintain that as companies like Intel and Microsoft start offloading design experience to China. We are more advanced in Agriculture technology. We do have a very creative Silicon valley that keeps generating ideas like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc. but many of these aren't making a lot of money. We've got creativity going for us, but we're being held back. South Korea's cellular phone and Internet are years ahead of the US. Why is our environment moving so slowly. We do have the outstanding iPhone but it could do much more if the carriers could move forward.

I'm puzzled, puzzled, puzzled.

Rule of law failing in the USSA

Is the rule of law regarding contracts failing in the US?

I was listening to an interview this morning with the President of Russia. He was talking about the need for global investors to invest in Russia. Global investment in Russia has fallen tremendously. He acted like global investors are really missing a good opportunity. Right! The reason global investors abandoned Russia because the rule of law failed. Suddenly taxes that no one had ever heard of were applied to the Yukos oil company which was sited and penalized for years of not paying these unknown taxes until the company was bankrupt and sold off to one of Russia's government run oil companies. Other unknown environmental laws suddenly appeared forcing non Russia companies to give up their stakes in Russian oil fields. The rule of law meant nothing. The laws suddenly changed to suit whatever Putin's government wanted to do. The current President denies that this was this case and says they have improved the rule of law. Of course, no one seems to believe him.

Now are we starting to see the failure of rule of law in the US under President Obama. Many ordinary people who invested their retirement savings in GM bonds suddenly discover that President Obama's auto task force worked out a "deal" that eliminates 90% of their investment in order to help the company and the union survive. These retirees had understood that their investments would be safe because the rule of law for bankruptcy said they would have first priority in a bankruptcy. Instead President Obama's task force hands over any money to the union who would not have come first if the rule of law had been followed. If people can't rely on the existing laws how can they feel good about investing in America. This is not a good precedent.

Now this morning the Citigroup Bank under US government control has said that they are not going to pay the rest of millions in severance to departed executives per the "contracts" with the executives. The bank didn't want to draw more attention to the big payments to executives and they're counting on that the executives will not sue to avoid drawing the public's anger. The payments are quite large. The contracts also stated that the departing executives would not work for a competitor and would not recruit employees from Citigroup. The failure to pay is a breach of contract. While Citigroup may be morally right in not continuing to "reward" the executives in power when Citigroup nearly failed, it is legally wrong to violate a contract.. If Citigroup will violate a contract to an employee, who is to say they won't violate a contract to a customer. Of course if Citigroup has breached the contract, I would say these executives can now work for Citigroup's competitors and can recruit employees from Citigroup. Then where will that leave this US government run bank that needs to pay the taxpayers back.

With the Chrysler and GM "bankruptcy deals" and the US government influence over the banks, I'm afraid we are starting to see the failure of the rule of law in this country. The rule of law made the US a great place to invest. Now investing in the US is becoming more of gamble. You can't depend on the existing laws. The government thinks the ends justifies the means. There are going to be economic consequences if the government persists in twisting the law. It does not bode well for the future.