Tag: manufacturing

Greetings, Mister President, congratulations on your recent electoral victory and inauguration.  I, like many others, voted for you in the hopes that our nation would be steered in a new direction.  Normally, I try and put out a blog piece highlighting certain news and tidbits in regards to manufacturing in this country.  It’s not one of the best blogs in the world, nor one of the worst.  I’m no one of great importance either, just another blog writer among many who hope to voice an opinion or two or highlight something.  Trust me, there are much better bloggers out there.  Chances are you will never hear of this blog, or series, or entry.  Still, in the slight hope that you may hear about this or even read it, I wish to bring something up, that well to me at least, is of great importance.

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!

It’s the start of the new calendar year, the start of a new Presidential administration (well on the 20th actually), and of course the start of the first business quarter.  We got in some disturbing, ok that’s putting it mildly, some crappy manufacturing news from the gang at ISM.  The steel industry, in hopes of restoring some business, initiates a new campaign. Arizona & Michigan are starting a green jobs plans. All this, but first…

Greetings folks, I hope your holiday season is going well.  In case you were wondering, there was no Manufacturing update last week, family and health related issues.  This week will be kinda short, my apologies, but I wanted to cut some of the gloom and doom for the holiday season.  We got stuff on solar energy, a new grant system for electric car innovation, milestones on wind, and something for the kids!  But as always, we hit our first section…

My oh my, what an interesting week, and I don’t mean that in a good way.  From our trade deficit to our automakers on the brink of joining our domestic consumer electronics firms, things aren’t looking all that swell.  The latest indicators are showing, at least for November, what has been on everyone’s mind, the economy.  Some are saying, though that things will pick up, that the recession began a year ago and we’ll come through it by 2009.  We’ll see, when the average worker is able to stop worrying not just about making rent or that mortgage payment, but also putting food on the table, then I’ll agree.  Globally, like the United States, things for now look dim.  And like I said, the figures show it…which leads us to the Numbers!

Damn, talk about a pretty intense week!  The auto sector looks like it just…just might get saved.  Still, it looks as if the issue of over capacity is being looked on, which means job cuts.  Sadly, that seems to be the theme of this week’s manufacturing update. Well actually there is something on health care…think of it as “nyceve lite”. They say it gets darkest before the light, well this must be a long tunnel then.  ISM is saying that ’09 will suck as bad as 2008.  Well before I dispense with the unfortunates, it’s time for the Numbers!

Amazing, simply amazing.  For the past two days I’ve been watching these hearings on the automakers, and find myself more aghast than anything else.  Actually, it’s more than that.  I think I’ve had this almost sickening feeling, a feeling where anger is meshed in with a humiliation and sadness.  It isn’t just the automakers that has been the cause of this, but that they symbolize how far we’ve fallen.

(My apologies folks, for the delay.  This was supposed to be published this morning, but I had rush a sick wiener dog to one of those emergency vet places.  Rest assured, he’s Ok, and probably won’t eat another sock again!)

Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to another edition of Manufacturing Monday…er Tuesday!  Originally I wanted to post this on Monday morning, but I wanted to include the latest development from the Boeing SPEEA talks. Outside of this we got news from the steel industry, unfortunately not the good kind.  Sticking with steel for a moment, there’s an op-ed piece I wish to highlight that I thought you should look at.  We have news or alarm bells I should say about pensions.  Of course we also have some Green news, some ominous, but some good.  

But before we get to those, let’s take a look at the Numbers!

(Cross-posted from Daily Kos)

Our economic situation has been all over the news. Banks are failing, credit is contracting, the auto industry is crying for a bailout. Clearly, the U.S. economy has gotten derailed, and we’re now faced with the unenviable task of getting it back on track. The trouble is, we don’t know which track is the right track.

Or do we?

Suppose there exists a valid interpretation of economic forces and outcomes, one that explains our current situation, yet one that no one will acknowledge, even to knock down.

About 12 years ago I picked up Cities and the Wealth of Nations: Principles of Economic Life by Jane Jacobs (better known as the author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities) at a used bookstore in upstate New York. Jacobs wrote this book in 1983, in response the emergence of stagflation. As an informed and educated layperson, she examined economic history with a critical eye and an urbanist’s heart, looking for the laws that explained what was going on — which the economic theories of the time did not.  

Greetings ladies and gentlemen and welcome to a new installment of Manufacturing Monday.  Now I would like to do something a tad different this week. You see today we get two important economic indicators released. So, instead of waiting a whole week for me to reprise them here, I would go ahead and write about then today!  I will still go over last week’s indicators, but figured you deserve to get something more up to date as well.  The numbers get released around 9:30 Eastern, so they will be covered first, then last week’s stuff.

Beyond the Numbers section, this week we’ll be covering Green Manufacturing again.  We haven’t touched this in a while, what with all the GM related business.  Yet there have been some very interesting developments in the green collar world.  So before you, for your pleasure, is some stuff that may or may not put a smile on your face.  Either way, it looks as if, thankfully, we are turning a new leaf (sorry, couldn’t help it) on manufacturing!

Today we conclude our small series on General Motors.  As you can probably tell by now, I favor helping out the company.  The company has history of market incompetence, it not only failed to meet various customer demands.  Adding to this, it designed its product line in such a way that made it at times more at the mercy of the price of petroleum than anything else.  Saying this, there are reasons to keep GM alive.

In our first installment, we introduced you to the current battle for the fate of General Motors. We highlighted why they share some if not all of the blame for their current situation.  We talked about the various sides involved in one way or another with the situation of GM.  Today we tackle the big question, what many deemed “unthinkable” previously, what bankruptcy would mean for General Motors and you.