You cannot have a strong economy with a record trade deficit and record debt.  Period.  Those promoting free trade agreements are destructive.  Destructive.  Every trade agreement has increased our trade deficit.  

StevenPearlstein, Business Editor for the Washington Post, writes of this "Mirage Economy":

While there's an ongoing debate about why the price of oil has doubled over the past year, there is little doubt that the declining dollar is a significant factor. The decline is the result of years of large and growing U.S. trade deficits that should have caused the exchange rate to adjust years ago but didn't because so many of our trading partners in Asia and the Middle East were intent on linking their currencies to the dollar. In the process of maintaining those dollar pegs and reinvesting those surpluses in Treasury bonds and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac securities, they created a surfeit of cheap credit that spawned all those bubbles. 

At best, trade agreements are a distraction.  The distract from the need to rebuild the capability of our economy... the balance of our economy.  We are heavy on financial services (repackaging debt and selling it as assets), government jobs, and service jobs.  We are hemorhaging agricultural and manufacturing production capability, including high tech and green tech and defense tech and... and... and... .

We need to refocus on rebuilding our internal capability.  That is not isolationist.  It is a correction.  Reclaiming the ability to build national policies that benefit us.  

The world will be better off if we are strong, not weak and failing. 

From the Washington Post:

Less than a decade ago, the domestic steel industry seemed to be collapsing under a string of bankruptcies and a flood of imports that made steel a potent symbol of the failures of U.S. manufacturing in a global world.

The industry shed more than 400,000 jobs in the United States from the 1980s to the early part of the current decade. More than 40 companies tumbled into bankruptcy, leaving thousands of retirees without health coverage and with sharply reduced pensions. Many of the bankrupt companies were later snapped up by private-equity firms, which were able to restructure the mills into larger, more-efficient enterprises that in many cases found new investors. The new owners invested in technology, and freed of the pensions and other legacy costs that burdened previous owners, they were able to run the businesses more cheaply.

Now, steel prices are at historic highs, surging 70 percent in the past year alone, along with the prices of the iron ore, coke, scrap, gas and coal used to make steel. The escalating prices have not dampened demand even during the ongoing U.S. economic downturn, as much of the steel on the global market is being consumed in China, India and fast-developing areas of the Middle East.

"I have never seen anything like it, and I have been in the business 45 years," said Barry Rhody, president of E&E Corp., a steel consultancy. "There has been unprecedented demand for steel."

Generations before us sacrificed, not only in war.  They built this country.  This United States of America.  

If we complain about the state of our country, or the trendline, it is because we love this country.  We all should give more than we receive.  Because our children and grandchildren will receive more than we gave. 

Memorial Day is one holiday that honors sacrifice, the sacrifice of soldiers.

"General Order Number 11 of the Grand Army of the Republic was the document that established Memorial Day, or Decoration Day as it has been also called, as a nationwide observance."

General Order Number 11 was issued on May 5th in the year 1868.  It is reprinted in full below the fold.

• Interesting.

Britain’s largest union, Unite, said Sunday it had completed the details of a planned merger with the United Steelworkers in the United States, which would create the first trans-Atlantic labor organization. ...

“We’re dealing with global companies that can move capital — and employment — around the world, at will in many cases,” he said. “While big business is global, and labor is national, we’re going to be at a disadvantage.” 

• And in China, the government is not progressing to free market capitalism:

China has told its six telecommunications companies to merge their assets, allowing fixed-line carriers to expand into wireless services and creating three operators that will offer phone and Internet connections to 1.3 billion people.