The economic impact of the current Exodus from the United States.

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Black diamond: But can't you start out by comparing Brazil to Australia or Germany?


******


May 9, 2008

SouthAmerica: Sorry to disappoint you.

You think that I should compare Brazil with Haiti, then move one step up at the time then Somalia, then Congo, then Sudan, then Togo, then Angola, then Albania, then Bulgaria, and so on until I reach the United States.

There is one problem there are only 2 countries that I know really well and they are Brazil and the United States.

I am Brazilian and I have traveled in Brazil all the way to the Amazons area – and I have been living in the United States for many years. These are two countries that I know very well and can compare not only the latest figures but I also know well the history of both countries.

I wrote and published 2 books about Brazilian history and probably know more about US history than many Americans.

Do you know anything about Brazilian history – or your knowledge about Brazil is based on a quick visit and the only other thing that you know about Brazil is that Petrobras and Vale do Rio Doce have been doing well on the stock market.

Your suggestion that I should compare Brazil with Australia, or Germany it is a very silly suggestion for many reasons since there is no basis for such a comparison.

Let me try your suggestion:

Brazil has a population ten times the population of Australia.

Brazil has 5 World Cup soccer titles and Germany has only 3.

Australia has Kangaroos, but we don’t have Kangaroos in Brazil.

Australia is a subsidiary of the UK.

Brazil is an independent country.

A lot of Germans immigrated to Brazil after WW I and also after WW II.


*****


You said: "3) I think you are confusing some nationbuilding difficulties with the ability to defeat an enemy when the gloves are off."

The US army had to outsource the fighting in Afghanistan because they did not know their way around that country.

As far as I understand the Taliban is making a big come back and the US army still can't figure out what to do in Afghanistan.

Remember what happened to the Soviet army in Afghanistan in the late 1980's?

The end of an Empire......


*****


You also said: "we are now putting the marginally competent to work."


I know that today they are all working for the Bush administration.

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Good morning SA,

Keep up the good work.

I do not agree with all that you say about either Brazil or US but at least you have the pelotas to put your thoughts on the line.

Some of your detractors subscribe to a differing line of thought and fair enough, history will be the judge .... it always is.

However, you seem to hit a nerve with many other readers and it sends them into an emotional frenzy where everything becomes fair game except for the very issue itself.

regards
f9
 
Quote from southamerica:

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SouthAmerica: That fence that they are building in the border with Mexico is the dumbest investment that I ever head. What a waste of money – billions of US dollars that could be used for better purposes such as bridges, tunnels, water systems, and other forms of useful infrastructure.

Every time I see Lou Dobbs going crazy on television because of that fence I just shake my read.

Most Americans don’t even ask some basic questions regarding this issue. Maybe that is asking too much from the average American population anyway.

Over the years when I was working on a business plan I had to expend a lot time doing research about the Brazilian population living in the United States about the legal and illegal immigrants and where they were located.

For all practical purposes there were 1.3 million Brazilians living in the United States out of 2 million Brazilians living outside of Brazil.

The 1.3 million Brazilians living in the United States was split right in the middle – half were legal immigrants and the other half were illegal immigrants.

Today according to Lou Dobbs program I heard all kinds of estimates regarding the number of illegal immigrants living in the United States – the US government does not have a clue if there are 12 million or twenty million of illegal immigrants scattered around the United States.

Out of the 750,000 Brazilian immigrants living on the United States only a few thousand came across the Mexican border with the US, and there was a reason why these few thousand people came that way – Globo Television Network had a very popular program in Brazil called “America” – that soap opera did show how a group of Brazilians crossed the border from Mexico to the US and the soap opera did show how these people were able to find jobs and prosper in the United States and some of the characters even were able to become very rich.

That soap opera became a marketing tool for people to follow on the footsteps of the soap opera story line and that was when a few thousand Brazilians came to the US via Mexico going thru the desert and so on….

But most Brazilians are smarter than that and they have been going to the United States by the thousands by the usual way – which is a little more comfortable than trying to go across a desert and so on – they just board a 747 in Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, or other major Brazilian cities and after a few hours of flight they land in New York City, Newark, NJ, Boston, Miami, Los Angeles and so on. – and then they overstay their tourist visas.

I know that coming to the United States by 747 and landing in one of the major cities is not as exciting for a program like Lou Dobbs since there are very few people who actually die during these flights (maybe sometimes someone has a heart attack) and they usually have water and other beverages to drink during the flight, and they even serve food for the passengers.

Probably 95 percent of the illegal immigrants got here in the United States by airplane, by bus, by train, by ship, by truck, by car and just a small minority crossed the desert, under the most hostile conditions.

In a nutshell: another intelligent investment made by the US government just like the money invested on the US prison system – they are investing billions and billions of US dollars to keep maybe 5 percent of the illegal immigration out of the US.

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SA: Only 5% of illegal <b>Brazilian</b> immigrants to the U.S. got here by traveling across the U.S.- Mexico border via an off-road route. Therefore, I conclude that only 5% of <b>all</b> illegal immigrants to the U.S. got here that way. That's why building a fence to block off-road border crossings is wasteful and stupid.

SA, I think you're too intelligent not to realize your own logical fallacy. You know <b>exactly</b> why your above claim makes no sense, so why bother posting it?

The world abounds with useless market forecasts, yet the most useless of all predictions seem to come from just two distinct types of forecasters: Perma-bulls, and Perma-bears like SA.
 
Excellent Commentary....As Usual
..................................................................................................

What would be an interesting exercise at this point is to suggest what the US is going to be like in the next decade vs its peers.

The recent oil price shock, is mostly due to the dollar decline, whereas in terms of other currencies, such as the Brazil and EURO currencies , there is no real price shock.

What is of particular interest would be the steps that are going to have to be taken post Bush/Cheney....and their implications.

The current mix of dollar/oil effects on commodity prices to the developing world whereby their currencies are inextricably linked to the dollar, are going through a very difficult period.

What is of particular disgust is that the two main culprits, Bush /Cheney are walking away scott free, leaving behind a wake of misery and wrongness to the world's society as a whole.
 
Quote from southamerica:

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Get into your thick head – the world it is too big for the United States to try to police it with its little army.

...

Look at the British they used to rule the world and the seven seas, and many British people still delusional and think that they still a major world power – and they want to hang on to an obsolete currency instead of adopting a new currency for the 21st century.

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First of all, my point is that we can topple any government in the world. That we can't police the entire world at once is pretty obvious if you simply look at the numbers. So you are arguing something that I said in my post.

The entire world should welcome the day that the emerging countries of the world can contribute to the overall security of the planet. Looking at a country like Myanmar and what they are doing to their people brings me to near tears. It would be great if Brazil and China could team up to topple the junta there.

In short: Hopefully you'll spend a little time lobbying your government to use some of the huge windfall from those new oilfields (and congratualtions on those by the way- great for your country and our entire hemisphere) to build a strong military that could contribute to taking down a regime that confiscates UN food aid after a natural disaster.

By the way, your sovereign debt rating is still in the "B's" but just got an upgrade. Congratulations on the upgrade. Hopefully more will follow.

http://www.forbes.com/afxnewslimited/feeds/afx/2008/05/01/afx4956376.html

As said by another poster above, most people in the US want your great country to do well. Why you feel the need to trash talk the US is really beyond me. Britain isn't the world power it once was but it passed what it knew to the growing powers that in the end rescued it in WW2.

Your Korea example proves only that your knowledge of history is a bit lacking. Korea was divided to avoid WW3 (Communism vs. Capitalism). It was a prudent choice.

Kevin Phillips is not an economist. He is a political strategist. Show me a peer reviewed economics journal article that says US gdp is overestimated by 3-4 trillion dollars. Phillips can't be telling you something that you already know. He can be telling you something that you believe but, he isn't qualified to critique economic models developed by phd economists.
 
As said by another poster above, most people in the US want your great country to do well. Why you feel the need to trash talk the US is really beyond me.

Now to add insult to the injury, this deranged Brazilian idiot actually lives in the U.S..
By the way he moved here because of traffic in Sao Paulo(?!).
 
Quote from southamerica:

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April 3, 2008

SouthAmerica: The Exodus from the United States continues and it is slowly snowballing.

Last Saturday a friend of ours came for diner at our house. These is a couple who used to live here in Bergen County, New Jersey since the mid-1960’s, then they moved to Miami about ten years ago, but some of their sons still live on our area and they visit them on a regular basis.

.....
Source: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b7e6e19c-0009-11dd-825a-000077b07658.html?nclick_check=1

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take your long rambling anti-american rants and stuff them up your butt

grind your axe somewhere else
 
Quote from Cesko:

As said by another poster above, most people in the US want your great country to do well. Why you feel the need to trash talk the US is really beyond me.

Now to add insult to the injury, this deranged Brazilian idiot actually lives in the U.S..
By the way he moved here because of traffic in Sao Paulo(?!).

Some people are born complainers, glass half empty types that are never happy no matter where they are.
 
Quote from Cesko:

As said by another poster above, most people in the US want your great country to do well. Why you feel the need to trash talk the US is really beyond me.

Now to add insult to the injury, this deranged Brazilian idiot actually lives in the U.S..
By the way he moved here because of traffic in Sao Paulo(?!).

I'm getting so damned sick of everyone in the world thinking the American citizen owes them 'The American Dream' then hearing them bitch at us when 'we fail them'

Indians are the absolute worst about this

Here's an artifcle where they say the US is less appealing to them, because the job market here isnt as good as India

http://computerworld.com.my/ShowPage.aspx?pagetype=2&articleid=8220&pubid=4&issueid=133

They destroy our job market, then run us down

like locusts, they move on to the next field
 
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Hhubbins: “First of all, my point is that we can topple any government in the world.”


*****


May 9, 2008

SouthAmerica: You are delusional now.

If Fidel Castro could read you posting he would be on the floor because he would be laughing so hard.

Cuba – only 90 miles from the US coast – it is a symbol that the US can’t get its way even with a small island such as Cuba.

The US has been trying to topple the Cuban government for the last 50 years, and only now Fidel is giving up his power because of his health and old age.

But the United States have been able to show the rest of the world that the US can topple the government of places such as Panama, Grenada, and the fight still going on in Iraq and Afghanistan – 2 countries that had been destroyed almost completely before the US decided to show its power.

But the Somali gangs were too strong for the US army and the US had to live town in the 1990's.

The US just pick on little guys to be able to project its power – Do you really think the US could topple the government in Russia or in China?

Napoleon and the Germans learned their lesson about going after the Russians – not that would stop people like George W. Bush of making the same mistake.

The Chinese also have nukes and they already showed that they can shoot down all the US satellites that the US needs for its army to be able to communicate.

The Chinese can build a 50 million-man army overnight and they can manufacture all the materials necessary to fight a war. The US army would need to go barefooted on a war against China since China makes all the shoes for the US army.

By the way, the US army is in worse shape than you think – its airplanes, thanks, trucks, helicopters, and so on are in disrepair since the sand and hot weather in the Middle East are destroying all the machinery needed to wage wars.

The latest reports say that besides the 30,000 American soldiers that have been badly wounded on the Iraq war there are at least another 65,000 that are severely mentally ill because of their stays in Iraq and in Afghanistan.

And they have been fighting only a few thousand freedom fighters here and there can you imagine if the US army had to fight with a real army?

Don’t forget the US army stayed for 50 years in North Korea looking at the North Koreans on the other side of the dividing line because they knew they could not beat the North Koreans on the battlefield.

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