Okay, time to stand back and be realistic about who's to blame for the deep trouble we're in right now. We can blame the jerks in Washington all we want, and believe me, they deserve all the blame we want to heap on them, because having them, and their counterparts in state legislatures guarding your finances, is like having the proverbial fox guard the hen house.
My take, for what it's worth, Corporate America, is that you screwed yourselves, and every American right along with you. The BIG difference is that we didn't have fat nest eggs to hide away money, golden parachutes and the ability to rip off money while the peons suffered. We have to live with your greed and miserable manufacturing practices.
You failed to build decent cars in our own country and forced Americans to look elsewhere for reliable automobiles. Thus the influx of Toyota, Datsun (now Nissan) and dozens of foreign makers. They made cars that lasted and could be bought at affordable prices, all the while you kept putting forth junk, and telling us it was un-American to buy foreign. Hell, it was un-American to keep making the crap you were making but nobody could tell you that or show you where you were heading! Even the first bankruptcy didn't open any doors in the brains of Chrysler, did it? You allowed the unions to run the show, and their labor costs priced what you offered outside the norm of affordability, while still shoving junk out the factory door. More fodder for the foreign car makers cannons.
Then you moved more manufacturing offshore and outside the country to become "competitive" with the crap we were receiving from China and third world countries. You established what you called "maquiladoras" or sister plants across the Mexican border to manufacture refrigerators, other major appliances and televisions and warehoused them in the US, putting foreigners to work for pennies on the dollar while laying off Americans. That's how you dealt with foreign competition rather than becoming united and making the god damned government close the doors to all the foreign crap! Current information is there are over 3000 of these maquiladoras along the US/Mexico border.
Then the corporate brains outsource their information and technology to India, the Philippines and to wherever they can get it cheap and fast. It's like fast food, cheap but usually not good. There's a menu and if it isn't on the board the worker reads from, it doesn't exist. Read my first blog about some of the problems with offshore call centers.
Warning about your personal information... It must make you, fellow Americans, really feel warm and fuzzy, knowing that your Social Security and other personal information is floating all around the world, because your bank and credit card issuer is too damned cheap to have a US call center, and not offshore source any of its customer service! Charge you 20 percent or higher interest on your credit card but use cheap labor to answer your questions...or wait.,.try to answer them from their script boards that they can only use. What's that you say...you need something else? Too bad. They might not help at all.
My suggestion is when you call for assistance...DO NOT PRESS 1 FOR ENGLISH! PRESS the Key for Spanish...then insist on someone who speaks English! You'll get a US based person because they don't have Spanish speaking workers in the offshore call centers!
Folks, banks overcharged the public with high rates and shoved it in their pockets. They don't give you back much in interest. They charged you for everything they could, bank higher-ups made a bundle and bonuses and even when banks failed, they kept their jobs in many cases. Want to see the pinnacle of incompetency in my opinion...Washington Mutual Bank. Yet after the fall, the same people still running around just like it was yesterday. Now it's Chase who will take the dump with their new family members with them! Step into any San Diego County Credit Union and look at all the huge plasma TV's on the walls. They don't need them to hawk their services..it's pissing the members money away. Nor do they need to sponsor ball games and other events. They need to put the money they make back in the members accounts. But that isn't happening there or anywhere else. Yes, they're probably better than most, but still throw away lots of your money.
Bail out insurance companies? Come on! They've been screwing the consumer for eons and they want to be bailed out. Then the government helps out AIG, who continues to insist they are not really an insurance company anyway, and they screw everyone by holding a huge taxpayer-paid party? And the big-wigs still get their bonuses. Only in America, folks. If this was Russia or another country, we'd have dead bodies piling up in the streets outside those greedy bastard buildings as they were quickly brought to justice. Not that I advocate that type justice, but the kind we have here is like hot air from a broken men's room hand dryer...useless. In the good ol' USA only the worker and taxpayers will suffer.
As a final thought...remember that L.L. Bean shirt? Even that no longer says "Made in America anymore. My last one says "Made in Bulgaria" EWWWWWWWWWW!
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