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Wednesday, March 10, 2004 |
 
WSJ. Trade deficit reaches new record: $43.1 b in January.
But America's politically sensitive trade deficit with China expanded to $11.5 billion in January, up from $9.9 billion in December. China's currency is pegged to the dollar at a fixed rate, but U.S. manufacturers contend that the Chinese yuan is now undervalued, giving that country a big trade advantage.
Solution #2: All US trading partners must agree to free float their currencies against the dollar. The appreciation of the Euro against the dollar has already narrowed our deficit with them (but not enough yet).
12:48:22 PM 
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"Printing" concrete homes. Nice.
12:41:26 PM
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Tenet's testimony widens the administration's credibility gap.
11:56:04 AM
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Imagine a facewall like this as active wallpaper on your PC desktop. Each picturre would contain one click contact info (VoIP phone, IM, e-mail threads, and fax), presence (IM "I'm online"), GPS data (for your family), etc. New messages would be highlighted on the picture. Contacts can be grouped/outlined by high level pictures (family, company, etc.), just click to drill down.
9:20:14 AM
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Iran threatened to withdraw from IAEA. It wants entry into the nuclear club. This has been building since Sunday.
Iran sought to raise the stakes in its dealings with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Wednesday, threatening to stop cooperating with the UN's nuclear watchdog unless it stopped being "influenced by the Americans".
9:15:23 AM
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Asia Times: Is Zarqawi the new Osama or a scarecrow set up to claim al Qaeda involvement in every terrorist incident? The Iraqi Sunni Mujahideen:
...are adamant: "The truth is, al-Qaeda is not present in Iraq." They claim that hundreds of Arabs entered the country a year ago to fight the Americans, but now only a few dozen remain. "We had to help hundreds of them leave for their own protection because they were only a burden on the resistance. It was difficult to hide them."
7:53:52 AM
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Solution 1: Allow global price arbitrage in pharmaceutical pricing. Here's a BIG problem that if corrected can help our trade deficit and slow offshoring. Health insurance costs are expensive in the US. It makes US workers much more expensive relative to competitors globally (which in turn drives our trade deficit and offshoring). So why do we allow US pharms to charge us twice as much as they charge international customers? Drug costs are a HUGE part of healthcare costs. We need some drug price arbitrage fast (!) or some legislation that says that US prices for patented drugs (as a prerequisite for the patent protection)must be the same as the lowest price charged globally.
This is the first of some solutions that will help make the US more competitive without protectionism.
7:34:59 AM
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Say what you want about Bernie Sanders, but he is using the Web correctly. He has a great Web site dedicated to drug price reform. Here is a comparison between US and Canadian prices on 50 commonly used drugs. The upshot of a study his team put together is:
... that the average prices that senior citizens in Vermont must pay are 81% higher than the average prices that Canadian consumers must pay and 112% higher than the average prices that Mexican consumers must pay.
7:17:03 AM
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WSJ. More evidence that China is using access to its market to push home-grown standards (in this case a wireless encryption standard) and locally produced chips/equipment.
7:04:55 AM
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© Copyright 2004 John Robb.
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