Cargo Business News put out a report under this headline: “China’s Manufacturing Slows Down in March”. Then the report went on to evaluate this slow down by providing nonsensical numbers from “HSBC’s Flash China Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index”, and some meaningless Dow Jones Industrial and Standard & Poor’s 500 quotations.

They make it sound so complicated. They mean to confuse us with survey numbers, and why not? – they’ve been getting away with it for years. Deep down they know that China’s manufacturing capacity has been built upon the demand of U.S. consumers, and because unemployed Americans are no longer able to demand goods at retail outlets Chinese manufacturing is slowing down.

Well, it would, wouldn’t it? What’s so hard to understand about that? A reduction in demand has always resulted in a reduction of supply.

And then the report concludes by stating that “the Asian giant’s slower growth is a reflection of China’s longer-term goal of re-balancing exports with domestic demand.”

If “China’s Manufacturing” is slowing down, how does that translate into slower “growth”?

And if Americans are buying less and less, wouldn’t that mean that large numbers of Chinese workers are also becoming unemployed? And if joblessness is on the increase in “Asia’s giant”, how could that have a positive effect on “domestic demand”?

What should be obvious by now is that the whole world depends upon the buying power (demand) of the employed U.S. consumer. As an Asian commentator stated a few years ago, “When the U.S. sneezes, the rest of the world catches pneumonia.”

The worldwide economic collapse can only be halted by treating the source of the problem. The unemployment crisis in the U.S. must be dealt with, otherwise large numbers of desperate people will take to the streets. Hunger pangs can be endured for just so long.

Recent U.S. administrations have directed billions (trillions?) of dollars to overseas ventures, none of which have generated a profit for the nation’s citizens. “Charity begins at home” should be the nation’s motto from now on, and we must begin by providing jobs for the down-trodden.

This country is worse off now than it was during the Great Depression. There are twice as many jobless nowadays as there were back then, and no one knows how to stop the backslide. FDR stopped the 1930s backslide though, almost overnight, when he reopened dozens and dozens of dormant U.S. shipyards just prior to our entry into World War II. That’s what should be done now.

Producing hundreds of our patented container ships would “revolutionize the world’s economy” – as a prescient individual once told us. A rising tide in the U.S. would lift all boats.