The mainstream media has been telling us about our “jobless recovery”, like for instance how the great ports of LA and Long Beach are setting cargo handling records this year. All those media reports and all too many of those empty cargo containers being exported at LA/Long Beach are filled with nothing but hot air, as you probably know – so Michael Snyder and Timothy Gatto deserve credit for publishing the following data about the deindustrialization of our country.

President John Adams once said, “Liberty cannot be preserved without general knowledge among the people.” So here’s some general knowledge Mr. Snyder and Mr. Gatto are providing us:

1. The U.S. has lost approximately 42,400 factories since 2001.

2. Dell, Inc., one of America’s largest manufacturers of computers, has announced plans to expand operations dramatically in China with an investment of over $ 100 billion over the next decade.

3. Dell has announced that it will be closing its last large U.S. manufacturing facility in Winston-Salem, NC. in November. Approximately 900 jobs will be lost.

4. In 2008, 1.2 billion cellphones were sold worldwide. So how many of them were manufactured inside the U.S.? ZERO.

5. According to a new study conducted by the Economic Policy Institute, if the U.S. trade deficit with China continues to increase at its current rate, the U.S. economy will lose over half a million jobs this year alone.

6. As of the end of July, the U.S. trade deficit with China had risen 18 percent compared to the same time period a year ago.

7. The U.S. has lost a total of about 5.5 million manufacturing jobs since October 2000.

8. According to TAX NOTES, between 1999 and 2008 employment at the foreign affiliates of U.S. parent companies increased an astounding 30 percent to 10.1 million. During that exact same time period, U.S. employment at American multinational corporations declined 8 percent to 21.1 million.

9. In 1959, manufacturing represented 28 percent of U.S. economic output. In 2008, it represented 11.5 percent.

10. Ford Motor Company recently announced the closure of a factory that produces the Ford Ranger in St. Paul, Minnesota. Approximately 750 good paying middle class jobs are going to be lost because making Ford Rangers in Minnesota does not fit in with Ford’s new “global” manufacturing strategy.

11. As of the end of 2009, less than 12 million Americans worked in manufacturing. The last time less than 12 million Americans were employed in manufacturing was 1941.

12. In the United States today, consumption accounts for 70 percent of GDP. Of this 70 percent, over half is spent on services.

13. The United States has lost a whopping 32 percent of its manufacturing jobs since the year 2000.

14. In 2001, the United States ranked fourth in the world in per capita broadband Internet use. Today it ranks 15th.

15. Manufacturing employment in the U.S. computer industry is actually lower in 2010 than it was in 1975.

16. Printed circuit boards are used in tens of thousands of different products. Asia now produces 84 percent of them worldwide.

17. The United States spends approximately $ 3.90 on Chinese goods for every $ 1 that the Chinese spend on goods from the United States.

18. One prominent economist is projecting that the Chinese economy will be three time larger than the U.S. economy by the year 2040.

19. The U.S. Census Bureau says that 43.6 million Americans are now living in poverty, and according to them that is the highest number of poor Americans in the 51 years that records have been kept. –

All this tells us that we could use a little help. Like maybe the kind of bailout they gave Wall Street?

Forgetaboutit. On January 7, according to the Wall Street Journal, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke announced that the Fed had ruled out a central bank bailout of state and local governments. “We have no expectation or intention to get involved in state and local finance,” he said in testimony before the Senate Budget Committee. The states “should not expect loans from the Fed,” he said.

How nice. The Federal Reserve was set up by bankers for bankers, and it served them well. Out of the blue, it came up with $ 12.3 trillion – yes, trillion – in nearly interest-free credit to bail the banks out of a credit crunch that they created. That same credit crisis has plunged state and local governments into insolvency, but the Fed has now delivered its ultimatum: there will be no “quantitative easing” for municipal governments or the U.S. citizens those governments represent.

So, right after President Obama advised us that there will be no further “stimulus” monies handed out, the Fed also gave us the brush off. Without a bailout then, is there any way out of this mess?
More than half a century ago we were in a similar bind and only Emergency Shipbuilding Programs mandated by FDR created the jobs that ended that first Great Depression. It’s the only way out.