re: #462 Obdicut

Manufacturing companies need investors. The way that they have turned, increasingly and to a very large extent, to attracting investors is through financial maneuvering. For example, investors largely aren’t interested in companies that don’t take on debt for debt’s sake - to take advantage of tax margins - because they don’t turn around their investments fast enough. Stock buy-backs are a good example. They have nothing to do with improving their business model.

This has been a long term trend what predated the love affair with derivatives. Take a look at the huge increase in debt burdens in the manufacturing sector as a whole.

I don’t think that it is sufficient to simply look at the employment numbers in the manufacturing sector and to reduce the problem to that by talking about the increase in output as proof that the sector isn’t having big problems. Look at the graph - it isn’t just in the U.S., manufacturing as a % of GDP has shrunk in almost all countries since 1980 - by significant measures.