Some amazing, exotic, fantastic, and remarkable truths
by Kevin Parker, editorial director -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 8/1/2005 6:00:00 AM
Someone once said: Nothing is more amazing than the simple truth, nothing is more exotic than our own surroundings, nothing is more fantastic in effect than objective description, and nothing is more remarkable than the time in which we live.
The United States had a record $162-billion trade deficit with China last year. China sits on $700 billion in foreign exchange reserves, mostly in dollars. It recycles those funds in good part by investing in United States Treasury bonds; that keeps American interest rates low, fueling the real estate boom. —The New York Times; July 24, 2005
In the past year, the growth in output of high-tech equipment, machinery, and aerospace products has outpaced overall economic growth. Even production of motor vehicles ... is growing at a healthy pace, expanding 8.5 percent in the past 12 months as foreign automakers have increased output in the U.S. ... Two larger trends are at play in the increases. The first is continued productivity gains in the manufacturing sector, which means factories are producing more products with fewer workers. The other is a growing global economy, which allows U.S. producers to expand production even as upstart factories in places like China and Mexico build up market share. ... In June, production of business equipment—computers, industrial machinery, tractors, airplanes, and other products used by business ... was up 8.2 percent from a year earlier, while output of computer and electronic parts rose 15.6 percent. ... In 2004, manufacturing was 12.7 percent of gross domestic product, down from ... more than 20 percent in 1980. ... Manufacturing payrolls are today 1.6 million smaller than they were when the economic recovery started in November 2001 ... payrolls stood at $14.3 million in June on a seasonally adjusted basis. —The Wall Street Journal; July 18, 2005
Google continued its rapid growth in the second quarter, posting a profit of $343 million ... more than a fourfold increase from the same period a year ago. Revenues doubled to $41.38 billion from the quarter a year earlier. —The New York Times; July 22, 2005
Savings by companies in rich countries increased by more than $1 trillion from 2000 to 2004, J.P. Morgan economists estimate. Measured against the size of the global economy, companies haven't been this thrifty at any time in the last 40 years. ... Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said yesterday that 2003 was the first year since the recession of 1975 that U.S. companies' capital expenditures were below corporate cash flow. —The Wall Street Journal; July 21, 2005
In the second quarter, [IBM's] services business grew 6 percent—4 percent excluding currency gains—to $12 billion. Within the overall numbers there were particularly encouraging signs, analysts noted. Its higher-profit services—like taking over and automating business processes, including procurement and human relations—grew more than 25 percent. And new contracts signed during the quarter, an indicator of future business, rose to $14.6 billion, or 45-percent higher than a year ago. —The New York Times; July 19, 2005
China's economic expansion accelerated to a rapid 9.5 percent during the second quarter, as robust factory production and galloping exports propelled growth, despite government efforts to rein in the economy. —The Wall Street Journal; July 21, 2005
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