What I did Christmas Day

[HeadExam 1,783]

I love research and like to understand all facets of society, so while everyone was passed out from eating too much and boring football (oblong ball) games, I spent some time on the computer. I was wondering how globalism was faring today and how it rose after WWII and started googling information. This is what I found, and by the way, some of these statistics came from leads reported in vintage Popular Mechanics magazine that led to government websites.

 

After World War II in 1945 with international business returning to post war conditions, U.S. companies had  $8.4 billion invested around the world. By 1958, this had grown to $27.4 billion and by 1967 U.S. private investment abroad has increased eightfold in 20 years since the end of World War II. This was largely accomplished because postwar Europe was very favorable to the Common Market theory and encouraged trade between nations, however European businesses were not fully prepared to function in that much larger market due to the decimation of factories and infrastructure by war damage. American businesses, by contrast, were well used to operating in continent-spanning contexts from the very same war conditions.

 

In 1967 American firms invested $10.2 billion, or about 14% of all their capital spending on plant and equipment, in ventures outside the U.S. This rising annual amount brought total overseas investment to $64.8 billion, more than the gross national product of many a nation, and eight times the amount foreign businessmen have invested in the U.S. in the 191 years of the Republic. Americans controlled 80% of Europe’s computer business, 90% of the microcircuit industry, 40% of its auto making, and sizable shares of chemicals, farm machinery and oil by 1967. In Britain, U.S. companies owned half of all modern industry, employed one of every 17 British workers, and manufactured 10% of all British goods for home consumption or export. U.S. firms also squeezed out twice as much profit from invested capital as their British competitors. Of this amount American companies sent $225 million a year home mostly tax free and reinvested the rest for the long term abroad all tax free.

 

 

In 2016 the U.S. direct investment position, or the cumulative amount was around $6.4 trillion and has been well over a trillion dollars a year for nearly 20 years, but that growth has seen a much, much smaller growth in the past 4 years and many economists believe that the global market is close to saturation. Between 2008 and 2014 alone US capital investments rose from 3 trillion yearly to over 6 trillion yearly or 100%, but from 2014 through 2016 that increased slowed to less 250 billion or less than a 2% increase. What is more disturbing is that the small or no growth could turn to a negative growth very quickly due not only by a saturated market, but also due to the attitude towards consumption and consumerism by new generations. For over 100 years the US growth has been dependent on domestic or foreign economic growth, or both, but indicators from multiple areas concerning the economic conditions in which Western society/American society has depended on (economic success) could change literally overnight.

 

Today it feels good to be old.

 

[Stormin 4,458]

 I often say, Alain, I'm glad I'm the age I am.