Economic Review |
3/03/08 Will a sputtering economy in conjunction with rising prices begin to weigh on the forces of globalization? For the first time in about 15 years, the US economy looks to be entering a prolonged slow down in growth and rising unemployment. Unfortunately these two factors have been accompanied by a significant increase in prices to create the building blocks of stagflation, something that hasn’t been seen since the early 1980s. Prior to this most recent period of slowing growth (beginning in 2007) many US consumers have enjoyed the ability to increase the standards of their living by either taking advantage of the US Equity bubble in the mid to late 1990s or the real estate bubble from the late 1990s into 2007. In addition to this, consumers also experienced lower prices for select goods and services that were produced in low wage economic zones due to expanding global trade. The combination of these were referred to as the goldilocks economy. However, were the positives of globalization and outsourcing masked by the bubble economy that transpired over the last decade? In other words, did bubble assets which helped augment consumption and standards of living enable globalization to expand without a populace scrutiny? And if so, will the recent, bubble-less weakening economy begin to turn US consumers against such policies of outsourcing and lash out against multinational activities that have produced lower real US wages and less job security. With bubble assets at their disposal, many US laborers perhaps did not feel the lack of wage growth over the past decade, however with no Housing or Stock bubbles to extract income from, flat wages may just come up short to maintain life styles. Many say globalization is just the way of the future, but the real test of the future will be consumer reactions to the real affects of globalization, some of which are stagnant wages and job insecurity.
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Stephan Kudyba (MBA, PhD) THE MARKET DOCTOR |
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