“It’s the economy stupid” is on my mind right now. Those words were made famous in a presidential debate not that many years ago, and an election was essentially one on the issue. Here we are again. We are in an “economic mess” as some would say. What didn’t we learn or do to prevent us from slip sliding away into an economic abyss? Is it necessary that our economy goes through cycles of bad times?

While those are the questions, it’s important to understand that the basic structure of our economy hasn’t changed. Our Gross Domestic product (GDP), the measure of how much we output in dollars terms has only changed significantly in one area over the past 40 years. That one area is “net exports”. In other words we haven’t changed our propensity to spend (i.e. consumption), but the stuff we spend our dollars on have been produced in countries other than our own. This trend has grown as our companies have not only moved production to other countries, but there’s been a growing trend of foreign purchases of some of these very companies. Some voices say, “What’s wrong with this?” My voice says explain the benefits of foreign takeover of American companies and increased negative trade imbalances to the American people, if you dare! Once you do that, then I’ll tell you, “What’s wrong with this?”