Tapsearch Com Editor1970s - Greenspan's star rises - In the trenches, workers worry (LINK)
December 28th 2007 18:03
Bizarre Politics Reports:
Local Economies Fade Away
A view of Greenspan from the trenches - by Ray Tapajna and the Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
The 1970s were the beginning of many endings. The working middle class was still growing. The minorities for the first time enjoyed being part of the working middle class. The unions were taming down with competition growing. The corporate world and factory production were still vibrant although it was becoming more difficult to make a decent profit. Our city still enjoyed many top corporate headquarters coupled with local value added economies.
The first shot across the bow was the so called energy crisis.
As John Perkins reports in his book The Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, the U.S. was deep into growing its empire. John Perkins says he was a highly paid professional who cheated countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars. The economic hit men funnel money from the World Bank, the U.S. Agency for International Development and other foreign
"aid" organizations into the coffers of huge corporations and pockets of a few wealthy families who control the planet's natural resources. Their tools include fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, payoffs, extortion, sex, and murder. They play a game as old as empire, but one that has taken on new and terrifying dimensions during this time of globalization. John Perkins says - I should have known; I was an Economic Hit Man. ( (From his book preface in 2006 )
Obviously, none of this can be found in Greenspan's Age of Turbulence and Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat. We suggest all should read The Confessions of an Economic Hit Man before reading Greenspan or Friedman.
In the trenches of the workday in the USA, I was finding it difficult to sell mainframe computers and related systems. The computer manufacturers were busy building mainframe computers but the applications were very competitive and led to computer hardware salesmen, selling futures rather than reality. I found it difficult to market systems based on only fancy brochures with fantastic overviews. The applications did not exist or were at least six months away from being real. However everyone seemed to be selling these applications as being in real time and real world . IBM sold unbundled systems and concentrated on computer hardware they could control patents for years. However, many anti-trust law suits were filed against them. This changed their corporate complexion a few years later.
I left the mainframe world and went to disk storage. For more than ten years was part of real innovations in the disk storage industry. I became something of a disk storage expert. In the latter part of the 1970s, I helped jump start the Cat Scan industry this way. I also sold various drives, calibration and diagnostic disks directly to China. I also sold vintage mainframes to China but the red tape stopped this venture quickly. I quickly found out that China does not do business the way we do.
The Zero Defect Manufacturing banners that were on many factories in the 1960s start coming down. Government contracts called for this manufacturing methods while consultants hired by the Government were pushing and installing in process and just-in-time manufacturing in Asia. U.S. manufacturing was caught with their pants down. Zero Defect Manufacturing was labor intensive involving a pre and post manufacturign cycle. Actually, there is no such thing as Zero Defect Manufacturing. It is really impossible. You can perfect it down to about a 1 percent defect rate but doing it is a very expensive thing to do.
For example, a computer tape in the late 1960s and early 1970s cost about $25 a reel. There was a post manufacturing quality check and a post certification of every reel of tape. In most case, the tape also went through a polishing cycle because the best formula's were "soft" and needed a cleaning before the certification process.
Computer tape manufacturing changed to in process manufacturing and statistical testing of batches of production. This brought the cost down more than 50 percent but the rate of failure was about 3 percent. However, with batch statistical testing that 3 percent could be in just one lot representing a terrible failure rate for small batches. The suspected failures went into storage to sell as is but by the end of the month, alot got out to the general market.
A computer tape that is used as a calibration device to tune up the tape drives required loads of certification and testing . Only about one in a hundred tapes could even qualify for final stages of testing. A calibration tape cost about a $100 to produce.
This gives you an idea of what it takes to make a Zero Defects rated product.
U.S. consulting engineers change the face of industrialization outside the U.S. thinking they are doing something good - Instead they were being used by the Economic Hit Men for the sake of investments by a powerful few - paraphrasing author John Perkins
In Japan, with U.S. consulting engineers leading the way, they were able to get down to only a 3 percent failure rate with the in process manufacturing methods. All pre and post manufacturing cycles were removed. Everything was accomplished during the manufacturing cycle itself. On top of this, just-in-time supply took over too knocking out the need for large in house inventories- ( however, there is kinks in this process ). When I set up three oil burning furnace assembly lines we had plenty of in house inventory. When the orders were coming in slow, workers were taken off the assembly lines to helped to make many of the parts. The parts increased in value due to ordinary inflation. The workers were kept employed and trained to do multiple tasks. Today, companies fire and hire as the orders come in and complained they can not find decent help. They assume someone else will train the workers and can enjoy a large labor pool competing for the jobs.
Just-in-time supply may replace the need for large in house inventory, but the quality standards are at risk. With government defense contracts, you need standards and I suspect these contractors keep large inventories of proven quality. In the 1980s I became a trouble shooter supplyer to U.S. industrial computer manufacturers. They did not know how to cope with the computer components coming from Asia. The engineers would take a new part and test it in the field for six months before they put it into production. However, a part from Asia, like a power supply inner structures would be entirely different within six months without any change in product code and without notification. Eventually, all the U.S. industrial computer manufacters in the USA closed down or outsourced their manufacturing outside the USA. The old Zero Defects Manufacturing standards crashed head on with the anything goes approaches from the Asian manufacturers. I fought hard for the U.S. computer manufacturers and supported the last industrial computers and the micro computers made in the USA until the final curtain went down. I thought the American public would not let this all happen but they did.
During the 1970s, Alan Greenspan was on his way to the top while the writing was on the wall. The American Dream was fading away. Greenspan ignored all this while he knelt at the economic altar of the Globalist to be knighted. President Nixon selects Greenspan to head his Council of Economic Advisors in 1974. In 1977 while President Carter was in office, Greenspan recieves a Ph.D from New York University. He joins President Ronald Reagan's Economic Policy Avisory Board and The Greenspan Commission is part of the Social Security hikes. Today 70 percent of all workers pay more in pay roll taxes than they do in income taxes even though both taxes are used the same way in paying for all government services. The hike represented a tax on the working poor with even a small contractor or business owner making only $10,000 today has to pay about 17 percent in taxes overall to stay on the job or in their business. When President Bush cut taxes, he only cut income taxes while the working poor had to carry the load. Any extra money from the income tax cuts did not regrow the economy. Any extra money spent at the retail quickly fanned out to where the products are made with most made outside the USA. The tax cuts were ultimately enjoyed by investors and not the workers in the USA.
( will continue posting more here later - where was Greenspan during this era ?)
The 1970s were the beginning of many endings. The working middle class was still growing. The minorities for the first time enjoyed being part of the working middle class. The unions were taming down with competition growing. The corporate world and factory production were still vibrant although it was becoming more difficult to make a decent profit. Our city still enjoyed many top corporate headquarters coupled with local value added economies.
The first shot across the bow was the so called energy crisis.
As John Perkins reports in his book The Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, the U.S. was deep into growing its empire. John Perkins says he was a highly paid professional who cheated countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars. The economic hit men funnel money from the World Bank, the U.S. Agency for International Development and other foreign
"aid" organizations into the coffers of huge corporations and pockets of a few wealthy families who control the planet's natural resources. Their tools include fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, payoffs, extortion, sex, and murder. They play a game as old as empire, but one that has taken on new and terrifying dimensions during this time of globalization. John Perkins says - I should have known; I was an Economic Hit Man. ( (From his book preface in 2006 )
Obviously, none of this can be found in Greenspan's Age of Turbulence and Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat. We suggest all should read The Confessions of an Economic Hit Man before reading Greenspan or Friedman.
In the trenches of the workday in the USA, I was finding it difficult to sell mainframe computers and related systems. The computer manufacturers were busy building mainframe computers but the applications were very competitive and led to computer hardware salesmen, selling futures rather than reality. I found it difficult to market systems based on only fancy brochures with fantastic overviews. The applications did not exist or were at least six months away from being real. However everyone seemed to be selling these applications as being in real time and real world . IBM sold unbundled systems and concentrated on computer hardware they could control patents for years. However, many anti-trust law suits were filed against them. This changed their corporate complexion a few years later.
I left the mainframe world and went to disk storage. For more than ten years was part of real innovations in the disk storage industry. I became something of a disk storage expert. In the latter part of the 1970s, I helped jump start the Cat Scan industry this way. I also sold various drives, calibration and diagnostic disks directly to China. I also sold vintage mainframes to China but the red tape stopped this venture quickly. I quickly found out that China does not do business the way we do.
The Zero Defect Manufacturing banners that were on many factories in the 1960s start coming down. Government contracts called for this manufacturing methods while consultants hired by the Government were pushing and installing in process and just-in-time manufacturing in Asia. U.S. manufacturing was caught with their pants down. Zero Defect Manufacturing was labor intensive involving a pre and post manufacturign cycle. Actually, there is no such thing as Zero Defect Manufacturing. It is really impossible. You can perfect it down to about a 1 percent defect rate but doing it is a very expensive thing to do.
For example, a computer tape in the late 1960s and early 1970s cost about $25 a reel. There was a post manufacturing quality check and a post certification of every reel of tape. In most case, the tape also went through a polishing cycle because the best formula's were "soft" and needed a cleaning before the certification process.
Computer tape manufacturing changed to in process manufacturing and statistical testing of batches of production. This brought the cost down more than 50 percent but the rate of failure was about 3 percent. However, with batch statistical testing that 3 percent could be in just one lot representing a terrible failure rate for small batches. The suspected failures went into storage to sell as is but by the end of the month, alot got out to the general market.
A computer tape that is used as a calibration device to tune up the tape drives required loads of certification and testing . Only about one in a hundred tapes could even qualify for final stages of testing. A calibration tape cost about a $100 to produce.
This gives you an idea of what it takes to make a Zero Defects rated product.
U.S. consulting engineers change the face of industrialization outside the U.S. thinking they are doing something good - Instead they were being used by the Economic Hit Men for the sake of investments by a powerful few - paraphrasing author John Perkins
In Japan, with U.S. consulting engineers leading the way, they were able to get down to only a 3 percent failure rate with the in process manufacturing methods. All pre and post manufacturing cycles were removed. Everything was accomplished during the manufacturing cycle itself. On top of this, just-in-time supply took over too knocking out the need for large in house inventories- ( however, there is kinks in this process ). When I set up three oil burning furnace assembly lines we had plenty of in house inventory. When the orders were coming in slow, workers were taken off the assembly lines to helped to make many of the parts. The parts increased in value due to ordinary inflation. The workers were kept employed and trained to do multiple tasks. Today, companies fire and hire as the orders come in and complained they can not find decent help. They assume someone else will train the workers and can enjoy a large labor pool competing for the jobs.
Just-in-time supply may replace the need for large in house inventory, but the quality standards are at risk. With government defense contracts, you need standards and I suspect these contractors keep large inventories of proven quality. In the 1980s I became a trouble shooter supplyer to U.S. industrial computer manufacturers. They did not know how to cope with the computer components coming from Asia. The engineers would take a new part and test it in the field for six months before they put it into production. However, a part from Asia, like a power supply inner structures would be entirely different within six months without any change in product code and without notification. Eventually, all the U.S. industrial computer manufacters in the USA closed down or outsourced their manufacturing outside the USA. The old Zero Defects Manufacturing standards crashed head on with the anything goes approaches from the Asian manufacturers. I fought hard for the U.S. computer manufacturers and supported the last industrial computers and the micro computers made in the USA until the final curtain went down. I thought the American public would not let this all happen but they did.
During the 1970s, Alan Greenspan was on his way to the top while the writing was on the wall. The American Dream was fading away. Greenspan ignored all this while he knelt at the economic altar of the Globalist to be knighted. President Nixon selects Greenspan to head his Council of Economic Advisors in 1974. In 1977 while President Carter was in office, Greenspan recieves a Ph.D from New York University. He joins President Ronald Reagan's Economic Policy Avisory Board and The Greenspan Commission is part of the Social Security hikes. Today 70 percent of all workers pay more in pay roll taxes than they do in income taxes even though both taxes are used the same way in paying for all government services. The hike represented a tax on the working poor with even a small contractor or business owner making only $10,000 today has to pay about 17 percent in taxes overall to stay on the job or in their business. When President Bush cut taxes, he only cut income taxes while the working poor had to carry the load. Any extra money from the income tax cuts did not regrow the economy. Any extra money spent at the retail quickly fanned out to where the products are made with most made outside the USA. The tax cuts were ultimately enjoyed by investors and not the workers in the USA.
( will continue posting more here later - where was Greenspan during this era ?)
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