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Wire & Cable ASIA – November/December 2010
38
From the
americas
GM’s hourly work force in China has grown to 32,000
people at 10 factories, including its joint ventures, while
its American operations have shrunk to 52,000 hourly
employees from a peak of 468,000 in 1979.
Analysts estimate GM is worth $50 billion to $90 billion,
with China accounting for about $15 billion of that total.
It is a field which GM is assiduously cultivating. In addition
to greatly enlarging its engineering and design work force in
China, it is building the country’s largest proving grounds.
And, also in July, it broke ground on a $250 million
advanced technology centre there to research batteries and
other alternative energy sources.
The economy
Let the good times return: US households
have their balance sheets in order and
exports show promise
“Just when America is feeling blue again about the
economic outlook – a sharp drop in housing sales is the
latest reason to sigh – along comes a credible someone to
cheer us all up.”
So wrote Francine Kiefer, of the
Christian Science Monitor
,
in reference to Mark Zandi, who joined the Boston
newspaper’s reporters on 25
th
August to discuss near- and
far-term prospects for the US economy.
Mr Zandi, who is chief economist of Moody’s Analytics
and co-founder of Economy.com, earned his reputation for
credibility over a career as an influential source of economic
analysis for businesses, journalists and the public, and a
trusted adviser to policymakers.
In 2009, the
Wall Street Journal
called him the “de facto
chief economist to Congress.”
While the ensuing six months or so would be rough,
Mr Zandi said, he is optimistic about the period after that.
He told the
Monitor
staffers, “I firmly believe that, once we
get by the next six to twelve months, we are going to get
our groove back and we are going to be surprised at how
well the economy is doing.”
Here, lightly edited from Ms Kiefer’s article, are some of the
reasons for optimism cited by Mr Zandi (“One Economist
Who’s Expecting Clear Skies in Another Year,” 26
th
August):
America’s consumers, whose spending beyond their
❖
❖
means contributed heavily to the nation’s financial crisis
of 2008 and 2009, have tightened their belts several
notches by lowering debt and increasing savings.