Stacy Summary: This is a great story to highlight how cheap money and Fed command and control created the false price signals that has destroyed capitalism.
Though domestic production has ticked up recently, more than 97 percent of the 19 billion pieces of apparel sold in the United States last year were made somewhere else, primarily in China and other Asian nations, according to Labor Department data compiled by the American Apparel & Footwear Association. Employment has declined 75 percent since the late 1990s, from 621,000 jobs in 1998 to 151,800 today.
Fessler had been a rare breed among apparel manufacturers not only for its longevity, but also because it controlled all aspects of production. The company weaves its own fabric, cuts it and sews it into private-label garments shipped to stores around the nation.
As Meck noted in article, it is a wonder they were able to stay in business this long. It is very difficult to “compete” with tax breaks and backdoor subsidies for corps offshoring production, slave labour, abscence of safety and environmental regulation and enforcement abroad and banks being “awash” in money yet reluctant to loan.
As noted in Hudson’s latest book, “the Bubble and Beyond” banks in the US have preferred to make loans in unproductive rent-seeking parasitical fashion rather than loan (or direct equity investment) to productive physical capital.
Everyone knows that contries flourish with low value-added, low-wage Servant economies, not high value-added, high-productivity manufacturing. (sarcasm).
Just a quick look at Germany should destroy that propaganda instantly. Too bad most academics, pundits, so-called experts and so-called journalists are either ignorant, psychologically conditioned or maintain irrational belief systems based solely on ideology.
the u s of a doesn’t have to do anything except print money and maintain the planet’s largest military force to ensure this process continues. the american dollar was once backed by gold, now it is backed by the american military. so keep printing your money, america, continue to consume vast quantities of foreign made products and hire aliens at home and abroad to produce and maintain your lifestyle…
@JJ
Great post and I have yet to read the great man’s latest.
American Cowardice and Ignorance have llowed the Wealthy 1,000 ruling this nation to send every job and industry of sustance ‘overseas’. China, Asia and the E.U. nations owe these 1,000 hus & thieves an immnse debt of graitude for their self-aggrandizing actions. These new purveyors o fomer US productsw will be clothing americans as they’re marched off to the FEMA/DHS Gulags in h near future…
there’s a lot to be upset about. another american manufacturer bites the dust. depressing
The internetz tell me to source Levi’s from Mexico
http://www.thegearpage.net/board/showpost.php?p=12303653&postcount=11
Blundstone boots now made in Thailand? Quality? – Expedition Portal
(from 2007)
Aussie Icon Blundstone Heads to Asia… Up to 350 Workers Lose Jobs