The Global Market

From the Shop Floor — The Week in Manufacturing (5/17/2013)

The Hill reports that a political storm is brewing, at the center of which are protectionist tariffs and Chinese-made plywood, along with a quagmire of unintended consequences which could put a long-awaited and much-anticipated U.S. housing boom at risk. After carrying this nation’s economic water for four slow years’ worth of recovery, Nasdaq.com says that [...]

A Big Fracking Mess

As someone who has long understood and appreciated the enormous potential of fracking, and not just in terms of what it means to American jobs but our competitiveness in the global arena, I stand front and center among those who feel that process’ upside is far too great to ignore.  So while I may not [...]

From the Shop Floor — The Week in Manufacturing (5/4/2013)

Way back in February, 2012, I wrote a deadly serious (and I’d like the think, moderately compelling) post asking a tough question in a rather tongue-in-cheek fashion,  Will Unions Kill the Twinkie?  This week CNBC ran a piece on pretty much the same situation some 15 months later, and asked from a slighly different perspective, Have Twinkies Killed the Union Movement?  [...]