Assorted Links Sunday

I keep highlighting product and raw material shortages, not because they're bad per se, but because they demonstrate how much pent up demand there is, and how strong the economy is, and will be in the coming months as more and more of the US is vaccinated.

This boom will not happen around the world, though.

For the first time in seventy-five years, the United States is pretty much alone.  The rest world China, the developing word, and Europe especially, are suffering under continuing waves of COVID-19, as their governments struggle to manufacture or purchase vaccines.

Post World War II, the United States was in a similar situation: the economies (and factories) of Europe and Asia were in ruins, their cities destroyed, and their people demoralized following the the conflict.  While in the continental US, where not a bomb was dropped by enemy, was nearly in exactly the opposite situation: her people were triumphant, and her economy was strong.

Add to that nearly nine million returning GIs. And - it didn't take long for them to get married, settle into the suburbs, and start their families.

They wanted stuff to fill their new homes, and the factories that just a few years earlier were pumping out Sherman tanks, M-1s, and B-17s for the war effort, almost overnight turned their production to refrigerators, cars and washing machines.

This is nearly the situation the US finds itself in today.   Will the US reconfigure itself into a manufacturing powerhouse?  It sure looks like it, and economic developers are the ones to make it happen.  Get to work!

-Dane

The prices of the raw ingredients that we use to make almost everything are surging.

America is running low on chicken. Blame Covid-19, a sandwich craze and huge appetite for wings.

A major chlorine shortage is set to spoil summertime fun in the swimming pool.

Nearly 20 percent of electric car owners return to gas.

Soaring lumber prices add $36,000 to the cost of a new home.

From Apple to Domino’s Pizza, US companies scramble to meet surge in demand.