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Deficit Facts
I read your article in Metropolitan Magazine (The Connection, August, 1998). Here are some more intriguing facts about the trade deficit:
- Today the U.S. has the highest trade deficit in its history. We also are enjoying the lowest unemployment rate since World War II.
- The last time the U.S. had a net trade surplus, 1982-1983, the U.S. unemployment rate was over 9 percent, the highest unemployment in decades.
- In the last 15 years, the lowest trade deficit, 1990-1992, has coincided with the highest unemployment.
- The U.S. had a trade surplus during the Great Depression.
The only statistical correlation between the trade deficit and U.S. unemployment rates is exactly inverse of what we have been told to expect. Instead of larger trade deficits correlating with higher unemployment, trade deficits are predictably high during periods of high unemployment.
The trade deficit is not an indicator of lost U.S. jobs. Historically, it has functioned more like a trailing indicator of the strength of the economy.
Ernesto Grijalva
San Diego
Favorite Places
I read with interest your 11th Annual Best of Downtown. Happily, a few of my favorites made a showing. At the end of your commentary on Dobson's you pose the question of where the favorite watering hole was for the editors and reporters of the Downtown San Diego Union and Tribune
I asked an old friend, Ed Hutshing, who was the book editor for the newspaper for many years all the way back to its Downtown locale. He said it was a bar called The Press Room, and he recalled it being right where Dobson's is now. He said it had a long bar reaching nearly all the way to the stage of the Spreckels Theater. It also had a small mezzanine where John Barrymore would hoist a few when he was in town.
He also remembered a fish tank behind the bar that contained a piranha to which the bartender occasionally would feed live gold fish, and which once bit a careless barkeep on the finger.
Jan Tonnesen
San Diego
Bad Press
I am very troubled by all the unsupportive media I’ve been reading lately regarding building a new and very needed Downtown ballpark for the Padres. People seem to be focused on not wanting to pay additional taxes for a ballpark some may never visit. But people are neglecting to see that the Padres are the only players willing to step up to the plate and increase the popularity of our Downtown.
We, as taxpayers, have got to get the idea out of our heads that all the tax dollars we contribute are for the sole purpose of increasing John Moores' paycheck. It is not about the ballpark; it’s about the steps that need to be taken to redevelop Downtown San Diego. I applaud the Padres for taking the initiative.
Aaron Hewitson
La Mesa
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