<story><title>Wells are running dry in Southwest as foreign-owned farms feed cattle overseas</title><url>https://lite.cnn.com/en/article/h_a1fc0bf7958049a62752160ff8ac5878</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Danieru</author><text>What I find most interesting is how this plays into Warren Buffet&amp;#x27;s complaints about the American trade deficit: America has been selling long term assets to buy short term toys.&lt;p&gt;In Warren Buffet&amp;#x27;s explanation he uses selling farm land as this exact example.&lt;p&gt;Of course under free trade we would expect foreign buyers to own bits of land. The challenge for America: these are not land swaps. America is not buying up bits of land elsewhere. Instead America is selling these bits of land for trinkets.&lt;p&gt;The US Dollar is a global reserve currency. Which in the abstract sounds nice to have other countries sell US things in exchange for more US debt: but in practice that means selling assets. US Government Bonds or US Farm Land. Both are assets openly traded.&lt;p&gt;The issue is not foreigners. The issue is America is running up a debt and is selling the farm.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jmyeet</author><text>You&amp;#x27;re touching on the Triffin Dilemma [1]. Basically, running a trade deficit is almost inevitable with any global reserve currency. There&amp;#x27;s not much you can do about that other than ot be a global reserve currency and there&amp;#x27;s simply no way that&amp;#x27;s going to happen voluntarily. The US derives too much power from the status of the US dollar.&lt;p&gt;The other issue you&amp;#x27;ve touched on is a mistake that even economists make, which is to conflate the freedom of trade with the free movement of capital. These are two entirely different things. If you buy something, that&amp;#x27;s trade. If you sell land, that&amp;#x27;s the movement of capital. You can and should have policy that honors that distinction.&lt;p&gt;About the time the TPP was being rejected, I saw this comic [2], which honestly is worth a read as it explains pretty accurately this distinction.&lt;p&gt;Another angle to this is debt trap diplomacy [3].&lt;p&gt;[1]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Triffin_dilemma&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Triffin_dilemma&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;economixcomix.com&amp;#x2F;home&amp;#x2F;tpp&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;economixcomix.com&amp;#x2F;home&amp;#x2F;tpp&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[3]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Debt-trap_diplomacy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Debt-trap_diplomacy&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Wells are running dry in Southwest as foreign-owned farms feed cattle overseas</title><url>https://lite.cnn.com/en/article/h_a1fc0bf7958049a62752160ff8ac5878</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Danieru</author><text>What I find most interesting is how this plays into Warren Buffet&amp;#x27;s complaints about the American trade deficit: America has been selling long term assets to buy short term toys.&lt;p&gt;In Warren Buffet&amp;#x27;s explanation he uses selling farm land as this exact example.&lt;p&gt;Of course under free trade we would expect foreign buyers to own bits of land. The challenge for America: these are not land swaps. America is not buying up bits of land elsewhere. Instead America is selling these bits of land for trinkets.&lt;p&gt;The US Dollar is a global reserve currency. Which in the abstract sounds nice to have other countries sell US things in exchange for more US debt: but in practice that means selling assets. US Government Bonds or US Farm Land. Both are assets openly traded.&lt;p&gt;The issue is not foreigners. The issue is America is running up a debt and is selling the farm.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>toss1</author><text>And not only the farm assets, but the other natural assets, not to mention the know-how of manufacturing (the stupidest thing we ever did was follow the MBA&amp;#x27;s recommendations that &amp;quot;labor is just fungible, ship it off to the lowest-cost markets&amp;quot;).&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;&amp;gt;&amp;quot;You can&amp;#x27;t take water and export it out of the state, there&amp;#x27;s laws about that,&amp;quot; said Arizona geohydrologist Marvin Glotfelty, a well-drilling expert. &amp;quot;But you can take &amp;#x27;virtual&amp;#x27; water and export it; alfalfa, cotton, electricity or anything created in part from the use of water.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Seems it is time to put a stop to a LOT of that.  Fortunately we already are returning semiconductor &amp;amp; other mfg.  Must keep this up...</text></comment>