Did you know that the new World Trade Center tower is being constructed with glass from China and steel from Germany? 1 World Trade Center, also known as “The Freedom Tower”, is not just another skyscraper. It is essentially a national monument. But that doesn’t mean that we are above awarding construction contracts to the lowest bidder. The new World Trade Center tower will contain 250 tons of steel from Germany and the lower floors will be surrounded with blast-resistant glass from China. This is yet another example of how the U.S. economy is being hollowed out. Once upon a time, the United States produced more steel and glass than anyone else in the world. But now we are being deindustrialized at a blinding pace. We have lost tens of thousands of factories and millions of jobs over the past decade. We are going to have a trade imbalance of about a half a trillion dollars this year. Meanwhile, our federal, state and local governments are going into massive amounts of debt in order to keep funding government activities at a level that our hollowed out economy simply cannot support any longer. (Read More...)