I can't take credit for the title to this post as it is the title to a report from the Boston Consulting Group that I think is a must-read in these difficult times.  You can find the report here:  "Made In America, Again" by Harold L. Sirkin, Michael Zinser, and Douglas Hohner.

As we have to deal with > 9% unemployment, stock markets that rise and fall with the voracity of a roller coaster, news of profligate European economies that threaten the world's financial system, nuclear weapons in Iran, and incompetence in Washington, DC, I thought it would be nice to check in on what is actually going right - and in particular what is going right in the good ol' USA.

This report gives us a lot of hope for our economy, particularly:

• Chinese wage inflation running at 16% a year for a decade has closed the cost gap between manufacturing in the US V. China - China is no longer the "default location" when deciding to build a manufacturing plant;
• The gap in productivity-adjusted wages will narrow from 22% of US levels in 2005 to 43% by 2015 (and 61% in the Right To Work South)  - when you add in shipping costs, reliability issues, and other related issues relative to running a manufacturing operation in a foreign country, the the advantage shifts back to the USA;
• The list of companies that are already moving operations back the USA is growing:  Farouk Systems is bringing back assembly of hair dryers to Texas; ET Water Systems has switched irrigation products to California; Master Lock is returning to Milwaukee; NCR is bringing back its ATM work to Georgia; and NatLabs is returning to Florida.

Boston Consulting Group expects 800,000 manufacturing jobs to return to the USA by 2015 with a multiplier effect of supporting organizations to create 3.2 million new jobs in total.

The weak dollar has also added to the increase in manufacturing jobs in the USA:  Volkswagen is building a new $4 billion plant in Chattanooga, Samsung is investing $20 billion in US capacity, and domestic companies like Intel, GM, and Caterpillar are building new capacity in the states instead of in Asia.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard of the UK Telegraph makes further points in support of this premise: 

• the USA is now the number one producer of natural gas, moving ahead of Russia;
• the shale oil extraction industry has moved us into the single largest contributor to global oil supply in 2010, with a net 395,000 barrels per day in new production;
• the USA now meets 72% of our energy needs with domestic production up from 50% in the early 2000's;
• the US has 16 of the world's top 20 universities; and
• it is the only Western power with a fertility rate above 2.0 - a key to a sustainable economy that Japan, Germany, Russia, China, and many other G20 economies do not enjoy

So, when  you listen to the news or read the paper and you are smacked in the face with all of the negative stories, try to remember that as Kevin Bacon said in Animal House:  "All Is Well!" - well maybe not all, but certainly more than you generally hear about.

Mark