Category Archives: Barack Obama

UPDATE II: Lazy Boy To China: Quit Producing, Start Printing

Barack Obama, China, Debt, Europe, Federal Reserve Bank, Inflation, Political Economy

This is not even a case of the pot calling the kettle black. It’s plain insane. Barack Obama is the president of a country that is, with full presidential imprimatur, devaluing its coin and all private savings in order to conceal the ever-accreting public debt. China’s monetary policy, which is its business, is geared toward production; toward growing its economy out of any foreseeable economic straits.

Brainy boy is so stupid as to demand that China strive for a “balance” (of what? Debt and credit?)

“The president, speaking at a news conference in Seoul, suggested China bears much of the blame for global trade imbalances, The New York Times reported. He abandoned his usual cautious language on the subject and said China and other countries should not assume ‘their path to prosperity is paved simply with exports to the United States.'”

Wow, BHO is unaware that China produces for the world. But then Americans do think America is the world. In that, BHO is very American, and not so much of an alien.

Recall that Lazy Boy issued the same dire warning to Germany’s Ms. Merkel:

“U.S. President Barack Obama [has called] for Germans to aid the global recovery by spending more and relying less on exports.”It is not only Germany that Obama wishes to knee-cap economically, but Canada, Japan and China too. Given that big-spending Americans exist at the sufferance of the frugal, productive Chinese, I don’t quite know how this would work.

“Ms. Merkel countered that Germany’s growth and employment are rising—and therefore the world’s fourth-largest economy has no reason to rethink its dependence on its powerhouse industrial sector and large trade surplus.”

UPDATE I: WSJ: “We don’t like to see U.S. Treasury Secretaries so completely shot down by the rest of the world, except when they are so clearly misguided.” An understandable sentiment, except that from where I’m perched, I can’t recall when last an American president went abroad on a worthwhile mission.

Rather than leading the world from a position of strength, Mr. Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner came to Seoul blaming the rest of the world for U.S. economic weakness. America’s problem, in their view, is the export and exchange rate policies of the Germans, Chinese or Brazilians. And the U.S. solution is to have the Fed print enough money to devalue the dollar so America can grow by stealing demand from the rest of the world. …
But why should anyone heed this U.S. refrain? The Germans are growing rapidly after having rejected Mr. Geithner’s advice in 2009 to join the U.S. stimulus spending blowout. China is also growing smartly having rejected counsel from three U.S. Administrations to abandon its currency discipline. The U.K. and even France are pursuing more fiscal restraint. Only the Obama Administration is determined to keep both the fiscal and monetary spigots wide open, while blaming everyone else for the poor domestic results. …Meanwhile, China and other Asian economies see first-hand that rather than spurring more U.S. growth (on which Asian exporters still depend), U.S. monetary ease has flooded the developing world economies with dollars they’re not able to absorb; produced exchange-rate turmoil to the detriment of the region’s traders; and sent the world’s dollar-denominated commodity prices climbing.

No one is giving voice to the following thought—and whenever I mention this point, posters on this blog equivocate—but truly, the austere economic policies leaders are pursuing in Europe and the UK bespeak of some love of country and sense of duty. These Obama, and Bush before, is without. The terrible two have done things that, ultimately, hurt their countrymen horribly; they’ve trashed the country and its coin via war, welfare and debt.

UPDATE II (Nov. 13): What do busybody conservatives have against China for producing in response to demand? Why is the centrally planned, state counterfeiting of money even remotely comparable to the production of made-in-china junk in response to the demands for made-in-china junk? Mad at the Chinese for their exports? Why do you buy them?

American Sinophobes should remember that “China has undergone considerable economic restructuring and market reforms, the consequence of which is a 300 million strong Chinese middle class. Poverty levels have receded from “53 percent in 1981 to 8 percent in 2001. Only about a third of the economy is now directly state-controlled. As of 2005, 70 percent of China’s GDP was in the private sector.” The Chinese financial system is duly being liberalized—banking is diversifying and stock markets are developing. Protections for private property rights are being strengthened as well.”

“China is changing. It is ‘out of the red’ in more ways than one. The US is changing too: It’s in the red and getting redder.”

UPDATE V: The World Against Our Fed (Stock Market High On Fed Smack)

Barack Obama, Debt, Economy, Federal Reserve Bank, Inflation

This is remarkable. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke thought that he could float another flotilla of fiat currency, QE2, without consequence. How buoyed am I that the world, or countries that matter, is up in arms about the US’s attempt to flood money markets with counterfeit currency. So as to get rid of the public debt, our government, via the Fed (which is an arm of the state), is debauching the dollar and all private savings. If Americans don’t kick back at this tax by stealth, let the world do so for us. This is the not-so-invisible hand of fiduciary self-interest in action.

The WSJ’s assertion that the Fed is “independent” is bellied by at least one fact: it inflates in perfect unison with the administrations it served:

Global controversy mounted over the Federal Reserve’s decision to pump billions of dollars into the U.S. economy, with President Barack Obama defending the move as China, Russia and the euro zone added to a chorus of criticism.

Mr. Obama returned fire in the growing confrontation over trade and currencies Monday in a joint news conference with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, taking the unusual step of publicly backing the Fed’s decision to buy $600 billion in U.S. Treasury bonds—a move that has come under withering international criticism for weakening the U.S. dollar.

The Fed is independent, and the White House by longstanding tradition has strained to avoid any appearance of collusion or conflict. Mr. Obama said the administration doesn’t comment on particular actions of the U.S. central bank, before adding: “I will say that the Fed’s mandate, my mandate, is to grow our economy. And that’s not just good for the United States, that’s good for the world as a whole.”

The prospects of the Fed flooding the financial system with money helped drive gold above $1,400 an ounce on Monday. The precious metal, which investors often buy as protection against inflation, settled at a record $1,402.80 per troy ounce. Other assets, such as U.S. stocks and oil, drifted back slightly on Monday after getting a big boost from the Fed’s announcement last week. The dollar fell against the yen, while rising against the euro as worries about Europe’s debt problems returned.

UPDATE I (Nov. 9): SEN. JIM DEMINT, R-S.C.: “Well, I don’t — can’t say I’m glad to hear bad things about our country from the rest of the world, Neil, but it’s clear that we are monetizing our debt. It’s something we have said we wouldn’t do. We know it is a precursor — at least it has been in history — to a lot of bad things that happens to currencies and economies.

What I don’t understand in the middle of all this is, why don’t we just follow good, basic economic rules? Let taxes stay lower, so that more money stays in the economy, rather than trying all this micromanagement that the president and the Federal Reserve have been trying to do.”

UPDATE II: “Is the Federal Reserve violating the U.S. Constitution’s separation of powers in its new purchases of $600 billion worth of U.S. Treasuries?,” asks Fox Businesses’ Elizabeth MacDonald. “Is the Fed engaging in an unconstitutional monetization of the U.S. Congress’ out of control spending spree that is really a bridge loan to fiscal insanity?”

“At minimum, should the Fed be avoiding these purchases until the fiscally debauched U.S. Congress, packed to the ceiling with fiscal dipsomaniacs, follows Great Britain’s lead in its fiscal abstinence that may ‘out Thatcher’ even Margaret Thatcher?”

[SNIP]

I’m just so grateful that at last someone in mainstream media is discussing economics sensibly and quite knowledgeably. Of course—and more fundamentally—it is the federal reserve banking scheme that should be probed. The Fed has been doing its dastardly deeds—manipulate interest rates and siphon wealth away by stealth—for quite some time and under Bush as much as under Fox News’ nemesis, Obama.

UPDATE III: I called her “Bush in a Bra,” but it seems that Palin, unlike Bush, has a learning curve. Is she learning from Ron Paul via Michelle Bachmann? Who cares. She’s tweeting QE (“Quantitative Easing”):

“What’s the end game here? Where will all this money printing on an unprecedented scale take us? Do we have any guarantees that QE2 won’t be followed by QE3, 4, and 5, until eventually – inevitably – no one will want to buy our debt anymore? What happens if the Fed becomes not just the buyer of last resort, but the buyer of only resort?”

UPDATE IV: STOCK MARKET HIGH ON FED SMACK, writes Charles Hugh Smith of the Business Insider. (via Vox Day):

The U.S. stock market is increasingly dependent on the Federal Reserve’s constant interventions to maintain the illusion of an organic demand for equities. The market’s impressive climb since September 1 is only a simulacrum of a healthy market; actual organic demand from individual investors is falling. The Fed’s destruction of the U.S. dollar, its relentless pumping of cash into banks’ trading desks via POMO (Permanent Open Market Operations) and its destruction of any yield on cash with zero interest rates has driven money into risk assets–emerging markets, commodities and the U.S. stock market.

The more the market comes to depend on Fed “smack” (credit and intervention) for its “animal spirits,” the more inevitable the crash becomes.

A healthy market is built by rising demand from millions of investors–a broad foundation. It is built on rising revenues, not just on heavily gamed “pro forma” earnings goosed by the dollar’s decline (all those sales in euros look fat indeed when converted into dollars).

The present market is more like an inverted pyramid: a single source of “demand,” the Fed, and months of declining volume.

As dependency on the sole source rises, then the addict (in this case, the stock market) clings ever tighter to the pusher; the addict becomes increasingly volatile, demanding and resentful

UPDATE V (Nov. 10): The “World”—or at least the working world; countries that shake-and-move markets—is accusing “the United States [of] deliberately weakening the dollar while trying to swing the G20 spotlight back onto global imbalances as world leaders gathered in Seoul on Wednesday.”

The “World” is right.

Barefoot In Bollywood

Barack Obama, Business, English, Free Markets, Outsourcing, Regulation, Technology, Trade

That’s our First Lady, Mrs. Michelle Obama. “Almost immediately after arriving at the university [of Mumbai’s] library, she kicked off her flats and joined in a game of vocabulary-building hopscotch with the 8- to 13-year-old orphans and runaways who receive English-language instruction from Make a Difference volunteers,” reports CBC.

“I love dancing. Oh that was fun!’ Mrs. Obama said after they danced to the theme song from the Bollywood movie ‘Rang de Basanti.'”

A grass skirt and a pail of water on her head would have completed Mrs. Obama’s regal regalia. (What horrid “music” she’s bumping and grinding to.)

It’s interesting that these kids are receiving English-language instruction. Hardly something Michelle would be fighting for back at home. She’d be the “English as a Second Language ‘Program” advocate.

Meanwhile, Michelle’s less earthy husband is talking a good game against outsourcing, and doing what he does best: central planning, promising tax breaks to companies that create jobs in America.

Strange: the president visits India, which is outsourcing central, only to tell his put-upon hosts that he wants to discourage their bread-and-butter industry.

Obama would do better to ponder the following: In the U.S., companies endure endless, punishing, government-imposed regulations, which make doing business and staying competitive increasingly difficult. Foreign investors in China and India are not subject to more than 180 federal labor laws; to an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, an Occupational Safety and Health Administration, an IRS and an EPA; or to a work force where merit is marred by affirmative action. To the cost of the assorted alphabet soup of regulatory agencies a corporation must pay off in the U.S., add exorbitant corporate taxes and expenses like workers compensation insurance … as well as the cost of a government rape known as Social Security.

Factored into the wage price the corporation pays are, thus, large government-imposed costs. The company’s before-tax wage package must offset the cost of the income-tax burden as well as the cost of Social Security. Without the onerous government taxes, this American employee would cost the firm 30 to 40 percent less.

Consider that the annual Social Security burden alone on an American high-tech employee, borne by the employer, is the equivalent of the annual salary of a high-tech worker living well in India—and the logic of outsourcing is self-evident!

Ron Hira, an associate professor of public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology and author of the book “Outsourcing America,” knows how corporate America works. Via the WaPo:

“They have successfully built a business model where not only do they offshore large numbers of jobs, but the fraction that remain in the U.S. are filled by lower-paid foreign guest workers … They are often also forced to train their foreign replacements.”

This is indeed the model. You have to be at the top of your game to retain viable employment as an engineer in the US.

UPDATE II: Beware Of Wolves In Bipartisan Clothing (But When He's Good …)

Barack Obama, Bush, Democrats, Education, Elections, English, Iraq, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Politics, Propaganda, Republicans, Socialism

The following is from my latest WND column, “Beware Of Wolves In Bipartisan Clothing,” now on WND.COM:

“… MSNBC’s Chris Matthews has more street cred than most. The host of ‘Hardball’ spent the first two years of the Obama presidency in a state of delirium bordering on the sexual. Famous for experiencing something akin to a (daytime) nocturnal emission during Obama’s coronation – ‘thrill up the leg’ Matthews called the incident – Chris later begged Barack to be his ‘Enforcer,’ in the matter of sacking Gen. Stanley McChrystal. Understand: When a liberal like the president shows a bit of that manly magic, ‘girlie boys’ like Chris get giddy.”

Given Chris’ well-known carnal affections for Barack Obama, it is unfortunate that the op-ed segment with which he ends the ‘Hardball’ program daily is called ‘Let Me Finish.’

Yesterday, Matthews finished off by surmising that the ‘kick in the pants’ the president has sustained means that it was now up to Obama to make the Republicans an offer they could not refuse – especially with the entire country watching. The challenge for Obama, advised Matthews, is to force Republicans to join him, or look like creeps if they fail to join him. …

Yes, The 2010 midterm elections were a bloodbath for the Democratic Party. Because there are no mollifying messages to be had from such a political massacre, liberal pols, pundits, and other dominant interests, hastened to soften the “shellacking” by framing it in terms more tolerable. …”

The complete column is “Beware Of Wolves In Bipartisan Clothing.”

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UPDATED I (Nov. 5): BUT WHEN HE’S GOOD HE’S VERY GOOD.

Now how good is the following editorial by Chris Matthews?! And how good am I for being capable of seeing a good argument for what it is?! Why can’t Chris be as good at distilling the truth? In any case, this time “Let Me Finish” is a proper climax to the show (read “Beware Of Wolves In Bipartisan Clothing” to get all the sexual connotations):

Matthews: Does George W. Bush live in a house of mirrors? Hardball’s Chris Matthews reacts to some of the excerpts released from George W. Bush’s new memoir.

Behold the transcript of this fabulous editorial. See the quality of intern/ignorant millennial (most probably) these large organizations are forced to hire (they love youth, and shun older, more literate workers). It’s one thing not to know the fine word “solipsistic”; it’s quite another to be bereft of the brains, the initiative, and the work ethic to look it up on an online dictionary before typing/transcribing the sentence.

Instead of “solipsistic,” which is what Matthews said, the moron MSNBC has hired to transcribe the audio (and do related work) wrote “solid cystic.” This is the kind of word salad one is treated to when watching the simultaneous translations offered up on the TV screens at the health club. The transcribing is being done by individuals who’ve almost no facility with the English language. That describes most American school and university graduates. Enjoy:

“Let me finish tonight with george w. bush. you know years ago a member of the british cabinet got caught in an embarrassment and of course denied it, to which his accuser said, well, he would, wouldn’t he? denial is the norm of political life especially of the awful. president bush says the iraq war was justified because it prevented another 9/11. well, 9/11 was a network operation involving cells in germa germany, heavy recruit in the saudi arabia and of course flight training down in florida. the one country not involved in 9/11 was iraq, the attack of 9/11 was conspired among a web of jihadists religion phanatics without loyalty to a particular state. saddam hussein was a baathist. so how would a war in iraq prevent another attack from elements of al qaeda? or is bushauring something that logically cannot be denied for the simple reason it has nothing to do with logic with the discernible cause and effect with anything tangible. is he saying that the war which caused 77,000 lives was justified because he thought it would prevent another terrorist attack like 9/11? in other words, if the connection between 9/11 and iraq, which no one else’s ever been able to substantiate, was in his own mental wiring, he’s guiltless before history. there’s a reason that bush lives in this solid cystic world. cause of effect or of tangible fact even, but of what george w. bush sees out there…”

UPDATE II: More on “compromising” from Diana West (who, I am sure, would have lots to say about the ill-educated non-adults who’re, increasingly, running this country):

If our new Republicans are as gullible as our old ones, instead of cutting taxes across the board, they just might “compromise” with Democrats, and that’s the end of that. Or instead of refusing to raise the national debt ceiling another trillion dollars, they just might “compromise” with Democrats and up it goes. Or instead of repealing Obamacare, they just might “compromise” with Democrats and fine-tune a few colossal programs. When all the votes are cast and backs patted, of course, “compromise” is a poor substitute for principle. But all we can do now is hope for change: that the GOP, backed by the tea party, stands strong this time even in the face of Democratic accusations that it is playing “politics as usual,” or acting like the “Party of No.” Because it’s a sure thing that such accusations are on their way. Indeed, even as voters were still heading to the polls on Tuesday, Michelle Malkin noted the Democratic National Committee had already released talking points that attacked Republican leaders who “are not willing to compromise.

[SNIP]

I would change “gullible to “venal” and “power hungry.”