Category Archives: China

The Trump Card: Trade Aggression

Business, Celebrity, China, Economy, Elections, Foreign Policy, Free Markets, Politics, Trade

Watch out Alec Baldwin (or should that be America?), publicity hound Donald Trump is considering a run for office. Trump is motivated by the sense that the nimbus of great power that surrounds the US is dissipating. It hasn’t occurred to him to look closer to home for the cause of America’s economic anemia—at Fanny and the Fed, for example. Trump thus blames OPEC because he has no idea what’s potting, and is not eager to look in his own plate—at the burdens of doing business in the US. OPEC and the Chinese.

Among American opinion makers, Sinophobia is considered an economic theory and is thus sanctioned. Disliking China falls within the realm of economic theorizing. Accordingly, Chinese success is put down to currency manipulation, and not the industry, frugality, and hard work of that people.

The Trump plan to reclaim American power and prestige in the world includes force, of course. Like Baldwin, Trump has never wanted for anything for too long, at least not in recent memory. Strutting around on the world stage; showing those South Koreans and Chinese who’s boss: that’s a perfect complement to the waning testosterone and increasing megalomania that are the ingredients of Trump persona.

UPDATE II: News You Missed (Taxpayers Vs. Tax Consumers)

America, China, Debt, Media, Uncategorized

The ostrich press, “Bloomberg, CNN, New York Times or anywhere in the US print or TV media,” did not report it. VDARE did:

“On Thanksgiving eve the English language China Daily and People’s Daily Online reported that Russia and China have concluded an agreement to abandon the use of the US dollar in their bilateral trade and to use their own currencies in its place. The Russians and Chinese said that they had taken this step in order to insulate their economies from the risks that have undermined their confidence in the US dollar as world reserve currency.” …

“The American financial press finds solace in the episodes when sovereign debt scares in the EU send the dollar up against the euro and UK pound. But these currency movements are just measures of financial players shorting troubled EU-denominated debt. They are not a measure of dollar strength.”

MORE.

UPDATE I: The custodians of the Irish state are still better than the filth that gathers to rule us from DC. The American governing class has been unique in working against the economic interests of its countrymen and their country. (Treason?)

News comes that, “Ireland [will] endure the toughest cuts and tax hikes in its history as an unavoidable price for saving the debt-burdened nation from bankruptcy, Finance Minister Brian Lenihan told lawmakers as they prepared to vote on a brutal 2011 budget.”

“Lenihan’s plan — the harshest yet of four emergency budgets unveiled since 2008 to combat a runaway deficit — contains euro4.5 billion ($6 billion) in spending cuts and euro1.5 billion ($2 billion) in tax rises.”

Lenihan said income taxes would be broadened to bring tens of thousands of low-salaried workers into the tax net for the first time, while welfare payments would be cut across the board. Spending on capital projects — chiefly jobs-intensive building of roads and public transportation networks — would be cut by euro1.8 billion ($2.4 billion).

“Lenihan said Ireland had no choice but to slash spending and raise taxes immediately because the country this year is spending more than euro50 billion on regular government and at least euro45 billion to bail out its banks — yet collecting just euro19 billion this year in taxes. The staggering imbalance means an underlying deficit this year of 11.6 percent that, when bank-bailout costs are included, balloons to a modern European record of 32 percent of GDP.”

[SNIP]

I like the Irish idea of tax hikes on the poor a lot. Really. The cost of the welfare state must be felt by those who demand its spoils. Making the rich bleed for creating wealth will not ween the poor off welfare.

UPDATE II: The state has bifurcated the population into taxpayers and tax consumers. The so-called poor don’t really pay taxes as they receive in the form of assorted transfer payments from the government more than they contribute. They are net tax consumers.

The so-called rich pay all the taxes. Making the poor pay might just turn them against all the stuff they believe they are owed.

UPDATE II: Not So Pale-Lin

Aesthetics, China, Debt, Federal Reserve Bank, Inflation, Political Economy, Regulation, Sarah Palin

“He’s backwards,” said Sarah Palin about Barack Hussein Obama’s lack of economic smarts. She spoke on the occasion of Judge Andrew Napolitano’s Fox Business show, Freedom Watch, going daily. Palin has an unadorned way of looking at things. She spoke forcefully and fairly knowledgeably about monetary policy tonight.

Less welcome was what Palin adorned on the occasion. Palin, a natural beauty with a glowing skin, had squeezed herself into the sort of Little Black Dress Ann Coulter wears to every event. Worse still was the orange, bottled tan with which Palin’s arms, shoulders, and alarmingly large bosom had been sprayed. The difference between the pallor of Palin’s face and the bright orange of her decolletage was plain to see on the TV. Less so in the online clip. Oy vey.

Palin does not need to heed TV’s repulsive stylists; most of them have acquired their “talents” making-up Kim kardashian’s private parts for public viewing. Palin should tell the image consultants to back off. There is no need to repeat the make-over failures of the McCain campaign.

It’s good to see Mrs. Palin coming to grips with monetary policy. A mature, natural beauty like Palin has no need to adopt the trashy TV look.

UPDATED I: I don’t understand the question below. Was Palin fundamentally wrong about monetary policy tonight? Did she recommend bad policies? Why do you care where she got the ideas she was promoting vis-a-vis the Fed? If she’s reading Ron Paul’s End The Fed, or Tom Woods’ Meltdown—why do you care? Speaking to—and against—current monetary policy makes Palin and Bachmann better than almost any other pol around.

UPDATE II (Nov. 16): Let me correct the above statement: “Speaking to—and against—current monetary policy makes Palin and Bachmann better than almost any other AMERICAN, most of whom draw a blank at the causes of inflation and the devaluation of the country’s coin—except to hoot obscenities at the Chinese, as a primate would scream at a someone with a coveted banana.

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.”