Posts Tagged ‘China’
US Credit Rating Downgraded - by Chinese Credit Rating Agency
By Ian Cooper, wealthdaily.com, July 13th, 2010
After years of warnings — from our own “waste of time” credit raters —- the seemingly untouchable US AAA rating was just cut by China’s Dagong Global Credit Rating Company to AA. This, after repeated Geithner promises that the US would never lose its credit ratings, despite outrageous budget deficits and our raised $14 trillion debt ceiling.
It’s not as if US credit rating agencies have been credible these past few years. The China firm just did what Moody’s and S&P could never even dream about doing… unless orchestrated by the Fed. How these credit raters still have a job after the housing disaster is beyond me.
Read more at http://www.wealthdaily.com/articles/us-credit-rating-downgraded/2594
The opinions expressed in this article are the opinions of the writer.
How Foreign Nations Now Pay For All Of America’s Defense And Education
Vincent Fernando, CFA, Business Insider, July 12, 2010
Hope they don’t cut the credit line.
Here’s an ugly dose of perspective. America is so dependent on foreign financing for its budget, that things like defense, homeland security, education, and unemployment benefits are pretty much funded by foreign nations such as China.
Why?
According to former Republican senator and committee co-chairman Alan Simpson, federal revenue is, already, completely chewed up by the three nasties: Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. “The rest of the federal government, including fighting two wars, homeland security, education, art, culture, you name it, veterans — the whole rest of the discretionary budget is being financed by China and other countries.”
Foreigner creditors truly hold America by the neck these days. They effectively finance everything beyond the three programs above.
Read more at http://www.businessinsider.com/us-debt-disaster-2010-7
‘I’m a Marxist’ says Dalai Lama, but agrees capitalism has helped China
From correspondents in New York, From AFP May 21, 2010
TIBETAN spiritual leader the Dalai Lama says he’s a Marxist, yet credits capitalism for bringing new freedoms to China, the communist country that exiled him.
“Still I am a Marxist,” the exiled Tibetan Buddhist leader said in New York, where he arrived today with an entourage of robed monks and a heavy security detail to give a series of paid public lectures.
“(Marxism has) moral ethics, whereas capitalism is only how to make profits,” the Dalai Lama, 74, said.
However, he credited China’s embrace of market economics for breaking communism’s grip over the world’s most populous country and forcing the ruling Communist Party to “represent all sorts of classes”.
“(Capitalism) brought a lot of positive to China. Millions of people’s living standards improved,” he said.
–SNIP– Although China, which forced him to escape for his life in 1959, is loosening up, he had harsh words for a Communist leadership that he said still seeks to rule by fear.
As Chinese become richer, “they want more freedoms, they want an independent judiciary, they want to have a free sort of press”, he said.
The Chinese Government, he said, seeks harmony, “but harmony must come out of the heart, not out of fear. So far, methods to bring harmony mostly rely on use of force.”
How the right can court labor and fix the economy
By Adam Sparks, World Net Daily, April 09, 2010
Look around at the merchandise at a Wal-Mart. Nearly everything is made in China with the sole exception of the label that says “Made in China”; that’s made in America. Joking aside, America has lost its industrial base. Over the past four decades, nearly all our manufacturing has gone overseas. Steel is dead, electronics dead, manufacturing of every kind fallen victim to cheap imports. How can a nation survive if it doesn’t make anything? Have we degenerated to such a point that we are now a dependent colony to imperial nations? We sell our trees to China and Japan so they can make paper and furniture and sell it back to us. We sell our iron ore to China so they can make steel I-beams and sell it back to us. Isn’t the classic definition of a dependent colony one that sells its natural resources to the usurper nation, which then adds value (manufacturing) before selling the finished product back to us, the hapless colony?
Japan is an island nation about the size of California and yet is the second-largest economy in the world. What do they have, or do, that makes them so powerful, while we limp along as a debtor nation, resigned to begging China to buy our inflated debt? Japan has strong protectionist tariffs and laws that make imports expensive. We have a free market.
Similarly, the world’s fastest-growing economy, China, has some of the strictest protectionist laws in the world. Why should the Chinese buy imports? They have cheap labor, the technology and the consumer markets for their own goods. Their economy is booming.
Conservatives have been hoisting the free-trade banner for decades, claiming that this was the panacea to all that ails our economy. Wrong. Our economy is in the tank; our manufactures and their jobs have moved overseas and won’t be returning anytime soon. Free marketers say we are a transformational economy that has changed to a service economy. Really? Does that mean we have an economy based on low-paying service jobs like call centers? We did, but they, too, have all moved overseas. But, don’t despair, we still have the shoe-shining market, don’t we? The shoes are made in Brazil, the polish comes from India – but at least the shoe shiner is from Peoria. However, soon no one will be able to afford the shoe shine, as we continue to peel off jobs. And the shoe shiner is now an out-sourced, imported illegal alien from Mexico.
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=138233
Found this interesting, not that we necessarily agree with it.
Glenn Beck Show - The Revolutionary Holocaust
Glenn Beck Show - The Revolutionary Holocaust - January 22, 2010 - Pt 1 of 7, Youtube.com
Pt 2 of 7 at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkRHCzd_5rA
See all 7 parts at http://lucianne.com/article/?pageid=glenn_beck_show
CHINA: ‘The world does not have Money to buy more US Treasuries’…
By Zhou Xin and Jason Subler, Shanghai Daily, December 18, 2009
IT is getting harder for governments to buy United States Treasuries because the US’s shrinking current-account gap is reducing supply of dollars overseas, a Chinese central bank official said yesterday.
The comments by Zhu Min, deputy governor of the People’s Bank of China, referred to the overall situation globally, not specifically to China, the biggest foreign holder of US government bonds.
Chinese officials generally are very careful about commenting on the dollar and Treasuries, given that so much of its US$2.3 trillion reserves are tied to their value, and markets always watch any such comments closely for signs of any shift in how it manages its assets.
China’s State Administration of Foreign Exchange reaffirmed this month that the dollar stands secure as the anchor of the currency reserves it manages, even as the country seeks to diversify its investments.
In a discussion on the global role of the dollar, Zhu told an academic audience that it was inevitable that the dollar would continue to fall in value because Washington continued to issue more Treasuries to finance its deficit spending.
Read more at http://www.shanghaidaily.com/sp/article/2009/200912/20091218/article_423054.htm
If Obama’s Lost Saturday Night Live, He’s Lost…
Permission to laugh at Obama, sir?
Permission granted.
Hilarious video at link below, but do NOT view while children are in the room.
SNL Obama Jintao Press Conference in Beijing (VIDEO, 6:44)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxYSduRES1o
“I am noticing that each of your plans to save money involves spending even more money.” That’s not exactly a revelation to those who have been paying attention, but it’s legitimate political commentary that may be news to some in the SNL audience.
From http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/11/025002.php
++++
Q: What’s the real problem with Barack Obama jokes?
A: His followers don’t think they’re funny and everyone else doesn’t think they’re jokes.
CHINA questions costs of U.S. healthcare reform
by James Pethokouki, November 16th, 2009
Guess what? It turns out the Chinese are kind of curious about how President Barack Obama’s healthcare reform plans would impact America’s huge fiscal deficit. Government officials are using his Asian trip as an opportunity to ask the White House questions. Detailed questions.
Boilerplate assurances that America won’t default on its debt or inflate the shortfall away are apparently not cutting it. Nor should they, when one owns nearly $2 trillion in assets denominated in the currency of a country about to double its national debt over the next decade.
Nothing happening in Washington today should give Beijing any comfort or confidence about what may happen tomorrow. Healthcare reform was originally promoted as a way to “bend the curve” on escalating entitlement costs, the major part of which is financing Medicare and Medicaid. That is looking more and more like an overpromised deliverable.
Read more at http://blogs.reuters.com/james-pethokoukis/2009/11/16/china-questions-costs-of-us-healthcare-reform/
How often do we have to say it: We’re Broke!
U.S. Will Pay $2.6 Million to Train Chinese Prostitutes to Drink Responsibly on the Job
by Edwin Mora, Tuesday, May 12, 2009
(CNSNews.com) — The National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAA), a part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), will pay $2.6 million in U.S. tax dollars to train Chinese prostitutes to drink responsibly on the job. Dr. Xiaoming Li, the researcher conducting the program, is director of the Prevention Research Center at Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit. The grant, made last November, refers to prostitutes as “female sex workers”–or FSW–and their handlers as “gatekeepers.” . . . Li said his study is being done in China rather than the U.S. because prostitution occurs with alcohol use in the United States like it does in China, Americans will be able to benefit from the project’s findings.
Read more at http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=47976
(The above is one of) 50 Examples of Government Waste
Read more examples at http://blog.heritage.org/2009/10/08/50-examples-of-government-waste/
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These are just a few examples of why we have a TRILLION dollar deficit (along with TARP etc.)