I always get a little nervous when the government of a country start thinking they're too special. This is called nationalism, and it seems especially out of place in countries nominally based on the international solidarity-supporting writings of Marx. For example, if there were rumors that a country's only political party had commissioned a study to show that the dominant ethnic group was actually a separate (superior) species from the rest of humanity - let's just make up a name, "Han" will do - then that would be worrisome.
Another concern would be if that country's Ministry of Truth (let's make up another name, "Xinhua") issued news releases about nature itself bestowing miraculous protections unto their people. For example, reporting that dolphins had protected your ships from Somalian pirates. I'll take the U.S. Navy over dolphins protecting shipping lanes any day. Naval sharpshooters are better than magical pirate-herding dolphins - and they exist.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
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Well, I think that the main way of trying to lessen the amount of leverage that China has is by lessening the amount of debt that we have with them. If they decide to sell a mass amount of U.S. Treasury bonds at a discount,t hey could really hurt us. With her last trip to China, Hillary Clinton all of a sudden stopped mentioning concerns about human rights violations. Obviously, because we are hoping for them to buy more of our debt.
They drastically reduced the amount of bonds that they purchase from us and are calling for a new international currency. They have leverage to do that now because we owe them big time and want to owe them more. Likewise, we are showing that we are willing to sacrifice our pprinciples to please countries that we disagree with. We are ESPECIALLY willing to put our enemies' opinions of us above our own peoples' opinion of the country.
I agree that this was disappointing. There's been a long history of both parties giving China a bit of a blank check, along with borrowing from them, which skyrocketed in the previous eight years. Unfortunately I don't have a prescription for avoiding borrowing more from them in the immediate future without our economy sliding further, but for the long-term this is important to avoid as much as possible. I've been asking for a long time, does Pepsi borrow from Coke?
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