Palast - China Floats, America Sinks

[realFedUp]

www.gregpalast.com

CHINA FLOATS, AMERICA SINKS
YUAN KICKS DOLLAR BUTT BY REJECTING "FREE MARKET"
Friday Jul 22, 2005
by Greg Palast

snip

The White House line to the media, swallowed whole, is that by making Chinese money (yuan) more expensive to buy with dollars, Americans will buy fewer computers and toys from China -- and US employment will rise.

This will happen when we find Saddam's Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Economics IT DIDN'T TAKE LONG, DID IT?
Friday Jul 15, 2005
Well, it didn't take long, did it?

In the USA, the curtain opened on new anti-terror follies Wednesday when three Senate committees, in blustery response to the London bombings, voted to extend the power of the FBI under the Patriot Act to obtain library records without a subpoena. Exactly what suicide bomber or sleeper cell has so far been exposed by this powerful new intelligence weapon, we are not told. Did Osama fail to return his copy of 'Harry Potter'? Or 'Hijac... < Click here for full article >
Lesson #1: You can't change the value of goods by changing the value of the currency on the price tag. As my comrade Art Laffer wrote me, "If cheap currency makes your products more competitive, all automobiles would be made in Russia." Driven a Lada lately?

Economics Lesson #2: Don't take economics lessons from George Bush. Or Milton Friedman. Or Thomas Friedman. What that means, class, is don't believe the big, hot pile of hype that China's zooming economy is the result of that Red nation's adopting free market economic policies.

If China is now a capitalist free-market state, then I'm Mariah Carey. China's economy has soared because it stubbornly refused the Free – and Friedman-Market mumbo-jumbo that government should stop controlling, owning and regulating industry.

continued

[K-W]

1. China proves again that closed markets = development.

And why neo-liberalism is such a cruel joke at the expense of the "developing" nations.

The only part of this I struggle with is what the US elites game plan is through all of this. Some of it is certainly obvious, wage depression is great for them, etc. But I wonder how they plan to try and keep a China with a juggernaut economy from becoming too hard to control.

[realFedUp]

2. is that the kind of control a person has over a dinosaur?

very hard to manage.

[K-W]

3. Heh, That sounds about right. nt

[Wetzelbill]

4. I was going to reply but your analogy was dead on

:)

[Wetzelbill]

5. I loved this part

Economics Lesson #2: Don't take economics lessons from George Bush. Or Milton Friedman. Or Thomas Friedman. What that means, class, is don't believe the big, hot pile of hype that China's zooming economy is the result of that Red nation's adopting free market economic policies.

The Thomas Friedman one cracked me up. :)

[K-W]

6. Anyone who thinks that free markets even exist is clueless

And Thomas Friedman doesnt just think they exist, he worships them.

[Wetzelbill]

7. yeah he is a blind ideologue about free markets