China-Mart Takes Over......The US Navy...Made in China(Paul Roberts)

[RedEarth]

July 25, 2005

The US Navy...Made in China
China-Mart Takes Over
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

My poor beloved country, trapped in a Middle Eastern quagmire and tricked by Osama bin Laden into subsidizing to the tune of $300 billion (spent or appropriated) a training ground for Muslim terrorists and insurgents while our once fabulous economy disintegrates.

If the US were still rich and just wanted to throw several hundred billion dollars at bin Laden as a good will gesture, that would be one thing. But we are borrowing the money
that we are using to train Muslim terrorists to kill and maim our troops in Iraq and Londoners in England.

The money is being lent to us mainly by Asians, especially the Chinese. China has so many dollars to lend to us because we send so many dollars to China to pay for the goods and services that patriotic American corporations have decided to supply to us from China instead of from America.

US corporations decided that the way to get rich was to destroy their American consumer base by closing their American factories, throwing their US employees out of work and hiring Chinese instead.
The Chinese work for less, you see, and free trade economists say lowering costs makes us better off.

What US corporations and the free trade economists overlook is that giving Americans' jobs to foreigners raises foreign incomes and lowers American incomes. When credit cards and home equity lines are maxed out, there will be nothing to support the US consumer market. The American corporations who moved their capital and technology to China will have to find new customers.

http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts07252005.html

Paul Craig Roberts has held a number of academic appointments and has contributed to numerous scholarly publications. He served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. His graduate economics education was at the University of Virginia, the University of California at Berkeley, and Oxford University. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions. He can be reached at: paulcraigroberts@yahoo.

[getmeouttahere]

1. Make sacrifices NOW and make a statement at the same time...

buy union-made, sweatshop-free, made in USA...not easy to find, and may cost a little more, but we make the sacrifices now or later, plus voting with our dollars may be the only power we have left.

www.justiceclothing.com

[formerrepuke]

2. This ought to be a major point in the Dem talking points..maybe

it'll finally get people to not focus to much on the various trifling wedge issues which Republicans like to use so much.

[getmeouttahere]

3. Well, you know, they have to start fires everywhere...

to keep us from noticing the important stuff they sneak through...