the Prez has a MBA in Business Administration...

[tocqueville]

Hu's White House lunch: Rare but not bloody
By Brian Wingfield

WASHINGTON - Chinese President Hu Jintao was to touch down in the United States on Tuesday, and most pundits seem to believe that his visit - which includes his first trip to the White House - will yield little in the way of tangible results.

No one is expecting any deals to be made on contentious economic disputes. No one anticipates Hu promising to cut his country's military spending and energy consumption or announcing a new crackdown on rampant intellectual property theft. In fact, US President George W Bush will not even honor him with a formal state dinner. (The two presidents will have a very formal lunch instead.)

But this is not to say that the Chinese leader's visit is unimportant. Congress is away on its Easter recess this week, which means that when Hu reaches Washington on Thursday after a rambling trip across the US, all eyes will be on him. And it will be a rare opportunity for the leaders of two of the world's most powerful nations to sit down and talk about what is perhaps the greatest wedge between them - economic policy.

That issue in itself is a two-headed monster: trade and exchange rates. Many American leaders, eager to protect manufacturing jobs, believe China is flooding the US with cheap imports. This problem, many say, is exacerbated by China's undervalued currency and trade surplus: if the yuan is cheap, the logic goes, Americans buy more Chinese products, sending their dollars to Beijing , where they are kept in reserves, further widening the trade gap between the two countries. According to some news reports, China may have recently set a new record for foreign-currency reserves by holding as much as US$854 billion.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China_Business/HD19Cb06.html

[EST]

1. His MBA was, no doubt, a bribe to induce him to quit school.

[Hekate]

2. It's really the wrong paradigm for running a democracy, isn't it?

I don't think he ever had to read the Constitution or Bill of Rights in business school; probably never did more than skim a few laws in order to pass some test or other.

Corporate capitalism may have its place within the country (a highly regulated place, imo), but it is absolutely not synonymous with democracy, and it is the wrong paradigm for running a democracy, a republic, a state, a university, a public school, a hospital, a health care system.....

Hekate

[EST]

9. Those of us of passing intelligence did not need this

sickening lesson on how not to run a gubmit!

[Monk06]

3. Uh, his Chimpness entered Harvard in 1975 the same year>>>>

George Senior became the head of the CIA. Do you really think Junior
was in any danger of flunking out?

I bet he was a waking terror for every TA and un-tenured assistant prof
while he was there and everyone sighed with relief when he was gone.

Note to self: Check how many Harvard Business profs took sabbaticals
between 1975 and 1977.

[EST]

7. There was at least one who really put out some bad ink on

him but the others may have been too afraid of repercussions.

[Monk06]

13. An MBA is probably the most overrated post graduate degree..,.

there is and a favorite choice for rich frat boys
who just need some respectable paper that they can trot
out when they're hoisted to the board of Enron,
Morton Thyiocol (now deceased) and Raytheon.

Junior isn't even in the same league as Powell who
like Bush senior is on the board of Carlyle.

Bush is just a place holder, bookmark in what will be
the tawdry history of neo-conservatism.

That history will be written but we have to go through
a lot more mayhem before it's finished.

[ixion]

16. ANY degree that deals with business is over-rated, IMO

The business college at any given university is nothing more than a refuge for stupid frat boys, like der chimpenator, IMO.

[Old and In the Way]

4. Those USD reserves have become a problem for China

Float the Yuan and the value of those holdings could be worth 30% less. OTOH, if we bomb Iran, why not? Take the hit and meltdown the US economy. We'd be hard pressed to meet the demand in the short term (retool, retrain factory workers) and what happens to the USD value in the meantime?

Wars don't need to be fought with bullets and bombs...we could become like the Weimar Republic after WW1. A huge military giant, completely helpless to compete in the 21st century. Don't look for this government to do nation building...they only do nation de-building.

[Ecumenist]

5. He got that MBA at K-Mart, bluelight special

He couldn't run water without a illustrated instructions and someone to hold his hand and walk him through it.

[SoCalDem]

6. Daddy bought it for him

like everything else he has...

[Oversea Visitor]

8. Master Bushiter Award

Thats the only MBA he got.

[stopbush]

23. Or Major Bullshit Artist. n/t

[dipsydoodle]

10. I recall reading

a long time ago that there was something extremely odd about **** {he whose name is not worth mention) even getting into Harvard. I'm reminded of spoof degrees whenever I see T shirts on ebay for "The Bluegrass University" or a Chainsaw Diploma.

[LynnTheDem]

19. U of Texas refused entrance...yet Harvard accepted him.

Things that make ya say HMMMmmmmmmm...

[dipsydoodle]

21. Oh ! I see............

.......I believe in the tooth fairy as well. Old saying - money talks. I've often wondered if his course (coarse ?) work is in the public domian ? Maybe he got his MBA cos he was good at colouring the pictures in.

[dipsydoodle]

22. He majored in

smirking and lying I guess.

[sweetheart]

11. Harvard's tarnished reputation

That a university gifts degrees to people based on wealth
and status pretty much says it all. In my MBA course, we
learned how to do the job bush is not doing, truth be told.

Managing an organization in a climate of chaos, where
you are interconnected and interdependent on other
organizations all over the earth, is what good managers
are able to do adeptly.

Clearly bush was never qualified for management, and he
disgraces the profession. Those i've encountered in
international management are not fools or gifted free
riders. There is a competence of respect and diplomacy
that is endemic, of respect for civil society as well.
Harvard is giving away degrees for money to degenerates,
shame on the US university system.

[Hekate]

14. Sweetheart, you are right enough. My husband has an MBA, too, but he is...

...a whole different caliber of person than * is. For one thing his undergrad major was Philosophy, which is an alien world to *; for another he spent the Vietnam War years in the Air Force and not a champagne squadron; and finally he became a computer programmer/business systems analyst and went off to earn his own living with the degree he obtained from a state college, not Harvard or Yale.

My reason for dissing the "paradigm" the way I did has to do with what I see as the corporate mentality that measures everything with the yardstick of power and profit. All entities need to pay their bills on time, but education and health care are delivering services related to the public good whose success can't be measured by profit. For instance, the reason the health care industry is failing the American people right now is for the very reason that it is seen as an industry, and not a public benefit.

Hekate

[sweetheart]

15. the Greed degree

I think a lotta people get an MBA as a gateway to money money money.

Other people get an MBA to become excellent managers of large
organizations. And depending on the secret motivation of the student,
we either wend up with a greedy psychopath or a social asset.

In an MBA programme, had he actually taken some schooling, he would
have learned enough economics to have not become such a prodigious
destroyer of wealth.

He would have learned to care for all people in a sustainable way that
not a single person in his organization (USA Inc.) go without health
coverage, or a decent retirement provision.. or that ANYONE in the
company not have housing, unthinkable. If he had the awareness of
a manager, he would be an outstanding president, i truly believe.

Funnily, the genuineness of a good manager might be a bad quality for
a political despot, as the constant need to defraud the people to
get elected... fraud is not a good management quality... except at
harvard. ;-)

[Divernan]

12. Couldn't get a JD because law school has "blind" grading.

In law school, every semester students get a randomly assigned number which they use on their exams. In other words, the professors don't know who's test they are grading. So it doesn't do any good to suck up in class, or have a VIP father or family name. I'm sure the Harvard professors simply held their noses and gave Bush the traditional legacy's "gentleman's C". There was one Harvard professor who commented on how extremely shallow Bush was and that Bush totally lacked any intellectual curiosity and displayed hostility toward the plight of the working class. One has to wonder why MBA programs do not also have blind grading.

[Avalux]

24. Bush applied and was rejected by the UT law school.

So - Daddy got him into Harvard's business school. Every time I see Bush's pride in the University of Texas and yucking it up by making the longhorn sign, I have to wonder if he doesn't feel a bitter pang in the pit of his stomach as he remembers the told him to go to hell. :D

[Bassic]

17. Meaningless. I know personnaly that ANYONE

can get a fruckin MBA. The dumbest person I have ever met (which happens to be a Jesus freak) has one. She couldn't administer a sack of marbles if her life depended on it.

[Spider Jerusalem]

18. As opposed to an MBA in electronics, or dentistry?

Your title is a little redundant, no?

[DFW]

20. I hope:

Somebody in Washington takes a second to think:

$854 billion. The interest alone on that is about $3.4 BILLION a year,
or, in other words, every man, woman and child in the United States owes
China $1000 a year interest on our debt to them. Support OUR troops?
We're supporting the PLA!

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

25. He got Honors in "Pocket Protector Placement".

Not to mention "Briefcase Gymnastics" and mastering the complicated "Turning On Calculator" exercise.