Historic speech (China President addressed Indonesian Parliament)

[No Elephants]

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Chinese President Xi Jinping made history in Indonesia on Thursday by becoming the first foreign leader to address the democratic country's Parliament, using the platform to call for greater cooperation with Southeast Asia's biggest economy and the region as a whole.

China "is ready to work together with Indonesia and other ASEAN countries to make the two sides share the same prosperity (and) stick together through thick and thin so that we can become good friends and good neighbors," Xi said referring to the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

Xi's speech came a day after he met with his Indonesian counterpart President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and the two agreed to work together to improve a number of areas including trade, investment and infrastructure.

A currency swap was also signed worth $16 billion for three years that could be utilized to support Indonesia's sliding rupiah in a crisis.

During his first trip to Southeast Asia since taking office in March, Xi also proposed creating an infrastructure investment bank that would help fund development projects in the region.

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/china-president-makes-historic-speech-indonesia

Interesting on infrastructure bank. I am not sure where the idea of an infrastructure bank originated, but I saw many articles about it on the old DLC website, starting years ago with respect to education, then broadening to infrastructure generally. Then, I heard Obama recommend it.

As we all know, the DLC is not exactly leftist. So, here we have the President of "Red" China recommending it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Infrastructure_Reinvestment_Bank

[Enthusiast]

1. That's why we shouldn't have an infrastructure bank,

because Obama recommended it.

Seems to me that we had better get busy on these infrastructure projects immediately. Maybe we could skip a war or two.