Earlier today, Karl Denninger double-dog-dared China to start dumping US bonds, arguing that the Chinese were at the mercy of U.S. Presidential fiat with respect to (a) the value of China's reserves and (b) our superior military. He may be right, but that won't stop the Chinese from dumping other assets in an escalation of...one thing or another:
Dollar-denominated risk assets, including asset-backed securities and corporates, are no longer wanted at the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE), nor at China's large commercial banks. The Chinese government has ordered its reserve managers to divest itself of riskier securities and hold only Treasuries and US agency debt with an implicit or explicit government guarantee. This already has been communicated to American securities dealers, according to market participants with direct knowledge of the events.
It is not clear whether China's motive is simple risk aversion in the wake of a sharp widening of corporate and mortgage spreads during the past two weeks, or whether there also is a political dimension. With the expected termination of the Federal Reserve's special facility to purchase mortgage-backed securities next month, some asset-backed spreads already have blown out, and the Chinese institutions may simply be trying to get out of the way of a widening. There is some speculation that China's action has to do with the recent deterioration of US-Chinese relations over arm sales to Taiwan and other issues. That would be an unusual action for the Chinese to take-Beijing does not mix investment and strategic policy-and would be hard to substantiate in any event.
The U.S. still wants to declare war on Iran, or short of that, exact barbaric and debilitating sanctions on its people in the hopes of causing unrest and ultimately regime change, but China has no interests in that game:
Clinton had warned China it would come under a "lot of pressure" to recognize the threat from Iran's nuclear program and to join international calls for further sanctions. She said pressure would come as Washington and other powers "move away from the engagement track, which has not produced the results that some had hoped for, and move towards the pressure and sanctions track" to curb Iran's nuclear ambitions, which Tehran insists are for peaceful purposes.
Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said of the US's US$6.4 billion arms package for Taiwan that Washington should "truly respect China's core interests and major concerns, and immediately rescind the mistaken decision to sell arms to Taiwan, and stop selling arms to Taiwan to avoid damaging broader China-US relations".
According to the official China Daily:
"From now on, the US shall not expect cooperation from China on a wide range of major regional and international issues. If you don't care about our interests, why should we care about yours?"
In the mockumentary, the original cover, according to recording company representative Bobbi Fleckmann, featured "a greased, naked woman on all fours with a dog collar around her neck and a leash, and a man's arm extended out...holding on to the leash and pushing a black glove in her face to sniff it." The production company, Polymer Records, ultimately refused to release the cover because of pressure from retailers such as Sears and Kmart and gave the album a solid black cover instead. Upon learning of the concerns of Polymer, David St. Hubbins said, "You know, if we were serious and we said, 'Yes, she should be forced to smell the glove,' then you'd have a point, but it's all a joke." Bandmate Nigel Tufnel replied, "It is and it isn't. She should be made to smell it, but..." which David clarified with the statement, "But not, you know, over and over."
Rather than post an intro that would nothing more than a repetitive summary, I'll leave it to you to listen to how the MIC and the empire will end...
The end of an epoch in 2008-2009, and the beginnings of a new one in 2010:
Real News Network - January 7, 2010 Afghanistan and global dominance Pt2
F. William Engdahl: New regional cooperation that challenges US dominance is good for the world
Apparently many workers in China would -- for how much longer though is not entirely clear. You see the Chinese, want to make more, improve the Standard of Living for their families -- just like Americans and Europeans do.
8-12% Raises in Minimum Wages across China, in 2005!?
Apparently, Workers around the World, AREN'T Working just for the Fun of it!
This new trend toward leveling the the Global playing field, doesn't bode well for the Wal-Marts of the world, who rely on such "captured cheap labor markets" --
to remain quiet, dutiful, and
happy with a pittance.
Afterall Billions of Dollars (and Euros) are at stake -- those Foreign Workers must not upset that Apple cart.
The Great Green Hope for lifting America's economy is not looking so robust. [...]
Growth in clean energy industries and in green jobs has been considerably slower and bumpier than anticipated, industry experts say.
[...]
Last week, the Gamesa wind turbine plant in western Pennsylvania announced it was laying off nearly half its 280 workers. Last month, General Electric said it would close a solar panel factory in Delaware
[...]
There are myriad reasons why green jobs have grown more slowly than hoped. The clean energy component of the $787 billion stimulus package has only recently started to kick in. Energy experts say that banks, which have been reluctant to lend generally, have been especially loath to lend for alternative energy projects.
And renewable-energy companies are hesitating to invest in new plants and equipment before Congress enacts new environmental mandates, like cap and trade, to limit carbon emissions.
[...]
We're diving deep into "geek world" today with a story that combines economic hardball, the periodic table of the elements, and a barely noticed provision of the Defense Authorization Act that seeks to break a monopoly which today gives China near-absolute control over the materials that make cell phones, electric cars, wind turbines, and pretty much every other tool of modern life possible.
If we successfully break the monopoly, we'll be able to create millions of new manufacturing jobs in this country-and if we don't, somebody else owns the 21st Century.
Ironically, the global warming we're trying to fight with new green technologies might be an ally in our efforts to make those very same green technologies happen.
There's a revolution in industrial processing going on, rare earths are at the center of it all...and in today's story, the revolution will be televised.
Saturday Night Live did an interesting satire sketch last week, that raises the bar of its political humor to "The Daily Show" level and beyond.
Underneath this sophisticated satire, is the inconvenient truth that the once great United States is now on its knees at the mercy of begging for loans from Communist China, that it can never repay, in order prevent itself from having to formally declare Bankruptcy. And even as it does this (driving itself even further in debt in the process), all this never ending sea of Trillions of dollars in debt, which has exploded beyond anything before ever imaginable due to 10 years of multiple illegal, endless Wars & Foreign Occupations, has only resulted in a situation where the U.S. Dollar has steadily become virtually worthless.
World leaders representing nearly two-thirds of world economic output massively watered-down their public commitment to lowering greenhouse gasses last night, in what may be a grim portent for next month's climate change talks in Copenhagen.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, this on should suffice in explaining the urgency of our species phlight to act NOW, not later, and not pragmatically.
It is both ironic and sad that as climate change reform is watered down, the sea levels will rise even more.
Robert Reich being interviewed by Australian Broadcasting Corporation, snuck in a pretty good one-liner, I thought might be worth sharing:
ROBERT REICH, PUBLIC POLICY, UNI, OF CALIFORNIA: I wish I could say, Ali, that there were a lot of lessons learned on Wall Street. There don't seem to be. [...]
And yet the public is now out almost $600 billion, having cushioned the blow of the last round of risky ventures that Wall Street entered into. So, I wish I could be more optimistic and upbeat about where Wall Street has come to, but I don't think they've learned a thing.
ALI MOORE: Why is it? Why haven't the lessons been learned? Why is it that nothing has changed?
ROBERT REICH: A word with five letters: it's greed.
[Here's the one-liner]
If you take the greed out of Wall Street, all you're really left with -- is Pavement!
When a courageous speaker of truth emerges from the forest of lies that is modern media, the risk is ever present that censorship, suppression, or worse could occur. Sadly, that is the case today. Glenn Beck produced an episode of his program that continued his valiant search for communists burrowing into the woodwork of America like subversive termites eating away at the foundation of our national home. However, this episode has mysteriously disappeared. Fortunately, I have acquired a transcript (h/t Esquire) of the "Lost Episode" that reveals perhaps the most insidious enemy of freedom yet unveiled by Beck.
The question now is not if climate change will happen, but how much of a change do we want to allow and how quickly will those changes come? "Our destiny is really in our hands," Karl explained. "The size of those impacts is significantly smaller with appropriate controls."
I'm still absorbing the news that the Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Company Ltd, one of the giant industrial corporations that characterize present-day Chinese "socialism," has purchased the Hummer brand from General Motors as the latter shuffles down the path blazed long ago by Studebaker and American Motors.
The Hummer is of course the vehicle sensible people love to hate: ugly, heavy, dangerous, gas-guzzling, polluting, military (in roughly the same sense as camouflage footsie pajamas) and a big fat macho fraud--the damn thing is built on a regular GM SUV chassis, just like a plain old Chevy Colorado.
The psychological makeup of Hummer purchasers has been looked into more deeply, most succinctly by Ruben Bolling, the crackerjack creator of the Tom the Dancing Bug comic. (Won't embed for some reason--view his hysterical dis of Hummer owners here.]
I, however, have an even more theoretical speculation on the fate of the Hummer, based on the old Marxist precept that changes in people's consciousness tend to trail changes in material conditions. Let me draw first a brief analogy-when I spent a little time in West Africa in the early '80s, I met a couple of young guys, Komi and Kasimir, who were adherents of voudon (a/k/a voodoo). We talked about the belief system and they turned out to be followers of a particular fetiche or deity, which forbade them to eat anything cooked in a metal vessel or with metal utensils.
Kasimir and Komi told me of one the most dreaded of the voudon cults, whose fetiche was connected with smallpox, Its adherents would paint their faces white on sacred occasions and were feared for their ability to call disease down on enemies. Now this was only a decade since scientists and medical personnel had finally eradicated the disease in its last strongholds in Africa, so I asked if this group was still as feared as it had used to be. They both thought and said no, actually it was not as powerful and its fetiche not seen to be as deadly. Changes in consciousness trail changes in material conditions!
Back to the Hummer. The military's HumVee was a star of the last substantial victory for the US military, Operation Desert Storm, the 1991 Gulf War. The Arnold Schwarzeneggers of the US felt uncontrollable lust and a civilian version was soon forthcoming, and became a GM product by 1998.
9/11-fueled war fever sent sales soaring even higher--for a while. But by early 2004 they were declining precipitously. I rather doubt that it was due to sudden environmental concerns among its target audience. I think what happened is that fairly early in the occupation of Iraq, it became clear that this mighty war wagon could be taken out by a couple of Baghdad teenagers with a big artillery round and a garage door opener. Whether people thought about it consciously or not, IEDs had taken the bloom off the rose.
I don't know what Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Company management is thinking. I can't see a big Hummer comeback in the US and the contribution they'd make to China's already horrific pollution boggles the mind. Indications are they plan to market these vehicular plug-uglies more heavily in developing nation markets. I can only say I hope they take a richly deserved bath on this venture.
Crossposted from Fire on the Mountain.
Yesterday we saw investigative historian and journalist Gareth Porter talk with Paul Jay of the Real News Network about the war in Afghanistan and Obama's recent appointment of Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal to replace General McKiernan as the US commander in Afghanistan.
Porter says the McChrystal appointment won't fulfill Obama's supposed intention of investing in a civilian surge that will "win over the population," through "services and political programs" because during his five year service in the Joint Special Operations Command and recently as the Director of the Joint Staff, McChrystal "has only been involved in targeted killings."
We also learned that Obama's surge may be only a prelude to a ground invasion of Pakistan as part of ongoing imperial resource wars.
Today in part two of the interview we learn that Porter has also interviewed Graham Fuller, the CIA Station Chief in Kabul during US support for the Afghan Jihadi movement against the Soviet Union, and says that Fuller "now believes very strongly the United States has to get out. That there is no way the United States is going to be able to win, [because the US] has no understanding of the forces it has unleashed in Afghanistan."
Real News Network - May 25, 2009 No way to "win" in Afghanistan
Porter: The United States doesn't understand the forces it unleashed in Afghanistan
I think that Porter is right as far as the majority of people in the US and the world not understanding the forces unleashed in Afghanistan by the US invasion and occupation, but I also feel Porter hasn't gone far enough in explaining the context of what is happening in Afghanistan and with Obama's surge, and I want to highly recommend to readers a thorough reading of another recent and very detailed in depth piece from Tom Englehart and from Pepe Escobar that places the AfPak situation in the much wider geopolitical context of a desperate US attempt at world energy and resource domination: Tomgram: Pepe Escobar, Pipelineistan Goes Af-Pak.
Welcome to the 9th in the Dog's letter writing campaign series. This series is dedicated to taking action (even if it is a small action) every week on the issue of torture. Here is how it works, each week the Dog writes a letter highlighting some aspect of the torture issue and making the point this requires investigation. The Dog sends these letters to the President, the Supreme Court, AG Holder, Speaker Pelosi, Majority Leader Reid and Rep. John Conyers, the Chair of the House Judiciary Committee. Your part, if you chose to act is pretty easy. Simply cut and paste the letter and send it under your own name.
This will be a book review of Minqi Li's "The Rise of China and the Demise of the Capitalist World Economy," a book which is important for its calculation of the rising contradiction between capitalist growth and ecological sustainability, and for its perspective on Chinese history.
Li's prose is clear and understandable, and his use of graphs and charts really drives his points home rather than (as is the case with some economic writing) confusing the reader. In this review, I will look at Li's book with one eye upon a conference I have volunteered with Focus the Nation to help organize. Li will be the keynote speaker at the FtN conference at USC.
March on Washington
