"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler
It’s like the punchline of a Jeff Foxworthy joke:
BEIJING, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) — Two people were killed and 223 have been injured in the Chinese capital amid traditional New Year fireworks frenzy that lasted from Wednesday evening to Thursday noon. . . .
On Thursday, Beijing dispatched more than 20,000 street cleaners after a night of fireworks. A total of 2,380 tons of exploded fireworks have been swept up by workers.
That there’s funny, I don’t care who you are.
Jimmie Bise is right: “Nothing Sends a Message Like an Aircraft Carrier,” and President Obama seems to have realized that godless commie dictators aren’t going to be persuaded by mere words:
The Pentagon has dispatched the aircraft carrier strike group led by the USS George Washington to the Yellow Sea for naval exercises with South Korea following the exchange of artillery fire between the North and South.
The exercises are likely to anger China which in the past pressed Washington not to send its aircraft carriers to the sea.
The U.S. military command in Seoul announced that the carrier will take part in exercises in “waters west of the Korean peninsula” from Nov. 28 to Dec. 1.
“This exercise is defensive in nature,” the statement said. “While planned well before yesterday’s unprovoked artillery attack, it demonstrates the strength of the [South Korea]-U.S. alliance and our commitment to regional stability through deterrence.”
As for offending the Chinese:
But of course, China doesn’t want war with the U.S. They’ll make a lot of diplomatic noise about this situation, but the Pyongyang regime has become an embarrassment to them.
UPDATE: King Shamus isn’t optimistic:
Chances are, no matter what strategy Obama employs, he and his State Department will help to escalate the situation to something near catastrophic levels.
OMG. I hadn’t thought of that. It’s bad enough dealing with the North Koreans. The State Department is where you’ll find the real hard-line commies.
Back in May, Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) made himself political point-man for a left-wing attack on Goldline — which just coincidentally happens to be one of Glenn Beck’s few remaining advertisers. (Beck’s show is the No. 1 cable news program in its time slot, but has lost advertising revenue because of the Left’s vitriolic boycott campaign.)
Weiner said that Goldline “takes advantage of fears about President Barack Obama’s stewardship of the economy — which are stoked by its stable of paid conservative endorsers including Beck, Mark Levin, Laura Ingraham and Fred Thompson — ‘to cheat consumers.'”
What Weiner and his allies on the Left were saying is that, because Goldline advertised on Beck, it was wrong for Beck to tell his viewers that gold is a wise investment in a time of economic instability. But I advised:
Everybody Should Buy Gold, Even If
Glenn Beck Gets Paid to Tell You So
Gold was then selling at $1,192 an ounce. And now? How does $1,399 an ounce sound to you?
So if you had listened to Glenn Beck and bought gold in May — when Anthony Weiner was telling you that Beck was part of a scheme “to cheat consumers” — your investment would have made you a profit of 17.4% in six months. And check out the news today:
Gold gained in New York as European debt concerns spurred demand for a protection of wealth and as faster inflation in China boosted demand for commodities.
Gold futures climbed to a record $1,424.30 an ounce on Nov. 9 on concern that some European governments may struggle to raise funds. Portuguese and Spanish government bonds declined on mounting concern that nations on Europe’s periphery will be forced to restructure their debt. All six main industrial metals on the London Metal Exchange gained after China’s inflation reached a two-year high.
“The re-emergence of sovereign risk should ultimately help the yellow metal,” Edel Tully, an analyst at UBS AG in London, said in a report. “Rising inflation is one of the single biggest factors driving China’s appetite for gold.”
Did you catch that? Now the Chinese are buying gold.
Maybe they’re watching Glenn Beck in Beijing.
UPDATE: Malice or incompetence? “It’s almost as if the Feds are purposely trying to destroy our currency. That, or they have no clue what they’re doing.”
UPDATE II: Five weeks ago, I suggested that rising stock market indexes were actually a reflection of inflation: Stocks were going up in dollar amounts, because the dollar was losing value. Now, via Instapundit:
“By pushing the dollar down 15%, the Fed managed to goose the S&P 500 by 19% since June 1. Stated that way, the leap in stocks can be seen as mostly the result of the Fed’s eradication of the dollar’s purchasing power. Priced in wheat, which has soared 71% since June, then the U.S. stock market has woefully underperformed.”
In the long run, markets cannot be deceived.
UPDATE: Welcome, Ace of Spades HQ Morons. And I mean “moron” as a compliment, having done quite a bit of commenting there over the years, occasionally under such pseudonyms as “Chuck Norris’ Left Testicle.”
Yeah, this could kind of wreck the class-warfare rhetoric Democrats usually roll out in their election campaigns:
California Democrat Rep. Jane Harman’s family business is laying off American workers – including engineering employees in California — and shifting jobs overseas.
A letter from the human resources director of one Harman company, obtained exclusively by The American Spectator, describes a “permanent” layoff of dozens of California workers that went into effect last week.
“I am writing to inform you that Harman Consumer, Inc. has decided to consolidate their global engineering operations located at 8500 Balboa Boulevard, Northridge, California 91329, to Shenzhen, China,” Sandra Buchanan wrote in the letter dated July 20. “The separation is expected to be on September 30, 2010 and will affect forty-eight (48) employees. . . . The layoffs are expected to be permanent . . . .”
Harman is the third-richest member of Congress, and her net worth increased last year $40 million, according to a study of Federal Election Commission records conducted by The Hill newspaper. . . .
Wonder what Mattie Fein will have to say about this?
The headline is “Obama Urges Europe Not to Drop Stimulus Measures Yet,” but to understand what the president is actually trying to say, you have to read this New York Times story very carefully:
President Obama signaled on Friday that countries in Europe should not withdraw their extraordinary spending programs too quickly.
In a public letter to other leaders of the Group of 20 nations in advance of a summit in Toronto next week, Mr. Obama wrote, “Our highest priority in Toronto must be to safeguard and strengthen the recovery.” . . .
Mr. Obama also wrote, “We must be flexible in adjusting the pace of consolidation and learn from the consequential mistakes of the past when stimulus was too quickly withdrawn and resulted in renewed economic hardships and recession.” . . .
American officials are concerned that fiscal retrenchment by too many countries at once could imperil the global recovery.
Mr. Obama warned of the risks of a double-dip recession, which most economists consider unlikely but not impossible.
“In fact, should confidence in the strength of our recoveries diminish, we should be prepared to respond again as quickly and as forcefully as needed to avoid a slowdown in economic activity,” he wrote.
People who haven’t been paying close attention might not understand why Obama is saying all this. Obama, his advisers and the Democrats in general are firm believers in Keynesian economics, which prescribes deficit “stimulus” spending. But Germany isn’t buying that baloney. Bloomberg News explains:
While Obama endorsed restoring order to public finances in the “medium-term,” his focus on growth is at odds with that of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s preference for budget cuts amid Europe’s debt crisis. Each strategy carries risks. Continued stimulus risks bondholder revolt over rising debt burdens, while spending cutbacks could tip the global economy back into recession.. . .
Merkel, the head of Europe’s largest economy, said June 11 she expects to have a “hard time” at the summit and that she will respond that “there is no alternative” to cutting the fiscal deficit.
Germany’s Cabinet this month backed budget cuts worth more than 80 billion euros through 2014, while French President Nicolas Sarkozy this week raised the retirement age and increased taxes.
Pay close attention to this part of the Bloomberg story:
Chinese officials said in Beijing today that they plan to use the Toronto talks to discuss responses to Europe’s sovereign debt turmoil while keeping the yuan’s value off the agenda. The yuan has been held at about 6.83 yuan to one U.S. dollar since mid-2008 to help protect China’s exporters, drawing threats of tariffs from among U.S. lawmakers.
Obama doesn’t mention China in the letter but maintains his position that China’s currency value should be determined by the market. “I also want to underscore that market-determined exchange rates are essential to global economic vitality,” he said.
Obama is facing domestic pressure from his own party to lean on China to raise the value of its currency. Lawmakers such as House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Sander Levin and New York Senator Charles Schumer, both Democrats, say a weak currency gives Chinese exporters an unfair advantage over their U.S. competitors and costs U.S. jobs.
Levin said yesterday that the value must be increased by the end of the summit. After the G-20 meeting, “if China does not act and the administration does not respond promptly thereafter, the Congress will act,” Levin said yesterday at a hearing.
The Bloomberg reporter doesn’t connect the dots here, but mention of a potential “bondholder revolt” and this trade issue with China are in fact connected.
China owns a lot of U.S. debt, and there seems to be an implicit bargain here: China will keep funding Obama’s deficit spending spree, so long as the U.S. keeps its markets open to Chinese goods. Under pressure from U.S. labor unions, however, Schumer and Levin are starting to talk like Smoot and Hawley, which would undo that bargain.
So we’ve got high unemployment with mind-boggling deficits as far as the eye can see, and the whole thing could unravel if China ever gets tired of buying U.S. debt.
Gold just hit $1,262 an ounce. Mere coincidence, I’m sure.