"Words that make actions speak louder."
Over the weekend China announced a change in its currency policy. But is it for real? Or is it designed to head off Congressional action? So far China has pulled away the football. Their Central Bank was buying up dollars as usual to keep the currency from rising. WSJ: China Central Bank Tames Yuan Appreciation […]
America needs an economic/industrial policy like other countries have. THAT is how we will pay off our debt — by earning money. You may have read about the back-and-forth on Chinese currency this weekend. China said they would let their exchange rate adjust, and then pulled the football away. The deal is that China manipulates […]
China’s central bank announced over the weekend that it will gradually loosen their currency from its tie to the dollar (but see note below). China said they will allow the currency to appreciate, saying that their economy is recovering. This appreciation will encourage Chinese consumers to boost consumption and is good for American manufacturing and […]
Treasury Secretary Geithner delayed a required April 15 declaration that China is manipulating its currency, saying it will instead be taken up by the G20. China has now warned other G20 countries that the G20 meeting in Toronto next week is not the appropriate place to discuss their currency manipulation, saying that would be “finger-pointing.” […]
Before you read on, yes this is for real. Yes, Democrats are joining with Republicans to fight help for the long-term unemployed. Yes, members of Congress are blaming the unemployed, calling them names, and proposing that the unemployed be publicly humiliated. And yes, for some reason they think this will win them votes. If you […]
The headline of my local paper today is Obama: Act on clean energy. (But a different headline online – do they do that just to mess up bloggers?) In the speech the President paid homage to President Carter’s efforts to change America’s energy policies, saying, For decades, we have known the days of cheap and […]
“The moral equivalent of war.” Tonight President Obama will talk about the Gulf oil catastrophe, and, hopefully, overall energy and climate policy. A look back at President Carter’s fight over energy brings some context to this situation. On April 18, 1977, 33 years ago, President Jimmy Carter gave a White House speech on energy and […]
Today the country is looking for ways to cut spending and borrowing. Yet military spending, the biggest spending item in the budget, is barely part of the discussion — obviously because of the amount of campaign and lobbying dollars it generates. The corrupting influence of lobbying money is clear: the fact that the Soviet Union […]
After all this time China is still manipulating its currency, the Obama administration is still not able to get them to change, their exports are still rising relative to the rest of the world, global imbalances are still bubbling out of control, jobs are still being lost, and the Senate is getting ready to force […]