Deficit Drumbeats along the Yongding 2
Through state media, China is taking advantage of the US financial situation to suggest that US military spending is too high. A snippet from the Asia Times report:
I tend to agree that US military spending is out of control, though I am certain my path to that conclusion is much different from China’s. As I heard today, nine days worth of military spending in Afghanistan would fill the budget hole at the US Post Office.*
I suspect China is primarily concerned with protecting their investments in US T-Bills.
Aside:
The Republican Party is not “deficit-phobic.” It is deficit prone, as a casual acquaintance with its track record shows. Its current “deficit-phobia” is a tactic, more three-card monte.
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*Next week, the show link will move from “Current Show” to the Show Archives. It’s kind of a screwy way to do it, but that’s how their website works.
August 16, 2011 at 1:13 pm
Amusing. Us and China have something of a symbiotic death grip/devil’s bargain with each other. We are the major purchaser of their export non-military dry goods for the middle class. And they park their money here, not only because there’s no alternative, but because it also keeps -their- money artificially devalued. And with it devalued they can keep doing our domestic manufacturing and receiving all of our outsourced jobs, keeping the growing Chinese middle class employed. There’s one thing that China’s leaders are very afraid of and it’s unrest caused by mass unemployment. So they can’t afford to do anything, except maybe make cosmetic noise, that would markedly reduce any buying power on working and non-working Americans. Unfortunately for them that also constitutes the mass of Americans working in the war machine, a Keynsian jobs program, the only one we have.
Paradoxically, we know all of the GOP and a good portion of the Democratic Party don’t care a fig about unemployment. But they will all fight to the death to keep employment in the war machine high. And I’m not really a big believer in the uniformity of any alleged Tea Party belief that defense should be downsized. In the run up to the 2008 elections I saw plenty of signage and proclamations that Obama was a threat because he would gut military spending. Which, as it turned out, made laughable such claims.
And you already know what I really think about defense spending. Never has so much been so unfairly distributed for so little in return.
August 16, 2011 at 2:56 pm
As Dr. Moriarity and Sherlock Holmes struggle towards the lip of the cliff . . . .