[Cruzandercerberus]

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Copenhagen was a disaster. That much is agreed. But the truth about what actually happened is in danger of being lost amid the spin and inevitable mutual recriminations. The truth is this: China wrecked the talks, intentionally humiliated Barack Obama, and insisted on an awful "deal" so western leaders would walk away carrying the blame. How do I know this? Because I was in the room and saw it happen.

China's strategy was simple: block the open negotiations for two weeks, and then ensure that the closed-door deal made it look as if the west had failed the world's poor once again.

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Here's what actually went on late last Friday night, as heads of state from two dozen countries met behind closed doors. Obama was at the table for several hours, sitting between Gordon Brown and the Ethiopian prime minister, Meles Zenawi. The Danish prime minister chaired, and on his right sat Ban Ki-moon, secretary-general of the UN. Probably only about 50 or 60 people, including the heads of state, were in the room. I was attached to one of the delegations, whose head of state was also present for most of the time.

What I saw was profoundly shocking. The Chinese premier, Wen Jinbao, did not deign to attend the meetings personally, instead sending a second-tier official in the country's foreign ministry to sit opposite Obama himself. The diplomatic snub was obvious and brutal, as was the practical implication: several times during the session, the world's most powerful heads of state were forced to wait around as the Chinese delegate went off to make telephone calls to his "superiors".

http://www.guardian....ange-mark-lynas

And this is how it ends. Dictated to by a clerk.

In case you've been living under a rock you've noticed that the U.S. is being forced into a subordinate position to other nations by virtue of massive debt from government spending. It is exactly what happened when the UK was financially exhausted and heavily in debt to the U.S. This position left it almost completely unable to defend its colonies by force. The U.S. capitalized on its position of banker and forced the UK to abandon the empire by threat of economic collapse otherwise.

China is now irreversibly a stakeholder in the future of our economy. However they have put themselves in a difficult position. The main reason they hold so much of our currency is to allow them to artificially depress the value of their currency. They hold a lot of E.U. currency and debt also. Ultimately if they decided to dump our shit it would be a tough blow for them but it would be the end of our economic system. They are in the driver seat. They now hold a permanent role as an domestic economic advisor at the highest possible level. Every major government initiative that the U.S. Government undertakes now has to be tacitly approved by China.

The Chinese strategy will be to keep the U.S. economy churning at almost no growth into perpetuity. It will happen.

What can we do about this? Absolutely Nothing.

The jobs are not coming back. Learn Chinese.

[conran]

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The jobs are not coming back. Learn Chinese.

You might be the dumbest person in existence. Maybe you don't understand our economic system, we have to literally spend our way out of recessions and then *attempt* to pay off our deficit when the economy is on an uptick. We look like assholes on the world scale because....... WE ARE.

Dun dun dun!!!

We started this global recession if you didn't notice. Of course we're being treated like shit. We fucked up the whole fucking world because of our economy.

Get over it and quit blaming Obama. He's doing the best he can and he didn't spend all that money to create jobs and jump start the economy, there's a 20% (unemployment would have probably spiked over that.... but let's say 20%) chance that you would be unemployed.

[Cruzandercerberus]

Blame Obama? Please show me where I did that. I simply made statements of fact. I don't recall where I said that Barack Obama personally sent China the 1.5 trillion dollars they hold in dollar denominated reserves. This is not about bashing Obama. I do not enjoy seeing the president embarrassed by chinese bureaucrats.

The trade deficit is 100% due to American consumers. You're the one that has to get over the fact that Obama cannot get us out of this. No matter how much you wuvs him with all your widdle heart. regardless of what happened in the last election, this problem would still persist. And of course your statement that if we didn't spend more things would be worse is unprovable tripe, because even the most brilliant economists that are alive (Volcker, Bernanke, whoever you like) don't fucking know that. And didn't know it when they make unemployment predictions which repeatedly are proven incorrect. And in fact if I become unemployed it is because we are all so completely and irreversibly fucked that there is no way we'd be on here exercising the luxury of talking about how fucked we are.

Also fuck you and your idiot prejudices about me, you don't know me like that. Bitch.

[conran]

If I wasn't so lazy I'd search for your previous posts and show you that you blame him for pretty much everything. It's not too hard to read between the lines especially considering 1/2 of the 1.5 trillion dollars that you're talking about was on Obama's watch.

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You're the one that has to get over the fact that Obama cannot get us out of this.

Are you just rambling on at this point? Why can't Obama get us out of this? Seems to be doing just fine...... stocks are back up, jobs are starting to come back, new financial laws to make sure that this shit never happens again. These things take time, years probably. And I do like Obama. He's the lesser of two evils, that's all. If it wasn't for him, we'd be invading 2 more countries and infringing on personal liberties.

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And of course your statement that if we didn't spend more things would be worse is unprovable tripe, because even the most brilliant economists that are alive (Volcker, Bernanke, whoever you like) don't fucking know that.

Let's see..... I'll try and break it down for you Barney style.

No jobs + More of No jobs= Pure Shit
No jobs + Jobs/Economic Growth=Going in the right direction

I may not be an economist and the two you mentioned may not be able to read the future but everyone pretty much knows what would happen if we didn't create more jobs. See the first part of the lolmath problem if you don't remember.

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Also fuck you and your idiot prejudices about me, you don't know me like that. Bitch.

Here's the kicker. I don't have to be your BFF to know that you bash our government for no reason and spew filth like get ready to be bow down to china. That's the last thing that people need right now. I also don't have to be your long lost brother to spot out that you're a douchebag.

[Cruzandercerberus]

conran, on 27 December 2009 - 08:09 PM, said:

No jobs + More of No jobs= Pure Shit
No jobs + Jobs/Economic Growth=Going in the right direction

I may not be an economist and the two you mentioned may not be able to read the future but everyone pretty much knows what would happen if we didn't create more jobs. See the first part of the lolmath problem if you don't remember.

Wealth cannot be created by fiat. Labor doesn't ever create wealth. Labor is fungible and abundant. Innovation creates wealth. Without an economy driven by private sector innovation to create new products for export, we have nothing but debt. That debt will be satisfied by reclaiming wealth from private enterprise. stifling innovation by making investment capital difficult to obtain. No matter who is in office the government will continue to spend at alarming rates and the demand to pay service on the debt will continue to depress real GDP growth.

The situation we are in now is not sustainable. And is probably past the point of no return. The U.S. is basically a business that borrows $500 from the bank every day to buy the goods that they sell that day for $450. Our need for capital and our spending is literally that bad. Its daily. ANY interruption of massive borrowing would lead to outright economic collapse.

From the standpoint of the Chinese, American treasuries are like a savings account for them. A buffer. The U.S. Government has literally no concept of that. I will bash them for that lack of perspective (or perhaps indifference to it). They don't NEED our money. They have it so they can leverage control. Would dropping 10% of their American treasuries and currency and buying that commensurate amount in Euro-zone stuff hurt them? It would not significantly. Even a small unload like that would devastate us. Make no mistake....we are fucked beyond repair and China has us by the balls.

http://www.bloomberg...id=aL6KzrXJh418

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“We have another economic problem which is mixed up in this of too much consumption, too much spending relative to our capacity to invest and to export,”

~Paul Volcker

What does this mean to you? I'll tell you what it means to me. It means that the current administration intends on reducing our trade deficit with the third world. If you want to get rid of trade deficits you would have to lower the American standard of living significantly so that our consumers could not demand as many goods. Lowered consumption means higher (and sustained) unemployment.

Enjoy your pure shit sandwich.

There are plenty of good reasons I bash the government, you just don't understand them and choose to simplify things into child like caracatures instead of trying. I will say If Democrats took the oft quoted Thomas Jefferson "the less we use our power the greater it will be." they've been using on the Republicans for war spending and applied it to their domestic spending I would be a lot happier with the outcome.

[Demonsquall]

Fuck this shit, i'm stocking up on shit and heading for Antarctica...

[Chrono51]

conran, on 27 December 2009 - 08:09 PM, said:

And I do like Obama. He's the lesser of two evils, that's all. If it wasn't for him, blah blah blah and infringing on personal liberties.

You mean like that whole secret copyright treaty bullshit he is pulling?

anyways I think its about time to convert all my money to yen and not come back to the US >_>

[Vigilous]

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If I wasn't so lazy I'd search for your previous posts and show you that you blame him for pretty much everything.

You can't blame someone who hasn't done anything.

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You mean like that whole secret copyright treaty bullshit he is pulling?

Bush actually started that. Pay attention. Only difference is, Obama took all the surveillance aspects of it and added it into the Patriot Act.

[Fencer of Alexander]

(Yea I know tl;dr)

Here is my 2c bean-counter perspective on the national debt and the general economic health of the federal government.

First, I have never really found anything sinister behind 1 country investing in financial instruments issued by another. Because of inflation, countries, like households, must invest their cash someplace, as storing it under your mattress inevitably causes the value of your cash holdings to decline. US government issued debt has for the longest time been considered the safest investment in the world. In fact, the risk-free rate used in finance and accounting is just the rate of return on the US government 30 year T-bill. A quick look into who actually owns the US debt reveals that Japan also owns $746.5 Billion as compared to China's $798.9 Billion. (Yet this country receives substantially less press for its share of the US debt)

The problem is not really who owns it, but that the debt level is indeed high.

As for the actual fiscal health of the government, I'm less pessimistic. Every major organization needs debt to survive, as it is impossible to raise your assets in a reasonable amount of time on equity alone. Even a successful firm like Google which had that stellar IPO a few years back has today 3.5Bn worth in debt. However, it's considered as having a good balance sheet because this amount represents only 10% of its total assets. It's hard to make this comparison with public entities because Public Accounting is done a little bit differently, but one way is to use the GDP as a substitute for "Assets" in the accounting identity.

GDP is not exactly a perfect match for government assets, but it does a good job at representing the total productivity of a country. In here, the US has a Debt to GDP ratio of roughly 0.8 at the moment, mostly influenced by the latest recession. In better times like during the later Clinton years the ratio was much lower, it hovered under 60%. In contrast to the second largest economy of the world, Japan, their ratio hovers at a crushing +150% regularly (1.5).

I wish someone would take a serious look at accounting for every asset: financial, real estate, etc owned by the federal government and thus we can have a better view on how the debt is actually used, which in my opinion is more important... but you'd be surprised as to how difficult this information is to find. It's either poor transparency or crappy bookkeeping (they're really the same actually). The only real hard figure on assets you can find is the monetary side as reported by the Fed. On financial instruments alone, US has assets of roughly 2.2 trillion, which obviously does not cover the whole national debt, but when you pile the remaining assets owned by the US, the situation probably will look less dreadful.

[Cruzandercerberus]

Vigilous, on 28 December 2009 - 09:53 AM, said:

You can't blame someone who hasn't done anything.

Ho, ho.

It's getting tiresome how all the Obama dick suckers act like whorinsh women and use Cognitive kill switches change the focus of the discussion from content to identity. Fucking pavlovian cockroaches.

[firefeng]

I am past the point of believing I can effect any change whatsoever on the bloated curmudgeon our government has become over hundreds of years; to survive as an individual, I imagine it behooves me to start learning Chinese. As Alexander pointed out, our debt is no where near as frightful as we can and do make it out to be; however, I also know I'm not alone in my disillusionment with the democratic process, and I imagine that such growing doubts, more than any spreadsheet balance,will eventually spell the downfall of this nation. Or we could totally team up with China like in Firefly, and everything will be coo'. Or I'm just playing chicken little like every generation does, peering through rose-colored glasses at past successes while also ignoring that past generations were certain that theirs would be the last.

[Cruzandercerberus]

firefeng, on 29 December 2009 - 08:30 AM, said:

I am past the point of believing I can effect any change whatsoever on the bloated curmudgeon our government has become over hundreds of years; to survive as an individual, I imagine it behooves me to start learning Chinese. As Alexander pointed out, our debt is no where near as frightful as we can and do make it out to be; however, I also know I'm not alone in my disillusionment with the democratic process, and I imagine that such growing doubts, more than any spreadsheet balance,will eventually spell the downfall of this nation. Or we could totally team up with China like in Firefly, and everything will be coo'. Or I'm just playing chicken little like every generation does, peering through rose-colored glasses at past successes while also ignoring that past generations were certain that theirs would be the last.

The increasing inability of democratic governments to get anything done is a symptom of the nation breaking up. We can limp along probably indefinately without outside financial pressure. The Soviet Union might have lasted another 30 or 40 years if outside threats hadn't caused them to make financially fatal policy a matter of unquestionable need. That is the danger. Are we going to change anything? No. No one can be told what the matrix is.

[Vigilous]

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Ho, ho.

It's getting tiresome how all the Obama dick suckers act like whorinsh women and use Cognitive kill switches change the focus of the discussion from content to identity. Fucking pavlovian cockroaches.

Figured you'd like that one, lol.

[Cruzandercerberus]

Fencer of Alexander, on 28 December 2009 - 05:03 PM, said:

First, I have never really found anything sinister behind 1 country investing in financial instruments issued by another.

The problem is not really who owns it, but that the debt level is indeed high.

Sinister is not the way I would put it. It is not sinister when the debt is held by a just government who has a decentralized political system where the citizen has some level of recourse against the government. China however has none of that. They don't give a shit about things like individual worth, human rights, etc. Power in summation. While many nations' policies may often seem schitzophrenic, and hence not pointedly threatening or "Sinister", China knows exactly what it's doing.

[Fencer of Alexander]

Cruzandercerberus, on 29 December 2009 - 10:47 AM, said:

Sinister is not the way I would put it. It is not sinister when the debt is held by a just government who has a decentralized political system where the citizen has some level of recourse against the government. China however has none of that. They don't give a shit about things like individual worth, human rights, etc. Power in summation. While many nations' policies may often seem schitzophrenic, and hence not pointedly threatening or "Sinister", China knows exactly what it's doing.

They know exactly what they're doing which happens to be virtually the same thing every government does - invest their savings, just like Japan which owns 746.5 Billion of the debt (almost as much as China), the UK which owns 133 Billion, and a consortium of oil exporters (of which many are our political enemies) with 169 Billion. Even our enemies and rivals agree, investing in US debt is a safe low-risk alternative for national treasuries.

Of course everyone would rather have all their customers be nice well mannered representative democracies, but even for the Federal government it's all business at the end of the day. In the first decade of this century, immense government spending in the US, coupled with China's explosive economic growth during the same time created the circumstances by which China owns a large chunk of the debt. The government wanted to spend spend spend, and there was someone willing to buy our debt instruments so we could do it.

In the alternate universe where China never became the economic powerhouse it currently is, another government or coalition of governments will have surely stepped in to purchase said securities when the US was willing to sell it.

[sy.ste]

Cruzandercerberus, on 27 December 2009 - 07:08 PM, said:

What can we do about this? Absolutely Nothing.

The jobs are not coming back. Learn Chinese.

well thats no so bad. stop ur whining and start to learn chinese an then hydro enginering as a complmnt. u will b e very attracted in china. if you work in china repbluc you will be very respected. there is no greter glory than working for china or russian federation.

[treelo]

All that time and effort denouncing Communism and in the end they just buy you out. Classic.

[sy.ste]

treelo, on 30 December 2009 - 05:51 PM, said:

All that time and effort denouncing Communism and in the end they just buy you out. Classic.

except, china arent relly communists anymore. were have you been hidin?

[Cruzandercerberus]

treelo, on 30 December 2009 - 05:51 PM, said:

All that time and effort denouncing Communism and in the end they just buy you out. Classic.

sy.ste, on 30 December 2009 - 05:57 PM, said:

except, china arent relly communists anymore. were have you been hidin?

Yeah, really. Also enjoy being fucked even harder on gas prices by Russia's new pipeline to China.

sy.ste, on 30 December 2009 - 05:07 PM, said:

there is no greter glory than working for china or russian federation.

With the shit going on over here, I'm not about to disagree. At least about the Russia part, China can still go fuck themselves. We pretend to be better than Russia, but with shit like nationalization of the auto industry, leveraging government money into firing CEOs and shielding from prosecution racist/fascist special interest groups that threaten to club old ladies at voting stations. It's difficult to say that we're much different than the totalitarianism in Russia with a straight face. At least their totalitarianism is done by a real man not a race baiting effete coward.

[sy.ste]

Cruzandercerberus, on 30 December 2009 - 08:53 PM, said:

Yeah, really. Also enjoy being fucked even harder on gas prices by Russia's new pipeline to China.



With the shit going on over here, I'm not about to disagree. At least about the Russia part, China can still go fuck themselves. We pretend to be better than Russia, but with shit like nationalization of the auto industry, leveraging government money into firing CEOs and shielding from prosecution racist/fascist special interest groups that threaten to club old ladies at voting stations. It's difficult to say that we're much different than the totalitarianism in Russia with a straight face. At least their totalitarianism is done by a real man not a race baiting effete coward.

i see but nationalising the automobile industry is nt such a bad idea. the State is a vrey good entrepenur an will see to the companys best. they wil maximize profit. the government are the people. an if the govnerment support firing CEOS they probebly diserved it. they were to incompetent to run thier own businees an coudnt handle pressure during this financal crisis.