And so should every Democrat (hopeful or incumbant) in Congress. The Dems have done jack shit to solve this problem, when it should have been first on their agenda, and they had the seats to do something about it. They largely created this problem to begin with.

Politicians Play The China Card
by Jeff Yang, October 27, 2010
View and comment on NPR.org  
Given the hyperpolarized nature of the current electoral environment, it’s amazing to think candidates of opposing parties can still find anything to agree on other than blanket truisms like “the system is broken” and “water is wet.” (And heck, even the latter might provoke angry 140-character rebuttals on Twitter these days.)

But if you’ve been watching campaign ads -- with more than $3 billion dumped into political advertising this season, how could you avoid them? -- you’ll notice that a remarkable bipartisan coalition has coalesced around one of the most critical geopolitical issues of the day: our relationship with China. And the common ground they’ve arrived at appears to be that China is evil, scary, and poised to eat our lunch.

On October 9, David Chen of The New York Times noted that more than 29 candidates, Democrats and Republicans, have unveiled commercials attacking their opponents for aiding and abetting China’s imminent economic takeover of America.

In one ad, Democrat Joe Sestak, waging a hard-pitched Senate battle against Republican Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania, accused the latter of “fighting for jobs…in China.” (Sound of gong striking!):



In one ad, Democrat Joe Sestak, waging a hard-pitched Senate battle against Republican Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania, accused the latter of “fighting for jobs…in China.” (Sound of gong striking!):

In a race for West Virginia’s 3rd Congressional District, Republican Spike Maynard raised the ominous specter of Mao Zedong while accusing opponent Nick Rahall of voting for a bill that ended up funding Chinese wind turbine manufacturers:


And perhaps most egregiously, Ohio Democratic U.S. Rep. Zack Space ran ads condemning Republican rival Robert Gibbs for supporting free trade agreements that benefit China, “like NAFTA.” (Look how insidious China is: They already weaseled their way into becoming part of North America!)

The Space ad was made even more distressing by its unfortunate imagery. While many of the cycle’s anti-China ads share similar iconography (lots of Communist red, triumphalism, PRC flags, Beijing opera sound effects)  Space’s hired guns decided to climax the commercial on a stock photo of a Lunar New Year dragon dance performance -- which careful observers will recognize as taking place in San Francisco. The English-language signs in the background are a dead giveaway.

That’s what makes the widespread demonization of China and “the Chinese” so frightening to Asian Americans: The line between Asians on that side of the ocean and those on this side has always been blurry to those with a surplus of rage and a deficit of judgment.

To see where all this is leading, you need go no further than Citizens Against Government Waste’s scurrilous “Chinese Professor” ad, which shows a Beijing educator in the year 2030 explaining how American deficit spending led to China’s conquest of the West (cue creepy, villainous laughter):


Except that the ad was shot in Washington, D.C., and the audience apparently celebrating the fall of the U.S. is actually made up of local Asian American college students -- who’d been lured to the shoot with the bait of being extras for the next Transformers sequel, and never informed of the nature of the shoot in which they were participating.

But hey, an evil Asian is an evil Asian, right?

Postscript: A group of Asian American bloggers is fighting back on the Citizens Against Government Waste ad with a resubtitling contest hoping to make “Chinese Professor” the next “Hitler Is Angry.” Check it out!

Writer Jeff Yang is the "Asian Pop" columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle and lives in New York. Copyright 2010 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

war for oil,war based on pretense


record spending for war against Iraq


bush bush bush was the president who spent spent spent

and did not make our economy grow

record deficit under bush/cheney

I find that most Americans either don't know history, choose to ignore history, or just do not understand what has transpired throughout history. Very few understand our monetary system. They are too busy blaming the other guy for this or that. They are too caught up in the political spin. There is a certain reality that is going to rock everyone's world within the next decade. There is no stopping it as it is too late and too big. Within the next decade there will be a complete economic collapse in the U.S. and leading this collapse will be the U.S. dollar. There are many events that has lead to the current situation dating back to 1913 when the Federal Reserve was created to 1971 when Nixon managed to create our current fiat currency taking the dollar of the fractional gold standard. Since 1971 Congress was able to write bad checks. This has lead to the creation of a 14 trillion dollar gross national debt with future obligations of 70 trillion dollar over the next 50 years. During the Bush years when the economy was booming tax revenue generated was around 3 trillion a year. It is around 2.3 trillion now (do the math). By 2015 the gross national debt will exceed 20 trillion dollars and the future obligations will increase. I suggest you do your own research and look into subjects like Liquidity Trap, Quantitative easing, hyperinflation, gross national debt, fractional reserve banking. Once you have a grasp on these subjects, you may not want to be affiliated with any political party. Why? Both political parties are equally to blame for our current economic situation and the disaster that is pending.

The term quantitative easing (QE) describes a monetary policy used by some central banks to increase the supply of money by increasing the excess reserves of the banking system. This policy is usually invoked when the normal methods to control the money supply have failed, i.e the bank interest rate, discount rate and/or interbank interest rate are either at, or close to, zero.

A central bank implements QE by first crediting its own account with money it creates ex nihilo ("out of nothing").[1] It then purchases financial assets, including government bonds, agency debt, mortgage-backed securities and corporate bonds, from banks and other financial institutions in a process referred to as open market operations. The purchases, by way of account deposits, give banks the excess reserves required for them to create new money, and thus hopefully induce a stimulation of the economy, by the process of deposit multiplication from increased lending in the fractional reserve banking system.

Risks include the policy being more effective than intended, spurring hyperinflation, or the risk of not being effective enough, if banks opt simply to sit on the additional cash in order to increase their capital reserves in a climate of increasing defaults in their present loan portfolio.[1]

"Quantitative" refers to the fact that a specific quantity of money is being created; "easing" refers to reducing the pressure on banks.[2] However, another explanation is that the name comes from the Japanese-language expression for "stimulatory monetary policy", which uses the term "easing".[3] Quantitative easing is sometimes colloquially described as "printing money" although in reality the money is simply created by electronically adding a number to an account. Examples of economies where this policy has been used include Japan during the early 2000s, and the United States, the United Kingdom and the Eurozone during the global financial crisis of 2008–the present, since the programme is suitable for economies where the bank interest rate, discount rate and/or interbank interest rate are either at, or close to, zero.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_easing

In economics, hyperinflation is inflation that is very high or "out of control", a condition in which the general price level within a specific economy increases rapidly (while the real values of the specific economic items generally stay the same in terms of relatively stable foreign currencies) as the functional or internal currency, as opposed to a foreign currency, loses its real value very quickly, normally at an accelerating rate.[1] Definitions used vary from the International Accounting Standards Board´s a cumulative inflation rate over three years approaching 100% (26% per annum compounded for three years in a row) to Cagan´s (1956) "inflation exceeding 50% a month." [2] As a rule of thumb, normal monthly and annual low inflation and deflation are reported per month, while under hyperinflation the general price level could rise by 5 or 10% or even much more every day.

A vicious circle is created in which more and more inflation is created with each iteration of the ever increasing money printing cycle. Hyperinflation becomes visible when there is an unchecked increase in the money supply usually accompanied by a widespread unwillingness on the part of the local population to hold the hyperinflationary money for more than the time needed to trade it for something non-monetary to avoid further loss of real value. Hyperinflation is often associated with wars (or their aftermath), currency meltdowns like in Zimbabwe, and political or social upheavals.

Hyperinflation happens with only fiat money and occurs only "when the supply of money had no natural constraints and was governed by a discretionary paper money standard." [3]

Hyperinflation normally results in severe economic depressions although that did not happen during the 30 years of very high and hyperinflation in Brazil from 1964 to 1994 because all non-monetary items (such as property, plant, equipment, inventory, finished goods, quoted and unquoted shares, trade marks, issued share capital, retained earnings, capital reserves, all other items in shareholders' equity, trade debtors, trade creditors, provisions, all other non-monetary payables, all other non-monetary receivables, taxes payable, taxes receivable, salaries payable, salaries receivable, etc.) in the entire economy of Brazil were updated daily in terms of a daily non-monetary index supplied by the government which was principally directly related to the change in the daily US dollar exchange rate for the Brazilian currency.

This was not done during Zimbabwe's hyperinflation although the daily change in the parallel rate for the US dollar as well as the Old Mutual Implied Rate (OMIR) were both available to everyone in Zimbabwe on a daily basis and eventually resulted in the wiping out of the real value of only those non-monetary items (such as salaries, wages, issued share capital, all other items in shareholders´ equity, trade debtors, trade creditors, salaries payable, salaries receivable, taxes payable, taxes receivable, all other non-monetary payables, all other non-monetary receivables, etc.) expressed in terms of the ZimDollar and never or not fully updated (inflation-adjusted) during Zimbabwe's hyperinflation while Zimbabwe's hyperinflationary monetary meltdown resulted in the wiping out of the real value of all monetary items (actual 100 trillion Zimbabwe dollar bank notes, all other bank notes, all loans payable and all loans receivable and all other monetary items) expressed in terms of the hyperinflationary Zimbabwe Dollar which became completely worthless.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation

Fractional-reserve banking is the banking practice in which a bank lends out most of the funds deposited and keeps the remaining fraction in reserve (as cash and other highly liquid assets), while simultaneously maintaining the obligation to redeem all deposits upon demand.[1][2] Fractional reserve banking necessarily occurs when banks lend out funds received from deposit accounts, and is practiced by all modern commercial banks.

The practice of fractional reserve banking expands the money supply (cash and demand deposits) beyond what it would otherwise be. Due to the prevalence of fractional reserve banking, the broad money supply of most countries is a multiple larger than the amount of base money created by the country's central bank. That multiple (called the money multiplier) is determined by the reserve requirement or other financial ratio requirements imposed by financial regulators, and by the excess reserves kept by commercial banks.

Central banks generally mandate reserve requirements that require banks to keep a minimum fraction of their demand deposits as cash reserves. This both limits the amount of money creation that occurs in the commercial banking system, and ensures that banks have enough ready cash to meet normal demand for withdrawals. Problems can arise, however, when a large number of depositors seek withdrawal of their deposits; this can cause a bank run or, when problems are extreme and widespread, a systemic crisis. To mitigate these problems, central banks (or other government institutions) generally regulate and oversee commercial banks, act as lender of last resort to commercial banks, and also insure the deposits of the commercial banks' customers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional-reserve_banking

The liquidity trap in Keynesian economics is a situation where monetary policy is unable to stimulate an economy, either through lowering interest rates or increasing the money supply.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquidity_trap


The total amount of outstanding public and private debt in a country.


http://www.investorwords.com/2246/Gross_National_Debt.html

"Once upon a time, a woman was picking up firewood. She came upon a poisonous snake frozen in the snow. She took the snake home and nursed it back to health. One day the snake bit her on the cheek. As she lay dying, she asked the snake, "Why have you done this to me?" And the snake answered, "Look, bitch, you knew I was a snake."

Anyone with common sense knew that Bush & Co. were snakes. To expect them to behave any differently only shows one's stupidity and gullibility.

However, this is a problem that was not created by those snakes. It was created by the wolves in sheep's clothing in the Clinton administration. They took money from labor to help themselves get elected, and then started the NAFTA nightmare and sold the country down the tubes.

And I seem to recall that NAFTA has been favored by both Republican and Democrat presidents.

If the great humanitarians really gave a crap about either the people of Mexico or the United States, we would repeal NAFTA forthwith AND repeal all the laws pertaining to illegal drugs thereby disempowering the feudal lords effectively running things in Mexico and large portions of the United States that don't make the news.