The donkey in the China shop

[ensho]

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China_Business/LI28Cb01.html


United States President Barack Obama has issued a blackmail to Prime Minister Wen Jiabao of China: "You immediately revalue the yuan or else ... " According to an article by David E Senger in The New York Times on September 23, the two leaders met at the United Nations in New York and spent most of their two-hour session in a spare conference room, usually used by members of the Security Council, to discuss the currency issue.

The session ended by Obama issuing an ultimatum that is bound to be followed by trade war. Surely, this is a most unseemly use to which the sacred grounds of the Security Council, dedicated as it is to the maintenance of peace and prevention of war, have ever been put.

It is most undiplomatic, not to say arrogant, for a head of government to engage another in a tete-a-tete confrontation, to discuss technical currency problems that should first properly be sorted out at a lower level by experts. In a total lack of courtesy to be shown to a guest, Obama is threatening him with action on the part of congressional Democrats, to railroad legislation through before the midterm elections in November that would put huge punitive tariffs on Chinese goods, thus plunging the world into trade war.

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The reason given for Obama’s most unusual procedure is that he and his congressional cohorts are "protecting US interests: American jobs and American competitiveness". Obama would never pay the blackmail if China wanted to force on the US an unpalatable dollar-policy, eg, demand that the dollar be immediately put back on a gold standard on the theory that the present dispute would not have arisen if the dollar were gold redeemable as it had been before Richard Nixon’s default.

Obama has grossly overplayed a very weak hand. The US has never been in a weaker bargaining position - all the trump cards are in the Chinese hand.
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guess this writer is still caught up in the UN's dogma of the proper way to behave at the UN.

good going Obama.

[vaberella]

1. I was told Obama and most of our leaders are afraid of China.

Interesting turn of events, seems as though Obama is a man of his word. This writer is a buffoon kissing China's ass. Obama would never have played his hand without reason.

Update: How in the hell have I rec'd this up and it's still giving a zero. Jesus, who unrecs this stuff?