Slashdot Mirror
EU Wants Power To Block China's Tech Buying
itwbennett writes "In an interview with German daily paper Handelsblatt, the EU's industry commissioner, Antonio Tajani, said he wants the power to block China from buying up European tech companies. Tajani envisions an authority along the same lines as the United States' Committee on Foreign Investment and would determine 'if the acquisition (of a company) with European know-how by a private or public foreign company represented a danger or not.'"
I think they're really much more worried about China becoming the super power that it will. You can be quite sure that the world will be a lot different in 10-15 years, and China will be the new country number one.
And that is just for starters.
The fact is, that the west needs to say enough is enough. I support free trade, but not when it is one sided.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Actually, they are starting to. And I think that we will see more coming from them. Having cheap manufacturing available helps ppl
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
China is pretty much where Japan was 30-40 years ago. Look where Japan is today and that's where China will be in a few decades.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
At least they have got similar equipment.
ZTE Blade
Huawei U8500
Huawei 4G
Though the processors is slower (but not impossible for them to get faster ones I assume? They just want to keep prices low?)
It is really hard to believe what kind of crap becomes policy courtesy of the European Commission these days.
It is even funnier when you consider that the EC is basically very close to the Chinese Politburo -- the Commission is neither elected by the people whose money it liberally wastes, nor effectively accountable to anyone, but the backroom dealers in Europe.
It is a sham and a shame.
I googled "Clinton accord" and got nothing like what you describe. Could you please direct me to the proper references?
Thanks in advance.
I 3 E.U. FOR DOING THIS. :))
China has been printing Yuans like they are going out of style. QE2 is designed to shake China off of America's coat tail. The longer that they tie their Yuan to the dollar, the worst that things will get for them. Shortly, they will see massive inflation. And if they do NOT untie the Yuan from the dollar, then I expect that QE3 will be done. THAT will run China's inflation up to MINIMUM of 40% with ZERO chance of slowing that puppy down.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
http://articles.cnn.com/2000-10-10/politics/clinton.pntr_1_wto-membership-china-global-trade-regime?_s=PM:ALLPOLITICS
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
And the only thing they'll accomplish is they'll force China to use it's covert/secret agents to buy European tech companies. If China wants to buy a company nobody and nothing can stop it. They'll have their European shell company set up with their puppet CEO who will covertly buy the company in the name of China. Then years later China will overtly take control.
It's called a hostile takeover.
China is supposed to do everything to become number 1.
Since when did Americans become such wimps? Every nation cheats to win. It's called espionage.
And that is what has been going on in America. Part of several bill by W allowed companies to hide their investors. If the rest of the west does not want wholesale destruction of their nations like has happened to America, then they need to require all investment companies to disclose who the investors in them are.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
They don't have to be covert or secret. The housing bubble in Australia has been driven to a large extent by Chinese buyers. The property is actually owned by Chinese born Australian citizens but the money is coming from China.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
I do not say that their free trade should be restricted. I say that as long as they are not obeying the treaties/laws that they agreed to, THEN there is no reason for us to honor our side. Free trade is about TWO WAY TRADING. CHina is not about 2 way trade. It is about gaining it quickly and with interest in the real issues. They are in a cold war with us and using the economy against the west. It is time for us to stop this.
One way to pull our electronics out of CHina is to get western companies to move it back. However, QE2 is designed to do that for us. It will shake China lose, or they will suffer massive inflation.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
It's been going on since the 80s at least as far as I've been alive. Japanese companies were the big threat back then and were using sneak techniques to conduct a covert hostile takeover.
It's what we should expect from any nation state. They want to steal American technology, business, control of industry, etc. They also want to steal jobs.
I know a few Chinese born Australian citizens who would really love it if this conspiracy theory is true, but instead they have to save to hit a moving target just like the rest of us.
The reality is pretty well the same as the US housing bubble and a whole lot of others in history. About the only twist we've got is a bit of artificial political manipulation because the press and others assume that sales of houses are equal to a measure of the economy - thus leading to the assumption that a lot of activity in housing means a good government.
In Queensland your yellow peril conspiracy is instead those "damned southerners" buying up all the property and driving the price up. Once again a conspiracy theory fed from a few isolated anecdotes that mean nothing but noise in a large system.
This comes from my wife's relatives and friends. They are primarily Malaysian born Chinese with Australian PR or citizenship. And yes they have a lot of trouble saving to buy. They see a lot of mainland Chinese born people buying property purely to invest. Additionally my wife works as an architect and she knows of mainland Chinese businesses which are actively investing in the Australian property market. They do projects typically between five and 10 million AUD. Usually high density unit development. She looked at working for them but they weren't paying enough to justify the risk.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Mr. Lowell visited water-powered mills in England and managed to memorize all the critical details. He then returned home to the US, got together some investors, and set up shop on the Merrimack River in what is now called Lowell, Massachusetts.
That led to quite a bit, because you then need mechanical engineering and mechanics.
Uh, "wholesale destruction" isn't what's happening to the US, and China can take little credit for the decline that is happening. At worst, the US is having a slump, caused by incompetent leadership and short-sighted financial policy, combined with a media that doesn't "report" the news so much as it "spins" the news.
The EU, as currently conceived, just flat-out doesn't have the power to enforce laws in individual countries. Look at the recent abortion ruling by the EU against Ireland. Ireland's response amounted to "And . . . ?"
The first time the EU tries to make this stick, they're going to have to go to court against every member nation the company in question operates in.
The Europeans need to face facts: they're not remotely as committed to the ideal of unity in practice as their speeches would suggest. Look at the bailout. The Eurozone basically exists so Germany and France can export surplus productivity to lazier, poorer countries. The Eurozone exists to correct flaws in the German Mark that the Germans themselves could never fix. But, when it comes time to pay up for indulging those lazier, poorer countries for profit, the Germans and French bitch and complain ceaselessly about having to do it. And worse, they force their partners into austerity measures that fundamentally extend the failures of the Mark to the Euro.
The Europeans are too stupid for their own good. The invent a unified government that no one ever intended to obey. They implement a a common currency that no one wants to back -- and then bitch when it turns out ya kinda have to back your currency no matter how badly your partners piss on it.
If it weren't for improving the passport rules, the EU would go down in history as an abject internationalist failure alongside the League of Nations.
The only question for the Europeans now is whether they do what the early US did. The early US figured out that the original Articles of Confederation were useless and barely empowered the government to do anything (sound familiar?). Eventually a new constituent assembly was called and a real Constitution (admittedly full of poisonous compromises) was written.
Until the EU gets down to the business of writing a non-pathetic organizing document, they might as well save the bullshit and let the Chinese steal everything.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
You haven't been paying attention. China already has a bigger economy than Japan, and in a few decades they'll be speaking Mandarin in the White House.
If you mod me down the terrorists will have won
Rubbish. Laws can be made that stop this kind of thing and China must abide by Western laws when doing business in the West (just as Western businesses must operate by Chinese laws in China). Stop the unfounded sensationalism please. Here the EU is clearly creating regulatory laws as is their sovereign right - and China is subject to them whether they like it or not (if they are caught stealing tech the full force of such laws is used against them). I applaud the EU for protecting the innovators in this case.
Yes, but the reason the US machines were able to take off is because the European mills were all destroyed or put out of business by the people who worked, owned, or invested in the manually run non-industrialized mills. If the Europeans hadn't so soundly rejected the new processes then industry in the US would have floundered by being unable to produce goods at competitive prices.
Today we remember these angry Europeans -- who are infamous for storming the new mills and breaking the machines -- for the name of one of the most outspoken among them: George Ludd. Yes, they were the Luddites.
Yes, the plans were stolen away to the US, but they were not being used in Europe because the technology was socially unacceptable!
The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
33828*1331460000 / (47123*307006550)
ans = 3.1133
Right now US defense spending is 6.8 times the next largest competitor (China). Imagine if China out-spent the US by a factor of 3 instead. It would be a different world.
Yes, real anecdotes but of little consequence to a larger system. It's just like a few real investors from Sydney buying land in Queensland but it's not enough to drive the bubble.
It's a weaker link than a conspiracy theory of saying that the Chinese run the Liberal Party via Andrew 'Twiggy' Forrest and just as unlikely to make a difference in the long run. The mining sector is where there is a lot more investment than the trivial percentage of the housing market. Radio Rich Gay Redneck talkback subjects shouldn't be taken too seriously because it's all about getting people angry for entertainment.
Economics. Its all a lot more civilized than violence.
But lets stop trying to win petty economic battles in lost wars... Democracies always seem to resort to trade restrictions when confronted by another majority. Its no fun anymore when you are suddenly out numbered by your own ideology.
Human beings are prone to human nature in any and all cultural landscapes. I read that in a fortune cookie (an American custom).
Personally, I like Chinese Food, and I look forward to prosperity and success for all nationalities no matter what economic policies are negotiated, or implemented. Just make sure not to squander life or liberty if wealth belongs to someone else... Other people are people, too.
You support free trade but you insist their trade be restricted. Personally I'm against free trade. It never made sense when it was first proposed and it's brought a lot of grief to the first world. It's one thing having free trade with countries like Canada and the US or even much of Europe and North America where the economies are similar. Merging with a third world country means the first world country has to drop their standard of living to compete.
Well, one of the key theorems in trade is that it's beneficial to exchange goods as long as there's a relative difference in productivitiy, regardless if one country is superior to another in every way. That is, if we can produce good A much faster than China and good B a tiny bit faster than China, we should specialize in producing A and export that while importing B for a net gain compared to producing B ourselves while China does the opposite. As such it's not unreasonable that rich countries have trade with poor countries.
When you add unemployment it starts being complicated because the above assumes both countries are maximizing their production. Unemployed people aren't productive which means China is better off producing both goods rather than importing from the US as long as they aren't capacity limited, while the US is now hooked on cheap imports and can't produce them domestically at a competitive price. So you get a trade imbalance, in theory some of this could still be balanced as China buys other things from other countries for US dollars but in practise it doesn't work out.
However, one thing that people seem to think which is wrong is that China is not particularly interested in a US downfall, at least not short term. They're more interested in picking the crown jewels by saying "Um yeah cheap labor we got that, decent tech level we got that, what exactly do you have that we'd really need to get from the outside?" Rare earth minerals or oil resources could be good examples of that. Specific pieces of technology they don't have. Basically it's about sniping the valuables while the US is spending their huans filling up the Wal-Marts.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Let's do China one better, and buy its tech companies and loot their assets! What's that you say? China has laws on the books prohibiting the sale or investment of companies which may damage its national interest? Entire industries are restricted? And there are parts of China's economy totally prohibited from any foreign investment whatsoever? Surely Europe and America can trust this country and not apply any reciprocal policies that fuck over China as much as China fucks over foreign firms.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
The Internet is designed to be a fault-tolerant network that routes around damage. To this network, censorship is damage. It may take a bit, but the network will find a way to route around this.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I see. So any foreigner coming to invest 10 million in your country is a conspiracy. That's like, what? 0.001% of your country's GDP?
I don't think its a conspiracy.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
You support free trade, but not when the other "side" is "winning"? Are you crazy? Do you even know what "free trade" is? It's a ticket for transnational companies to do what the hell they like, override local laws and generally be a government unto themselves. Now, what is one-sided?
Does that take into account their foreign exchange reserves? You really need to subtract those from public debt for an accurate picture.
What if the Republicans cement their power and the bankers (who hate inflation) take over control of the Fed though? QE is obviously beneficial to the economy as a whole, but the powers rallying against it (a combination of stupid people and people who'd throw their granny off a train for short term gain) are powerful.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha haaaaaa!! :)
You made me laugh too hard.
QE2 is 'designed' to do WHAT? :)))))))
QE2 is an admission that US debt is no longer attractive to the foreign buyers, that the long terms interest rates are going up and cannot be controlled by Fed set short term interest rates, that inflation is rampant.
QE2 is the Fed being the lender of last resort to the US federal government. QE2 is an admission that US federal government is bankrupt.
I fully expect that this spring bonds of US municipalities will be also in the same trouble and there will be some sort of QE3 to buy back US muni bonds.
QE2 is a disaster and if it has anything to do with China, it's that China is waking up and it's no longer interested in both financing US debt and providing US with goods to be bought with the Chinese financed debt.
QE2 is a consequence of a failed fiscal and monetary policy and of a failed government.
You can't handle the truth.
That debt is also a weapon. Repudiate the debt, get closer to Europe (than China ever could be), and watch the riots in Peking.
The First World can survive, but the Third World will eat itself alive.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
If someone would directly or indirectly cause a prohibited country to benefit whether by hostile takeover, scuttling of the company, or any other means of takeover, then anyone involved in such a takeover can be pursued for treason in the member country.
If China wants to be despotic, it's going to have a lot of blood on its hands that it cant wash off. The only way you deal with China's despots is with hardball.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
If someone would directly or indirectly cause a prohibited country to benefit whether by hostile takeover, scuttling of the company, or any other means of takeover, then anyone involved in such a takeover can be pursued for treason as defined in the member country, and can be pursued anywhere in the world.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
It's kind of hard to ask for a debt when the developed world repudiates the debt owed to a Third World country. Especially when that means China is eaten alive by its own people.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Not if it that means they are declared traitors, along with complete seizure of assets. The EU and the US have plenty of weapons to put China back in its place, behind the world.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
QE == Qualitative Easing, also known as dumping currency
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Right now a hot market for the small property investor is foreclosures in the USA, which are incredibly numerous. Of course, you have to get one that's not going to be contested, or you could end up in an eternal legal battle. Why would you want to live in a country where everything'll kill ya? They're going just as fascist as the rest of the world.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Remember all those people that said that Africans are just poor and starving because they're lazy bums who could have it just as good as us if they just got off their collective ass and started working?
I wonder if the same people think that something like this is better.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Yes the strong aussie dollar does lead to ideas like that but I reckon dealing with red tape would be a problem.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
You want to go to war with a country that can muster about 700 MILLION people if need be? Where 20 MILLION reach an age where they can carry a rifle sensibly per year?
FYI, The US can (provided they get a draft past the population, and given that we won't have too many dropouts due to lard) get about 150 Million and 4 Million annually.
And we're not talking about a country whose weapons resemble those of Iraq, ok? You're facing a military that is quite well equipped and a workforce that they can press into 18+ hours shifts with ease. Work or be shot. Try that in the US.
"Playing hardball" is nice if you can back it up with muscle. But this dragon can breath fire.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
So you're saying all we have to do is make the real estate bubble pop in China?
How much do rice huts go these days?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The following are 17 national debt statistics which prove that we have sold our children and our grandchildren into perpetual debt slavery....
#1 As of December 28th, the U.S. national debt was $13,877,230,355,933.00.
#2 If the federal government began right at this moment to repay the U.S. national debt at a rate of one dollar per second, it would take over 440,000 years to pay off the national debt.
#3 If the federal government began repaying the national debt at a rate of $10 million dollars a day it would take approximately 3,800 years to pay off the national debt.
#4 Today, the U.S. national debt is increasing by roughly 4 billion dollars every single day.
#5 The U.S. government is borrowing approximately 2.63 million more dollars every single minute.
#6 On September 30th, 1980 the U.S. national debt was 907 billion dollars. Just thirty years later, the U.S. national debt is over 14 times larger.
#7 According to a recent U.S. Treasury report to Congress, the U.S. national debt will reach 19.6 trillion dollars in 2015.
#8 It is being projected that the U.S. government will be paying 900 billion dollars just in interest on the national debt by the year 2019.
#9 A trillion $10 bills, if they were taped end to end, would wrap around the globe more than 380 times. That amount of money would still not be enough to pay off the U.S. national debt.
#10 The U.S. Congress has raised the federal debt ceiling six times in just the past three years.
#11 The 111th Congress added more to the U.S. national debt than the first 100 U.S. Congresses combined.
#12 The 111th Congress got us into so much new debt that it breaks down to $10,429.64 for each of the 308,745,538 people counted by the 2010 U.S. census.
#13 The U.S. government currently has to borrow approximately 41 cents of every single dollar that it spends.
#14 When you break down the debt that the U.S. government owes to China alone it comes to over $10,000 for every single American family.
#15 If you were alive when Christ was born and you spent one million dollars every single day since that point, you still would not have spent one trillion dollars by now. Almost unbelievably, the U.S. government will accumulate well over a trillion dollars more debt in 2011.
#16 If right this moment you went out and started spending one dollar every single second, it would take you more than 31,000 years to spend one trillion dollars.
#17 The Congressional Budget Office is projecting that U.S. government debt held by the public will reach a staggering 716 percent of GDP by the year 2080.
But the American people don't want to hear that we have spent decades creating a horrific debt crisis that is not going to be easy to fix. They just want someone to "tweak" a few things and get us back to being the greatest economy on earth. Unfortunately, it is simply not that easy.
From:
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/17-national-debt-statistics-which-prove-that-we-have-sold-our-children-and-grandchildren-into-perpetual-debt-slavery
The USA just wants your money so we let anyone not on THE LIST of people who we claim are terrorists or from a member of THE OTHER LIST of countries we are mad at economically since we sure don't give a tenth of a shit about human rights come in and buy property. The real issue to me is that the economy continues to decline and there is every sign that the government is trying to make it do this as rapidly as possible, and that means more and more hungry, homeless people wandering around and potentially squatting in any property that's not occupied.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
i am still learning trying to catch up for the time i wasted being hedonistic american brat.
thanks for clarifying that the path the experts called for weakens china's buying power.
some people tell me i don't need to change. they say to listen to my heart. my heart still just goes 'thump thump' though. my goal is to break through the stereotype and find that special someone i need.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
We know governments are reluctant to piss China off nowadays, saying that you're blocking them out loud isn't going to be well received. But who said you're trying to block them? Just slap regulations on top that will (hopefully) produce that side effect. Of course, at the end you won't be doing any blocking but *controlling* -- just like countries who don't like many immigrants, they have strict laws that indirectly give them control. It'll work on most if not all topics. Say, outsourcing - if you want to reduce outsourcing to China, then just slap something on top requiring that a certain number of existing senior management to reside in the destination country. Otherwise, flood them with taxes. With that constraint, nature and economics should sort itself out such that the trend will shift toward East European countries away from China. At the same time, countries of poor living qualities will be improved in order to be attractive. Several birds, one stone. If this works out for outsourcing, then something along this line will work for controlling tech buying.
What do you imagine would happen if the rest of the world tried to get tough with China, and the Chinese regime locked down the ports, told their businesses that they'd underwrite their wage bills in order to keep the peasants working, and just started backing up all the exports - or for that matter, just diverted them straight from the factories that make them to the factories that recycle them?
I'd give it a week before the rest of the planet blinked and caved in completely. We need them China a lot more than China needs us. You don't bluff on a pair of sevens.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
We could easily manage, create LED lamps, etc..
What's 0.001% of a couple of dead dingos, a rancid koala and a pile of sandy rock? Oh yeah, better remember to include Dame Edna....
bang goes my karma... again...
The fact is, that the west needs to say enough is enough. I support free trade, but not when it is one sided.
How's that for Newspeak, free trade that's not free? Free as in ... freeloading?
It's almost like you like in a world where, Taiwan, Japan, Indonesia, Korea and India don't exist.
China manufacturing is being driven by western corporate greed, the desire to cripple the middle class, and the willingness of the China leadership to ruthlessly exploit the Chinese people.
Fair trade will happen (import adjustments to ensure product competitiveness is based upon fair equitable costs including, minimum wages, pollution controls, labour conditions, product safety, taxation base).
China's problem with burdensome US debt and offloading that debt by buying European and other countries industrial, farming base with basically junk US dollars, is really going to start hitting a wall shortly.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Cut a deal with them. That's what diplomacy (unwritten, so no leaks) is for. China is the natural master of Asia since the US nuked the other contender a while back. They exist, cannot be dictated to, and have an interest along with all truly civilized people in resisting religion. They have much more scope than a democracy in doing this, because religion cannot be restrained by democracy.
Chinese methods against Falun Gong cultists and against Muslim Uighers are fairly effective and should be encouraged. If Beijing wish to disrupt Islam by demographic realignment, ethnic cleansing, or even murder I find that acceptable. Islam is the worst major superstition at the moment, Christianity having been gutted post-WWII. There is no moral obligation to Islamists. Put them to the sword, and get comfortable with discussing how to limit their power by any means without regard to the conventional "morality" one would apply to people who are not cultural enemies.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
What's interesting about that site is that it doesn't show a single country being in the black as far as debt is concerned.
No, not really. Just paper and gunpowder.
Dumbass.
The three laws of thermodynamics:(1) You can't win. (2) You can't break even. (3) You can't even quit.
China has a bigger economy than Japan because it has 10 times as many people living there. China's economy is only 1.025 times larger than Japan's, which means than on a per-capita basis, China still has a long way to go. I think some provinces in China will reach Japanese levels of GDP per capita, but not all of them.
Oh, it would be nice, wouldn't it? Or just invade them and force them to comply.
But they are a bit too large a country to be bitchslapped around- China is big enough to call the shots, and they know it
Plus, money is a faulty concept, a dirty business and all that, so I'm not surprised that nobody sheds a tear for the US being beaten at their own game.
The three laws of thermodynamics:(1) You can't win. (2) You can't break even. (3) You can't even quit.
If yes, would it not be equal if China wants its companies in EU?
Actually, QE is NOT that beneficial to the economy. HOWEVER, it is far far far less destructive to America (and the west) than China's policy has been. China's cold war policy has been to drain the economies of the west by allowing LIMITED capitalism in there. There is little doubt that China's leaders see themselves in a war with the west.
Now, if you really want manufacturing to come back soon, then the DOD will insist that the phones that they buy for troops MUST BE MADE IN AMERICA. In fact, if the DOD and the US gov. targets companies that have moved jobs to CHina and says that they will only buy those goods iff they are produced in America, then they will come back.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
China has a split economy. Many of their goods, such as what coal miners and most of CHinese farmers are paid, is dictated by the CHinese gov. Most of what is capitalist there, is for manufactured goods destined for exports.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Actually, America CAN DO WITHOUT CHINA. They will have it difficult if it occurrs quickly, but if over 1-2 years, businesses are re-built back up, then America will be fine.
And China has signed a number of treaties that says that they will do free trade. WTO being the largest. And yet, they cheat like mad.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
QE = Quantitative easing, not "qualitative".
Then jobs would come back to the west. China of course, would be bankrupted within 1 year.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Then jobs would come back to the west. China of course, would be bankrupted within 1 year.
Um, no, it wouldn't. China has massive assets, domestic and foreign (you know, those trillions of Treasury and Agency bonds that they bought up). Unemployment would spike massively, of course, but that would be the worst that could happen to China's neighbours: The easiest way to deal with 10 million newly-unemployed young men is to offer them jobs in the army and to gice them a go at rape and pillage in South Tibet or Taiwan or something... Not a nice outcome for anyone.
QE is the only policy which is politically tractable to balance trade, although something like import certificates like Warren Buffet proposed might be better (and export tariffs when necessary to balance foreign ownership of domestic assets). Balanced trade is a necessity to get out of the problem where western countries can't redistribute wealth any more because any such measures hurt their international competitiveness ... pulling both the government and their citizens into a morass of debt instead just to keep the economy going, a trick which we have managed to keep going for 3 decades.
A trick which is running out of steam, although China would love to keep it going ... just to absorb the last little bits of know how and industry they can from the west.
Hell China probably has some hope that free market fundamentalism is so strong in the west that we will force ourselves into a deflationary spiral (rather than printing money) and at the end of the ride buying our countries out from under us with their foreign exchange reserves ... something we really really shouldn't let happen, free market be damned.
Numbers make no sense without context. If we put our entire GDP into paying off debt, how long would it take to pay it off? About a year (WolframAlpha puts it at 0.98 years). That's still something that's plausible to pay off. Not to mention the fact that, while the US owes other countries money, we too have our debtors.
Thanks, Interesting reading 10 year old stuff and seeing what actually has happened...
My bad. I'm not an economist either.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I'm sorry, but QE2 won't have any effect on dollar. It's far too small to affect currency rates. Also, if you believe in massive inflation, then you are idiot. Right-wing 'thinkers' have been predicting high inflation since the first bailout.
There'll be no inflation until recovery is complete.
"However, QE2 is designed to do that for us. It will shake China lose, or they will suffer massive inflation."
No, it isn't. QE2 will do exactly nothing to make China float the yuan. Trade barriers would be effective in this case, but nobody in the US government has the guts to do it.
Ultimately, China will have to float the yuan, because of internal pressure to do this (due to unsustainable capital controls and internal inflation).
I see. So any foreigner coming to invest 10 million in your country is a conspiracy. That's like, what? 0.001% of your country's GDP?
They aren't coming to invest in our country, they are coming to buy, bribe, write laws, ship jobs overseas, and divide and conquer our country.
How will they know which citizens and CEO's are China? A loyalty test?
Not if it that means they are declared traitors, along with complete seizure of assets. The EU and the US have plenty of weapons to put China back in its place, behind the world.
It's not that easy. Chinese agents could be anywhere and in any family. Many prominent powerful elite families might be controlled by Chinese intelligence, and these families will be used to prevent these sorts of laws from being made.
This list contains many flaws. The single biggest one being its source. Its conclusion is clearly subjective. Most of the items in your list are meant to scare econonoobs/laymen, just taking a look at the first five points: #1: Absolute values don't have any meaning by themselves. This number could mean anything. #2: The repay rate is arbitrary and meaningles, there is no realistic case here, just scary-sounding math. #3: See #2. #4: See #1. #5: See #1. #6: This one ignores inflation and more importantly, the expansion of the US economy, which is the collateral that this borrowing is based on. This is like saying "my 1980 mortgage was 150,000 and now it's over 500,000". Yeah, the house is different too you know.. These kind of collapse blogs just try to scare the shit out of people using their ignorance to sell them complete crap. Trouble with nerds is that while they are very knowledgeable about computing, they sometimes get convinced that it's the same in other areas as well.
This list contains many flaws. The single biggest one being its source. Its conclusion is clearly subjective. Most of the items in your list are meant to scare econonoobs/laymen, just taking a look at the first five points:
#1: Absolute values don't have any meaning by themselves. This number could mean anything.
#2: The repay rate is arbitrary and meaningles, there is no realistic case here, just scary-sounding math.
#3: See #2.
#4: See #1.
#5: See #1.
#6: This one ignores inflation and more importantly, the expansion of the US economy, which is the collateral that this borrowing is based on. This is like saying "my 1980 mortgage was 150,000 and now it's over 500,000". Yeah, the house is different too you know..
These kind of collapse blogs just try to scare the shit out of people using their ignorance to sell them complete crap. Trouble with nerds is that while they are very knowledgeable about computing, they sometimes get convinced that it's the same in other areas as well.
I'm not actually sure what your point is with this. How do you make the jump from "Chinese companies are buying up EU tech knowledge" with "'Uhrubs' use low-tech means to terrorize European sites"?
i guess that good old capitalism is biting back eh?
China will see the yuan inflate massively. They will have no choice but to untie from the dollar.
Now, you are correct that the BEST course of action is for us to raise barriers to them. But, it should be done slowly. And I agree with you. W should have done something back in 2004, but chose to push tax deals that helped send jobs to CHina instead. Obama has done nothing to either help CHina or America. Yet.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Yuan is already inflating, to the point that China has started to directly control the price of some goods (food and fuel). That's the direct result of their currency controls, all in accordance with the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impossible_trinity
However, QE2 won't do much because its amount is not significant to the total dollar amount. And most certainly it won't cause any massive inflation.
Hell, the US is on the brink _deflation_ right now. Why the fuck people talk about risks of inflation?
Who is doing the buying though? It seems many large companies in China are owned, or at least in the control of, the government. So when an overseas company is bought, is the buyer basically the Chinese government?
I can imagine that being the real problem here - not Chinese "commercial interests", but rather the Chinese government controlling all these foreign assets. Even if they are being privately bought, surely the Chinese government can tell them how high to jump at any time.
We have a similar problem here in Oz. It has recently come to light that China is "investing" quite seriously is our farm land.
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-04-14/china-investment-in-australian-farms-rises-10-fold-agents-say.html
As an aside, we are now importing apples from China - either because they're cheaper to produce than our own, or as part of some trade deal, as we grow more than enough here. Either way, it's insane, particularly given China has lax, in any, controls over pesticide use, environmental damage, etc. - all those things we fight so hard for in the West. All now completely undermined by globalisation.
I think nowadays we can see that unconstrained capitalism is completely dysfunctional, and that Globalisation was entered into without any decent controls or forethought over market and other abuses. But the real hypocrisy is that governments will cry "free market" while manipulating it to suit themselves, often at the long-term expense, since governments only think till the next election.
Which is what makes China and its ilk so dangerous. They are in a position to think long term. The winner of a chess game is usually the one who can plan more moves ahead.
And, all the supposed 'safeguards' did not work.
WindBourne for President in 2012... you'd get my vote :)
Saying Android is a family of phones is akin to saying Linux is a family of PCs.