After Historic Credit Downgrade, Americans Must Mend Ways (Xinhua, People’s Republic of China)
Aug 6th, 2011 | 8 responses
What message should the United States government take away from the first credit rating downgrade in its entire history? According to this bluntly-worded editorial from Xinhua, the state news agency of America’s largest creditor, the U.S must break its ‘addiction’ to borrowed money, the political ‘wrangling’ in Washington must end, and China’s dollar denominated assets must be protected.
The Xinhua editorial that everyone seems to be quoting today says in part:
The days when debt-ridden Uncle Sam could leisurely squander unlimited money borrowed from overseas seem numbered now that its AAA credit rating was slashed by Standard & Poor’s for the first time on Friday.
Although the U.S. Treasury promptly challenged the unprecedented downgrade, many outside the U.S. believe the credit rating downgrade is an overdue bill that America must pay for the short-sighted political wrangling in Washington and its burgeoning debt.
Fledgling Chinese rating agency Dagong Global degraded U.S. Treasury bonds late last year, when its move was met with arrogance and cynicism from some Western commentators. Now S&P has demonstrated that what its Chinese counterpart did was nothing but tell global investors the ugly truth.
China, the sole superpower’s largest creditor, now has every right to demand that America address its structural debt problem and ensure the security of China’s dollar denominated assets. To cure its addiction to debt, the United States must reestablish the commonsense principle that one should live within his means.
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8 Responses to “After Historic Credit Downgrade, Americans Must Mend Ways (Xinhua, People’s Republic of China)”
I’ll repost my earlier post:
[China is the world’s largest “single foreign holder” of America’s debt. Not the largest holder. China owns 8% of our debt. I am no longer concerned about what China says about our debt situation. I would tell them, “no risk, no reward”, and, walk away with a sardonic smile on my face.]
Sometimes, I think China should LISTEN rather than try to “build face” at the expense of others. Then maybe more people would listen to China. Otherwise China is just spewing the same old communist BS rhetoric crap it always has.
HEY China, have you noticed? Nobody really gives a damn what you say, anywhere.
Well, China is growing and is a Supreme Creditor, you know.
There are things that China could be “encouraged” by the West to do, as outlined in Roger Bootle’s more recent book, for example — boost consumption and reduce its trade surplus. (Stop manipulating your currency, too, many would say to China.) I don’t have confidence that China will do this, thought, but that it will be continuing to act in its short-term as well as long-term interests.
DLS-
Of course there are some things that China could do to improve their reputation and increase their world status, but they won’t. They are Communists. Maybe a bit less totalitarian than they used to be, but totalitarian nonetheless. You can’t tell them much once they’ve had a little success doing what you told them before!
They will have to be dragged kicking and screaming over the coals of, “trial and error”, until it sinks into them what the world is telling them. So if our bonds are not good enough for them, fine. I wonder how their bonds are rated? Rated by other than the Chinese bond rating so-called-system of course.
Gentleman,
Can I point out that Beijing is more fascist than anything else – and that communism as outlined by its inventors, has never existed on this earth, as the human condition makes any such system impossible?
China is now a corporate-government combine. The goal of it leaders is not and has not been for decades – if ever – to put the ‘means of production’ into the hands of the ‘proletariat’ – who would then share all of the benefits equally.
So let us dispense with calling China communist. It is a fascist totalitarian state far more along the lines that Mussolini imagined than the communism of Marx and Engels. It is a corporate-government totalitarian state that excludes the voice of the people in any tangible way.
– William Kern
William Kern-
Yes William. You are absolutely correct. I have been trying to convince people of this for years. Furthermore, if we allow these American Republicans to run our country unopposed, the “Free individual” propaganda coming from Republican party will disappear and this country will soon mimic China‘s growing Corporate Republic Fascist State.
Liberal and Conservative are simply two ways of getting to the same goal. Our government has never moved left or right, because it almost never repeals anything. It consistently moves toward fascism.
The New Deal featured striking fascist details (notably the worst from early in that program, that was struck down by the Supreme Court while it still refrained from activism, such as the N[I]RA with the labor “codes,” for example) — the “managed cartel” of a few parties in any given industry is the ideal (the way the airlines and air travel used to be managed by the federal government before the deregulation of air travel), and running things from Washington is the preferred method, fascistic — not communistic (though the New Dealers loved the Soviet Union, too). Don’t bother with the various headaches and day-to-day mundane stuff with ownership; what really matters is control.
Ralph Nader wants to push fascism to even more “progressive” extremes, with federal corporate charters. (It doesn’t change the fascistic nature of that, that typical demands the feds would make in Nader’s dreams would be “social responsibility” and political correctness lefty junk behavior; it’s still fascistic.) There have been fears eventually of federal officials being installed in the boards of directors or into top management of businesses, and we got an ugly fascistic taste a couple of years ago with federal “infusion” into General Motors and Chrysler.
When you think of labor codes (original New Deal) and consolidation and a “managed cartel,” that is fascistic, don’t forget Hillary Clinton’s health care plan involving and depending on HMO “alliances.”
Lefty advocates of “single-payer” [sic; Medicare for all or the equivalent] decried such things as corporate schemes, while missing the bigger point, or were afraid to admit it: this plan was fascistic; the federal government was at the center of it and the “boss” of all.