Posts Tagged ‘Chinese’
June 28th, 2011 by John Feehery
We live in a nation of control-freaks.
Everybody wants to be able to control his or her own lives in a world where America increasingly is not in control. We don’t control the Chinese or the Indians or the Europeans or anybody else for that matter. We barely can control our own budget.
We are used to controlling our environments. We don’t get hot any more, except for those rare moments where we go from our house to our car. We live in climate-controlled bliss.
Environmentalists believe that we control the weather with our actions. Put me down as a skeptic. I doubt the car that I drive has any control over the kinds of solar flares the Sun shoots off.
We have more control over what we watch on television than we ever did. And what are we watching? The intelligent shows? The well-acted, well-rehearsed, well-written shows? Nope. We are watching TMZ and the Real Housewives of Orange County.
We want to control our government too, and our government wants to control us. Read more...
Tags: America, Barack Obama, Chinese, climate-controlled, Conservatives, Democrats, Economy, election, Europeans, Government, health care, Obama, Politics, Presidential election, spending, taxes, White House
Posted in Bad Decisions, Economy, Financial Crisis, Foreign Relations, Government, History, Hollywood, Politics, Presidential election, Theory, bad news, election, health care, housing crisis, national security, spending | No Comments »
June 24th, 2011 by John Feehery
Eric Cantor pulled out of the Vice President’s debt talks the other day, convinced that the Democrats were leading him down a politically unsustainable path.
Republicans don’t think revenues are a problem (a debatable proposition), and the House Majority Leader certainly doesn’t want to be tagged as a tax increaser. That is bad politics for the GOP and dangerous politics for him.
It has been openly acknowledged that Mr. Biden and Mr. Cantor were only going to be able to run this race to a certain point, and at some point, they were going to pass the baton to the President and the Speaker.
I still believe that it makes far more sense to have the Senate go first. But I look at this only from the position of trying to get it done, not trying to accomplish some ideological victory.
Debt limit votes are to be endured. They are not venues to declare victory or defeat.
The Argentinians have an interesting story to tell when it comes to debt limits. About a decade ago, they defaulted on their debt, causing turmoil in the financial markets and misery within their borders. Read more...
Tags: America, American policy makers, Argentina, Argentinians, Barack Obama, Chinese, Congress, Conservatives, Democrats, Don’t Cry for Me, Economy, Eric Cantor, Evita Peron, Government, International Bond Markets, Joe Biden, Politics, President Obama, Presidential election, Republican, Republicans, US foriegn relations
Posted in Bad Decisions, Economy, Financial Crisis, Foreign Relations, GOP, Government, History, Politics, Theory, election, national security, spending | 1 Comment »
April 1st, 2011 by John Feehery
It is easy to be fairly nonchalant about the current budget battle that has consumed the Congress.
Pundits (myself included) have pointed out that the tens of billions of dollars being discussed is chump change, especially if you consider the trillions of dollars that we owe to the Chinese.
And that may be true.
But that doesn’t mean that these cuts being considered by both the House and Senate are not significant. Because they are. And it doesn’t mean that they won’t be painful. Because for many folks, they will be.
In fact, should the House and the Senate cut $36 billion from the rest of this year’s budget, it will be the largest one year spending cut in our nation’s history. By far.
That is historically significant. Kind of like when Tiger Woods won the U.S. Open a few years ago by a dozen strokes (or whatever the final number was). It is a big deal.
And if you consider that this $36 billion dollar number applies for only slightly more than a half year of the budget, that spending cut is astounding. Read more...
Tags: Budget, budget cuts, Chinese, Congress, Democrats, House of Representatives, House Speaker John Boehner, John Boehner, Nancy Pelosi, Pundits, Republicans, spending, Tea Party, tiger woods, U.S. Open
Posted in Economy, Government, Politics, Theory, spending | 1 Comment »
February 18th, 2011 by John Feehery
The trade union movement started in medieval Germany as a way for artisans to band together to perfect their craft.
The craft unions now perfect ripping off the taxpayers.
Unions used to target big, mean industrialists who paid minimal wages and exploited workers.
Unions now target Democrats in primaries who don’t tow their line.
And their line is never ever give an inch when it comes to ripping off the taxpayers.
It is trite to say that the federal government is going broke. But as long as the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department can get the Chinese to buy our bonds, our brokenness is more notional than visceral.
At the state level, though, it is more than a notion that bankruptcy looms. The pension system in Illinois is due to collapse any day now. California is a complete mess every year. And the list goes on.
In Wisconsin, the new Governor has decided that he has to change the deal when it comes to the unions and the taxpayers. In Wisconsin, a progressive state, the taxpayers have finally had enough of the rip off. That is why they elected a Republican governor who had a plan. Read more...
Tags: Chinese, Economy, Egypt, Federal Reserve, Government, Illinois pension, local government, middle-east, Politics, Republicans, spending, state government, Treasury Department, unions, Wisconsin
Posted in Economy, Government, Politics, Theory, spending, taxes | 1 Comment »
November 10th, 2010 by John Feehery
I am about as qualified to talk about the technical intricacies of the Federal Reserve as Ben Bernanke is qualified to talk about the MTV show “Jersey Shore”.
But that isn’t going to stop me from making a few observations about Mr. Bernanke’s latest moves to spur economic growth in this country.
Rarely can any policy maker infuriate the Chinese, the Germans and the Tea Party all at one time, but that is exactly what the Fed Chairman did when he announced he was going to start the process of “quantitative easing”, which in simple language means “printing more money.”
The Chinese are apoplectic. They see this as a strategic challenge to their own policy of making their own currency weaker than it ought to be. The Germans, who ditched the Deutsche Mark in favor of the Euro Dollar at the turn of the century, hate the idea of printing more money. They are still scarred from the turmoil surrounding the Weimar Republic’s currency, which helped lead to the rise of Adolph Hitler.
The Tea Party? Well, they too are worried about the dollar becoming less valuable. They don’t like the whole idea of the Federal Reserve, and channeling their inner-Andrew Jackson, they would simply do away with the central banking and return to the Gold Standard. Read more...
Tags: Ben Bernanke, Chinese, Economy, election, Germans, Jersey Shore, Sarah Palin, spending, Tea Party
Posted in Economy, Government, Politics, Theory, spending | No Comments »
October 25th, 2010 by John Feehery
courtesy: Asia Pacific Arts
This might seem like a simplistic truism, but I think it is worth noting that there are more Asians in the world than any other group of people.
The number of Asians living in Asia is rapidly approaching four billion. There are 1.3 billion Chinese and almost as many Indians.
But the Asians are not staying in Asia. They are immigrating in search of a better life for themselves and their families, and many of them are ending up in America.
There has been much talk about how Hispanics make up the fastest growing part of the American population and how Hispanic voters are becoming increasing more important as a potential swing bloc. That is all true, except for the fact that Asians actually make up the fastest growing racial/ethnic group.
From 1990 to 2000, Asians, as a percentage of the American population, increased 63%. In 2000, they made up 4.3%, but that number is closer to 5% today and is expected to hit 7% by 2030.
According to Wikipedia: “As of 2008, Asian Americans had the highest educational attainment level and median household income of any racial demographic in the country, and the highest median personal income overall.” Read more...
Tags: american dream, American population, Asia, Asians, Chinese, Education, Indians
Posted in Economy, Education, Foreign Relations, Government, Immigration, Politics, Theory, election | No Comments »
May 27th, 2010 by John Feehery
Planet getting eaten (Credit: ESA/C Carreau)
I was watching television this morning and CNN was alternating between video of the great Gulf leak and a video from the Hubble telescope of a planet getting eaten by a bigger star.
So, the message is if we don’t all kill ourselves, well, then a big star is going to eat us all any way.
On that cheery note, let me add another.
America is doomed. At least, that is the message that we get all too often from both the left and the right.
We are going broke. Our workforce isn’t competitive. People in the rest of the world hate us. We can’t plug the damn hole. We have too many immigrants coming into this country. Crime is too high. Our military is stretched too far. We are too fat. We are too old. We are too young.
And of course, we better all start speaking Chinese soon, because the Chinese are so rich, they work so hard, they are so smart, and there are so many of them, that we really can’t compete. America is doomed.
Really? Put me down as an America-is-doomed skeptic. Read more...
Tags: Al Gore, Barack Obama, Brazil, china, Chinese, Christian right, Conservatives, Economy, Europe, India, Politics, poor, Tea Party, Tom Friedman, USA, WASP-12b
Posted in Economy, Financial Crisis, Foreign Relations, GOP, Government, Politics, Theory | 2 Comments »
March 23rd, 2010 by John Feehery
The Democrats and their allies are feverishly trying to spin their health care victory as a victory for their political fortunes. Stan Greenberg, in the New York Times, says, “Democrats today could easily be at the beginning of a hopeful six-month period, starting with the signing of the health care legislation that will further raise the public profile of the president and the Democratic Congress.” Mike Barnicle, on Morning Joe, asked Joe Scarborough, after ticking off the law’s many giveaways, “Joe, how do you run against this?”
The answer is simple. You run against everything that has happened thus far.
You run against the trillion dollars of tax increases, especially the tax increases on the health insurance of hard-working union people. You run against the premium increases that will hit most Americans who have health insurance. You run against the elimination of the Medicare Advantage program. You run against the individual mandate. And you run against the complete government takeover of the student loan industry. If you or your kid need a loan to pay the exhorbinant college tuition prices, you now only have one choice: the federal government. So, if you can’t get a student loan, you know who to blame: The Democrats. Read more...
Tags: AAA bond rating, Barack Obama, Chinese, Democrats, election, Government, health care, House Republicans, legislation, spending, Stan Greenberg, taxes, White House
Posted in Government, Politics, Theory, election, health care, spending | No Comments »
We live in a nation of control-freaks.
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