O/T Hats off to China

That is only 20 times longer than the USA has been around.

AND they seem to be on the upswing...

I'm not holding my breath for them to fail!

Howard

PS - For another thing, my roommate at the University of Texas was a PhD student in computer science. He is as smart a fellow as I've ever met in my life - and he hit the books like his life depended on it. He's now a research fellow at Bell Laboratories.

With retail sales in the US falling, production in China has slowed, and is even causing layoffs within the Chinese companies.

With the weaker dollar and improved efficiency of US manufacturing, foreign companies are once again looking to the US for products.

It's not all gloom and doom, but prices of everything are going to rise.

There is all this concern about how we should handle the protests that are going on over there.
I think we have to be nice to China because we owe them to much money.

On kind of a related subject. I listen to the presidential candidates tell about all the wonderful programs they will implement, health care etc. I wished they could explain where they plan on getting the money. All of them are saying that they will lower taxes.

I am afraid my vote is going to be NATA, none of the above.

Things arent as rosy in China as they would like you to think.Read the link below.

• Inflation

And there's no reason for us to fear them.

The arguments about them holding so much our debt is bogus. Last figure I saw it was at $487 Billion. Don't increase federal spending for two years and you can pay that off, in full. It's not that much.

I'm far more worried about 15-20% budget growth you see in Defense & Welfare (Social Security, Medicare, Unemployment, General Welfare) spending. None of those items has a dramatic, long term impact on our national economic output. A strong economy can afford to spend well on defense and social programs...but you don't build a strong economy doing so.

China is not a military threat within the next 20 to 30 years, minimum. Even then we would have years to see a build up of blue water naval capabilities. They're currently building a Navy that can defend their territorial waters, can saber rattle well with Taiwan, and can defend their oil shipping lanes from the Middle east and Africa -- especially from Indian harrasment (and an Sino-Indian war is a hundred times more likely then a Sino-American war). If any country was unwilling or unable to take such basic steps to defend itself, we'd call them French.

Seriously, what do people think China is going to do? Blockade their own ports so they can't sell stuff to the U.S.?

Is it time to engage in a love fest with 'em? Hell no. I prefer stronger trade agreements with other countries in the Americas then across oceans (take care of your neighbors first policy). They are on the road, long term, to the Communists losing their grip. The free market will make that happen -- 30, 40, 50 years down the road.

That said, they are not a nation to get your panties in a knot being afraid of. They don't even rank high on my list anymore of nations to be concerned about -- Russia is the sleeping bear that is the #1 threat in the world. I used to buy the nonsense of the rising threat from China, but it's just not there folks. It's just not there.

They are simply a rising economic power, and rising living standards and embracing free markets is a very good thing.

Kuwait {sp} buys our treasury notes because they have all our dollars from our purchase of their oil. That money isn't spread throughout the country, it ends up in a couple of pockets. I am sure they feel obligated to buy our treasury notes cause we saved their butt. It has got to the point where they are very concerned about our financial stability.

I have to wonder if the folks that run our country think like the other folks that have run up their credit card debt to a average of $6000+
per household.