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CounterPunchers! We Still Mean It!
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CounterPunchers! We Still Mean It!
Please Read This, Then ActThese last days, assuming that you are among the tens of thousands of people around the world who check in at this CounterPunch site every day or two, we’ve been featuring our annual appeal for donations and saying that without the necessary $75,00 to be raised in these weeks, we’ll have to cut back drastically on what we do and what all you site readers who don’t subscribe to our newsletter, get every day for free.
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Today's Stories November 16, 2009 Alan Nasser November 13-15, 2009 Alexander Cockburn Patrick Cockburn Tariq Ali Douglas Lummis Vijay Prashad Carl Ginsburg Manuel García, Jr. Rannie Amiri Mary Lynn Cramer Fred Gardner Dave Lindorff Robert Jensen David Macaray Corporate Crime Reporter Ron Jacobs David Model John V. Walsh Jon Mitchell Stuart Easterling Dan Bacher Franklin Lamb Farzana Versey Charles R. Larson Saul Landau David Yearsley Lorenzo Wolff Poets' Basement
November 12, 2009 Robert Weissman Franklin Spinney Nadia Hijab Afshin Rattansi Paul Craig Roberts Ralph Nader Belén Fernández Allan J. Lichtman Dave Lindorff Jayne Lyn Stahl November 11, 2009 Andrew Cockburn Mike Whitney Rev. Jesse Jackson Jeff Nygaard Stewart J. Lawrence James Ridgeway Eamonn McCann Michael Ortiz Hill Shepherd Bliss Walter Brasch November 10, 2009 Ellen Cantarow Dean Baker Rose Ann DeMoro Ramzy Baroud Peter Lee Dave Lindorff Roberto Rodriguez Winslow T. Wheeler Alan Farago Joseph Grosso November 9, 2009 Patrick Cockburn Linn Washington Carl Ginsburg Jeff Leys John A. Murphy John Halle Bouthaina Shaaban James Ridgeway Dave Lindorff David Macaray Stephen Fleischman Website of the Day November 6-8, 2009 Alexander Cockburn Mark Grueter Paul Craig Roberts Patrick Cockburn Gareth Porter Mike Whitney James Bovard Dean Baker Robert Lawless Saul Landau Jayne Lyn Stahl Stephanie Westbrook M. Shahid Alam Marc Levy Franklin Lamb Ron Jacobs David Ker Thomson John V. Whitbeck Julien Mercille Rannie Amiri John Ross David Michael Green Carl Finamore Farzana Versey Missy Comley Beattie Charles R. Larson David Yearsley Kim Nicolini Poets' Basement November 5, 2009 Pam Martens Vijay Prashad Brian Gallagher Norman Solomon Nadia Hijab Joseph Shansky Andy Thayer Tracy Rosenberg Website of the Day November 4, 2009 Stan Cox Andy Worthington From Gitmo to Palau: Who are the Uighurs? Robert Weissman Susan Galleymore Ralph Nader Michael Leonardi Bitta Mistofi Robert Bryce Martha Rosenberg Dave Lindorff Website of the Day November 3, 2009 Patrick Cockburn Mike Whitney Franklin C. Spinney Laura Carlsen Serge Halimi John Stanton Sophia Weeks Dave Lindorff November 2, 2009 Steven Higgs Ishmael Reed David Macaray Bouthaina Shaaban David Michael Green David Swanson Ellen Brown Adam Federman James McEnteer Stephen Fleischman Website of the Day October 30 - Nov. 1, 2009 Alexander Cockburn Jeffrey St. Clair / Carl Ginsburg Mike Whitney Joe Bageant Gareth Porter Saul Landau Anthony DiMaggio Dave Lindorff Rannie Amiri Niranjan Ramakrishnan Jayne Lyn Stahl Rev. William E. Alberts Alvaro Huerta Martha Rosenberg Binoy Kampmark Norm Kent Charles R. Larson Roth's "The Humbling:" Nothing Like a Novel From an Old Pro Ron Jacobs David Yearsley Lorenzo Wolff Kim Nicolini Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend October 29, 2009 Michael Neumann Mike Whitney Gary Leupp Conn Hallinan Marshall Auerback Laura Flanders Eamonn McCann David Macaray Mark Weisbrot Stephen Soldz Christopher Brauchli Website of the Day October 28, 2009 Moshe Adler Dave Lindorff Frank Joseph Smecker Alexandra Early M. Shahid Alam Vijay Prashad John Ross Franklin Lamb Gregory Travis Susan Galleymore Website of the Day October 27, 2009 Mike Whitney Patrick Cockburn Stewart J. Lawrence Alan Farago Ralph Nader Dave Lindorff Bouthaina Shaaban Brian M. Downing Elections in Afghanistan, the Second Time Around Iain Boal Carl Finamore Jayne Lyn Stahl Website of the Day October 26, 2009 Bill Quigley / Paul Craig Roberts Uri Avnery Mike Whitney Michael Snedeker Shamus Cooke David Michael Green Martha Rosenberg Patrick Bond Binoy Kampmark Website of the Day
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Obama, China and the DollarThe US Must Solve Its Own Economic ProblemsBy MARK WEISBROT President Obama is in Asia this week and has promised to say something about the exchange rate between the Chinese yuan and the U.S. dollar. It would be good if some enterprising journalist asked him why the United States is worried about the Chinese dumping their dollars, and why U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner recently said that the United States is committed to a “strong dollar.” As a matter of accounting, a “strong dollar” is the same as an “undervalued yuan.” So it makes no sense to be worried about the great “power” that the Chinese are holding over us -- that they can dump a few hundred billion dollars of their reserve holdings and cause the dollar to fall. A fall in the dollar would be just what Obama and others are asking for when they ask the Chinese to allow their own currency to rise. This would stimulate the U.S. economy by reducing our trade deficit. It is also just what we need to resolve the long-term problem that our trade deficit represents. Although the U.S. trade deficit has been cut in half during the current recession, it will once again swell as the economy recovers unless the dollar is reduced to a more competitive level and stays there. The manufacturing sector of the United States, including the National Association of Manufacturers and some union leaders, understand this very well. But they have relatively little political clout. The interests that dominate economic policy-making in the United States are mainly in the financial sector, as we can see by the hundreds of billions of dollars of no-strings-attached government subsidies they have gotten in this recession; and the $21 billion in executive compensation that will be paid out by Goldman-Sachs, which is particularly well represented in our government. A strong dollar is good for them because it makes anything they want to buy overseas cheaper, and of course it lowers inflation by keeping imports cheaper. The more than five million manufacturing jobs lost over the last decade are just “collateral damage” for them. Since this conflict of interest between Wall Street and the rest of the country has been resolved in favor of the guys with the big bonuses, what we end up with is a spectacle of scapegoating. It is cheap and easy to blame the Chinese for the overvalued U.S. dollar (which is official U.S. policy) and the U.S. trade deficit. While it is true that the Chinese could allow their currency to rise against the dollar, it is also true that the United States Treasury has the ability to influence the international value of our own currency – just like China and many other countries do. Although the Chinese currency is not freely convertible, our government could push down the dollar against other major currencies, which would generate more pressure on the Chinese currency. It is also worth noting, as World Bank Chief Economist Lin Yifu pointed out this week, that only about one-third of the U.S. trade deficit for the years 1990-2007 is with China. With respect to the Chinese holdings of dollar-denominated assets, China is holding a lot of longer-term U.S. government bonds (e.g. U.S. ten-year treasuries). If the Chinese government were to sell off a lot of these, it would drive up long-term interest rates in the U.S. Since our mortgage rates and other long-term lending rates tend to move with long-term Treasuries, this could obviously have a negative impact on the U.S. economy. But it must be emphasized that this is a different issue from the dollar falling. Is this threat of a Chinese sell-off of longer-term U.S. treasuries something that we should worry about? Not really. First, the Chinese government does not want to hurt the U.S. economy, which still absorbs about 20 percent of Chinese exports. One reason that they have accumulated long-term Treasuries was to help push down long-term rates in the U.S., to support growth and demand for their exports during the 2001-2007 expansion in the U.S. (Some economists have even tried to blame the Chinese for the housing bubble, since these purchases helped push mortgage rates down during the bubble years. But the housing bubble was, even more than the overvalued dollar, a result of deliberate U.S. policy.) Second, the Fed can counter-act unwanted increases in long-term treasury and mortgage rates, as it has already done during this recession. Deficit hawks and other fear-mongers in the U.S. have also used the Chinese accumulation of U.S. debt as another weapon to try and persuade people that we must sacrifice growth and employment during a deep recession, in order to avoid further debt accumulation. This too, is a dangerous misconception. Unfortunately our economic problems are made in the United States, and it is here in Washington that they will need to be fixed. Mark Weisbrot is an economist and co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan. He is co-author, with Dean Baker, of Social Security: The Phony Crisis (University of Chicago Press, 2000), and has written numerous research papers on economic policy. He is also president of Just Foreign Policy. This column was originally published by the Guardian.
Inside the New Print Edition of Our Subscriber-Only Newsletter! Obama and Black America Ten months into Obama-time, the plight of black Americans is terrible. Yet overwhelmingly they rally behind the president. In a powerful report from the Deep South Kevin Alexander Gray asks the question: what should the black political agenda be? Mark Rudd counterposes “organizing” with “activism” and describes what it will take to build a movement. H. Bruce Franklin gives a chronology of the march into Afghanistan. Get your new edition today by subscribing online or calling 1-800-840-3683 Contributions to CounterPunch are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! CounterPunch books and t-shirts make great presents.Order CounterPunch By Email For Only $35 a Year !
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Now Available from CounterPunch Books! Yellowstone Drift:
"Powerful and shocking ..
Waiting for
Lightning
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