Oh, The Irony

[dilettantedude]

From Investors Insight this week:

"Asking the Chinese to Buy Our Mortgages?

"This all amusingly contrasts with the following news item today from Bloomberg, in the you can't make stuff like this up category. US Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson is in Beijing. He is meeting with various Chinese banking authorities, asking them to buy US mortgage-backed securities. Evidently he is doing this with a straight face. The same story goes on to talk about the collapse of the subprime market.

"On the one hand we have US Congressional leaders demanding that China let the dollar drop another 20% or so against their currency, and then another government official asking them to buy more US debt, which will drop 20% when they do allow their currency to rise. And they call the Chinese inscrutable?

"Has it come to this, that we have to have government officials going to China to ask (some would impolitely say beg) them to buy our debt? You do have to appreciate the irony. Then again, maybe they think it is their punishment for selling us bad pet food and toothpaste. You sell us unsafe products and you have to buy our mortgages."

For the financially clueless, the US sub-prime mortgage market is imploding. These securities the US is begging China to buy to try and stave off disaster here have been downgraded from AAA to Junk - all of it. The degree of the potential damage to the US economy has been under-estimated, and it will last for years longer than currently believed. This is going to hurt a lot of people, and perhaps be the fuse to the next recession.

This is a pretty good investment newsletter, btw, altho not a hot stock tip or how to make 200% per year newsletter. He's a Republican and a Bushie, but one of the more thoughtful and objective investment strategists out there (they're virtually ALL Republicans and Bushies, fwiw), and I've never seen him make a political statement in his newsletter.

[gypsy]

yeah i think "don't buy chinese toothpaste" and "don't buy american debt" are kind of equally wise advice these days. why are people still buying dollars, anyway?

[dilettantedude]

Just try to buy a tire gauge not made in China. Go ahead - try it. 4 stores and about 20 brands later I finally gave up. I'm polluting the world trying to avoid the Chinese, who are polluting the world in even more ways.

That makes my hair hurt.

[~Rumormonger~]

[gypsy]

Just try to buy a tire gauge not made in China. Go ahead - try it. 4 stores and about 20 brands later I finally gave up.

along those lines, this sounds kinda interesting:

On January 1, 2005, Sara Bongiorni's family embarked on a yearlong boycott of Chinese products. They wanted to see for themselves what it would take, in will power and creativity, to live without the world's fastest growing economy—and whether it could be done at all.

A Year Without "Made in China" chronicles this fascinating and frustrating journey, and provides you with a thought-provoking and thoroughly entertaining account of life in a vast and slippery global economy of infinite complexity. Drawing on her years as an award-winning journalist, Bongiorni fills this book with engaging stories and anecdotes of her family's attempt to outrun China's reach, and does a remarkable job of taking a decidedly big-picture issue—China's emerging status in the global economy—and breaking it down to a personal level.

Bongiorni's real-world adventure is filled with small human dramas. You'll learn how her boycott of China meant scrambling to keep her rebellious husband in line and disappointing her young son in stand-offs over Chinese-made toys. You'll also discover how shopping trips for mundane items like birthday candles as well as high-end designer clothing became grinding ordeals, while broken appliances brought on mini crises.

A Year Without "Made in China" reveals how this manufacturing colossus is quietly changing our lives, but it also addresses the realities of globalization and, more importantly, where the world economy is heading. With low wages and government subsidies fueling China's rapid production of consumer goods, countries and companies around the world will soon face the inconvenient fact that they must rely on this economic giant in order to survive—and this book offers a rare glimpse of what that could be like.

[Tennessee Jed]

[dilettantedude]

along those lines, this sounds kinda interesting:

On January 1, 2005, Sara Bongiorni's family embarked on a yearlong boycott of Chinese products. They wanted to see for themselves what it would take, in will power and creativity, to live without the world's fastest growing economy—and whether it could be done at all.

A Year Without "Made in China" chronicles this fascinating and frustrating journey, and provides you with a thought-provoking and thoroughly entertaining account of life in a vast and slippery global economy of infinite complexity. Drawing on her years as an award-winning journalist, Bongiorni fills this book with engaging stories and anecdotes of her family's attempt to outrun China's reach, and does a remarkable job of taking a decidedly big-picture issue—China's emerging status in the global economy—and breaking it down to a personal level.

Bongiorni's real-world adventure is filled with small human dramas. You'll learn how her boycott of China meant scrambling to keep her rebellious husband in line and disappointing her young son in stand-offs over Chinese-made toys. You'll also discover how shopping trips for mundane items like birthday candles as well as high-end designer clothing became grinding ordeals, while broken appliances brought on mini crises.

A Year Without "Made in China" reveals how this manufacturing colossus is quietly changing our lives, but it also addresses the realities of globalization and, more importantly, where the world economy is heading. With low wages and government subsidies fueling China's rapid production of consumer goods, countries and companies around the world will soon face the inconvenient fact that they must rely on this economic giant in order to survive—and this book offers a rare glimpse of what that could be like.

And economic cretins in Congress like Schumer and Graham (both sides of the aisle) want to put huge new tariffs on some Chinese goods! All they'll do is punish American consumers.

Hmmm.... maybe there's some upside to this. Women may have to start going bra-less again, heh.

[Daizy]

A Year Without "Made in China" reveals how this manufacturing colossus is quietly changing our lives, but it also addresses the realities of globalization and, more importantly, where the world economy is heading. With low wages and government subsidies fueling China's rapid production of consumer goods, countries and companies around the world will soon face the inconvenient fact that they must rely on this economic giant in order to survive—and this book offers a rare glimpse of what that could be like. [/i]

It's about time someone took on this task, none too soon, and possibly too late. I've been looking at labels for ten years now. Another socially conscious friend began avoiding those goods years ago because of the labor issues, and I was hooked.

It is nearly impossible to do this completely. Gotta have shoes and the like. But when it comes to anything "disposable," cheap knick knacks and other store bought pretties, it's easy to draw the line.

[earlnemo]

I like fried rice too. We'll keep that. Everything else goes.