[lit-ideas] Re: Englehardt, Cold Warrior in a Strange Land

  • From: "John McCreery" <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Sun, 26 Mar 2006 08:55:35 +0900

On 3/26/06, Lawrence Helm <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> I don't see the U.S. as "limping along" in any respect.  From everything I've
> read, and I read a lot, we are still the most successful economy as well as
> military.
>
>

Hi,Lawrence.

Nobody denies that if you look at gross GDP figures the US appears to
be doing all right. But while the investor class, of whom I happen to
be in a modest way a member, are doing very well, indeed, the median
income in dollars adjusted for inflation has fallen. The numbers of
people living below the official poverty line and of people with no
health insurance at all are rising. The strategy of preserving the
American worker's edge through education has proved to be a paper
tiger (plenty of highly educated Indians, Chinese, etc., out there).
Yesterday, Howard Myerson had an interesting piece in the Washington
Post talking about a new study, reported in an article in Foreign
Affairs, by former vice chair of the Federal Reserve Alan Binder, who
suggests that between 42 and 56 million white collar jobs are
exportable to other countries.

>>"Janitors and crane operators are probably immune to foreign
competition," Blinder writes, "accountants and computer programmers
are not."


And the national debt is out of control. Here, for your delectation is
an opinion that just appeared on the NBR-Japan Forum list. The author
is a retired Japanese government official.

**************
Here's what I summerized from a U.S. government's source of information
http://www.ustreas.gov/tic/mfh.txt
as the current top 10 foreign holders of U.S. government securities such
as Treasury Bills:

Country      2006 Jan (US$billion)

Japan          668.3
China          262.6
UK             244.8
Caribbean      97.9
OPEC           77.6
Taiwan          71.6
Korea           68.3
Germany       65.2
Canada         54.9
Hong Kong   48.3

From this statistics, one can see that Asian countries, particularly Japan
and China, are supporting the bulk of the national debts of the United States.
These Asian countries are, in turn, major exporters of goods and services to
U.S.

I wonder if U.S. is trying to maintain its hegemony and if the international
economy is designed by U.S. in such a way as we see it today. Does U.S.
think that it can maintain supremacy over other countries as long as it can
maintain the military supremacy?

I ate a can of sweetened mandarin orange the other day. I called Microsoft
for help to configure my wireless home LAN and ended up with talking to an
Indian software engineer who helped me and who told me that he lives on
the East coast of India. My wife laments that all merchandises she checks
at local garment stores are made in China. We see enough Japanese cars
here in this suburb of New York City. So, U.S. is buying goods and services
from those supplier countries and sell to them in return paper certificates of
debts? Does U.S. really want globalization? What is the true aim of that?
So that they can continue to let others work and buy on credits perpetually?
Is that the scheme? Does U.S. think that its military supremacy will never
end? Why U.S. is buying so much from China to help the Chinese economy
if U.S. is afraid of military build up in China? In the meanwhile,
U.S. is holding
Japan, the biggest lender, under an iron claw and it looks very secure.
Could the world can be in a more reciprocal relation?

I think that what we see is not a healthy and sustainable situation.

***************************


Cheers,


John McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd.
55-13-202 Miyagaya, Nishi-ku
Yokohama 220-0006, JAPAN
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