BY TOM WATKINS • September 24, 2008
Many have predicted that the 21st Century will be the Century of China. It seems that the jokers in charge of Wall Street and our federal regulators assigned to watch over "The Street" are attempting to speed up this prediction.
The Chinese government holds in excess of $1 trillion in U.S. securities. The Chinese fear the global economic slowdown being led by this country will stifle the jobs boom that has moved hundreds of millions of people out of abject poverty and created the Chinese equivalent of the American dream.
If the Chinese government, along with the U.S. taxpayers, were not left holding a bag of debt, they would be laughing at the mess our banking and financial systems are in today.
U.S. taxpayers have taken over the country's two biggest mortgage companies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and its biggest insurance company, AIG. Our government took no action as the nation's fourth-largest investment bank, Lehman Brothers, tumbled into bankruptcy and another investment icon, Merrill Lynch, was forced to sell itself to Bank of America. And there is fear from Main Street to Wall Street that more dominoes are likely to fall.
The old socialists and communists -- Marx, Engels, Lenin and Mao -- must be chuckling in their graves.
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and many members of Congress have called on China to address its currency manipulation and develop more transparency in its banking and legal systems. We must admit that this lacks credibility and is a bit ironic when our nation has failed to get its own fiscal house in order.
America is hugely in hock to China and Japan, borrowing money from those countries to underwrite the escalating debt brought about by the Iraq war, cutting taxes while going on a spending spree, and being mired in the mortgage crisis. While the United States borrows and consumes, the Chinese are saving, building up their infrastructure and lending us money to continue our self-destructive behavior.
Earlier this year, I traveled 48 hours by rail from Beijing, the capital of China, to Lasha, Tibet. What did I see? Not just the $40 billion of Olympic infrastructure investment in Beijing, but bridges, roads, rail, hospitals and schools being built in the interior of the country (some with inferior construction, as we saw in the collapse of thousands of schools in the May earthquake in Sichuan that killed 70,000, including 10,000 schoolage children).
I spent days traveling along the old "silk route" in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, where, in the middle of the desert, thousands of windmills and solar panels provide renewable energy to the people of Turpan and Urumchi. Yes, I know, you have never heard of these places, yet they are more advanced than we are when it comes to finding alternatives to fossil fuels.
The Chinese are investing in progress while we disinvest in America and the American people.
Our behavior and poor choices on foreign and domestic policy are making us a laughingstock on the world stage. We preach to the world about capitalism and free markets while we nationalize our largest insurance company and money lenders. China, sitting on a big stash of cash, will be looking at what American banks and other companies they can pick up on a fire sale.
In China they call their economic system "capitalism with Chinese characteristics." That means the state owns a big part of the economy while, at the same time, individuals are allowed to participate within a market economy. Today in America, it would seem we have socialism with slivers of free market characteristics. The world is being turned upside down.
As this financial crisis plays out, the questions remain. Will people on Main Street be viewed as worthy of a bailout or investment as Wall Street? Will Treasury Secretary Paulson, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, Congress or the presidential candidates ensure that working men and women get relief? Or will it be, to paraphrase an old country song, Wall Street gets the gold mine and the rest of us get the shaft.
If this is the case, our national leaders may want to keep in mind what Mao Tse-tung said: "In waking a tiger, use a long stick."
It is about time that our national leaders recall and act on the fact that this great country was built on the backs of working men and women and that ordinary Americans deserve better than seeing our American dream evaporate.
TOM WATKINS is a business and education consultant working in the United States and China. He served as Michigan's state superintendent of schools, 2001-2005. He can be reached at tdwatkins@aol.com.
The American dream got sold out to China and Japan | Freep.com | Detroit Free Press
Many have predicted that the 21st Century will be the Century of China. It seems that the jokers in charge of Wall Street and our federal regulators assigned to watch over "The Street" are attempting to speed up this prediction.
The Chinese government holds in excess of $1 trillion in U.S. securities. The Chinese fear the global economic slowdown being led by this country will stifle the jobs boom that has moved hundreds of millions of people out of abject poverty and created the Chinese equivalent of the American dream.
If the Chinese government, along with the U.S. taxpayers, were not left holding a bag of debt, they would be laughing at the mess our banking and financial systems are in today.
U.S. taxpayers have taken over the country's two biggest mortgage companies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and its biggest insurance company, AIG. Our government took no action as the nation's fourth-largest investment bank, Lehman Brothers, tumbled into bankruptcy and another investment icon, Merrill Lynch, was forced to sell itself to Bank of America. And there is fear from Main Street to Wall Street that more dominoes are likely to fall.
The old socialists and communists -- Marx, Engels, Lenin and Mao -- must be chuckling in their graves.
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and many members of Congress have called on China to address its currency manipulation and develop more transparency in its banking and legal systems. We must admit that this lacks credibility and is a bit ironic when our nation has failed to get its own fiscal house in order.
America is hugely in hock to China and Japan, borrowing money from those countries to underwrite the escalating debt brought about by the Iraq war, cutting taxes while going on a spending spree, and being mired in the mortgage crisis. While the United States borrows and consumes, the Chinese are saving, building up their infrastructure and lending us money to continue our self-destructive behavior.
Earlier this year, I traveled 48 hours by rail from Beijing, the capital of China, to Lasha, Tibet. What did I see? Not just the $40 billion of Olympic infrastructure investment in Beijing, but bridges, roads, rail, hospitals and schools being built in the interior of the country (some with inferior construction, as we saw in the collapse of thousands of schools in the May earthquake in Sichuan that killed 70,000, including 10,000 schoolage children).
I spent days traveling along the old "silk route" in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, where, in the middle of the desert, thousands of windmills and solar panels provide renewable energy to the people of Turpan and Urumchi. Yes, I know, you have never heard of these places, yet they are more advanced than we are when it comes to finding alternatives to fossil fuels.
The Chinese are investing in progress while we disinvest in America and the American people.
Our behavior and poor choices on foreign and domestic policy are making us a laughingstock on the world stage. We preach to the world about capitalism and free markets while we nationalize our largest insurance company and money lenders. China, sitting on a big stash of cash, will be looking at what American banks and other companies they can pick up on a fire sale.
In China they call their economic system "capitalism with Chinese characteristics." That means the state owns a big part of the economy while, at the same time, individuals are allowed to participate within a market economy. Today in America, it would seem we have socialism with slivers of free market characteristics. The world is being turned upside down.
As this financial crisis plays out, the questions remain. Will people on Main Street be viewed as worthy of a bailout or investment as Wall Street? Will Treasury Secretary Paulson, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, Congress or the presidential candidates ensure that working men and women get relief? Or will it be, to paraphrase an old country song, Wall Street gets the gold mine and the rest of us get the shaft.
If this is the case, our national leaders may want to keep in mind what Mao Tse-tung said: "In waking a tiger, use a long stick."
It is about time that our national leaders recall and act on the fact that this great country was built on the backs of working men and women and that ordinary Americans deserve better than seeing our American dream evaporate.
TOM WATKINS is a business and education consultant working in the United States and China. He served as Michigan's state superintendent of schools, 2001-2005. He can be reached at tdwatkins@aol.com.
The American dream got sold out to China and Japan | Freep.com | Detroit Free Press
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