U.S. Leadership Void Squanders Influence - China Steps In

During this period in American history when the economy, business, trade and currency have taken pivotal positions in the Nation’s psyche, the country is led by what may well be the most economically uninterested Administration it has ever elected.

Loudly professing to fight for the vast middle class, the Obama Administration’s actions are taking the Nation galloping toward the destruction of middle-class incomes, toward upwardly spiralling middle-class taxes, toward bloated government, and toward overwhelming debt. 

As the expansive middle-class heads off to work at its one or two jobs each day, it has the right to expect its leadership to do the job it gets handsomely rewarded to do. That job includes paying attention to all matters which affect the long term health and stability of the country. 

We were not surprised to discover ineptitude such as the State Department’s decisions in Libya or in Egypt, nor were we astonished at cover-ups attempting to hide the incompetence. However, of more import to the middle-class is the blundering neglect and disregard this Administration has shown to economic matters which will directly impact the long term health of America – both its economic condition and its military strength. 

After four years of the current Administration’s platitudes, but prevailing economic indolence, we are presented with abundance of tell-tale ‘canaries in the coal mine’ evidencing a methane cloud sweeping across the whole country trying hard to drag it into a state of international subordination. 

The EU leadership’s attitude toward Cyprus bank depositors forecasts the future imposition of punishment on Spaniards, Italians, and other profligate governments. Any word from the White House? This act by Brussels is criminal expropriation of personal property, telling of an imperious inclination. But who cares? Surely the EU’s action cannot be a ‘canary in the coal mine’ for the American middle-class. It’s just those funny Europeans who speak strange languages, and anyway, we’re not like Europe and surely our leadership would not want to emulate theirs. So let’s look at ‘telling’ events elsewhere for more suitable ‘canaries’. 

Let’s skip to the other side of the world where Australia’s Prime Minister Julia Gillard, head of the labor party, is heading to China to slide Australia further into the Chinese sphere of influence through the signing of an agreement to allow for the direct conversion of Australian dollars into Chinese Yuan. Reducing the need for Australian businesses to convert U.S. Dollars (the greenback is the predominant currency middleman), in trade with China reduces some costs incurred by Australian companies. More importantly, this arrangement provides China a more direct and less expensive access to the raw materials it requires to fuel its own growth and increase its wealth. What of Chinese exporters to Australia? China is promising better prices and better payment terms under this new agreement. How perfect is that seduction? This Australian maneuver could be dismissed as a minor ‘canary,’ representing a trivial event relative to the global daily trade turnover of over $US3 trillion. Such an event is nevertheless an economic and political statement, highlighting the progress in the long term internationalization of the yuan. China is buying up all the mining companies and raw source materials it can in Australia, as it is doing elsewhere. It has done a successful job of hiding the reality that the communist party, which controls China, also controls most entities who ‘acquire’ foreign assets, and it influences any which it does not fully control. Down the road, that centrally manipulated ideological mindset will have massive control over foreign economies. 

Brazil is moving in the same direction with a $30 billion currency swap with China. Such arrangements are expected with other Chinese trading partners including the United Kingdom and Japan. This new and consequential trend is about receding the greenback’s and America’s prominence. 

In Canada, the disdain and the disrespect which the Obama Administration has shown for its leader, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and for its economy, has pushed that country to bend over backwards for China. When the head of CSIS (Canada’s equivalent to the CIA), mentioned that the Chinese government had infiltrated the Federal and Provincial governments at the highest levels, the country’s predominantly liberal media admonished him and shut him down. How dare he talk against a country so busily buying up Canada’s natural resources. How dare he be so politically incorrect? The Canadian MSM actually placed the label ‘racist’ on him. As for Stephen Harper? Since Obama is not only uninterested, but recalcitrant, Harper is determined to forge a trading relationship with China to the point where everything is ‘for sale,’ including the out-of-control indebtedness of Canadians who now on average owe more than the average American. A whole generation of indentured citizens seems apathetic to its plight. China finances construction of hundreds of thousands of pigeon-hole condos, selling them to Canadians who cannot afford them. How is that for a perfect storm? A currency agreement with China such as Australia is entering into, can only be just over the horizon for Canada, further erecting the yuan’s position and sidelining the U.S. dollar. 

As any country’s trade with China increases relative to that country’s other trading partners, China’s ability to dictate trading ‘conditions’ increases. In Europe, the general weakening of the Euro trading block opens the door to sidelining the greenback. China can hardly be accused of being subtle in its efforts toward economic dominance. Here is a statement from a Professor Yu, who was a member of the monetary policy committee of the People’s Bank of China and an economic adviser to the government ”It is a simple case of invoicing and settlement currency, it is not about making the yuan a reserve currency.’’ Of course. 

Australia, Canada, Europe, South Korea, Japan, Indonesia, and, . . . and, . . . and, all depend on America for security. Individuals in much of the world go about their day, conscious that America has for as long as they’ve been alive, been a positive influence on their safety and on their stability, and most importantly on their freedom. The capacity to provide that stability has been financed by the strength of America’s economic engine, the health of its currency and confidence in its ability to lead. Flaccidly standing-by as ‘friendly’ economies become smothered and influenced by a communist government does not augur well for our well-being and our way of life. 

History dictates that maintaining a strong position on the global stage is essential for self-preservation and is imperative for the preservation of freedom and core values. It requires interested, visionary, and inspiring leadership. True leadership cannot be concocted through alchemy, or fashioned on a Hollywood back-lot, or discharged through a teleprompter. It is innate. Before more canaries prognosticate degradation of the Nation’s international stature, America’s taxpayers should make themselves heard, and demand pro-active leadership in Washington.

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• THE ELECTORAL PROCESS - AN URGENT CHANGE IS REQUIRED

American taxpayers are watching their leadership take a stake in the financial engines of their economy, supposedly on their behalf and for their own good. The State is taking equity stakes in banks, healthy banks, solvent banks in need of cash, as well as not so solvent ones. And, as if it matters, Paulson and company are earnestly pointing out that participating companies will have to accept executive compensation limits. Taxpayers have no choice and the compensation limits won’t make the pill go down any more easily. Taxpayers, nevertheless, have front row seats to the biggest show on Earth, and to the historic changes that are shaking the American style of capitalism to its roots.

For taxpayers to be provided the kind of government that will be effective in its supervision and oversight of corporate investments, or general corporate behavior, as well as continued tendencies toward free trade that have built the country and its economy, they will need to demand change in the electoral process. Honest dissection of root problems that enabled the economic turmoil currently being endured by most taxpayers, should lead to an elimination of the organizational, corporate, and special interest funding of elected officials.

How, for example, could Congress, the house Financial Services Committee and the Senate Banking Committee, conduct themselves in a manner befitting the public’s interest when all of them received millions from the financial services industry, including Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? Independence of thought and deed becomes difficult if not impossible when powerful, almost unlimited forces oil the machine that keeps you elected.

Labor unions, political action committees, corporations, associations and other such bodies, should be prevented from providing dollar contributions, or gifts, to political parties, their representatives running for office or those already in office. Along with changes in corporate governance, there is a need for change in electoral governance.

If this is a government By The People and FOR The People, then the people should demand that the financial clout of special interests be taken out of the equation. It is NOT time to look to Europe for a better form of governance of very much, particularly the economy, as some would suggest. Europe was only remained an envious bystander to America’s technological and entrepreneurial advances achieved over the past thirty years. Don’t turn the clock back a century. Allow as much freedom for innovation as possible, but give teeth to oversight. Get meddling interests out of the electoral process, and allow creativity of get the country out of its current difficulties. Legislators will resist such changes. Don’t let them.

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