Chinese Capitalist Lovers Versus US Debt Lovers

 

 

 

 

 

Chinese leaders present flowers to heroes’ monument on National Day

People mock the Chinese for various reasons.  This is mainly due to fear and an irrational sense of entitlement.  The US used to fret about ‘corporate stiff’ long ago but no longer.  It doesn’t really exist here anymore.  The US military, for example, has ceased having ‘spit and polish’ and now goes about in mud-disguise costumes, slovenly unkept looking as well as often, overweight.  Look at this picture from China!  This is the Army of the Future and it was what the US used to have but has lost.

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A sign of capitalism and industrialism is taking over a country is how the mass of operators at the top all dress not only alike but in black.  We see this clearly in Europe in the early 19th century.  Before 1800, the

 

main if not only real ‘industrialists/capitalists’ were dissenting Christians who wore black clothes like our Pilgrims.  So, after the end of the Napoleonic wars, the distinguishing dress of all the capitalists and their office staff was uniformly black with the ‘top hat’ being the preferred insignia of status.

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1850 Victorian Photo Gallery:  Here is a 160 year old photo of a French opera singer.  Note his very colorful vest, a tiny vestige of the very colorful garb worn by say, our Founding Fathers or the

Napoleonic elites,  just two generations prior.

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Here is a photo of a Victorian businessman in London.  Note how he is wearing all black.  This garb was as uniform as an army regulation for all businessmen by 1850.  If one wore even a flashy vest like the opera singer, one was viewed as being a scoundrel, a wastrel or a criminal.  To assure everyone of one’s sobriety and seriousness, it was all black, all the time.

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There were finer distinctions as to one’s status as a capitalist or diplomat, the Top hat rose to power thanks to Victoria’s consort, Prince Albert, taking to wearing one and thus, all her ambassadors and negotiators did likewise.  By 1860, US Presidents like Lincoln, did this, too.

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The average office workers, on the other hand, wore bowler hats as we see in this old movie made in Manchester, England in 1890:  

Workers universally wore various slouch hats and berets.  A classic comic Victoria figure is the poor man trying to pretend to be a rich capitalist by wearing a top hat which invariably, was shot to hell or partially collapsed.  This denoted a drunk fool whereas the polished top hat denoted a rich, but sober man.  Not that these people were sober!  Nay, they were often the opposite but only on the sly, behind the scenes, going in disguise to see whores and drinking on private estates.

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Fear of revolutionaries and fear of assassins didn’t stop the top hat.  It was automobiles that did this just like it killed off women’s elaborate hats.  Today, in most capitalist countries, the ‘top hat/black suit’ uniform is no longer needed, the very rich wear their autos and private planes as their ‘clothing of power’.  So we see people like Richard Branson, one of the richer people on earth, going about, looking like a ditch digger.

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This disguise seems to work for now, so long as people don’t see him exiting or entering his various capsules of isolation.  The Chinese, being recent converts to capitalism, are most serious about keeping up the uniform appearances required for the illustration of sobriety and conscientiousness required to run this system.

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Back, just before the French Revolution, the elites struggled to pretend to be common people, but couldn’t do this due to the opposite need of appearing to be rulers.  Napoleon started off wearing a muff and black coat and simple hat to aping the royals.  But Prince Albert saw the handwriting on the wall and thus, donned capitalist garb.  But not laborer garb.  Bronson is not unusual in dressing like a beach bum or low level laborer, this is nearly a requirement of our upper classes today.

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It is as much a uniform (jeans/tee shirt and sneakers) as the Chinese capitalist uniform.  The oddest thing is, the middle workers are being ruthlessly squeezed and even eliminated (the bowler hat wearers in Victorian London) while the remaining slouch hats (hard hand labor) remains but is outsourced to cheap illegal alien labor and the dress clothes worn on special occasions like the Oscars, remains as a threadbare tradition showing ‘royalist’ pretensions, and this tiny remainder is collapsing in favor of dressing like outcasts or gypsies.

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A Beijing That Isn’t | China Heritage Quarterly

Back to the Chinese: here is a photo of the same square in Beijing when Mao died.  Again: all are dressed the same, stand in lines the same and are as identical as possible.  This is the sort of discipline required for running a technological/industrial culture.  This is exactly what Americans hate the most and want to avoid and fight off the most.

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The tragic problem here is, we love the fruits of the industrial revolution but hate the plants that grow these things.  We want it all but don’t want to pay the price.  Indeed, what is this price?

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The Ant culture.  Oh, how we hate this!  We want the Grasshopper culture!  I support the demonstrations against Wall Street because I feel that it has been taken over by grasshoppers who have no sense of time value, no idea how to interact with labor and no idea what capitalism is anymore.  But I am not a supporter of the Grasshopper lifestyle choices.  This leads to destruction when winter comes.

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JPMorgan just gave a record amount to the Police Benevolent Society in thanks for beating up and attacking protestors.  Police Arrest Occupy Wall Street Protesters on the Brooklyn Bridge – October 1, 2011 – YouTube

700 arrested at Brooklyn Bridge protest – CBS News:  It is extremely brave for these protestors to defy the state like this.  Of course, this is all a contradiction, too.  Namely, the collapse in discipline in society has led to us ceasing to be a top capitalist nation.  This lack of discipline is on Wall Street just as much as in Harlem.    The Chinese leadership struggles with this as individuals within their own system become reckless, steal stuff, run wild, etc.

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China’s notorious rich second generation in trouble again–WantChinaTimes.com is one example here of they breaking the law and being disorderly.  Rich Chinese Kid’s Life Of Luxury In Dubai – chinaSMACK are just some examples of this disorderliness and this worries the high command in Beijing quite a bit.

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Pretty Girls on the Street Protesting the Rich Second Generation | ChinaHush: this is so big an issue in Chinese news, an official decided to use the charms of young ladies in a safe driving campaign by having them pass out fliers while wearing ‘second generation rich bad drivers’ T shirts.

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In the US, the very rich throw their weight around despite attempts by our government to pretend that we are all supposed to follow the same rules.  The poor still go to prison a lot more, a hell of a lot more, than the rich.  But the rich have put themselves in a slight disadvantage here by dressing as if they are gangsters or homeless veterans.

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Now, back to boring stuff, that is, chatter in the US about how China and Germany, the world’s top sovereign wealth export powers, are stupid and are not taking proper care of themselves due to free trade and FOREX currency games:  AEI – Speeches  Philip I. Levy before the Joint Economic Committee in Congress:

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…I would like to conclude with a brief discussion of U.S. economic policy toward China. Following decades of remarkable economic growth, China has transformed itself into an economic heavyweight and a major trading power. While China undertook an impressive set of liberalizing obligations when it joined the WTO in 2001, the state sector retains a very large role in the economy and the country has contributed significantly to global economic imbalances. China’s global imbalances, exemplified by its $3.2 trillion of foreign exchange reserves, derive from a combination of export-oriented policies, including an undervalued exchange rate, financial repression, and an emphasis on investment over consumption. Chinese actions, such as tying investment opportunities to technology transfer, violate the spirit, if not the letter, of global trade rules.

 

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A first question is who is harmed by these policies. Ultimately, I believe they will prove harmful to Chinese hopes of developing a more sophisticated economy. Policies such as the rapid accumulation of foreign exchange reserves are clearly unsustainable and are already threatening to stoke inflation. Other policies, such as China’s approach to indigenous innovation, will do damage more slowly. They will deter businesses from bringing their best products to the Chinese market and will fail to nurture an innovative domestic environment within China.

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HAHAHAHAHAHA….oh, yes, look at how free trade and manipulating the currency like Japan does, harmed China: they have INFLATION!  Oh, my!  This does irritate the Chinese leaders a bit.  But what do we have?  The total destruction of much of our industrial base!  And inflation, too!  I have to buy tires for my old jeep.  $125-150 @.  And this is a heck of a lot more than I paid several years ago.   When I buy gas, it used to be around $.80 a gallon a decade ago.  Now it is often near $4 a gallon.

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So, we run huge trade deficits and…have inflation!  Duh!  This is like a fat person going to a slightly overweight person and saying, ‘You need to go on a diet.’  This actually happened to me once.  A hideously fat woman who could barely squeeze into the room in the doctor’s office announced that I was 20 lbs overweight.  I told her to go to the scales and tell me her weight.  She got very, very mad.  She must have been over 350 lbs!

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So it is here: the US isn’t figuring out how to close the trade gap.  We have failed at this for many, many years.  Nearly my entire life!  China didn’t factor it even slightly during 90% of this time.  Only now, do they factor in and one reason Japan isn’t even worse than it is with us, is due to Japan moving partial but not even half of their production here after destroying our native industries.

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Secondly, why is Congress so worried about the Chinese nurturing their innovative domestic environment?  Eh?  Holy cow!  What the heck do they think is going on there?  Exactly this!  And what fuels it?  The trade surplus!  Duh!  China is growing.  It is building many cities, it is building many roads, bridges and rail systems and opening many more airports, more infrastructure is being built per decade than the US builds in a half a century.

China’s urbanisation – interactive | World news | guardian.co.uk

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This interactive map shows tremendous future growth for China.  By 2030, there is going to be over 221 cities with more than a million people.  In stark contrast, the US is destroying its million people cities such as Detroit, just for one ugly, glaring example.

 

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Japan has concentrated nearly all of its growth in a very few places, 80% of this being Tokyo.  And it isn’t growing in population, it is shrinking.  The state of affairs in the US is, we can build infrastructure but only by increasing our debts.  We have decided, collectively, to NOT do this but instead, to build overseas which is why 50% of our capital budget is focused on building military bases, funding military alliances and increasing wars overseas.  We have definitively turned our backs on home spending.

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This, at a time, when we are running historically high trade deficits!  One of the first rules in life is, if there is a hole in the bucket, you plug it before drawing more water.  Instead, Congress continues to drill more holes while pretending to be oh-so-concerned about what the Chinese are doing with their vast national sovereign wealth!

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The other nation that invented the industrial revolution, England, is just as clueless and stupid.  Here is a typical example of a clever Brit whining about China’s ‘mistakes’ while studiously ignoring Britain’s suicidal mistakes:  China Financial Markets » Current account dilemma.  In this case, he talks extensively about Germany:

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Without unlimited borrowing capacity these are the only two options, and once the market decides debt levels are too high, a decision must be made. Either Germany must accept a reversal of the current account imbalances or it must accept an erosion in the value of the Spanish assets it owns as a consequence of the current account imbalances. This is the important point. Once you have excluded infinite borrowing capacity there are arithmetically no other options.

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It is pretty clear that the countries of the world represented in my example by Germany (Germany, China, Japan, etc.) are doing everything possible to resist the first option. They are not taking the necessary steps to reverse their anti-consumptionist policies and plan to continue running current account surpluses for many more years. Even Japan, for example, a country that has abandoned its old growth model and has finally been adjusting domestically for nearly two decades has been unable, or has refused, to take the necessary steps to reverse its current account surplus.

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…This is why I find the moaning and gnashing of teeth over the possible erosion of the value of claims accumulated by surplus countries surreal. There is only one possible way to avoid that erosion of value, and that requires that the surplus countries work with the deficit countries to reverse the trade imbalances. If the surplus countries refuse to take the necessary steps, an erosion in the value of those claims is the automatic and necessary consequence. In practice that means that either the claims must be devalued or they will lead to default.

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Japan has changed NOTHING.  This makes his analysis stupid.  Japan is increasing its meddling in FOREX markets.  It is increasing its exports.  Its mistake was to coddle the rich elites instead of disciplining them.  Now, they are fleeing their own sinking ship and going to either Europe, the US or Chinese outposts.  But not China, proper.  They fear the Chinese government.

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Gold was once used to stop trade deficits.  Nixon wanted trade deficits so he dumped the gold standard and voila!  We got trade deficits!  He wanted oil trade deficits, not industrial but Germany and Japan both jumped for joy and began exporting high end manufactured goods here.  From day one, the dropping of the gold standard was a complete disaster for the US.  We had a merchant marine and ship building abilities before that day, now, we have none whatsoever.

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The Chinese correctly see that the US free trade model doesn’t work.  Duh.  They want to try to build their own model because they see the flaws in the Japanese model.  Germany’s model of building the EU confederacy with one currency (thus, no floating fiat solutions to trade imbalances) does work for Germany but this is due to them being still and ‘Ant’ society but the ‘Grasshopper’ parts are now too deep in debt to do much of anything and thus, have changed from trade destination to a form of financial cancer.

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The big trade deficit nations now have to cease buying.  This will be recessionary, big time.  But then, the stupid free trade/floating fiat currency system was supposed to not cause this!  It was supposed to float along, merrily and just like the Federal Reserve stopped bank runs, the fix made things much worse and more dangerous in the long run.  Ever since the Fed took over banking, we now have to endure periodic mega-crashes that destroy everything, everywhere.  And with the floating trade system, we don’t have ‘trade war’s we have trade NUCLEAR warfare!

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That is, instead of using tariffs to stop imports, smart, Ant culture nations have used other tools to prevent imports.  And stupid, Grasshopper nations didn’t bother to do this at all, they thought it was fun, importing nearly everything and then paying with paper money.  The US top elites, to this very day, boast about how we got real TVs and cars from foreigners and paid them in imaginary credit paper.  Well, why not continue this forever, eh?  If it is so smart?

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And who is building what, today?  China is building one city after another, expanding everything across the globe and the US is desperately butchering Muslims and trying to force them to do business with us at the point of the gun.

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Look at this news:  China, France pledge to deepen military ties.  Germany will do this, in spades, and with Russia, too.  The West is looking increasingly Eastwards.  This is because long range planners see a US bankruptcy in the future and the collapse of our military rule of this planet.  Mandarin Language Charter Schools Not Approved by New Jersey – NYTimes.com: New Jersey, where I used to live, is cutting edge.  These two Chinese Ant colony schools were turned down for political theater reasons.

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If I still had children there like in the past, I would have probably sent them there for at least one year, for the immersion classes.  I went to a German school for this reason, in the past.  This week, China runs Confucius video in New York’s Times Square to celebrate their Ant culture.

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