Bouncing Back

You might want to check out this interview with Singapore’s prime minister at Politico. I wish more Americans and, especially, American politicians were as optimistic about America’s prospects as he is. Here’s the conclusion:

SG: When you go around to Beijing and the other capitals in the region, what are they misunderstanding about the United States? I think there is a question about whether China is betting on American decline, for example.

PM: Many of them don’t realize how resilient the United States is, and they think that after the global financial crisis, you are done for, and well, suitable obsequies will be spoken, and then a new power will rise. But I’ve told them that is not so and it’s a very resilient country and it has tremendous energy and creativity and drive, and it’s going to bounce back. It may be now tired of wars and battles, but it will come back; it has done so before. I think there’s also a perception in China particularly that America is trying to circumscribe it, restrict it, even contain it from taking its rightful place in the world. I don’t think any American leader wants to do that.

14 comments… add one
  • TastyBits Link

    From linked article:

    PM: … I think there’s also a perception in China particularly that America is trying to circumscribe it, restrict it, even contain it from taking its rightful place in the world. I don’t think any American leader wants to do that.

    WTF! Is this guy smoking dope?

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    TB, given that a couple of generations of American elites have favored helping Chinese economic growth and Chinese employment over their American counterparts, I think the pm is correct.

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    Where the pm is wrong is in his expectations of American resilience. The combination of “demographics are destiny” and that the elites are trying to destroy the American worker and middle class means that we are sliding downhill now. Soon enough we are going to be nothing more than Mexico or Brazil with atomic weapons and a more stupidly aggressive foreign policy. (The elites will continue to favor foreign adventurism for the circus aspects. They’ll go with what they know)

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    I mean, how much faith can one have in a country when it is surprised about the arrival of winter in the middle of winter? And now it is apparently surprised by the arrival of a (near) hurricane during hurricane season. The NHC’s website has been overwhelmed with traffic today. I don’t recall that ever happening before, even when major hurricanes were about to make landfall.

    Maybe they should check the NHC’s web servers to see if they have any IRS or State Department emails by mistake.

  • TastyBits Link

    @Icepick

    The elites are helping China to become a second class citizen. The Chinese can ride on the bus. They just need to stay on the top. As a compassionate people, we do not want to pack the back of the bus with too many undesirables.

    Adjust your mindset. Think like a person with lots of money, and I mean lots of money. Manufacturing goods is for the suckers. Whether you do it domestically or overseas, it is a loser. If you have money, manufacturing credit is where the big profits are made.

    In order to manufacture credit, you need capital to leverage. If your goods are being made in China (or elsewhere), the Chinese can either stuff the dollars in a mattress or they can invest in the US. US manufacturing has been run out of the country, and Wall Street has exploded.

    Every 30 years the auto industry gets a loan, but the finance industry is getting goodies everyday in any number of programs from the government and the Fed. Finance is as safe as US bonds, and it may be safer.

    Environmental regulations are a big factor in ridding the US of manufacturing. Dope smoking hippies and Hollywood actors do not have enough money to fund the environmental organizations. Furthermore, the causes they champion make no sense. A bait fish has shut down one of the most fertile areas of the US, but an environmental disaster in the gulf is not worth one drum circle.

    There is no conspiracy. You simply fund a cause and let the useful idiots do the work. Most of the elites are as dumb as a bag of rocks. Your neighbor’s pitbull has more brains than most of these idiots.

    US manufactures are not the good guys, but they have been playing on an unfair field. Free trade is anything but free. It is a mechanism to increase the cost of US manufacturing and, thereby, free up capital for Wall Street.

    Again, another weird idea. I have a lot of them.

  • As I’ve said, you can write a free trade agreement on the back of a napkin

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    TB, the elites are working on making Americans second class citizens, too. And doing a damned fine job of it, too!

    Given recent polls some people seem to be figuring out a little bit of the big picture.

  • TastyBits Link

    @Icepick

    You have different groups.

    The standard useful idiot elites such as: Obama, Bush, Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Limbaugh, Huckabee, Sandra Fluke, Larry Summers, Elizabeth Warren, Hannity, Eric Cantor, Timothy Geithner etc., etc. etc. These are the people who quote each other and spout conventional wisdom. They are consistently wrong, but they rarely call the other side out.

    Then you have the other group. Hank Paulson and Jon Corzine (remember him) are two public figures. They rarely say much. Ever wonder why? They let the useful idiots spout any type of nonsense, and they never say much. Ever wonder why?

    You are conditioned to the nonsense of the useful idiots. You play along. Pick a topic, and you will faithfully play your part. Even if you refuse to join the fray, you will still have the same mindset. You will will always be a good little boy, and you will never think outside of the nonsense tossed in front of you.

    Hank Paulson and Jon Corzine do not want to distract you. Jon Corzine makes Bernie Madoff look like a two-bit pickpocket, but Bernie is rotting in jail while Jon is flying around the world.

    Those at the bottom are fighting for scraps, but what the useful idiots do not understand is that they are in the fight also. Not everybody will be affected, but Bernie thought he was one of the untouchables until he found himself doing the perpwalk. Today shit is flowing uphill.

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    The political players aren’t entirely stooges. They’re symbiotic with the big money players at this point.

    And Corzine is not a bigger crook than Madoff, just a different one. Actually, the reason Madoff is in jail is that he ripped off the wrong people. Personally I subscribe to the theory that the people that invested with Madoff knew he was a crook, they just thought he was a different kind of crook. They assumed insider trading to get the big returns, and wanted a piece of the action, and didn’t guess that it was a pyramid scheme instead until too late.

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    And TB, you sound a little more like Uncle Smedley every day.

  • TastyBits Link

    General Smedley Butler? If so, you learn about him in boot camp, but they forget to mention his post-USMC activities. The Drill Instructors were not amused when I mentioned he might be a communist. (I was a lot older than the usual recruit.)

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    That’s Uncle Smedley, the post-USMC one, that is.

  • TastyBits Link

    Are you a Marine?

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    No. I wish I had signed up when I was young. A missed opportunity in so many ways, though no doubt my swabbie father-in-law would have been quite upset about it!

    But it would have done me worlds of good when I was 18 or 19 or 20. Now I’m too old, too broken down (physically) and too much a family man to do it.

    I’m not entirely certain why, but the Marines held more appeal than the other branches. Maybe starting with WEB Griffin’s The Corps when I was younger, but I think it goes back farther than that. Marines are just bad asses, in all the right ways.

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