Quote Of The Day

Robert Reich, on what China can teach us:

China is eating our lunch. Why? It has a national economic strategy designed to create more and better jobs. We have global corporations designed to make money for shareholders.

The Real Economic Lesson China Could Teach Us

What's really going on at the business meetings is that American corporations and their political prostitutes are giving the Chinese access to advanced aviation technology in exchange for keeping a few jobs here at home. The corporations are selling out our future, because the people who run them can make a lot of money right now.

Our politicians will continue to let them, because Americans are too busy obsessing about nonsense to make them do anything else. If you want to have a future, I suggest you learn Chinese. The age of American domination will soon be over.

UPDATE: Dean Baker on the same story:

Well President Obama has not, thus far, had a press conference on the topic, but a "senior administration official" is touted an agreement by China to buy $45 billion in U.S. exports. The Post article provided no information about the time period over which these goods would be purchased (e.g. 2 years? 10 years?), nor is there any reason to believe that the deal actually involves new exports. (One of the items in the Post article is planes being sold by Boeing, the sale of which had already been announced.)

While $45 billion may sound like a big commitment, senior administration officials know that it is not. The United States had a trade deficit with China of more than $250 billion over the first 11 months of 2010. Exports of $45 billion over some indefinite number of future years, many of which were already in the pipeline, will not affect this in any noticeable where.

President Obama's $45 Billion in Exports to China: Where Is the Ridicule?

The only people who are likely to make much noise about this are the empty-headed chorus of Obama fanboys who make up the "progressive" establishment. Anyone with any sense will probably be speechless when they realize what an embarrassment this behavior is in the face of the country that will almost certainly be our principle rival in this century.

And the really smart ones will figure out that this was the day that the writing was finally on the wall for America. With pathetic leadership like this, we aren't going anywhere but down for a long while.