China's Role as U.S. Lender Alters Dynamics for Obama

[UpInArms]

Source: New York Times

When President Obama visits China for the first time on Sunday, he will, in many ways, be assuming the role of profligate spender coming to pay his respects to his banker.

That stark fact — China is the largest foreign lender to the United States — has changed the core of the relationship between the United States and the only country with a reasonable chance of challenging its status as the world’s sole superpower.

The result: unlike his immediate predecessors, who publicly pushed and prodded China to follow the Western model and become more open politically and economically, Mr. Obama will be spending less time exhorting Beijing and more time reassuring it.

In a July meeting, Chinese officials asked their American counterparts detailed questions about the health care legislation making its way through Congress. The president’s budget director, Peter R. Orszag, answered most of their questions. But the Chinese were not particularly interested in the public option or universal care for all Americans.

“They wanted to know, in painstaking detail, how the health care plan would affect the deficit,” one participant in the conversation recalled. Chinese officials expect that they will help finance whatever Congress and the White House settle on, mostly through buying Treasury debt, and like any banker, they wanted evidence that the United States had a plan to pay them back.

It is a long way from the days when President George W. Bush hectored China about currency manipulation, or when President Bill Clinton exhorted the Chinese to improve human rights.

Mr. Obama has struck a mollifying note with China. He pointedly singled out the emerging dynamic at play between the United States and China during a wide-ranging speech in Tokyo on Saturday that was meant to outline a new American relationship with Asia.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/world/asia/15china.html

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Thanks go to GWB for being the worst spendthrift in the history of this country - he and his minions and the GOP did one hell of a wrecking-crew job on our once great nation.

edited to fix title line

[slipslidingaway]

1. knr nt

[PSPS]

2. It was Reagan that turned us from largest creditor to largest debtor nation on earth

His cutting the top tax rate by 2/3 had a lot to do with it, along with his explosion of military spending (increased 44% during his term.) And it's just gotten worse since then.

[loudsue]

3. The biggest REASON China owns so much of our debt is because of their own

currency policies. Their control of their currency put us at a disadvantage economically, and I'm not happy about Obama having to play quite so nice. Bush's tactics were atrocious, but Obama doesn't need to swing the pendulum in the opposite direction.

[debbierlus]

9. Well, he kind of does. Because if they stop lending, the system crashes

The corporations utilized China for dirt cheap labor, and the majority of the US citizens were more then happy to play along when it meant cheap goods (and before they realized it was THEIR jobs being shipped overseas). Now, we don't make anything, and we are dependent not only for loans but for goods.

It was incredibly stupid for the majority of this country to allow this to happen.

We allowed ourselves to be put in this position of weakness. It did not have to be this way. And, now, we are paying for it. And, the really scary thing - the paying hasn't even really started yet.

[amandabeech]

13. If we come up with a way to get out of this, then we'll be heroes for a generation.

n/t

[AndyA]

4. George W. Bush, the Pimp President, whored the United States to anyone with cash.

Then after workin' the country for all it had until it was spent, he just put on his white fur coat and got into his Eldorado pimpmobile and headed for Dallas.

I hope there's a future in a jail cell for him. If we had any justice in this land, he'd already be there.

[lib2DaBone]

5. It is hard to believe how the most guilty walk free....

as the media exhaults Goldman Sacs (the Biggest of Big Pimps) as heros.

[bluestateguy]

6. They may need to be reminded who buys all of their cheap plastic crap

We are perfectly capable of making that stuff over here, you know.

[caseymoz]

7. I hate to be the one to say it wasn't all Bush's fault.

I could go all the way back to Reagan, but really, our decision to keep fattening the military-industrial complex after the Cold War is what killed us. Bush was just the inevitable outcome of that: a political hack with a "tough" Cold War posture and a thick, family attachment to the MIC.

[Owl]

8. Stop buying crap from China.

[debbierlus]

10. Easier said then done. Most everything is MADE there - buying vintage is the best way to do it

I am with you. I buy everything vintage USA or European (except my car, Japanese). Not just because I hate to give money to China, but because the stuff is MADE and lasts forever. We used to CRAFT things. Everything from hammers to toasters to clothing, it was made with high quality products and it was made to last. My entire house and everything in it (with a very few exceptions is all vintage and antique).

It is really amusing because my daughter's friends think we are rich! But, we aren't. Far from it. It is just we buy from estate sales, auctions, and tag sales.

[davidwparker]

12. Good for you. I'm now doing without, spending only on mortgage, utils, and

local services like restaurants or something that will benefit people who work in my area.

I'm now big on localization.

[amandabeech]

14. I haunt second-hand shops for clothes.

Even if they were made in China, I'm not adding to our trade deficit by doing so.

If I have to buy new imported, I look for clothes made somewhere other than China because I just don't want to increase our dependency on them, even if it is in a small, small way.

[davidwparker]

11. +1