WASHINGTON — A top White House aide on Sunday said President Barack Obama wants to strike an “appropriate balance” between advancing human rights and maintaining U.S. relations with China, the first public comments by the administration on its potential involvement in harboring a Chinese activist on the eve of diplomatic talks between the two world powers.
Quite possibly never in our nation’s history have Washington politicians been more fundamentally divided about the future direction of spending and taxation decisions. Sometimes, it would seem, political gridlock can be a desirable outcome, since Congress seems almost devilishly capable of wreaking havoc with our nation’s economy, given the sometimes short-sighted fiscal policy actions enacted. At the present time, however, the political gridlock/opportunism/cowardice (pick your favorite descriptive term) that infects lawmakers is particularly destructive given the monumental issues that must be addressed over the next 13 months.
Last week in a procedural vote to move along a piece of legislation, the U.S. Senate voted by an overwhelming margin of 79 to 19 to establish a mechanism to retaliate against countries that consistently and intentionally undervalue their currencies. While the legislation may seem evenhanded in its treatment of every currency manipulator, it is squarely directed against the Chinese government which is, to the surprise of nobody, keeping the yuan undervalued so as to encourage both production and employment in their domestic export sector. Needless to say, if the yuan is undervalued, then the U.S. dollar is overvalued, and if the Chinese artificially expand their export activity, then the U.S. will see its export sector unfairly restrained.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Congress is embarking on a flurry of votes to show it is trying to do something about creating jobs. The prospects for legislative success, however, are spotty.
By now everyone is aware that the U.S. government has lost something the country has possessed since 1917 — its “best-of-the-best” stamp of financial approval from all major debt ratings agencies. Last Friday Standard and Poor’s downgraded U.S. Treasury securities from AAA to AA+, suggesting the U.S. government seems a little less likely to repay in a timely fashion both principal and interest on Treasury securities.