Stimulus working in China, World Bank says

http://money.cnn.com/2009/06/18/news/international/china_economy/index.htm?postversion=2009061804



When you make crap products that have to be replaced every 2 years, nobody should be surprised.

Couldn't find one made in the U.S.

Well, Obama has murmured a few bland sentences about 'job creation'... when in fact, the Corporations (encouraged by Washington) are shoveling jobs out of the country as fast as their little hands can count the corrupt profit.

The main point is that China is no longer sitting on its pile of cash, and whether their money is spent at home or abroad, it has a stimulus affect on the global economy.

It means that the Chinese are slowly shifting from being mercantalists to being Keynesians.

Chinese economic figures are not exactly the most transparent of numbers. The Chinese gov't can put out any figures they like regardless of whether they have a nexus with reality.

They're investing in infrastructure/jobs and buying up oil contracts, mineral rights, and just property rather than propping up banks and failed industries. Of course, having over a trillion "strong" American dollars accumulated, they can do that. We can't.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Asian_Economy/KF19Dk01.html

Similarly today, the three East Asian economic powerhouses collectively possess much of the world's productive capacity - just as the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries had (and has) much of the world's oil producing capacity. A generation of corporate outsourcing in the United States and elsewhere, combined with blinkered adherence to an ideology of free trade, helped bring on one of the largest transfers of production capacity in history: from the West to Japan, China, and Korea. While much of that capacity - at least in China - may be owned by outsiders, even the Chinese are taking advantage of current economic circumstances to bring as much as they can under their control.

If and when the economies of the US and the UK revive, these countries will find themselves forced to place orders for everything from capital equipment to consumer goods from manufacturers in the Asian trio. It is conceivable that the world will return to the status quo ante, and the Asian producers will swallow whatever prices are set in competitive American, British and German markets. But if Napier is right, the Asian producers may wake up to the power that they have - particularly if the policies being followed in Washington and London to stimulate economies result, as he suspects they will, in a return of inflation. Japan, China, and Korea may insist that they be compensated in some form for the weakened purchasing power of the currency in which they are being paid.

One way to do that would involve insisting that their Western customers pay for Asian goods in currencies they control. Indeed, Brad Setser has written a long thoughtful piece on how China may seek to shape the post recession global financial order; he notes "China's evident discomfort with its dollar exposure."

stimulus program. Not being a Democracy, they could move instantly
and really direct projects all over their country. They put "gazillions"
in to Infrastructure, etc.

This is living proof that stimulus works. (I do prefer Democracy).

In our country the bleeding or hemmoraging has been stopped and
we have not gone over the cliff. It takes longer in a Democracy.