When you can't run a state, run for President. When you can't run your country, attempt to run the world.
This directive to the G20 is probably going to make the Organizer-in-Chief's recent pathetic sermonette on altruism and self-denial to Wall Street seem effective by comparison.
Unless he is as prime an example of boobus Americanus as he appears to be by his actions, we suspect that this proposal is intended merely to be a blue sky diversion to a broadly unachievable goal from a genuine agenda for reform and action on the table including regulating bankers' pay, which might be an annoying hindrance to Obama's constituents on Wall Street. It has been estimated that the reforms on the table from Europe, for example, might cut the trading revenues at Goldman Sachs by a third.
What Obama does not say, and perhaps does not realize, is that the majority of the problems that exist in the US's imbalanced trade relationships is the position of the US dollar as the world's reserve currency.
Owning the reserve currency is a significant benefit for your government and financial sectors, but it makes your manufacturing and productive economy the target of every mercantilist command economy around the globe that is by definition hungry for dollars.
Reuters
Obama wants G20 to rethink global economy
By Jeff Mason and Dave Graham
Mon Sep 21, 2009 12:29am EDT
WASHINGTON/BERLIN (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama said on Sunday he would push world leaders this week for a reshaping of the global economy in response to the deepest financial crisis in decades.
In Europe, officials kept up pressure for a deal to curb bankers' pay and bonuses at a two-day summit of leaders from the Group of 20 countries, which begins on Thursday.
The summit will be held in the former steelmaking center of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, marking the third time in less than a year that leaders of countries accounting for about 85 percent of the world economy will have met to coordinate their responses to the crisis.
The United States is proposing a broad new economic framework that it hopes the G20 will adopt, according to a letter by a top White House adviser.
Obama said the U.S. economy was recovering, even if unemployment remained high, and now was the time to rebalance the global economy after decades of U.S. over-consumption. (The recovery is as tenuous as Mr. Obama's prospects for a second term - Jesse)
"We can't go back to the era where the Chinese or the Germans or other countries just are selling everything to us, we're taking out a bunch of credit card debt or home equity loans, but we're not selling anything to them," Obama said in an interview with CNN television. (How about a system where Wall Street thinks it can defraud the world, and take usurious rents on every financial transaction in every market? - Jesse)
For years before the financial crisis erupted in 2007, economists had warned of the dangers of imbalances in the global economy -- namely huge trade surpluses and currency reserves built up by exporters like China, and similarly big deficits in the United States and other economies. (Greenspan dismissed every growing problem with an unswerving prevarication, and the corportocracy provided air support. - Jesse)
With U.S. consumers now holding back on spending after house prices plunged and as unemployment climbs, Washington wants other countries to become engines of growth. (Most of the world would like to cure its problems by net exporting to other countries in unbalanced trade relationships. The Asian preoccupation with mercantilism is in some ways the natural outcome of the US dollar reserve hegemony. There is a bit of a standoff here. - Jesse)
"That's part of what the G20 meeting in Pittsburgh is going to be about, making sure that there's a more balanced economy," Obama told CNN.
China has long been the target of calls from the West to get its massive population to spend more. It may be reluctant to offer a significant change in economic policy when Chinese President Hu Jintao meets Obama this week. (The only way they can spend more is if they get higher real wages, a neat trick when your national policy is based on exploiting the exploitation of your laboring class - Jesse)
The U.S. proposal, sketched out in a letter by Obama's top G20 adviser, Michael Froman, calls for a new "framework" to reflect the balancing process that the White House wants.
"The Framework would be a pledge on the part of G-20 leaders to individually and collectively pursue a set of policies which would lead to stronger, better-balanced growth," said the letter, which was obtained by Reuters. (Kumbaya, my lord, kumbaya... Jesse)
Without naming specific countries, the proposal indicates the United States should save more and cut its budget deficit, China should rely less on exports and Europe should make structural changes -- possibly in areas such as labor law -- to make itself more attractive to investment.
To head off reluctance from China, Froman's letter also supported Beijing's call for developing countries to have more say at the International Monetary Fund. (Say = talk, but it does not imply that anyone will listen and take any action. The US owns the IMF. - Jesse)
The IMF would be at the center of a peer review process that would assess member nations' policies and how they affect economic growth...(Most statists are by nature Ponzi politicians who really cannot run anything complex, and have to keep expanding their power and span of control or collapse and be exposed as frauds. Its been a perennial source of mischief throughout history. - Jesse)
