Eideard

Xi Jinping with Joe Biden, LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa
Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping said on Friday the Chinese economy would experience stable growth and avoid a hard landing this year, discounting a scenario economists fear may upset the global economy.

The Chinese leader-in-waiting, turning to courting American companies and governors hungry for a slice of his nation’s growth, told a business forum in Los Angeles that the world’s No. 2 economy will continue to push domestic demand while directing investment toward the United States.

Xi said “2012 will be a crucial year in driving the 12th five-year plan. China’s economy will maintain stable growth … there will be no so-called hard landing.”

“We will encourage more consumption, imports, and outward investment,” he told a business forum in Los Angeles on the final leg of his five-day U.S. visit, drawing light applause…

Xi is poised to become China’s next leader after a decade in which it has grown to become the world’s second-largest economy, while the United States has endured the deepest recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s…

Scores of executives from major U.S. and Chinese companies, from Intel to Microsoft, lined up to sign a plethora of deals after Xi’s address at the economic forum on Friday. Those included “Kung Fu Panda” studio Dreamworks Animation’s venture to make films from Shanghai, and Chinese telecoms giant Huawei’s pledge to award $6 billion of contracts over three years to Qualcomm, Broadcom and Avago.

The Chinese trade delegation this week also inked deals to buy a record 13.4 million tonnes of U.S. soybeans, valued at $6.7 billion. Before Los Angeles, Xi visited the heartland farm state of Iowa, where Chinese soybean buyers announced they would buy more than $4 billion in U.S. soybeans this year…

“China has become the United States’ fastest growing export market,” Xi told an audience of business executives and policymakers on Wednesday. “Speaking frankly, an important aspect of addressing the imbalance in Chinese-U.S. trade is the United States’ own economic policies and structural adjustment…”

“A prosperous and stable China will not be a threat to any country,” he said.

None of this differs especially from the analyses of most economists and analysts doing business on the global stage. Of all the information strolling across the electronic stage – all week – the majority reflects this theme.

Professional bears, trying to influence their short-selling egos try to counter reality. And a couple times a week some minstrel show mug will get five minutes interview time trying to sell the latest book on the imminent collapse of China. With or without a secret cabal of lizard people [and a wink to Eddy Elfenbein].

The photo links to a site from the German Ministry of Education and Research

German unemployment fell more than forecast in December as exports of cars and machinery boomed and one of the mildest winters on record helped support jobs in construction…

German companies, working off orders for exports and investment goods, have so far defied a debt crisis the European Commission says risks triggering a recession in the euro area. The Munich-based Ifo institute’s measure of business confidence rose unexpectedly in December, and polls show most Germans see their job as secure even as Europe’s biggest economy slows…

Carmaker Audi AG said on Dec. 27 that it may add 1,200 jobs this year as it expands investment in electric vehicles and light-metal technology. Airbus SAS, maker of the A380 superjumbo whose German production sites include Hamburg, said Dec. 14 that it’s seeking 4,000 more workers. Of Hamburg’s largest 200 employers, 42 percent said they plan to boost hiring in 2012, the Abendblatt newspaper reported Dec. 30, citing its own poll…

Across Germany, 90 percent of voters said they view their jobs as secure, a poll of 2,000 respondents by Ernst & Young International for Die Welt newspaper published today showed. Forty percent said they expect the economy to weaken in 2012.

Compare that to any poll of economic confidence in the United States since Bill Clinton left office. Even in the period before the Great Recession – brought to us by Bush/Cheney in the White house – American workers confronted economic policies that focused solely on maximizing profits through outsourcing.

Read the rest of this entry »

President Obama has made expanding exports a centerpiece of his plan for accelerating the economic recovery, but in recent weeks, his trade agenda has nearly ground to a halt amid partisan feuding.

Although the White House renegotiated a pivotal free-trade agreement with South Korea in December, scoring rare bipartisan praise, House Republican leaders have refused to allow the deal to move forward. They want the administration to make progress first on similar accords with Colombia and Panama that face stiff opposition from labor unions and liberal Democrats.

Wonder what products from those countries are favored by Republicans?

To add to the pressure on the administration, House Republicans in February blocked a big expansion of trade adjustment assistance — which provides cash, training, relocation, job search and other benefits to workers displaced by globalization — from being renewed. Many of the 220,000 workers who took part in the program last year could have their benefits reduced as a result.

Another program, which gives duty-free preferences to 4,800 products from poor countries that are allies of the United States, expired in December after a Republican senator, Jeff Sessions of Alabama, blocked a vote to extend it….

“In 30 years I have not seen trade policy in such disarray as it is now,” said Howard F. Rosen, a trade expert at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a research organization here.

The standoffs have come to overshadow what trade proponents had seen as a major accomplishment: the completion in December of a free-trade agreement with South Korea, the largest such deal since the North American Free Trade Agreement took effect in 1994…

The Andean preferences, which began in 1991, have lapsed just as the United States was trying to get Colombia to strengthen labor protections as part of the negotiations to revise the 2006 agreement.

A third program, the Generalized System of Preference, also has expired, but for parochial reasons, not partisan ones. Mr. Sessions, the Alabama senator, blocked the program from being renewed past its Dec. 31 expiration unless changes were made to protect Exxel Outdoors, a sleeping-bag manufacturer with a plant in Haleyville, Ala., from competition in Bangladesh.

As usual, Republican ideology is as suspect as any other agitprop they offer whilst electioneering. Unless pork is protected, unless businesses in the Republican family get special treatment, free trade means as little as civil rights.

Unused ammo seized from gang after 10-hour shootout
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

As Mexico approaches its bicentennial, Mexico’s president says his country is fighting significant security problems — many of which are fueled by U.S. policies.

“We live next to the world’s largest drug consumer, and all the world wants to sell them drugs through our door and our window. And we live next to the world’s largest arms seller, which is supplying the criminals,” Mexican President Felipe Calderon told CNN en Español…

He said many of America’s leaders have acknowledged a shared responsibility in drug violence.

“But I think in American society, there is still not a sense of sharing responsibility, unfortunately,” he said.

The 2004 end to the U.S. federal assault weapons ban gave criminals new resources, he said. “They gained access to powerful firearms that they didn’t have before,” he said…

“It’s not only guns; it’s weapons, it’s arsenals of all kinds that come south,” Hillary Clinton told the Council on Foreign Relations Wednesday. “So I feel a real sense of responsibility to do everything we can. And again, we’re working hard to come up with approaches that will actually deliver…”

But still, Calderon said he was optimistic about Mexico’s future. He claimed the country had made significant headway combating poverty, and that he planned to work toward improving its economic competitiveness, education systems and national security.

“Even in this terrible moment of insecurity that we are living, I know that we are taking the firm steps that tomorrow will make Mexico secure,” he said.

The parallel analyses of the United States as primary customer for drugs traveling through Mexico – and as primary source for cartel weapons – is impossible to dispute unless you’re one of the clan of nitwits whose ideology overrules all evidence, the realities confronting police on both sides of the border.

Decriminalization of drug use takes extreme profits and gangsters out of the consumption side of the equation. The weapons side is much more difficult given the American love affair with things that go bang – and our craven politicians fear of the NRA.

Bush’s bubba Bremer with his Blackwater bodyguards
Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

The private security company formerly called Blackwater Worldwide, long plagued by accusations of impropriety, has reached an agreement with the State Department for the company to pay $42 million in fines for hundreds of violations of United States export control regulations.

The violations included illegal weapons exports to Afghanistan, making unauthorized proposals to train troops in south Sudan and providing sniper training for Taiwanese police officers, according to company and government officials familiar with the deal.

The settlement, which has not yet been publicly announced, follows lengthy talks between Blackwater, now called Xe Services, and the State Department that dealt with the violations as an administrative matter, allowing the firm to avoid criminal charges.

Don’t slap their wrist too hard. The Obama administration continues to employ these gangsters.

Read the rest of this entry »

For decades, Turkey has been told it was not ready to join the European Union — that it was too backward economically to qualify for membership in the now 27-nation club. That argument may no longer hold.

Today, Turkey is a fast-rising economic power, with a core of internationally competitive companies that are turning the youthful nation into an entrepreneurial hub, tapping cash-rich export markets in Russia and the Middle East while attracting billions of investment dollars in return.

For many in aging and debt-weary Europe, which will be lucky to eke out a little more than 1 percent growth this year, Turkey’s economic renaissance — last week it reported a stunning 11.4 percent expansion for the first quarter, second only to China — poses a completely new question: who needs the other one more — Europe or Turkey?

“The old powers are losing power, both economically and intellectually,” said Vural Ak, 42, the founder and chief executive of Intercity, the largest car leasing company in Turkey. “And Turkey is now strong enough to stand by itself.”

It is an astonishing transformation for an economy that just 10 years ago had a budget deficit of 16 percent of gross domestic product and inflation of 72 percent. It is one that lies at the root of the rise to power of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has combined social conservatism with fiscally cautious economic policies to make his Justice and Development Party, or A.K.P., the most dominant political movement in Turkey since the early days of the republic.

Indeed, so complete has this evolution been, that Turkey is now closer to fulfilling the criteria for adopting the euro — if it ever does get into the European Union — than most of the troubled economies already in the euro zone. It is well under the 60-percent ceiling on government debt, at 49 percent of G.D.P., and could well get its annual budget deficit below the 3 percent benchmark next year. That leaves reducing inflation, now running at 8 percent, as the only remaining major policy goal…

Whether it be embracing Islam as a set of principles to govern his life or Israeli irrigation technology for his sideline almond and walnut growing business, Mr. Ak represents the flexible dynamism — both social and economic — that has allowed Turkey to expand the commercial ties with Israel, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Syria that now underpin its ambition to become the dominant political actor in the region…

Read the rest of this entry »

Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

China has overtaken Germany as the world’s biggest exporter of goods after exports rose for the first time in 14 months.

In the last month of 2009 Chinese exports rose 17.7 per cent on the previous year, the state-run Xinhua news agency said on Sunday, quoting figures from the general administration of customs.

That made total exports for the year just over $1.2 trillion, ahead of the $1.17 trillion forecast last month for Germany, according to the BGA foreign trade organisation.

China’s new status reflects the ability of its low-cost manufacturers to keep selling abroad despite a collapse in global consumer demand due to the financial crisis…

China’s politically sensitive trade surplus shrank by 34.2 per cent in 2009 to $196.07 billion, Xinhua said.

That reflected China’s stronger economic growth, driven by a $586bn stimulus package, and demand for imported raw materials and consumer goods at a time when demand in the US and other foreign markets was weaker.

China’s official title of world’s biggest exporter is expected to be confirmed when Germany releases full-year trade figures on February 9.

Just noting this as an economic milestone. I’m afraid most of my peers here in the States won’t even be aware that it is Germany being surpassed as #1 exporter.

Container ship loading in Hamburg – this week
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

The eurozone emerged from its worst recession since World War II in the third quarter of last year, thanks to strong exports, according to official figures released Friday.

The combined economy of the 16 European Union (EU) nations that use the euro grew by 0.4 percent in the third quarter of 2009, compared with the previous three months, EU statistics office Eurostat said in its final figures, confirming previous estimates.

It ended the economic contraction in the previous five consecutive quarters, as well as the deepest zone’s recession.

Eurostat said economic growth in the third quarter was mainly due to strong exports, which increased by 3.1 percent over the previous quarter, but household final consumption and investment, the other two growth engines, had fallen by 0.1 percent and 0.8 percent, respectively.

The 16 countries that use the euro saw their trade surplus with the rest of the world rise massively in October as imports fell and exports remained at recent high levels — despite the ongoing strength of the currency.

The figures provide further evidence that the eurozone is benefiting from recovering global demand as its leading export markets emerge from recession…

Eurostat, the EU’s statistics office, said Friday that the eurozone’s trade surplus during the month spiked to €8.8 billion from €0.9 billion in September…

Hey, I know what a trade surplus is. Anyone else remember?

The White House has made a new push for expanded offshore drilling to help lower fuel prices, days after new government data showed American petroleum product exports hit record levels.

“To reduce pressure on prices, we need to increase the supply of oil, especially here at home,” Bush told reporters…

Critics of the offshore drilling plan noted that the Energy Department released data this week showing that U.S. exports of finished petroleum products, including gasoline, diesel fuel and jet fuel, soared to 1.592 million barrels per day in May.

The exports set a record for the month and were up 31 percent from a year ago.

Exports were equal to about half the 3.204 million barrels a day in petroleum products that the United States imported during May.

In May, U.S. oil companies shipped 183,000 barrels of gasoline a day out of the country, even as Americans saw prices at the pump steadily rise.

Trying to drill our way out of trouble is absurd. No different from bigots who tried to convince us that “separate but equal” school systems didn’t equate to segregation and discrimination.

Liars and self-deluded hypocrites.