US in real life

I'm not going to post the latest SNL Obama skit because it has a few very crude references in it, and my Mom and Grandma read this blog. Heck, someday my kids will read it. SIGH, because it was very politically interesting, that skit. It was about how much money we owe China.

Here's how the situation is:

China owns a large amount of our US treasury bonds. Those are the things we create when we don't have the cash to cover our expenses (as a nation). We create these bonds and offer them for sale to other countries (or the American people), basically selling "futures" in American currency. They are supposed to mature and create a profit for those who buy them.

China owns so many of these bonds that basically, they own around 25% of our nation's debt (see here for some illustrations of the kind of debt that the US currently owes). Japan owns a further 20%. The rest is owed in smaller bits and pieces... some by countries where we are currently engaged in tricky diplomatic processes.

This, in itself, is troubling. But we see that it's even more of a dilemma when we realize how much of our labor is outsourced to China and Japan. How many goods and products we buy from people who give jobs to people in Japan and China at the American People's expense, because they can do it at a much lower production cost, partially because these countries do not have this debt, as well as other regulations that we in America put on businesses. It's an endless downward spiral.

Another problem is that China is artificially keeping its currency at a low rate, thus giving itself an unfair advantage over other currencies. We can't do much about it, can we? For a very pithy illustration of this, go ahead and watch that SNL video I told you not to watch.

Most people say this isn't a real worry because China and Japan need us to have a stable economy so that we will provide them with a market for the goods that they export, and they will lose a significant investment if they liquidate the bonds they hold. The problem with this argument, is that it's missing the whole point. We are currently in the position of Owing. We are in Debt. Right now, China doesn't seem to have any real reason to liquidate bonds. But they may soon find one.


So, what does this have to do with SNL and Obama and this trip he took to China?

It appears we are becoming more friendly to China. More diplomatic, more chummy. More willing to overlook points upon which we don't agree as nations. This could be good; diplomacy is always good. But not if we're doing it for the wrong reasons.

This is a very clear example of how America as a Nation must be free from entanglements and obligations, if we Americans want to be able to effectively promote our cause (even the most altruistic, noble cause, including things such as human rights.)

Of all the news I've read lately, this is the most troubling, to me. And it's the thing that's causing ME (yes me, Nosurfgirl) to wonder about the future of America; not necessarily related to communism and socialism and the constitution hanging by a thread.. but our Reason for Being. And our ability to be who we're supposed to be... are we going to continue being that City on the Hill? Most would say we've already fallen, because of our ill-conceived actions in the middle east over the past 50 years and the resulting negative image we've gained internationally.

Up 'till now, I've always felt like we're doing things for the right reasons (albeit, sometimes horribly misguided). We're trying. We make mistakes. We get stupid information. Greedy people manipulate numbers and intelligence to further their agenda, but we have tried to make the foreign policy decisions that seem most in line with our mission, our "city on the hill" identity as a nation.

This latest development makes me worry if perhaps we're starting to get on the track to doing the wrong things... because we can't do much when we don't have a leg to stand on, economically speaking.

This is the kind of stuff I'd like to hear more people debate about. I feel like we're skimming the surface in our rhetoric and our debates lately... quibbling over table scraps and finding shallow rhetoric to pit one side against the other. What we need to be doing instead is talking about the things that nobody seems to want to talk about. It's understandable that politicians want to avoid this whole subject, and others that are equally serious and threatening to the future of the US. Because it's not popular to be the voice of gloom and doom. You'll never get elected that way; Americans elect people who tell them they're Great and they're Right and they're on the Right Team. Americans like to see gladiators fighting each other. They like the race and the show, and they like being able to pick the winning side.

Problem is, right now... guess who's on the losing side? It's not the republicans or the democrats. It's US.

We can't allow ourselves to be distracted by pettiness when there are real dangers out there to America itself; what we are as a nation. Why we exist. We can't sequester ourselves in front of our little computer screens playing the Tetris of bill word counts and semantics gymnastics when there's a real problem out there.

Time to take our heads out of the sand, people.