China Buying Oil, Uranium, Gold, Other Products At Bargain Prices

China is forging ahead with an overseas spending splurge, snapping up resources especially oil at bargain prices and strengthening its long-term prospects for growth before Western economies can bounce back.

A series of high-profile energy deals and mining bids in the past month marked an end to the nervousness that appeared to impinge on Communist Party leaders at the outset of the global financial crisis. Attention has turned from hoarding foreign exchange reserves worth close to $2 trillion to locking up future supplies. Oil has emerged at the top of China’s shopping list.

By Chris O’Brien
The Washington Times

In February, China secured oil supply deals totaling $41 billion with Russia, Brazil and Venezuela.

Among the most lucrative: an agreement reached with Russia, in which China will lend $25 billion to Russian oil giant Rosneft and oil pipeline company Transneft. In return, according to Russian news reports, China will receive 300,000 barrels of crude a day for the next 20 years at a rate of about $20 a barrel less than half the current price of $45.

While touring Latin America, Vice President Xi Jinping signed a deal to lend $10 billion to Brazil’s state-owned oil company Petrobras. China will receive up to 160,000 barrels a day, again over a 20-year period.

People sharing a scooter ride past oil rigs in Cangzhou on in northern China’s Hebei Province, near Bohai Bay

A subsequent announcement from China’s National Energy Administration further clarified Beijing’s intentions. China is considering setting up a fund for China’s three state-owned energy giants PetroChina, Sinopec and the China National Offshore Oil Corp. (CNOOC) to purchase oil and gas companies overseas. The firms will benefit from low-interest loans and direct capital injections, the announcement said.

The oil deals complement efforts to buy into the Australian mining industry. China’s biggest aluminum producer, Chinalco, has submitted a bid of $19.5 billion to buy an 18 percent stake in beleaguered mining company Rio Tinto. Chinese firm Minmetals has offered $1.7 billion for Oz Minerals.

China also is seeking diversification of its foreign exchange reserves, now heavily in dollars. The head of China’s energy bureau, Zhang Guobao, said earlier this week that China should accumulate more gold and uranium as well as other strategic commodities.

Read the rest:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/new
s/2009/mar/12/china-stocks-up-on-
bargain-oil/

Related:
Russia, “Desperate For Cash,” Sells Oil to China In “Very Bad Deal”

Pelosi’s Stimulus II? Lawmakers Propose No Cost, High Employment Energy Package

Economists, politicians, and the public alike are questioning the viability of the massive $787 billion stimulus signed into law. In response, Congressman Rob Bishop (R–UT) and Senator David Vitter (R–LA) recently introduced legislation that would create an estimated 2 million jobs, increase gross domestic product $10 trillion over the next 30 years, and lower energy costs—all without a huge expense to the taxpayer.

The No Cost Stimulus Act of 2009 would do this by expanding domestic energy supply and streamlining burdensome, unnecessary environmental review processes that have placed a stranglehold on access to reliable U.S. energy sources for decades.

Read the rest:
http://www.heritage.org/Research/
EnergyandEnvironment/wm2336.cfm

Why the No Cost Stimulus Act ?

Nancy Pelosi is already saying the nation will need another stimulus bill before we get out of this recession….

The $787 billion economic-stimulus plan was followed by today’s omnibus for $410 billion….

The interest payment on the debt from the stimulus and the omnibus will be about $500 billion…..And has anyone seen the economy start to rev up?
Obama Spending $1 Billion an Hour of Borrowed Money in First 50 Days
.
What are others doing?  Russia has energy but no jobs.  China has money but needs energy….
Russia, “Desperate For Cash,” Sells Oil to China In “Very Bad Deal”
.
Related:
President may Ask For “Global Bailout”
Obama, Geithner: recession requires global action 

Even Democrats Showing Signs Of Economic Despair, Worry at White House Inertia

Pelosi: Congress Needs to ‘Keep the Door Open’ to Second Stimulus Package

Pelosi

Philippines Enacts Law Claiming Islands also Claimed by China, Others

The Philippine president has signed a law affirming sovereignty over islands also claimed by China and Vietnam, an official said Wednesday, sparking protests over the control of strategic South China Sea islands.

Associated Press

The legislation, signed Tuesday by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, reaffirms Philippine sovereignty over the more than 7,100 islands in its archipelago, Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita said. It also claims outlying islands in the Spratly chain and Scarborough Shoal – two regions in the South China Sea.

China claims sovereignty over both chains. Vietnam and others have long laid claim to the Spratlys.

“We are sending the message to the whole world that we are affirming our national sovereignty … our national interest,” Ermita told a news conference.

The Chinese Embassy issued a statement expressing its “strong opposition and solemn protest” over the signing of the law, and insisted China “has indisputable sovereignty over these islands and their adjacent waters.”

Earlier, China’s Foreign Ministry summoned a Philippine Embassy official to protest the passage of the bill in the Philippine Congress.

Vietnam also urged the Philippines to refrain from taking action that might complicate the dispute.

Foreign Affairs official Henry Bensurto said the Philippines passed the law not to reiterate its claims over the Spratlys and Scarborough Shoal but to define the baseline used to determine its extended continental shelf.

The U.N. has asked the Philippines and other countries that signed the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea to submit the dimensions of their claimed continental shelf by May 13. The convention, which came into force in 1994, defines the maritime limits of its signatories.

The Spratlys, believed to be rich in oil, gas and fish, consist of about 100 barren islets, reefs and atolls dotting the world’s busiest shipping lanes in the South China Sea.

Vietnam, China, Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei each claim all or part of the low-lying islands.

Read the rest:
http://apnews.myway.com/article
/20090311/D96RQ50G0.html

Era of Obama, American Weakness Emboldens Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Terrorists

Like it or not, the era of President Barack Obama and American weakness, real or perceived, has already emboldened many nations with long-term anti-American strategic goals: namely, Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.

Many in the world have already concluded that Brack Obama is soft, for his overtures so far toward the Taliban, Russia, Iran and others.

Related:
Various Views On Obama Foreign Policy: “Just Like Bush” Or Radical Change?

President Obama’s move to close the terrorist prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba (Gitmo) was cause for applause in human rights circles and also with terrorists.

On Afghanistan, Peter Begen of the New America Foundation said “It is a longstanding cliché that there is no military solution in Afghanistan, only a political one.”  On President Obama’s idea to hold talks with the Taliban he said, “Doing deals with the Taliban today could further destabilize Afghanistan. ”

And economically, there is no dobt that the U.S. is weakened.

Just today, North Korea threatened war with the United States — a war that would certainly involve Japan and South Korea.  North Korea could not be making such threats and could not even think about testing a long range strategic missile just now unless China consented to this brazen move or at least looked the other way.  China supplies North Korea with almost all of its food, oil, luxury goods and currency.  Without China, North Korea would be impotent and meaningless.

Yet China is acceding to North Korea’s bluster and browbeating of the United States just as China itself is harassing a U.S. Naval vessel in international waters — a violation of international law.

 
This US Navy file photo shows the military Sealift Command ocean surveillance ship USNS Impeccable (T-AGOS-23). Five Chinese vessels maneuvered dangerously close to a US Navy ship in the South China Sea on Sunday, March 8, 2009, approaching within 25 feet of the unarmed surveillance ship, the Pentagon said.(AFP/NVNS)

China doesn’t care much for international law and international waters: just ask Japan and Vietnam.  Both those nations have long struggles with China encroaching upon the coasts of Japan and Vietnam as the Chinese super power searches for more oil beneath the sea floor.

China has become the most voracious user of oil and other mineral resources on the planet as it strives to keep its factories busy producing goods for sale overseas.  China is in Afghanistan, protected from the Taliban by U.S. troops, while Chinese companies exploit Afghan copper.  And China just signed a $50 billion (U.S. dollars, cast) agreement to get oil from Russia for ten years.

Last year China was no help when the U.S. wanted access to Myanmar to deliver humanitarian relief supplies to those stricken by the cyclone.  After the crisis passed, China signed a big oil deal with Myanmar.

China wants the U.S. out of its sphere of influence from North Asia to Somalia, and is planning an ocean-going navy to eventualy make that goal a military reality.

China recently opened the largest sea port in the world, in Gwadar, Pakistan — directly astride the sea lanes used to bring out out of the Persian Gulf to Japan, the U.S. and others.

Meanwhile, the U.S. continues to go into debt — to China.

China allows North Korea to antagonize the United States because that is in China’s long term strategic interest — and a weakening U.S. plays into China’s strategy perfectly.

Russia also wants the U.S. out of its area of influencce.  Russia recently paid off Kyrgyzstan, which was helping the American effort in Afghanistan with an air base. Just after Russia gave  Kyrgyzstan its big aid deal, that nation announced the closure of the Manas air base supporting the U.S.

A KC-135 Stratotanker sits on the flightline at Manas Air Base, Kyrgyzstan, Thursday, Feb. 23, 2006. Ground crews will have to de-ice the tanker before it can take off on a refueling mission. (U.S. Air Force photo/Staff Sgt. Paul Clifford)

Generous Russian loans to Kyrgyzstan totaling US$2 billion and a non-repayable US$150 million grant, were announced the day before Kyrgyzstan said Manas would be closed and the U.S. Air Force evicted.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation had been insisting on the closure of Manas to the U.S. Air Force since 2005.

What the heck is the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation?

The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) is an intergovernmental mutual-security organisation which was founded in 2001 by the leaders of China , Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.

But the key players of the SCO are Russia and China who don’t want the U.S. or anyone else in the West anywhere near that region of the world, rich in oil and other minerals, that includes Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.

China and Russia conducted their largest joint military exercise ever last year.

And finally Iran wants the U.S. out of the Persian Gulf, away from Arab oil, and at arms length from Isreal.

Joshua Gross wrote for the Christian Sciences Monitor today,  “Iran recently launched its first satellite into orbit in what The New York Times called, ‘a shot across the bow of American diplomacy,’ and US President Barack Obama passed along a secret letter to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in an attempt to enlist the Russians in an international effort to contain Iran’s nuclear program.”

The global economic crisis, which has eliminated something like $50 trillion in world wealth, has hit the United States and NATO very hard, which fuels the beliefe that Mr. Obama and the U.S. are weaker than ever just now.

That’s why Iran and North Korea are talking missiles and nukes, China has chosen just now to harass a U.S. ship, and Russia is gloating like a cat bird that Obama is already pleading for help with Iran from Putin and Medvedev….

John E. Carey
Wakefield Chapel, Virginia
March 9, 2009

 
Iranian clerics watch the launch of a Shahab-3 ballistic missile outside Qom in 2006. A top Iranian military commander said that the country has missiles that can reach the nuclear sites of its arch-foe Israel.(AFP/File/null)

Related:
Stimulus: China Will Fund U.S. Debt But “We Hate You Guys”

Russia, “Desperate For Cash,” Sells Oil to China In “Very Bad Deal”

India, China jostle for influence in Indian Ocean

 China Extends Navy’s Anti-Piracy Mission Near Somalia

 China Says Its Navy Expansion “No threat to others”

 Pentagon: Chinese Ships Harassed Unarmed U.S. Navy Craft in International Waters

 North Korea Warns: Shoot Down Our Satellite Will “Prompt Counterstrikes by the Most Powerful Military Means”

Obama’s First Major Foreign Crisis Brewing?

China’s thirst for copper could hold key to Afghanistan’s future

Obama says US is losing war in Afghanistan and hints at Taleban talks

Despite Global Economy Downturn, China Still Lending

Russia Sees Obama, U.S., Others As “Weak,” “Naive”

http://michellemalkin.com/2009/03/09/analys
ts-to-obama-there-are-no-taliban-moderates-yo
u-nitwit/

What’s China’s Long Term Global Strategy?

http://jonathanturley.org/2009/03/09/ira
nian-justice-eight-women-face-stoning-dea
ths-for-adultery/

http://spectator.org/archives/2009/03
/09/slickness-with-a-straight-face

CNN on Peter Bergen and Afghanistan:
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/PO
LITICS/03/09/bergen.taliban/index.html

Joshua Gross on Iran:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20
090309/cm_csm/ygross

Russia, “Desperate For Cash,” Sells Oil to China In “Very Bad Deal”

“Russia, just a few months ago a very oil rich nation, just made a very bad deal to raise $25 billion in cash from China by giving them oil for 10 years.  It is a very bad deal and shows how bad the world economy has become.”

That according to Newt Gingrich on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday March 8.

**************

From the People’s Daily

China will further promote cooperation and exchanges with Russia this year as the two countries embrace the 60th anniversary of their establishment of diplomatic ties, said China’s Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi here Saturday.

China will fully carry out practical cooperation with Russia in various fields, including energy and science and technology, he told a press conference on the sidelines of an annual parliament session.

The two sides’ recent agreement on the construction of a crude oil pipeline project, a long-term crude oil trading deal and a financing scheme was a “mutually beneficial and win-win result”, said Yang.

The agreement signed in February allowed China to lend 25 billion U.S. dollars to Russia in an exchange for a 20-year oil supply starting from 2011 with a total volume of 300 million tons.

“China and Russia have come a long way in the past 13 years since the Sino-Russian Strategic Partnership of Cooperation was established,” said Yang. “A lot of achievements have been made in recent years particularly.”

He urged the two countries, both major countries and permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, to join hands to promote world multi-polarity and greater democracy in international order.

 
Gas flares off under heavy snowfall at a liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant on Sakhalin island outside the town Korsakovi Russia.(AFP/File/Natalia Kolesnikova)

“We should make greater contribution to promoting world peace, stability and development,” said Yang.

He also pledged to enhance high-level exchanges and mutual visits between the two countries and boost people-to-people interaction through such activities as the Year of the Russian Language in China that falls this year.

Source:Xinhua

Related:

Recession on track to be longest in postwar period

 Russia Reclaiming Raw Materials Like Oil, Coal

************************

The Next Big War Will Be Over Commodities

By John E. Carey
2008

Last Month President Bush went to Saudi Arabia to ask his friends there to increase oil production. The White House believed that by increasing supply, the price of gasoline per gallon at your friendly service station would drop. The president was rebuffed.

This month the United States urged upon the other large users of oil in the world community to join the “produce more” bandwagon.”

China, Japan, India and South Korea went along with the U.S. plan.

Cabinet ministers from the five countries, which account for more than half the world’s consumption of energy, agreed that the sharp surge in oil prices was a menace to the world economy, and that more petroleum should be produced to meet rising demand.

The five consumer countries, meeting in Japan before an energy conference of the Group of Eight industrialized nations plus Russia on June 8, 2008, argued that the unprecedented prices were against the interests of both producers and consumers, and imposed a “heavy burden” on developing countries.

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries current president, Chakib Khelil, said that the cartel will make no new decision on production levels until OPEC’s September 9, 2008 meeting in Vienna.

So in just a few weeks time, we witnessed the President of the United States pleading for more production and the senior energy ministers from the U.S., China, India, Japan and South Korea joining in a chorus.

We at Peace and Freedom believe that when the engine of the free market jumps the tracks and supply and demand are ignored; one had better get ready for bad blood.

Then we have food. In the Philippines the people took to the streets demanding more rice. In Egypt, the people took to the streets demanding more bread. And some bad blood developed between Thailand, the world’s leading rice exporter, and Vietnam, perhaps the second most important rice exporter.

It seems the Vietnamese had underbid the Thais on contracts to export rice. The Vietnamese saw this as good business. The Thais viewed it as theft. Never mind that Thai rice is of higher quality and thus cists more.

China recently announced that it had “overbuilt” its industry and removed too much farmland from production. China now is instituting new regulations to preserve farmland and it is mapping a strategy to import more food.

Ethanol and other bio fuels seemed like a great idea to help add to U.S. oil stocks. But when all that corn disappeared into your fuel tank, the price of all corn went up. And corn not only feeds people but it is a huge source of livestock feed. So the price of pork and beef and all that other livestock that makes its way to the dinner table went up.

And food and fuels have never been in such demand. Never mind the huge increases in global population; with the combined populations of India and China eight times that of the U.S.

The world, believe it or not, is becoming more “middle class.” That means more people want gas burning cars which suck up a lot of fuel and add to global pollution. These new “middle class” folks also want a higher protein diet.

If one eats rice or corn or other grains the costs are somewhat manageable. But it takes four times more grain (and sometimes as much as six times) to put meat on pork or cattle before human beings eat that meat. So the high protein diet has a huge cost. It sucks up a lot more grain that human grain eaters ever would and it means the eaters need more dollars, rupees euros, yen or other denominations to buy every meal.

Bacon and eggs are more expensive, say, than the traditional rice bowl.

Finally, all these goodies, usually called commodities, are moving around the globe.

The Associated Press had an excellent article by Gavin Rabinowitz out on June 7.

India, China jostle for influence in Indian Ocean

 

Mr. Rabinowitz pointed out that looking south from Sri Lanka “just over the horizon runs one of the world’s great trade arteries, the shipping lanes where thousands of vessels carry oil from the Middle East and raw materials to Asia, returning with television sets, toys and sneakers for European consumers.”

That shipping lane is a possible flashpoint between India and China. Add in Japan, which gets just about all of its oil by that sea lane. And don’t forget the U.S. and the U.S. Navy. Those boys don’t want to see that sea lane interrupted by war, terrorism, piracy or any other form of bad blood.

So the bottom line, from our small window of the world is this: The next big war could well be over “commodities.”

We’ve used food and oil here as the most obvious examples of commodities worth fighting for. But it could be over uranium, tin, gold or who knows what. Even fresh water.

California is already starting to limit development due to water shortages. Australia is in the midst of a multi-year drought which has crippled Aussie grain production. And over use of fertilizers and pesticides in China and Vietnam have poisoned much of the ground water.

The next big war could well be over commodities.

Welcome to the new millennium.

Related:
China’s thirst for copper could hold key to Afghanistan’s future

Philippines Enacts Law Claiming Islands also Claimed by China, Others

Obama’s Next Challenge: Iran, Israel, Russia? It’s Here Now

“Mark my words,” Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden warned last October. “It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking.”

“Remember I said it standing here if you don’t remember anything else I said. Watch, we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.”

Today Iran tested a new long range ballistic missile.  Israel sees Iran as an existential threat armed with such missiles and nuclear weapons.

A right wing government headed by Benjamin Netanyahu is being formed in Israel and Netanyahu has made noise about attacking Iran in the past.

The Jerusalem Post wrote today about Israel’s Military Intelligence chief Maj.-Gen. Amos Yadlin, who told the cabinet on Sunday that Iran had “crossed the technological threshold” and that its attainment of  nuclear military capability was now a matter of “incorporating the goal of producing an atomic bomb to its strategy.”

See:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid
=1236269373103&pagename=JPost%2FJP
Article%2FShowFull

And all of this includes Russia.

Since President Obama’s inauguration, Russia has been testing Mr. Obama and his administration rigorously and continuously.

Russia has been jerking around all of Europe, showing who is boss of the gas and winter heating fuel for NATO which inludes the U.S.

Russia has even managed to withstand a threatened NATO boycott of ties as a direct result of Russia’s invasion of Georgia and South Ossetia last summer.  Today NATO members scrapped their threatened cut off of Russian ties just as Russia threatened to again stop the flow of Russian oil to Europe.

And the New York Times and other media reported that President Obama sent Russian President Medvedev a letter which may have offered to scrap U.S. missile defense plans in Europe in exchange, some believe, for Russian help in stopping Iran’s nuclear program.

America’s missile defense effort in Europe was planned to stop Iran’s long range ballistic missiles: which were demonstrated as real and advancing again today.

Russian leaders are certain to be gloating at the pliability of the Obama Administration and the West since Obama became president.

Despite Joe Biden’s warning last October, the international “testing” of Obama is ongoing — just not as obviously and  publically as Russia tested JFK during the Cuban missile crisis.

It seems that Russian leaders may have matured and become more subtle since the 1960s.  U.S. leaders have not….

So, even before America’s economic problems are solved, even before the stock market has started to recover, even before the stimulus has worked any magic, and even without a real start of revolutionizing health care and turing our thirst for oil into a love of wind: the Biden predicted testing is ongoing.

And the clock is ticking.

John E. Carey
Wakefield Chapel, Virginia
March 8, 2009

 
Iranian clerics watch the launch of a Shahab-3 ballistic missile outside Qom in 2006. A top Iranian military commander said that the country has missiles that can reach the nuclear sites of its arch-foe Israel.(AFP/File/null)

Related:
 Iran test-fires new long-range missile
.
Fox News on missile test:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0
,2933,506813,00.html
.
Russia, U.S. Missile Defense Dispute

Russian Relations With U.S., Europe Improve: But Putin, Medvedev Understand Strength, Power More than Diplomacy

 Russia Sees Obama, U.S., Others As “Weak,” “Naive”
.
Israel Ponders War on Iran; Obama, Russia HaggleRussia Testing Obama: Just as Biden Predicted
.
Russia building anti-satellite weapons

 Russia: Medvedev Pushing Putin Out?

Russia Verifies “American, Western Weakness”

Russia Sees Obama, U.S., Others As “Weak,” “Naive”

Mr. Obama and Russia
NYT Editorial: Russia only understands strength….

 Chutzpah: Admire Russia’s Arrogance

Russia, Obama and the Strategic Chess Tournament

 
Iranians walk past a replica of a Shahab-3 missile on display in Tehran. The Fars news agency says Iran has “successfully” tested a new air-to-sea missile with a range of 110 kilometres (68 miles).(AFP/File/Atta Kenare)

Obama Doesn’t Understand What Many Americans Are Thinking

“First of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.”

Words from Barack Obama?  Hardly.  Those are words from Franklin Roosevelt’s first inaugural address.

See:
http://historymatters.gmu.e
du/d/5057/

I am disappointed in my president, our president.

He has changed some really great rhetoric like FDR’s “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself” into this:

“I don’t think that people should be fearful about our future.  I don’t think that people should suddenly mistrust all of our financial institutions.”

“I don’t think” indicates an Obama-centric view of the financial turmoil of Americans — not a “people centric” view.

And by guessing at what Americans really do fear, “financial institution,” Obama is saying it is these evil “financial institutions” that many of us do fear.

Well, maybe in Obama World and Obama’s White House, people fear financial institutions because they have no understanding of capitalism, business, the stock market and the American dream.

I am afraid that President Obama has no clue….That’s my fear.  And I resent Him telling me what I think.

I believe generally that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself” and I also believe in JFK’s famous challenge: “Ask not, what your country can do for you.  Ask what you can do for your country.”

I also believe in Ronald Reagan’s exoration: “Government is not the solution.  Government is the problem.”

I am afraid now because President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and a lot of other well meaning folks think the government is the solution.

America’s founders wrote down the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the other parts of our national fabric because they were living in fear of a far off all knowing and uncaring English Government.

And their spirit lives today in the saying, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”  Many of us fear such naive, ignorant hubris.

I am starting to fear Washington.  Obama’s Washington.  A far off, all knowing and uncaring government about five miles from my house, which is surrounded by other foreclosed houses.

I really do fear that Obama and many Democrat’s don’t get it.

Just last week, on Tuesday, President Obama, while speaking about the economy and the stock market, mentioned the “profit to earnings ratio.”

And I thought he went to Harvard.  There is no “profit earnings ratio.”  There is a “price to earnings ratio” or PE.  Investors care more about their return on the dollar, reflected in the price they paid and the earnings that resulted.

Tom Petruno wrote in the Los Angeles Times on March 7, “He didn’t get the lingo right, assuming he meant to say ‘price-to-earnings ratios,’ a measure of stock prices relative to earnings per share. That flub caused snickering among market pros.”

See:
Obama, Socialism, Fear, Lack of Confidence: Tanking Stocks, Skyrocketing Debt, Recovery Doomed This Year

I was even more disappointed when the president repeated this ignorant flub in a New York Times interview late in the week.  That meant to me that nobody in the White House was smart enough to straighten out the president by holding a little school call on him.  Or maybe they just don’t know; and don’t read.  They certainly don’t listen.

But they’re thinking about curing all my education and health care problems, undoutedly….

So Obama’s lack of stock market lingo doesn’t mean to me that he slept through high school: it means he has no idea what drives capitalism because he was reading socialist doctrine instead of paying attention to America, as he himself indicates in his books.  Maybe he never invested in anything but himself.

*****

What is wrong with America?  Everything, in Obama World:

“Look, I wish I had the luxury of just dealing with a modest recession or just dealing with health care or just dealing with energy or just dealing with Iraq or just dealing with Afghanistan,” Obama said. “I don’t have that luxury, and I don’t think the American people do, either.”

Related:
From CNN:
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/POLITIC
S/03/07/obama.interview/index.html

Related:
 NYT Interviews Obama; No Economic Recovery This Year
.
NYT: After March 6 Economic News, “2009 is Probably a Lost Cause”

Related:
Obama: Crisis is time of ‘great opportunity’

 President Pelosi?

 Obama, Socialism, Fear, Lack of Confidence: Tanking Stocks, Skyrocketing Debt, Recovery Doomed This Year
.
Can Democracy Fail With Obama’s Socialist Help?

*****

It seems to us that the attacks on Rush Limbaugh fromTeam Obama are an effort to tell Americans what to think and what not to think.  This kind of arrogance often manifests itself in unusal ways: Limbaugh’s radio show ratings doubled.

So I really do fear that President Obama and his guys don’t get it….

Democratic Attacks On Limbaugh Boost His Ratings — But He’s Not The Problem

********

I fear that the president doesn’t understand that many of us don’t want to pay more taxes, however they are hidden or veiled and whatever thay are for, many of us DO MIND paying for por, even though Chick Schumer thinks we don’t, and many of DO want to further understanding of the good news/bad news behind such huge spending on health care and other Obama projects.  And I certainly DO WANT to understand how all this government debt will degrade American growth and quality of life in the future.  I don’t like sending money for oil to Saudi Arabia and I don’t like sending debt/interst payments to China eaither….

****************

By TOM RAUM

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama offered his domestic-policy proposals as a “break from a troubled past.” But the economic outlook now is more troubled than it was even in January, despite Obama’s bold rhetoric and commitment of more trillions of dollars.

And while his personal popularity remains high, some economists and lawmakers are beginning to question whether Obama’s agenda of increased government activism is helping, or hurting, by sowing uncertainty among businesses, investors and consumers that could prolong the recession.

Although the administration likes to say it “inherited” the recession and trillion-dollar deficits, the economic wreckage has worsened on Obama’s still-young watch.

Every day, the economy is becoming more and more an Obama economy.

More than 4 million jobs have been lost since the recession began in December 2007 — roughly half in the past three months.

Stocks have tumbled to levels not seen since 1997. They are down more than 50 percent from their 2007 highs and 20 percent since Obama’s inauguration.

The president’s suggestion that it was a good time for investors with “a long-term perspective” to buy stocks may have been intended to help lift battered markets. But a big sell-off followed.

Presidents usually don’t talk about the stock market. But the dynamics are different now.

A higher percentage of people have more direct exposure to stocks — including through 401(k) and other retirement plans — than ever.

So a tumbling stock market is adding to the national angst as households see the value of their investments and homes plunge as job losses keep rising.

Some once mighty companies such as General Motors and Citigroup are little more than penny stocks.

Many health care stocks are down because of fears of new government restrictions and mandates as part a health care overhaul. Private student loan providers were pounded because of the increased government lending role proposed by Obama. Industries that use oil and other carbon-based fuels are being shunned, apparently in part because of Obama’s proposal for fees on greenhouse-gas polluters.

Makers of heavy road-building and other construction equipment have taken a hit, partly because of expectations of fewer public works jobs here and globally than first anticipated.

“We’ve got a lot of scared investors and business people. I think the uncertainty is a real killer here,” said Chris Edwards, director of fiscal policy for the libertarian Cato Institute.

Some Democrats, worried over where Obama is headed, are suggesting he has yet to match his call for “bold action and big ideas” with deeds.

In particular, they point to bumpy efforts to fix the financial system under Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

Obama may have contributed to the national anxiety by first warning of “catastrophe” if his stimulus plan was not passed and in setting high expectations for Geithner. Instead, Geithner’s public performance has been halting and he’s been challenged by lawmakers of both parties.

Republicans and even some top Democrats, including Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, have questioned the wisdom of Obama’s proposal to limit tax deductions for higher-income people on mortgage interest and charitable contributions.

Charities have strongly protested, saying times already are tough enough for them. The administration suggests it might back off that one.

Even White House claims that its policies will “create” or “save” 3.5 million jobs have been questioned by Democratic supporters.

“You created a situation where you cannot be wrong,” the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Montana Democrat Max Baucus, told Geithner last week.

“If the economy loses 2 million jobs over the next few years, you can say yes, but it would’ve lost 5.5 million jobs. If we create a million jobs, you can say, well, it would have lost 2.5 million jobs,” Baucus said. “You’ve given yourself complete leverage where you cannot be wrong, because you can take any scenario and make yourself look correct.”

Republicans assert that Obama’s proposals, including the “cap and trade” fees on polluters to combat global warming, would raise taxes during a recession that could touch everyone. “Herbert Hoover tried it, and we all know where that led,” says House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio.

The administration argues its tax increases for the households earning over $250,000 a year and fees on carbon polluters contained in its budget won’t kick in until 2011-2012, when it forecasts the economy will have fully recovered.

But even those assumptions are challenged as too rosy by many private forecasters and some Democratic lawmakers.

Many deficit hawks also worry that the trillions of federal dollars being doled out by the administration, Congress and the Federal Reserve could sow the seeds of inflation down the road, whether the measures succeed in taming the recession or not. The money includes Obama’s $3.6 trillion budget and the $837 billion stimulus package he signed last month.

Polls show that Obama’s personal approval ratings, generally holding in the high 60s, remain greater than support for his specific policies.

“He still has a fair amount of political capital, so the public is willing to cut him some slack and go along with him for a while,” said pollster Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center. “But the public will have to get some sense that the kinds of things he’s proposing are going to work, or are showing some signs that they are working.”

Allan Sinai, chief global economist for Decision Economics, a Boston-area consulting firm, said the complexity and enormity of the crisis make it hard to solve.

“There’s no way to get it all right, regardless of which president is making policy,” Sinai said. “The problem is the sickness got too far. The actions taken, medicine applied, were mainly the wrong actions. So it’s just worse, and it gets harder to deal with. At this stage, there is no easy answer, no easy way out. It’s a question of how we fumble through.”

http://michellemalkin.com/2009/03/07/tea-part
y-on-taxpayer-revolts-in-green-bay-lafayette-olat
he-and-harrisburg/

Obama, Socialism, Fear, Lack of Confidence: Tanking Stocks, Skyrocketing Debt, Recovery Doomed This Year

This has the feel of a full scale assault on capitalism….

Some investors and pundits blame Obama for the market’s dismal performance. He inherited a mess, but his rhetoric isn’t helping.
.
Obama’s Radicalism Is Killing the Stock Market

NYT: After March 6 Economic News, “2009 is Probably a Lost Cause”

Tom Petruno, Market Beat
Los Angeles Times
March 7, 2009

The stock market is supposed to be a bet on the future.

The market’s verdict so far this year: There is no future.

The continuing meltdown in share prices, the worst since the Great Depression, now has become Exhibit A in the political battle between the Obama administration and its harshest critics.

Conservative pundits including Rush Limbaugh and CNBC-TV’s Larry Kudlow assert that the president is waging war against capitalism itself, with his tax-hike proposals, social programs and banker-bashing rhetoric. That has sent disillusioned investors fleeing, they contend.

Well, something has. After diving 38% last year, share prices are down 24% just since Jan. 1, as measured by the Standard & Poor’s index of 500 big-name issues.

Despite a slight uptick on Friday, stocks plummeted 7% this week alone.

The decline from the market’s peak in October 2007 now is 56.3% — the steepest drop since the plunge of 1938 to 1942, when no less than the future of democracy was at stake.

“I think everybody is afraid of Obama,” said Todd Leone, a veteran stock trader at Cowen & Co. in New York. “They’re afraid he’s a socialist.”

Yes, the S-word.

Others say the market is more upset with the administration’s failure to stabilize the ravaged banking system — a Herculean task that Wall Street had hoped would be the first major challenge the White House tackled.

“Every time Obama talks about something like healthcare, the market’s reaction is — ‘No, the banking crisis!’ ” said Jeffrey Schappe, investment chief at BB&T Asset Management in Raleigh, N.C.

Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner still hasn’t provided specifics on his plan to get rotting loans off the balance sheets of major banks, a step seen as crucial to jump-starting new lending.

For his part, the president this week advised investors to look beyond what he called “day-to-day gyrations” in share prices.

He then ventured into territory where few other presidents have gone. Perhaps taking a cue from fellow Democrat Warren E. Buffett, Obama offered an opinion on whether stocks were bargains.

“What you’re now seeing is profit and earning ratios are starting to get to the point where buying stocks is a potentially good deal, if you’ve got a long-term perspective on it,” he said Tuesday.

He didn’t get the lingo right, assuming he meant to say “price-to-earnings ratios,” a measure of stock prices relative to earnings per share. That flub caused snickering among market pros.

Read the rest:
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-
fi-petruno7-2009mar07,0,869176.column

Related:
 Can Democracy Fail With Obama’s Socialist Help?

George W. Obama?

Related:
 Venezuela’s Chavez Urges Obama, U.S. Down Socialist Path

Obama’s Radicalism Is Killing the Stock Market

NYT: After March 6 Economic News, “2009 is Probably a Lost Cause”

Obama’s First Weeks: Economic Disaster, Socialist Agenda,

Can Democracy Fail With Obama’s Socialist Help?

We heard Mike Huckabee mention French philospher Jean-Francois Revel on TV recently.  Ravel believed that in a democracy, people could vote themselves so many benefits that the nation-state would collapse in debt.

We mention this as President Obama plans to borrow money and create debt to reform health care; bailout all homehowners with difficult mortgages; bailout AIG, Ford, GM, Citi, and a host of others; pay unemplyment insurance; reform our energy industry to eliminate oil, gas and coal, and more….And he has promised 98% of Americans a tax cut while proposing to increase taxes on those that create the most jobs (and wealth).

Whoopi doesn’t like getting taxed out the wazoo.  And neither does anyone else….

Well, maybe Oprah doesn’t mind more taxes for her pal Barack….

Oprah won but I’m losing hope…

Martin Kozlowski, WSJ

Ravel:

“… anarchy leads to despotism … despotism leads to anarchy …”

“Clearly, a civilization that feels guilty for everything it is and does will lack the energy and conviction to defend itself.”

“It is unlikely that we will ever be capable of building a world that is qualitatively better than we ourselves are.”

Democracy against Itself

“Strangely, it is always America that is described as degenerate and ‘fascist,’ while it is solely in Europe that actual dictatorships and totalitarian regimes spring up.” From Europe’s Anti-American Obsession. A similar statement can be found in his book Anti-Americanism, Encounter Books, 2004, p. 156 (paperback).

“A human group transforms itself into a crowd when it suddenly responds to a suggestion rather than to reasoning, to an image rather than to an idea, to an affirmation rather than to proof, to the repetition of a phrase rather than to arguments, to prestige rather than to competence”

**************

By Albert Mohler

“Democracy may, after all, turn out to have been a historical accident, a brief parenthesis that is closing before our eyes.” With those words, French philosopher Jean-Francois Revel sounded an alarm as the ramparts of democratic conviction were under attack by the political left. Revel, one of the most important conservative thinkers in France, saw European intellectuals and the political left in America undermining the very foundations of democracy.

“Democracy tends to ignore, even deny, threats to its existence because it loathes doing what is needed to counter them,” explained Revel. “It awakens only when the danger becomes deadly, imminent, evident. By then, either there is too little time left for it to save itself, or the price of survival has become crushingly high.”

To any insightful observer of the European scene in the early 1980s, Revel’s analysis was prophetic. Leftist intellectuals were pointing to the United States as the source of all oppression in the world, while praising the Soviet Union as the liberator of human kind. In How Democracies Perish, Revel aimed his sights at the self-destructive hypocrisies of liberal thought. As he knew, the very intellectuals who should have been supporting the United States were instead hoping for its downfall. “What we end up with in what is conventionally called Western society is a topsy-turvy situation in which those seeking to destroy democracy appear to be fighting for legitimate aims, while its defenders are pictured as repressive reactionaries.”

As Revel lamented, at times the democracies seemed to find strange comfort in calls for their own destruction. As he observed, “Democratic civilization is the first in history to blame itself because another is power is working to destroy it.” Were democracies doomed to self-destruct?

Jean-Francois Revel is well known as a shining light of reason in the French academy. Long a columnist, editor, and director of L’Express, Revel is also the author of a multi-volume history of philosophy. He sprang to Western attention with the publication of his controversial book, Without Marx or Jesus. Revel’s later volumes would include The Totalitarian Temptation and Democracy Against Itself.

Throughout his career, Revel has been known as a stalwart defender of democracy. He does not take this matter lightly, for he understands all too well that the basic structure of government determines the achievement or loss of human freedom within a society. In Democracy Against Itself, Revel argued that “every society which has worked more or less well, which achieved any sort of viability, and which produced civilizations men found tolerable, have been–or are–societies that in some sense are democratic.”

Of course, the alarm sounded by Revel in How Democracies Perish was overtaken by history with the fall of the Soviet Union and the remarkable events of 1989 and 1990. As Revel later reflected, the good news revealed in the fall of the Soviet Union was the fact that its internal weaknesses were even greater than the self-hatred of the secular left in Western democracies.

Now, twenty years after How Democracies Perish, Revel looks to the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorists attacks and asks the fundamental question: Why do so many Europeans hate America?

This is not a question of merely academic interest. Revel senses that something fundamental is revealed in the way the European Left has responded to America’s status as the world’s only super power.

Revel is blunt. The ascendancy of the United States, set over against the relative decline of Europe, has given birth to an intense hatred in some European corridors. Most particularly, Revel locates the root of this poisonous anti-Americanism in France. As he comments, “It is in France that this loss–real or imaginary–of great-power status engenders the most bitterness.”

The virulent anti-Americanism that erupted on the streets of Europe in the aftermath of America’s military action in Afghanistan and Iraq did not emerge from a vacuum. Revel’s interest in anti-Americanism is rooted in his own experience as an French intellectual who actually visited the United States. When Revel first visited America in 1969, he discovered a land very different from what he expected. Having planned to write a book on the problems of the United States, Revel instead wrote a treatise criticizing the irrational anti-Americanism of the European Left. Now, he has done it again–and this new book may be even more important.

In Anti-Americanism, just released by Encounter Books, Revel considers this toxic pattern of European hatred towards the United States. He identifies one core issue as a sense of European loss. Revel cites Hubert Vedrine, the French minister of foreign affairs, who rejected the word “superpower”, and instead substituted a term of his own invention: “hyperpower.”

As Revel notes, since the Greek prefix “hyper” has exactly the same meaning as the Latin “super,” Mr. Vedrine is merely seeking to score political capital in his own nation and in the larger European neighborhood. As Vedrine stated, “We cannot except a politically unipolar and culturally homogenized world, any more than the unilateralism of the single hyperpower.” Exactly what Mr. Vedrine meant by this, no one seems to know. Nevertheless, it is an example of French hyperventilation posing as foreign policy.

Revel sees the problem as much worse than hyperbole. If America is dominant, Revel asks, then why is this so? He will not allow Europeans off the hook. “Europeans in particular should force themselves to examine how they have contributed to that preponderance. It was they, after all, who made the twenty century the darkest in history; it was they who brought about the two unprecedented cataclysms of the World Wars; and it was they who invented and put into place the two most criminal regimes ever inflicted on the human race–pinnacles of evil and imbecility achieved in a space of less than thirty years.”

The United States is far from perfect, Revel acknowledges. Nevertheless, he suggests that any criticisms should be directed at real problems, and should not take the form of irrational rantings.

According to Revel, the European Left enjoys its fantasy of America as “the worst society that ever was.” According to this cartoon of reality, America is a society that is entirely under the control of money-grubbing plutocrats. Everything is for sale and the entire culture has been commodified. The problem is not just George W. Bush, for the European Left is convinced that every recent American president “has been in the pockets of the oil companies, the military-industrial complex, the agricultural lobby or the financial manipulators of Wall Street.” But, in the French view, George W. Bush is just the worst of the lot–at least as yet.

The European Left is also convinced that America is primarily marked by poverty. As Revel describes the Leftist fantasy: “Hordes of famished indigents are everywhere, while luxurious chauffeured limousines with darkened windows glide through the urban wilderness.” These same thinkers are convinced that violence reigns throughout the United States, and that gunshots commonly ring through even the most peaceable neighborhoods. As Revel acknowledges, European rants about America’s lax gun laws would have more credibility if the same weapons were not easily available for purchase through the black market in virtually every European city.

If this picture of America is true, the pattern of immigration from Europe to the United States throughout the twentieth century was absolutely irrational. “If the picture of American society drawn everyday by the European press is accurate, then we must believe that those tens of millions of immigrants from all parts of the world, and especially those who came from Europe between 1850 and 1924, were all deluded fools. Otherwise, why did they insist on staying in the American capitalist jungle with all its evils and not return to the lands of peace, plenty, and liberty they came from? Lost in a hellish cultural wasteland, why at least didn’t they write to their families and relations basking in the paradises of Ukraine, Calabria and Greece warning them not to come to America?” Clearly, Revel does not mince words.

This virulent anti-Americanism is not a matter of mere sociological interest. As Revel understands, this explains why the United Nations Security Council has become so ineffectual and why the United States has been forced to act unilaterally. As he explains, “Europeans’ voluntary blindness with regard to these radical changes renders any American attempts at dialogue fruitless; as a result, America has no other option but to make unilateral decisions. How can you discuss a problem with people who deny its very existence?”

Jean-Francois Revel is a brave man who has lived through some of the most tumultuous decades of human history. Though a realist, he is not without hope. He has sounded the alarm more than once, only to have the Left ignore his cries. Anti-Americanism is Revel’s latest attempt to call the trendsetting intellectuals of Europe back to sanity. Good luck, Professor Revel. This is no easy task.

Revel’s prescient warning to the European Left should also serve to educate thoughtful Americans about the challenge we face in Europe, which may be as daunting a challenge as that posed by Islamic terrorism. Something sick lies at the heart of Western civilization. The democracies that will surely perish will be those who cannot tell the difference between good and evil, survival and ruin, freedom and tyranny. Or, perhaps more to the point, the greatest danger faced by democracy are those who deny that there is any real difference after all.

Ravel from Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-
Fran%C3%A7ois_Revel

Ravel’s book:
“How Democracies Perish”
http://www.amazon.com/How-Democracies-
Perish-Jean-Francois-Revel/dp/0060970111
.
That brings us to the first weeks of the Obama administration, set against the background of a scary and steadily deepening global economic crisis. Last month, in his first address to Congress, Obama warned the country that fixing the huge problems in the financial markets and housing and auto industries would require a historic effort. “None of this will come without cost, nor will it be easy,” he said. “But this is America. We don’t do what’s easy. We do what is necessary to move this country forward.”

Minutes later, Obama spelled out what he proposes this to mean for 98 percent of Americans: “You will not see your taxes increased a single dime. I repeat: not one single dime. In fact, the recovery plan provides a tax cut . . . and these checks are on the way.”

So much for summoning the country to sacrifice. Obama has been no more willing to ask average Americans to pitch in, even once the recession is over, than Bush.

See:
George W. Obama?

Related:
 Venezuela’s Chavez Urges Obama, U.S. Down Socialist Path

Obama’s Radicalism Is Killing the Stock Market

NYT: After March 6 Economic News, “2009 is Probably a Lost Cause”

Obama’s First Weeks: Economic Disaster, Socialist Agenda, Congressional Pork, Limbaugh Attacked, and “We Won”

Michelle:
http://michellemalkin.com/2009/0
3/06/the-going-galt-phenom-spreads/

Oprah’s Literary Liars Club: Who Is Responsible?

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/330
01_Chavez_to_Obama-_Ally_With_Us_on
_the_Path_to_Socialism

Russia welcomes “positive signals” from US

If Russia is this happy with Obama: WORRY!

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By Steve Gutterman, Associated Press Writer 

 MOSCOW – Russia has received “very positive signals” from the new U.S. administration but wants a missile shield plan scrapped or reworked to eliminate Moscow’s concerns, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s spokesman said Friday.

Dmitry Peskov suggested Russia sees the new American administration’s moves on missile defense as a crucial test of its stated intention to revamp ties. The remarks were broadcast hours before the highest-level meeting between the former Cold War foes since President Barack Obama took office and signal that the Kremlin expects the United States to make the first move on concessions in missile defense.

“We are receiving very positive signals and we welcome them,” Peskov told Voice of Russia radio, apparently referring to the Obama administration’s repeated calls for a “reset” in badly frayed relations with Moscow.

But he repeated Russia’s vehement opposition to plans pushed by the previous U.S. administration to deploy elements of a missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic, former Soviet satellites now in NATO.

Read the rest:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/2009030
6/ap_on_re_eu/eu_russia_us

Related:
Hillary: One-Time Health Care Failure Now American’s Chief Diplomat, Fouls Up First Time Out

Israel Ponders War on Iran; Obama, Russia Haggle

Russia Testing Obama: Just as Biden Predicted
.
Russia building anti-satellite weapons

 Russia: Medvedev Pushing Putin Out?

Russia Verifies “American, Western Weakness”

Russia Sees Obama, U.S., Others As “Weak,” “Naive”

Mr. Obama and Russia
NYT Editorial: Russia only understands strength….

 Chutzpah: Admire Russia’s Arrogance

Russia, Obama and the Strategic Chess Tournament

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Above: Vladimir Putin speaks with his presidential successor, Dmitry Medvedev

 
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin heads up a meeting in Moscow. NATO agreed Thursday to resume high-level talks with Russia, ending a seven-month freeze sparked by Moscow’s decision to send troops into Georgia in August 2008.(AFP/RIA/Alexey Nikolsky)