"Reuters" -
China will close its borders if it finds a single case of human-to-human transmission of bird flu there, a Hong Kong newspaper reported on Saturday ... Saving lives would be Beijing's top priority in efforts to contain a possible outbreak of bird flu, even if it meant slowing the economy, Huang Jiefu, a vice minister of health, was quoted as saying by the South China Morning Post.Er, umm... whattayathink THAT would do to the world economy?!?!? Yipes!
If I were an al Qaeda terrorist, I'd be trying to find some way to get infected Muslim people from Indonesia or southern Thailand into the Muslim-Uighur section of western China, and from there into the industrialized areas of China.
ReplyDelete(Because shutting down China would hurt the USA economy bigtime.)
But, uh, I thought, you know, that we run a, like, you know, trade deficit with China. They're just a drain on our economy.
ReplyDeleteLike, the only thing we export to China is American jobs.
Wouldn't it be better for us if they all just died?
trade deficits are ENTIRELY BOGUS; it's heuristic device which MISLEADS.
ReplyDeletewhen you go to the grocer and buy groceries and pay for them you have the groceries and the gorcer has the money.
that's a fair trade, NOT an imbalance. you do NOT have a trade deficit with the grocer.
ditto international trade.
we BUY things from china. we PAY for them; it's an ECHANGE the arties involved in think it FAIR, and even. walmart WANTS sneakers; it PAYS MONEY for them; walmart GETS THE SNEAKERS; china gets the money. money china must use in other trades/purchases.
if chiuna buys T-Bills, it's ONLY because they want to. it doesn't make us weaker when they do. in effect, we get the sneakers AND the money too!
if walmart just bought T-Bills they'd make money, and we'd get NO SMEAKERS.
so the puiblic WINS TOO!
trade deficits are the INVENTION of anti-trade/isolationist reactionaries.
Yeah, I agree with you. I was being sarcastic in my previous comment.
ReplyDeleteI don't actually wish that the Chinese would all just die.
;-)
Unfortunately, the mechanism to transmit the bird flu virus, if it becomes transmissible from human-to-human, all over the world very swiftly already exists. The Hajj will take place in Makkah in early January. There, pilgrims from Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, will join 2 to 3 million other pilgrims, taking communal meals, living in tents, and in constant contact with each other. Ordinarily, thousands of cases of influenza are transmitted during the Hajj every year. If the bird flu now claiming human victims in and around Jakarta is capable of being transmitted between humans, it might be spread via pilgrims to almost every country on earth by the end of January, 2006.
ReplyDeleteThe End Of The World Is Coming, It Is Coming Soon! Not!
ReplyDeleteWhat do AIDS, SARS, and Terrorist Attacks, the death of Arafat, the war in Iraq, Katrina, Rita, and a possible bird flu pandemic have in common? A surprisingly large number of Christians in the United States see in these things a sign that the end of the world is coming ... soon. And not only that, the events you are reading about in your newspapers and watching on television today were forecast precisely in the pages of the New Testament some two thousand years ago. Today there are more books sold, more movies produced, more television shows broadcast, and more radio talk shows devoted to various scenarios predicting the end of the world than at any time in history. Biblical Prophecy. The Rapture. The Second Coming. Armageddon. These are the themes of a rapidly growing media industry with millions upon millions of dollars to be made by enterprising preachers, writers and prophets of doom.
But is the possibility of a bird flu pandemic this winter. or any other calamity that might possibly strike in the coming weeks or months, forecast in the Bible? Let's take a long view of the entire topic of biblical prophecy.
Some fear that the end is near; others are banking on it
Perhaps the most widely know and certainly the most widely read promoters of "the end is near" theology are Tim La Haye and Jerry Jenkins, authors of the best-selling"Left Behind" series of novels. In these books, there is a direct correlation between current events and specific biblical passages, but the over arching theme is that the world situation is bad and getting worse day by day. Soon people around the world will face a time of "tribulation" and suffering more severe than anything humanity has ever faced. But not to worry. For born again Christians, help is at hand in the form of Jesus Christ who will return to rescue true believers in a last minute, dramatic exit known as the Rapture. Those fortunate enough to be carried off in a cloud to heaven may be few in number, but their salvation is assured ... so one better be reading one's Bible right away, or if not the Bible, then certainly those books that paint such a clear, dramatic picture of it all, including, of course, the Left Behind novels.
While President Bush and other world leaders attempt to promote a "roadmap" to peace in the Middle East, fundamentalist, prophecy minded Christians are following a roadmap to heaven, even as the world is assigned, quite literally to hell. There is, of course, a website where you can read all about it, LeftBehind.com, and a newsletter where you can read regular editorials by Mark Hitchcock, one of the leading promoters of "end is near" thinking. Hitchcock opened an editorial not long ago with this question: "Is SARS a fulfillment of Jesus' prophecy about plagues in the End Times?" For readers who were not aware that nearly two thousand years ago, Jesus was predicting events like the outbreak of SARS that would unfold in our time and place, Hitchcock writes: "Two days before He died on the cross, Jesus said that one of the signs of His coming is "in various places plagues" (Luke 21:11). Of course, you could strike SARS from Hitchcock's statement, and substitute AIDS or bovine flu or bird flu, and little would change. For all the attention to detail in such thinking, the thoughts remain the same.
Although it is quite clear from the context that Jesus was referring not to events that might take place in the 21st century, but to circumstances in his own time and place, Hitchcock lifts these words of Jesus completely out of their setting in a particular time and place and uses them as a conversation starter about SARS and other recently minted infectious diseases, including AIDS and the Ebola virus.
Are these recent outbreaks a fulfillment of Jesus' prophecy of endtime plagues? Some prophecy teachers believe they are. While this is possible, I prefer to see SARS, AIDS, Ebola, and other modern epidemics as foreshadows of even worse things to come. They don’t fulfill Jesus' words, but they do point toward their fulfillment. People had been led to believe that terrible plagues were a thing of the past. But all that has changed now. Fear of deadly epidemics is alive and well. And when the coming seven year tribulation arrives, one of the terrible judgments of God on an unbelieving, Christ-rejecting world will be the unleashing of terrible plagues that will kill millions, even billions. ... The epidemics we see today are just a small foretaste and faint glimpse of what is coming upon the whole world.
So there you have it. And global pandemics are just the beginning. Soon God's judgment against a sin filled world will descend upon us in the form additional calamities, both natural and man-made, through which God puts to death "millions, even billions" of human beings.
Did Jesus actually predict anything like this?
Let's take a closer look at the context in which Jesus was speaking in the passage referenced by Hitchcock in his SARS editorial. In the 21st chapter of Luke, Jesus is standing in the temple courtyard in the ancient city of Jerusalem. And he had just observed, with approval, a poor widow who had placed two small copper coins in the temple treasury. Contrasting her generosity with the relatively stingy behavior of the rich people who were also coming forward with their own gifts, he said: "Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them, for all of them have contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in all she had to live on."
When he noticed that people seemed to be more impressed by the luxurious surroundings of the temple architecture and appointments made possible by gifts from the wealthy, Jesus replied. "As for these things that you see, the days are coming when not one stone will be left standing upon another; all will be thrown down." It's in this specific context that Jesus mentions the possibility of a future calamity in which the city and its impressive temple might be destroyed. Included among the portents of such a time Jesus lists warfare, earthquakes, "and in various places famines and plagues."
And to be sure it was only seventy years later that the Romans invaded Jerusalem, sacked the city, and the great temple of King Solomon came tumbling down. All that remains of the temple and its impressive surroundings that had so mesmerized Christ's listeners is the wailing wall which today is one of the flash points for the continuing conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.
There is another sentence worth mentioning in this passage from Luke. When pressed to say more about his comments on the coming destruction of the temple, Jesus snaps: "Beware that you are not led astray; for many will come in my name and say, ... 'The time is near!' Do not go after them."
If there is anything clear in this passage, it's Christ's admiration for the generosity of the poor woman, which he finds more impressive than any of the outward signs of wealth and power in such extravagant display all around him. And to be sure, his love for that woman is combined with some rather dramatic words of warning addressed to those "who devour widows' houses and for the sake of appearances say long prayers" Yes, he does suggest that there will be a time of reckoning and judgment for those who oppress the poor and pervert the faith. But of those who may suggest when, or in what form such judgment may occur, his words are clear: "Do not go after them."
Tall tales Vs Biblical Teaching
Judging by the sales of the prophecy books of authors like Jenkins and La Haye, or the popularity of websites like LeftBehind.com, there are plenty of people two thousands of years later who are still quite willing to "go after them." And so it is that when news of a bird flu pandemic began to spread, there were preachers and prophets soon to follow, trumpeting once again that "the end is near." And somehow the readers of such books and the believers in such "prophecy" theology failed to notice that the very same writers and preachers were making the same predictions and drawing the same conclusions about the end of the world upon the breaking of other bad news in prior years. The war with Iraq, the terrorist attacks of September 2001, the AIDS epidemic, and remember this one: The Y2K computer virus? Few will remember that in 1998 and 1999, none other than Jenkins and La Haye were suggesting that the outbreak of that long forgotten bug in the coding of the Windows operating system would lead to a world wide economic meltdown that would, once again, signal the end of the world as we know it.
People have been making such predictions and promoting such prophecies year after year, decade after decade, century after century. One thing all such prognostications have in common. They are wrong. Not only are they factually flawed, but they represent a gross distortion of the clear meaning of the biblical text, such that a narrative that focuses on the generosity of a first century widow can be transformed into a dramatic prediction of the suffering and death of "billions" of the world's people at the hands of an angry God. The fiction sells a great many novels, movies and television shows to be sure, but runs far, far away from the simple truths as told by the carpenter from Nazareth more than two thousands years ago.
While many are mesmerized by tall tales about the end of the world, I prefer the teaching of the one who came that the world might be saved.
Where did that come from, and what did it have to do with anything?
ReplyDeleteOk, Apperently I'll have to educate you on how a trade deficite works.
ReplyDeleteSay you buy a new pair of sneakers at Wal-Mart that were made outside the U.S. A few of your dollars end up at Wal-Mart headquarters where they’re booked as profit in the company’s next quarterly earnings report. A few more dollars wind up in the hands of the American company that imported your new sneakers. A few more go to the truckers and owners of cargo ships that brought them to you. But a significant chunk of your dollars end up in the country where the products were made.
Last year, around $650 billion ended up outside the U.S. The country with the most, China, took in over $162 billion in 04. Oil producers, lead by Saudi Arabia, received $164 billion from American purchases of gasoline, heating oil and other products made from crude oil.
So what would you do if you were one of those countries with a piece of that $650 billion? You can’t spend it on goods and services: your country has already bought all the stuff from the U.S. that it needs, wants or can afford. You could put it in a bank, but for many countries holding surplus trade dollars, especially those with shaky banking systems, that’s not necessarily a very good Idea
Eventually, those U.S. dollars come back home in return for I.O.U.’s from The Federal Government called U.S. Treasury securities, still one of the safest places in the world to stash cash. As long as our Congress continues to spend more than it rises in taxes, we’ll have plenty of that Treasury debt to sell. All that demand helps keep interest rates low.
One reason China is getting so much attention, aside from the huge chunk of the trade deficit it creates, is that it has kept its own exchange, the Yuan, artificially low by pegging it to the dollar. No one knows just how much it would rise if it was allowed to “Float” but the strength of the Chinese economy indicates that the Yuan should be valued considerably higher relative to the dollar.
there is no such thing as a trade deficit, in fact.
ReplyDeleteit is a heuristic deivce.
do i have to explain what that is/educate you on that!?
sheesh. (go look up "heuristic device" in a dictionary, you moron!)
a tree is a REAL thing. it exists. so does a pair of sneakers. and jets like spartan. but a trade deficit is a figment of the imagination. it is DERIVED by subtracting the value of goods bought from a particular country from the goods SOLD to that particular country.
my ANALOGY - of the grocer (which was SWIPED from WALTER WILLIAMS) is a good one. when you buy groceries from yopur grocer, you pay him what he asks for his goods. THAT IS AN EVEN/STEVEB TRADE. IT IS AN EVEN STEVEN TARDE WHETHER YOU EVER SELL HIM SOMETHING OR NOT.
when we BUY things from china, THERE IS NO DEFICIT; it is an EVEN/STEVEN TRADE.
what they do with their MONEY ASSET is their business.
our trade in china is mostly one-way ONLY IN THE SENSE THAT WE PAY THEM FOR GOODS. In effect we take a monetary asset and EXCHANGE it for a GOODS ASSET. We are not richer or poorer and neither are the chinese(unless they have a profit margin in their sale price).
most of the trade between the USA and China is us trading them dollars for goods, BUT THAT IS CHANGING. GM'S MOST PROFITABLE AUTOMOTIVE DIVION IS IN CHINA SELLING CARS TO THE CHINESE. THIS WILL EXPAND.
as for the YUAN, currencies should all float. Nixon made our float. the chinese should make theirs float. they will one day. sooner rather than later.
it's a protectionist thing for them, which hurts their citizens/consumer. japan also has a long way to go as far as fair trade. as does the EU.
the USA is the FAIREST trader in the whole frigging world.
and WITHOUT our consumption, the whole frigging world economy would collapse.
YUP: the LEFTIST assholes say we consume too muchy, but if we cutback then the whole frigging world economy goes into a recession.
the ONLY way to change this is by getting the other countries to consume MORE. and if they had fewer trade barriers this would happen and the HWOLE FROIGGING WORLD'S ECONOMY WOULD EXPAND!
but the socialists in the EU and China and japan (and elsewhere) would rather protect their industrial base then improve the living standards for their citizens.
the thning MOST responsible for improving living standards throughout history is TRADE, and the more the better.
the "trade deficit" is a stupid phony device invented by ANTI-TRADE isolationists.
Ok, lets see if I can explaine this another way in which you might understand, and by the way, Try having an intellegent conversation instead of calling one who diss agrees with you an asshole or a moron. And don't ell me to "get a fucking Dictionary" I know what heuristic device is, Im not some Kindergardner.
ReplyDeleteYour analagy of the grocer makes since, however you fail to realize a thing called Balance of trade. The way you seem to want to describe it, it would be a perfect Balance where we Import, and Export the exact same. That is the Ideal situation to both the left wing and the right Right wing
That is a balance of trade. On the other hand there is such a thing as a Trade Surplus which is the amount of goods and services that a country exports that is in excess of the amount of goods and services it imports. A trade surplus increases economic activity in a country but also may result in higher prices and interest rates if the economy is already operating at near capacity.
Then, on the other side of the Balance you have Trade Defficit which is the amount of goods and services that a country imports that is in excess of the amount of goods and services it exports. Large trade deficits may result in unemployment and a reduction in economic growth in the country with the deficit.
instead of telling me to get a dictionary, get one yourself.
the way the term "Balance of trade" is almost always used it's just another phony device invented by isolationists.
ReplyDeletein fact - in REALITY - when we buy stuff from china THERE IS BALANCE! they do not have to buy theam dollar value of GOODS from us for there to be a balance. that is absurd! sure: it's what the isolationists tell you, but it is PURE BUNK!
AGAIN: when i BUY groceries and PAY the grocer what he wants to be paid, our trade IS IN BALANCE! I do NOT have a defiocit with him becasue i do not sell him goods, too!
sheesh!
sparty baby: when you hear the terms "trade balance" and "trade deficit" being used you are listening to an isolationist propagandist who is NOT describing reality.
free trade is good. free trade is MERELY free people buying and sellign whatever they want to buy and sell at whatever price they want to buy and sell at.
luvya!
Reliapunidt,
ReplyDeleteYou mentioned that when China sells us goods, there is a profit in it for them. There is also a profit in it for us. When we spend our money to buy goods, we do so because the money is worth less to us than the goods we want.
So, when the goods are in our hands, they represent a profit.
All trade expands the total pie. Like you said, the answer to the economic problems of the world is always more free trade, and not less.
Now, as for your assertion that the world economy would collapse if we ceased buying goods from the rest of the world, yes, I very much agree with you.
Look at it this way, Spartan, if the United States uses a disproportionat amount of the world's resources that means two things:
1) We pay for those resources, which means a disproportionate number of the world's wealth and jobs are created by American money,
2) we are very, very productive, because if we need all those goods, it means both that we are selling them, and that by selling them, we are making more money to buy more goods.
Damn, and I don't even own a dictionary.
:)
It's impossible to achive a balance of trade unless both parties of the trade want the same net worth value, for example, I may only want a few apples, but you want 5 crates of oranges, if we trade, a deficit is created for me because I gave up more net value than I took in by taking your apples, and a surplus is created for you, because you Took in more net value with 5 crates of oranges, but only gave up a few apples in return.
ReplyDeleteI fail to see how thats Isolationist propaganda. It sounds more like basic economics to me, but what do I know I only took 3 years of marketing.
You're right, Trade is the Life Blood of the global economy, but Trade Balance is hardly Isolationiost, if anything it tries to improve trade by working towards a balance, that way one economy doesnt over extend itself while another one goes into poverty
Isolationist propaganda would sound more like
"The U.S can sustane it's self, we produce enough food each year to feed the world" and things of that nature.
Spartan,
ReplyDeleteUnder what circumstances would you trade five crates of oranges for a few apples?
I'll tell you under what circumstances I would make such a trade:
UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCE WHERE FIVE CRATES OF ORANGES ARE WORTH A FEW APPLES.
For instance, people will trade the equivalent of many crates of oranges for one bottle of fermented grape juice. Here's the simple economics. We do these things when they are worth it to us personally, and as a society.
Supply and demand.
Are you one of those people who buys things at the store and then whines about getting ripped off?
;-)
I mean, really.
You know, I think I figured out where this silliness comes from. It's leftover from the days when goods truly were limited.
For instance, there's a verse in the Bible which says something about a piece of bread being worth a bag of gold. Well, that's an expression of severe shortage of bread. We don't have such shortages in our world anymore. And, in the case of any country which IS in fact short of food, the problem is political, not economic. Usually, it is a problem of distribution, caused by either inept, or genocidal government.
Can't wait to hear what you have to say.
You're taking my metaphore of apples and oranges too litterally.
ReplyDeleteThe metaphore relates to a Nations Imports and Exports.
Currently The U.S Imports more than it exports, creating a gap in it's trade, creating a trade gap.
The difference in values relate to many factors such as suply and demand, and the gap, sometime we demand, but don't supply enough in return, but offer it as payment for another time, Think of it like a credit card.
other things affect it as well such as Tax, Tariff, and trade mesures, and exchange rates.
trade deficits and surpluses exist when there is an excess or lack of demand for a country's investment assets.
Agian the Idea of Balance of trade is not an isolationist movment because it's objective is an equillibrium.
You're taking my metaphore of apples and oranges too litterally.
ReplyDeleteThe metaphore relates to a Nations Imports and Exports.
Currently The U.S Imports more than it exports, creating a gap in it's trade, creating a trade gap.
The difference in values relate to many factors such as suply and demand, and the gap, sometime we demand, but don't supply enough in return, but offer it as payment for another time, Think of it like a credit card.
other things affect it as well such as Tax, Tariff, and trade mesures, and exchange rates.
trade deficits and surpluses exist when there is an excess or lack of demand for a country's investment assets.
Agian the Idea of Balance of trade is not an isolationist movment because it's objective is an equillibrium.
SPARTAN. YOU WROTE:
ReplyDelete"Agian the Idea of Balance of trade is not an isolationist movment because it's objective is an equillibrium."
My point is that there IS equilibrium at the point of the original sale - of money for goods; that is NOT "unbalanced;" they sell for what they wantr; we pay it; there's BALANCE!
it is an ARTIFICE to demand that all nations buy and sell the same amount of goods to each other.
REPEAT: YOU DO NOT HAVE A DEFICIT OR AN IMBALANCE WITH YOUR GROCER; NEITHER DO WE HAVE ONE WITH CHINA.
"TRADE BALANCE" and "TRADE DEFIOCT" are phony/meaningless artrifices which mean NOTHING in the real world.
It is PREPOSTEROUS to demand or expect or prefer that all nations sell each other the same amount of goods.
absurd.
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ReplyDeleteCharles