Words have gender, people have sex. But not the people on this board, I'll wager.
 

Maybe he thought you meant "Having women in the lab makes men think differently, because in the presence of women they think only about sex"?

Yes, yes. But only because you like to babble on in French after a few cocktails.

I bet W is charming as all fuck in one-off, one-on-one or small group meetings. He (and Clinton) really really want to be liked. It's, uh, possible that at work I have that going on too. Though, the PTBs seem to think there's some kind of pit bull thing behind it -- which I think is probably true of Bush and Clinton. Nice as hell, charming, but aren't actually going to give up something unless it's tactical.

Hah. Yeah, he loves the fatties. :rolleyes:

I was just trying to stave off the comment about how he must have raped me (it would have been pedophilia too -- your wet dream!).

bad news, club
 

Wow. I will defer to the learned one. Clearly I am not qualified to carry your proxy.

Words have gender, people have sex. But not the people on this board, I'll wager.
 

That would be in character -- him projecting his behavior/feelings onto the men in the lab. I think fake vaginas (or whatever it is that was listed as being illegal in AL) are legal in CA -- he should probably get one, to relieve some of that tension.

bad news, club
 

What's teh mechanism to supress currency price? Selling a bunch of their currency, and printing more to fill its place? All that gets is rampant inflation, which has internal effects as well. Generally, it's pretty tough to affect currency prices other than by moral suasion, unless you have a really massive bankroll. Whatever you do ultimately reverses pretty quickly.

Why are we worried about exports to China? If they don't want to buy our stuff, so be it (of course they steal it through IP, but that's a different issue). Plenty of other countries want to buy our stuff, and that's fine.

bad news, club
 

Right. So what's the harm in their selling to the US at low prices? That it forces our low-wage workers to switch to different jobs? We've been facing that problem, internally and externally, for years. Hell, Ludd broke some cotton gins (or something) for just that reason.

Wow. If you can tell that my drunken babble is French, my French is better than I think it is.

Or is that your nice way of telling me that my posts are so filled with friendly-aggressive-incoherent blather that it is evident that, for me, the cocktail hour has already begun? Hic.

BR(I got me menu-French and dos-cervezas-por-favor-Spanish)C

bad news, club
 

God, I'd love to have you on the other side in negotiations. You give up so easily when faced with well-phrased (though only half-thought-out) "blather."

That was, actually, not a shot at DS.

ETC phrasing and include "blather."

bad news, club
 

It may have been blather, but that blather convinced me my understanding the Chinese currency situation was lacking.

bad news, club
 

Your understanding of most (if not all) of the topics you discuss is lacking. This is a slam, though it is also equally true of me and everyone else on the board for nearly every topic. I mean, fuck, your evidence on medmal insurance rates is what some guy told you at a local Republican Party meeting of some kind.

ETA, after reading Sidd's post, you were so bowled over by her facility with language and ability to remember and regurgitate bits of things that you didn't even notice the glaring issue with this statement:

I don't know crap about whether the yuan is overvalued or undervalued, but I know that the fact that the yuan is pegged to the dollar (and has been for a very long time), and the fact that the *dollar* is down, combined, can't tell you anything about whether, in reality, the yuan is undervalued w/r/t non-dollar currencies as to what its value would be if floated.

bad news, club
 

It's a definitional issue, I suppose. But, if the yuan floated, and were worth $1.50, and China imposed a 33% tariff on all US goods -- would you call that "free trade"? Would you think it was beneficial? It might get you cheaper shirts at Wal-Mart, but it doesn't help us sell American-built computers in China. Instead, we end up making them there.

And there is plenty of dispute to the theory that there's a net benefit to the one party who is opening its markets. If your idea were true -- the party with liberal trade policies benefits, the one without them does not -- then we would never pressure other countries to open their markets.





Wow. That IS silly. I mean, suggesting that the value of the yuan is articifically suppressed, just because it is undervalued as a result of a government policy that pegs the currency to the dollar rather than letting it float? I don't know what came over me.


Again, I can't imagine what came over me, thinking that the Chinese government might have something to do with the policy of keeping the yuan pegged to the dollar. Or that it might not be an accident that they did so. Or that it might be related to keeping export prices low so as to provide more manufacturing jobs.




Again, lots of disagreement on that. From Beijing, among other places.

bad news, club
 

Or he's really smart, in that he lets others take on the work of making his arguments so long as they appear to be doing OK.

That said, I sometimes think all my comments on economics (or anything else, really) should be concluded "So sayeth the literature major." However, since economists are really just people who can tell you tomorrow why what they said yesterday would happen today didn't happen, and to the extent the dismal science has value it is usually in more clearly expressing what is really common sense, I feel free to have at it.

bad news, club
 

Some of those consumers who would otherwise benefit from prices depressed by the subsidization of Chinese manufacturers don't have money to spend because their employers can't compete with those Chinese manufacturers.

How odd that we tend to think of the average citizen as a consumer instead of a producer. Hello, trade deficits.

caption, please
 

bad news, club
 

Why, if the employer is an inefficient american company, do we worry more if the more efficient competitor is Chinese instead of American?

Doesn't the caldor's employee deserve equal consideration as the US Steel employee?

bad news, club
 

They keep the currency pegged to the dollar. It does not float on the free market. The kinds of mechanisms that you identify are relevant only to a currency that floats, not to one that is pegged.

In other words, you don't know what you are talking about.


They might want to buy our stuff if it were 30% cheaper, which it might be if their currency were freely traded. And they might not take so many manufacturing jobs from the US.

And, yes, the US consumer would suffer. But why should we protect the "right" to buy a $30 DVD player from the effects of the free market (free market including a free currency market), any more than we should protect US jobs?

I disagree with Ty's view about the need to protect people from the effect of the free market. But I don't think cheap consumer prices have any greater standing.

bad news, club
 

If efficiency is the issue, I agree with you.

If artificially low costs driven by government policies are the issue, I disagree.

Did every Repub on this board suddenly turn into a quasi-Communist? It's hard to understand why else you would all so admire Chinese monetary policy.

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We seem to be starting from different hypotheses. I thought we were proposing that we should not be concerned that the Chinese government is protecting Chinese businesses in various ways, just so long as imports from China remain cheap.

I'm not particularly concerned with who owns which company, unless a company owned by the Chinese military is buying IBM or something like that, and I'm not particulary concerned with protecting inefficient American companies, unless you're talking about getting rid of the traditional licensing and consumer-protection functions of state bar associations.

bad news, club
 

Lets not forget the new service jobs created in the US because the US consumers have more discretionary spending from the money they saved on the cheap chinese products. Let us not also forget almost every citizen benefits from the cheap products were very few actually lose their jobs.

caption, please
 

I dragged my ass to Bratislava for this?

bad news, club
 

Socialism for the consumer, capitalism for the worker.

bad news, club
 

I think I can read between the lines there.

bad news, club
 

Have you been listening in on our smoke filled backroom strategy meetings?

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People, even the poor people who lose their jobs to China, won't spend more for an equal quality more expensive US made product than they will spend on a cheaper foreign made product.

Once the US consumer madt this decision the "US worker wage premium" died. It was Joe Six Pack who killed Joe Sixpack- not Roger Smith. Ty- are you proposing tariffs on everything coming into the country so we can maintain the high wage jobs?

I posted this 4 or 5 times now- they don't answer because they can't.

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I am new here, but is this some sort of jealousy thing? Was I supposed to give you the compliment and not Sidd? Would that help with the insecurity issue?

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Agreed, we're having a definitional issue. I, for one, would say China does not practice free trade in your example - but I still might call the US's trade with china "free," depending on what its policy was, just because I don't think discussing "free trade" only as a bilateral (or multilateral) concept is adequate or accurate. Whether one calls it "free trade" or not is irrelevant for purposes of discussing whether our (or china's) policies are a good idea.
If I thought macro economic actors were consistently rational any more than micro economic actors, I'd say that was a good argument.
Well, you implied the Chinese G was somehow doing something to suppress it, when it is in fact the US G's fiscal policy that is having a secondary effect of suppressing it, given the existence of the peg. (If you didn't imply it, media coverage certainly has. The "common wisdom" of the thing is really what I was noting was silly.) The yuan is, of course, valued lower than it was when the dollar was strong (though it is not necessarily clear whether, or how much, it is currently undervalued vs. the $). Obviously, chinese policy has the effect of maintaining that lower value. That's different than saying the Chinese have a policy of undervaluing the currency, or are doing things (or not doing things) because they are trying to achieve or maintain that value.

Pegging, unpegging, floating, indexing, or otherwise fundamentally restructuring the valuation of a national currency isn't a simple matter of changing your mind based on the immediate market situation, however. Regardless of whether the yuan is now undervalued vis a vis the dollar or anything else, changing currency policy has serious reprecussions beyond the effects of revaluing the currency. "Keeping the yuan pegged to the dollar" can't properly be considered just a decision to undervalue the yuan.
Well, I think they're wrong. I'm not quick to trust the thinking of a centralized communist state on market issues.

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I am not proposing tariffs to make imports more expensive.

I am proposing not engaging in "free trade" with countries that use government policies to reduce prices on exports -- whether that be dumping, unfair subsidies, or refusal to float currency despite a reasonably developed economy.

I can answer, and did.

Now, can you answer my question: If, say, France gave a 30% subsidy to every French company on all products exported to the US, and imposed a 30% tariff on all products imported from the US, would you say "Great! That benefits the US consumer! It makes wine cheaper, and think of all the jobs that we'll create with all that extra disposable income!"?

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There are many different sorts of things you can do to try to level the playing field. If this was so simple, Robert Zoellick wouldn't be a household name.

And if you're going to do things that benefit the country on the whole, but hurt certain populations, I think the government should be working to ameliorate the hit on those people.

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Of course it's the Chinese government doing so.

Do you think anyone other than the Chinese government could make the decision to keep their currency pegged to the dollar, or to let it float?

And do you think the policy would be any different if it wasn't having the effect of bolstering Chinese exports to the US by making them cheaper?


See my Q to Hank -- if their currency floated, but they subsidized exports and taxed imports, would you consider that a good thing? Even if the net effect were the same?



eta:


Perhaps you should check the growth rate of the Chinese economy over the last decade years before being so dismissive.

bad news, club
 

Again, see my question to Hank.

By your logic, we should be encouraging our trading partners to subsidize their exports to the US.

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You can say a currency is "pegged", but you have to back that up with something too, usually by convincing someone to buy your currency. If it's pegged, yet you run inflationary policies, holders of other currency aren't about to keep giving you a dollar for a yuan. The country's central bank just won't get any foreign currency, at which point you become known as Argentina.

Eat the rich.
 

What does this have to do with whether said pegging results in an anti-free trade effect?

(Hey, fringey, wanna play "yuan and the dollar"?)

edited to clarify question

A few days ago, parsing the speeches of FDR.
Yesterday, eminent domain.
Today, yuan/dollar monetary policy.

With hot topics like these, it's no wonder the page hits keep cranking up.

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Of course not. That doesn't mean they are doing so in an effort to suppress the currency vs. other currencies. If I order pizza from Sam's, and Sam's switches from bicycle to SUV delivery, my continuing to order from Sam's doesn't necessarily mean I'm attempting to destroy the environment; it may just be a side effect of a decision based on Sam's being cheaper than Dominoes or the only place that doesn't get the box top stuck to the cheese, maybe its too much effort to look for the instruction book to reprogram my speed-dial. My lack of dedication to green causes will certainly factor into my decision, but it's not the only factor and may not be the most important one.
Well, their policy wasn't any different when that was exactly the case and the dollar was strong (or even over-valued against other currencies), so I'd have to say "no."

The peg doesn't necessarily make the exports cheaper in the US, it mainly makes them cheaper compared to other countries exports in the US (for instance, India's).
Not necessarily good or bad. In general, I think floating currencies are a good thing and subsidies and duties are bad. But I don't understand what you think this counterfactual flushes out. Whether China floats, repegs, or whatevers their currency, either together with or independent of their other trade policies, does not change my general belief that reducing US subsidies and import duties, including with respect to trade with China, is beneficial to the US economy.

Good point. Maybe it was the Klingon.

Nah. You know I love you, pookie.

And stop calling me a Hick.

No, no, no Dammit. Say it like this:

Parse FDR?
Merits of the Takings Clause?
Yuan peg? Gag me!!!

Its probably got something to do with me leaving. Seems like there is less name-calling, less shrieking, and less blindside shots since I've taken a rest. And holy fuck has work been busy the last few months!!!!

And I've noticed that more than one of your people has not posted on this board since I piped down. Silenced 10 leftists just by keeping quiet myself? Best work I ever did on an internet chat board!

Caption, Please
 

http://www.wonkette.com/politics/_40...kiss_ap245.jpg

4K!