Well the Chicken (John Snow) and the Hawk (Alan Greenspan)backed away from calling on tariffs against China. One use to be able to tell the difference between a chicken and a hawk, but not anymore.
Greenspan warned that imposing tariffs on China would hurt U.S. consumers and protect "few if any American jobs." That's right Al, but the jobs are gone and they are not coming back. Why don't you just go ahead and tell congress the real reason you are afraid of calling for tariffs. Could it be because the Chinese have control over our longer term interest rates ? You have to bite the bullet sooner or later. If something isn't done soon we will be trading in the 50 stars on our flag for 5 gold ones.
I have said it over and over again. US corporations have sold our country out to the "isms". Now, congress wants to stop the bleeding and they know in order to do so will create some economic pain. In reality, its boiling down to pay me now or pay me later. I'm voting for now, later may be way too late.
A few days ago China told Microsoft that in order to do business in the "ism" country, they had to remove about 180 words that promote democracy. Microsoft's new MSN China Internet venture is censoring words such as "freedom," "democracy" and "human rights" on its free online journals/blogs. Other words banned were "Taiwan independence" and "demonstration," which returned an error message saying "prohibited language, please remove". In addition to all this, the Vietnamese rang the opening bell on Wall Street. Whose next to ring the bell, North Korea?
Now that China is "cash rich", they know that greedy American's will do just about anything for a buck. This morning Becky Quick on CNBC said whats wrong with China's state run oil company CNOOC buying Unocal. Are you kidding me? In Becky's defense, she is too naive and too young to understand that the communists, as Josef Stalin said, want democracy to buckle from within.
The Dow Jones Industrials fell 166 points as oil prices climbed above $60 per barrel level. FedEx dissapointed investors saying that higher fuel costs are impacting profits. We saw this coming months ago when we removed UPS from the IA portfolio.
We are going to remain defensive despite the chorus of cheers for technology stocks lately. I find the timing of tech touting very odd since June ends the NASDAQ's best eight months according to the Stock Trader's Almanac. We may yet have one more burst on the upside in the market, but I believe we are in the later innings of this ballgame. Sometimes, however, the final inning could last a few months.
Comments (1)
What a mess! The Greenspan testimony was sickening. Warren Buffet said today that these current account deficits are going to end badly within 5 years, ie, the dollar is going down and with it most Americans standard of living. As a debtor, you gotta pay back, and if you won't pay by hocking tangible things like giving up Unical for example, then the US paper will be dumped for another currency. As a country, what are we going to do? Start saving!
Posted by alan | June 23, 2005 9:06 PM
Posted on June 23, 2005 21:06