“Uh Oh” Is Somehow So Inadequate

That post is the written equivalent of an Irish Coffee… While I get depressed over the loss of another species, I am simultaneously getting agitated over the first stages of a major possible economic downturn…

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The housing market’s already crashing. And wouldn’t all those “liquidated” dollars have to be spent on something in the U.S.? Otherwise, they go from “dollars under China’s mattress” to “dollars under Thailand’s mattress,” and there’s no net change.

Of course, currency speculators and illiterate sandwiches like Lou Dobbs should start panicking yesterday. But Lou Dobbs should always be panicking. It’s more entertaining.

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So the dollar crashes. China’s gone from holding a pile of debt instruments against the greatest empire in the history of intelligent life in the universe to holding a pile of dead presidents that will either (1) sit in a cookie jar losing value or (2) have to be spent on American goods. And since China already has a trade surplus with the U.S. – we import more from them than we export to them – it’s clear that the U.S. isn’t selling shit China wants to buy.

Don’t get me wrong – the 21st century has proven that spite is a perfectly legitimate motive for policy (see: U.S. v Iraq; “Iran 2008 – The Next Great War”). But this would hurt China as much as it would the U.S.

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it’s likely in their best interest to be the ones tanking it rather than just taking it in the ass.

Again, I don’t buy this for any reason other than “spite,” but we’ve established that, if that’s a motive, anything’s possible.

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