“You’re an idiot, babe, it’s a wonder that you still know how to breathe…”
Ah, Larry Kudlow, one of our finest economic wingnuts:
Red Scare? [Larry Kudlow]
Is China trying to poison us, our kids, and our pets? Are Beijing’s communist hardliners waging some clever, clandestine, economic/military war against U.S. citizens? Now, before flatly dismissing the idea, consider that China freely admits a lengthy record of safety woes.
The fact that China openly admits these blunders seems to throw cold water on the “clandestine” part, no?
Check out yesterday’s Wall Street Journal for Pete’s sake. According to China’s own findings, almost 20 percent of Chinese goods fail to meet quality standards. 20 percent. Now, when you factor in that China was responsible for issuing the report, and that its China’s own quality standards that are at play here, one needn’t go out on a limb to reach the conclusion that safety problems are likely far more widespread than what’s being officially reported.
Gee, I actually agree with that.
Say, aren’t you and your business pals* ever-so-happy that you’ve pushed for unrestricted free trade with them?
Some recent Chinese safety woes: poisoned pet food; baby diapers laden in excessive fungus, children’s toys with lead, a slew of foods tainted with high levels of bacterial contamination, poisoned toothpaste, etc.
Yep, it’s really bad, I agree.
But let’s get something straight here: this kind of crap should be surprising to no one (my emphasis):
[T]he highly publicized contamination of U.S. chicken, pork and fish with tainted Chinese pet food ingredients and this week’s resumption of high-level economic and trade talks with China has activists and members of Congress demanding that the United States tell China it is fed up.
Dead pets and melamine-tainted food notwithstanding, change will prove difficult, policy experts say, in large part because U.S. companies have become so dependent on the Chinese economy that tighter rules on imports stand to harm the U.S. economy, too.
“So many U.S. companies are directly or indirectly involved in China now, the commercial interest of the United States these days has become to allow imports to come in as quickly and smoothly as possible,” said Robert B. Cassidy, a former assistant U.S. trade representative for China and now director of international trade and services for Kelley Drye Collier Shannon, a Washington law firm.
As a result, the United States finds itself “kowtowing to China,” Cassidy said, even as that country keeps sending American consumers adulterated and mislabeled foods.
The kind of economic reforms that have been pushed by the IMF for the past few decades have been designed to eliminate government intervention into the economy. This means slashing labor, environmental and safety standards, not to mention tariffs designed to restrict imports and protect local industries. Read my man Joe Stiglitz on what happened in Russia and Indonesia (my emphasis):
The IMF pushed these countries to have very rapid privatization, before they had corporate governance, while the economy was still in recession, and they pushed the privatization so rapidly that it was almost inevitably a corrupt privatization. At the same time, they pushed them to open up their capital markets. […]
[T]he shock therapy has cost the Russian people enormously, not only in terms of GDP. Their life expectancy is down while the rest of the world has life expectancy increasing. These are the kind of consequences that have resulted. Poverty went from 2 percent of the population to over 40 percent in 1998. These are just enormous changes. […]
They worry less about poverty than they do about what will happen to the capital markets. In my view, a lot of that has been shortsighted. It is a mistake to ignore the social and political consequences of policies. Even if you don’t worry yourself about poverty, it is bad economics. When the IMF cut out the subsidies for the food and fuel to the poorest people in Indonesia, it led to riots. Those riots led capital to flee and that exacerbated the economic downturn, the depression, in the country. So ignoring the social consequences is bad economics.
I’m not an expert in economics by any fashion, but I can see the kind of incentives that these policies create. Countries are encouraged to make themselves as attractive to Western businesses as possible. Thus, they give those businesses cheap labor, little government oversight and low taxes. And if they do these things, Western countries will reward them by lowering tariffs and other trade barriers.
And whaddya know! Countries such as China, which can produce goods at a very high rate but which have no regulatory framework, suddenly start exporting poisonous (but cheap!) toothpaste! Now in the long run, this sort of thing will hurt Chinese exports because people are going to understandably avoid products that will, you know, kill them. But these things take a while to catch on, and people are going to get hurt in the meantime.
Anyway, let’s get to Larry’s amazing punchline:
Even the Chinese government admits to “major quality problems”. One high ranking Chinese health official recently stated, “These are not isolated cases.”
Could this be a calculated Communist strategy? Is China trying to poison our pets and our kids? Maybe the folks suspicious of China are right after all?
Some flaws in this argument come to mind:
1.) Commies are too lazy to come up with such a clever plot.
2.) If they were actually secretly trying to kill us, they could do better than to openly admit that many of their products are poisoned.
3.) If China poisoned all of our children, who would be left to buy the all those shitty plastic toys they export to Wal-Mart?
*”You and your business pals” is only part of the problem, unfortunately. The other part is mostly-awesome people such as Dr. DeLong, who drank too much of the globalization kewl-aid during the ’90s and have yet to come off it.
Owww. Reading this “reasoning” hurts my head. The question that is lacking here is why would China do such a thing? As far as asymmetric war goes, what does poisoning a bunch of children and dogs actually accomplish? (Other then make us not buy their poisonous products). If they were really interested in doing harm to the US, perhaps calling in the massive debts that Bush has run up to finance his little war would make a bit more sense.
It’s like the late nineteeth/early twentieth century never happened for these schmucks.
We’ve alredy TRIED total global free trade/free markets (markets were just as globalized in the years before WWI as they are now). Know what we got for our trouble? Two world wars, a couple of global depressions the Dust Bowl, and the Soviet Union.
It’s like they’re all saying “Gee, that was fun – let’s do it again!” It’s like they honestly believe global market collapse in the race to the bottom of the free market barrel is a bug and not a feature. It’s the most naive, utopian, wishful thinking I’ve ever seen in my whole damn life – and remember, I’m a socialist, and we specialize in utopian, wishful thinking. But these guys make me look like as much of a hard-nosed realist as Kissinger or Metternich. “Free markets will make everything better! The market solves all problems naturally! Free markets equal freedom! Free ponies for everyone! What could possibly go wrong?”
They’d be adorable if they weren’t killing so many people. Instead, they’re unbearably creepy, like that kid in the Twilight Zone episode who sent everyone to the cornfield when he got angry at them.
Wait!
You mean the “meaning of Life” isn’t to stack as much “arbitrarily colored pieces paper, imprinted with numbers and spiffy busts of famous dead people’ as possible before you die?
There have to be rules and quality standards that are ENFORCED. It’s just a matter of simple observation to note that Big Bidness will NOT do the right thing when no one is looking(this would also be known as having integrity,something lost on globalization advocates) . Jesus,how many examples of corporate bullshit do people need before they figure this crap out? I never set foot on a college campus and I can see it. (btw,”the economy”as a profession,along with way too many MBAs running everything is part of the problem,in my not so educated opinion. I’m astounded that most wealth actually only exists in the ether,not physically,but that’s a whole other post I suppose)
Before WWII every farm was organic. We mostly fed ourselves,including poor people. Combining that knowledge with today’s knowledge of cleanliness standards and disease control could put people to work,cut pollution and feed damn near everyone. It requires creativity,will,interaction in the community,and a few other simple things.
We’ve become locked into a cycle of thinking this is the only way the world can work. We could shift back into more local economies,but this stupid need to make billions upon billions of dollars a year is blotting out any other way. There is no utopia here,but good god,we could multi task this stuff and fix lots of ills in the process.
China isn’t the problem,not by a long shot.
Personally, I think the better chance of a group “waging some clever, clandestine, economic/military war against U.S. citizens?” would be the kind of person Larry Kudlow is. Free-market bottom-line capitalist fuckwits who want products cheaper than dirt, with no concern for how those products get that cheap.
If it’s done by slave labor, if the safety standards are bottom-rung, these fuckers will crow to what a profit they shall make at charging higher prices on the resale.
And then when it turns out slave labor operating under no safety regulations to make a cheaper toothpaste leads to bad things? Why, it was the foreigners’ fault. Not the shitty import/export regulation of our country, or the bottom-line corporate mindset pushing to sell that shit.
Hell, the fuckers who probably produced the toothpaste are the free-market capitalist suckweasels already in fucking China, not some communist hardliner in the Party. The hardliners are probably more concerned with stomping on dissident neck, like any state communist would.
The fact that China openly admits these blunders seems to throw cold water on the “clandestine” part, no?
Not at all. It’s like how the MSM keep covering up stories, which I know about only because I read about how the MSM won’t cover certain stories. It’s in all the papers and on TV.
Check out yesterday’s Wall Street Journal for Pete’s sake.
Fuck Pete. Get someone else to read the damned thing.
As though there aren’t, oh, thousands of American businessmen running the show in the background of China’s economy. Not that they give two shits about the people they sell poison things to, because they can afford to buy “made in the USA” (or preferably France or Germany or Switzerland). What was that quote about not trusting a tailor who wouldn’t wear the suits he made himself?
These people really can’t stand that the whole “Cold War” is over with, can they?
By the way, reading that IMF article makes me loath all those “free-market” worshiping Libertarians even more than before. If Communism makes a come back, they will be the ones to blame for screwing up capitalism so bad.
Y’know, I was just waiting for some Libertarian shithead to totally miss the implications of the whole deregulated free-market scam and instead come up with the idea that the poisoned toothpaste/poisoned pet food thing was some kind of evil inscrutable plot by the Yellow Menace to destroy America. Nice to know they don’t fail my pitiful opinion of them.
OT — via Instaputz, here’s a Photoshop contest that will Astound you:
“Now I happen to have four tickets to the Kenny Chesney concert in Cleveland Stadium next Saturday, July 14. I will send them to the best effort to photoshop James Lileks back to the ’60s –whether as a preteen in Fargo or during his infamous Summer of Love days in San Francisco.
Just send your entry to me at hugh@hughhewitt.com. Bonus points for including the cover a Mormon In The White House somewhere in the picture.”
From Hewitt.
Wow…
To the ’60s?
Maybe I’ve gotten the wrong impression of Lileks, but isn’t his schtick a passionate political longing for the ’50s?
I’m not sure why the Chinese would want to kill our kids, since they’ll need those kids to grow up and work themselves to the bone to pay off all the U.S. debt that China is holding.
So…the sinister Communist plan is to make a statistically insignificant number of children and animals sick with tainted products, openly admit it, and weaken consumer confidence in their own economy. Which would eventually allow them to, uh…
Which would achieve the end result of, um…
Which, ultimately, will allow them to reach their ultimate Red victory by, er….
I’m sure it’ll come to me.
Patkin- I think you mean the 1650s.
Right here ya got a big juicy slab o’ down-home hickory-smoked dry-rubbed slow-cooked AMERICAN fuckhead dumbbell idiocy.
Is that what Kudlow thinks is “possible”? That they’re doing it on purpose? To “get” us? To destroy us with toothpaste? Do these people ever write this tripe and sit back and think, “Well, wait. Does this make sense? Or should I improve its content before sending out it over my name?”
These are rhetorical questions. The reader need not answer them.
Anyone here ever read David Harvey’s A Brief History of Neoliberalism? It’s a pretty good synopsis of all the free market shenanigans we’ve seen over the past several decades.
I wonder why, as soon as the Powers That Be secured the failure of immigration reform and thus their bottomless supply of cheap illegal labor within the U.S., the Noise Machine was instantly cranked up to 11 in a campaign against the evil dangers of China products — which until now have been a lauded as a triumph of Frei Trade and Teh Market. [Long pause] Or did I just answer my own question?
A couple of points from my experience in traveling in China and working with Chinese factories for the past 15 years.
The Chinese labor force is migrant. The poor from rural China travel to the cities to work for one or more years. They are housed, fed,and provided medical care. Yes, their wages are low but they are able to save almost all of it. And the working conditions aren’t that great but really no different than any U.S. factory. Factory work is hard, dirty, and not much fun. At the end of the day I think the Chinese worker gets to keep as much or more than some poor slob in the U.S.
Most if not all major retailers require factory inspections to insure conditions are reasonable or they will not do business with them.
Yes, there are corrupt inspectors. Yes, there are importers who use unapproved factories for a competive edge.
And the Chinese are great to work for and with. Some of them are my very dear friends.
Fuck ’em! I’m going to lead the resistance here. The Chinese think they can attack us here in america with toothpaste and pet food of mass destruction? Hah! Think again, commie slime!
From here on, I pledge to stop brushing AND stop feeding my pets!!
WOLVERINES!!!!
mikey
I guess he hasn’t read this report: 750,000 die in China from pollution every year
…what makes him think the Chinese aren’t victims of the tainted products made in their country.
Wingnuts will never get it. The problem is Communism and Socialism and other countries. The problem is NEVER capitalism.
[…] has already documented Larry Kudlow’s daring investigative report into the sinister Chinese Communist dog food conspiracy, by which they will sicken an entire […]
mikey was later found scratched and bitten to death by his starved pets. The autopsy also revealed significant tooth decay which may have contributed to his inability to defend himself, according to the unnamed sources from the coroner’s office.
Shorter Larry Kudlow: The Chicoms are using the underpants gnome strategy against us!
Phase 1: Export tainted products to U.S. and openly admit it.
Phase 2: ?
Phase 3: America falls to our devious communist plans.
“mikey said,
July 7, 2007 at 19:33
Fuck ‘em! I’m going to lead the resistance here. The Chinese think they can attack us here in america with toothpaste and pet food of mass destruction? Hah! Think again, commie slime!”
Won’t they be surprised when we all stop buying their precious fortune cookies!
Christ. These guys are the intellectual equal of Dr. Evil, asking Scott if he’s going to be an “evil” vet, or work at an “evil” petting zoo. Something bad happened? Well, priority one is to confirm weather or not this is a prelude to nuclear holocaust of the entire mainland US.
One question:
How much baby diaper fungus is “excessive”?
Are they expected to measure out the baby diaper fungus very carefully, to ensure it is only slathered over the diaper in moderate amounts?
Do they have to keep close tabs on their supply of baby diaper fungus, for fear a smidge too much here and there will leave them short of baby diaper fungus?
I think we need an investigation. Perhaps we can even sell them baby diaper fungus. I know where there’s a good supply.
No one has yet mentioned that it’s not the defective Chinese imports themselves and the harm they might actually wreak on U.S. consumers (and their pets, and children, and so forth), but the threat of lawsuits appurtaining thereto that causes concern among the officious U.S. industrial-complex official-type officials.
In other words, fuck the actual death and destruction this shit may actually cause for acutal people; their whining about it later, in the form of lawsuits and shit, might damage our bottom line! Something must be done!
For all the Socialists and Communists knocking capitalism with their childish four letter words read the Black Book of Communism and see how many tens of millions of their own people your sainted Communist leaders murdered in the Twentieth Century from Stalin, to Mao, to Pol Pot. Government is the problem not the solution.
Jake, you seem grossly stupid, even for a wingnut troll.
People here don’t like Communism. It has wonderful ideals, but is fatally flawed as an economic system, and as a political system encourages shitheads and tyranny.
People here also do not like unrestrained laissez faire capitalism. It has wonderful ideals, but has tremendous flaws as an economic system for certain areas of human endeavour (while working well elsewhere), and when it entangles itself in a political system encourages shitheads and corruption.
Now, I realise you’re a wingnut, and therefore fundamentally ignorant, but there are more colours than just “black” and “white”, more ways to point than just “left” and “right”, and more political stances to adopt than “out and out Marxist-Leninism” and “out and out Randian capitalism”.
Now, go away and play with your dollies – the big people are talking.
For all the Socialists and Communists knocking capitalism with their childish four letter words read the Black Book of Communism and see how many tens of millions of their own people your sainted Communist leaders murdered in the Twentieth Century from Stalin, to Mao, to Pol Pot. Government is the problem not the solution.
Oh no, four letter words! The horror!
And yes, the state communists of the 20th century did do a pretty stellar job of killing people. It would possibly be why men like Stalin, and Pol Pot are reviled. They’re not unique in that regard. I’m pretty sure if we tabulated the number of people capitalists murdered in the 20th century, we’d come up to an impressive number also. The question is if you’d revile the Hearsts or Wall Street quite as much.
Economic theory kills, Jake. Since the dawn of time, until the extinction of our species.
Still, at the risk of undercutting Phoenician, I do kind of like the Communism. I think its ideals are pretty awesome and that with enough work the economic/political problems can be sorted out to provide an equal society.
The ideals of capitalism, I can’t fucking fathom though. Unless I keep deluding myself into thinking I’ll be the aristo stomping the boot instead of the prole getting the shit kicked out of him.
For all the Capitalists and Neoliberals knocking socialism with their childish four letter words read theBlack Book of Capitalism and see how many tens of millions of their own people your sainted Capitalist leaders murdered in the Twentieth Century from Pinochet to Marcos to Diem. Markets are the problem not the solution.
(Oh, what? I was supposed to resist doing this? Right….if I had that kind of willpower, I’d rule the world by now.)
Sometimes I think that “Government is the problem!” stuff is just an excuse, like “Yeah we screwed up again. But what do you expect? Government is the problem, not the solution!” The fact that it gives the Repubs a reason to give out inflated contracts to their corporate buddies for everything under the sun is a nice perk to.
Jake, what you and your ilk have constantly shown with your “Stalin and Mao this… and Stalin and Mao that…” is that you have no conception at all what the fuck you are talking about. The concepts of communism have little or nothing to do with the totalitarian dictatorships of Stalin or Mao except in name. You keep beating that dead horse not to argue in a logical sense but to hear the thundering echo of your helplessness. I have no patience for the neocon spittle that oozes from your pie hole because you have not an original thought in that pointy thing you call your head.
Government is only the reflection of those that are chosen to run it. If the position is occupied by irresponsible, power mad paranoids whose only selfish function is to acquire more, more, more to satiate their greedy childish lust for shiny things then we get the governments that reflect this condition.
Jake, I am going to tell you something that you will probably deny. Those Mexican/Latino immigrants and those descendants of slaves and all those other people of color who have chosen to live here have more in common with you and me than with any CEO or equally wealthy person. When you finally see this, then you will know who the true enemy is; right now as far as I am concerned, you are the lowest form of traitor this country has. I can excuse an ignorant person for some things and it depends upon the situation. HOWEVER, THERE IS NO EXCUSE IN ALL OF THIS UNIVERSE FOR A PERSON TO BE WILLFULLY IGNORANT AND THEN TO COMPOUND THAT IGNORANCE EXPONENTIALLY, THE PERSON WILL BOAST ABOUT HIS LACK OF INTELLIGENCE AS IF THIS IS AN IDEAL TO BE SOUGHT AFTER. TOOL!!!
btw it is a little red book…
and socialism
you know, i had something kinda funny to say about thomas friedman, but ah, nevermind.
Still, at the risk of undercutting Phoenician, I do kind of like the Communism. I think its ideals are pretty awesome and that with enough work the economic/political problems can be sorted out to provide an equal society.
Nah. It’s got problems with information – the market is a great tool for responding to real needs. And the power distribution in Communism is too dangerous – putting economic power in the hands of the same people who run politics is inherently dangerous – when the government feeds you, you do what the government tells you to do.
Of course, putting political power in the hands of teh same people who dominate the economy isn’t great either.
The market is a good tool for responding to real needs only if you treat the market like you are a dominatrix and the market is your little bitch – you have to keep it on a tight leash, train it to take orders, and beat it every now and then for its own good.
the market is a great tool for responding to real needs.
Really? Because I’ve observed that probably the least-capable force out there in responding to real needs is the market. Christ knows that the past seven years wouldn’t be such absolute shit if the administration were actually focused on government response instead of letting the market decide the response.
Jillian – that comment is going into my collection of Wise Sayings.
Heh.
Study up on “market failure” and always keep it in mind. Where you have many buyers, many sellers, and good information flow, the market is your friend. And even then you sometimes have to spank it to ensure it keeps aligning profit with social value.
The market is a good tool for responding to real needs only if you treat the market like you are a dominatrix and the market is your little bitch – you have to keep it on a tight leash, train it to take orders, and beat it every now and then for its own good.
Heh.
Study up on “market failure” and always keep it in mind. Where you have many buyers, many sellers, and good information flow, the market is your friend. And even then you sometimes have to spank it to ensure it keeps aligning profit with social value.
[…] ?You?re an idiot, babe, it?sa wonder that you still know how to … Some recent Chinese safety woes: poisoned pet food; baby diapers laden in excessive fungus, children?s toys with lead, a slew of foods tainted with high levels of bacterial contamination, poisoned toothpaste, etc. Yep, it?s really bad, … […]
[…] But did you know that former (?) coke head and rightwing gas bag Larry Kudlow has some thoughts. Maybe, the Chinese are secretly trying to poison our dogs and our kids. That makes a lot more sense than […]
Great information. Thanks
You might also find it useful to visit my website: http://www.petsmanners.info