Monday Open Thread
Beware the Ides of March! Today is the Ides of March and also the Breitbartocalypse. At this time tomorrow the “institutional left” will have ceased to exist. I suppose you’ll only see a blank page here tomorrow. We will all have been raptured or something. It’s pretty unclear what Breitbart meant. Stay tuned! Let’s open up this thread and get rolling.
Paul Krugman has an interesting op-ed today on tensions between the U.S. and China over currency policy. He turns conventional wisdom on its head by showing China is the one with no power right now:
If Treasury does find Chinese currency manipulation, then what? Here, we have to get past a common misunderstanding: the view that the Chinese have us over a barrel, because we don’t dare provoke China into dumping its dollar assets.
What you have to ask is, What would happen if China tried to sell a large share of its U.S. assets? Would interest rates soar? Short-term U.S. interest rates wouldn’t change: they’re being kept near zero by the Fed, which won’t raise rates until the unemployment rate comes down. Long-term rates might rise slightly, but they’re mainly determined by market expectations of future short-term rates. Also, the Fed could offset any interest-rate impact of a Chinese pullback by expanding its own purchases of long-term bonds.
It’s true that if China dumped its U.S. assets the value of the dollar would fall against other major currencies, such as the euro. But that would be a good thing for the United States, since it would make our goods more competitive and reduce our trade deficit. On the other hand, it would be a bad thing for China, which would suffer large losses on its dollar holdings. In short, right now America has China over a barrel, not the other way around.
Good news for Harry Reid – his wife has been released from the hospital.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s wife was discharged from a Washington-area hospital Sunday after being treated for a broken neck and back when a tractor-trailer rear-ended her minivan.
Landra Reid, 69, was hospitalized last week after she and the couple’s 49-year-old daughter, Lana, were hit by a semi-truck while traveling in their Honda Odyssey in stop-and-go traffic on Interstate 95 about 14 miles south of Washington.
The Nevada senator’s wife of 50 years, who suffered a broken nose, broken back and a broken neck, underwent neck surgery Friday at Inova Fairfax Hospital.
Best wishes to Landra Reid for a speedy recovery.
Tags: Open Thread
dKos poster ran into Mike Castle on Sunday at the St. Patrick’s Day festivities at the legendary St. Patrick’s Church party.
And Mike Castle dodges and weaves on some pretty serious questions.
Cassandra’s link is awesome. Everyone should read it.
Alan Grayson is fabulous — this is supposed to be a real campaign email from Representative Grayson on the occasion of a Sarah Palin visit to his part of the world:
How it’s done, folks. Awesome.
Big Brohaha in Haiti: Well well the Clintons never miss an opportunity. When Aristede was President of Haiti there were two cell phone companies. Comcell and Haitel. Aristede owned 10% of that company and Hilary’s brother Roger Rodman owned the rest. When the Bush regime removed Aristede, Roger made a move on Comcel claiming to have bought the company and renamed it Voila.
Haitis government has no resources. They do not collect taxes on the most wealthy and the national phone company was its only source of revenue. Glen Ford interviewed people in Haiti who claim the Clintons along with Roger are attempting to purchase the entire cell phone industry in Haiti worth billions of dollars, thereby leaving Haiti totally dependent and broke.
Hilary as Secretary of State has a major conflict of interest, so does Billy Boy since he is the “Chief Envoy to Haiti”. So it appears the Clinton Family is about to pocket Haitis only asset and privatize the only cell phone service left in the country.
We should all remember Lanny Davis another Clinton supporter who used his right wing interest in Honduras and worked to get the duly elected President of Honduras out of office and installed a right wing military arm governing today. Notice the Clintons had very little to say about the deposing of the true President, while Davis pocketed millions in the process.
How is that for foreign policy? The demorats in DC are no different than the repukes…they are all working to pocket the resources of small countries who cannot fight back. Clinton should resign as Secretary of State and Billy Boy should be sent packing. Remember all the allegations that Haiti was becoming a military zone! Military planes went in first, while doctors without borders, hospital ships sat in the Ocean waiting to send in humanitarian help? You should also know huge deposits of oil have been found in Haiti. Think it was a humanitarian jaunt for the US or just another guise at stealing the resources?
Don’t worry, Michele Rollins who is Mike Castle in a skirt will save the world.
Sad but true, the GOP is latching on to a liberal and a old person with a big check book who has no touch for us the sweaty masses.
I look forward to voting for Carney. I have my doubts about him but I have no doubts about Rollins, she is a wreck for the GOP.
Oh yeah, DP, the DE GOP was looking around for a self-funding candidate in the U.S. House race. I guess that means they don’t expect much support from the national GOP.
Social Secutrity is now in the red.
Do you think it will get any media attention after Obamacare dies-or-passes?
Today, Obama said my health insurance premiums will drop by “3000%” with Obamacare…
we used to call statements like that “Bushisms”, what do we call them now?
Gaffes.
Remember that Prius story from last week. Turns out it was most likely not true. Not surprising at all.
Since its an open thread and I have no where else to publicly state my opinions, I have to say I am so sick of teachers whining about bad parents being the problem in education! I had horrible parents and thrived because of good teachers. I can still remember the ones who instilled a sense of pride in the child commonly referred to as “white trash” and the ones who made me interested in learning. They made me realize there was a whole world outside of the trailer park I lived in.
I’m sure there were also teachers who wrote me off, but I don’t remember them! Teachers and their union are copping out and I don’t think we should accept it. Every child has the potential to learn and develop, regardless of how bad their parents may be. My parents are still horrible people, and I’m not. And I finished school and eventually a Master’s degree. That was because good teachers were good with all students, not just the ones with good parents.
Yeah, we’ll need to keep watching the Toyota story. Priuses were designed with brake overrides, which appeared to work fine in the tests.