by Stephen Diamond on November 22, 2009 · 0 comments
For this we dissed the Dalai Lama?
The pro-Obama media machinery is excusing the lame trip of Obama to Asia, particularly China, as reflecting the weakness of America relative to a rising Asia led by Communists in Beijing.
But is China a lender to the US, as Brad Setser of the Council on Foreign Relations and others claim?
Not really. China is, in fact, an investor in the United States.
It links the value of its currency to the dollar so that it can continually earn US consumer dollars no matter how the dollar’s value fluctuates.
As the most powerful economy in the world it is only American consumers that can afford to expand consumption. That is because America’s powerful education system feeds a giant productivity machine that we can afford to borrow against. Actually, despite the huge absolute numbers, relative to our GDP we actually borrow less than it appears.
Chinese exporters then take the dollars they earn from US consumers and buy US capital goods (e.g., high end machinery) and intellectual property (e.g., software). What is left over of those dollars is exchanged with the Chinese banking system for Chinese currency to buy local supplies and hire Chinese labor.
Then the state controlled Chinese banks together with the monetary authorities in China invest those dollars in US treasuries. That investment is their rational decision that the US remains the most attractive place to put those dollars.
If the Chinese authorities rationally thought the US was a bad place to invest they would delink their currency from the dollar and that would interrupt the flow of dollars back into US treasury notes. There has, in fact, been a very small shift in this direction but nothing on a scale that would suggest a fundamental loss of faith.
The US then has recovered the dollars it originally used to buy Chinese exports. The Federal Reserve then decides whether to use its open market operations to expand the supply of dollars by purchasing those securities available to expand domestic consumption and investment by US consumers and companies.
In other words, there is a joint decision by the Chinese and the US financial system that gives US businesses and consumers access to surplus dollars that had originally flowed into China.
That hardly suggests to me US weakness as against China. It seems clear China is as dependent on us as we are on them.
If we really want to change this system we should be advocating a limit on the ability of US companies to exploit sweatshop Chinese labor and that China should recognize the right of Chinese workers to form truly independent unions. This would force the regime to rebalance the Chinese economy to favor domestic consumption as opposed to dependence on an unstable export economy.
It is hard, then, to understand the propaganda being put out there by the Obama machinery. US power relative to China has not shifted just because Obama won the presidential election. This hardly seems a reason to have, for example, insulted the new Asian human rights movement led by buddhists like the Dalai Lama and Vietnam’s Thich Nhat Hanh.
China: Creditor to the Rich - Council on Foreign Relations.
by Stephen Diamond on November 19, 2009 · 0 comments
The Chicago Sun-Times reporter Lynn Sweet criticized Sarah Palin here for discussing the Bill Ayers controversy in her new book yesterday. Sweet says Palin was wrong about the significance of the now infamous Fall, 1995, meet and greet hosted for Barack Obama by Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn in their Hyde Park home
But Sweet did not quite get the story right and has so far refused to post my comment on her blog explaining why so I am posting it here for my readers. (And I promise that if Sweet wants to reply I will post her comment!)
You are partly right about Palin’s take on Ayers.
It would have been more accurate to say that Ayers played a significant role in launching Obama’s career, and certainly the meet and greet with Alice Palmer and Obama in the Ayers/Dohrn living room was not the only thing that Ayers did for Obama.
There is, for example, Ayers’ appointment of Obama to the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge earlier that year and, if biographer Christopher Andersen is right, there is Ayers’ role in helping Obama finish his memoir Dreams of my father the year before.
However, it was, I believe, Quentin Young who said the purpose of the meet and greet was to introduce Obama to the Hyde Park/Kenwood left. That introduction was certainly a critical contribution to Obama’s success in the upcoming campaign in light of Palmer’s own pro-Soviet politics.
by Stephen Diamond on November 17, 2009 · 0 comments
A few years ago Cal State Chico “Marxist” economist Michael Perelman argued with me on his “Progressive Economists Network” that the Cambodian genocide, if it really happened at all, was really a side effect of the otherwise justifiable attempt by the Khmer Rouge to feed starving Cambodians.
He is at again - this time arguing the Rwandan genocide was really just a side effect of a civil war. The real story can be found in the reports of Human Rights Watch as developed by the heroic Alison des Forges, who is nearly slandered by the specious article provided by Perelman.
What seems to stymie Perelman, like others of his political cohort like Mike Klonsky and Bill Ayers, is the naive notion that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Thus, any regime, whether that of Chavez in Venezuela, Ahmadenijad in Iran, Ortega in Nicaragua, or Hu Jintao in China, however brutal and authoritarian, is to be excused or defended as long as they indicate they are in opposition to US foreign policy.
The tougher job of establishing an independent and democratic foreign policy for the United States is ignored. Whether they know it or not, Perelman, Ayers, Klonsky, et al, are the flip side of the “new realism” that is in such fashion among certain human rights activists. These people argue that the US government can make genuine support for human rights an integral part of US foreign policy. Tell that to the Dalai Lama. My critique of that position can be found here.
In an era when Chavez admirer and stalinoid education professor Bill Ayers can be a guest at numerous college campuses perhaps it is not a surprise that Perelman is being “honored” by his campus, Cal State Chico, next month.
PEN-L: Rwanda: The Case for Humanitarian Intervention.
by Stephen Diamond on November 17, 2009 · 0 comments
by Stephen Diamond on November 12, 2009 · 0 comments
AFTRA has ratified a new collective bargaining agreement with producers of video games that use actors to provide voices. Previously, SAG members in the same sector defeated the proposed deal.
While SAG and AFTRA bargained separately to reach the deal the terms in both contracts were similar. A majority of SAG members voting opposed the terms, particularly a provision that allows gaming companies to engage actors to do far more voices for the same pay. This was viewed a major give back by the deal’s opponents.
While both SAG and AFTRA leaders argued the deal would bring more gaming work to unionized actors, it appears that the hardline minority in SAG led by Membership First was able to mobilize opposition, arguing as they have over the years that AFTRA is more interested in growing union membership at the cost of weaker pay and conditions.
As the first contract to be voted on since the moderate group captured the SAG presidency the division in the outcomes illustrates the continuing importance of the MF faction in SAG. It will likely complicate plans by the moderates to move forward with their major election campaign promise, a merger with AFTRA. The SAG vote is the first defeat for SAG NED David White since he joined the Guild’s staff a year ago.
While AFTRA reported that the deal passed 2 to 1 in a mail ballot, they did not report the number of votes cast. SAG held meetings at union halls for an in person vote in San Francisco, Chicago LA and NY. 115 people voted with 73 voting no and 42 voting yes. All 73 NO votes were cast in LA, a stronghold for Membership First.
AFTRA ratifies vidgame deal - Variety.
by Stephen Diamond on November 12, 2009 · 0 comments
It’s not just the junior ranks of the Foreign Service expressing concern about Obama’s war path in Afghanistan…..
The dynamic reminds one of the criticism of the Diem regime in Vietnam by the US Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge. A buddhist-influenced military coup overthrew Diem and that led in turn to a conflict between the US Government and what it called “neutralism” - a third force led by buddhist monks that led a campaign against both the stalinist movement and the US invasion.
Unfortunately there appears to be no coherent third force in Afghanistan today, that is, a democratic movement that opposes both the reactionary politics of the Taliban as well as the corrupt regime installed by the US government.
U.S. envoy resists troop increase, cites Karzai as problem - washingtonpost.com.
by Stephen Diamond on November 9, 2009 · 0 comments
What is it about defensive USG officials that makes them sound like teenagers who “forgot” to do their homework?
Oh, ok, yeah, we were, like, listening in on communications between alleged mass murderer Major Hasan and banned 9/11-linked radical cleric al-Awlaki but nothing really alarmed us….
Of course, Scott Shane has been willing to cover up for Obama in the past, why not for his friends in the intelligence community.
Wonder how the Times editorial team feels now about saying others were jumping to conclusions? It was their reporters who went on about how Hassan might have had “secondary” PTSD - yet it turns out Hasan was not significantly involved in counseling soldiers after all. According to Ft. Hood commander Lt. Gen. Cone:
“He didn’t have an extensive role in counseling soldiers.” Instead, Cone told the Washington Post he was primarily involved with “writing psychological profiles” of patients.
Fort Hood Suspect Communicated With Radical Cleric, Authorities Say - NYTimes.com.
by Stephen Diamond on November 9, 2009 · 0 comments
The Berlin Wall fell 20 years ago so today is as good a day as any to announce the publication of my new book, From “Che” to China: Labor and Authoritarianism in the New Global Economy.
Here is the back cover blurb:
From ‘Che’ to China: Labor and Authoritarianism in the New Global Economy argues that globalization is not a progressive force that is giving rise to a new democratic capitalism. In fact, authoritarianism, in part influenced by neo-stalinist regimes and their intellectual architects such as ‘Che’ Guevara, remains an important political force and the new global capitalism itself is contributing to its persistence. In particular, the labor organization is now seen by authoritarian regimes as a source of power and control over the general population. To realize the democratic potential in the globalization process, a new autonomous labor movement responsible to its rank and file members must emerge. This requires an intellectual break with the consensus view that capitalism can safely accommodate healthy trade unions in a stable world order.
As I argue in the book, formal stalinism has disappeared but it is being replaced by what I call “neo-Stalinism” as well as authoritarian forms of capitalism.
by Stephen Diamond on November 7, 2009 · 2 comments
Apparently after a long illness, the head of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, Nick Counter, died this week at age 69. Hollywood is not likely to see his kind again. Nick Counter, chief labor negotiator for the film and TV industry, may be one of the last great figures of the 20th century industrial relations era.
His accomplishments were not known widely outside of the entertainment industry but that should not prevent those on the other side of the table from him taking stock.
First and foremost, of course, he built and held together an alliance of the major studios - bitter competitors in all other realms - in a period of dramatic change in the industry.
Second, he put a firewall around the cash cow of the industry, DVDs, which generate amazing piles of free cash flow. Since those revenues took off in the late 90s, the industry unions, including SAG, the DGA, AFTRA and the IA, have been unable to crack open the safe in which those revenues are kept. Instead, they continue to accept a measly percentage of the revenue in what even Wall Street acknowledges is a lopsided formula.
Third, in what may be the crowning achievement of his career, his handling of the last round of negotiations was well, let’s admit it, a thing of beauty. The two most important guilds - the Writers and Actors - approached this round with similar new militant leadership in place. Both guilds hired top execs with “tough” labor union backgrounds. Both guilds appeared to be working closely together with a threat that they would join hands to attack both DVD revenues as well as the new media environment.
But Counter used provocative and aggressive tactics that pushed the WGA into an early strike. The Guilds quickly gave up on any change in DVDs and turned their attention to the still miniscule revenues in so-called new media, online entertainment.
SAG’s leaders turned out to be ham handed and inept and the WGA seemed to lose faith in their partner. The ensuing 100 day strike by the WGA used up all the energy the members of both guilds had for a strike. Meanwhile, SAG began an internecine war with its sister guild AFTRA.
By the time SAG was up for its contract talks it had little political power left and even less ability to think through the situation carefully. Counter stonewalled and the Guild collapsed, agreeing under new moderate leaders to everything the Producers demanded and then some.
Those same moderates are now out with what look like understandably sympathetic comments on Counter’s death. Fair enough, as they had worked across the table with the man for a quarter century. But they no doubt now fear the unknown. Counter may have bested them time and again but his replacement, Carole Lombardini, likely does not have the same ability to hold the Producers together as a collective bargaining group and at the same time she may prove a more aggressive opponent as she will be likely under pressure to prove herself.
Former chief negotiator Nick Counter, 69, dies | Company Town | Los Angeles Times.
by Stephen Diamond on November 4, 2009 · 0 comments
Once again the numbers indicate the devastating impact of the failed strategy of the Hollywood unions.
Both the WGA and SAG were taken over by more militant sounding leaders several years ago and both vowed significant gains for the members. Both failed, leaving the lopsided DVD revenue sharing formula on the cutting room floor in order to focus on the so-called “new media” sector.
Yet revenue numbers indicate a major difference between the two that only highlights the mistake in strategy: DVDs generate 20-25 billion annually in rentals and sales while new media comes in at some just north of $200 million while models like that of Hulu and YouTube have yet to turn a dime of profit.
Now, both the WGA and SAG are back in the hands of the so-called moderates who have had little to say on this issue over the years. At SAG all the talk is of merger with AFTRA with little, well actually no, serious explanation of how merger would make the DVD issue any more tractable.
Blockbusters May Rescue Ailing 2009 DVD Sales | The Wrap.
