Magician? Ok. Vampire? Ok. Superman? Ok. Oba Mao? Send in the censors!

[zaimoni]

I doubt the censors were sent in because of the deleterious effects on U.S. politics:President Obama spent the second day of his state visit to China in the capital Monday, and the government adopted a two-track policy toward Obama memorabilia for sale here: Obama dressed as Superman was in, and Obama dressed as a Red Guard was out

Comments

[sir_dave]

Apparently 25% of US debt is owned by the Chinese. I worked out that a lot of it had to be them some time ago because it could only be a regime with a huge cash surplus, and that means being able to resist the demands of the population to get their hands on it in terms of more consumable goods. But now I've got a figure to work with

[zaimoni]

So the USA is basically stable now because it is too big a basket case to allow to fall to pieces.
More like "You starve, all food-importing nations". I think China currently can go self-sufficient on food, but they really need to handle (or better, prevent by intimidation) a parallel invasion by India and Japan to get away with pulling out the rug. I have little doubt India would resort to nuclear war if able to, and about to be wiped out conventionally.

(Red China quantitatively has the second-largest coal reserves on Earth, after the U.S. Fischer-Tropsch synthesized gasoline and diesel are practical if you have coal as a base stock -- and don't care at all about CO2 production. Red China definitely qualifies as not caring.)

Technically, the U.S. does not need either synthetic fertilizer or imported food to feed its own population; it just can't export food without synthetic fertilizer.

Fallen, fallen is Babylon the Great ---
A sentiment, in the U.S. PreMillenialist eschatological literature, going back at least to 1974 (

[jordan179]

It would be very bad for America, because America's credit rating would be mud. It would take a generation or more for us to recover from this.

And Obama is setting things up so that it will be inevitable.

[zaimoni]

Very bad for the U.S.: no argument there.

As for setting things up to so that is inevitable: the Obama administration has so few cards to play, in either direction, that it's unclear to me that anything more than minor nudges in either direction is possible. Leverage is with the U.S. Congress (accelerator on the hyperinflation pedal, no chance of getting any letup until the 2010 elections) and the U.S. Federal Reserve. (Is Helicopter Ben so fearless of deflation that he will try to destroy enough U.S.$ to stop Congress in its tracks?)

It would be a bit much to ask Congress to reinstate the key parts of Glass-Steagall act of 1933. Even that would probably take about a decade to cauterize the damage process.