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Robert Samuelson discusses global market shifts as developing countries increase consumption.
…China, India, Brazil and many “emerging-market” countries escaped the worst consequences of the Great Recession. Their economies are generally growing much faster than ours (6.4 percent annually in 2010 and 2011, compared with a 2.9 percent rate for the United States, reckons the International Monetary Fund). This boosts their demand for the advanced equipment, instruments and basic industrial supplies (chemicals, coal) that constitute two-thirds of U.S. exports. Of Boeing’s 3,350-jet backlog, 77 percent will go to foreign customers.
Domestic spending is strengthening in emerging markets, as incomes and tastes — for cars, clothes, computers, cellphones — expand. In 2002, the consumption spending of these countries (including Brazil, China and India) was 23 percent of the world total and the U.S. share was 36 percent, estimate economists David Hensley and Joseph Lupton of J.P. Morgan Chase. By 2008, developing countries were 32 percent, the United States 28 percent. …
Radio Free New Jersey has a message for the Greek protestors.
Morons,
There is no money. There is no one else’s pocket left to pick. You can’t borrow anymore, you can’t print anymore, and you can’t steal anymore from anyone else. The people who will be paying the bill to keep you from reentering the 15th century are, unlike you, working very hard. They deserve better than you spoiled pampered children are giving them.
You object to the bond market, but the bond market is just the voice of reality calling. It’s telling you that 2 plus 2 is still 4, no matter what your union bosses would have you believe. Your bosses tell you that ‘the people’ didn’t spend the money, but it’s not true. That’s exactly who has wasted the money, and now the bill is coming due. Right now the Bond Market is actually your very best friend. It’s telling you what a horrible mistake you’ve made, and giving you a chance to undo it, before it’s too late. …
Christopher Hitchens surveys Britain’s political landscape.
…There’s a whole sector of the British professional class that probably knows Tuscany and Provence better than it knows large areas of post-industrial Britain. But this “Europeanized” layer is not large enough to swing an election, especially at a time when the stupendous size of Britain’s debt puts it at risk from the same continentwide factors that have ruined the Greek economy. This, in turn, is why some of those who rate bonds have been warning that a so-called hung Parliament, unable to arrive at swift or difficult decisions, would endanger the stability of sterling and cause a crisis of confidence in Britain’s decisive financial system. And a hung Parliament is precisely the contingency that Nick Clegg’s sudden emergence makes many times more likely. …
In Forbes, John Tamny explains why we won’t become Euro-Weenies.
…To understand why the U.S. will be fine over the long run, we have to remember that we’re a “nation of immigrants.” This is an important distinction, because as Johns Hopkins professor John D. Gartner says in his 2005 book, The Hypomanic Edge, “a ‘nation of immigrants’ represents a highly skewed and unusual ‘self selected’ population.”
We’re for the most part descended from the kind of individuals who possessed what historian John Steele Gordon referred to as the “get up and go” that drove them to leave the comforts of home in order to make their highly uncertain way in the new world that was the United States. We’re different because we’re descended from those who had the courage and drive to leave feudal, excessive taxing, warmongering governments. Simple as that.
…This American restlessness, the unrelenting drive for something better, reveals itself most notably in the entrepreneurial nature of the average American. Driven to work hard by our restless minds, Americans elevate starting a business far more than individuals in most countries do. According to a poll cited by Gartner, when asked “Do you think that starting a new business is a respected occupation in your community?”, 91% of Americans polled said yes vs. 28% of British and 8% of Japanese respondents. …
In the Corner, Kevin Williamson wants to hear Mark Steyn’s response to John Tamny’s opinion.
…Americans love Big Government. But it’s not a blind love — it all depends on the direction the arrow is pointing on the cashflow chart. Ask George W. Bush, who got himself crucified for trying to reform Social Security. Ask anybody who has touched Medicare, or even idly thought aloud about doing so. Ask a farmer or anybody marching in the Small Business Administration pork parade.
Steyn’s fear, which I share, is that Americans, like the British before us, will become used to government-run health care, will consequently come to fear the uncertainties of a market-based system and — above all — will come to dread the need for be personally responsible for their own health care. Tamny’s take does not account for how a giant new entitlement can change the character of the American people. He is correct, I think, that today’s Americans are very different from today’s Europeans. But today’s Europeans are very different from their recent forebears. …
Thomas Sowell looks at resentment in the context of race and achievement.
Recent stories out of both Philadelphia and San Francisco tell of black students beating up Asian American students. This is especially painful for those who expected that the election of Barack Obama would mark the beginning of a post-racial America. …
…Resentments and hostility toward people with higher achievements are one of the most widespread of human failings. Resentments of achievements are more deadly than envy of wealth. …
…These are poisonous and self-destructive consequences of a steady drumbeat of ideological hype about differences that are translated into “disparities” and “inequities,” provoking envy and resentments under their more prettied-up name of “social justice.” …
… People who call differences “inequities” and achievements “privilege” leave social havoc in their wake, while feeling noble about siding with the less fortunate. It would never occur to them that they have any responsibility for the harm done to both blacks and Asian Americans.
Mary Anastasia O’Grady gives a current example of how top-down governing of markets doesn’t work. The buffoon Hugo Chávez provides the example.
The late Milton Friedman once quipped that “if you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years there’d be a shortage of sand.”
Friedman was using hyperbole to make a point about central planning. Or so I thought until Hugo Chávez put himself in charge of Venezuela’s coffee sector. Last year, for the first extended period of time in the country’s history, Venezuela did not produce enough of the little red berry to satisfy domestic demand. It has now become a coffee importer and is facing serious shortages. …
In the Weekly Standard, Matthew Continetti wonders why the Dems have become such thugs.
…There’s a word for this sort of overbearing, priggish intimidation: bullying. And like a lot of bullying, the Democrats’ behavior seems to stem from deep-seated insecurities. Maybe the Democrats are not as confident in government as they appear. Maybe they worry about the massive deficits and the hemorrhaging public debt. Maybe they read the same polls we do, the ones showing the public shifting right, Republicans leading the generic ballot, Republican-leaning independents returning to the GOP, congressional approval and support for incumbents at record lows, and the conservative base in a state of wild enthusiasm. Maybe the bully party, in other words, is simply acting out.
The Economist relates stories about jade auctions that will interest Antiques Roadshow types.
… Mr Axford is head of the Asia department in a small provincial English auction house called Woolley & Wallis, in the southern town of Salisbury. A year ago, he offered for auction a Qianlong-period green jade buffalo that belonged to Lady Diana Miller, daughter of the 5th Earl of Yarborough. The buffalo had lain in a bank vault since the Battle of Britain in 1940 and was still wrapped in wartime newspaper when Mr Axford saw it for the first time.
The internet has done much to change the auction business. No longer do small country auction houses have to languish in obscurity. Good photographs posted on the web now reach potential buyers all over the world.
On the day of the sale last May, Woolley’s auction room was full of bidders who had made the journey from London, and even from as far afield as Hong Kong and mainland China. Bidding for the buffalo opened at £150,000 ($230,000) and rose to £3.4m (£4.2m including commission and taxes). The buyer was Daniel Eskenazi, the son of London’s pre-eminent dealer in Chinese treasures, who was bidding on behalf of Bruno Eberli, a Swiss foreign-exchange specialist based in New York. The sale brought Mr Axford considerable publicity. The 88-year-old Lady Diana was delighted, and resolved to buy herself a racehorse. …