Wash Post: Obama postpones meeting with Dalai Lama to avoid upsetting Chinese

[Eddie Teach]

Chinese colonization is rapidly making Tibet a moot point.

Fixed. 

[The Minsky Moment]

Guess what percentage of Treasury debt is held by the Chinese.

Over 10 percent I think.  Plus China is one of the main foreign buyers of agency securities which are also guaranteed by the US govt.

Ten percent is pretty significant when you start to think about concepts like who is the marginal buyer.  Perhaps the Chinese can skip a few auctions, but if they stop buying altogether, that demand has to come from someplace else.  And were they to dump their whole portfolio, it would crush the market.

[derspiess]

Mao was a community organizer.

[Darth Wagtaros]

Mao was a community organizer.

He swam through the people like a tuna does the mackerel.

[The Minsky Moment]

Mao was a community organizer.

So were Franklin, Adams, Jefferson, Madison . . .

[Sheilbh]

Incidentally, I read a very interesting interview with Emmanuel Todd in the Polish edition of Newsweek today. I hope I can get hold of an English or a French translation. Essentially, he is claiming we are seeing the fall of the American Empire and that the emergence of Iran as a major regional power (following the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and Iraq) will be a final nail to its coffin.

He predicted that in his book 'After the Empire' I believe in 2002.  A big chunk of it is based on a decline in child mortality rates in the US - he says it was a similar decline that led him to believe in the late 70s that the USSR was internally doomed.  In it he also suggests American power will basically be replaced by a consensual democratic Russia acting in concert with European powers.

I don't really rate him as a great analyst.

[Agelastus]

He predicted that in his book 'After the Empire' I believe in 2002.  A big chunk of it is based on a decline in child mortality rates in the US - he says it was a similar decline that led him to believe in the late 70s that the USSR was internally doomed.  In it he also suggests American power will basically be replaced by a consensual democratic Russia acting in concert with European powers.

I don't really rate him as a great analyst.

I'm having trouble even seeing the logic of that phrase; I would have thought that a decline in child mortality increases your population, which increases your workforce and pool of military age manpower?

Now, that may have been bad in the USSR with its screwed up agricultural system, but I am fairly sure that does not apply to the American system.

Besides, didn't the decline in child mortality coincide with a decline in the birth-rate? I would have thought the latter was a better statistic to base a theory of decline on.

Can you give me some more specifics of his theory, please?

[Sheilbh]

Sorry, I meant an increase in child mortality

[Darth Wagtaros]

The is a conspiracy afoot between CHinese business interests and GCC groups to replace the dollar as the oil standard within ten years. 

[Berkut]

Sorry, I meant an increase in child mortality

There is an increase in child mortality in the US?

[Sheilbh]

There is an increase in child mortality in the US?

There was at some point between 89 and 02 when he wrote the book

[Agelastus]

Sorry, I meant an increase in child mortality

There is an increase in child mortality in the US?

A quick internet survey does suggest there was a temporary upwards blip in the early 2000s. Perhaps more worryingly for the USA, it appears the mortality rate has stopped or slowed its decline compared to other developed countries. You do have quite a high rate even compared to the UK, which quite frankly surprised me.

[Berkut]

Yeah, we had a discussion about this before. There is a very strong racial factor to this - US white infant mortality rates are pretty much in line with the rest of the west (around 5/1000), but black infant mortality rates are more than double that number, which is clearly terrible.

There doesn't really seem to be any good ideas about why though - lots of speculation (obesity, lack of access to healthcare), but the base cause is an increase in pre-term births, which of course have a much higher mortality rate.

[Valmy]

the emergence of Iran as a major regional power (following the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and Iraq) will be a final nail to its coffin.

You had me up to this.

Why do people love to pick total basketcase loser nations to be regional powers?  I mean the United States may be thankfully less likely to have to put up with the rest of the world's shit in the future but Iran?  What a joke.  At least pick India or China to dominate central Asia not a worthless hellhole with no future.

[Berkut]

the emergence of Iran as a major regional power (following the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and Iraq) will be a final nail to its coffin.

You had me up to this.

Why do people love to pick total basketcase loser nations to be regional powers?  I mean the United States may be thankfully less likely to have to put up with the rest of the world's shit in the future but Iran?  What a joke.  At least pick India or China to dominate central Asia not a worthless hellhole with no future.

What you have to realize is that the motivation for articles like this is simple "stick it to the nasty US" bullshit.

Therefore, you ahve to pick an actual enemy of the US to supersede them - makes it ever so much more galling, at least in their minds. Saying that the US will decline and be replaced by an ally like India isn't nearly as insulting, so you have to pick a country like Iran instead.

It really is rather silly, but then, the entire Euro angst over the US always has been.