Americans Love to Hate

May that be due to the color of the skin, size of your toe or length of your fingernail, an average American will find a reason to hate you.

Take the following example (Monsters and Critics)

Washington – Americans are ‘impatient’ to see China slim its huge trade surplus, which is fuelling anti-China sentiment in the United States, the top US finance official said Tuesday.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s warning came at the start of a US-China economic summit in Washington, where the US is seeking to ease trade tensions and prod China to boost imports from the US.

‘Our policy disagreements are not about the direction of change, but about the pace of change,’ Paulson told the opening session. ‘Americans have many virtues … but we are also impatient.’

Pressure in the US Congress to punish China, the world’s fastest- growing economy, is running high as Paulson and Chinese Vice Premier Wu Yi began two days of talks.

Many US lawmakers view China as an unfair trade partner that keeps its foreign exchange rate artificially low to boost exports and has killed hundreds of thousands of US manufacturing jobs.

Now that is a bit unfair don’t you think. It rather demonstrates the hypocrisy of Americans (as if thats news) but how? Allow me.

By the early 1970s, as the Vietnam War accelerated inflation, the United States as a whole began running a trade deficit (for the first time in the twentieth century). The crucial turning point was 1970, which saw U.S. gold coverage deteriorate from 55% to 22%. This, in the view of neoclassical economists, represented the point where holders of the dollar had lost faith in the ability of the U.S. to cut budget and trade deficits.

In 1971 more and more dollars were being printed in Washington, then being pumped overseas, to pay for government expenditure on the military and social programs. In the first six months of 1971, assets for $22 billion fled the U.S. In response, on August 15, 1971, Nixon unilaterally imposed 90-day wage and price controls, a 10% import surcharge, and most importantly “closed the gold window,” making the dollar inconvertible to gold directly, except on the open market. Unusually, this decision was made without consulting members of the international monetary system or even his own State Department, and was soon dubbed the “Nixon Shock“.

Wikipedia

So, basically US blasted the Bretton Woods system when it could not repay in gold.

The point being, US “reserves” the right to act in its self-interest, while others do not. An interesting ethnocentric logic. Iraq and Afghanistan are prime examples of the application of this logic.

In the end I leave you with this… The Spoof

Americans Love to Hate

May that be due to the color of the skin, size of your toe or length of your fingernail, an average American will find a reason to hate you.

Take the following example (Monsters and Critics)

Washington – Americans are ‘impatient’ to see China slim its huge trade surplus, which is fuelling anti-China sentiment in the United States, the top US finance official said Tuesday.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s warning came at the start of a US-China economic summit in Washington, where the US is seeking to ease trade tensions and prod China to boost imports from the US.

‘Our policy disagreements are not about the direction of change, but about the pace of change,’ Paulson told the opening session. ‘Americans have many virtues … but we are also impatient.’

Pressure in the US Congress to punish China, the world’s fastest- growing economy, is running high as Paulson and Chinese Vice Premier Wu Yi began two days of talks.

Many US lawmakers view China as an unfair trade partner that keeps its foreign exchange rate artificially low to boost exports and has killed hundreds of thousands of US manufacturing jobs.

Now that is a bit unfair don’t you think. It rather demonstrates the hypocrisy of Americans (as if thats news) but how? Allow me.

By the early 1970s, as the Vietnam War accelerated inflation, the United States as a whole began running a trade deficit (for the first time in the twentieth century). The crucial turning point was 1970, which saw U.S. gold coverage deteriorate from 55% to 22%. This, in the view of neoclassical economists, represented the point where holders of the dollar had lost faith in the ability of the U.S. to cut budget and trade deficits.

In 1971 more and more dollars were being printed in Washington, then being pumped overseas, to pay for government expenditure on the military and social programs. In the first six months of 1971, assets for $22 billion fled the U.S. In response, on August 15, 1971, Nixon unilaterally imposed 90-day wage and price controls, a 10% import surcharge, and most importantly “closed the gold window,” making the dollar inconvertible to gold directly, except on the open market. Unusually, this decision was made without consulting members of the international monetary system or even his own State Department, and was soon dubbed the “Nixon Shock“.

Wikipedia

So, basically US blasted the Bretton Woods system when it could not repay in gold.

The point being, US “reserves” the right to act in its self-interest, while others do not. An interesting ethnocentric logic. Iraq and Afghanistan are prime examples of the application of this logic.

In the end I leave you with this… The Spoof