Use Your Noodle, Or Else
For anyone who thinks that inflation starts and ends with what the authorities report in their periodic consumer price index releases, writes Sean Corrigan, there were two news items recently — one from each of those titanic, productive-consumptive symbionts, China and the United States — which should have given them pause for reflection. each story in turn carried echoes of the reign of Diocletian, to pick but one despot among the many forced to take punitive action because his debauched money was falling in value so rapidly as to excite popular disturbance. FULL ARTICLE
Comments (5)
Corn prices are shooting up in the U.S. too.
http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/business/16348649.htm
The problem for China is that most people, like in the U.S., do not understand economics, and those that do cannot criticize the government harshly enough. Each government department is like a fiefdom, far more independent than American agencies, and so they counteract each other with their actions.
Published: January 4, 2007 12:25 PM
It's a testament to the limits the Chinese people are willing to endure and the entrepenuerial spirit that exists among all of East Asia that the PRC didn't collapse fifty years ago.
Published: January 4, 2007 3:23 PM
Government action subsidizes agriculture to insure profitable price levels to farmers while more insightfudenouncing so-called "hoarding" and "speculation" in the cities. It then buys up the grain at the inflated price levels to "guarantee" food availability to city folk. Then other bureau(c)rats go and subsidize the production of energy and fertilizer (produced by city folk) to aid the farmers.
One more sorry case of governments trying to hold onto temporary popular support by promising "high prices" to "sellers", and "low prices" to buyers", while diverting attention to their policy of currency debasement and debt pyramiding which lies at the root of the problem.
I believe that there is an old Chinese saying-"If you try to be all things to all men, you will end up not being worth anything to anyone!".
Government policy is never worth anything to anyone anyhow, but it never stops their bureaucracy!
As far as the effects of inflation on all of this, didn't our favorite economist once say that "Government takes a useful commodity such as paper, and by slapping ink on it and calling it "money", renders it completely worthless"?
PEACE AND FREEDOM!!
David K. Meller
Published: January 4, 2007 9:16 PM
Shouldn't that be that it is testament to the limits of state control. And who says it did not?
Published: January 5, 2007 5:37 AM
It is entertaining to read Chinese politicos spouting non-sense just like the American and Eurpopean politicos. I guess ignorance is a virtue in the East as much as it is in the West. Lovely. LvM should offer seminars in China. Does the language allow logical thinking and subtle distinctions? I'm sure it must, but sometimes wonder based upon my interaction with asians in general.
Published: January 5, 2007 12:58 PM