[Paul Krugman]: Right
now America is a superpower living on credit – something I don’t think
has happened since Philip II ruled Spain. What will happen to our
stature if and when China takes away our credit card?… it could be
the start of a process that will turn the world economy upside down –
or, more accurately, right side up. That is, the free ride China has
been giving America, in which the world’s richest economy has been
getting cheap loans from a country that is dynamic but still quite
poor, may be coming to an end.
Greg Palast offers a strikingly different perspective than Krugman’s:
In case you haven’t the least idea what the heck it means for China
to “float” its currency, let me put it in the language we economists
use: China’s float don’t mean squat….
Don’t take economics
lessons from George Bush. Or Milton Friedman. Or Thomas Friedman. What
that means, class, is don’t believe the big, hot pile of hype that
China’s zooming economy is the result of that Red nation’s adopting
free market economic policies.
If China is now a capitalist
free-market state, then I’m Mariah Carey. China’s economy has soared
because it stubbornly refused the Free and Friedman-Market mumbo-jumbo
that government should stop controlling, owning and regulating the
industry.
Always such a surprise when Guerilla News Network and the New York Times don’t see eye to eye, isn’t it.