Culture battle: Selective use of history should not be used to justify the status quo

[marct]

Hi Tequila,

Marct - Thank you for that much more nuanced response. I was afraid that we had a member of the Bill Gertz Brigade aboard.

Wel, I will admit to having a passing fondness for Lou Dobbs, but that's as far as it goes . Anyway, I thought it would be better for discussion purposes if I put it out in that rather crude, and somewhat paranoic, format.

There will be no "trade war" with China. What we are looking at is just more rumbling in a very uncomfortable two-way snakefest that has been ongoing for almost a decade now. RGE's Brad Setser has a good roundup here.

Thanks for the link, I'll check it out. On the whole, I have a pure gut feeling that we are going to see more and more "pseudo-trade wars" showing up over the next century. Please, don't ask me where that feeling is coming from - it's only 5 pm and I haven't had anywhere near enugh beer yet to try and dig that up .

In the long run, both China and the U.S. would be better served by China untethering the RMB from the dollar and allowing a controlled appreciation.

Agreed, although I am still convinced that that won't have too much effect until we shift the basis of "money" (see my two-part post to Nat). Certainly in the short term (okay, from my rather jaundiced Anthro perspective that means from now for the next 25 years or so) such an uncoupling would be very useful. China also has some severe gender imbalance problems and, coupled with their one-child policy, that is going to lead to some interesting migration patterns.

Marc