Punting the Pundits

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the t internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Paul Krugman: China, Japan, America

Last week Japan’s minister of finance declared that he and his colleagues wanted a discussion with China about the latter’s purchases of Japanese bonds, to “examine its intention” – diplomat-speak for “Stop it right now.” The news made me want to bang my head against the wall in frustration.

You see, senior American policy figures have repeatedly balked at doing anything about Chinese currency manipulation, at least in part out of fear that the Chinese would stop buying our bonds. Yet in the current environment, Chinese purchases of our bonds don’t help us – they hurt us. The Japanese understand that. Why don’t we?

Some background: If discussion of Chinese currency policy seems confusing, it’s only because many people don’t want to face up to the stark, simple reality – namely, that China is deliberately keeping its currency artificially weak.

Robert Reich: The Two Categories of American Corporation — and Why it Matters

Some giant American corporations depend on a buoyant American economy and a world-class industrial base in the United States. Others are far less dependent. What comes out of Washington in the next few years will reflect which group has most political clout — especially if Republicans take over the House and capture more of the Senate this November.

The first group includes national telecoms like Verizon and AT&T that need a prosperous America because most of their sales are here. Same with finance companies like Bank of America and Travelers Insurance whose business strategy has been built around U.S. consumers. Ditto for certain giant chains like Home Depot. Naturally, all these companies were especially hard hit by the Great Recession and its devastating impact on American consumers.

The second group includes companies like Coca Cola, Exxon-Mobil, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, and McDonald’s, that get substantial revenues from their overseas operations. Increasingly this means China, India, and Brazil. Ford and GM are still largely dependent on US sales but becoming less so. GM sold more cars in China last year than in the US. Not surprisingly, American companies that are less dependent on American consumers have been showing the biggest profits.

Dean Baker: Fun With George Will

The Washington Post likes to run columns that are chock full of mistakes so that readers can have fun picking them apart. That is why George Will’s columns appear twice a week. Let’s have a little fun with the latest, which is an attack on President Obama’s economic agenda.

First, Will is anxious to tell readers that Democrats are telling the public that stimulus did not work because many think we need more stimulus. Actually, people who think we need more stimulus simply note that the stimulus was helpful, but not large enough for the task. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the stimulus added between 1.7 and 4.5 percent to GDP since its enactment (that’s between $240 billion and $740 billion in additional output). It also lowered the unemployment rate by between 0.7 and 1.8 percentage points.

This was not enough to fully offset the damage from the collapse of an $8 trillion housing bubble. The collapse wiped out more than $1.2 trillion in annual demand (roughly $600 billion in lost consumption and $600 billion in lost construction). By comparison, the stimulus injected about $300 billion a year into the economy in 2009 and 2010. Roughly half of this was offset by cutbacks at the state and local level. So, we were looking at a net increase government sector stimulus of $150 billion, which was being used to counteract a decline in private sector demand of $1.2 trillion.

Joe Conason: Why the GOP embraced Islamophobia

Fanning fears of Muslims has never made better — or more cynical — political sense

Only a few years ago, an angry political demonstration at ground zero on September 11 would have been deemed an unthinkable offense not only to the bereaved families of victims and responders but to the nation. Yet this anniversary featured a raucous and highly partisan rally, as well over a thousand protesters gathered to show their opposition to the Park51 Islamic center – and to listen to tirades from Republican politicians and commentators against the Obama administration.

More than a flaky Florida pastor’s cancelled threat to burn the Quran (or the actual scattered torchings that took place the same day), the ground zerio rally answered the question posed repeatedly over the past few weeks: Why are millions of Americans suddenly caught up in a torrent of fear and fury over Islam so strong that both the president and the commanding general of U.S. forces in Afghanistan have warned of deadly consequences? What motivates the outpouring of rancor against Muslims, especially in the conservative media? How did they escape until now?

The answer is that until the advent of the Obama presidency, Republicans had no reason to scapegoat Muslims or demonize Islam — and indeed, they could not have inflamed those prejudices without damaging their own leaders, especially George W. Bush.

E.J. Dionne, Jr.: A Chance for Supreme Court Damage Control

Imagine that your neighbors started getting letters describing all sorts of horrific deeds you had allegedly performed. Wouldn’t you feel you had the right to know who was spreading this sleaze-especially if the charges were untrue?

Now imagine a member of Congress telling a lobbyist from Consolidated Megacorp Inc. that she would do all she could to block an extra $2 billion in an appropriations bill to purchase the company’s flawed widgets for the federal government. A week later, television advertisements start appearing in the representative’s district portraying her as corrupt, out of touch and in league with lobbyists.

It turns out they are being paid for by Consolidated Megacorp through contributions to a front group called Americans for Clean Government. Shouldn’t the voters be able to know who is behind the ads?

This hypothetical tale is not fantasyland, thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court’s hideous decision earlier this year in the Citizens United case. But with Congress coming back this week, there’s a chance to limit the damage the court has caused-if three moderate Senate Republicans are willing to act.

In a decision that was either the most Machiavellian in American history or the most naive, a 5-4 conservative majority broke with decades of precedent and said Congress had no right to ban corporate or labor union spending to influence the outcome of elections. The court ruled that corporations such as Consolidated Megacorp have to be treated the same as living, breathing “persons.”

Robert Kuttner: Maybe Not Such a Mid-Term Blowout

Winston Churchill once said that you can always count on Americans to do the right thing–after they’ve tried everything else.

The Obama administration has kept progressive economic policies to be used as a last resort — In Case of Emergency Break Glass.

Well, the emergency is here in the form of a protracted recession and a threatened mid-term election blowout. And sure enough, President Obama is discovering his inner populist.

Rejecting the advice of his departing budget director, Peter Orszag, Obama has insisted that the Bush era tax cuts, which expire this year, be extended for “only” about 98 percent of Americans, but not for households making over $250,000 a year. Hard to argue with that, but watch the GOP try. The more the Republicans hold hostage this plan for tax relief for millionaires, the more voters appreciate whose side they are really on.

Obama has belatedly proposed a $50 billion infrastructure program, to put Americans back to work. He should have proposed four times as much, and long ago, but it’s a start.

He has begun smoking out Republican inconsistency and hypocrisy on issues like regulation of banks, where the GOP tries to be anti-Wall Street but also anti-regulation. And how can the right be in favor of both fiscal discipline and tax cuts for the rich?

The right may have peaked a little too soon. The Gallup Poll for the last week in August showed a ten point swing back to the Democrats in congressional match-up races.

Fareed Zakaria: Post-9/11, we’re safer than we think

Of course, we are not 100 percent safe, nor will we ever be. Open societies and modern technology combine to create a permanent danger. Small groups of people can do terrible things. We could make ourselves much safer still, but that would mean many, many more restrictions on our freedoms to move, congregate, associate and communicate. It’s tough to do terrorism in North Korea.

So the legitimate question now is: Have we gone too far? Is the vast expansion in governmental powers and bureaucracies — layered on top of the already enormous military-industrial complex of the Cold War — warranted? Does an organization that has as few as 400 members and waning global appeal require the permanent institutional response we have created?