OT (or is it?): American Imperialism

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Not semantically true, but I think it is true that that is what many people hear.

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

I know... but in the US it is far, far more evident than in any ohter country. I agree that Bosnia was a black eye for Europe, but I think Iraq was a black eye for the US.

However, IMO Afghanistan was a feather in the US's cap. We've never heard any important news from there in over a year. For as far as I know, Afghanistan is now a peaceful, free country. But to say there is an "Axis of Evil"... is a very big black eye for the US.

(So... someone else here read Catch-22?)

[Nodachi]

massmanfun said:
There are power hungry leaders in every country on Earth.

StrategiaInUltima responded:
I know... but in the US it is far, far more evident than in any ohter country.

Really? Ever hear of North Korea?

[EvilGenius4ABetterTomorro]

I should have known this was a Euro-Whiner type of topic. America attacks countries because because we can. And sometimes doing things the nice way (diplomatically) is slow and chock full of Euro-self intrest that it's sick. Iraq may or may not have been a mistake. I could not imagine how many more years the Hussain family would have ruled Iraq. I'm just mad that my president had to lie to me about going in. I'm also mad that his buddies are making alot of money off of it too. And I must confess that I am really enjoying all the European countries trying to negotiate the end to Iran's nuclear program..all to no avail. And when that diplomacy fails who do you think their gonna call? The U.N.? Don't even bother. China and Russia will veto any military intervention there. What are those poor peaceful and concerned European countries gonna do? We practically had to pull all of the E.U. (screaming and crying) just to help out in Kosovo! And in the end they caught a French General calling Serbia on his cell with that nights targets! Wow, what great friends.
As for U.S. nuclear warheads in France? Bull! France is not a member of NATO and they have enough of a nuclear deterrent anyway. You may have warheads in your country but thats because you are a member of NATO. Just like their is a RAF training detachment in Nebraska. And if you remember, the U.S. had recalled the Pershing II delivery vehicles and destroyed them in full view of Russian spy satellites. The Tomahawk GLCM's were recalled and re-fitted for aerial and naval launch platforms. And I do recall we are destroying our warhead stockpiles, it takes time you know. If we were true Imperialists, you wouldn't even have a government to complain too. You would be called "Airstrip One".
If your culture is so superior then just do what we do and market it. Let's see something coming back this way instead. I know the commercialism is annoying. It makes me really sick at Christmas time. But we're not the only ones. The asians are so into it, that I can't even understand what they are selling sometimes. Go look at engrish.com
And if you think our businesses own everything, you should see who owns our businesses. Not the Japanese or Saudis. The Dutch and British are the biggest investors in American business. The Japanese don't even come close. Except in Hawaii of course.
I just feel that this time around we are caught with a bad administration that people were too scared to dump. Don't hate us for it. We mean well. And if it's not us selling you crap, it would be someone else. Someone else who isn't your friend.

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

And in what methods is it manipulated? The planned economy is one thing, of course, but are there others?

[TheDeadlyShoe]

Got this from googling "Chinese Currency Manipulation"; just the first hit. This is congressional testimony given by a manafucturing trade group, so it's biased, but frankly I'm no expert on the issue, anyways. The effects are rather complicated (I don't understand them, either), but to summarize, many central banks keep their currency artifically weak and strengthen the dollar because this provides considerable trade benefits; there is a large incentive for money to flow out of the strong currency and into the weak currency, encouraging the massive trade deficits that currently exist. This also results in outsourcing, as not only are wages lower in real terms, but the real value of a dollar spent in China is greater.

Chinese exchange rate policy is an important special case which spells currency manipulation in a different way. The Chinese currency has a fixed rate to the dollar but is nonconvertible on capital account. Over the past year, there has been a $25 billion trade surplus, a $45 billion net inflow of foreign direct investment—which also puts upward market pressures on the exchange rate—and over $50 billion of central bank purchases of foreign exchange. In this case, the central bank purchases offset almost three-quarters of market-generated upward pressure on the yuan from the trade surplus and the FDI inflow combined. Moreover, these official foreign exchange purchases may have been even larger except for an unfolding financial scandal involving billions of dollars of missing reserves.[2]

Based on the IMF definition, China has clearly been manipulating its currency for mercantilist purposes. The Bank of China has made protracted large scale purchases of foreign exchange—$150 billion since 1995—in order to maintain a large trade surplus as an offset to poor growth performance in the domestic economy. A direct measure of the manipulation is not possible because of the nonconvertible fixed exchange rate. There is no doubt, however, that if the central bank had not purchased $50 billion in 2001, there would have been strong upward pressures on the yuan in formal and informal markets. The bottom line is that the Chinese yuan is substantially undervalued and should certainly not be devalued as the Chinese government occasionally threatens to do.