Washington is entering its summer of discontent, with no resolution of the budget and debt issues that will push the federal government to the brink of insolvency in early August. Among the many divisive issues: what to do about taxes in general and corporate taxes in particular.
Read moreObama and the GOP's Risky Gamesmanship Over Debt Ceiling Could Spur Another Credit Crisis
It’s official: the United States government is overdrawn on its debt limit of $14.294 trillion as of yesterday. Well, not technically overdrawn, as the U.S. Treasury directed by Secretary Timothy Geithner has taken a variety of measures to forestall any actual federal defaults on its operations—which range from keeping the lights on at the Smithsonian to maintaining combat forces in Afghanistan. These accounting sleights-of-hand will delay any actual defaults to early August. But still, after months of inconclusive wrangling by both parties, a new Rubicon has been crossed.
Read moreSuperfusion: How China and America Became One Economy and Why the World’s Prosperity Depends on It
The economic relationship between China and the United States is the defining issue of our day. While debates over health care are vital to American society, and while challenges ranging from Iran to Afghanistan to North Korea are real, nothing will determine the arc of the coming decades — or will shape domestic life and prosperity in the United States — more than the emergence of China as a global economic superpower unrivaled except by America.
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Krugman Is Wrong: Why China Won’t Revalue
For years, Americans have been fulminating about China and its policy toward currency. While many of the debates are technical and laden with econo-speak, they boil down to the simple conviction that China is unfairly manipulating its currency to keep it undervalued against the dollar. The result is to give China unfair advantages in trade - flooding the US with cheap goods, hurting labor wages world-wide, and accumulating massive surpluses in the process.
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China and the United States — a Marriage of Convenience
As the United States and China wrap up their two-day “Strategic and Economic Dialogue,” it’s more apparent than ever that the two find themselves in a marriage that neither can easily dissolve and that neither fully wants.
Read moreChina's Relationship With America
China is not happy. That's the title of the bestselling book in China. The five nationalist authors say it is time for China to "split from the West," particularly the United States and the Treasury bonds that Beijing holds to the tune of $1 trillion. This desire for greater distance from America is growing: in a May poll conducted by China's Global Times, 87 percent said they were against buying more U.S. debt.
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