Chine posed to capitalize on space, when the time comes

China completes the first soft landing on the moon, most certainly to be followed by landing humans on the moon, not in the too distant future.  And, the US the lead the space race for decades is quickly falling behind (and not just behind China).  What happened to us?  Is China just wasting money on their space program while we have wised up and realized that such investment may not be worth it?  I don't think so!

I believe we have just gotten complacent and allowed this to happen.  There is no question that space will be the arena where market competition will be taking place in the future.  There is also no doubt (in my mind) that if one wants to be ready to compete in the future, they need to start preparing now!!!  Unfortunately, our leaders have lost sight of that :-(  We'll ALLsee the results and pay the consequences, in the future, but it will be too late to do anything about it.

Sad, sad state of affairs.

USA dealt a blow at the G20 Meeting

I can still hear the echo. The USA was told in no uncertain terms that (a) we don't know how to manage our own finances - never mind helping the rest of the world manage theirs, and (b) we have to stop whining about being shut out of world markets and blame currency manipulation, and start building better products, that would be attractive to those foreign markets.

Analysts have been telling us for months (years ?) that the US hegemony of the world finance is pretty much finished and China may be the next likely leader, and now it looks as if that's eminent.

I can't really blame the other countries for telling us that we destroyed our economy and we are now asking them to pay for fixing it. They are right. Not only did we destroy ours, we almost took a number of other economies down with us (our only defense may be that their greed helped, as well).

And, our delegation went to the G20 complaining about the Chinese illegally or unethically manipulating their currency value to take advantage of us. We did that about a week and a half after the Fed announced dumping another $600 Billion (actually closer to $900 Billion) into out economy. What is that? Isn't that currency manipulation/devaluation? How do we expect anyone to take us seriously? What are the Chinese supposed to do? Think about it. They hold close to 2 trillion dollars of US Treasure bonds, and the Feds just made sure they lost some of that value. If I were them, I'd be pissed too.

I don't know what the solution is, but what I *do* know is that always blaming someone else doesn't work. The Chinese are not to blame for our current situation. The tax system, the ever-increasing size of government, the ever-decreasing productivity of the American worker, the ever-decreasing quality of American products, big Unions, much higher wages than other countries, etc. All these, and many others, may be contributors to bringing us to the brink we are today. And convincing the Chinese not to manipulate their currency will not solve our problems. Let's be realistic. A auto-factory worker in China makes the equivalent of $1.20 and hour. So, we'll convince the Chinese to stop their currency games and that may increase by 20%, 30%, even 50%. So, now the Chinese auto-factory worker hourly rate will be $1.80. Do you think we will all of a sudden become competitive, when the US auto-factory worker hourly rate is $39.00. Dream on...

How about we build a car that is of such quality that Germans import it and make it their top-of the line, luxury vehicle, much more expensive than their Mercedes? Now there is a concept - compete on quality! But that is not our mentality. We have all become accustomed to the Walmart mentality, i.e., "I don't care about the quality, as long as it's cheap and I can get lots of it". Sure, the Chinese may have adopted a similar paradigm, but guess what, *we* are the ones stocking Walmart's selves with "Made in China" products. The reverse is not true, and it couldn't be, since we don't have a manufacturing based economy in America, not any longer.

I hope the way the US was shot down at the G20 becomes a wake-up call, but I am not holding my breath.

Olympic Flame and Protests

The lighting of the Olympic torch took place in Olympia, Greece today. The lighting is a process that takes place before the start of each Summer Olympic games and the torch carries the light from there to the host country, for the opening ceremonies.

Today, the event was marred by a few protesters from "Reporters without Borders" that held black flags with the Olympic rings pictures as handcuffs, protesting China's treatment of Tibet.

It got me thinking about the whole concept of the Olympics, and whether this was a good venue for such demonstrations.

I'm torn. Part of me thinks that if one believes that some human rights are being violated (as these protesters claims is done by China towards Tibet), then they have a social responsibility to voice that concern in any forum they can access.

Another part, however, thinks that the Olympic events should be immune from all that. Even during the ancient Olympics, all political fighting and wars, were paused for the events. Olympics were were supposed to be void of any politics. One of the reasons they were started was indeed to pause ALL hostilities!

The more I think about it, the more I think that the Olympics should only be about athletes getting together and competing. All other issues should be kept out of them. There are many venues that can be used by protesters. to try and make their statements. Let's have at least one that doesn't become the soapbox for everyone with an ax to grind.

And, I am not passing judgment as to whether the protesters are right or wrong. They may be very right in chastising China for their human rights abuse record. All I'm saying leave their plight ot of the Olympics. It's about the only institution that remains!