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.