Definition of U.S. Treasury Secretary: a Weasel

The Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner is supposed to an experienced economist that has the fiduciary duty and responsibility to oversee the U.S. Treasury. Yet when economists and financial and hedge fund managers of major banking and investment groups and corporations continue to discuss the notion of the U.S. dollar weakening, Secretary Geithner continues to say this is not the case, yet he never seems to offer any evidence to support his defense.

Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve Chairman, earlier this week claimed “the United States is deliberately weakening the dollar”, challenging Geithner’s responsibility over the Federal Reserve and how it establishes monetary and fiscal policy with relation to currency supply and interest rates. Geithner’s response was that “the U.S. will never do that. We will never seek to weaken our currency as a tool to gain competitive advantage to grow our economy”.

Of course not.

Geithner would simply like every one else in the world to manipulate their own currency, most notably China, which has a reputation for doing so, to solve our monetary problems. At the same time, China does not want to devalue its currency, because it would mean exporting jobs from China, back into the United States. China, which for the most part, owns the United States’ $14 trillion and growing national debt, is really focused on what the Federal Reserve’s inability to control its monetary supply without leading to further inflation, and now critics are actually thinking it might become a deflation of the U.S. dollar.

Yet, in nearly every Congressional testimony that Secretary Geithner has given, he says that the economy is growing within the private sector, despite the unemployment remaining about 9% and most likely projected to remain the same into 2011. He also made a push earlier this week to print $600 billion dollar out of nowhere, which already has foreign critics (again China) up in arms about our federal policies, which was cited by some members of Congress and economists as being another bad decision.

One has to question the motives behind printing all of this currency. The idea for doing so seems to improve the U.S. economy, but has deemed unworkable thus far. Is Secretary Geithner just doing so to make the economy look good, without any notion of thought in regards to inflation? What message are we sending to our foreign lenders over seas? Can the U.S. even continue as a place to do business in the coming years?

I will be the first to admit that I am not an economist by any means, but it does not take rocket science to figure out that Secretary Geithner is clearly continuing to act as a puppet for this Administration, standing around acting as if everything is fine and dandy. This is the same Treasury Secretary who dodged paying taxes and was President of the Federal Reserve Bank in New York during the last few years of the Bush Administration. He has the understanding of the Federal Reserve’s policy, and had full knowledge of the impending problems during the financial crisis, and played a role in bailing out AIG.

Now when you hear him testify before Congress, he acts as though he doesn’t even know what happened during that period and incites wrath in everyone else for his contributing audacity. It is quite incompetent.

I would recommend that someone make an amendment to the definition of what the Treasury Secretary is supposed to be. As far as I’m concerned, its description is... a weasel.

APEC moves forward on expanding free trade in Asian Pacific Region

President Obama, as part of his visit to Asia earlier this week, participated in the two day Asia-Pacific Economy Cooperative summit in Japan this weekend which focused on an effort to call for more ‘liberalized free trade’ in the Asian Pacific Region.

Some leaders in the region however, are not buying this. Apparently, President Obama was unable to come to an agreement with South Korea, which the United States anticipated on completing during the summit, known as the U.S.-South Korea trade deal. This has left many questions and concerns with other countries based in the region. The trade deal with South Korea was to become a catalyst for a more open and less restrictive regional trade deal called The Transpacific Partnership in the Asian Pacific Region.

Despite the fact that the United States’ trade deficit has diminished in the last few years, now to the tune of about $400 billion for fiscal year 2010, Obama seems to show a great deal of heavy dependency on establishing these trade agreements as he views Asia being one of the greatest priorities for solving diplomacy and importing jobs back into the United States. Again, it comes back to the notion of not only China, but now other countries based in the Asian Pacific Region, as to whether the United States can remain committed to such free trade proposals, while trying to stabilize our monetary supply and inflation

There is no question that the United States has, and will continue to feel the heat from China, since their currency is devalued, they can export production for far less, than what it would cost the United States to do the same job. This same week, President Obama at the G-20 summit failed to try to get garner support to influence China to undervalue their currency to the U.S. dollar, and believe that it was free trade. They can say it is free trade, while the United States continues to get murdered by such exports, but when it comes to correcting the imbalances, well, then that is not called free trade.

At the height of forging ahead with free trade throughout the Asian Pacific Region is one thing, but to basically continue to criticize China’s currency in relation to free trade, for the idiocy of our own monetary policies, is absurdly irresponsible.

United States will not garner support from G-20 to push China’s currency value

The finance ministers from the 20 major economies refused to back the United States’ push in China boosting its currency value today. The reason why the United States is doing this mainly due to the concerns over escalating disputes with China (the main lender for the U.S., by the way) and their ability to have cheap labor and exports, which the United States says is costing American jobs.

President Obama is calling this a disappointing turn of events after the leaders of the G-20 decided to not devalue their currency. Obama wanted the opposite to occur, which was a more competitive undervaluation, which would have influenced the leaders of G-20 to push China’s currency value. Furthermore, the United States fears that nations such as China, who are protective of their own currency policies and trade barriers, will send a shockwave through the global economy and put it back into a recession.

It seems as though President Obama still lives in a fantasy world of looking to every other leader to put together a plan to solve the United States’ financial woes. Why should China, which owns the United States' national debt, be forced to loosen its own currency value to help the United States? China didn't cause the economic problems in the United States, it was the poor decisions made by President Bush and the idiotic Democratic leadership of Congress, most notably individuals like Barney Frank and Chris Dodd.

China, most likely is laughing hysterically at the United States, after the Obama Administration and the weasel that is Tim Geithner, choose to solve our trillions of dollars in debt.... by adding more trillions of dollars in debt. Insane. 

Obviously, the President has been completely oblivious to the Federal Reserve’s inability to stabilize the currency supply and interest rates, and continuing on the path that leads to further inflation. Now the United States admits it was undermined by the central bank's decision to print $600 billion in an apparent effort to keep the economy afloat, while at the same time the currency value diminishes.

Since the President will do nothing to solve the real problems crippling the United States such as the creation of real private sector jobs, reforming pension/union funds in government programs, cost of illegal aliens and maybe telling those puppet master internationalists like George Soros (who buys individuals within the government to create an agenda) to go take a walk, the President is really at a breaking point were there are very few options to choose from when it comes to our monetary and fiscal issues.

He’s not going to solve the real problems, and he is now finding out that when it comes to the United States’ monetary and fiscal policies, leaders in other countries, including those at the G-20 summit are not going to help our nation. They’ve really done all that they can since the financial collapse in 2008, and it is time for the United States to solve its own problems internally, even if it means for this President to finally stand up and say “no” to the people that are influencing him to make decisions which are deemed irresponsible.