There has never been anything like it--not in business, at least. The Chinese work their tails off earning billions of dollars and then, instead of spending their profits, Mao Zedong's grandchildren lend us Americans back the dollars we've paid them so that we can buy yet more stuff from the commie-capitalists. We buy their baby booties and television sets, and they take the money and lend it back to us. It's like getting the contents of your local Super Wal-Mart for free, but in Washington this strange circularity has been the cause of nonstop bitching and moaning for years.
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Federal Reserve Freakout
Nicholas von Hoffman: The Fed scrambles for solutions to the mortgage meltdown--but saving prudent homeowners also involves bailing out a huge number of wealthy speculators. What good is that?
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The Candidates Pump Gas
Nicholas von Hoffman: As Clinton and McCain pander to frustrated voters with tax cuts, the real remedies to rising gas prices go unexplored.
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Bitter? You Should Be! Why Obama Is Right
Nicholas von Hoffman: If you had to choose between Hillary or God for economic assistance, who would you cling to?
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Put Inflation on the Political Agenda
Nicholas von Hoffman: Gas is up, sneakers are up, onions are up and eggs, too. The only thing that is not up is your income.
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Economic Chaos, Political Consequences
Nicholas von Hoffman: As the federal bailout of the banking industry continues, is it too much to ask that McCain, Clinton and Obama abandon their blue-sky promises and address reality?
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The People's Ball
Nicholas von Hoffman: How Saul Alinsky would plan Obama's inauguration, and his government.
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Vice President Rice?
Nicholas von Hoffman: If John McCain picks Condoleezza Rice as his running mate, Democrats should be afraid. Very afraid.
Washington did not gloat that commie pinkos might have been hornswoggled into paying too high a price for Unocal. The sound of gnashing teeth and thumping breasts reverberated through the nation's capital. Warnings against a nightmarish color combination of red economics and yellow peril filled the air. Irresistible pressure was put on Unocal's board not to sell out to Sino-collectivism or communists in capitalist clothing.
We have been there before.
In the 1970s the air was heavy with "woe is us" when the Arabs, flush from a big jump in oil prices, were thought to be about to buy California and ship it to Saudi Arabia. Instead, those Arab guys trimmed their beards, threw off their djellabas and hit on our women.
In the 1980s it was the Japanese who were giving editorial writers hissy fits. Even though they wore suits and were good at math, they scared the hell out of the policy-wonk community when it was learned that they were using the profits gained from selling us superior automobiles to snap up Pebble Beach Golf Course and Rockefeller Center. In the end, they lost their kimonos on both deals.
The Unocal board of directors caved to the political clamor. The company is being sold to the lowest bidder. Elsewhere Canadians, who prefer profit to principle, quickly made themselves a heck of a lot of it by selling PetroKazakhstan, an oil company in the country of more or less the same name, to another Chinese outfit. Unocal stockholders looked on as they suffered a billion-dollar cash loss and they still have to pay for the Cristal.

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