Sock-puppet Secretary of the Treasury John Snow wanted to secretize a little bit on the state of the economy.
TOKYO (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow said on Tuesday he wanted to see more progress toward flexibility in China's currency regime.
``We'd like to see more progress on the path toward flexibility,'' he said in an interview with Reuters Television.
That's nice. What can we do about those intractable Chinese and their fixed-rate currency? Nothing. Why is this? Because the Chinese Central Bank holds so much US debt it can do what it wants. China has Uncle Sam by the balls.
He added that oil prices are a risk for global economic growth.
"These prices are way too high,'' he said. ``These prices, if sustained, could hurt the growth rates of global economies.''
What does this even mean? Prices are too high? What the hell are you going to do about? What the hell is anybody to do about it. I wanted to write a separate post about how funny it would be if gas prices, of all things, turned out to be the albatross of the Bush administration. As if the Bush administration could control gas prices. Here, Snow is simply reading from the memo sent out to all Bush flunkies, which reads: "Say something about energy costs that sounds like you give a shit." The reality is much bigger, and much darker, than anything John Snow can offer.
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/business/business-economy-snow.html
Posted by mike at October 10, 2005 10:22 PM