Excited Delirium Book: Chapter 44 (China News – The Dragon is Buying)
Author’s Note: The following is Chapter 44 of the my online book "Excited Delirium". Please post comments. Please tell your friends about this story. If you’ve missed a chapter, please click here for Chapter 1 (Prelude) or here for the full index .
HEADLINE: THE DRAGON IS BUYING … AND ITS ATM IS AMERICA
DATE: June 2008
SOURCE: International News Corporation (INC)
NEWS STORY – China’s Investment Corporation, the privately-held, state-run enterprise that manages the currency reserves of the Chinese government, now has cash reserves in excess of $US 1.7 trillion.
If you’re familiar with counting numbers that big, consider this: if you go by market capitalization, the value of a company based on its stock performance, $1.7 trillion is enough to buy most of the Top Ten companies in the United States outright .
Without batting an eye, China could buy Microsoft, General Electric, Exxon, Wal-Mart and a raft of other companies and still have lots of loose change to pick up a few hundred other small companies. Alternatively, it’d be enough money to buy a significant stake in most of the Fortune 500 companies and dictate the economic sovereignty of the United States.
And this reserve is growing. Every time you buy a product that’s made in China, you’re putting money into their bank account.
Most financial market pundits and observers suggest that this is nothing to be bothered by, but some activists in America are doing what they can to put a stop to this trend.
A number of groups, including the fledging group “America Before China” or ABC, advocate buying local, buying from people that you know and putting money back into the United States.
“ABC is an important project that’s just getting started,” declared Wilson Wayne, a Democratic Senator from Massachusetts. “It’s an obvious sign of the times, where people are scared. They’re worried about their jobs, their livelihood and they’re worried about the economic future of the United States of America.”
“At some point, this massive redistribution of wealth from America to China will have to stop,” Senator Wayne added. “If not, our sovereignty and security will be breached.”
Many other Senators and executives we interviewed don’t seem to agree with Senator Wayne, citing his rhetoric as nationalistic and anti-trade. “Globalization is an inevitability,” Griffith Garamond, CEO of the newly launched company TRI-X said in an official statement. “Consumers make their choices every day and when they pick a product that’s made in China as opposed to the USA, that’s their choice. Ultimately, when it’s all about competition and fair trade, we just have to do a better job. America must re-learn how to build products that the world will want. We have to improve our productivity, keep a lid on wages and leverage our resources. We will compete with countries like China on all levels. I know we can.”
In the meantime, the level of reserves controlled by the Chinese grows by more than $500 billion per year.
A final thought: the financial instability of the US in recent months, led by the debt crisis and banking meltdown on Wall Street has is only making the US cheaper. At some point, it’ll have to be attractive to new buyers. Right?
Right?
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Garamond and Hadlock were preparing for their annual manager’s meeting when Hadlock’s assistant brought this article to him. Hadlock picked it up, did a quick scan and showed it to Garamond.
“They forgot to put your picture with the article,” he said.
“One day, they’ll surprise me and actually get it right. Make sure the journalist eats dog food for a year and give Wayne more lines about being protectionist,” Garamond said casually as he organized his notes. “This ABC thing that we’ve organized has to smell like it’s more ‘grass roots’, more ‘American Apple Pie’. It can be angry, but not furious, do you understand me?”
“Absolutely, sir,” Hadlock responded quickly. “As long as we’re slamming the public from all fronts, they’ll be in such a state of shock when our plans finally hit home that they’ll accept us with open arms,” he asserted confidently.
“Like Bush with the bullhorn,” Garamond mused, referring to the overwhelmingly positive response to George W. Bush on September 14, 2001 when he stood on the pile of rubble that was the World Trade Centre.
“By the way, the title is excellent. Is that your work?”
“The journalist,” Hadlock answered.
“OK. Maybe not dog food. Maybe just convenience store hot dogs for a year.”
“You’re a kind soul,” his assistant said sarcastically.
(Note: "Excited Delirium" is a work of fiction. Any person, place or thing depicted in this work of fiction is also a work of fiction. Any relation of these subjects or characters to real locations, people or things are an unintentional coincidence.)
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Excited Delirium by Liam Young is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License .
Based on a work at www.exciteddelirium.ca .