All ashore who’re going ashore

By Author Linda Brady Traynham

My darling Charles tossed out one of his great one-liners: “Why don’t they teach geography any more? Most of history stems from geography.”

Oh, how true, and many diplomatic encounters remind us of our personal lives. This article will make you feel as though you are six and your best friend’s family moved–next door to your school’s bully. Suddenly he isn’t your friend any more. Or your girlfriend leaves you a eighteen–for your best friend. Your wife not only files for divorce but tells your friends she left because you abused her, blew the kids’ college fund, and have been running around on her, and you want to say, “Well, it isn’t quite that bad…” but you know you’re guilty.

It looks like the blanket is being split and Japan isn’t even faintly apologetic; their new Prime Minister is ripping the thing apart all by himself, he isn’t at all apologetic, and at first glance we’ll be lucky if we get even the short end of the blanket. Japan has had its hands in our pockets since the end of WWII, and I always wondered if there weren’t some residual bitterness, and it does, indeed, appear that there is.

The ruling party for the last half of a century got tossed out recently–and who is to wonder given nearly twenty years of Depression. The new guys appear to have no problem exclaiming the Japanese equivalent of, “What you mean we, Kemo Sabe?”

The apparently pragmatic Yukio Hatoyama, who has been Prime Minister for only a few days, didn’t have any trouble glancing around him and concluding the wisest course is to ditch the US and proclaim his roots. Unlike our dear leader, Mr. Hatoyama has no difficulty discerning threats and coming up with where to whack the Gordian Knot.

Let’s see…China has a billion man army and is just across a very narrow stretch of sea, there, and the USA bases in Hawaii Ne are a very, very long way away while Congress and the US Prez are slashing Defense funds again. Mr. Obama is busy disavowing the USA’s traditional “friends” and allies, and kowtowing to–do I sound as though I know what racial slurs Japanese use other than referring to us as “hairy foreign devils?”–every tin pot dictator who hates America and a bunch with more clout who do not wish the USA well. Mr. Hatoyama isn’t being subtle or even polite about ditching his old “friends,” even though nobody has dropped a bomb on them in over sixty years.

The USA has thrown away the opportunity it had to establish Pax Americana in 1945, bled itself dry in lunatic wars, and through unthinkably uneconomic giveaways at home and abroad, and is in a similar position to the Kennedy family: too many Kennedies, too little of Grandpa Joe’s illgotten gains. Both are running on very old and increasingly decrepit appearances of power and wealth. Cyrus of Persia proved many, many centuries ago that “foreign aid” is a very good way to lose your kingdom. The Greens and the Statists are on a rampage and in another year I’m not sure we’ll be able to manufacture corny dogs and yo-yos. And if we did someone would declare them entitlements.

Mr. Hatoyama probably mused…”America isn’t close enough to protect us from the Chinese…or the Russians…our ancestors forbid from both…it is nearly bankrupt, and it owes us over 724 billion declining dollars and our (shudder) ‘dear friend,’ China, some 800 billion. It still buys 140 billion a year from us, but there’s the matter of imposing a thumping big tariff on Chinese tires, so we could be next.

“Hmmm…it would be quite popular if we tossed the Yankees out of our ports and off our airfields, and it is expensive and disruptive to mess with refueling their ships headed to Afghanistan, so we could pick up some nice bits of real estate and save a bunch of money if we just said ‘Get out and don’t come back.’ Like that one…think I’ll kick them through the door by saying we won’t buy any more of their lousy Treasuries unless they’re denominated in yen, while I’m at it.” (Did something happen to the prince and his bride? I didn’t always keep up with such things.)

“Got to move carefully about knocking the dollar out as the reserve currency since we’re holding so many, but if we could get a basket of yen and weird Chinese money as the standard, perhaps a sop to the Euro, we might make out like Somali pirates…yeah, sounds like a good idea to become the Yellow Peril, again. That bunch of wusses won’t do the Popeye thing from WWII and make cartoons saying, ‘I never saw a Jap that wasn’t yellow.’ We’ll show ‘em yellow!”

Part of that is speculation on the thought processes of a culture so alien to ours that all we have to go in is our knowledge of at least American and European nature and financial thinking, but the actions mentioned have all been discussed or implemented. Hatoyama campaigned on promises of divorcing Japan from America and seeking closer alliances with Asian neighbors, a bellicose lot, and it is starting to look as though his campaign promises were good. A fine start is refusing to allow war planes to take off, ships to refuel or dock, and not catering to our military any more. Signature chuckle…maybe he’ll give us a reprieve because he can’t find anyone to take our Army, Navy, and Air Force in, emulating the One when he couldn’t figure out what to do with terrorists if he closed Gitmo. Don’t count on it; it does not sound as though Mr. Hatoyama has a vascillating bone in his body.

“Ah, but wait! There’s more!” as Billy May always said.

“Why settle for just Chinese and Japenese money in our attempt to grab the world’s reserve currency status?” we can sense Mr. Hatoyama asking himself. “If we bring in Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan we up the economic base, may get out of our slump, and look like great leaders and financial genuises. Hey, the Europeans have their Euro, we need an Asi.”

Hatoyama may be a little behind the times because he didn’t do an interview with a financial newsletter, he went the oldfashioned route and wrote for the New York Times while campaigning to reduce the US push towards globalization and to protect Japan’s economy, and he tossed in a bit to help Mr. Obama by noting that the USA is responsible for “the destruction of human dignity.” Dang. I knew y’all shouldn’t be driving Mitsu Bishi and Honda, buying Sony, and eating Sushi, which is very pretty but isn’t a decent dinner. Shame on you.

Mr. Hatoyama is clearly no Beni Hana: he didn’t slice, dice, or mince any words when writing “A New Path for Japan,” published in the NYT about a month ago. “The financial crisis has suggested to many that the era of U.S. unilateralism may come to an end…” and “It has also raised doubts about the permanence of the dollar as the key global currency.”

In the same article, Hatoyama answered his own question: “(W)e must not forget our identity as a nation located in Asia,” he averred. “I believe that the East Asian region, which is showing increasing vitality, must be recognized as Japan’s basic sphere of being.”

If that isn’t the economic equivalent of “Tora! Tora! Tora!” it is certainly at least a Toe in the water. The shark-infested waters.

In his spare time Hatoyama sent his son to study engineering in Russia, and the Chinese jumped on his bandwagon with front page and television coverage of the election. It certainly sounds as though they approve thoroughly of Mr. Hatoyama. Another way Mr. H curried favor with the Koreans was by ignoring the WWII shrine to the war dead. He and our dear leader can probably have great talks trashing America.

Shall we panic? Nah, I think not. I have long said that one of the major dangers was the loosing of bright butterflies in the East, but if both our biggest creditors hitch together in lockstep they can lay their heads on the chopping block simultaneously. I am not a pretty chess player. Mine is a very bloody game, as I will swap anything approaching even avidly, and one of my first acts is to see if I can get you to to give up your Queen in return for mine. I’m sure you use yours better, and I’m a Roman Legion type. Shock troops. Get it down to where you’re toying with your Knights and Bishops slanting to the Left, and I’ll keep my towers of power. Sooner or later I’ll line up my Rooks and come after you on the board swept clear of intrigues and subplots. I’ll back you into a corner, and that’s that.

Let Mr. Hatoyama rattle katanas and posture pretty for the people. Hey, worthy Oriental gentleman, cut loose your dogs.

Washington’s best response is very simple: devalue the dollar. A thing like that will empty your war chest quite quickly, East Asian Block, and it will be entertaining watching China work out what to do with the vast Olympic expenses still due.

What if we raise tariffs sky high and stop imports? Bite the bitter bullet and tell Agribiz to sit down and shut up, and loosen regulations?

At that point, Mr. Hatoyama can munch his small portions of Kobe beef while America smiles over amber fields of grain no longer being turned into Ethanol and the cattle on thousands of hills. Japan has very little aerable land. Literal hunger trumps power hunger. China can do without all those luscious chicken feet we sell them, WalMart will be wailing Banzai, and Mrs. Obama will be having a nervous breakdown because she can’t get the enormous quantities of $400/pound beef their cronies dine on several times a week. War’s hell, Michelle.

Will the wimp in the White House not have the courage to do such things? Is a bear Catholic? Shall we panic, then? No…get your money out of dollar-denominated assets and turn it into durable goods. Judging from the antics in the metal market last week, somebody is playing games again or nobody believes Mr. Hatoyama. Watch in amusement, and if silver gets down to thirteen again buy all you can get.

Yup, Shooters, I have a nice eighteenth century mind. Human nature doesn’t change when it comes to grabbing for power, money, and position. Mr. Hatoyama has signalled his intention to cut loose at least his butterflies, and either he’ll topple the dollar from its shakey post or fail to do so, and the worst that can happen is that he’ll really precipitate The Greater Depression we here in the bar expect. Plunging the world into hunger and economic standstill will lose Mr. Hatoyama his seat with the mighty, and we’ve been making preparations while he was telling people what they want to hear. My advice to him is, “You live in interesting times. Act accordingly!”

Regards,

Linda Brady Traynham

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 10th, 2009 at 6:44 am and is filed under Authors, Economics, History, Linda Brady Traynham. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.