The President forgets who broke the ground he is treading upon

By Jack Brummet, Presidents Ed.

"The relationship I have with China, it's been already acclaimed as being something very special, something very different than we've ever had." - President Donald J. Trump on Face The Nation this morning.

Well, not quite, Mr. President.

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One more wacky sign from Beijing

By Jack Brummet, China Travel Editor

I can't remember the name of the highway over which this is posted, but I took this shot on a road coming into town from the airport...

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The Model XHZLC 40 Filtering Respirator For Fire Self Rescue

By Jack Brummet, China Travel Editor


I've never seen the The Model XHZLC 40 Filtering Respirator For Fire Self Rescue (or anything similar) in any country I've been to recently--Turkey, Greece, Mexico, England, or India--but my hotel room had two of these on the shelf in the closet.  I resisted the urge to play with it, or wear it around town.  I especially like the cover illustration, where the evacuee is wearing a two button suit and tie.

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Visiting a redeveloped Hutong and Shichahai Lake in Beijing

By Jack Brummet, China Travel Editor

Hutongs (simplified: 胡同; traditional: 衚衕) are narrow streets or alleys, 

"most commonly associated with Beijing, China. In Beijing, hutongs are alleys formed by lines of siheyuan, traditional courtyard residences. Many neighbourhoods were formed by joining one siheyuan to another to form a hutong, and then joining one hutong to another. The word hutong is also used to refer to such neighbourhoods," according to Wikipedia, which also says:  "Following the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, many of the old hutongs of Beijing disappeared, replaced by wide boulevards and high rises. Many residents left the lanes where their families lived for generations for apartment buildings with modern amenities. In Xicheng District, for example, nearly 200 hutongs out of the 820 it held in 1949 have disappeared."However, many of Beijing’s ancient hutongs still stand, and a number of them have been designated protected areas. The older neighborhoods survive today, offering a glimpse of life in the capital city as it has been for generations."Many hutongs, some several hundred years old, in the vicinity of the Bell Tower and Drum Tower and Shichahai Lake are preserved amongst recreated contemporary two- and three-storey versions. This area abounds with tourists, many of which tour the quarter in pedicabs."

Shichahai Lake contains three lakes: Qianhai (前海), Xihai (西海) and Houhai (后海).  I don't know which of these three lakes we strolled around, but it was the one lined with bars and restaurants.  A promenade between the shops and the lake ran all around the lake.  It was a fascinating walk, and we were only subtly hustled by a few women and greeter types, asking if we wanted to go to "a lady bar."


Strolling through the hutongs was fascinating, and I hope to visit others on my next trip to Beijing. . .

The Hutong we visited had some residents along the side alleys, but along the main alleys and streets, the houses had been redeveloped into shops.  This is much preferable to the usual alternative--they are often razed to make way for large, characterless apartment buildings.

Jack with Bill Willis outside a tree-lined alleyway

Kids out for the night, and one of the few cop cars I saw the whole time I was in Beijing

three policemen in the shadows

this unit looked like it was still being lived in--you saw a few outliers along the main streets

Liang Liu, Leon Yao, and Bill Willis

trinkets

flags

a hostel in the Hutong

 Shichahai Lake contains three lakes - We walked all around this one (it's about a mile around), but I'm not sure which one this is!  The lakes are Qianhai (前海), Xihai (西海) and Houhai (后海).

this was a typical bar around the lake - the music was usually western pop/folk (I heard some Carpenters, Beatles, and Bob Dylan).

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A racy statue in Beijing's central business district

By Jack Brummet, China Editor

I stumbled onto this interesting sculpture not far from our office in Beijing's CBD. . .

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At the gates of the Forbidden City (I snuck this post in from China, where Blogger, Facebook, Glogger, Tumblr, and just about every other social site is blocked)

By Jack Brummet, Travel Editor

Here I am in Beijing, standing in front of the gates to The Forbidden City.  More to come, when I can actually post text and pictures  in from China (where Blogger, Facebook, Glogger, Picasa, Tumblr, and just about every other social site are blocked).  Without saying how I snuck this onto Blogger/All This Is That, let me just say that they have China locked down pretty tight.  I probably don't want to say much more, since I will be returning to China fairly regularly.  But, despite their total lockdown, there are a couple of transitory exploits from which you can sneak things onto the Internet.  I will post far more pictures and commentary once I am back safely inside the borders of the U.S.

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We have to put the screws to someone. Don't we?

By Mona Goldwater
Amateur Economics Correspondent





What do we do?  If this was a real business--and it seems like we need to treat it like that once again--wouldn't we nick our employees and, especially, our vendors and buyers; we'd lower wages and raise prices (taxes) and hope we could find a middle ground on which to survive.  Despite all the moaning and groaning, hasn't the TARP money done what it was supposed to do?  In fact, haven't many/most of those "investments" been paid back, even with a little vigorish?  Yeah, we ran up deficits dealing with the late 2000's financial meltdown, but isn't it approximately time to put a cork in that?

The U.S. ran up budget deficits for nearly 30 years--from 1970 through 1997.  Bill Clinton was president in 1998, when the government finally achieved a surplus--a surplus created through bi-partisan cooperation.  And we racked up further surpluses in 1999, 2000 and in 2001.  2001 was the final year of a Clinton-managed budget.

George W. Bush succeeded Clinton in 2001, and--surprise--we had a budget deficit in 2002 that has continued every year since then.  The deficit is projected to increase massively and exponentially this year under President Barack Obama.

This isn't an editorial opinion.  I have no idea how to roll back the clock to 1998.  What do the smart people say?  What would you do? What's three trillion between friends?  Do we need to crank up the presses at The Mint?  Or sell, say, a 25% equity stake in the U.S. to The People's Republic of China?  If the numbers I see are right, we have now borrowed around $1.4 trillion from China, or, $1,000 from every one of the PRC's 1.3 billion citizens.   Where do we go from here?  How do we fix this?

And one last question?  How much gold do we actually have in Fort Knox?  I know that virtually all the gold we own there was purchased at $35 an ounce or less, and most of it was accumulated when the price was far lower than that (when we were still on the gold standard).  Why don't we break that gold out and sell it, now that it retails for around $1,500 an ounce--while all the knuckleheads are buying gold, shotguns, and canned goods like madmen?

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