Cross-posted at River Twice Research.

So bipartisanship isn’t dead. By a vote of 348-79, Democrats and Republicans alike put aside their acrimonious differences and agreed, at least for a moment, to stop blaming each other for the sad state of American economic life. Instead, they agreed to blame China.

The bill authorizes the president of the United States to impose tariffs on Chinese goods in response to what it considers an illegal subsidy of Chinese exports in the form of an undervalued currency. It helps that the supporters in the House know that this bill has precious little chance of becoming law; it will not pass the Senate and it is unlikely that it would be signed into law by Obama if it ever came to that. As a result, the bill is the perfect campaign gesture, bombastic, angry, self-righteous, and without much real-world consequence.

More than 100 candidates have endorsed the Green New Deal, a 10-point program to create economic prosperity together with ecological sustainability. Join them today.

When the financial crisis started to bite, there were many western economists and politicians who insisted that the crisis would hit the east as hard as the west (aka the “domino effect”). Around three years later we see that they were simply wrong. the world economy is no longer hinged on the west (assuming that it ever really was). The east has decoupled from the west. So has the south.

To get America back on the right track, we need an ambitious program to create economic prosperity together with ecological sustainability. It’s time for a Green New Deal.

This is the first in a two-part series about Nourishing the Planet co-director Danielle Nierenberg’s visit with COMACO in Zambia. Cross posted from Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet.

Paul Krugman bemoans the Chinese peg to the dollar as mercantilism and reflects on the wonders of a strong Chinese currency for the American economy. He’s crazy. The Chinese peg is the only thing keeping our first-world standard of living afloat.

Cross-posted at River Twice Research.

In his current Asian trip, President Obama visits Japan, then addresses a forum of leaders in Singapore, and eventually ends up in Seoul to discuss nukes and North Korea. But make no mistake, the axis of this week is the time Obama will spend in China, which has catapulted to the forefront of international affairs and is on its way to joining the United States as the alpha and omega of the global economic system.

Cross-posted at River Twice Research.

For years, Americans have been fulminating about China and its policy toward currency. While many of the debates are technical and laden with econo-speak, they boil down to the simple conviction that China is unfairly manipulating its currency to keep it undervalued against the dollar. The result is to give China unfair advantages in trade – flooding the US with cheap goods, hurting labor wages world-wide, and accumulating massive surpluses in the process. That view is again articulated by Paul Krugman in today’s New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/23/opinion/23krugman.html?ref=opinion) which ends with the firm statement: “Something must be done about China’s currency.”

You got 14 minutes to break out the popcorn, there’s an important new HBO documentary airing tonight at 9 pm est. It’s called “Schmatta: Rags to Riches to Rags.” The documentary tells the history of New York’s garment workers, their unions, the fashion industry and how these jobs made the American Dream possible for countless immigrant workers. (Watch the trailer here)

Cross-posted at River Twice Research.

The economic relationship between China and the United States is the defining issue of our day. While debates over health care are vital to American society, and while challenges ranging from Iran to Afghanistan to North Korea are real, nothing will determine the arc of the coming decades – or will shape domestic life and prosperity in the United States – more than the emergence of China as a global economic superpower unrivalled except by America.