Originally Posted by Villages Kahuna

Mika Brzeznski interviewed two young economist-authors on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" this morning. I recall one book was entitled Winner Take All. The other book was entitled Hybrid Reality, as I recall.

In the short interview, these were the key points made by the authors and presumably discussed in more detail in their books.

• China has cash reserves of more than $3 trillion and no sovereign debt. They are using these reserves for both internal and international long-term investments to further strengthen their economy. (To put that in perspective, that amount of cash is a little more than two years-worth of the entire U.S. GDP!).

• They understand quite well that of their 1.3 billion citizens that 300 million are extremely wealthy but about a billion are living close to poverty. China has virtually no middle class. China's published five-year plan s show extensive investments in technology and unfrastructure with objective of creating significant numbers of new jobs, essentially forcing the creation of a significant middle class and expanded domestic markets for goods and services.

• One author postulates that the economic and increasingly military battles of coming decades will be over commodities. We've already seen wars fought over oil, diamonds, even potable water. That will increase in coming decades over everything from minerals to potable water to lumber resources to arable land.

• The Chinese have been investing in countries that have the resources they know thy will need and will be in short supply. There are many examples in Africa, South America, the Middle East, and recently even in Canada.

• Most often, the countries where they are investing have high birth rates, an extremely low average age, very high unemployment, and weak governments. Again, there are many examples. The authors theorize that by China investing, creating new commodity-based industries and creating jobs, that a local embrace of their political beliefs will follow. The authors contrast that approach with the U.S.'s more "unilateral" approach (do it our way).

• China is investing significantly in their military. But their unstated purpose appears to be solely designed to protect their economic interests as they expand around the world. Of course we know that human rights are not high on China's list of political or social objectives, and their burgeoning military strength does not appear to be designed to achieve political objectives either at home or internationally. Their military expansion seems solely designed to sustain their political power and protect future economic expansion.

What I heard, albeit in a brief interview, I found very difficult to argue with. In fact, there is ample evidence that China's strategy is already well under way. I know that Americans seem to still react to the "red threat", the expansion of communism. That was certainly a Russian objective before the CCCP disintegrated, but there's no real evidence that China has the expansion of their political system beyond their borders high on their list of national objectives. However, it does appear that their political posture is based on the theory that expanded economic success and influence will lead to an embrace of their political system.

So with all that happening, what are our political leaders arguing about? Whether or not our current economic problems are the result of a previous political administration (pretty backward-looking, don't you think?); whether to repeal an expensive healthcare system while at the same time lowering the taxes on the mst wealthy and corporations (with no reliable evidence that either will have a positive economic effect--maybe even quite the contrary); how to remove the influence of government on our lives and our economy (has that worked, is that why China has been so economically dominant in recent years?); and now, increasing political noise over whether we should apply military force in Syria (which has no identifiable natural resources, by the way).

What is our Congress doing? Other than a whole lot of ideological bickering, not much that I can see. They can't even agree on a federal budget, let alone any kind of long-term economic or fiscal planning. But their 'summer recess' is coming up, I suppose they're planning for that.

Maybe "disturbing" is too mild a description of my reaction, my frustration, my aggravation.