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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (176786)	10/17/2003 6:45:58 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1573927

Bush Should Leave China's Currency Alone By James J. Cramer 10/16/2003 12:00 PM EDT Who's guiding this administration's dollar policy, the thinkers or the politicians? Has anyone thought to ask Intel (INTC:Nasdaq - commentary - research) or Dow Chemical (DOW:NYSE - commentary - research) or Target (TGT:NYSE - commentary - research) or Motorola (MOT:NYSE - commentary - research) what will happen if we keep banging on the Chinese to mess up their currencies and let them float and be beaten up by hedge funds after short-term profits? Has anyone even thought about the notion that free trade is important? What are these guys thinking? Is the problem that if it doesn't involve cutting my taxes, it's beyond the ken of these guys? Who is in the ear of people like John Snow, encouraging them to do things that we all know lead to huge problems down the road? The John Snow I knew at CSX was a free trader trying to make more trade, not an erector of barriers to trade who says he isn't. What the heck is going on here? Secretary of the Treasury was an esteemed position under President Clinton. We had scads of terrific people who understood and promoted worldwide growth. Now we export only one thing: tax cuts. We stand for nothing other than insuring that President Bush doesn't lose West Virginia or Alabama. So, as Bush goes off to bash our Asian trading partners, may I remind him that the one thing that is going right this quarter is the amount of business our companies are doing in China? And while I don't like a lot about business in China, I do like the yuan when it comes our way, not to others, where it most certainly will head if we keep up the China-bashing. Steve Friedman, Greg Mankiw and John Snow know this stuff cold. They are seasoned players. I wonder how they can stand it themselves. But they don't have to; they are rich guys, they could walk. They at least could argue better for what is pro-growth. At least all is not lost, though. They did just appoint a smart guy to run the New York Federal Reserve, one of the Rubin-Summers team, Timothy Geithner. Gee, I wonder how that got past the political department of this White House? Maybe they were so busy bashing China they forgot to pay attention. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- At the time of publication, Cramer was long Intel. James J. Cramer is a director and co-founder of TheStreet.com