The comments work great too.

American politics are two extremes, the right and the crazies. Only America is protectionist and only America is racist according to the gospel of media. Great comment.

While creating the new Instapopulist it looks like permissions became corrupted and so commenting might have been disabled. Sorry, working on the fix!

Unions and their growth is a main reason why the middle class grew from 1935-1980.

It's fine for Crony Capitalist China to force American companies stupid enough to manufacture over there to hire locals, share critical IP, etc. Of course, to no one's surprise, the IP is quickly stolen and the "American" company is now competing with a cheaper version of its own product that can be manufactured even more cheaply, sold cheaper, and distributed worldwide. And the Japanese also know all about protectionism (the 80s were awesome for Japan and they loved dumping goods on us through their national protectionism - things haven't gone well for Japan's economy since then). And India today, same deal. How about their labor "protectionism"? Many nations require that certain percentages of locals work on crews and will only allow expatriate bosses to work there until locals can assume the duties. In Japan and other nations, it's not common for foreigners to work in Japanese firms, and in fact, foreigners will more likely be teaching English in Japan and abroad, not working in Japanese factories and firms. Try visiting Russia or Japan or China and work there off the books. Ain't happening and if you're caught, well, Japan is probably the best best because they'll treat you well. Russia and China, yeah, best of luck. Try getting caught over there without proper visas. Oh, most unpleasant. Ask Georgians or others in Russia how they are treated. Sure, the media talks about Depardieu and Russia's taxes, but the news over here rarely, if ever, covers violence against minorities, immigrants, corruption, the killing of those who speak out, including journalists, etc. in Russia. India, nope, not fans of foreigners working there in white or blue-collar jobs. Mexico, nope, they don't like people from neighboring countries working there at all but the government sure is quick to bash us and have meetings with our "leaders" to form pro-Mexico economic policies at our expense.

But oh man, all these countries do love complaining about the US and its foreign worker and production policies. They do insist on easier visas, that everyone here illegally stay here as long as they want, and that every single position in academia, white collar, blue collar, and every other collar be open to foreigners, even if Americans had those jobs, want those jobs, or could be trained for those jobs. In fact, it doesn't even matter if the person that wants that job can't speak English, needs a visa, and can't perform the job. According to these other nations and our sell-out corporate-owned politicians, they are "entitled" to everything they want, even if they are the ultimate hypocrites that don't care about America or its citizens. So who's protectionist and who's just full of it?

Who can forget the tranches of garbage filled up with toxic assets in such a way they were fraudulent and can never be proved?

It was global so if China has this, no surprise. They didn't do any reforms period and why Fisher's proposal to make SPVs considered an affiliated, the banks holding companies is very good. They would dump these CDOs into little SPVs then parked in the Cayman's or where-ever so no legal action, outside the law, plus tax haven status.

Apparently there's a growing problem in China with repackaged debt being sold through third-party brokers. It was a trend that used to be common in the US and UK too... remember the Collateralised Debt Obligation crisis?

Granted, hedge funds act in a way that is always in their own interests...that's red-toothed free-market capitalism for you: someone will always spot the financial opportunity in what is a disaster for others.
But if the ECB can't afford to buy all the sovereign bonds of struggling countries like Spain, it falls to private investors to pick up the slack. It's not necessarily predatory.
And don't forget that they too have an obligation to their investors to seek the highest possible returns.

The knowledge is out there, it's available, and there's no excuse for the common man or woman to not know what's going on in so many realms. Now this isn't conspiracy stuff, or fringe talk, but facts, history, etc. Look at Mali. Now, counterinsurgency books (COIN that talking heads in media mention but didn't read anything about) talk about making friends with the locals, sealing borders, and the accepted ratio of troops to insurgents to crush it is 10:1 (could be wrong, but not critical). Listening to people in DC and on TV it's like counterinsurgency and foreign affairs are new concerns. Whatever they do, they can't read history, no, not like the Greeks or Romans or Turks or the Russians or Napoleon or the British or the US had experience with this for the last 2000 years. Books are bad, talking points and endless meaningless talk for ratings and votes is good.

Now look at Afghanistan. The Soviet's mistakes were written down in dozens of books. Their General Staff wrote about mistakes extensively and the books are available to anyone out there. Guess what? We went in and repeated the same mistakes. And the sad thing is we actually armed our future attackers during the 80s, helped harden them, helped foster Al-Qaeda and the Taliban during the 1980s. Too many tribal allegiances, impossible to seal borders, Afghanistan has a history covering centuries of repelling invaders/foreigners. Thousands of reports written, trillions spent that never got down to the US taxpayers, borders impossible to seal, and no one fired or canned or loses prestige in US. No one that dares speaks the truth is hired by the govt. or contractors and if they do say, "Why do we keep repeating the same mistakes and have endless meetings to repeat the same BS?" they are fired.

Mali? Mali? Best of luck. More billions going to waste. Impossible to seal borders (the country is twice the size of Texas). Insurgents aren't strictly Islamists, they also are composed of ethnic minorities pissed off. Africa filled with corruption so that creates insurgents everywhere. It's a desert country where people can melt away and come back after planes + bombs disappear. They can melt into surrounding countries. Who are we going to back up? France, with it's "wonderful" history in Africa? How about ECOWAS? Nigeria has its own massive fight with insurgents from Boko Haram. In addition, corruption in the Niger Delta (involving oil profits, massive environmental pollution) is keeping MEND going strong. Nigeria and other ECOWAS countries won't send troops and if they do, a few thousands won't and can't end an insurgency. And how would the Malians or Algerians feel about foreigners from other African countries "aiding" them? The Algerians' and French history is not a pretty one, and the Algerians' own civil war in the 1990s was also brutal and ugly but lacked international media coverage. But we're going down this road again? Do policy makers and corporate bigwigs and media lackeys not know how to read? Would that disqualify them from jobs in the US + UN and other organizations? Probably.

Remember this, the companies that make billions in Nigeria and elsewhere always complain about a US government that is too big and has too many regulations. Go ask the people in the Niger Delta how they feel about no environmental protections and massive corruption. How do they feel about foreign companies and their own govt. taking resources and they get nothing? And when things go horribly wrong, of course the US govt. (through the unemployed and overworked average taxpayer) now has to bail out the big CEOs that pray at the altar of Grover Norquist and Murdoch and Koch. They help fuel the mess and we get stuck with the bill. That, well, sucks.