Miller’s Involvement: Possible explanation from Sydney Blumenthal?

Is it possible that Miller was about to do a story discrediting Wilson and his Niger claims as a pre-emptive strike against Wilson for her buddies in the White House? But Wilson trumped her with his op-ed?

I was just reading Sydney Blumenthal’s story, Who will be indicted, and when?, over at Salon. Two comments struck me as important, see below…

Is it possible that Miller was about to do a story discrediting Wilson and his Niger claims as a pre-emptive strike against Wilson for her buddies in the White House? But Wilson trumped her with his op-ed?

I was just reading Sydney Blumenthal’s story, Who will be indicted, and when?, over at Salon. Two comments struck me as important, see below…

The Times, meanwhile, has subordinated its news coverage to her legal defense, withholding reportage on what she has told the grand jury, though the Times promises a full account. Will it include her colleagues’ recollections of how livid she was that the Times published Wilson’s Op-Ed?

Why would she be livid? Perhaps her previously debunked reporting that got her into trouble with the NY Times was exacerbated by the op-ed by Wilson and only served to make her look even worse? OR was she scooped (so to speak) by Joe Wilson himself, on a story she’d been working on to cover the exact same issue only from a different (and more White House friendly) perspective?

It’s entirely possible she was given Plame’s status on background but never had any intention of revealing the name in her article. She then could very well have been the one to spread Plame’s name to other reporters, but Libby ultimately gave her the name first.

In the meantime, someone gives Joe Wilson the heads up that the White House is out to discredit him and he then pushes ahead with his op-ed to stay one step ahead of them. His op-ed gets published to the extreme chagrin of Judith Miller, who was tapped to “break” the story herself.

The next quote relates to something Bob Woodward said:

For his part, Bob Woodward, who has written two books describing in detail events from the perspective of the Bush administration, supported the White House version of the Niger incident by charging in July 2004 that “there were reasonable grounds to discredit Wilson.”

And now we are back to the smear campaign against Joe Wilson, who just happens to be the real whistleblower in this entire sordid affair. It’s this aspect of the case that I have always thought Fitzgerald was digging into, and the WHIG was behind it all.

Thoughts?

FYI, all bolding is mine.

Plame is Miller’s Source?

OK, work with me here. I have been going through over and over in my head the discrepancy between Judy’s statement of what her testimony was about compared to what her lawyer said on Wolf Blitzer.

So, as I’m thinking it through, here is how I got there:
FACTS:

  1. We don’t know who Miller’s source is. Everyone assumes it’s Scooter Libby, but show me an article where that was EVER CONFIRMED. It never was, we all just THINK it’s Libby because the media keeps saying it. But it has never been proven that Libby is Judy’s source…
  2. Judy said today that her testimony is limited to information concerning her source.
  3. Her lawyer says her testimony is speficically related to the “Valerie Plame” matter.

THOUGHTS:

  1. We all assume one of them is lying based on the belief that Libby is the source. If that’s the case, then why aren’t she and her lawyer on the same page? OH NO!! That could be bad!
  2. BUT, WHAT IF SHE AND HER LAWYER ARE TELLING THE TRUTH? What does that mean? If “Valerie Plame” was her source, then Judy and her lawyer are, all of a sudden, on the same page.

But, if that’s true, then we all must totally re-think the story. We all are convinced that Judy is working for the admin and she’s in on it. But what if she’s not? What if Libby says that Wilson’s wife was in on it somehow, Judy calls Wilson’s wife to ask her directly and figure it out. Plame then confides things to her about something. Judy then knows something. Well, I could go on and on, right?

It then becomes a whole new ball game…

Thoughts? Theories?

60 Minutes Niger story that never aired… Let’s get it aired!

Consider this an actionable item diary for all of you. I think the tone in the media has changed sufficiently over the past few months that now is the time to push to get stories out there.

One story inparticular is already done but has never been aired. 60 Minutes has it ready to go, they’ve just never aired it. Now is the time to contact them and request they show this important story. Here is the contact information:

EMAIL: 60m@cbsnews.com

PHONE: (212) 975-3247

More detail on the story that never aired below…
Here is the link to the article written by Michael Isikoff for Newsweek, September 22, 2004 about the CBS decision to bump the Niger story with the TANG documents story. There are some very interesting points in the article:

The Story That Didn’t Run

Some excerpts from the article include:

A team of “60 Minutes” correspondents and consulting reporters spent more than six months investigating the Niger uranium documents fraud, CBS sources tell NEWSWEEK. The group landed the first ever on-camera interview with Elisabetta Burba, the Italian journalist who first obtained the phony documents, as well as her elusive source, Rocco Martino, a mysterious Roman businessman with longstanding ties to European intelligence agencies.

Some CBS reporters, as well as one of the network’s key sources, fear that the Niger uranium story may never run, at least not any time soon, on the grounds that the network can now not credibly air a report questioning how the Bush administration could have gotten taken in by phony documents. The network would “be a laughingstock,” said one source intimately familiar with the story.

Although acknowledging that it was “frustrating” to have his story bounced, David Gelber, the lead CBS producer on the Niger piece, said he has been told the segment will still air some time soon, perhaps as early as next week. “Obviously, everybody at CBS is holding their breath these days. I’m assuming the story is going to run until I’m told differently.”

I think enough time has passed that CBS shouldn’t be “embarrassed” anymore about the TANG forgery fiasco and get back to reporting news now that 64% of Americans actually may want to hear it!

There is also another article by Mary Jacoby dated September 29, 2004 that talks about some of the details contained in the CBS story that never aired, and shows why this story is even more imprtant NOW than ever.

The Cowardly Broadcasting System

Here is the clip from the article that shows how it ties to the current Grand Jury investigation and why airing the story is so important, not only for the public, but for CBS regaining its credibility:

After the war started, in March, Wilson, shocked that the discredited Niger story had appeared in Bush’s State of the Union address, wrote an opinion piece in the New York Times about the lack of evidence he found in Niger. In retaliation and in an attempt to intimidate him and any other future critic, the segment relates, “two senior administration sources gave conservative columnist Robert Novak the name of Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, a covert CIA agent, which he published in his column, published in the Washington Post. The act of revealing the identity of an undercover CIA operative is a federal felony against national security. The episode led to appointment of a special prosecutor. That probe continues. Lately, the prosecutor has hauled a number of journalists who may or may not have information in for questioning.”

Bradley interviews Wilson, who says that he found nothing in Niger to indicate that any purchase agreement had been signed or executed. Bradley then speaks with the former director of the Department of State’s intelligence bureau (intelligence and research), Greg Thielmann, who explains why he concluded that Iraq was not attempting to reconstitute its nuclear program. In March 2002, Bradley reported, the White House received Thielmann’s report, entitled “Niger: Sale of Uranium Is Unlikely.”

So, please, contact CBS and get them to air this ASAP. I suspect they just might… Hey, if CNN is finally growing some, maybe CBS can too!

UPDATE: TBRNews and the Real "Brian Harring"

For those of you actually following the stories I’ve been posting concerning TBRNews.org, I have recieved further information on the real identity of Brian Harring (the so-called author of the de-bunked 9000 dead servicemen story). I have been in e-mail communication with him and he has authorized me to post this diary in the hopes that he can somehow clear his name.

Assuming everything he has told me is true and he isn’t part of this whole scam, then this gentlemen needs some help, if only to get the truth out there.

I’ll try to sum it all up below the fold (apologies if it gets too long!)
First, the background for those of you not familiar with this. I strongly suggest reading my first two diaries to get a real appreciation of what’s going on.

The first diary is called WARNING: Beware the “Voice from the White House”.

The second diary is called Follow up: TBRNews and Brian Harring.

So, to sum up to this point. TBRNews.org is a scam website. It promotes conspiracy theories and made-up stories as truth. Why? Well, I have my own theories on this. The theory I like best is a comment posted to this story from 2002 and can be found here:

Right Wing Propagandists

by Fight the Right Tuesday December 10, 2002 at 01:05 PM

Rivero, What Really Happened, Go off, Dandelion, Gordon Thomas are essentially all part of an inbred and incestuous network of Right Wing propagandists and disinformation artists.

They included not only the standard Hard Right outlets like Newsmax but also Christian Fascist moupieces like Dandelion.

Their political function and agenda in general is to act as a phony opposition or Trojan Horse media specifically targetted towards those people who question the official story. If you study the disinformation put out by these propagandists, you will see a similar pattern in that they question the official story or version of events–only to carefully spin the issue in a way which just so happens to reinforce their own Right Wing agendas and political campaigns.

In particular with respect to 9-11, most of the sites have tried to seize upon obvious holes and lies in the official story about 9-11 in order to direct and deflect blame AWAY from the Bush Regime and American State in general towards some foreign bogeyman or patsy.

The bottom line is that these pseudo-alternative media outlets set up by the Right Wing have the effect of being classic CIA style psyops operations. They question the official story, only to steer and focus attention away from the more fascistic political factions which support the American military-corporate complex onto a suitable “enemy” foreign or domestic.

I have spent countless hours researching this aspect of the story and found a disturbing link between my research on TBRNews (specifically how it relates to Harring’s current threats) and the story referenced above. Also, the person who wrote the story above calls himself S. Boyle and I can find nothing from him past April of 2003 when he stopped writing on his blog. If you care to read a further entry of S. Boyle on the harassment he got in early 2003 concerning his research, you can see that here.

Anyway, on to Brian Harring. Brian is a computer geek who works on Linux stuff (I won’t even begin to describe it, I’m not that computer literate!). Brian knew Peter Stahl (one of the many pseudonyms used by Walter Storch, editor of TBRNews) a few years ago and lost touch. He became aware that his name was being used on the military deaths story because he began getting e-mails from readers who googled his name trying to track him down. He then googled TBRNews and Walter Storch and came across my original diary where he recognized the name Peter Stahl as someone he once knew. He then e-mailed me wanting to know if I knew how to contact Mr. Stahl. This was when I wrote the second diary on the subject. I did some independent checking, made a few calls and have determined that the computer-geek Brian Harring is who he says he is. And he is NOT the one who wrote the TBRNews story.

Brian then contacted (via e-mail) Peter Stahl to get him to cease and desist using his name on the story. What ensued was a series of e-mails back and forth between the two. Brian then catalogued the whole story on his blog, complete with copies of all the e-mails and background on his past relationship with Pete Stahl.

His latest entry along with another e-mail to me today details the fact that he is now being threatened by Mr. Stahl and the “publisher” who is supposedly going to write a book based on “Brian Harring’s” DOD findings.

Now, the tie-in to the story from 2002 that I reference above is important to why the theory quoted above makes some sense. The so-called publisher for this current book is a woman named Carol Adler from Dandelion Books. It’s clear when you google her or Dandelion that this is a sham on-line publishing operation, as evidenced here. This is also the organization tied to S. Boyle’s story from 2002 where he found evidence of umbrella ownership with a number of these conspiracy-pushing websites. I think TBRNews is also one of these websites and part of this umbrella organization which S. Boyle identifies as Great Dominion. What I don’t know is who is behind it all. Or is it simply coincidence that Stahl is trying to get this fake book published by Dandelion Books?

Perhaps this is something e-Pluribus Media would like to dig into. I think there is a story here, but I have limited resources, any help would be appreciated.

Thanks!

Niger Forgery and Michael Ledeen

For all of the many details and connections related to the Niger forgeries, please go to wikipedia’s page for details, timelines and links. I don’t want to bulk up the diary unecessarily….

Also, Josh Marshall mentions it again in a recent entry…

My thoughts are below concerning Michael Ledeen being the person who was behind the forgery of the documents.

 
From the Alternet interview with former counterterrorism chief, Vincent Cannistaro:

Well, Ambassador Wilson publicly refuted the claims — particularly the 16 words in the President’s State of the Union address that the Iraqis were trying to buy significant quantities of uranium from Niger. That document, I understand, was fabricated … it originally came out of Italian intelligence, I think SISME, or SISDE–I’m not sure which one.

It was SISME, yeah. …

[D]uring the two-thousands when we’re talking about acquiring information on Iraq. It isn’t that anyone had a good source on Iraq–there weren’t any good sources. The Italian intelligence service, the military intelligence service, was acquiring information that was really being hand-fed to them by very dubious sources. The Niger documents, for example, which apparently were produced in the United States, yet were funneled through the Italians.

Do we know who produced those documents? Because there’s some suspicion …

I think I do, but I’d rather not speak about it right now, because I don’t think it’s a proven case …

If I said “Michael Ledeen” ?

You’d be very close…

What I didn’t know until today was that there was a companion piece to the forged Yellowcake document that was also a forgery. A quote from this source says:

…included with the yellowcake documents was a completely over-the-top memo in which all the countries under sanctions conspired together to have the sanctions lifted.

Here is a link to more information on the companion piece.

Now, in terms of a timeline, we know the Niger forgeries were given to the US Embassy in Rome in October 2002. So, was Michael Ledeen, neo-con extroadinaire, resposible for the forgery?

Well, I think it’s curious that in September 2002 (one month before the Niger forgeries were provided to the US Embassy, with the companion forgery), Ledeen wrote an article for the National Review where he says in the last paragraph the following:

Let’s hope they’ve learned their lesson and realize that Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Saudi Arabia are now working together against us.

Now this is not conclusive evidence of any sort, but it does strike me as curious that a month before the forged companion piece was “given” to the US Embassy in Rome, Ledeen was giving a heads up to a conspiracy of Middle Eastern countries in the National Review. If he was behind the forgery, the acceptance of the companion letter as a valid document would have more legitimacy if it was mentioned previously….

Newsweek on Plame story: "The Rove Factor?"

Sorry for the short diary, and if it’s already been posted (I didn’t see it anywhere…), let me know and I’ll remove this one.

The story oddly enough is written by Michael Isikoff who, if you recall was the co-author of the Gitmo flushing the Koran down the toilet allegation that was vociferously condemned by the White House. I have to wonder if that wasn’t a pre-emptive strike to discredit Isikoff now that this story has come out.

It’s apparently slated for the July 11, 2005 issue of Newsweek. Go to the link and give it a 5-star rating at the bottom of the article. This needs to be pushed!

Follow up: TBRNews and Brian Harring

As mentioned in my previous diary of earlier today, I received an e-mail from a so-called Brian Harring. You may or may not recognize the name, but he is the “author” of the well-debunked story out of tbrnews.org concerning 9000 dead GI’s.

If you haven’t read the other diary, I strongly encourage you to do so. There is quite a web being woven with this story.

Here is the link to the other diary:

WARNING: Beware the “Voice from the White House”
The following is the e-mail that I got from Brian Harring:

From: “Brian Harring”
To: me
Sent: Monday, June 20, 2005 10:19 PM
Subject: entry on pete stahl

Hola,
Been doing some digging attempting to track down pete’s email addie
(contact info in general), and came across your entry-
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/4/15748/99064

So… straight to the point, got any contact info for Pete?  I’m just
a wee bit curious why he’s slapped my name on

http://www.tbrnews.org/Archives/a1661.htm

aside from the fact pete lives with an old friend of mine, and seems
to be trading on my name for google juice (fun fun).

Thanks in advance, although frankly, whatever is going on with pete
I’m a bit inclined to stay out of, mainly after tracking him down and
poking him to stop using my name since I have no involvement, nor care
to have any involvement.
~harring

I removed mine and his e-mail addresses from above.

Initially, I didn’t know what to make of it. I immediately thought to myself that, as with the Voice from the White House, that
Walter Storch=Peter Stahl=Gregory Douglas=Brian Harring.

But then I searched the e-mail address of the person who sent me the e-mail and came to discover that he is a Linux developer, 23 years old, from Madison, Wisconsin. He used to be an IT student assistant in the Genetics department at the University of Wisconsin and I did find a picture of him.

Just in case this young guy IS innocent in all of this, I’m not going to post links to all of the information on him I have uncovered, nor will I post his picture. However, during my research, this young man seems to have disappeared. He left his position with the University of Wisconsin sometime last year and I can find no record of him at all. Also, public records seem to stop in 2003. This may be nothing given his age of 23. If he’s just a geek at a computer, there could very well be very few records concerning him on the internet.

What concerns me though is the tone of his e-mail. He seems to know “Pete” Stahl. In my original diary, I used the name Peter, not Pete. Also, if “Pete” lives with a friend of his, then why not get Pete’s contact info from the friend? Why e-mail some nobody like me who wrote a diary about it? I did reply to his e-mail to ask those very questions and haven’t gotten a response back yet. But now I have conflicting gut feelings…

The e-mail sure smells like Storch/Stahl/Douglas. But if Storch/Stahl/Douglas is an old man (as my previous diary would indicate), then how is it that a 23 year-old Linux developer geek seems to know him or be familiar with him? Something just isn’t making sense here and I can’t put my finger on it.

I’m wondering if the whole TBRNews schtick isn’t some type of propaganda machine being run by a number of people who put stories out there hoping the liberal media will grab on and make asses of themselves. It’s difficult for me to believe this is all the work of one man. Many of the stories on TBRNews are incredibly detailed and close to the truth (but not quite). But who’s funding the operation? The white supremacist revisionist people like Willis Carto who has known connections to the Douglas persona? Could Rove have a hand in it? I haven’t seen anything that would indicate that except that I wouldn’t put it past him! I just don’t know and I find it all very strange…

I’m hoping some of you here might have some thoughts…

WARNING: Beware the "Voice from the White House"

The following is a diary I posted on May 4, 2005 at dailyKos. I’m posting it here as a primer to a diary I plan to write tonight. A seriously bizarre thing happened to me yesterday. Do you recognize the name Brian Harring? Well guess what? I got an e-mail from him… But I’ll leave that story for tonight, this re-posting is just the primer…
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/5/4/15748/99064

May 4, 2005

I have seen reference occasionally to “news” reports that apparently come from a White House insider. These reports are titled “The Voice of the White House” and are being put out there by TBRNews. The latest installement is all about Gannon (as are many previous postings).

According to TBR News, this “source” is “a reporter with access to the White House and Presidential press briefings.” I began reading some of these reports from when they began back in March of 2004 and, while they are entertaining and sometimes convincing, something smelled bad. So I started to dig….

I think I should first start with TBR News itself. From their website, in the About Us section, the editor calls himself Walter Storch and says that TBR News originally came from the Barnes Review magazine. I have since come to discover, through two sources (one from the CIA and the other from a historical revisionist named Germar Rudolf, that Walter Storch is one of many pseudonyms used by Peter Stahl, a.k.a. Gregory Douglas. So, who is Gregory Douglas?

Well, let’s just say I’ve waded through so many filthy revisionist websites today that I feel almost sick. In essence, it’s all about anti-semitism and the holocost was a hoax shit. Regardless, I plugged my nose, took some gravol, and plowed my way through to find some very interesting information.

It appears Gregory Douglas (or Peter Stahl, or Walter Storch, or ….) is a very elusive character. The following are a few of the things written on him:

From http://www.vho.org/GB/c/GR/StahlDouglas.html#ftn33

During our first conversation in 1994, Dr. Sudholt informed me that Gregory Douglas was the pseudonym of an American writer with connections to American secret services; early in 2001, Mr. Douglas contacted me by telephone in the US. He said he had gotten my number from the Washington revisionist Andrew Gray, since deceased, and that Gray had described me as a rising star and new leader in the Revisionist movement. Mr. Douglas obviously felt a great need to talk to someone. Since I was entirely alone and a good listener, he called me more and more frequently, until he was calling every day and expounding on God, the world, and his action packed life. Some of his tales were truly wild and far-fetched, concerning his dealings with high ranking dignitaries and the underground, in which he always emerged as the hero. Since his lengthy tales helped familiarize me with American colloquial language, I let him talk as much as he wanted. Thanks to my sheeplike patience and his need to talk endlessly, Douglas developed so much confidence in me that he invited me to his home, where he revealed some of his most intimate secrets.[10]

Let me summarize what I learned about him.

After we had become well acquainted, Douglas confessed to me that his real name was Peter Stahl, and he showed me his identification papers. He said he often used the name of his illegitimate son, however. In 1993, this son had begun writing newspaper articles about Gestapo-Müller. This had inspired him (Stahl) to publish the articles in book form. His son had signed the contract with the US publisher and had also received the royalties.

He said that he himself had been born in Germany in 1933. Because of hard times in Germany his parents emigrated to the US in 1934; but finding conditions in the US even worse than in Germany, they gave him up for adoption. Eventually, he was adopted by a German American family. As a young man he researched his parentage and learned that his mother maiden name was Müller and that here family roots went back to the German-French region of Alsace.

Stahl was strongly influenced by his adoptive grandfather, a staunch German nationalist; and since early childhood, Stahl had a strong interest in everything that had to do with Germany and the Third Reich. The defeat of Germany in WWII did not dampen his enthusiasm. In his youth, he began collecting and dealing in National Socialist memorabilia, with which he soon developed an intimate familiarity. This trade became lucrative, as there was a huge market for NS memorabilia from the fifties to the seventies. He progressed from Hitler paintings to other art and sculpture, becoming an artist and art dealer along the way.

In 1963, his predilection for all things German and his admiration for the Third Reich brought him in contact with a German war veteran who introduced himself as a fighter pilot and later confided that he had been a member of the Führer’s honor squadron (Führer-Begleitstaffel). After some time, this pilot introduced Stahl to a friend who later revealed his real identity: Gestapo-Chef Heinrich Müller. A great surprise developed from the discussion of Stahl’s family background, as it turns out that Heinrich Müller’s family originates from the region of Alsace, had a sister with exactly the same name as Stahl’s mother, who happened to have emigrated to the U.S. in the year given by Stahl. A comparison of Stahl’s family documents with those in the possession of Heinrich Müller reveals that Stahl is indeed Müller’s nephew.

Whoa!! OK, this writer is a revisionist himself, so take THAT with a grain of salt. Anyway, Douglas apparently wrote some books on Muller and on the JFK assassination, most of which gets debunked but still sits in the libraries of the most die-hard conspiracy theorists out there.

In other places, I have read that he is in the FBI witness protection program, that he was in the secret service, etc.. In his own words, as shown in this e-mail and this e-mail, he says he lives in France and used to live in Vancouver. He also says he knows the owners of the Barnes Review but they have nothing to to with TBR News (I’ll get to those connections in a minute).

Two gentlemen have been extremely critical of Douglas’ books, one man named Mark Weber of IHR and the other a gentleman called David Irving. They’ve had plenty to say about Douglas and his writings. And Douglas apparently despises both of them. Which brings to mind another quote from the Rudolf paper:

Stahl has a terrible reputation for dealing ruthlessly with those who make his life difficult. He has ways of ruining their economic and social lives by means which are legal and yet very effective. As a trained secret agent with many influential connections he has both the abilities and opportunities to do this. He seems to derive real pleasure from carrying on private feuds.

It was this quote that made me realize that the Voice from the White House that TBR claims to get the information from is actually Stahl/Douglas/Storch himself. Here is a quote from the February 28, 2005 installment, where the “source” says:

Here is the Guckert/Gannon website that sets forth both his fury at being tossed out of the White House like a dog that pissed on the floor and his monumental ego. These following rants sound like something concocted by failed British revisionist, David Irving, who used to put out a pathetic website as well, that informed dozens of people about his daily meals, pets, bowel habits and favorite television programs.

This, along with other things, leads me to believe that Stahl/Douglas/Storch is actually writing these things himself. There is no “source” in the White House sending e-mails to TBR News. This whacko is making it up as he goes along. Why? God only knows….

Finally, his connection to Willis Carto, owner of the Barnes Review, an extreme right wing hate-type site, is not in dispute either. Although his association to Carto seems to be exclusively through the pseudonym Gregory Douglas. This article fron the Southern Poverty Law Center really says it all: ever wonder where the theory came from that Bush knew about 911 ahead of time? Well, here you go. A real group of crackers here.

In the end, it worries me that this twerp is getting in there on the Gannon story. I would caution anyone who is seriously interested in the Gannon investigation to COMPLETELY AVOID citing anything from TBR or the so-called “Voice From the White House”. There is nothing that will discredit the Gannon story quicker than having these people invlolved.

Thank you….

UPDATE: Here is my second diary Follow up: TBRNews and Brian Harring

China buying up North America?

First off, let me say that I am so excited to have found the booman tribune…. I was a loyal Kos diarist until today. Lately, the bickering there about being “reality-based” was getting beyond annoying and then, this mornings’ “orange blast” when I checked the Kos site pushed me over the edge… So, here I am.

Anyway, on to my diary. We have all been aware that China has been progressing under the radar quite nicely over the past few years, particularly given the distraction that is Iraq and the War on Terror. However, I have always been careful to pay attention to news related to China and what they’re up to.

The following CNN/Money article highlights a few things, but I will expand my thoughts below the fold.

money.cnn.com
The two main topics related to China that I feel are most important are the currency pegging discussion, which has been given plenty of coverage, and the Chinese move to buy assets in North America, which has not been covered in depth.

With respect to the currency pegging, I have long thought that if China went free float, the US dollar would eventually tank. I won’t get into my thesis long list of reasons as to why I think this, I’ll just leave it as my opinion for this diary. The conventional wisdon, on the other hand, tends to favour the theory that a free float will help the US dollar. This is the opinion of people like Snow and some well-respected economists. Even Greenspan has toted that line, although not with much enthusiasm.

You’ll note a quote from the article linked above that says, “But he (Greenspan) also questioned the idea that a higher-valued yuan would give the U.S. economy the boost that proponents expect.” Doesn’t really sound like Greenspan is all that enthused about the free float idea! I think it is all tied in with the amount of US debt that China owns and politics. Those two combined are what will determine whether the move to free float will be helpful or hurtful to the US dollar. And given the bunch in charge of the politics of the equation (Bush and company), I’m not overly optimistic that the dollar will bounce…

Second, to the slow but sure acquisition of North American assets by the Chinese. The article mentions two such stories; the purchase of Unocal by a state-owned Chinese outfit and a Chinese appliance-maker joining in the bid for Maytag. I have another personal story to add to this trend.

I work in real estate in eastern Canada (the Maritime provinces). Trust me, it’s out of the way, out in the middle of nowhere land here. But guess what? Chinese delegations have been coming here non-stop for the past year, courting small municipal governments. They offer tons of money to buy up real estate, they will fund huge City projects, from hotels to office building. My company has recently signed a contract with a group of Chinese buyers (negotiated by City officials) to develop land all over Atlantic Canada for commercial use.

But is all of this really about expanding China’s market horizons? Or is there something more co-ordinated going on? Are they building political leverage by buying up real assets? China and Japan together already own almost 40% of US government debt ($1.3 trillion as of June 2004 according to the IMF. I’ve read recently that it is even higher now, but I can’t find a link for it…). That alone gives them the leverage to tell George Bush to go fuck himself, and he’d probably have to! Yet here they are, buying up more and more while Bush is galavanting around in the Middle East!

And so I say in closing: Beware the Chinese.