Tell It To Al

China may sometimes seem to be calling out for a new global currency, but it is pretty much stuck with the dollar, according to Benn Steil and Dinah Walker of Council on Foreign Relations.

Click here to read their latest blog post: “Dr. Strangelove: How China Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Dollar.”

They say China’s holdings of U.S. securities break down to about $1,000 per resident.

“Any major fall in demand for dollar-denominated assets would cause a collapse in the global purchasing power of China’s massive dollar hoard,” the write.

Can’t have that. So U.S. consumers will keep buying cheap Chinese goods, and the dollars they send to China will keeping flow back to the U.S., providing cheap credit to keep the cycle going for years to come.

“Neither partner in this monetary marriage is, therefore, likely to file for divorce any time soon.”

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Steve Jobs may have been a lovable technological visionary, but his dream was built on sweatshop labor, says Mike Daisey, a monologuist who went undercover at Chinese plants where Apple devices are made. Click here to read a fascinating report on Daisey from the Associated Press.

Daisey says he thought iPads and iPhones were built by robots. Nope. They’re put together by people willing to risk crippling repetitive motion disorders and suicidal depressions for dirt pay.

I discussed the issue  last year on Fox Business (see above), and click here to read the column I wrote on FoxConn Technology Group, maker of gizmoz by Apple and many other computer and electronics companies. Bottom line: The gadgets we have come to love and rely upon come with a price – and we’re not the ones paying for it.

How much oil does a nation need to produce to warrant a U.S. intervention?

Somewhere between 500,000 and 1.8 billion barrels per day, according the U.S. News and World report columnist and blogger Rick Newman. Click here to read Newman’s analysis. “Wherever the next bombs fly, one safe bet is that the ultimate target will be oil,” he writes.

As the Middle East increasingly descends into chaos, Newman tries to forecast which countries will see interventions and which won’t based on daily oil output, alone.

“Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, Oman, and Egypt are probably safe from Western intervention,” he writes.  “Qatar and Kuwait are blissed out on oil money, with little likelihood of upheaval. Algeria is a wild card that could end up like Libya, if its dictator loses control. Iraq and Saudi Arabia are both governed by regimes friendly to the United States. … And Iran is the most problematic big oil producer, but it’s also the riskiest to tangle with.”

G7 nations take down the yen. And some states talk about selling more cigarettes to raise revenues. I talk about it with Matt Flener on Denver’ NBC affiliate 9News:

Want to be a billionaire?

Try becoming the dictator of a Middle Eastern nation. Seems to work as well as any other strategy outlined by those on the Forbes’ list of the world’s billionaires.

Click here to read my column in The Sunday Wall Street Journal.

If China was serious about assuaging our fears of commercial domination, it would buy more of our junk.

Click here to read what I mean.

While governments around the globe impose austerity programs, President Obama has been defending yet another move by the Federal Reserve to prop up the U.S. economy.

Flooding the world with dollars so far seems to have stabilized the U.S. economy, but at what cost? The world is watching, and wondering, ‘what’s next?’ Does U.S. financial audacity know any bounds?

Click here to read my column in The Sunday Wall Street Journal. And click here to read a draft report from the co-chairs of President Obama’s deficit commission. The commission has listed a lot of great ideas, but so far can’t agree on any of them.

Beyond kicking around the Taliban, killing poppy fields, and searching aimlessly for Osama Bin Laden, it’s never really been clear why we’re in Afghanistan.

Now it’s clear: $1 trillion worth of minerals.

We’re talking gold, copper,  cobalt, iron. The New York Times quoted a Pentagon memo saying Afghanistan could be “the Saudi Arabia of lithium.”

This isn’t a war for oil. It’s a war for lithium. You want laptops and cell phones, right?

Click here to read more from the Associated Press.

Afghanistan’s resources are vast enough to bring its economy into at least the 19th century and it will all be greaty booty for the lucky corporations that get their hands on it.

So was the war for lithium worth it? Depends on how long it goes on, and how much of Afghanistan’s resources are actually exploited. You’ll notice, for instance, we’re not getting a lot of oil out of Iran. You’ll also notice that the spoils of war do not often go back to the taxpayers who fund it.

The war in Afghanistan has cost us about $300 billion, and you can add another $70 billion a year on to that as it lingers on, according to 2009 U.S. Congressional figures. Since 2001, more than 1,100 Americans and 1,800 foreign troops have died in Afghanistan, and it remains a bloody cesspool.

The Taliban are still Talibanning and even getting support from Pakistan. Click here to read more about that from Reuters.