....China?

Back when I was just a teenager living in Southern California, there was a severe recession, along with double-digit inflation, shortages of common goods like gas, flour, aluminum, paper, sugar, coffee, etc.

At that time, Japan's post-World War II economy was zooming along with no end in sight. Japanese businessmen (there was no such thing as a Japanese businesswoman, still might not be) were buying up anything and everything on the West Coast, including skyscrapers and the Pebble Beach Golf Course. The joke in junior high and high school was that soon we would be the United States of Japan.

Japan's good fortune only lasted another decade, taking them into their 1990s recession and what is commonly referred to as Japan's "lost decade" since it took them about ten years to work their way out of it. President Obama has decided that he didn't think the American people wanted to take ten years to work their way out of the current United States recession. Whether what he has done to atttempt to shorten that ten years is justified or works or doesn't work will have to remain an unknown at the present time.

With some of the news lately, though, it looks like it's China's turn to try to take over the United States. Someone once said, "If you build it, they will come." Well, here are the latest two things that Americans have built that China is coming for:

1. The Cleveland Cavaliers, they of the National Basketball Association, perhaps soon to be the United States National Basketball Association of China, have signed an agreement with an investment group from China which would allow the group to acquire up to 15% of the Cavaliers Operating Company, which also operates Quicken Loans Arena. I wonder why they didn't go after the Houston Rockets and Yao Ming. What this might do for Cleveland is give them the marketing power in China, a nation of one billion people, so that Cleveland has the money to keep Lebron James with the team, a team in a very small market relative to the Lakers, Celtics, Knicks, Bulls, etc. Lebron James has stated that he wants to become the first billionaire athlete, so just one dollar donated from all one billion Chinese citizens (sorry, Yao; you'll have to find someone else for the Rockets) could get him there. Cleveland Cavaliers Presdient Len Komoroski called the venture "an exciting new opportunity." Can we say greed?
2. General Motors apparently has found a buyer for its Hummer brand: The Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Company Ltd., a machinery company in western China. For those too young to remember, the Hummer started as the military's Humvee and evolved into a rich person's gas-guzzling, highway-rolling tank. I wonder if there are any military secrets in those old Hummer/General Motor vaults and computers.

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This week's posts (they'll open in a new window):

1. Tips for buying pets in California - 6/2/09
2. Contact information for East County Chambers of Commerce - 6/1/09
3. Volunteer opportunities in East San Diego County - 6/1/09
4. It's not whether you win or lose.... - 6/1/09