ABC News’ Sunlen Miller reports that Barack Obama doesn’t seem to want to talk about the Olympics or Hillary Clinton’s call for a boycott of the opening ceremonies on August 8, 2008. On Monday, Obama said there “should be consequences” if the Chinese government does not take immediate steps to respect the human rights of the Tibetan people. But on Wednesday, when asked about US policy regarding China’s human rights abuses in Tibet and Darfur, the Olympics went unmentioned:
“It’s very hard to tell your banker that he’s wrong,” Obama said, after talking about the need to restore America’s stance in the world, “And if we are running huge deficits and big national debts and we’re borrowing money constantly from China, that gives us less leverage. It give us less leverage to talk about human rights, it also is giving us less leverage to talk about the uneven trading relationship that we have with China.”
Both ABC and the Politico’s Ben Smith note that Obama may have been loathe to mention the Olympics because his home base of Chicago is competing to host the 2016 games and that one of Obama’s top campaign advisors and close friends, Valerie Jarrett, is the vice-chair of Chicago’s bid committee. Both missed that billionaire businesswoman Penny Pritzker, Obama’s national finance chair, is also on the committee.
Moreover, the notion that China is our banker ignores the reality of the global financial markets. But we cannot expect Obama to know any more about that than he does about US equity markets. After all, he is busy running for president.
(h/t Memeorandum.)
Update: darwins notes in the comments that Obama has since said that President Bush should boycott the opening ceremonies of if the Chinese do not take steps to stop the genocide in Darfur and respect the human rights of Tibetan people. I would have thought that ABC News would have updated its original post, but apparently not.  The larger point about Obama’s economic illiteracy remains unchanged, but at least Obama is demonstrating he can speak out against the interests of his own bankers, which is a start.
may be that Chang guy is correct , technically and morally.
But in reality Obama is right, one does not want to piss off our banker(which Bush demonstrated lately when asked about Olympics, was much more incoherent then Obama about it).
Another important thing you missed Karl-manufacturing of goods consumed here. If tomorrow, hypothetically China will decide to stop producing furniture, fabrics, etc, we will have shortage of the goods , really.
Our businesses are very tight with China now . We both need each other ….
Obama Says Bush Should Boycott Olympics If….*
oh. I could probably be more stupid if I really really worked at it I guess. Is way past bedtime.
sashal,
If Chang is right, technically, Obama cannot be right in reality. And think about what you are writing:
And in that scenario, we buy our cheap clothes at a marginally higher cost from another country, while China’s economy collapses.
And if we are running huge deficits and big national debts and we’re borrowing money constantly from China, that gives us less leverage.
Yeah, because we have China’s money and they have what?
The Chinese are not dupes. They buy our Treasuries because they want to – probably because they are the safest investment in the World. And, as I recall, China holds only about $300 billion of our debt. Old ladies just might hold more.
By chance, I’ve also heard Bob Brinker laugh that “banker-leverage” meme out of the water.
The Obami are flat-out stupid.
oh. ack. Just to be clear, at #3 what happened was I checked back over the post and saw your first link was a politicalradar link and thought my #2 was redundant and I’d gotten confuzzled. Meaning #3 was me thinking I had been stupid, not no one else. I was really really tired. Baracky for real want a US whose hegemony is based on global capital flow? Ha. Him’s funny. Michelle has different ideas about pies.
*wants* … still waking up.