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The President is also receiving no credit for a major foreign policy success that will benefit our country for years to come: The development of much closer relations with India.

Like it or not, India and China have over one billion people EACH. We are third, with 300 million. To have friendly and productive relations with these two countries is sound policy.

Remember that Japan, Germany and South Korea at one point had VERY low wages and supplied us with cheap products. As those economies developed, their workers' wages rose -- in the case of South Korea, almost overnight as a result of political protests from workers who were not receiving their fair share.

Also remember that unions did NOT make the first steps to providing a great livelihood for workers here -- it was Henry Ford who paid workers well and created a prosperous working class.

China will eventually have to pay its workers better. Same with India.

Also remember that unions did NOT make the first steps to providing a great livelihood for workers here -- it was Henry Ford who paid workers well and created a prosperous working class.

Henry successfully introduced the production line. He went a step further, which blew out the brains of most economic theories of the time - his is the model for the efficiency-wage theory. In 1914, the $5 workday, a huge SUM for those times. Turnover fell, absenteeism fell, and the productivity rose, thereby lowering production costs.

I like talking about him. :)

You are so right in re India and China -- I think it will come. Perhaps not as quickly as some would like, but when I review the timeline between former President Nixon opening the pathway to China, and now -- For a country that HUGE, I think they are making progress rather, relatively, quickly. India is going to boom in a huge way and all indicators show they are hungry for the boom, and understand how the free market works, and have come to trust them.

I think President Bush's suggestion/proposal to China for them to allow Chinese citizens to direct their savings to their own choices is a good one. And, I think China is ready for it.

Culturally they battle internally, methinks, between the old way (under the table) and the newer way, upfront and on the table.