Laughingstock

Well, one area in which nobody can say that Barack Obama isn't enjoying robust success is foreign policy.  He set out to reduce U.S. power and influence in the world and introduce "humility" into our foreign policy, and by golly, humiliation is what he is reaping:

Leaders of twenty major economies on Friday refused to endorse a U.S. push to get China to let its currency rise, keeping alive a dispute that has raised the specter of a global trade war amid criticism that cheap Chinese exports are costing American jobs. …

The biggest disappointment for the United States was the pledge by the leaders to refrain from “competitive devaluation” of currencies. Such a statement is of little consequence since countries usually only devalue their currencies — making it less worth against the dollar — in extreme situations like a severe financial crisis....

The crux of the dispute is Washington’s allegations that Beijing is artificially keeping its currency, the yuan, weak to gain a trade advantage. But the U.S. position has been undermined by its own recent policy of printing money to boost a sluggish economy, which is weakening the dollar.

The G-20′s failure to adopt the U.S. stand has also underlined Washington’s reduced influence on the international stage, especially on economic matters. Obama also failed to conclude a free trade agreement this week with South Korea.

Here's what The One was selling: "Punish the ChiComms for doing what we're now doing because they're making us do it, and by the way, y'all should start doing what we're doing, too."  And to think that it wasn't that long ago that we on the center-right laughed at and scorned the EUnuchs for being "unserious".  Well, actually, they still are, for the most part, but how we managed to pass them up with such comprehensive rapidity is still a dismaying sight to behold.

Oh, and here's a little blurb on Barry's bungling of that FTA:

Stephen Spruiell has some fun with the fact that negotiations over the US-Korea Free Trade Agreement have failed because Democrats, who usually tell us that free trade agreements must be stopped because they undermine labor and environmental regulations, are now claiming that South Korea's environmental standards are too stringent. "If the administration's message is incoherent, it's because the administration is not negotiating from a set of principles, but from an industry wish list," he writes. His conclusion:

The auto industry has already gotten enough help from this administration. How about some help for the rest of us now, in the form of a free-trade deal that would increase U.S. GDP by an estimated $10 billion to $12 billion per year? Obama talks a lot about all the bad things he inherited from his predecessor. But the U.S.-Korea deal was just fine the way he found it. If he can get Korea to loosen its emissions restrictions, then all to the good, say we free-marketeers. Maybe his next triumph could be to loosen them here.

If not, then he should drop his hypocritical objections to the deal and sign it. It would be nice to have a little economic stimulus that our kids won't have to pay back, with interest, someday.

Would it be unfair to suggest that perhaps Barack Obama doesn't WANT to sign that free trade agreement with South Korea?  Perhaps because he is morally opposed to any "wealth" that isn't "created" by Marxist-Alinskyist-approved "methods"?  After all, we can't have the SoKos "distributing" their wealth over here outside of The One's pre-emptive control, now can we?

And do you want some method behind the madness about the yuan?  Here you go:

The dispute over whether China and the United States are manipulating their currencies is threatening to resurrect destructive protectionist policies like those that worsened the Great Depression in the 1930s. The biggest fear is that trade barriers will send the global economy back into recession. A law the United States passed in 1930 that raised tariffs on imports is widely thought to have deepened the Great Depression by stifling trade.

Barack Obama desperately needs another crisis to exploit, increasingly because his presidency itself is becoming the crisis that his designated political "enemies" are already exploiting.  The Gulf oil spill didn't work, demagoguing Arizona's illegal immigration enforcement statute didn't work, Islamphobe-baiting over the Ground Zero Victory Mosque didn't work, now he's lost Congress, and his approval numbers continue to plummet.  And stories like this one on this G-20 debacle aren't going to help: