The US legislative farce

WHILE MOSTLY SHYING AWAY FROM THEIR DUTY to answer the increasingly loud calls of their own people, US politicians pretend to be serious about their economic woes by again playing the game of scapegoating China and yuan.

However, a protectionist US bill to get tough with China over its currency will not save many US jobs permanently lost to low-wage workers around the world in this era of globalization. Nor will it help solve the country's fundamental problems, which result from an extended period of overborrowing and overconsumption.

Worse, the fragile global economic recovery simply cannot afford the risk of an all-out trade war between the world's two largest economies, a conflict that the controversial US Senate bill on so-called currency manipulation by China has the potential to trigger.