BUPKIS

Etymology: Yiddish– lima beans.

Noun: bupkis, absolutely nothing; nothing of value, or substance.

EXAMPLE: Treasury Secretary Paulson went to China and all we got when he came back was bupkis.

Related terms diddly , diddly-squat , peanuts , squat , zilch

 Yessiree, Hank Paulson went to Beijing this week and came back empty-handed.  No luck whatsoever regarding illegal subsidies or currency manipulation.  But as he explained, he wasn’t in a hurry to chat with his counterparts about the undervalued Yuan: “we do not talk about how fast is fast.”  Thankfully Paulson vowed to crack down on “economic nationalism” in both countries.

This latest, fruitless round of talks shows that neither Paulson nor the administration is serious about addressing the currency issue.  But what’s desperately needed is strong leadership.  In yesterday’s Washington Times, Robert Scott of the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) made the very good point that what’s needed now is a serious, multinational effort along the lines of the Plaza Accord pushed by Ronald Reagan in 1985. 

Without serious concerted action like that of 20 years ago, we’ll simply see more useless chit-chat diplomacy.

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This entry was posted on Friday, December 14th, 2007 at 12:53 am and is filed under Holding China Accountable, Currency Manipulation, Enforcing Trade Laws. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.