Tuesday, March 3, 2009

What views do Michael Pettis and others censor?

1) I expressed a view at Michael Pettis blog that China has, in fact bottomed out, when he wrote his essay on “Hooray! China has bottomed out” (which was a sarcastic title). Immediately, I was banned from the Michael Pettis blog! I didn’t even realize it for some time, but his website just wouldn’t load on my system. I thought this was because of some temporary problem with his site. Then one day I tried loading his site from other systems and it was perfectly accessible.And note that I hardly made 2-3 comments in all at Pettis’ and none of them had anything with good or bad manners.
2) At Paul Krugman’s blog on the New York Times web site, I pointed out that nationalizing US banks can make unfriendly foreign governments nationalize the overseas subsidiaries of those banks. Prior to making this comment, my comments - again, very few - would appear as ” awaiting moderation” by default. Some of them would later get approved and published or not; but all of them on my upload would appear as "awaiting moderation". After I uploaded this view on bank nationalization, I no longer see my uploaded comments pending moderation at Krugman’s New York Times blog.
Both of these illustrate to me that I’m touching on topics that are perhaps too sensitive. Pettis probably has an agenda to propagandize against the Chinese exchanges rising, and Krugman to demand nationalization of banks. Though I’m just an individual investor my views were too controversial to be allowed on those sites.
In Setser’s case it appears to me that the objection is from the Council on Foreign Relations mandarins, and less from Setser; though again I could be wrong.
In any case, one thing I’m very sure of is that my particular IP has been pinpointed and banned by Pettis.
Update: I've edited this post to reflect that Paul Krugman writes for the New York Times, so the newspaper might be exercising at least as much control over content at his blog as he does. This insight is based on the comment below.

7 comments:

  1. Indian Investor :

    PLS WALK the TALK.. enable anonymous commenting on your blog.

    We could haev a discussion here...

    ReplyDelete
  2. I am not sure about Pettis

    Krugman doesnt block comments..his NYT folks do..and out of his control. Believe me ...Paul is a areally nice guy.

    he would always welcome alternate view points

    ReplyDelete
  3. I didn't notice I hadn't enabled anonymous comments - have enabled that - thanks a lot.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Can I ask you a favour.

    I read your post on US Economy (in bullet points).

    could you do the same for Indian Economy.

    I am interested to know what is driving the GDP in India these days.

    I basically like peeking into the future and I am of the feeling that Indias troubles are only starting now.

    the services sector has a lagging effect to manufacturing sector in terms of overall declines.

    Let me ask you this. I could actually see a negative GDP QoQ for 3 rd quarter 09. Do you agree / disagree ?

    ReplyDelete
  5. GE. Someone made a 52,000 share put bet it goes bk by the third week in June. See denninger site for details.

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  6. Indian Investor : When Toyota has the alm bowl, can TATA MOTORS, MM, AHSOK LEYLAND survive ?

    ReplyDelete
  7. India's forex reserves are not large enough to sustain huge increases in imports and huge falls in exports for a long time. Either there have to be long term external loans, or there could be a balance of payments crisis if the trend of rising imports and falling exports continues. I see this as the main risk to the Indian economy.
    But I differ on the GDP impact of the global financial crisis, especially if the US acquires a working credit system. Please see my post below.
    I'll try to provide a break up of India's GDP and what seems to be driving it.

    ReplyDelete