Tue:Their Cold, Hard Cash is Frozen

Chinese People Are Sticking Their Necks Out To Post This Stuff

How a U.S. embassy post about giraffes became an outlet for despair about China’s tumbling stock markets

The post by the U.S. Embassy in Beijing was about protecting wild giraffes in Africa. But social media users in China wanted to talk about something else: the state of the Chinese economy, especially its faltering stock markets.

Tens of thousands of users on Weibo, a popular Chinese social media platform, flocked to the post on the Beijing embassy’s official account over the weekend to express their anger and frustration as Chinese stock markets hit five-year lows.

“Who can save me? I went jobless for a long time and now I am in debt,” read one comment on the Friday post, which by Tuesday had been liked more than 751,000 times and received 171,000 comments.

China, the world’s second-largest economy after the United States, grew 5.2% last year, according to official data. But it faces a number of economic challenges, including a real estate downturn, high youth unemployment and a declining population.

A difficult 2023 for Chinese stocks has extended into the new year, with domestic markets recording some of their worst weeks in years. Last week, the Shanghai Composite Index hit its lowest point since 2019, as did the CSI 300 Index, which is made up of 300 blue-chip stocks listed in Shanghai and Shenzhen. On Tuesday, Chinese stocks recorded their largest one-day gain in two years with what some analysts say appeared to be help from state-backed investors.

In late January, state media reported that China would take more “forceful” measures to stabilize the economy and promote market confidence, citing a cabinet meeting led by Premier Li Qiang. Since the sell-off last week, the China Securities Regulatory Commission has also vowed to prevent “abnormal fluctuations” and crack down on market manipulation and “malicious short selling.”

Some users said the U.S. Embassy’s Weibo account had become a “Wailing Wall” for Chinese people’s economic concerns, referring to the site for Jewish pilgrimage and prayer near the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. In China, foreign social media accounts can offer more room for expression than those associated with economic regulators and other government agencies, whose comment sections may be more restricted or disabled entirely.

Immigrants, They Get the Job Done

Back in 2020, Stephen Miller, one of the architects of Trump’s immigration policies, told Trump supporters that one of the goals was to “turn off the faucet of new immigrant labor.” Remarkably, Trump issued an executive order meant to deny visas to highly skilled foreigners, many working in the tech sector. Miller and his boss apparently believed that this would mean more plum jobs for Americans, when what it would actually do was undermine American competitiveness in advanced technology.

So this seems like a good time to point out that negative views of the economics of immigration are all wrong. Far from taking jobs away, foreign-born workers have played a key role in America’s recent success at combining fast growth with a rapid decline in inflation. And foreign-born workers will also be crucial to the effort to deal with our country’s longer-term problems.

About that recent success: It has taken a while, but many observers are finally acknowledging that the United States has done extraordinarily well at recovering from the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. Inflation has faded away in much of the world, but the United States stands out for its ability to combine disinflation with vigorous economic growth. And one key to that performance has been rapid growth in the U.S. labor force, which has risen by 2.9 million since the eve of the pandemic four years ago.

How much of that growth was due to foreign-born workers? All of it. The native-born labor force declined slightly over the past four years, reflecting an aging population, while we added three million foreign-born workers.

Their Cold, Hard Cash is Frozen

Israeli banks have no choice but to honor an order from the U.S. authorities combating money laundering, terror, the drug trade and illegal arms dealings through financial sanctions. Israel is well aware of the need, because it is fighting Iran's nuclear proliferation in part through the economic sanctions imposed by the Americans. It knows that three Israeli banks in Israel – Hapoalim, Leumi and Mizrahi Tefahot – have gotten into trouble in the past for ignoring American rules when they helped their clients in the U.S. avoid paying taxes and had to pay heavy fines as a result. Since then, they have been very careful.

Therefore, when the Biden administration imposed sanctions on the four settlers – David Chai Chasdai, Einan Tanjil, Shalom Zicherman and Yinon Levi – Bank Leumi immediately froze Levi's account. The Postal Bank did the same with Chasdai's account. Bank Hapoalim has not yet announced any action involving the accounts of Tanjil and Zicherman, but the Bank of Israel has indicated that Hapoalim will do so as well.

The U.S. State Department determined that "Levi led a group of settlers who engaged in actions creating an atmosphere of fear in the West Bank. He regularly led groups of settlers from the Meitarim Farm outpost that assaulted Palestinian and Bedouin civilians, threatened them with additional violence if they did not leave their homes, burned their fields, and destroyed their property."

With a Friend Like Bibi, Who Needs Enemies

As US Secretary of State Antony Blinken shuttles across the Middle East in the hope of easing regional tensions and winding down the war in Gaza, far-right Israeli ministers are pulling in the opposite direction.

In recent days, two of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s most important ministers have attacked US President Joe Biden.

Itamar Ben Gvir, the national security minister, said Biden was hindering the offensive against Hamas and too focused on getting aid to civilians in Gaza. He suggested that, from Israel’s standpoint, Donald Trump would be a better president.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich then assailed Biden for imposing sanctions on half a dozen Jewish settlers in the West Bank. Blocking their access to bank accounts amounts to an “anti-Semitic campaign,” he said.

The two politicians have long been controversial and outspoken. But their blunt criticism of Biden — who visited Israel soon after Hamas’ attack on Oct. 7 and has consistently defended its right to wage war in Gaza — underscores the strains between the two countries’ leaderships.

Netanyahu responded by thanking Biden for his steadfast support and for US efforts to free more than 100 hostages held in Gaza by Hamas.

But he refused to condemn either of his coalition partners. And, like Smotrich, the prime minister rejected the sanctions, which the US says are to stop violence against Palestinians by settlers.