Word: westly
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...While the revenue of state and local governments are falling, their obligations are not. On average, states have funded only 83% of what they owe or will owe to their retired workers. Many states have done a much worse: West Virginia, Road Island, Connecticut and Oklahoma all have less than 60% of their retiree benefits paid for. "The number of state funding ratios at the low end is startling," says Peter Hayes, who heads BlackRock's municipal bond management committee. "The prospect for even greater liabilities is a reasonable scenario if the country becomes trapped in a prolonged recession...
...More ambitiously, against the backdrop of a weakened West, Beijing sees an opportunity to assert itself globally. China has promised to buy International Monetary Fund bonds to bolster the organization, provided it gets a greater say in the IMF, and it has called for the creation of a new international reserve currency to replace the greenback. Though this idea is unlikely to ever become reality, just by floating the possibility, Beijing is signaling to the world that it wants to be a major player...
...Beijing is also taking political advantage of the global economic meltdown. Western countries are strikingly reticent these days about criticizing China's human-rights abuses, not least, perhaps, because Beijing has, for the first time, started warning the West not to take for granted its massive investments in their currencies and bonds. Capitalizing on this grace period, China has shored up its ties to repressive states such as Iran by signing a $3 billion natural-gas deal, challenged American ships off the coast of China and cracked down hard in Tibet for the 50th anniversary of the 1959 uprising...
...China's leaders are using the crisis to point out what they regard as flaws in Western capitalism. On a visit to Europe in January, Premier Wen Jiabao called China a "great power" and then criticized "an unsustainable model'' of development in the West that partnered a lack of savings and "blind pursuit of profit." Vice President Xi Jinping, on a recent trip to Mexico, blasted his hosts for harping on China's human-rights record, saying "there are a few foreigners, with full bellies, who have nothing better to do than try to point fingers at our country...
...could hurt Beijing. Time abroad could distract China's leaders from their pressing domestic problems - for all its sophistication, the Chinese Communist Party has failed to develop any effective local troubleshooters other than Wen. For years, moreover, Chinese nationalists have been calling for exactly a tougher line toward the West. Now, Beijing's new aggressiveness overseas could embolden the nationalists - a trend that would alienate China's neighbors...