President Barack Obama's Asia tour, with stops in India, Indonesia, South Korea and Japan, has started.
As a good-bye wave before his trip, Obama's "Exporting Our Way to Stability" was published in The New York Times. The President set Washington's goal for the next five years: a doubling of exports. He added: "To do that, we need to find new customers in new markets for American-made goods. And some of the fastest-growing markets in the world are in Asia, where I’m traveling this week."
How is it possible to double America's sales to the world? Obama said, "We need to rebuild on a new, stronger foundation for economic growth. And part of that foundation involves doing what Americans have always done best: discovering, creating and building products that are sold all over the world."
Obama, probably inadvertently, reminded me of Susan George's 2007 article,"Of Capitalism, Crisis, Conversion and Collapse: The Keynesian Alternative". George argued, within the context of ecological crisis, that the only alternative to saying "apres moi le deluge" was government expenditure on a new and greener technology whose products "would have huge export value and could quickly become the world standard".
George continued, "There are also plenty of advantages in such an economy for working people. A huge ecological conversion is a job for a high-tech, high-skills, high-productivity, high-employment society."
So is Obama telling the US that Green is the way to both environmental and economic salvation? Or is he just saying, after this week's political setbacks amidst economic concerns, "It's Time to Make Money"?