January 7 - The Global Impact of China's Stock Market Turmoil; The More Important Concern, China's Currency; Michigan's Governor Poisoned Children to Cut Costs

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the suspension of trading on the Chinese stock market and the effect that uncertainties over the Chinese economy, along with increasing tension between Saudi Arabia and Iran and falling oil prices are having as global markets and Wall Street took a hammering today with the Dow down 392 points, its biggest loss in three months. First we go to China and speak with Scott Kennedy, the deputy director of the Freeman Chair in China Studies and the director of the Project on Chinese Business and Political Economy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The author of “Beyond the Middle Kingdom” and the forthcoming book “The Dragon’s Learning Curve: Global Governance in China”, we will discuss China’s dilemma in wanting more participation in the global economy but at the time not wanting to be subject to the  kind of market forces that brought about the 2008 crash.

Part 2

Then we hear from Victor Shih, a Professor of Political Science in the 21^st Century China Program in the School of Global Policy and Strategy at the University of California, San Diego. He joins us to discuss the more important issue than China’s stock market, the decline of China’s currency the renminbi which is at its lowest point in six years, and whether currency depreciation is being used to stimulate growth as currency weakness, economic slowdown and stock market turmoil combine to question how much the Chinese government is in control.

Part 3

Then finally we go to Flint, Michigan to speak with Lonnie Scott, the Executive Director of Progress Michigan, about the poisonous water from the contaminated Flint River that the citizens of Flint have been forced to drink over the past year because of austerity imposed on the city by the state’s Republican governor Rick Snyder. We  discuss the call by Flint’s most famous resident Michael Moore that Governor Snyder resign and be placed under arrest by the FBI for poisoning children in the name of cutting costs.