After all the sturm und drang from the unions and their allies over china's currency, specifically complaints that the Chinese are manipulating their currency, today reality ran headlong into the Obama Administration - or maybe the other way around. The Bush Administration was roundly derided for 8 consecutive years for refusing to find -- in its semi-annual Report to the Congress on International Economic and Exchange Rate Polices, as required by law - that the Chinese were manipulating their currency in order to make their exports artificially cheaper in the US and around the world.
So Obama campaigned on it, Treasury Secretary Geithner in his confirmation hearings (when they weren't king why he didn't pay his taxes) reinforced the point. Both said the Chinese were in fact manipulating their currency and b'gosh once they got hold of the levers of government they would say so.
...or not....
Today, in Geithner's report to Congress, he found that in fact China is not manipulating their currency after all. Who knew?
This is but one more reminder that politics is easy, governing is hard. All these pronouncements made in the heat of the campaign start to fade -- or get finessed -- once the rubber meets the road. Let's see if Obama bears the brunt of the same barrage suffered by his predecessor for making the identical finding.