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Tea Party redux

Nick Carey was invited on MSNBC last night to talk about his Tea Party special report. Here’s what he had to say:

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Hell hath no fury like a Tea Party scorned

Here’s what Nick Carey had to say today about his special report “Stuck between the Tea Party and a hard place.”

By Nick Carey

Not long after the battle over the 2011 fiscal budget in Washington ended in mid-April, I received a few emails from Tea Party groups expressing frustration with the apparent failure by the Republican Party establishment to follow through on promises that they would cut spending in that budget by $100 billion.

I passed on one of those emails to an editor in Washington and we agreed that it would be a worthwhile exercise to talk to Tea Party groups across the country to see if that frustration was widespread, or if it was merely restricted to a few groups.

My very first call was to a Tea Party member in the South whom I had talked to before for previous special reports on the movement. I told him about the emails I had received and asked if he was frustrated by the budget deal. His answer: “Frustrated? I’m f***ing angry!”

At that point, I knew I was onto something. Dozens more interviews followed with Tea Partiers in 20 states, with all of them to varying degrees expressing anger and disappointment at what they see as an act of betrayal by the Republican Party.

Tea Partiers worked hard for a Republican win last November, driven by rage at President Barack Obama’s health reforms and egged on by Republicans many of whom professed that they, too, were Tea Partiers who would fix the mess in Washington with massive spending cuts. That message was simple and clean cut.

Battling meltdowns, nuclear and fiscal, in Japan

Check out two special reports out of Tokyo today.

The first examines what has happened at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant since Friday’s massive quake: “Mistakes, misfortune, meltdown: Japan’s quake” (PDF version here)

 Here’s how one expert sums up the situation:

“They might have been prepared for an earthquake. They might have been prepared for a tsunami. They might have been prepared for a nuclear emergency, but it was unlikely that they were prepared for all three,” said Ellen Vancko, an electric power expert with the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Global Economics correspondent Alan Wheatley looks at the outlook for Japanese debt as the nation rebuilds in his special report: ”Why Japan will avert a fiscal meltdown”

Masaru Hamasaki, a senior strategist at Toyota Asset Management in Tokyo, said the severity of the challenge facing Japan should not be underestimated.

The numbers killed in last Friday’s quake centred on Sendai in northeastern Japan will far exceed the 6,400 toll from the 1995 temblor in Kobe.

China’s U.S. debt holdings make it a powerful negotiator

Worrying about the power China has over the U.S. as America’s largest foreign creditor has become a national pastime. It’s a bipartisan issue in Congress and a favorite subject among pundits lamenting the decline in U.S. influence around the world. But could China really use its Treasury purchases to shape U.S. policy? Diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks and obtained by Reuters suggest that has already happened.

Emily Flitter’s special report outlines a diplomatic flare-up between the two superpowers following the U.S. financial crisis. Chinese officials said they were worried about the safety of their U.S. investments. U.S. diplomats worked hard to ease the tensions, but the conflict ultimately led to the request of a personal favor by a top Chinese money manager in a meeting with U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

Dubai comeback already?

We went behind the scenes of Dubai’s debt debacle last November and found a much more sober city-state starting to rebuild itself from the $59 billion hole that was dug by the whizz kids who had powered its transformation. Loans don’t come as easy — particularly the nod and the wink of association with the royal family isn’t cutting it like it used to.

Some people see a connection between the crisis and the fact that Dubai has also started to tighten up on its trade with Iran, in line with broader international sanctions, but we’re not so sure about that.

What did come across loud and clear in our reporting is that the new-new Dubai is currently being led more by older, senior types who had been thrown off the ladder by the MBAs and the like on their way up. Some of the financial types we spoke to worried about this: we don’t need civil engineers, one said, we need financial engineers. It’ll be interesting to see how it plays out.