Yeah...and China knows what would happen if their biggest consumer lost confidence in their products and started purchasing elsewhere.

These 'news snippet' programs never cease to amaze me with the level of short sightedness many of these people seem to exhibit.

Creepy clip indeed. Besides that though, I think it's obvious that something has to give sooner or later. You simply cannot have cheap goods, awesome quality, and mass production all in the same bin.

I really thought you were kidding when you made the quote... yeah that was a tad scary.

or China is to start making, say, toys that don't have lead in them or food that isn't poisonous, their costs of production are going to go up...

FOOD = POISON = GOOD?!?!?!

Lady, feel free to eat all the poison food you want. The rest of us wanna live.

didn't china loan the US trillions for our national debt?

Wow---just wow.

Yes, China has loaned us a ton of money and they also make sure to keep huge reserves of money as well(quite the reversal from the old opium/silver days of last century). Much as we may both hate to admit it, the US and China exist in a symbiotic relationship. Sure, we get cheap goods from them, but they also get a TON of their revenue from us. If we stop buying, they're gonna be a ton of trouble. And if another country can start ramping up production without the poisonous components, the US can always start buying from there. China will have a hard time selling their products to anywhere else in the world on such a massive level.

And dear god, that anchor woman is just retarded. Does she listen to the words that come out, or is she just on auto spew?

ROFL.. This is just freaking BS...
So she thinks we Americans should eat poison chinese (no capital C because I don't respect them) food and have our kids play toys with lead just because they are, um, cheap? Why doesn't Erin Burnett demonstrate eating/using those chinese poison food/products on TV, to show us how China is our "greatest friend"!

While there is a point to be made regarding China = cheap goods, it's a little much to swallow what she says. That second clip is just out there.

BTW, not to do w/ anything, but the thing at the top that tells me I'm logged in has an avatar of Krusty the Klown. Is Consumerist trying to tell me something?

Anybody have an address for this lady? I want to send her some Chinese toothpaste...

@Fl3shy: "You simply cannot have cheap goods, awesome quality, and mass production all in the same bin."

Yes we can(and we had in the past). Products made in Taiwan, Mexico, Malaya, etc. are much better quality products at reasonable low price. Its just that every damn companies move their factories to china now.

@rikkus256: And that's what's going to bite us in the ass; putting all our eggs in one basket. With most of our cheap goods coming from China, quality issues like these creep up and we're up shit's creek.

And with China's one child per family causing a huge disparity between males and females coupled with a huge increase in education levels causing a dearth of lower tier workers, things are gonna get pretty hairy.

China is holding $1.3 trillion in US dollars. They could flood the market with dollars causing the value to rapidly drop. The reason they don't do this is because if they did the US could no longer purchase the goods they manufacture. I think this is what she was talking about. She just failed to do so in an intelligent manner.

It's a known fact that China is not crazy about American's, despite all the business we throw their way. I don't trust putting anything in my (or my pets)mouth made in China. I miss the days when you could buy an appliance without a transformer attached to it. And if you have ever purchased furniture made in China that has to be put together, you can be sure the screws won't line up and go in easy. I miss "Made in America" when quality counted.

I dont care! GIMMIE my cheap products I NEED (not neccessarily want)so I can better survive in this miserable over-taxed world! I just saw today on the news where cities are thinking about charging tolls if you want to drive in them. Not ALL of us can take the bus! Nickel & dimed!

@rikkus256: I think the problem goes deeper than that. Companies move their factories to [whatever company is cheaper now], and every three to five years it's a different country. The local companies that supply those multinationals are then rich in huge new flows of cash and think immaturely that they can squeeze even more profit and increase the cash cow. Then problems like these occur and ... well however it plays out now, Chinese suppliers *will* become more mature in their thinking and will think about the negative impact that their poor product safety and quality decisions will have on them. Then, about the time everyone is happy that that gets worked out, Mattel and the dog food manufacturers and whoever else will move on to the next cheap market, and the whole process will start all over again. We experienced this at some level already in the past with Taiwan, Mexico, Malaysia, etc. and we don't seem to be learning from our mistakes.

I nominate that quote to be the dumbest thing heard in the last year.

Anybody second the nomination?

What better way to start undermining American's, start with our innocent, children and pets. If that works, widen the poisoning. Have you ever tried the immitation crab meat made in China?

She right. After all, who would want to pay $15 for a safe toy rather than $5 for a toy full of lead paint? Parents on a budget would be ruined if they had to go out there and buy toys made safely. So I think more lead paint and poor design could bring the price even lower, which will save my mortgage! Erin, your logic sucks, but you're ok looking, so I'll overlook it and buy those faulty toys. For you!

@bluegus32:
Here Here!

For crying out loud, this is CNBC aka MSNBC. This is like expecting the Beef Board to produce a fair and balanced story on E. coli in the food supply.

Oh, please tell me this is an SNL parody. Please.

I volunteer all my poisonous food to her. She can have as much as she wants. I'll stick with the nonpoisonous variety, thank you very much.

I am sorry, but I couldn't tell if she was being sarcastic or if she really thought that poisonous toys are good for America.

China's valuation problems are not a good thing, not at all.

China is Red-State America's greatest friend. The rest of love lower prices but love ethics a little bit more.

Hey, Erin Burnett, feel free to eat all the lead you want. I won't miss you. Personally, I wouldn't mind if prices at Wal-Mart went up. Maybe then people'd stop shopping there, they'd close their doors, and we'd have our free market back. I miss the Mom and Pop shops more than I'd miss dirt-cheap, shoddy, possibly poisonous goods sold out of an enormous, loud, dirty, overcrowded, understaffed megastore that's raping its community and lower-level employees. But maybe that's just me.

Erin Burnett isn't shy about injecting her conservative spin even at the cost of consumer safety or health.

If silicone breast implants were made of lead, she'd be screaming bloody murder.

My daughter was watching the morning news just in time to see that the barbie she has been buggging me to buy her for the last month was part of the recall. To totally drive it home the toy in question was plastered across the TV screen. She was in total shock at this being totally personal now in her little world.

Anyone else read this article from a couple weeks back?

[www.spiegel.de],1518,461828,00.html

One of the main reasons it's so cheap to manufacture in China is because they're sacrificing the environment (theirs & ours) to get market share.

Lead based paint? Maybe they won't notice. Under spec'ed electronic components that catch fire because they're not up to the task? Aw shucks, must be a bad batch of chips.

Wake up America.

@BrianH:

Somehow that URL got mangled (since when are commas in URLs bad?), let's try again with TinyURL:

[tinyurl.com]

A little poison never killed anybody.

Oh no, wait. It did.

at some point, i think corporations need to really think about whether they are saving money by doing business with foreign manufacturers. matell is easily looking at losing an entire year's profit over this latest debacle - maybe more. sure, they can amortize it - even reserve against future loss & reap the benefits of having large cash assets, but at what expense? one of the world's largest toy manufacturers is going into 4q with empty shelves. even if they manage to ramp up production over the next few months, they're going to be hard pressed to have even 1/2 of their normal inventory in toy stores. & what of their reputation for the future? american consumers have short memories, but things like "lead poisoning" seem to resonate with parents of young kids.

times like these & the "collapse of capitalism" foreseen by karl marx seem to make sense.

The only reason why bad products come from China is Americans are not willing to pay for quality merchandise. If Americans all stopped buying at Wal-mart and demanded safe products, none of this would have happened. You would have safe products, from China, albeit at twice the price.

Wake up America.

I want to give her the benefit of the doubt, thinking she meant to say something more intelligent...but then I remember she is on air talent. She is there for her looks, not her brains. Seems to me she should consider a job at Fox News, probably fit right in there. They don't like brains either.

She's actually right about the currency re-evaluation. Don't just pick out the bad parts, look at the whole picture.

Appreciated CNY = Low purchasing power of USD = less stuff can be bought by Americans = LOWER STANDARD OF LIVING

Erin is actually right: China is our greatest friend right now. Think about it, as more and more people die of lead poisoning, anitfreeze poisoning, getting into head-on (apply directly to the forehead) collisions in their well-built Chery automobiles, the fewer consumers there are in America. Fewer consumers = less demand for goods and services = lower prices. Everyone wins! It's simple economics, people.

Just think -- all that money people saved buying cheap toys can go toward chelation therapy for lead poisoning...

@WV.Hillbilly: This made me laugh while drinking poison and it shot out my nose, saving my life.

Sorry, I'm too busy sucking on an imported Elmo keychain to pay attention.

@jerseyjokeboy:

So you think everything would be fine and dandy if it were three times the price?

Bring that on and grab some popcorn.

Fortunately no children got sick from these toys. I have a problem with what this lady is saying, but not for the reason most of you do. Removing lead from the paint they are using on these toys will not cost the Chinese companies a significant amount of money. Don't expect the price of Chinese goods to go up. Do expect the quality of Chinese goods to go up though as the government will work hard to protect their ability to export goods to the world.

Guys, she's right. Most Americans don't give a crap about the environment or lead paint or human rights in China. People would rather buy their 50-for-a-dollar pack of tube socks at Walmart than see any ethics come out of China. All those cheap stores like Walmart are based on slave/cheap/child labor, harming the environment and putting out absolute crap products. If China installed any ethical business practices, our prices would go up and everyone would just complain.

The reason why outsourcing is so cheap is because ethics are expensive.

@Adam291:

Some of us DO care, but when some of us are just trying our best just to survive buying the necessities of life (yes... tubesocks would qualify as a necessity.... I am not talking about ipods & crap most people buy that they dont need). Its hard to care when you are you are just doing your best to survive. True... we arnt living in ramshackle shacks like some 3rdworlders are. Go ahead & bash people who buy all kinds of useless cheap crap they REALLY do NOT need, but dont lump us all in the same bunch.

I don't usually talk bad about people but that chick is an idiot.

Come on, Americans LOVE low prices. But the only way to have those prices is having low environmental standards, wages of shame and almost slavery work conditions. Want to stop this from happening, ask the companies to move to mexico instead, they'll buy american products and is MUCH easier to pressure the mexican government to raise its standards (which are much higher than chinese ones anyway) than dealing with the chinese.

Of course that would bring the prices up like 5% so I see that not coming soon...

Ok people - you should know that media people are some of the lowest on the intelligence totem pole.

As far as China goes, props to OMERHI.(read above)

for the rest of you: GO TAKE AN ECON CLASS.
or read a book.

Dumping currency as an offensive measure is a cannard. Especially when talking about benchmark currencies (EU or $US). You can't dump reserves THAT quickly. And if you have large enough capital reserves to be a threat, you have enough reserves to be in the same boat as the US (or Europe) if the FX rate shifted dramatically.

The West would get the sniffles. China would catch pneumonia.

Oh, then after the dust settles, we'd be fine, China's sole comparative advantage - low cost - would be largely eliminated. It would sting, but destroy China. Hee hee hee - and Wal-Mart.

There should be a rule that any time anyone says something this stupid - poison - OK!, or some woman's reproductive system living in another state - MINE to control! - a Federal law should kick in enforcing that person, and that person's children having to live by those stupid rules.

Erin Burnett: "This just in! I'm fired!"