Posted on 09/06/2009 9:57:25 PM PDT by rabscuttle385
The US Federal Reserve's policy of printing money to buy Treasury debt threatens to set off a serious decline of the dollar and compel China to redesign its foreign reserve policy, according to a top member of the Communist hierarchy.
BY AMBROSE EVANS-PRITCHARD
Cernobbio, Italy.
Cheng Siwei, former vice-chairman of the Standing Committee and now head of China's green energy drive, said Beijing was dismayed by the Fed's recourse to "credit easing".
"We hope there will be a change in monetary policy as soon as they have positive growth again," he said at the Ambrosetti Workshop, a policy gathering on Lake Como.
"If they keep printing money to buy bonds it will lead to inflation, and after a year or two the dollar will fall hard. Most of our foreign reserves are in US bonds and this is very difficult to change, so we will diversify incremental reserves into euros, yen, and other currencies," he said.
. . . . .
Mr Cheng said the root cause of global imbalances is spending patterns in US (and UK) and China.
"The US spends tomorrow's money today," he said. "We Chinese spend today's money tomorrow. That's why we have this financial crisis."
Yet the consequences are not symmetric.
"He who goes borrowing, goes sorrowing," said Mr Cheng.
It was a quote from US founding father Benjamin Franklin.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
thanks for posting this graphic—truly startling :(
You’re most welcome. Become as self-sufficient as you can, and don’t buy anything that you don’t need for a while. That’s the only way to a chance for better leadership, as far as I know. And I won’t be voting for any more CFR-friendly candidates so long as I live and regardless of the pretended meanness or largeness of their mouthy bandwagons.
what’s the green portion of the bars represent?
sorry about that question - i see it now
Oh, that’s fine. I wondered about it, too, before seeing the key in the lower left.
Green (printing 'green', that is) jobs!!
But there is more to a successful corporation than money:
skillful and/or educated workers
intellectual property rights
an impartial judiciary
an "honest enough" government that you don't have to bribe every official each step of the way to get anything done
proper infrastructure for manufacturing / transporting your product
a willing market to buy your product
access to the raw materials you need
commitment by the government not to favor its state-owned enterprises over yours
a physically safe environment (no wars or constant terrorist action)
non-confiscatory tax rates
The US has all but the last one in spades. But businesses take them for granted, failing to realize that most of the rest of the world (and indeed, almost all liberals) are openly hostile to the US. If our country is undermined to the point that it collapses, all of these these are lost, probably for a millenium or so.
Cheers!
I’m looking forward to the mass whining of left-wing economic geniuses when gas soars to $5.50 a gallon. It won’t be about supply or even refining capacity at that point...
...it will all be about how the dollar isn’t worth a thing and purchasing power has been radically diluted.
Do the libs really think this is all just one big, fun game?
There’s very little that is Communist about China, other than the nameplate on the Party, and the fact that they can be a pretty nasty authoritarian regime when they want/need to be.
It’s a pretty sad day when communist China sits to the right of the US government.
Free Trade and Socialism are antithetical concepts.
Socialism is about controlling the means of production: inserting the Government between buyer and seller.
Free Trade is about removing the Government from between buyer and seller.
Why should someone who wants to buy something be forced to buy it from one of your approved manufacturers?
Case in point: Obama wants everyone to buy their cars from unionised domestic producers like GM. If (using some section of Cap and Trade) he put a massive tarriff on foreign exports so that only crappy GM cars were affordable, would you clap and cheer?
Which CFR are you talking about, Campaign Finance Reform or the Council on Foreign Relations?
I have to say that your post is good food for thought. I’m beginning to actually wonder a bit about this myself.
“There IS however something wrong with erstwhile “Americans” profiting themselves by firing other Americans and sending our industrial might to a massive communist country, 4 times our size!”
No, it’s called being smart!
The US Federal Reserve's policy of printing money to buy Treasury debt threatens to set off a serious decline of the dollar and compel China to redesign its foreign reserve policy, according to a top member of the Communist hierarchy....y'know, because the efforts to keep the Yuan devalued relative to the USD has resulted in a paper shortage in China. This is analogous to Reagan's rearming of this country, which helped bring about the collapse of the already overmilitarized Soviet Union.
This graph underestimates the extent of the problem because the Chinese have been swapping out of their Agency securities and into Treasuries. So their *net* Agencies + Treasuries exposure is declining in ADDITION to their duration shortening exercise. I expect the yield curve to become INCREDIBLY steep in the next 2 or 3 years.
If the Democrats still control congress and the White House after 2012 (God forbid), the most likely path they will take is to coerce the Fed into an easy monetary policy to keep the economy going as fast as possible and inflate away some of the federal debt and interest expense on the debt. If they’re still in power, they’ll probably choose the path of least resistance for them, which is excessively low interest rates, printing lots of money by monetizing federal debt and mortgage debt, and higher inflation to create an incentive for consumers to buy now and to effectively increase taxes on everyone without having to vote for an explicit tax increase. Their strategy, if they still control Washington after 2012, will probably be: 1) inflate away debt, 2) cover up actual inflation with phony “official government” inflation statistics that understate real inflation, and 3) deflect blame for the inflation they cause by blaming OPEC, oil companies, corporations, and “commodity speculators” for higher inflation, especially much higher energy and food prices.
That’s the path of least resistance for the Rats, because democrat voters are addicted to federal entitlement programs and falsely believe these entitlements are “free” and “the government pays for it”, or at least they believe they’re getting more benefits from the federal colossus than they’re paying in federal taxes. So I think it’s a slam dunk certainty that oil prices will move back above $100 in a few years, and it the Rats still run Washington in 2013 it’s likely that crude oil prices will rise above $140 in 2013. If they react to prices above $100 with a “windfall profits tax”, then we’re looking at oil over 150, real physical shortages of gasoline, and gas lines around the block (or rationing) like we had back in 1979. So I’m buying oil production companies and MLPs that have a lot of crude oil reserves, mainly in Canada, Europe, and South America where oil companies will not be affected by any “windfall profits tax” enacted by out congress. Farm suppliers look like a good investment, and metals and mining companies look like something to buy on a correction here in September/October.
This is why Obama didn’t want to see Putin. Obama asked Putin for another 100 billion dollars, and Putin said nyet. Also, the Russians and other oil producers are thinking about not selling oil in dollars.
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