Free Republic

The U.S. Treasury Department has incorrectly labeled China a manipulator of its currency. An important distinction exists between devaluing a currency and currency depreciation. Devaluing implies the People’s Bank of China actively manipulated the value of the Chinese renminbi to gain unfair advantage for its exports. Depreciation simply means the renminbi has lost purchasing power relative to the U.S. dollar, based on market forces. There’s no indication that China is actively devaluing its currency. However, according to the Treasury Department, China met a broad definition of manipulation laid out in the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988, which says...

In a statement to the Congressional Hearing, Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, defended his policy on interest rates and placed the blame for the recent crash on the fact that most new mortgages in the final years of the property boom were securitized. According to Mr. Greenspan: “By the first quarter of 2007, virtually all sub-prime originations were being securitized, and sub-prime mortgage securities outstanding totalled more than $900bn.” An economist of equal weighting and stature, Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody's Analytics, countered Mr. Greenspan’s comments by suggesting to the hearing that “aggressive monetary policy...

April 18, 2006 Bulls Are Running to India, Raising Fears of a Bubble By SARITHA RAI BANGALORE, India, April 17 — Shashibhushana Reddy, a 28-year-old software professional with the local division of the Intel Corporation, has invested a quarter of his earnings in India's equity markets for the last three years. Mainly choosing media, pharmaceutical and manufacturing stocks, he has seen his investments triple as he rides a boom in the country's equity markets. Now Mr. Reddy is preparing to get even more aggressive. "Indian companies are doing extremely well," he said, "and I plan to soon start investing half...