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Israel, whose foreign currency reserves have traditionally been made up of Dollars, Euros and British Pounds, will add four new currencies – including the Chinese Yuan (RMB).Israel has added four new currencies – including the Chinese Yuan (RMB) – to its central bank holdings for the first time in the country’s history, Bloomberg reports. Israel’s Central Bank will also trim US Dollar (USD) and Euro holdings in a bid to diversify their foreign reserves.Israel’s foreign currency reserves, which last year exceeded $200 billion for the first time, have traditionally been made up of USD, Euro and British Pound (GBP) holdings....

The Chinese regime is accelerating its efforts to challenge the U.S. dollar’s dominance in global markets and trade by taking advantage of the economic shifts caused by the pandemic, a Chinese professor recently revealed.In the post-pandemic world, China should be the “one who decides the benchmark of value,” Di Dongsheng, associate dean of the School of International Studies at Renmin University in Beijing said in a video posted on Chinese social media on Feb. 4. “The currency that fixes the price will eventually be the renminbi.”The professor last April described the pandemic as an opportunity “unseen in 100 years” for...

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...

The yuan’s recent slide risks re-igniting one of U.S. President Donald Trump’s favorite criticisms of China: that Beijing weakens its currency to aid exporters. While analysts say the exchange rate is being driven by souring market sentiment as China’s economy slows and the U.S. ramps up tariffs, the slide towards 7 against the dollar comes during crunch trade negotiations. The offshore yuan has fallen almost 3% this month, making it the worst performing currency in Asia, and the onshore yuan broke the 6.9 level on Friday for the first time this year.

China’s central bank governor on Sunday affirmed an official promise to avoid manipulating its currency to boost exports, an issue he said American and Chinese negotiators discussed in their latest talks aimed at ending a tariff war. Yi Gang gave no indication the two sides reached agreements beyond previous commitments produced by meetings of the Group of 20 major economies. He spoke at a news conference during the annual meeting of China’s ceremonial legislature. “We stress that we will never use the exchange rate for competitive purposes, nor will we use it to boost China’s exports,” Yi said. Yi took...

Not long after billionaire George Soros forecast a so-called hard landing for the Chinese economy, Beijing fired back by calling out the high-profile investor, warning him of betting against its currency, according to media reports Tuesday. “Soros’ challenge against the renminbi and Hong Kong dollar is unlikely to succeed, there is no doubt about that,” said a government official in an opinion piece widely cited by several media outlets. The article headlined, ”Declaring war on China’s currency? Ha ha,” was published by the People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party which is widely viewed as Beijing’s propaganda...

Opinion: Why China probably has a lot more gold than it admits By David Marsh Published: July 20, 2015 11:48 a.m. ET Transparency on holdings linked to review by the IMF on joining the special drawing right China has lifted a veil over its gold holdings and confirmed its interest in providing more up-to-date reserves data by announcing a near 60% jump in its official bullion assets since 2009. /snip The PBoC said its gold reserves were 1,658 tons against 1,054 tons in April 2009, which was the last time China declared its gold holdings. In 2009 the reserves total...

Currency wars and the growing trend away from dollar dominance in international finance, particularly in emerging markets, was highlighted in an interesting CNBC article this morning entitled “Is the Dollar Losing its Clout Among EMs?” It refers to the deliberate and stated policy of “de-dollarization” around the world, the decline in the use of the dollar in international trade and as a reserve currency, and the emergence of the new BRICS bank. The article quotes best-selling author and Pentagon insider, Jim Rickards. Rickards says that the status of the dollar as a reserve currency is still solid despite its decline...

China’s central bank unexpectedly slashed interest rates on Friday to re-energize the world’s No. 2 economy, joining a growing list of major economies that are trying to encourage growth in the face of a global slowdown. On top of the rate cut, Chinese authorities promised to inject credit into the financial system if needed. Meanwhile, the president of the European Central Bank said Friday he was ready to step up stimulus for the 18-country eurozone economy, whose performance continues to disappoint. And Japan’s government this week delayed a tax increase after the country slipped back into recession. News of China’s...

Allows direct business between Canadian dollar and Chinese yuan, cutting exchange costs. Canada and China have signed a reciprocal currency deal that's expected to dramatically boost exports. The hub will foster far easier trade between the Canadian dollar and the Chinese yuan, also known as the renminbi. It makes Canada the first country in the Americas to have a deal to trade in the renminbi.

As we have been reporting (and forecasting for the past several years), the Eurasian anti-US Dollar axis is rapidly taking shape, with recent events catalyzed and certainly accelerated by US foreign policy in Ukraine, which has merely succeeded in pushing Russia that much closer, and faster, to China. The latest proof of this came overnight when the FT reported that Russian companies are preparing to switch contracts to renminbi and other Asian currencies amid fears that western sanctions may freeze them out of the US dollar market, according to two top bankers. According to Pavel Teplukhin, head of Deutsche Bank...

America, if there was ever a time in our nation’s history that it was imperative that we as Americans separated ourselves from the constant dribble of the false paradigm of American politics, the time is definitely now. I find myself in total disbelief as I watch the obvious consequences of the corruption, massive wasteful spending, the outsourcing of the American labor force and many other ills that have plagued this nation for decades come boiling to a head like a massive pimple on a teenager’s forehead. When this pimple pops, it is going to hurt. We have to stop pretending...

ZURICH, Switzerland - Media reports claiming that China's State Council has rejected a 40-trillion yuan ($6.5 trillion) urbanization plan are untrue, the chief of China's top planning agency said Friday. Xu Shaoshi, head of the National Development and Reform Commission, told reporters that his agency has been finalizing the drafting work of the urbanization plan with other relevant departments, and has not yet handed in the plan to the State Council. "How can it be possible that the State Council rejected a proposal that we have not yet submitted?" he said.

The U.S. Treasury on Friday warned Japan not to actively weaken its currency as it again refrained from naming China a manipulator. In its twice-a-year assessment of whether any nation is a currency manipulator, Treasury said it will “closely monitor” Japan’s policies and the extent to which they support the growth of domestic demand. The new Shinzo Abe administration has pushed for aggressive bond-buying at the Bank of Japan, and the yen has dropped 13% against the dollar this year. The Japanese currency rose in Friday afternoon trade after the report was released. … China, meanwhile, escaped being branded a...

The mainstream media in the United States is almost totally ignoring one of the most important trends in global economics. This trend is going to cause the value of the U.S. dollar to fall dramatically and it is going to cause the cost of living in the United States to go way up. Right now, the U.S. dollar is the primary reserve currency of the world. Even though that status has been chipped away at in recent years, U.S. dollars still make up more than 60 percent of all foreign currency reserves in the world. Most international trade (including the...

In the middle of last month, the Bank of China quietly announced a startling new bank account available to America citizens. At one of three Bank of China branches in the United States–two in New York and one in Los Angeles–an American can walk in, open an account and convert their grubby dollars into the currency of the hottest, and arguably the most important, economy in the world, the Chinese renminbi. To get a better sense of what this is all about, I went to the Bank of China's main branch in Manhattan on 5th Avenue and 48th Street. The...

A number of the world’s biggest banks have launched international roadshows promoting the use of the renminbi to corporate customers instead of the dollar for trade deals with China... ...HSBC and StanChart are among a slew of global banks – including Citigroup and JPMorgan – holding roadshows across Asia, Europe and the US to promote the renminbi to companies...

China will keep the yuan basically stable while alerting exporters to potential risks to minimize their losses, a powerful central planning agency said in a statement reported on Wednesday. The National Development and Reform Commission did not elaborate on what such risks might entail, but the wording hinted at China's readiness to resume appreciation after locking the yuan in place since mid-2008 to cushion exporters from the global economic downturn. In another sign that Beijing might be nearing a consensus about appreciation, the central bank set the the yuan's daily mid-point, its key reference rate, at 6.8259 to the dollar,...

BEIJING (Reuters) - China should increase the proportion of gold in its foreign exchange reserves to ensure the safety of its overall portfolio, an official Chinese newspaper said on Tuesday. The commentary, which was written by an academic and appeared in the overseas edition of the People's Daily, also said that a bigger holding of gold was a crucial building block for the yuan to become an international currency.

The big profits made by some of Wall Street’s leading banks are “hidden gifts” from the state, and taxpayer resentment of such companies is “justified”, George Soros, the fund manager, said in an interview with the Financial Times. “Those earnings are not the achievement of risk-takers,” Mr Soros said. “These are gifts, hidden gifts, from the government, so I don’t think that those monies should be used to pay bonuses. There’s a resentment which I think is justified.”