Saturday, November 14, 2009

Mr Obama goes to visit his creditors

Ouch!  Those headline writers in the UK and elsewhere can be brutal .... The title of this post is the editorial in Financial Times.
This editorial is one of the many that point out that we--the world--is in for trouble if the US dollar continues to be the world's currency, if the US continues with its what-me-worry approach, and if China continues to peg its currency to the dollar.
generalised concern about currencies; an as yet incomplete reversal of the strengthening of the dollar during the crisis; and a determination by the Chinese authorities to avoid appreciation against the dollar since the serious crisis began.
What is more intriguing to me is something Dan Drezner wrote about some time ago, where he noted:

It's the rest of the world -- articularly Europe and the Pacific Rim -- that are getting royally screwed by China's policy.  These countries are seeing their currencies appreciating against both the dollar and the renminbi, which means their products are less competitive in the U.S. market compared to domestic production and Chinese exports.
The more time goes by, the more I am convinced that my rather nutty conclusion--it seemed like that then--might not be as nutty after all:
Sometimes I wonder whether China's interest in the US dollar, and keeping its yuan tied to the dollar, is to essentially bankrupt the rest of the world and the US so that it can ultimately prevail as the global power.

No comments: