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| THE CHINA SYNDROME, GoldSeek and By: Jim Willie CB, GoldenJackass.com |
| These are truly significant signposts,
without precedent in modern history. The Chinese had been rumored to
delink their yuan currency for so long that many within the mainstream
doubted the event would ever occur. They did. Now the big rumor is that
the Chinese are busy cleaning up their banking system in a preliminary
maneuver to set up a gold-backed currency. They pursue the optimal
currency index to store their vast horde of reserves, which are expected
to top $1 trillion sometime this year. Their piggy bank has just surpassed
Japan’s horde, over $850 billion in size. The next two key events are
the foundation of the new pan-Asian credit market and the new payment
system for international commerce in an indexed currency. The Asian credit
market is in its formative stages. They are deciding up on a currency, and
believe an index is most appropriate. Squabbles continue, like inclusion
of the Taiwan Dollar. Beijing holds some sway in this region, still
resentful of Taipei’s independence. Look for the Chinese yuan (based in
an index) to take over in the Asian credit market denomination choice.
Also, expect major major major hostility and resistance and objection and
sabotage from the US authorities. International commerce, like for oil or
copper or iron ore or coal or grains begs for reform in its payment
system. The Asian Development Group has suggested a currency index for
large scale commodity purchase settlements. The Chinese yuan is the
natural choice, an evolution which seems to benefit from their route for a
managed practical currency index.
By its evolution as a balanced global index based upon Asian trade, the yuan is walking a clever path to displace the USDollar without the direct “in your face” challenge and insult to the United States. Any elevation and hoist of the yuan on a global platter of respectability and utility is an implicit supplant of the USDollar, a push off the table. Such evolution is monstrously bullish for gold, and such movement is very early, even embryonic. We are in the preliminary, not advanced, stages of removal of the USDollar from its place as world currency, from its place as the only petro-currency. Gold stands as the hidden “anti-US$” in function. In time, the yuan will serve that important role. In the tumultuous process, gold will gain respect, rise in value, and take center stage. Some foresee a time when both the Chinese yuan and the Russian ruble currencies are gold-backed. |
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| CHINA FLOATS, AMERICA SINKS YUAN KICKS DOLLAR BUTT BY REJECTING "FREE MARKET" Friday Jul 22, 2005 by Greg Palast Greg Palast |
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In case you haven't the least idea what the heck it means for China to "float" its currency, let me put it in the language we economists use: China's float don't mean squat. Yet our President, a guy whose marks in Economics 101 are too embarrassing to publish here, ran out to hail the fact that buying Chinese money will now cost more dollars. The White House line to the media, swallowed whole, is that by making Chinese money (yuan) more expensive to buy with dollars, Americans will buy fewer computers and toys from China -- and US employment will rise. This will happen when we find Saddam's Weapons of Mass Destruction. Economics Lesson #1: You can't change the value of goods by changing the value of the currency on the price tag. As my comrade Art Laffer wrote me, "If cheap currency makes your products more competitive, all automobiles would be made in Russia." Driven a Lada lately? Economics Lesson #2: Don't take economics lessons from George Bush. Or Milton Friedman. Or Thomas Friedman. What that means, class, is don't believe the big, hot pile of hype that China's zooming economy is the result of that Red nation's adopting free market economic policies. If China is now a capitalist free-market state, then I'm Mariah Carey. China's economy has soared because it stubbornly refused the Free – and Friedman-Market mumbo-jumbo that government should stop controlling, owning and regulating the industry. China's announcement that it would raise the cost of the yuan covered over a more important notice: China would bar foreign control of its steel sector. China's leaders have built a powerhouse steel industry larger than ours by directing the funding, output, location and ownership of all factories. And rather than "freeing" the industry through opening their borders to foreign competition, the Chinese, for steel and every other product, have shut their borders tight to foreigners except as it suits China’s own industries. China won't join NAFTA or CAFTA or any of those free-trade clubs. In China, Chinese industry comes first. And it's still, Mssrs. Friedman, the Peoples’ republic. Those Wal-Mart fashion designs called, chillingly, "New Order," are made in factories owned by the PLA, the Chinese Peoples' Liberation Army. In an interview just before he won the Nobel Prize in economics, Joe Stiglitz explained to me that China's huge financial surge -- a stunning 9.5% jump in GDP this year -- began with the government's funding and nurturing rural cooperatives, fledgling agricultural and industry protected behind high, high trade barriers. It is true that China's growth got a boost from ending the bloodsoaked self-flagellating madness of Mao's Cultural Revolution. And China, when it chooses, makes use of markets and market pricing to distribute resources. The truth is, Chinese markets are as free as my kids: they can do whatever they want unless I say they can't. Yes, China is adopting elements of "capitalism." And that's the ugly part: real estate speculation in Shanghai making millionaires of Communist party boss relatives and bank shenanigans worthy of a Neil Bush. It is not the Guangdong skyscrapers and speculative bubble which allows China to sell us $162 billion more goods a year than we sell them. It is that China's government, by rejecting free-market fundamentalism, can easily conquer American markets where protection is now deemed passé. And that is why the yuan has kicked the dollar's butt. America’s only response is to have Alan Greenspan push up real interest rates so we can buy back our own dollars the Chinese won in the export game. The domestic result: US wages drifting down to Mexican maquiladora levels. Am I praising China? Forget about it. This is one evil dictatorship which jails union organizers and beats, shackles and tortures those who don't kowtow to the wishes of Chairman Rob -- Wal-Mart chief Robson Walton. (Funny how Mr. Bush never mentions the D-word, Democracy, to our Chinese suppliers.) Class dismissed. |
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CIA
/ Contra drugs cover-up, Hitz Report
