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Dumping Dollars
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PROGRESSIVE REFERENCE CONSERVATIVE*
 
The Dollar     top
PROGRESSIVE REFERENCE CONSERVATIVE*
  • Bilaterals.org against bilateral trade and investment agreements to benefit transnational corporations.
  • Counterpunch How the world could stop Bush, Dump Dollars, ... The US is totally dependent upon foreigners (China, Japan, largest) to finance its budget and trade deficits. By financing these deficits, foreign governments are complicit in the Bush Regime's military aggressions and war crimes
  • Democratic Underground "Saudi Arabia has refused to cut interest rates in lockstep with the US Federal Reserve for the first time, signaling that the oil-rich Gulf kingdom is preparing to break the dollar currency peg in a move that risks setting off a stampede out of the dollar across the Middle East."
  • Economic Policy Institute  search: export subsidies
  • ElaineSupkis, blog China, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and Hong Kong have channelled immense foreign reserves into American government bonds, to prop up US dollar, and hold down American % rates,  ... Bush ... use $ as imperialist tool, controlled destabilization and collapse of the $, 
  • Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy for economically sustainable communities
  • New Economy Index  Progressive Policy Institute, Chinese dumping dollars would cause a spike in US bond yields, 
  • DissodentVoice, Socialism, 1 percent of US population owns 50 per cent of the wealth. obscene!
  • Online Journal "China’s "nuclear option" to dump the dollar is real"
  • MarketOracle.co.uk
  • Notes: Among those filing bankruptcy were New Century Financial Corp., Quality Home Loans, Aegis Funding, HomeBanc Mortgage Corp. and People's Choice Financial Corp. ... "That number is likely to grow," Challenger said. "I think that's the big question that will play out over the next six months: What are the repercussions from this hit to subprime on the economy? What other sectors will it infect? Housing and finance are the two areas that seem most likely to be in the direct path of the storm." Money.CNN
  • World Social Forum opposed to the domination of the world by capital, imperialism.
  • BBC Market Data
  • 321Gold range of value of dollar 160-79, governments and institutions that have foolishly accumulated hundreds of billion of US dollars are afraid to dump them, would trigger panic, devalue too quickly, 
  • Bloomberg Rising Euro is what China needs to dump dollar
  • Bloomberg, Canada, Subprime Panic Freezes $40 billion of Canadian Commercial Paper, search terms: September 25, 2007, Baffinland Iron Mines Corp, freeze in market for short-term debt, Toronto, defaults on subprime mortgages in Southern California and Florida, cash in commercial paper, debt backed by mortgages, corporate bonds, auto loans, all stable for decades, yielded 1 percent more than commercial paper, government debt sales fell because of  government surpluses, Libor is benchmark for commercial paper rates, no alternative plans for liquidity, locks up system, 
  • CommodityOnline The Fed saved the stock market Aug 2007
  • DailyFX
  • DailyReckoning  
  • EconPapers Access to RePec, worlds largest collection online Economics
  • Financial Sense, China dumping dollars,
  • GoldandSilverInvestments.com
  • GoldSeek, meltdown, sept 22
  • Gulf Times  "Middle Eastern investors, led by the Arabian Gulf, will spend as much as $300bn on Chinese equities through 2020 to build relationships in Asia and secure higher returns, according to Merrill Lynch.
  • Hometrack.uk housing price index
  • Institute for International Economics George Soros on BOD
  • Inter-American Dialogue support for free-trade deals falling
  • Kitco
  • MarketOracle.co.uk recessions Third Leg of Bear Market
  • Market Watch Bond reinvestment risk, in a interest rate cut environment
  • MoundReport
  • RePEc  University of Connecticut, Dept of Economics, Ideas
  • RobertReich's Blog "there's not much politicians can do to stimulate or retard the economy, ...  tax policies included, ... deficits do matter, spook the market into fearing the fed will raise % rates to counteract inflation, balance of payment deficits matter because large ones can cause speculators to dump dollars, generating inflation, and pushing up interest rates, 
  • StockMarketCrash.net
  • Telegraph.uk China threatens 'nuclear option', 
  • Tom Paine
  • TheStreet dollar daize
  • This is Money.uk dfg
  • TreasuryDirect.gov
  • WorldWatch Institute
  • coming soon?
  • Barclays  
  • Bank of England are they on the hook for all deposits if hedge funds raid Northern Bank?  Money CNN.com 
  • Bloomberg "Sept. 19 ...  As many as half of the 450,000 subprime borrowers whose mortgage payments increase in the next three months may lose their homes because they can't sell, refinance or qualify for help from the U.S. government."
  • BreakingNewsUpdate, Debka, Situation Room, October Market Crash, commodities, inflation
  • Council on Foreign Relations
  • DLC Democratic Leadership Council
  • Fool.com Market crashes
  • HSBC
  • Library of Economics and Liberty
  • Minyanville Ron Paul " ... I think moral hazard begins at the very moment that we create artificially low interest rates which we constantly do. And this is the reason people make mistakes. It isn’t because human nature causes us to make all these mistakes, but there is a normal reaction when interest rates are low that there will be overinvestment and malinvestment, excessive debt, and then there are consequences from this."
  • MSN, Epic Bear Market
  • New York Federal Reserve,  search data on China dollar
  • New York Times, remember Judith Miller and all her lies leading up to the Iraq war  Business
  • Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors
  • Zillow notes:Defaults are soaring. Home sales and prices are falling. Business is thin for real estate agents and mortgage brokers. But the money keeps pouring into Zillow, a Web site that computes the value of homes
 
  • Sovereign Wealth Funds, vehicle to dump dollars without being reported, but will eventually be exposed.   and Wikipedia "Sovereign wealth fund (SWF) (Sovereign wealth funds) is a fund owned by a state composed of financial assets such as stocks, bonds, property or other financial instruments. ...  Sovereign wealth funds are, broadly defined, entities that can manage the national savings for the purposes of investment. The accumulated funds may have their origin in, or may represent foreign currency deposits, gold, SDRs and IMF reserve position held by central banks and monetary authorities,. along with other national assets such as pension investments, oil funds, or other industrial and financial holdings. These are assets of the sovereign nations which are typically (but not necessarily) held in domestic and different reserve currencies such as the dollar, euro and yen. The names attributed to the management entities may include central banks, official investment companies, state pension funds, sovereign oil funds and so on.  ... There have been attempts to distinguish funds held by sovereign entities from foreign exchange reserves held by central banks. The former can be characterized as maximizing long term return, with the latter serving short term currency stabilization and liquidity management. This distinction points in the right direction, but is still unsatisfactory. Many central banks in recent years possess reserves massively in excess of needs for liquidity or foreign exchange management. Moreover it is widely believed most have diversified hugely into assets other than short term, highly liquid monetary ones (almost no data is available however to back up this assertion). Some central banks even have begun buying equities, or derivatives of differing ilk (even if fairly safe ones, like Overnight Interest Rate swaps)."
Export Subsidies     top
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Global Competition     top
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    Foreign Investment in U. S.     top
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    Economic Indicators links     top
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Free Trade Agreements    top
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    G-20 Underdeveloped Countries     top
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 TRIPS        top
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  Below: GoldSeek, Ron Paul Things to remember about Gold
If one endorses small government and maximum liberty, one must support commodity money.  One of the strongest restraints against unnecessary war is a gold standard.  Deficit financing by government is severely restricted by sound money.  The harmful effects of the business cycle are virtually eliminated with an honest gold standard.  Saving and thrift are encouraged by a gold standard; and discouraged by paper money.  Price inflation, with generally rising price levels, is characteristic of paper money. Reports that the consumer price index and the producer price index are rising are distractions: the real cause of inflation is the Fed’s creation of new money.  Interest rate manipulation by central bank helps the rich, the banks, the government, and the politicians.  Paper money permits the regressive inflation tax to be passed off on the poor and the middle class.  Speculative financial bubbles are characteristic of paper money-- not gold.  Paper money encourages economic and political chaos, which subsequently causes a search for scapegoats rather than blaming the central bank.  Dangerous protectionist measures frequently are implemented to compensate for the dislocations caused by fiat money.  Paper money, inflation, and the conditions they create contribute to the problems of illegal immigration.  The value of gold is remarkably stable.  The dollar price of gold reflects dollar depreciation.  Holding gold helps preserve and store wealth, but technically gold is not a true investment.  
US Economic Calendar, Yahoo

Burying the "Washington Consensus"

By Xavier Cano Tamayo

Agencia de Informacion Solidaria
February 26, 2003

Translation. Prudence Dwyer. Coorditrad, volunteer translators

A few days ago the Davos World Economic Forum, the capitalist economy's Sanhedrin, came to an end. Davos recognised that every country should apply the economic and social policy which best suits it without demanding allegiance to the economic and financial orthodoxy which has been destroying our lives for the past decade, the ill named "Washington Consensus". The cause of this change of attitude by the rich men's Forum is the economic disaster following a decade of "Consensus" dogmas.

Communism, having been disarmed and extinguished in combat; capitalism put on a brave face and in the death throws of the eighties formulated economic policy directives with mandatory effect; a process leading towards the final consequences of economic liberalism as formulated at the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth.

The "Consensus" prescribed budgetary discipline (a passion for eliminating deficits), fiscal reform (favouring those who own most), trade liberalisation (removal of tariff barriers by less developed countries without any compensation from the rich), opening up to foreign investment (without rules or controls) privatisation (public patrimony within the grasp of the powerful), deregulation (weakening or removal of labour guarantees, social and environmental controls)absolute guarantee of right to property and management of lesser affairs (excepting police involvement).

This "Washington Consensus" was produced and developed by a select few whose interests left no room for doubt. When someone keeps company with the chief supporters of a certain type of economic policy it is clear where his interests lie. The secretary of the North American Treasury, Robert Rubin, comes from Wall Street, like the former Secretaries, Roger C.Altman and Nicholas Brady. They all used to work in investment companies. Ernest Stein, former President of the World Bank is a Director of J.P.Morgan Bank and the current President, James Wolfensohn, was also director of an investment Bank. And so it goes on...

The "Consensus" was drawn up by a group of economists, officials of the U.S. Government, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. A very restricted consensus; it was never the subject of general debate and never submitted to a vote. It was not even formally ratified by the countries it was imposed on. It has been, and still is, an authoritarian exercise, greedy and unsupportive, whose champions try to justify it on the grounds of the supposedly unquestionable economic-scientific character of its guidelines. It is paradoxical that while the world's physicists call into question the immovable and unquestionable nature of certain principles of Science (with a capital) editors, defenders and executors of the ill named "Washington Consensus" claim that this selfish, obscene and biased view of the economy is pure economic science, making compliance obligatory. The "Consensus", however, used to predict that with its application economic growth would increase, poverty would diminish and employment would expand. Just the opposite. Moreover, intensive use of natural resources has caused damage, perhaps irreparable damage, to the environment.

Latin America, the principal victim of this "Consensus", is a prime example of the disaster it has caused. In 1980 there were 120 million poor; in 1999 the number had increased to 220 million, 45% of the population; the richest 20% is almost 19 times richer than the poorest 20%, when the world average is that the rich are only 7 times richer than the poorest. After a decade of blindly devoted application of the Washington Consensus guidelines, Latin America stands on the edge of a precipice. Debt grew from US$492,000 million in 1991 to US$787,000 million in 2001. Railways, telecommunications, airlines, drinking water supplies and energy supplies were virtually wound up and handed over to giant US and European corporations. Public spending on education, health, housing and social benefits was reduced, price control was abolished, wages were frozen and millions of workers were dismissed by the new masters of the now-privatised public undertakings. Massive imports (with the reduction of customs tariffs of course) to nourish the consumerism of the upper and aspiring middle classes caused national undertakings to disappear. And more unemployment. And according to the ILO (International Labour Organisation) 84% of jobs created in the golden years of the "Consensus" were temporary and poorly paid. Quite a programme!

In the recently held Porto Alegre World Social Forum, Jorge Wertheim, representing UNESCO in Brazil, roundly condemned what everybody has known all along; the "Consensus has meant a dramatic increase in inequalities and an incredible worsening of poverty worldwide."

The new President of Brazil, Ignacio Lula da Silva has rejected the neoliberal dogma of the "Consensus". With very little fuss he has altered the intended use of millions of dollars meant for buying fighter aircraft and has devoted them purely to fighting the hunger of millions of Brazilians; at the same time committing a great deal of State aid to education, health, environmental protection and safeguarding natural resources, Pure heresy!

The "Washington Consensus" has been a howling failure. The undeniable figures and facts are here. Perhaps this is why Jacques Chirac, who during 2003 will be G7 President, the club of the world's richest countries, has promised to fight for "a controlled and caring globalisation ".Perhaps out of contempt for the destructive consequences of the pernicious neoliberal theology which is the "Consensus" James Wolfensohn, President of the World Bank, declared in November 2002 at a Latin American Meeting in preparation for the Davos World Economic Forum;" the Washington Consensus is dead". Force of circumstance.

And at the Porto Alegre World Social Forum representatives of UNESCO urged that the "Washington Consensus" be buried forever and every effort made to confront the urgent task of eradicating poverty and overcoming the hunger and illiteracy that afflict 900 million of the Earth's inhabitants.

Let us consign the "Washington Consensus" to the cemetery. Or would it contaminate the dead?

Contact this article xavicata@wanadoo.es

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