We’re All Currency Manipulators Now
By Azizonomics. The BBC reports:
The US has decided not to declare China as having manipulated its currency to gain an unfair trade advantage.
But the Treasury did say that China’s currency, the yuan, remains “significantly undervalued” and urged China to make further progress.
In its semi-annual report, it said Beijing did not meet the criteria to be called a currency manipulator, which could have sparked US trade sanctions.
Critics of China say it keeps the yuan low to keep its exports cheap.
There’s a point that no-one in the establishment will admit.
The Invisible Experiment With Money And Gold
Guest post by Gold Silver Worlds.
Michael MacDonald and Christopher Whitestone did a superb Q&A with GoldSilverWorlds. In their book “The Silver Bomb” (available on Amazon.com), they wrote about their views on the world and the markets. They have summarized it and enriched with recent facts and figures.
The markets are completely bought and paid for, corrupt, and manipulated … “a farce”. We are in a corruption bubble, the largest corruption bubble the world has ever seen in modern history and perhaps in all history. This is the first time that the world has been united within instant communication, instant information, instant deposit or receipt of funds into any bank account or financial institution. Michael says: “I believe that we are already a one world order. I actually think we are already there, electronically certainly. I also think that a lot of the debates, wars and conflicts are manufactured, very similar to the presidential debates which are also manufactured. I believe we live in a one-world system, which financially is already completely manipulated.”
We don’t live in a free market. We haven’t lived in a free market for decades, if not since 1913. We have the most powerful agency in the world, the Federal Reserve, setting the interest rates and the value of the world’s reserve currency. Everything that stems from that is built upon deceit and fraud. This doesn’t bode well for the entire financial system as a whole and right now, we are seeing the ramifications of that deceit.
We are in the lengthening of this financial market topping. A lot of things are happening that point to any one of several large enough dominos falling over which is going to have a splash and pullover effect. Within three years we are going to see this farce imploding. Michael thinks that we will have something completely different and unrecognizable to what we currently have.
Currency Positioning and Technical Outlook: Fade Breakouts ?
Guest post via Marc to Market.
The US Dollar Index reached its best level in more than six weeks on Friday. Yet it managed to only close a couple of ticks higher, as if warning short-term participants against ideas that a breakout is at hand. This also appears to be the message of the yen’s dramatic recovery from four-month lows.
Caught between what appears to be renewed deterioration of conditions in the euro area and US electoral and fiscal uncertainties, investors are paralyzed. Key events this week include policy meetings by the Japanese and Norwegian central banks, the new month PMI readings, and the US jobs and auto sales reports.
The economic data is unlikely to tell investors anything new. The euro zone economy is experiencing a shallow contraction for the second consecutive quarter. The UK data is likely to lend to our view that Q3 growth exaggerates the strength of the underlying economy. Meanwhile the US should continue to post modest net job creation. The Bloomberg consensus call for 125k rise in non-farm payrolls, which would be smack in the middle of the 3-month average (145k) and 6-month average (104k).
The renminbi bloc is here: Asia down, the rest of the world to go?
A few points worth reading when it comes to China and its currency. Via Voxeu.
As China becomes ever more important in the global economy, will its currency take on an international role? This column argues that in some sense, this is already happening – an increasing number of emerging-market currencies seem to track (co-move with) the renminbi – and the trend is set to continue.
The staggering economic rise of China in the last three decades leads to the question of the potential internationalisation of its currency, the renminbi (RMB). Internationalisation has different dimensions. An international currency is widely used in financial and trade transactions, and crucially it is used as a store of value. Some, like Eichengreen (2011) and Frankel (2011) see a potential global role for the RMB, provided important ancillary reforms to the domestic financial system and to the financial account first take place. In Eclipse, one of us projected that such a shift might happen in less than two decades (Subramanian 2011).
Currency Wars Part II
Guest post by Jessie.
“All war is based on deception. Of all those close to the commander, none is more intimate than the secret agent; of all rewards none more liberal than those given to secret agents; of all matters none is more confidential than those relating to secret operations.”
Sun Tzu“Let Hercules himself do what he may,
The cat will mew, and dog will have his day.”
William Shakespeare, Hamlet
There is a currency war underway.
The international trade clearing mechanisms are tottering. Countries are using their economic power, their banks and currencies, as a part of overall foreign as well as domestic policy.
This is a huge source of the tensions and problems which are are seeing both economically and militarily in the world today.
The current trade system based on the US dollar reserve currency is not sustainable. It has had a good long run, but like the euro it has reached the end of its rope. The US cannot continue to print enough money and increase its debt balance through trade any further. See Triffin Dilemma. Yes I am familiar with Eichengreen’s counter argument.
Did You Get These Warnings? Gold?
Guest post via Gold Silver Worlds.
The author does a terrific job again, this time in summarizing the most important thoughts about the current economic effects on the monetary policy of the US government (in casu QE3). Although a lot has been written about QE3, it can be difficult for people with no economic background, to connect the dots between monetary actions, economic effects, personal risks. Furthermore, with a limited understanding of monetary matters, it can be difficult to distinguish the benefits that are argued by policymakers versus the real benefits / risks. From that point of the view, the following article succeeds in bringing an understandable summary of what really is happening in our economy as a result of monetary policies.
Some essays or market commentaries contain too much jargon to easily read and understand. This article keeps things simple and understandable. And we love it at GoldSilverWorlds as it links Gold & Silver as being the ultimate ways to protect oneself, although still an extremely low percentage of the population is aware of it.
Currency War in Europe
On the very delicate issue on currency wars, this time in Europe. Via Voxeu.
Switzerland has pegged its currency to the euro at a level that helps it sustain a 12% current-account surplus and one of the lowest unemployment rates in Europe. This column argues that the Swiss peg involves currency manipulation that is, as far as Europe is concerned, the same order of magnitude as China’s intervention. It has had a significant impact on the euro exchange rate and a non-negligible effect on the EZ economy.
A current-account surplus is the mirror image of a capital export. A country that is running persistent current-account surpluses is thus persistently exporting capital. An important question to consider is which sector is investing abroad, the private or the public sector? If it is the public sector which invests abroad, in particular if it is done by the central bank via the accumulation of foreign-exchange reserves, this is often called ‘currency manipulation’.
Did You Get These Warnings? Gold?
Guest post by Gold Silver Worlds.
It’s easy not to see the fundamental developments because of the day-to-day news streams and information overload (we tend to call it “noise”). So it can take some time to start connecting the dots and clearly see a red line. In this article, people who are not seeing it clearly yet, get some hints. As far as the link with precious metals is concerned, it’s very simple in our view: could there be a link between the warnings described in this article and the price of gold? “Oh … so it’s not the gold price going up, but something else coming down?”
November 21, 2002: Bernanke gave his “helicopter” speech in which he made reference to a “helicopter drop of money.” But the critical point in his speech was:
“U.S. dollars have value only to the extent that they are strictly limited in supply. But the U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press (or, today, its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost. By increasing the number of U.S. dollars in circulation or even by credibly threatening to do so, the U.S. government can also reduce the value of a dollar in term of goods and services, which is equivalent to raising the prices in dollars of those goods and services.”
Currently the “helicopter drops” are primarily fed into the reserves of the banks and to cover the increasing deficits between government expenses and revenues. There is no end to how many dollars the Federal Reserve can create. At the time of Bernanke’s speech, an ounce of gold was worth approximately $320. As of September 2012, that same ounce of gold is worth over $1,700. The gold has not changed, but the value of the dollar has declined. As more dollars are created or “dropped from helicopters,” all existing dollars become less valuable. We have been warned.
The Destruction Of Currency And Rise Of Gold
Guest post by Nick Barisheff via Gold Silver Worlds.
Today’s discussion is based on the primary trend that started at the beginning of this millennium. The fundamental shift that has been taking place since then was the creation of value through paper assets shifting in a gradual way to hard assets, primarily (but not only) gold and silver. Part of the current ongoing dollar devaluation is caused by this disparity between financial assets and gold. Nick Barisheff gave with these rounded numbers to create a high level picture of the scale of the paper asset market versus gold. The market for financial assets should be worth approximately $250 trillion. It includes mortgage bonds, equities, treasury bills and related financial instruments. It contains pure paper assets and does not include real estate or derivatives. Against that $250 trillion stands a nominal value of the gold market of around $4 trillion.
Half of the gold market is owned by Central Banks and half is privately owned. Central Banks account for approximately 500 tonnes gold purchases per year (figures are based on the past couple of years). The gold owned by private hands, is held by a relatively small number of very wealthy families (who mostly hold it for generations). The effect of the above situation on the gold market is that both Central Banks (who became net buyers in 2008 and who are not selling their gold) and the vast majority of privately held bullion is not for sale at any price. So all you’ve got is new mine supply to meet the upcoming [investment] demand. Imagine what happens if you get only a few percentage points move out of the $250 trillion paper market in an attempt to buy gold. Indeed, the only adjustable number in such a situation is the price of gold.
The Last Thing We Need To Worry About?
Guest post by Azizonomics.
But really, truly, the last thing we need to worry about is whether the Chinese love our bonds.
— ShitKrugmanSays (@ShitKrugmanSays) August 31, 2012
Krugman claims the US private sector is financing the deficit, not China:
So who’s actually financing the US budget deficit? The US private sector. We don’t need Chinese bond purchases, and if anything we’re the ones with the power, since we don’t need their money and they have a lot to lose. In fact, we don’t want them to buy our bonds; better to have a weaker dollar (a point that the Japanese actually get.)
Lots of people keep getting this wrong, even after all these years. But really, truly, the last thing we need to worry about is whether the Chinese love our bonds.
He cites as evidence that the current account deficit as a percentage of GDP is way down since before 2008:
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