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China in Their Own Words

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If the yuan isn’t stable, it will bring disaster to China and the world. If we increase the yuan by 20 percent-40 percent as some people are calling for, many of our factories will shut down and society will be in turmoil. If China’s economy goes down, it’s not good for the world economy.

This is China Premier Wen Jiabao, as quoted by Bloomberg News.

Get that? The United States should continue to export jobs to China as some sort of global social program. We should continue to give the Chinese people our jobs so they won't raise hell and revolt. We should allow China to continue to manipulate it's currency, capturing global manufacturing capabilities to keep the Chinese government in power. Wow. Maybe we should import Chinese potential social unrest, for the United States policies are stiffing the U.S. worker and the cries from the Populist are a muted whimper.

Jiabao also chastised the EU for joining the United States in demanding China re-evaluate their currency and blamed the United States for currency fluctuations. Businessweek:

Europe shouldn’t join the choir to press China to allow more yuan appreciation. The euro had a big fluctuation recently. It’s not because of yuan but the dollars. We shouldn’t be blamed for it; if there’s someone to be questioned, it should be the U.S.

Is the IMF preparing for an approaching crisis?

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The IMF has been making a lot of noise recently, but their biggest move almost managed to slip through completely unnoticed.

The Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) today approved a ten-fold expansion of the Fund’s New Arrangements to Borrow (NAB) and the transformation of the Fund’s premier standing credit arrangement into a more flexible and effective tool of crisis management. The NAB will be increased by SDR 333.5 billion (about US$500 billion) to SDR 367.5 billion (about US$550 billion), representing a major increase in the resources available for the Fund’s lending to its members.

The Global Agenda: Privatizing the Planet -- Part Deux

SDRs, PPPs, the IMF, UN and World Bank

In the first installment of The Global Agenda: Privatizing the Planet, I attempted to establish the suggestion of the underlying foundation and causation for Public-Private Partnerships (PPP), that being debt financing, which propagates debt trading, debt swaps and various and sundry securitizations and securitized financial instruments.

Within this post, I shall attempt to establish the connection between the IMF's Special Drawing Rights (SDR), the creation of debt and those private-public partnerships as debt-affiliated vehicles which are a major force in the privatization of everything.

Admittedly, these connections may appear tenuous to some, but it is definite food for thought.

Exhibit 1

From an International Monetary Fund (IMF) report, dated March of 2006:

63. Public/ private partnerships (PPPs) are currently not covered in statistical guidelines. At the January/February 2006 meeting, the AEG agreed that the PPPs are sufficiently important to be described in the revised SNA. It also agreed that a list of indicators would be useful to help determine the economic owner of the fixed assets associated with a PPP but that it was necessary to examine arrangements on a case-by-case basis. An annex on PPP will be included in the SNA, with an understanding to keep abreast of developments in international accounting standards.[1]

Exhibit 2

G-20 & Debt Forgiveness

As the leaders of the industrialized world converge on Pittsburgh later this week to  "commit to a framework for sustainable and balanced growth" (as President Obama has put it), perhaps a nail in that frame could be the forgiveness of the debt burden saddling many of the world's poorest countries.

This is Scary, Possible Currency Crisis

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currency exchange Economist

 

Every day another story, fact, detail makes my eye balls pop out, but some hair raising reads are worse than others.

The oh shit headline, Europe on the brink of a currency crisis meltdown:

Currency pegs are being tested to destruction on the fringes of Europe’s monetary union in a traumatic upheaval that recalls the collapse of the Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1992.

 

 

The Barrage and Not Enough Time to Know What it Means

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The Barrage of news is pouring in and I am trying to get my business taxes done before the deadline.

So forgive me if this post is a little weak.

It's being reported now we will have the worse recession in 25 years, if we are lucky.

''It's certainly going to be the worst since the 1980s,'' says Bradford DeLong, an economics professor at the University of California at Berkeley who worked at the U.S. Treasury Department from 1993 to 1995. ``The hope is that it won't become the worst unemployment business cycle since the Great Depression

There goes the Royal Bank of Scotland

Paradigm Shift: "Think the unthinkable"

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Individual economic predictions are usually pretty useless, and predictions of catastrophe are as ubiquitous as rednecks at a NASCAR race. Therefore when I see general doom-and-gloom predictions for the economy I tend to ignore them.

On the other hand, there is a tipping point. When both official and private sources all over the world that aren't known for being alarmist start screaming "fire!" then it is time to pay attention.

Before I make a few personal comments let me quote my sources.

IMF:

The International Monetary Fund today warned authorities worldwide to "think the unthinkable" in planning to cope with a mounting crisis in the global financial system.

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