Fire Hydrant of Freedom

The Hawaiian gov. (who is a dead ringer for Krusty the clown) has backed off his statements about Obama's birth and long form BC.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703789104576272983322884562.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Fleeing the Dollar Flood
The world tries to protect itself from U.S. monetary policy.

Members of the International Monetary Fund emerged from their huddle in Washington last weekend resolved to keep every option open to slow the flood of dollars pouring into their countries, including capital controls. That's a dangerous game, given the need for investment to drive economic development. But it's also increasingly typical of the world's reaction to America's mismanagement of the dollar and its eroding financial leadership.

The dollar is the world's reserve currency, and as such the Federal Reserve is the closest thing we have to a global central bank. Yet for at least a decade, and especially since late 2008, the Fed has operated as if its only concern is the U.S. domestic economy.

The Fed's relentlessly easy monetary policy combined with Congress's reckless spending have driven investors out of the United States and into Asia, South America and elsewhere in search of higher returns and more sustainable growth. The IMF estimates that between the third quarter of 2009 and second quarter of 2010, Turkey saw a 6.9% inflow in capital as a percentage of GDP, South Africa 6.6%, Thailand 5%, and so on.

This incoming wall of money puts the central bankers in these countries in a bind. If they do nothing, the result can be asset bubbles and inflation. Brazil (6.3%) and China (5.4% officially but no doubt higher in fact) are both enduring bursts of inflation, as are many other countries. These nations can raise interest rates or let their own currencies appreciate, at the risk of slower economic growth. Rather than endure that adjustment, many countries are resorting to capital controls and other administrative measures to try to stop the inflow.

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Bloomberg News
 
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, right, and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke during the IMF-World Bank spring meeting in Washington, D.C., on Friday.
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Over the past year, Brazil has introduced taxes on stock and bond investment and raised bank reserve requirements; Indonesia has introduced holding periods for government bonds; South Korea has limited banks' ability to engage in foreign-currency financing, among other things; Peru and Turkey have taken action, too. Yet their currencies have in many cases continued to rise and the money keeps coming in.

So it was little surprise earlier this month when IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn joined the parade and endorsed capital controls as a necessary "tool" to be used on a "temporary basis," ending the fund's long-time commitment to free flows of capital. The last time the fund did this was amid the Mexico monetary crisis of the mid-1990s.

The IMF wanted its members last weekend to endorse guidelines on when they would use such measures. Brazil's finance minister spoke for many when he refused, calling capital controls necessary "self defense" measures against "spillover effects" from other countries' policies. He meant the U.S.

As if to underscore the point, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner responded by pointing the finger right back at developing countries, essentially updating Treasury Secretary John Connally's famous line to a delegation of Europeans in the 1970s that the dollar is "our currency but your problem."

The larger story is that the world is starting to protect, and perhaps ultimately free, itself from America's weak dollar standard. The European Central Bank recently raised interest rates and may do so again to prevent an inflation breakout. China is allowing more trade to be conducted in yuan, a first step toward making it a global currency. At a meeting of developing countries—the so-called BRICs—in China recently, leaders called for "a broad-based international reserve currency system providing stability and certainty." They weren't referring to the dollar.

Even in the U.S., Americans are buying commodities (oil per barrel: $111) and gold ($1,500 an ounce) as a dollar hedge, and the state of Utah recently took steps to make it easier for citizens to buy and sell gold as a de facto alternative currency. Whether or not these prove to be wise investments, they are certainly signals of mistrust in Washington's economic stewardship.

At an economic town hall this week, President Obama blamed "speculators" for rising oil prices. He should have mentioned the Fed and his own Treasury, which have encouraged the world to invest in hedges against the falling dollar. Chairman Ben Bernanke and Mr. Geithner have deliberately pursued a policy of unprecedented monetary and spending stimulus to reflate the economy and boost asset prices. The bill is coming due in a weak dollar, food and energy inflation, and the decline of U.S. economic credibility.

I think that's fair, just so long as presidential candidates are willing to fill out the form as well. Perhaps Obama can lead by example here.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/imf-bombshell-age-of-america-about-to-end-2011-04-25?link=MW_home_latest_news



April 25, 2011, 8:57 a.m. EDT

IMF bombshell: Age of America nears end
Commentary: China’s economy will surpass the U.S. in 2016

By Brett Arends, MarketWatch
BOSTON (MarketWatch) — The International Monetary Fund has just dropped a bombshell, and nobody noticed.

For the first time, the international organization has set a date for the moment when the “Age of America” will end and the U.S. economy will be overtaken by that of China.

And it’s a lot closer than you may think.

According to the latest IMF official forecasts, China’s economy will surpass that of America in real terms in 2016 — just five years from now.

Put that in your calendar.

It provides a painful context for the budget wrangling taking place in Washington, D.C., right now. It raises enormous questions about what the international security system is going to look like in just a handful of years. And it casts a deepening cloud over both the U.S. dollar and the giant Treasury market, which have been propped up for decades by their privileged status as the liabilities of the world’s hegemonic power.

According to the IMF forecast, whomever is elected U.S. president next year — Obama? Mitt Romney? Donald Trump? — will be the last to preside over the world’s largest economy.

Most people aren’t prepared for this. They aren’t even aware it’s that close. Listen to experts of various stripes, and they will tell you this moment is decades away. The most bearish will put the figure in the mid-2020s.



 
China’s economy will be the world’s largest within five years or so.


But they’re miscounting. They’re only comparing the gross domestic products of the two countries using current exchange rates.

That’s a largely meaningless comparison in real terms. Exchange rates change quickly. And China’s exchange rates are phony. China artificially undervalues its currency, the renminbi, through massive intervention in the markets.

The comparison that really matters
The IMF in its analysis looks beyond exchange rates to the true, real terms picture of the economies using “purchasing power parities.” That compares what people earn and spend in real terms in their domestic economies.

Under PPP, the Chinese economy will expand from $11.2 trillion this year to $19 trillion in 2016. Meanwhile the size of the U.S. economy will rise from $15.2 trillion to $18.8 trillion. That would take America’s share of the world output down to 17.7%, the lowest in modern times. China’s would reach 18%, and rising.

Just 10 years ago, the U.S. economy was three times the size of China’s.

http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/crcc/engagement/resources/texts/muslim/hadith/bukhari/052.sbt.html

Volume 4, Book 52, Number 177:

Narrated Abu Huraira:

Allah's Apostle said, "The Hour will not be established until you fight with the Jews, and the stone behind which a Jew will be hiding will say. "O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him."
 
Note that the islamic antipathy towards jews long predates the existence of Israel.

"Is there such thing as an American ethnicity ?"

No. There is such a thing as American culture and philosophy, but not ethnicity. Americans come from every spot on the planet.

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/viewSubCategory.asp?id=84

NEW ANTI-SEMITISM: DISGUISED AS "ANTI-ZIONISM"
 
While traditional anti-Semitism remains prevalent among extremist fringe groups and populations where xenophobic attitudes persist, a “new” anti-Semitism manifests itself in opposition to Zionism and to the existence or policies of the state of Israel.

Traditional anti-Semitism, with its historic linkage to Nazism and fascism, tends to be overt and is considered unacceptable and illegitimate by much of the mainstream in Western Europe, North America, and beyond. Its hallmarks include:

drawing on the age-old blood libel that depicts Jews as bloodthirsty murderers and cannibals

perpetuating the timeless conspiracy theory of undue and unseen Jewish influence politically or economically

denying the reality and scope of the Nazi Holocaust

branding Jews as "Christ-killers"

accusing Jews of usury

depicting Jews as uniformly dishonest, treacherous, and evil 

By contrast, "new anti-Semitism" is characterized by anti-Zionist and anti-Israel criticism that is anti-Semitic in its effect — whether or not in its intent — and is more subtle and thus frequently escapes condemnation.

According to the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC), anti-Zionist and anti-Israel criticism -- regardless of the motive -- become anti-Semitic when they entail:

denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination;

applying double standards to the state of Israel;

using the symbols and images associated with classic anti-Semitism to characterize Israel or Israelis;

drawing comparisons between contemporary Israeli policy and that of the Nazis; or

holding Jews collectively responsible for actions by the state of Israel. 

In his classic 1969 article, “The Socialism of Fools—The Left, the Jews and Israel,” Seymour Martin Lipset wrote: "There is a dangerous confluence between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, though the two concepts are not always identical. Anti-Zionism is often used to conceal hatred of Jews." He then enumerated the following criteria for distinguishing between anti-Semitism and "legitimate criticism of Israel": 

"Consider the source. Is the speaker someone with a history of anti-Jewish attitudes?"

"Critics who habitually single out Israel for condemnation while ignoring far worse actions by other countries (especially other Middle Eastern countries) are anti-Semitic."

"Likening Israel to Nazi Germany, or to traditional anti-Jewish stereotypical behavior is another sure sign of Jew-baiting."

"Attacks on the merits of Israel's existence rather than individual government policies are anti-Semitic." 

In a similar vein, a 2008 State Department report says:

"New forms of anti-Semitism often incorporate elements of traditional anti-Semitism. However, the distinguishing feature of the new anti-Semitism is criticism of Zionism or Israeli policy that—whether intentionally or unintentionally—has the effect of promoting prejudice against all Jews by demonizing Israel and Israelis and attributing Israel’s perceived faults to its Jewish character. This new anti-Semitism is common throughout the Middle East and in Muslim communities in Europe, but it is not confined to these populations.... [T]he collective effect of unremitting criticism of Israel, coupled with a failure to pay attention to regimes that are demonstrably guilty of grave violations, has the effect of reinforcing the notion that the Jewish state is one of the sources, if not the greatest source, of abuse of the rights of others, and thus intentionally or not encourages anti-Semitism."


Adapted from "Contemporary Global Anti-Semitism: A Report Provided to the United States Congress," by The U.S. Department of State (2008).
 

And/or it is intimidated by Islamic Fascism, just as Mussolini's Brown Shirts intimidated in the streets of Italy.

Andrew, you are a good person, but in my opinion your opinion is the result of being denied both sides.


http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/youtube_jihad/

Perhaps intimidated is more correct.

GM-- would you please post that link on Media Matters as well please?  TIA, Marc

http://www.jihadwatch.org/2007/02/mein-kampf-anti-christian-polemics-big-sellers-at-cairo-book-fair.html

Mein Kampf, anti-Christian polemics big sellers at Cairo Book Fair



It's My Jihad in an Islamic context. "Massive Cairo book fair sets religious tone," by Alain Navarro for AFP, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

CAIRO (AFP) - At the Cairo Book Fair, the largest and most important event of its kind in the Arab world, religious works dominate, while literature and scientific texts are often pushed to the margins.
 Millions of Cairenes have been thronging to the fair giving it an air of carnival on the vast exhibition grounds covering 80,000 square meters (861,000 square feet) in northern Cairo and featuring some 1,400 stands of books and CDs.

By Sunday, when the 39th annual fair comes to a close, organisers estimate some two million people will have visited, dwarfing similar events in Beirut, Casablanca and Abu Dhabi -- though many complain that the crowds are just there to picnic and buy religious books....

Of the 700 Egyptian and Arab publishers at the fair, the vast majority stock religious books on their shelves. "Even we reserve about a quarter of our catalog for them," said publisher Ansari.

Korans of all styles, from the simple to the leather-bound, share shelf space with collections of religious sayings and fatwas as well as their more modern incarnations on cassettes and compact disks.

The collected works of late venerable preachers like Egypt's Sheikh Mohammed Shaarawi and Saudi Arabia's Abdel Aziz bin Baz were present as well, though there was stiff competition from the young "new look" television preachers like Amr Khaled.

"It's become a real business, but this fundamentalism comes from Saudi Arabia and stays with the cynical encouragement of the powers that be," said best-selling Egyptian author Aswani whose social satire the "Yacoubian Building" has achieved fame far beyond Egypt's borders....

The fair also has its darker sides, with anti-Christian polemics advocating conversion to Islam as the only solution to a flawed religion and of course plenty of editions of Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf" for sale.

"It makes up a big part of our success, especially among the 18 to 25 crowd," said Mahmud Abdallah of the Syrian-Egyptian Dar al-Kitab al-Arabi publishing house.

"Allowing the sale of books like 'Mein Kampf' is a total scandal," said Mohammed Arkoun, professor emeritus of Islamic history at the Sorbonne, for whom the Arab cultural production, at least as seen through the lens of the Cairo Book Fair, "reflects above all, a certain emptiness."


And worse than emptiness.

http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=32942

A Mid-East FictionBy: David Solway
FrontPageMagazine.com | Monday, November 03, 2008




The feral antipathy towards Israel, the concerted bid to leverage it out of the community of nations, accounts for the obstinate reluctance on the part of Western academics, intellectuals, professionals, churchmen and journalists to examine the true history of the region, which would expose the Palestinian claim to plenary proprietorship as largely fraudulent while buttressing the Jewish and Israeli title to rightful occupancy. As Joan Peters has shown in her scrupulously researched seven-year study From Time Immemorial, examining census reports and internal memoranda during the British Mandate, perhaps a majority of the “original” Palestinian inhabitants were relative newcomers to the territory in question, having migrated into the Holy Land from the surrounding Arab countries, mainly from what was then known as Greater Syria (i.e., Syria and Lebanon) when still part of the Ottoman empire, and afterward during the post-Balfour period.

Analogously, the Reverend James Parkes, in Whose Land? A History of the Peoples of Palestine, has built a powerful case for the Jewish, not the Palestinian, hereditament. His thesis has been recently strengthened by genetic research which has corroborated the provenance of Jews from the Middle East, basing its conclusions on the recently discovered DNA signature, called the Cohen Modal Haplotype, pointing toward a common ancestor dating back to the time of Aaron and Moses, circa 1000 B.C.E. (See also, among many such studies, the American Journal of Human Genetics, 2003, treating of Y-chromosome evidence for the origin of Ashkenazi Levites.)

As for the national collectivity we refer to as “Palestine,” it does not exist. There is, rather, a phenomenon we may call “Palestinianism,” a historically recent political movement rooted in hatred of Israel, palpable anti-Semitism, constructed memory and the Islamic summons to territorial conquest. No settlement in the land of Israel, with the possible exception of Ramla, has a name that indicates Arab extraction—they are mostly of Hebrew origin with a sprinkling of Greek and Latin, covered up at a later time with Arab appellations. There was not even a Palestinian national anthem until one was hastily dreamed up at the onset of the 1987 Intifada. In an Internet letter posted on November 6, 2002, Yashiko Sagamori asks “a few basic questions” about this imaginary Palestinian country: inter alia, “When was it founded and by whom? What were its borders? What was its form of government? Was Palestine ever recognized by [another] country? What was the name of its currency? And finally, since there is no such country today, what caused its demise and when did it occur?”

The historical record conclusively shows not only that there was never any such thing as a Palestinian nation but also that there is no Palestinian ethnicity—in the sense that there is a Jewish or Tibetan ethnicity—and that there was no coherent political grouping known as “Palestinians” until after the 1967 war. A Palestinian entity was only recognized by the Arab countries at the 1974 Rabat Summit Conference. (Although the Palestinian Liberation Organization was founded in 1964, it was largely an Egyptian affair controlled by Gamel Abdel Nasser.) 1967 is the founding year of the hypothesis now known as “Palestine.” What we call “Palestinian history” has just celebrated its forty-first birthday!

The designation “Palestinians” was not in official use under the Ottoman imperium and the British applied the term only to the Jewish inhabitants of the region. Local Arabs rejected the term “Palestine” and pressed for “Southern Syria” and even “Iraq.” Eli Hertz, president of Myths and Facts Inc., points out that the Territories “are filled with families named Elmisri (Egyptian), Chalabi (Syrian), Mugrabi (North Africa)”; and Habash, the surname of arch-terrorist George Habash, originates in Ethiopia (MythsandFacts.com, May 16, 2008). Unlike the original Jewish inhabitants of the area, these emigrant families were not driven out over the historical continuum—they were never there in the first place.

Dafna Yee, director of the JWD website, also explains that since “the borders of the Palestine territory were never clearly defined, it is safe to assume that a great many, if not most, of the ‘Palestinians’ never set foot in any part of what is now Israel and have as flimsy a claim to that identity as Arafat did”—Arafat was born in Egypt. She might also have mentioned Edward Said, another self-proclaimed Palestinian, who did in fact set foot in what is now Israel—he was born in a Jerusalem hospital where his parents calculated that the probability of a safe delivery was higher than in an Arab hospital, and was subsequently raised in Cairo where he spent the first twelve years of his life before moving to the West. With regard to Israel, fictions tend to multiply exponentially. In particular, that Israel was built on something called “Palestinian land” through a process of invasion and displacement is a myth that continues to gather momentum. On the contrary, Israel is not only the ancient Jewish homeland, but in modern times it was founded as nation by legal land purchases and legitimized by the United Nations.

Undeterred, Palestinian human rights activists continue to propound a bald-faced lie. For example, Susan Abulhawa, author of the novel The Scar of David, asserted in an article for the Paris magazine Libèration (March 18, 2008) that Israel was established on “the ancient land of Palestine,” a historical artifice created on the instant. The reader will look in vain in Abulhawa’s piece for any mention of the fact that between 1932 and 1944 half a million Arabs poured into Palestine to profit from conditions prevailing in the Jewish communities. That she claims in the same article that “Jesus was Palestinian,” in direct contravention of the Christian Gospels, may tell us something about the Palestinian style of argument. The Palestinian “narrative” is a synthetic athenaeum whose textual repertory is, for the most part, either forged or imagined. Palestinians fall back on what is by now a classic maneuver: the attempt to achieve unity and manufacture purpose by the denial of fact. But the fact is that the “Palestinian entity” as such is non-historical and would more accurately be defined as a Palestinian nonentity, its documentary grounding largely fabricated and its political aspirations dependent on a volatile mix of ignorance and deception.

In How to Do things with Words, Philosopher J.L. Austin has made a useful distinction between two kinds of speech acts, the referential and the constative. The referential delineates an actual state of affairs, the constative establishes not a quality but a social function. Austin offers an analogy from baseball: the ball may travel across the center of the plate, a perfect strike, but if the umpire calls “ball,” that’s how it registers on the scoreboard and operates in the game. For much of the world today, umpires (and crowds) engaged in the production of their own referents and bent on the reconstruction of reality, an Israeli “strike” will almost always count as a “ball.” The referential has been reconfigured as the constative, despite what a later replay may bring to light—the Gaza beach hoax, the Lebanese ambulance hoax, the al-Durah hoax, and so on. When it comes to Israel, the constative will almost always trump the referential and a collective assessment obliterate an objective factor. The Israeli pitcher throws a strike; the Arab batter receives a base on balls. An intimate congruence has been performatively created between the report and the referent minus the slightest hint of the semantic distance that stretches between the two. The former remains parasitic upon the latter.

Archeologist and historian David Meir-Levy makes this clear in his new book, with its Austinesque title History Upside Down: The Roots of Palestinian Fascism and the Myth of Israeli Aggression, in which he tries to dig up the buried facts and return to the referential. He points out that “the Arabs of the area had their own designation for the region: Balad esh-Sham (the country, or province of Damascus.)” It was only after the 1967 war that the PLO reframed the issue by “inventing a ‘historic Palestine’ ex nihilo, an ancient ‘Palestinian people’ who had lived in their ‘homeland’ from ‘time immemorial’ [and] who were forced from their homeland by the Zionists…” The idea of a Palestinian nation was hatched, principally by Yasser Arafat, “for political purposes and to justify and legitimize terrorism and genocide.” Arafat himself did not disguise his intentions. In his own words, the aim of the PLO was “not to impose our will on [Israel], but to destroy it in order to take its place.” Further, no Palestinian leader, neither Arafat nor Abbas nor any of their chief negotiators, have acknowledged that there are no 1967 borders to which Israel is required to return. In fact, there are only armistice lines, and the Jordanian peace agreement with Israel specified that these armistice lines would have no bearing on future negotiations to determine final borders.

In this context, it is obvious that the propaganda war against Israel, joined by many in the West, is an indispensable part of the violent campaign to erase the country from the map. The strategy at work in all these instances of malfeasance is obvious: if the lie about Israel is repeated often enough, it will eventually be accepted as truth. Strike three will be called as ball four. The effectiveness of this strategy is borne out by the findings of a BBC global survey, released in March 2007, which skewers Israel as the most negatively-viewed country in the world and shows how successful the BBC and the like-minded media have been in pursuing their hatchet job on the Jewish state.

This clandestine design has penetrated into the domain of presumably objective scholarship as well. The prestigious Macmillan Reference USA encyclopedia contains an entry on anti-Semitism culled in part from a controversial article in the journal Race Traitor, authored by the anti-Zionist Jew Noel Ignatiev. The brunt of the article makes Jews themselves responsible for anti-Semitism, which brings the rationale for the creation of the Jewish state into question. Cognitive distortion is the name of the game. As Aldous Huxley has one of his characters reflect in Brave New World, suggesting the famous dicta of Hitler and Goebbels about the reiterative efficacy of the “Big Lie,” “Sixty-two thousand four hundred repetitions make one truth. Idiots!”


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
David Solway is the award-winning author of over twenty-five books of poetry, criticism, educational theory, and travel. He is a contributor to magazines as varied as the Atlantic, the Sewanee Review, Books in Canada, and the Partisan Review. He is the author of The Big Lie: On Terror, Antisemitism, and Identity. A new book on Jewish and Israeli themes, Hear, O Israel!, will be released by CanadianValuesPress this fall.

Well, at least we elected the lightwalker who will end the Iraq war, win in Afghanistan and close Gitmo. When does he get sworn in?

Well, at least we're winning in Libya......


 

Perhaps we can deduct that from the bill we need to send them for all the costs of illegal immigration.

http://pajamasmedia.com/tatler/2011/04/21/its-not-just-the-s-p-chinas-dagong-credit-agency-downgraded-us-in-november/

It’s not just the S & P – China’s Dagong credit agency downgraded US in November

From the Economist Magazine:


JOSH Noble in the FT has a great piece on the views of Dagong, China’s credit rating agency. Since China is the world’s key creditor, it makes sense to focus on its views. Never mind “negative watch”; Dagong downgraded the US back in November from AA to A+, on a par with Chile. Only Switzerland, Denmark and Australia are ranked AAA; China and Germany are AA+ or three notches higher than the US.
 
Nor does the agency pull its punches. In its outlook for the year, published in January, it said that
 
the United States, as the biggest country involved in sovereign debt crisis around the world, will continue its quantitative easing policy when the country is in danger, and the world credit war will be escalated due to the overflow of US dollars. In particular, the trend of continuous depreciation of US dollar will result in haircut of international creditors’ debts dominated in US dollar. The issuance of US dollar encourages numerous speculative capitals into the global commodity market, leading to an increasing pressure on global inflation. Different countries, in order to avoid unpredictable losses on their own interests, will have to seek for adjustment of international credit relations, and the global credit war, no doubt, will become the turning point of reforming international credit relations in 2011.
 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/the-dollar-less-almighty-big-investors-see-possible-long-term-currency-weakness/2011/04/19/AFxVaKLE_story.html

The dollar, less almighty: Big investors see possible long-term currency weakness


By Steven Mufson, Thursday, April 21, 8:41 PM



Last month, Warren Buffett went shopping — abroad.

He flew to South Korea for a factory opening and called the country a “hunting ground” for investments. He also pronounced post-earthquake Japan “a buying opportunity,” and then traveled on to India, where he said he was eyeing more acquisitions.

April 21 (Bloomberg) -- Greg Anderson, senior currency strategist at Citigroup Inc., talks about the outlook for the U.S. dollar and other major global currencies.

This is Buffett’s way of betting against the U.S. dollar. Armed with about $38 billion of cash at Berkshire Hathaway, he can use dollars now to buy companies that will generate profits in other currencies for years to come. (Buffett is a director on the Washington Post Co. board.)

“I would recommend against buying long-term fixed-dollar investments,” Buffett said at a public appearance in New Delhi. “If you ask me if the U.S. dollar is going to hold its purchasing power fully at the level of 2011 five years, 10 years or 20 years from now, I would tell you it will not.”

Buffett isn’t alone. Some of the most successful investors in the United States and the biggest money management funds are worried that trade deficits, big budget deficits and the possibility of renewed inflation will make the U.S. dollar a weak currency compared with others around the world. On Thursday, the dollar fell to an 181 / 2-month low against the euro.

Bill Gross, chief executive of the giant bond investment firm Pimco, said its flagship Total Return Fund has 8 percent of its assets — a historic high — in issues denominated in currencies other than the dollar. Earlier this year, the fund dumped its entire holdings of U.S. Treasury bonds, according to disclosures.

“The United States is one of the serial abusers of deficits and inappropriate budgets and finance,” Gross said in an interview. “Do the headlines in terms of debt ceilings and 10 percent budget deficits and the back-and-forth between Republican and Democratic orthodoxies, does that matter? Sure it does. It’s not confidence-inducing.”

Gross said the decline of the dollar is part of a longer-term trend Pimco calls “the new normal.”

“We are in this new-normal type of economy in which the developing world is growing at a far faster pace than the developed world,” he said. “And growth tends to be reflected in terms of currency value.”

The dollar may still have more room to decline against other currencies. Gross noted that the currencies of many Asian economies are still 50 percent or more below their levels before the Asian currency crisis of 1997.

They should title this little misadventure "When accordions go deer hunting".

"Obama is awesome"

I like Cain and West. Hell, randomly picking names out of a phone book beats much of the 'pub front runners right now.

April 21, 2011
Iran, Nukes, and China's Inroads to the Middle East: What's Next Mr. President?
By Reza Kahlili

With the Middle East in an uproar, the roles being played by Iran and China are of utmost importance to our national security, economy, and global stability.  It is imperative that Americans grasp the significance of this.


President Obama's simple approach to dealing with the Iranian nuclear bomb program was to extend a hand toward the radical mullahs ruling Iran hoping to appease them.  Clearly, he thought an apology for what America stands for would motivate the Iranian leaders to change their behavior and find a resolution that would solve our differences.  He turned his back on millions of Iranians who took to the streets in protest, legitimizing this very barbaric regime -- a regime that has raped, tortured, and executed tens of thousands of brave Iranians and deprived them of their aspirations for freedom and democracy.


The Iranians instead, once again, outmaneuvered and deceived the Obama administration by promising cooperation.  Instead, they bought time to continue their nuclear enrichment to where they now have over 8000 pounds of enriched uranium -- enough for three nuclear bombs.


Today it is quite clear that President Obama's policies vis-à-vis Iran's nuclear program have failed.  The negotiations have not worked and the sanctions have proven to be a dismal disaster.


As a result of Obama's obvious weakness, many countries such as Germany, India, Venezuela, China, and others are openly collaborating with the regime by providing backdoor financial channels, arms, and even nuclear material.


The Iranian leaders have detected total confusion, weakness, and incompetence from the White House and have picked up their activities.  Iranian agents, who have long infiltrated the region, are helping to incite uprisings in Bahrain, Yemen, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt, and other countries in the Middle East.  As I revealed recently, there is a secret documentary, "The Coming is Upon Us," which will be distributed shortly in the Middle East among the Muslim population, that is calling for the unification of Arabs, the overthrow of U.S.-backed governments, and promising the destruction of Israel and the demise of the U.S.


Just in the last couple of months, many shipments of arms and explosives have been confiscated by authorities in Turkey, Israel, and others destined for Syria, Hezb'allah, Hamas, Taliban, and North Africa.  Also several ships containing nuclear material destined for Iran have been confiscated in South Korea, Singapore, and Malaysia, where two containers were confiscated carrying material used for weapons of mass destruction and nuclear armaments.  Interestingly, the parts were labeled as boiler parts and loaded in those containers at a port in China!


China, also sensing the weakness of the Obama administration, is helping Iran with its nuclear program exactly as they did with Pakistan with their nuclear bomb.  Pakistan recently announced that with the help of China, they were building more nuclear plants, making them the fourth largest nuclear state by the end of this decade.


Reports indicate that the Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov has warned that the recent China and Pakistan strategic agreements are a signal to China's ambitions regarding the vital energy resources of the Middle East.  This new strategic agreement between the two allows China access to the Karakoram Highway and therefore its reach to the Arabian Sea.  Other reports indicate that even Saudi Arabia and some other Gulf countries have turned to China because of Obama's apparent confusion in dealing with the current crisis in the Middle East.


While China and Iran share a common goal, which is the demise of America's supremacy in the region, they differ on the outcome.  China believes, for the first time in a long time, it has been provided a grand opportunity to access the Middle East, secure its energy source, and become the next superpower of the world.


However, the Iranian leaders, who say the destruction of America and the West is at hand, are quite excited about the recent events in the Middle East and believe that the overthrow of U.S.-backed governments are just around the corner.  Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei stated just days ago: "Expect more events in the region soon," and on the nuclear issue he went on to say, "And now, after eight years of pressure, the Islamic Iran has won out."


The Iranian leaders today, more than any time in the past, believe that the conditions are prime for the End of Times as predicted in the centuries-old Hadith; that the last Messiah, the Shiites' 12th Imam, Imam Mahdi, will return as promised opening the way for Islam's conquest throughout the world.  But, they also fervently believe that in order for that to happen, Israel must be wiped off the face of the earth.


It is quite clear that we live in very dangerous times and unless and until our leaders grasp the reality of the events taking place in the Middle East and the world, U.S. supremacy and superiority will be lost for decades to come, perhaps never to recover.  Millions of lives could be lost and the world could suffer destruction and depression worse than anything in recent memory!


Reza Kahlili is a pseudonym for an ex-CIA spy who requires anonymity for safety reasons.  He is the author of A Time to Betray, a book about his double life as a CIA agent in Iran's Revolutionary Guards, published by Threshold Editions, Simon & Schuster.

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/04/iran_nukes_and_chinas_inroads.html at April 21, 2011 - 02:10:46 PM CDT

"Centralized economic planning will really work this time!"-Obama supporter

Somebody call NATO!



Kidding...... 

ccp,

What of the idea of adopting Hong Kong's tax system? 200 pages vs. our tax laws and rules that no one can agree on interpreting correctly.

"However, they will move between states, change locations in a heartbeat for the
right incentive, be it a zoning, building, tax, or whatever incentive is foolishly offered."

Why is it foolish for NM to get films made in NM by offering incentives, as an example?

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/19/singapore-china-yuan-idUSL3E7FI3NA20110419

China began allowing its currency to be used to settle international trades in 2009 through a scheme involving several Chinese cities along with Hong Kong, Macau and various Southeast Asian countries, including Singapore. The scheme was extended to the rest of the world in 2010.

Hong Kong is, however, currently the only place outside China where yuan trades can be settled via a Chinese bank. That is one of the main reasons why CNH, or offshore yuan in Hong Kong, trading volumes have surged and are expected to hit $1 billion a day this year.

"China needs more such centres after first data showed a slowdown in the pace of shift of China's trade to yuan, and Singapore needs the ability to clear trades in order to compete with Hong Kong," said Dariusz Kowalczyk, a senior economist and strategist at Credit Agricole in Hong Kong.

"Such a development would be in line with our expectation of China establishing more yuan offshore centres to speed up the process of yuan internationalization." he added. <^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Chin 's web of currency swap deals: [ID:nL3E7FI0L6] China may permit yuan FDI this year: [ID:nL3E7FJ01W] CNH market developments and news: ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^


The Wall Street Journal, citing unnamed sources, reported last week that China was weighing steps to expand trading of its currency outside the mainland and may select Singapore as a second yuan-trading hub after Hong Kong. [ID:nL3E7FB0GW]

Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) Chairman Goh Chok Tong told reporters in Beijing that the People's Bank of China (PBOC) will soon pick an approved Chinese bank in Singapore to clear yuan trades.

PBOC may also give MAS a qualified foreign institutional investor (QFII) licence to invest in onshore Chinese financial products, Goh said.

Approval of such a license would allow financial institutions in Singapore to attract investors with the prospect of being able to invest directly in mainland Chinese markets. China's capital account is largely sealed, preventing foreign investors from gaining exposure to the fast-growing economy.

MAS already has a S$30 billion ($24 billion) currency swap agreement with China to ensure yuan liquidity in Singapore.


HONG KONG'S "CNH" MARKET TO STAY DOMINANT

Analysts said that while Singapore will likely grab a large slice of the fast-growing offshore yuan business, the PBOC will ensure that Hong Kong, a special territory of China, remains the paramount centre, a view that Goh also expressed.

"We have no ambition to try and rival Hong Kong. Singapore cannot rival it because Hong Kong is part of China. It is close to China; it has got much more trade with China," the Straits Times newspaper quoted Goh as saying on Tuesday.

Goh, Singapore's former prime minister, said that the city could play a primary role in facilitating yuan-denominated trade between China and the countries of Southeast Asia and India.

The Straits Times said the designated Chinese bank for clearing yuan trades in Singapore was likely to be either Bank of China or Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) .

The Business Times newspaper noted ICBC recently set up a yuan-processing centre in Singapore for Southeast Asia. ICBC is lobbying hard to become the yuan clearing bank for Singapore, a source told Reuters.

Singapore is Asia's trading hub for many of the commodities that China imports. More than 3,000 mainland firms operate in the city and the offshore arm of China's CITIC Bank said recently it saw great potential for developing a yuan business in Singapore.

The city-state is also the world's fourth largest forex trading centre, behind New York, London and Tokyo but ahead of Hong Kong and Sydney.

While there is no official data on the amount of yuan deposits held in Singapore, the city-state's three big lenders DBS , Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp and United Overseas Bank , all offer yuan deposits.

Singapore is also Asia's biggest hub for private banking and investors have access to several funds that invest yuan-denominated bonds as well as shares listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen exchanges.

Separately, a HSBC spokeswoman in Singapore told Reuters the bank has to-date raised over 1.5 billion yuan in yuan deposits in the Southeast Asia city-state.

http://www.nationalreview.com/exchequer/265199/four-national-debts

The Four National Debts

April 20, 2011 4:00 A.M.

By Kevin D. Williamson

 

Tags: Four different Treasury instruments


As I have argued (repeatedly, endlessly, ad nauseam, I know!), our real national debt is not that $14.3 trillion we always hear about, but more like $140 trillion. Another thing to keep in mind: That $14.3 trillion is not just one national debt, but four of them.
 
There are two flavors of national debt: debt held by the public and intragovernmental debt. The first category — securities held by investors, basically — is the one we mostly worry about. (I worry about the other one, too, but that’s another story.) If I may be permitted to express it in its full glory, the debt held by the public as of April 15 amounts to $9,679,202,714,701.01. (Love, love, love that penny on the end — can’t say Treasury isn’t minding the details! Wasn’t it Ben Franklin who said, “Mind the pennies and the trillions will take care of themselves”? Or something like that?)
 
That debt held by the public is really four debts, because we have four main ways of financing our borrowing: Treasury bills, Treasury notes, Treasury bonds, and Treasury Inflation Protected Securities (TIPS). Bills are the shortest-term security, the attention-deficit-disorder case of the U.S. sovereign-debt world, maturing in one year or less. Notes, like liberal-arts graduates, mature in one to ten years, and bonds, like a mortgage (remember mortgages?), go from 20 to 30 years. TIPS are a mixed bag, in five-year, ten-year, and 30-year versions. TIPS are a relatively new thing, having been introduced in 1997. They’ve grown popular, from accounting for $33 billion of the national debt in their first year to $640 billion as of March 2011.
 
Now, when you’ve got $9,679,202,714,701.01 in debt floating around out there in the marketplace, and you’ve got S&P sort of frowning in a meaningful way at your ledger, and bond funds are wishing you the very best of British luck as they dump your debt and refuse to buy any more, but you just can’t help yourself and have to buy a shiny new windmill whenever you see one — in that sort of a situation, you might be keenly interested in how much of your debt is financed through short-term bills vs. how much is locked into 20- or 30-year rates with the long bond. We are starting to have that discussion just now. And it ain’t pretty: The average maturity is 59 months, and about $1.7 trillion of the publicly held debt is in short-term notes, which presents real, sobering risks of the standing-on-a-ledge variety should interest rates spike up.
 
Here’s the thing: It costs more to finance your debt with 30-year bonds than with 30-day bills. (Yeah, I know, they’re 28-day bills, but cut a poet some slack.) That’s because investors, like men with options, are commitment-shy. If you’re going to lock your investment down for 20 or 30 years, you want a pretty high rate of return. But for 28 days? Less so. But there’s a tradeoff: Interest rates change, sometimes dramatically and often unexpectedly. When the 28-day bill comes up and you still haven’t balanced the budget, you have to refinance that debt. Ben Bernanke and Ramesh Ponnuru are working hard to keep Washington’s short-term borrowing rate at basically zero right now, so there’s a lot of incentive to use short-term rather than long-term financing. Sometimes that works out well: The Clinton administration pushed a lot of our debt into shorter-term instruments back in the 1990s and helped save a bundle on borrowing costs. (The other way to save a bundle on borrowing costs: Stop borrowing.) But sometimes taking the short-term deal and leaving yourself open to unexpected changes in debt-service costs is really, really stupid: Ask somebody who signed up for one of those brilliant adjustable-rate mortgages that take you from free money to pawn-shop rates overnight. A lot of people, myself included, worry that we’ve got too much short-term debt and should use more long-term financing to protect ourselves from interest-rate risk, even if it costs more to do so. Why? Because debt service is one of those checks the government absolutely has to write, and you don’t want surprises. That’s how you get the sort of fiscal crisis that leaves you with banana-republic finances while the Canadians laugh at you.