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Marc Chandler, Global Head of Currency Strategy at Brown Brothers Harriman has a good piece out today highlighting the differing economic policy agendas of the BRIC group (Brazil, Russia, India and China).  In it he suggests CRIBS is a more appropriate moniker for the group as it is China and Russia leading the way for [...]

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On Monday, I mentioned that the Asian Development Bank Fund was a clear sign that Asia was cutting loose from the west and looking to take care of things domestically.  WIlliam Pesek of Bloomberg News put out a piece this morning echoing those sentiments, but also adding a lot more background regarding the events leading [...]

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This comes via Bloomberg:
Global central banks risk inflation, currency devaluation and a “big consolidation” in bond markets by pumping cash into their economies, the People’s Bank of China said in its quarterly monetary policy report.
The Federal Reserve and the Bank of England this year started quantitative easing, or printing money to buy government bonds, a [...]

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A post from Reuters in overnight trading in Asia caught my eye.  It proclaimed “Asia faces up to challenges of global crisis." What I found particularly interesting about the post was the fact that the Asians had set up a $120 billion fund through the Asian Development Bank which excluded the International Monetary Fund (IMF) [...]

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China is holding its own in regards to economic growth because the government is pumping massive amounts of government money into the economy in order to make up for the loss in trade.  What does this mean for China, Chinese shares and the global economy?
The Bloomberg video below makes the bullish case for China and [...]

Marshall Auerback here. Yesterday, Ed made a big to-do about China’s increase in gold reserves. I am going to take a different view here.

CLSA is saying that the increase is from purification and miscellaneous transactions since all the way back to 2003 so that it was not a recent open market purchases but accumulation of 6 years of this process. If this is the situation, then this news really is not as significant as people think.

China is really looking at a lot of other options to get away from the U.S. dollar. The latest report is that it has been building huge gold reserves. There is no doubt that China wants to get out and away from the U.S. dollar now. We have heardSDRs , copper and precious metals all mentioned as plays out of U.S. dollars. How this will play out on currency markets and in the U.S. government bond market is no at all clear.

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This comes from Marc Chandler of Brown Brothers Harriman:
China appears to be an offensive of sorts. The governor of the PBOC proposed evolving the SDR as an alternative reserve asset. China has announced CNY60 bln of swap lines with a handful or so of countries. Today China indicated that it will begin [...]

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I don’t want to beat a dead horse here, but the Chinese have been making a lot of muscular moves diplomatically. While shifts in balance of power often take decades, it is increasingly apparent that China is making a strategic move in that direction right now.
We have been chronicling these moves here in a [...]

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In the wake of recent statements by Chinese officials about the dollar and dollar assets (see our previous comments here, here and here), it does seem like the Chinese are avoiding dolar-based transactions:

China and Argentina have made a tentative agreement to swap $10bn (£7bn) worth of their currencies.
The move, which allows both countries to bypass the [...]