China, which emerged fairly unscathed from the global recession, clearly considers itself to be on a roll. One (unnamed) Chinese official told the Financial Times: “We used to see the US as our teacher but now we realise that our teacher keeps making mistakes and we’ve decided to quit the class”. Market capitalism is so [...]

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In order to stimulate its economy, Beijing re-pegged its currency to the dollar. Doing so, however, has not only increased global economic imbalances — it could ultimately harm China itself.
It was just over a year ago that Huang Fajing, 55, was struggling to keep his company afloat. The president of lighter manufacturer Wenzhou Rifeng Lighters [...]

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Recently a major petroleum producing country located in a region recognized for anti-Americanism and fragile democracies completed negotiations on a multi-billion dollar arms deal with nuclear implications. The region is not the Middle East or Asia, but South America and the country is not Syria or North Korea, but Brazil.
A country determined to reflect [...]

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Visitors to America might have noticed the television ads urging us to buy gold. One such “spokesman”, formerly in charge of managing the government’s hoard of the yellow stuff, including the ingots buried at Fort Knox, points out that the value of gold has never fallen to zero. Why investors are expected to find such [...]

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Rebounds in commodity prices have helped several nations, Chile among them. Their goal is to modernize their military by 2015, and mechanized forces seem to be playing a much greater role in the new structure. Recent purchases have included Leopard 2A4 tanks and Marder IFVs from Germany, M113 variants from the USA and Belgium, and [...]

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There was a lot of talk at the Senate hearing about the U.S. nearing a fiscal tipping point that could lead to catastrophe. Rep. Jim Cooper, D-Tenn., among others, warned that the loss of international confidence in U.S. creditworthiness “could even make the current financial recession look like a sideshow.”
The Impact Of Trillion-Dollar Deficits

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Still, it’s not just partisan hacks and Chicken Littles who are worried about the dollar. There are (at least) three good reasons to fret. First, the events of the past 14 months have made predictions of impending economic doom seem a lot more credible than they used to. When Faber forecasts not only a worthless [...]

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Then again, perhaps future economic historians will look back at this stage of the dollar’s decline as the currency calm before the storm. Because at some point, investors may suddenly realize that America’s already somewhat devalued currency should not be trusted.
As Senator Judd Gregg, a New Hampshire Republican and noted budget hawk, said recently, “We’re [...]

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The United States may face a series of asset price bubbles and a rerun of the financial crisis unless it lets the dollar fall “at least” another 25 percent, economist Bernard Connolly said on Tuesday.
Without dollar fall, U.S. will repeat crisis: Connolly | Reuters

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This view is “slightly naive,” according to Ferguson, author of The Ascent of Money.
“The idea they don’t have anywhere else to go or would shoot themselves in the foot if there were a steep decline in the dollar or appreciation of their currency reassures many people in Washington ‘we can relax’,” he says. “An appreciation [...]

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