[BlackJack]

The Chinese will own the world soon.....if they don't poison themselves with pollution first.

[samtheman]

I guess that's why there are so many Americans busting to get over there and start a new life in China and why there are no Chinese coming to the USA to live.

I wondered why that was.

This article clears that all up.

(It's amusing that this idiocy was written shortly after Milton Friedman died. He used to say, "what are all those other countries going to do with all those dollars they're accumulating? Eat them?")

[trumandogz]

Perhaps we should stop buying products made in China and the U.S. Government should stop borrowing billions of dollars from Red China.

[Pro-Bush]

Not "per-capita".

[Cinnamon]

and how much of it is just paper? how much is backed by hard currency such as gold?

[arthurus]

China adding dollars to its reserves at such a high rate is why we are not feeling the effects of high inflation here. Our government has been inflating-printing excess money- at a prodigious rate since 2000. Normally that would be reflected in skyrocketing prices for just about everything as the production of money available to purchase goods exceeds the production of goods to be bought for money and prices get bid up across the board. But all those excess dollars are, instead, going into the Chinese and European central banks as reserves suggesting the nightmare scenario that China could Bring Down the American Economy just by switching its reserves to Eurinals or Sesterces or something. But if China did that the value of the dollars it holds would plummet and the value of its reserves would likewise plummet before it could get mucht of its reserves exchanged, i.e. instant national pauperization. Much as pundits discuss the possibility and China and France threaten it, it won't happen unless the countries are truly declaring bankruptcy and dropping out of the world economy altogether. In China that would bring rapid political upheaval and extreme disorder. They ain't gonna do it.

[arthurus]

The Chinese will own the world soon...

No. The Chinese will own the world's largest hoard of dollars but I believe China has reached the point that China cannot spend those dollars and they are a net liability. China's economy is based on the value of those dollars and the stash is so large that if China does spend them their value to China will decrease in a breathtaking fall. Likewise I think China is in a position of having to continue to add to its dollar reserves because the US is inflating its currency rapidly. If China does not add to its holdings the value of those holdings declines as the exchange value of the dollar declines due to the rapidly increasing number of those dollars in the market.China has to suck up those excess dollars to keep its economy afloat. China appears to be in a financial trap which if it allows the trap to spring will immediately suffer tremendous economic dislocations and an end to its own economic expansion. Incidentally it will also Carterize the US economy.

[aligncare]

Here is the "money" quote that reveals this article as a pre election hit piece designed to get folks to oust the Republicans as 'fiddling while Rome burns':

Today, as Americans go to the polls, the money supply is soaring, Saddam has been condemned to death and the Dow rallied more than 100 points. Still, “middle class cash woes cause election angst,” reads a Houston newspaper

[MadIvan]

(Begins with pictures of money, bank vaults, gold, etc. overwritten by 'THE MONEY PROGRAMME'. Eric Idle sits at a desk between Michael Palin and John Cleese. He begins quietly but becomes increasingly agitated as he speaks.)

PRESENTER:

Good evening, and welcome to The Money Programme. Tonight on The Money Programme, we're going to look at money. Lots of it. On film, and in the studio. Some of it in nice piles, others in lovely clanky bits of loose change. Some of it neatly counted into fat little hundreds, delicate fivers stuffed into bulging wallets, nice crisp clean checks, pert pieces of copper coinage thrust deep into trouser pockets, romantic foreign money rolling against the thigh with rough familiarity, beautiful wayward curlicued banknotes, filigreed copper plating cheek by jowl with tumbly ( ? ) rubbing gently against the terse leather of beautifully balanced bank books!

 

(He looks around in surprised realization that he's panting and screaming.)

I'm sorry.

(adjusts tie, darts eyes around room)

But I love money. All money. (growing excited again) I've always wanted money. To handle! To touch! The smell of the rain-washed florin! The lure of the lira! The glitter and the glory of the guinea! (stands up) The romance of the ruble! (stands on chair) The feel of the franc! (stands on desk) The heel of the deutschmark! (stomps foot) The cold antiseptic sting of the Swiss franc! And the sunburnt splendor of the Australian dollar! (slaps knee)

 

(sings the rest while dancing across desk; Michael and John just look at him blandly.)

PRESENTER:

I've got ninety thousand pounds in my pyjamas.

I've got forty thousand French francs in my fridge.

I've got lots of lovely lire.

Now the Deutschmark's getting dearer,

And my dollar bills would buy the Brooklyn Bridge.

 

PRESENTER and CHORUS:

There is nothing quite as wonderful as money.

There is nothing quite as beautiful as cash.

Some people say it's folly,

But I'd rather have the lolly.

With money you can make a splash.

 

PRESENTER:

There is nothing quite as wonderful as money.

CHORUS:

...Money, money, money, money.

PRESENTER:

There is nothing like a newly minted pound.

 

CHORUS:

...Money, money, money, money.

PRESENTER and CHORUS:

Everyone must hanker

For the butchness of a banker.

It's accountancy that makes the world go 'round.

CHORUS:

'Round, 'round, 'round.

PRESENTER:

You can keep your Marxist ways,

For it's only just a phase,

For it's money, money, money makes the world go 'round.

CHORUS:

...Money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, moneeeeey!

 

Regards, Ivan

[oblomov]

Kansas only has 52.36 million acres. So, the Chinese could buy the entire state and still have $947.64 billion left over—enough to buy all the farmland in Nebraska, Iowa, South Dakota, North Dakota, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Colorado, New Mexico, Montana, Wyoming, Oklahoma and probably Texas too.

Let's sell it to them. Then, for just one year, we can raise property taxes to 100% of the assessed value in these states. Don't want to pay? Then the sheriff will seize the land, and auction it off.

Yeh, foreign investing can suck. Just ask the Americans who owned assets in China, pre 1949.

[Dixie Yooper]

Now that the Chinese are doing so well, they should start a program that insures financial security for all of their citizens for as long as they live regardless of whether they ever want to work or not.

[capitalist229]

In the past two years the Asians Europeans and now Arabs are diversifying their dollar portfolios, no longer holding new dollars acquired through trade.

In a few years we will start seeing the effects of that policy as the $USDX sinks into the muck, our import prices will inflate, which will cause domestic inflation.

Commodities will be bid up beyond our control. I fear for oil prices because that is one commodity with highly inelastic demand (we cannot replace it).

What goes around, comes around.

Get ye into hard assets. Fixed incomes are toast.

BUMP

[The Raven]

>>CHINESE HAVE MOST MONEY ON PLANET

I thought it was Brazil

[AmericaUnited]

Bill Bonner the founder and president of Agora Publishing...

He has probrably published more newsletters predicting the end of the world as we know it in the last 40 years, than all of his competitors combined. Some great crash was supposed to occur 879 times... Buy gold, buy 'these special stocks', buy land in new zealand, buy bunkers, ....

[aligncare]

Can economics really be called a science? Seems like just so much speculation and opinion.

I suppose even the 'hard' sciences have room for opining; such as nutritional and environmental sciences. It may be all in how one interprets the data, and if the data is reliable to begin with.

[A. Pole]

"Well, isn’t that special," American economists could say. "The foreigners know America has the most dynamic, most successful economy in the whole dang world. Yes, we spend more than we make. But the money comes back to us finally. It just shows what a great economy we have. The foreigners want a piece of it."

They are buying out Latin America and Africa as well.

[dennisw]

trouble ahead... trouble behind...

[raybbr]

The Pentagon has had two rounds of discussions with the Chinese military on the defense budget process, with the United States explaining in detail how its military spending works and China revealing very little about its secret military budget. Chinese military officials met Pentagon officials in June and provided a very limited explanation of the process Beijing uses to support its weapons and forces. "We're trying very hard to get an exchange of experts on the budgeting process so that we can understand how they create their budgets, since this is an area where we have a very large disagreement with them," a senior defense official said. China is engaged in a major military buildup but will not disclose the amounts or systems it is building. From here.

Anyone want to guess where our dollars are going?

[Moonman62]

What an extremely misleading title. Every indicator of economic size and wealth belongs to the United States, by a very large margin.

[keithtoo]

There is no such thing as a trade deficit as long as the trade is voluntary.

A magazine called The "Economist" should know this.

[LibLieSlayer]

THE US ECONOMY GREW BY A LARGER AMOUNT IN THE LAST TWO YEARS, THAN HE ENTIRE SIZE OF THE chicom ECONOMY! This article is BS.

LLS