China

This video is based on the cover story from this week's Economist.  See the written version here.

China reported an October trade surplus of $27 billion Wednesday. This is a very big number and not one likely to soothe anger directed at China. It will be very hard for China credibly to argue that it is trying to contribute to global…

by Win Thin China took more efforts aimed at “further curbing inflows” with measures designed to “maintain China’s economic and financial security.”  The measures appear to be relatively mild, but like Brazil, China may end up…

The reason: QE. The downgrade for the U.S. is to A+ from AA, with a negative outlook because of quantitative easing, according to Xinhua. According to the ratings agency, quantitative easing will further depreciate the U.S. dollar and…

by Michael Pettis In the debate about global trade imbalances, we often hear it said that because Americans produce nothing that China exports to the US, any move to restrict Chinese imports to the US would have no employment effect on…

by Michael Hudson, President of The Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends (ISLET), a Wall Street Financial Analyst, Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City and author of…

There are two developments in China to note: The yuan appreciated in the spot market earlier today, after staging a relatively large decline yesterday.  At today's best dollar level, the yuan had weakened about 0.85% against the…

by Michael Pettis The seemingly imminent and inexorable rise of the renminbi as a major, even dominant, reserve and trading currency, has been almost as widely heralded as the equivalent rise of the Japanese yen just twenty years ago. Even…

Given the push toward austerity, I want to make a few remarks about the intersection of full employment with trade and exchange rates. It all begins with the British austerity budget. In regards to that budget, recently presented by the…

This graph comes via the Council on Foreign Relations (hat tip James Fallows).   The Chinese were implementing a gradual revaluation before the credit crisis. They stopped revaluing their currency versus the USD in 2008. And…