protectionism

Professor Professor Xiang Songzuo from the Centre for International Monetary Research at Renmin University in Beijing told the BBC yesterday there would definitely be retaliation if the US moves to sanctions against China. If this scenario…

Comstock Partnrs writes that its fund is currently positioned to benefit from a declining stock market. This bearishness is mostly due to the enormous debt built up over the last few decades (total debt-including private debt-- was $11…

We saw that Joseph Stiglitz proposes a new reserve currency to alleviate pressure on trade imbalances. Michael Pettis is now also proposing a similar move away from the U.S. dollar. In an FT Op-Ed, Michael wrote that every generation we…

By Michael Pettis On Friday the US Treasury released its presumably semi-annual (it was due last October) report to Congress on currency issues, and in it refrained from calling any of the countries under review “currency…

In anticipation of the state visit by Chinese Leader Hu Jintao, I spoke about the pressure on US politicians to do something about the Chinese currency problem with RT America's Alyona Minkovski on the Alyona Show last night. The video is…

There has been a lot of chatter of late about countries ditching the US dollar as the primary reserve currency and moving on to something else. Robert Zoellick mentioned gold as the alternative. Nicolas Sarkozy has been talking up special…

The Brazilian finance minister Guido Mantega continues to worry about the flood of money coming from Europe and the US and has said Brazil will take more steps to defend its currency. Mr. Mantega was quoted saying "With the situation…

The debt overhang in the developed world has lowered aggregate demand globally. As developed economies compete over a dwinding pie by moving toward a policy of economic nationalism, investment opportunities will dwindle. Bill Gross advises…

by Michael Hudson Here’s the quandary that the U.S. economy is in: The Fed’s quantitative easing policy– creating more liquidity so that banks can lend more – aims at helping the economy “borrow its way out of debt.” But banks are not…