Tag: Economics

  • Zoellick on China: The Washington Consensus?

    President George W. Bush is expected to appoint his former deputy secretary of state Robert Zoellick as head of the World Bank, replacing his former deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz. Zoellick, who says has lived in Hong Kong, in previous speeches has regarded China the way the government has. In two speeches Zoellick pushed…

  • How High U.S. Interest Rates Pay for the Rising Yuan

    I had always casually wondered how this little maneuver works. How exactly does China keep its currency pegged to the U.S. Dollar, or more recently a “basket” of foreign currencies, and how does it let it rise? In the New York Times article noting the most recent minor shift in currency policy, I got my…

  • Asahi: Stating the Obvious With a Little Attitude

    The English version of the Asahi Shimbun article about the U.S. action against China in the WTO over intellectual property has a pretty obvious headline: “WTO complaints against China put Japan in a bind.” It addresses the fact that the U.S. government asked Japan to join the action (and they haven’t decided yet as far…

  • U.S. Ethanol Partly Drives Brazil's Soy Exports to China

    In a rare U.S. newspaper article that reveals the complexity of global entanglements over something so simple as food, The New York Times notes Brazil’s status as the largest soybean exporter in the world and looks at China’s involvement. Some history: Once, the biggest bilateral food trade flowed between the United States, the world’s largest…

  • Hillary Brings China Into '08 U.S. Presidential Contest

    How issues involving China will play in the 2008 U.S. presidential election is yet mostly uncharted territory, but Senator Hillary Clinton revealed revealed some China talking points this week after the Shanghai market’s burp heard round the world. Sounding bells of economic populism, Clinton told CNBC the United States faces a “slow erosion of our…