The War On Dumbya's Dollar ...

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Good job, Georgie.

Antique store owners in lower Manhattan, ticket vendors at India's Taj Mahal and Brazilian business executives heading to China all have one thing in common these days: They don't want U.S. dollars.

Hit by a free fall with no end in sight, the once mighty U.S. dollar is no longer just crashing on currency markets and making life more expensive for American tourists and business people abroad; its clout is evaporating worldwide as foreign businesses and individuals turn to other currencies.

(snip)

Negative dollar sentiment is growing in nations where the dollar was historically accepted as equal or better than local currency — and dollar aversion is even extending to some quarters in the United States.

Read the rest of today's Associated Press report on 'reality'.

*(Cross posted at Appletree)

US Treasury: China's Preemptive Financial Nuke Option ...

Sooner or later something was going to have to give.

Those in the know and those with the know-how have been screaming about something like this slowly sneaking up on the USA for a long, long time.

One could quite reasonably call it the ultimate 'Made in China' product.

The inscrutable, far eastern, financial nuke.

China threatens to trigger US dollar crash

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

Daily Telegraph - 08/08/2007

The Chinese government has begun a concerted campaign of economic threats against the United States, hinting that it may liquidate its vast holding of US Treasury bonds if Washington imposes trade sanctions to force a yuan revaluation.

(snip)

China threatens to trigger US dollar crash

Henry Paulson, the US Treasury secretary, met with Chinese president Hu Jintao in Beijing last week

Two Chinese officials at leading Communist Party bodies have given interviews in recent days warning, for the first time, that Beijing may use its $1,330bn (£658bn) of foreign reserves as a political weapon to counter pressure from the US Congress. Shifts in Chinese policy are often announced through key think tanks and academies.

Described as China's "nuclear option" in the state media, such action could trigger a dollar crash at a time when the US currency is breaking down through historic support levels.

(snip)

It is estimated that China holds more than $900bn in a mix of US bonds.

(snip)

He Fan, an official at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, went further yesterday, letting it be known that Beijing had the power to set off a dollar collapse, if it chose to do so.

"China has accumulated a large sum of US dollars. Such a big sum, of which a considerable portion is in US Treasury bonds, contributes a great deal to maintaining the position of the dollar as a reserve currency," he told China Daily.

None of us need be Wall Street whiz-kids before being able to figure out for ourselves precisely what the 'big picture' here is all about.

Nonetheless, read the rest of this revealing British press report right here.

Buddy, can you spare a dime?

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