The Great Debate UK
from The Great Debate:
The dollar’s Tinkerbell moment
(James Saft is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.)
Repeat after me: "I believe in a strong dollar as the primary global reserve currency, I believe in a strong dollar as the primary global reserve currency."
Better hope it works, because the current debate over a far-in-the-future new monetary system may bring on a here-and-now dollar selloff and a whole new leg of the crisis.
Sadly, what worked when the children espoused their faith in Tinkerbell may not for a currency backed by the full faith and credit of a debtor nation which has socialised its banking system's risk and needs to sell trillions in further debt to pay that and other bills.
Russia, India and, most significantly, China have all questioned the U.S. dollar's central role in global trade and currency reserve management in the run-up to this week's meeting of the Group of Eight industrialized nations in Italy. The future, it seems, is not greenback.
from The Great Debate:
The ugly attraction of fast shrinking Japan
-- James Saft is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own --
Sure, seeing your economy shrink at a 15 percent annual clip is depressing, quite literally, but if you believe in even a tepid global economic recovery in the second half, then Japan is actually attractive.
There is no way to sugar coat the first quarter Japanese gross domestic product figures released on Wednesday: they are breathtakingly bad viewed from virtually any angle.
