Monthly Archive for May 2011

Trade and the RMB

Most of last week’s newsletter was dedicated to a discussion on Chinese debt, specifically on how we should think about the Chinese debt structure and on when would we know how much debt is too much debt.  Every earlier example of the investment-driven growth model that China follows ran into the problem of an unsustainable [...]

Looking for debt

Quite a lot of data came in last week as I was recovering from the jet lag generated by last week’s trip to the US, and for good measure, the PBoC then raised minimum reserve requirements Thursday evening.  I discuss the numbers extensively in my newsletter, and of course there has been a lot of [...]

Is China currently rebalancing?  The currency has been appreciating, the PBoC has hiked interest rates four times, and wages have been surging.  Because of all of this I am often asked if China has finally begun the long-waited rebalancing process and whether we have yet seen an improvement in the underlying economy caused by a [...]

The week before last on Thursday the Financial Times published an OpEd piece I wrote arguing that Washington should take the lead in getting the world to abandon the dollar as the dominant reserve currency.  My basic argument is that every twenty to thirty years – whenever, it seems, that American current account deficits surge [...]