There has been quite a lot of media attention given to the BRICS nations over the last few weeks as a displacement tool for Western political and economic power worldwide. While the BRICS only get media attention every few years, this year has elicited a greater response as the expansion of the BRICS was top […]
From 2003 to 2017, the Effective Federal Funds Rate (EFFR) dropped by 36% while gold rose 169%, and dollar purchasing power reflects this low-rate environment.
At a time when the administration wants to convince Vladimir Putin that the U.S. has the will to employ potent economic tools to further its diplomatic objectives, a 34-page document that the Treasury Department delivered to Congress on April 15 doesn’t help our credibility. The “Semiannual Report to Congress on International Economic and Exchange Rate […]
In mid-January, the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) announced that its foreign exchange reserves had grown by a breathtaking $157 billion in the fourth quarter of 2013. That influx of reserves brought annual growth for 2013 to $508 billion (the largest calendar-year increase ever) and pushed the total amount of China’s reserves toward the $4 […]
How serious is China about “the introduction of a new reserve currency to replace the dominant U.S. dollar,” one of its proposed steps for creating the “de-Americanized world” that the official Xinhua news agency called for in the run-up to the denouement-cum-deferral of the U.S. fiscal crisis? American commentators’ responses have ranged from the […]
It is a well know fact that China undervalues its currency, by pegging the renminbi (RMB) to the dollar at an artificially low level. This, along with other subsidies and mercantilist trade policies, keeps Chinese exports cheap, and thus more attractive to consumers in the U.S. and Europe. Because China is the manufacturing hub for […]
Iran is replacing the U.S. dollar by the euro in the country’s foreign exchange accounts. The Arabian Business reported that the euro will be used to calculate the value of the country’s Oil Stabilization Fund (OSF). The OSF, which forms part of Iran’s foreign exchange reserves, is a contingency fund set up to help the […]