China rattles eco-sabre: "perhaps time for building a de-Americanized world".

[JasonPratt]

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/indepth/2013-10/13/c_132794246.htm

"As U.S. politicians of both political parties are still shuffling back and forth between the White House and the Capitol Hill without striking a viable deal to bring normality to the body politic they brag about, it is perhaps a good time for the befuddled world to start considering building a de-Americanized world."

They're talking about removing America as the world's reserve currency; can't say I blame them!

They've been quietly (and not so quietly) stockpiling and buying gold for the past several years, and encouraging their citizens to do so, too -- no doubt because private citizen gold holdings in China actually belong to the state as eminent domain and can be seized (um, requested for redistribution) insofar as the state thinks it can get away with it. Other nearby communist states have been following the same gameplan, though naturally not to anywhere near the same scale as China.

What is that Chinese curse? -- may you live to see interesting times?

[Staggerwing]

This recent Congressional clustercluck has got to be a wakeup call to the world's financial markets and larger multinationals. If we get a sequel soon then the writing will really be on the wall for the global economy to read.

[JasonPratt]

Not that other countries are really doing much better (many are in much worse shape, though that's largely because they can't just print their own money with the safety net of being the world's reserve currency). Including China.

But if China (and some of her allies) is doing even one serious thing to help her economy stop being insane, that's one more thing than we're currently doing. So what's the result of that likely to be? I mean aside from war eventually?

In the land of the quadriplegics, the man who can drag himself along the ground with his tongue is king.  :P

[LongBlade]

Not that other countries are really doing much better (many are in much worse shape, though that's largely because they can't just print their own money with the safety net of being the world's reserve currency). Including China.

But if China (and some of her allies) is doing even one serious thing to help her economy stop being insane, that's one more thing than we're currently doing. So what's the result of that likely to be? I mean aside from war eventually?

In the land of the quadriplegics, the man who can drag himself along the ground with his tongue is king.  :P

China is can talk all it wants. The last thing the world is going to do is make them the reserve currency.

[JasonPratt]

They'd probably settle for a United Nations based world reserve currency; but even if they led the way in promoting some other nation's currency as the new reserve, they'd still benefit politically -- and in a negative way would benefit hugely from the US losing its reserve current status.

Kind of a "We're for Tennessee and whoever is playing against Alabama" situation. :)

[Dolan50]

Nobody likes the Chinese except the international banking cartels that propped up their fake economy with fake dollars.
UN based world reserve currency.That's a joke.

I'm all for pulling an Iceland on our debt and reinstituting the Glass-Stegle laws and going back to our pre NAFTA trade agreements.

Let's see how China and the banksters feel about that.
The WTO can shove their brand of economic slavery up their ass.

I also think it would be a good idea to break up these too big to fail corporations along with our too big too fail government.

The only thing these Conglomerates seem to be efficient at is sucking all the wealth away from the bottom of the pyramid and giving it to a few at the top,while making the rest dependent on their meager handouts and slave wages which become smaller every year.

[LongBlade]

"Too big to fail" only encourages failure.

[Windigo]

see how bitcoin goes...

I would like to see the reaction by world governments to it if it really took off...

[JasonPratt]

Considering that if we keep going at this rate, the US debt will literally exceed the yearly GDP of all countries on earth by around 2016, China might be able to make a good case for almost any other country (maybe Canada, which shares American stable isolation from gumpty neighbors) becoming the new reserve currency.

[Windigo]

Considering that if we keep going at this rate, the US debt will literally exceed the yearly GDP of all countries on earth by around 2016, China might be able to make a good case for almost any other country (maybe Canada, which shares American stable isolation from gumpty neighbors) becoming the new reserve currency.

Not sure we could handle the international pressure on that.... On the plus side, we are scheduled to be into a surplus budget state by 2015-16. Provided our neighbour to the south avoids  politicaly driven economic hari-kari

[JasonPratt]

If we pulled our military back, we might be a surplus budget state, too, although that wouldn't eliminate the underlying banking problem (both federal and public) and I don't know what we'd do with the enormous numbers of people now laid off. Maybe invade Mexico and keep going south for the next 150 years until we finally achieve stability on the American continents?

A tempting proposition, and one that would be REAAAALLLYYY tempting to keep the mil-indus-plex going, distracting people from the imploding character of our financial system. We'd be doing good, right?  :P