The discipline afforded by a global market is applied against the U.S. dollar--for the good

WORLD NEWS: "Malaysia, China Consider Ending Trade in Dollars," by Shai Oster, Wall Street Journal, 4 June 2009.

WORLD NEWS: "China Willing to Buy As Much as $50 Billion in IMF Bonds," by Andrew Batson, Wall Street Journal, 6-7 June 2009.

FRONT PAGE: "Rising Interest On Federal Debt May Sap Growth: Downside to Stimulus; Worldwide Borrowing by Governments Is a Cause of Concern," by Nelson D. Schwartz, New York Times, 4 June 2009.

The "phasing out" of the dollar that lots of countries are said to consider is driven by fears of inflation. It's a logical fear.

Thus all our calls for China to convert their currency are now being drowned out by Beijing's calls for a global currency based on more than just the dollar, arguing, with great validity, that that's just too much temptation for the American consumer to bear.

True. Of course, no such temptation over the past couple of decades and you can forget about China's "rise"--yes?

And the off-line argument about using yuan is a bit disingenuous, is it not, so long as the yuan is tied to the buck?

Still, all this signaling is good stuff and it needs to be done, whatever the risks for poisoning U.S.-Chinese trade relations, because all this government spending eventually starts to choke off non-public investments by gobbling up every loose bit of money out there, meaning too much stimulus has the opposite of the desired effect.

Scary to some, inevitable to others. Better this discussion than a host of others.

Comments

[Andrew in DC]

"Better this discusson than a host of others" - Unfortunately, those discussions are happening, just behind closed doors and being largely ignored by the western media. Two Japanese men just got caught in Italy just last week trying to offload 134.5 billion in US bonds - they were carrying the government-to-government kind and logic suggests that there's little reason to assume they were counterfeit.

http://seekingalpha.com/instablog/420590-marli/8420-did-the-japanese-try-to-dump-135-billion-in-us-bonds-on-the-black-market

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=afJXAA1ahZyo