US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen wants to work with China on mutual interests. What interests are those?
Eager to Work With China
Reuters reports Yellen ‘Eager’ to Work with China on Debt, Other Global Challenges
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Sunday she was “eager” to work with China on areas of mutual interest, including debt restructurings for poorer countries, and that multilateral development banks needed reforms before capital increases could be considered.
Concerns remain about China’s unfair trade practices, which prompted Washington to impose tariffs on Beijing. “They really have not been addressed,” she said.
“One of our core goals this year is to combat Russia’s efforts to evade our sanctions. Our coalition is building on the actions we’ve taken in recent months to crack down on these efforts,” she added.
Yellen’s Checklist of Alleged Mutual Interests
- Core goal to combat Russia’s efforts to evade our sanctions
- Debt restructurings for poorer countries
- Banks reforms before capital increases could be considered
- China’s unfair trade practices
- IMF’s Poverty Reduction and Growth trust
- A global corporate minimum tax
Mutual Concerns?
Q: Is China interested in any of those?
A: No, not a single one, except in the opposite direction of Yellen.
Hoot of the Day
I have no doubt Yellen is “eager” to have China bow down to her wishes. But it is a far flung hoot to suggest those items are on a mutual wish list.
It’s hard to know where to begin with Yellen’s list because it’s all preposterous.
Is China really interested in ending its unfair trade practices?
The growing interest in a BRIC currency is aimed smack at US core goals of sanction and trade policy.
A Yellen Breakthrough and Rainbows Over China?
On July 9, I asked A Yellen Breakthrough and Rainbows Over China?
What’s Changed?
- Is the US going to send advanced microchips to China?
- Is the US or EU going to lift restrictions on Huawei’s 5G technology even as the EU falls in line with Biden’s demand to restrict China?
- Has the US position on Taiwan changed?
- Is China going to rewind its export curbs on gallium and germanium?
Nothing of substance has changed other than we now have smiling faces and talk of rainbows instead of lectures and threats.
Official Silliness
More Gold Backed BRIC Currency Silliness on Dethroning the Dollar
China and Russia are certainly interested in creating a BRIC currency counter to the top concern of Yellen of enforcing sanctions on Russia.
However, that’s far easier said than done.
BRIC Echo Chamber
Via Kitco: Marc Chandler, managing director of Bannockburn Global Forex, says “Talk of BRICS gold backed currency seems like an echo chamber. They do not have the gold to back a currency meaningfully. Have we not learned anything from the EMU experience of monetary union without fiscal union. Color me profoundly skeptical.“
This echo chamber has been reverberating for years.
Thorsten Polleit, chief economist at Degussa, also hits the nail squarely: “For making the new currency as good as gold, a truly sound currency, it must be convertible into gold on demand. I am not sure whether this is what Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa have in mind.“
For more discussion, please see More Gold Backed BRIC Currency Silliness on Dethroning the Dollar
To date, all we see are proposals that are mostly to totally sensational hype, without any meaningful details.
Calling sanction policy a mutual interest is quite a hoot given the US wants to increase sanction effectiveness, while the rest of the world, including the EU is sick of the US setting sanction policy for the world.
BRICs or not, US ability to enforce global sanctions is going away. That’s a good thing. The only mutual concern is a set of desires 180 degrees apart.
US policy is one of exemplary solipsism.
Reminds me of a guy I knew in a student dorm. Every negative interaction (he was delusionally social awkward) added to his optimism & self confidence, since in his mind, people disliked him because they were jealous.
Mish: “The only mutual concern is a set of desires 180 degrees apart.”
That about says it all.
Commies gonna commie. She wants the CHN to commie her way.
Yellen Says Funding Ukraine’s War Effort Is the Best Boost for Global Economy
I can appreciate her honesty. War makes the rich richer, the poor poorer. Biden blamed all the energy/food inflation on Putin putting lower and middle class families on their heels, that’s the plan. All the grain exports, well, what’s left, have not been enough to feed the poor hungry kids in Africa and Asia where Obama and Bill Gates do not want them to farm for themselves because of their claims all that CO2 is heating the earf.
They love it when a plan comes together.
The US is in a lot of debt, and wants to borrow more, who has enough money to bail the US out ?
Only China, China will want more than the paltry interest rate that treasuries pay.
It seems China wants the US out of South Korea, and Jake Sullivan is already saying the US is willing to talk. When Blinken approached China they rebuffed him, and you could see he was a worried man, so they sent Yellen to ask for the loans. The US said no to Ukraine, and the next day the treasury auction was very successful.
The Ukraine war will wrap up quite soon, and US troops will leave SK.
“Mutual interests” means Yellen needs the Chinese to buy Treasuries as much as possible.
““Mutual interests” means Yellen needs the Chinese to buy Treasuries as much as possible.”
And: She increasingly desperately needs China to prevent the Yuan from starting to move unpredictably versus the dollar. Being stuck with a pile of ever-more-rapidly printed/debased dollars, quickly loses its luster, when near everything you need to buy, must ultimately be priced to cover costs incurred in Yuan.
Of course, why the heck would the Chinese stick with such a commitment, when all it boils down to is produce-nothing-since-1971 Americans, being able to casually print themselves ever more massive claims on the labor and resources of Chinese; without neither working nor producing almost anything at all, in return?
Can you imagine the interest rates required over here, in order to keep up pretenses of “2% price increases”, when currency moves render everything at Walmart, and everywhere else, twice as expensive in USD? While oil costs $300/barrel, payable in a currency Powell can’t simply print up and hand out to enrich his deadweight buddies?
This is, after all; the exact mechanism by which the Chinese “economy” will “transition” to one more dependent on “consumption,” like clownonomists have been calling for since about forever: The Chinese will double their purchasing power, hence consumption. Leaving the currently biggest consumers to halve theirs. As a result of no longer being able to afford more than half of what they currently consume.
The Fed’s mutual interest is CBDC.
Whatever the exchange, Yellen (U.S.) will get played. Just as the venture capitalists at SVB conned Yellen into covering their deposits. Three months, and no other large banks followed SVB down the drain.
Now I am reading that the US wants to pre-position massive amounts of weapons in Taiwan due to the possibility of China imposing sea & air blockades around the island.
An interesting fact about weapons is that they begin to appear to be a wasted investment if they are not used.
Weapons are an insurance.
Problem is, some treat them as of they were an investment.
Positively, Ms. Yellen should be MUCH better qualified president, than president Biden. After all, she’s a real expert in Financials and Economics, definitely.
I mean I think they have a common interest in censoring their own citizens when they express an opinion their respective regimes dislike.
Relationships have been built on less.
How about this significant shift in the currencies of the world being worked up?
https://www.goldmoney.com/research/the-bell-tolls-for-fiat
I think this is titled wrong. It should be:
“Yellen is eager to work for China’s interests”
She’ll go back to destroying the US with stupid sanctions, endless wars and financing ever increasing debt.
The BRICS must be dumb not to know what they’re talking about.
How about this: exchangeable on demand against their respective national currencies for their exporters, not for an ordinary Joe.
This require that national currencies float against the gold backed BRICK, or be revalued periodically based on trade data.
Chinese exporters earn US dollars, then convert it to renminbi to cover their domestic expenses. Now they would earn BRICKs and convert those to renminbi.
All things removed, this should mean USD depreciates and Chinese Renminbi appreciates.
Russia does not allow Russians to redeem rubles for dollars. Fat chance Russia allows anyone to redeem a gold backed ruble for gold. If they did everyone would redeem their rubles until all the gold were gone. Nobody trusts Putin or the Kremlin. The other BRICS are equally trustworthy. The 2+ billion people in China and India have a cultural tradition of hoarding gold. They would deplete the gold stock of any gold back currency if it were redeemable in gold.
You can only deplete the gold stock of another country if you are running a perpetual trade surplus with that country. The reason the US dollar was able to maintain a gold standard for decades was because the US ran trade surpluses. Once it stopped running them, the gold was depleted (or would have been if Nixon didn’t close the window).
The Chinese and Indian people so far have not managed to delete any gold stock at all. That’s because they are too poor to really afford any significant amounts of it. Those people would need to become very wealthy (by their standards) to serious deplete any gold stock.
Every poor Indian has a little gold as culture demands it, and there are 1.4 billion of them. The central bank has a puny 787 tons and change. There is an estimated 20,000 tons with the general populace
That’s already bullshit. Putin has an approval rating that Biden could only fantasise about.
It’s difficult to say what Putin’s approval rating is. I suspect it’s higher but there is no honest accounting due to fear.
Fear of what?
US has more political prisoners than does Russia at the moment.
Jailing African Americans does not make political prisoners.
Has anyone read the recent article by Alasdair Macleod on the GoldMoney site regarding a BRICS gold backed currency? In it he suggests it would be limited to cross-border trade settlements between central banks and would not replace national currencies. He also lays out what he thinks maybe the essential elements of the currency based upon his reading of Sergei Glazyev’s work on a trade settlement currency at the behest of Putin beginning in 2019. I’m not suggesting he is right or wrong but I did find the article interesting. It is titled “The Bell tolls for fiat”
Cross border settlement between central banks is a trivial use.
Total big yawn.
Everything needs to start somewhere
Things are changing rapidly. The world is tired of US imperialism and financial (and physical) bullying. We did not heed the founder when they said to steer clear of “foreign entanglements”. In fact, just the opposite. We went full bore to be everyone’s daddy.
As long as they could live under our rule, China was in put up and shut up mode because while the US was slaving it out, the slaves were building their escape plan. Yes, this included corporate espionage, etc. But the US loves to do nefarious acts, like overthrowing governments and running drugs and guns, on one hand while pointing out the splinter it our neighbor’s eye. Exactly the opposite of what the Bible teaches because, of course, Satan is running this liberal clown show.
So now china wants Taiwan back and thus cannot live under US rule anymore now that it sees the relationship as too favorable to the opposition. In response, the US has quietly made many high tech suppliers move their operations out of China and over to the next Slavelandia which is India. Now India will benefit from the “scourge” of being slaved out to the US. IT will gain tech, training, and factories that it would never have gotten before.
Turns out, slavery is a two way street. Those being slaved can only be slaved because it was their best bet. Yes many are abused but that changes nothing. Blacks slaved out to the US got a pretty good deal in aggregate. For 1 generation they paid their dues but now their descendants are 12% of the most powerful nation in history. Those tribes that their grand and great granddaddies left are still living a crap existence. Descendants of US slaves are way better off than the descendants of those back in Africa who sold the slaves to the white slave traders.
“Blacks slaved out to the US got a pretty good deal in aggregate.”
Obviously, you’re not a professor at Harvard, Captain ; ) But the truth hurts.
Personally, I want a GOP candidate who’ll commit to three things:
1) Close the border down
2) Fast tract a plan to decouple from China in terms of pharmaceuticals & rare earth metals
3) Fast track a plan to have 10 SMR reactors deployed within two years of taking office.
And that sure as hell ain’t Joe Biden and probably not Donald Trump. I’d love to see Vivek, DeSantis & Scott duke it out.