Managing The Dragon

Businessmen and diplomats certainly hope so. Expectations for Chinese President Hu Jintao’s trip to the United States are running high on both sides of the ocean. President Barack Obama is rolling out the red carpet, complete with the full pomp of a 21-gun salute and a black-tie dinner after Oval Office talks on Wednesday. People’s […]

The People’s Bank of China, China’s central bank, announced over the weekend that it will resume a gradual appreciation of the RMB against the U.S. dollar, and that it will manage the yuan’s exchange rate with reference to a basket of currencies, rather than pegging it to the dollar. The PBOC statement makes it clear […]

At the Export-Import Bank’s annual conference last Thursday, President Barack Obama took the latest swipe at China’s currency policy. In his speech, President Obama argued that liberalizing China’s exchange rate would help increase consumption in countries like China that have external surpluses, and boost savings and exports in countries like the U.S. that have external […]

It was supposed to be history in the making when representatives from 192 countries met in Copenhagen to formulate a global solution to what some believe is the biggest problem facing mankind. Instead, it degenerated into a sometimes tawdry display of finger-pointing and trading of barbs between representatives from the developed countries of the world […]

It’s only been six months, but it seems like ages since 2008 finally gave way to 2009. Though uncertainty will always be part and parcel of economics and finance, it’s hard to remember a time when there was less clarity in global economics. By January, trillions of dollars of wealth had been wiped out by […]

“Watch us…and watch what we do—in staging a strong recovery and controlling the rising deficit.” Those were the words of US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner as he faced Chinese skeptics at a China Daily news conference on Tuesday. On numerous occasions over the past several days, Geithner’s message was that the United States will spawn […]

Before Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner headed to Beijing over the weekend, a senior Treasury Department official was quoted as saying that Geithner plans to press Beijing to take drastic measures to turn China’s economy into one that depends heavily on sales to domestic consumers and less on sales to the U.S. and other […]

Through Timothy Geithner, the new Treasury Secretary, the Obama Administration has signaled that the relationship between the United States and China may be headed for choppy waters. In written testimony for his confirmation hearing, Mr. Geithner said that President Obama, “backed by the conclusions of a broad range of economists — believes that China is […]