"History shows again and again how nature points up the folly of man " http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiHRm2DioMA
good explanation of why us went off gold standard around minute 5 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZkNSfh2oz0&feature=channel_video_title
Rickards goes out of his way to say that the crisis in Europe doesn't necessarily have to spill over to the currency. Others obviously strongly disagree: "Euro Strength Misleading, More Artificial Than Authentic" http://www.cnbc.com/id/45354303 The hip bone is tied to the, leg bone...
Of course, if you spend Euro 20B a day, http://www.cnbc.com/id/45352305 You can hold up just about any currency in the world.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRzr1QU6K1o blah blah politicians are all the same rhetoricians at best criminals at worst
those currencies to the Peopleâs Bank of China in exchange for yuan at a rate fixed by the bank. When an exporter needs some dollars or euros to buy foreign materials or other imports, it can get them, but the PBOC makes only enough dollars or euros available to pay for the imports and no more; the rest is kept by the bank. The process of absorbing all the surplus dollars entering the Chinese economy, especially after 2002, produced a number of unintended consequences. The first problem was that the PBOC did not just take the surplus dollars, but rather purchased them with newly printed yuan. This meant that as the Fed printed dollars and those dollars ended up in China to purchase goods, the PBOC had to print yuan to soak up the surplus. In effect, China had outsourced its monetary policy to the Fed, and as the Fed printed more, the PBOC also printed more in order to maintain the pegged exchange rate. The second problem was what to do with the newly acquired dollars. The PBOC needed to invest its reserves somewhere, and it needed to earn a reasonable rate of return. Central banks are traditionally ultraconservative in their investment policies, and the PBOC is no exception, preferring highly liquid government securities issued by the United States Treasury. As a result, the Chinese acquired massive quantities of U.S. Treasury obligations as their trade surplus with the United States persisted and grew. By early 2011, Reuters estimated that total Chinese foreign reserves in all currencies were approximately $2.85 trillion, with about $950 billion of that invested in U.S. government obligations of one kind or another. The United States and China were locked in a trillion-dollar financial embrace, essentially a monetary powder keg that could be detonated by either side if the currency wars spiraled out of control. Rickards, James (2011-11-10). Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global Crisis (Kindle Locations 1717-1730). Penguin Group. Kindle Edition.
"Why Currency Wars Might Be Coming" http://www.cnbc.com/id/100426960 I have been hearing this same tome now for at least 25 years. Either the rest of the world are a bunch of wuss that won't stand up to defend their currency (weaken/strengthen) , or this "Currency War" thing is sensationalism. I am leading towards the latter.
nobody wants a currency war everybody wants their currency to go down there's a gentlemans agrrement that we will all stay within bands those bands can be pretty wide it's generally accepted that someday, the euro needs to weaken more than the others and the others will accomodate unless you have a trillion and a lot of time, not very useful info for a trader