In the currency market, the dollar lost some more ground to the euro. Late Friday, the euro was trading at $1.4068 vs. $1.3991 on Thursday.

China took center stage as Marketwatch.com reported that “the People’s Bank of China’s annual financial stability report repeated an earlier call by central bank chief Zhou Xiaochuan for the development of a new super-sovereign currency that would largely take the place of the dollar…

“The Chinese central bank’s comments come after Chinese government officials had played down concerns over the dollar’s reserve-currency role following a visit to China by U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner earlier this month.

“ ‘There may be signs here of tensions mounting between the PBOC’s economic concerns over China’s holdings of dollars and the Chinese government’s diplomatic reasons’ for toning down their criticism, said Stephen Gallo, head of market analysis at Schneider Foreign Exchange.

“The central bank is ‘still clearly worried about the

...

In the currency market, the dollar lost some more ground to the euro. Late Friday, the euro was trading at $1.4068 vs. $1.3991 on Thursday.

China took center stage as Marketwatch.com reported that “the People’s Bank of China’s annual financial stability report repeated an earlier call by central bank chief Zhou Xiaochuan for the development of a new super-sovereign currency that would largely take the place of the dollar…

“The Chinese central bank’s comments come after Chinese government officials had played down concerns over the dollar’s reserve-currency role following a visit to China by U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner earlier this month.

“ ‘There may be signs here of tensions mounting between the PBOC’s economic concerns over China’s holdings of dollars and the Chinese government’s diplomatic reasons’ for toning down their criticism, said Stephen Gallo, head of market analysis at Schneider Foreign Exchange.

“The central bank is ‘still clearly worried about the

...

Genesis Pharmaceuticals Enterprises, Inc., a U.S. pharmaceutical company with its principal operations in the People’s Republic of China, announced that its CFO, Ms Elsa Sung, was featured in a live interview at the studios of Bloomberg TV Asia Pacific Channel. During the interview, she discussed recent health care reforms in China and Genesis’ growth strategies.

According to Ms Sung, the Chinese government intends to spend more than 850 billion Yuan on health care over the next three years. As part of health care reform, over 90% of China’s population is expected to receive health care insurance coverage from the national medical insurance system. This will benefit the public as well as the suppliers of medical products, particularly producers of OTC Traditional Chinese Medicines (TCM).

Until recently, Genesis only focused on developing, manufacturing and distributing western prescription drugs. However, now the company is adding new TCMs to its product line and has moved

...

China Overtakes Germany – Economically

By Don Miller, Contributing Writer, Money Morning

Editor’s Note: Our colleagues have been tracking the Chinese “dragon” for a while. As part of a balanced asset allocation strategy we recommend 30% in foreign stocks – and as the third largest economy, China certainly fits that bill. There has been a lot of interest in China, and the latest report from Money Morning confirms why. Take a look below at the reasons China should be on your radar – if it’s not already.

China Now the World’s No. 3 Economy, Supplanting Germany

An upward revision in China’s growth figures allowed it to leapfrog Germany to become the world’s third-largest economy in 2007.  Now the Red Dragon is snapping at Japan’s heels in the quest to become No. 2 in the world’s economic pecking order.

“I think it will take only three to four years for China to overtake Japan

...

An upward revision in China’s growth figures allowed it to leapfrog Germany to become the world’s third-largest economy in 2007. Now the Red Dragon is snapping at Japan’s heels in the quest to become No. 2 in the world’s economic pecking order.

“I think it will take only three to four years for China to overtake Japan as the second-largest economy in the world,” Merrill Lynch economist Ting Lu, told the Associated Press. Catching up with the United States could take decades, he added.

In a complicated recalculation, the Chinese government yesterday (Thursday) revised its growth figures for 2007 from 11.9% to 13%, bringing its estimated gross domestic product (GDP) to $3.4 trillion - about 3% larger than Germany’s $3.3 trillion for the same year, based on World Bank estimates.

The news came sooner than expected, confirming a seismic shift in global economic power. It

...

Gold was under pressure right from the open of Globex trading in the Far East on Wednesday morning. It bottomed in Hong Kong and clawed its way back to unchanged by the time the Comex opened…but there was always someone there to make sure that the price didn’t get over $965 all through London trading. Every time it tried, it got shoved down. Its attempt to break through that price shortly after the Comex opened, met with a wall of selling that dropped the price by $25 in less than 90 minutes…and all of Tuesday’s gain of the same amount, disappeared. A rally attempt at the London close ran into big resistance at precisely 1:00 p.m. New York time yesterday. And as you might have expected…volume was huge as well…128,000 contracts, net of switches.

The shares got creamed.

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I have two objections to this crap, one being that the People’s Daily is wrong; the United States did NOT ‘plunder’ anybody; rather, the U.S. just took advantage of a bunch of ignorant rubes and hustled them out of their money!

My Puny Mogambo Mind (PMM) is actually retreating into a little Mogambo Inner Bunker (MIB) of its own, and I find that I avoid looking at what is happening at the hands of Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Fed chairman Ben Bernanke, as all of this money is going to show up in an explosion of prices, including food and energy, and that is when societal hell breaks loose and it’s, “Game Over, Player One.”

So I was doing a pretty good job of evading things, and I had finally relaxed enough to pry open one corner of my mouth in which a straw could be inserted so that I might

...

Holy cow batman.

A string of cascading failures in US Financial institutions appears to be having a chilling effect on the leaders of the worlds largest developing nation.

This week, casualties in the form of Merril Lynch, Lehman Brothers, and now AIG are lighting off alarms across the globe, with fears that the US Financial Maelstrom could lead to global problems far greater than what is happening now.

The most recent alarm, caused by the cascading failures of some of the worlds oldest financial titans, is rung with a final clarion call of AIG, a $1,000 Billion dollar insurer of the US Commodities markets is facing bankruptcy, to be bailed out by the Fed.

From the Telegraph.co.uk:

Federal Reserve bails out AIG with $85bn loan

By James Quinn, Wall Street Correspondent Last Updated: 1:38am BST 17/09/2008

The future of American International Group appears to have been guaranteed after high-level talks resulted

...

“The next Fourth Turning is due to begin shortly after the new millennium, midway through the Oh-Oh decade. Around the year 2005, a sudden spark will catalyze a Crisis mood. Remnants of the old social order will disintegrate. Political and economic trust will implode. Real hardship will beset the land, with severe distress that could involve questions of class, race, nation, and empire.”

– William Strauss and Neil Howe, The Fourth Turning, 1997

When IndyMac …

China Invests in London Blue Chips The State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE), which is owned by the People's Bank of China, has invested GBP9 bn in multinational companies listed in London, The Sunday Telegraph reports. The Chinese have bought stakes in a portfolio of blue-chip companies, including HSBC, Tesco, Unilever, Aviva, British Energy, Cadbury, the London Stock Exchange and, as reported, the Drax Group. Lockton Granted Insurance License Insurance broker Lockton has received approval from the regulator to operate in China. The U.S.-based firm will start business later this month from its office in Shanghai, and will provide both insurance and reinsurance broking services nationally throughout China. Lockton is only the second foreign insurance broker to set up a wholly foreign owned enterprise (WFOE) in China, after Marsh was awarded a license in 2007.