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Europe’s central banks are starting to replace dollar reserves with the yuan

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Re: Europe’s central banks are starting to replace dollar reserves with the yuan

#51

Post by learc83 »

yorwba wrote: post #45
sarchertech wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chinese is many times harder to learn than the other languages you mentioned for Native English speakers. It takes about 4 times as long as French and Spanish to become proficient. Given the amount of time kids spend on foreign languages in school, there's no way they're learning enough Mandarin to be useful. I took Mandarin as an undergrad, and I can understand more Spanish despite having never studied it.

You can absolutely learn enough Mandarin to be useful in 2 years of weekly classes. Source: That was my level when I went to China. I felt not at all ready, but then I discovered that my limited knowledge could get me quite far with a little effort.

Useful isn't an objective metric for language competency.

Cramming for a few weeks before visiting a country is useful.

It takes the average fully trained foreign service officer who already speaks multiple languages about 2200 hours to become proficient. And this is 2200 hours at arguably the best language school in the world doing nothing but studying Chinese full time.

2 years of of Weekly classes is about 100 hours of class time.

Re: Europe’s central banks are starting to replace dollar reserves with the yuan

#52

Post by ddnb »

endisukaj wrote: post #37
tanilama wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trump is definitely an issue. His talk about abandoning NATO, ridiculing EU to drive his own argument for domestic issues, makes him pretty hard to be likable from EU establishments' perspectives. On the least insignificant level, the message is pretty clear: US is destabilizing, and Trump might only be the beginning of it. With a isolationist and hostile US government, EU naturally would seek another anchor for safe…

In the end, the EU needs to do what it must to survive and that IMO means federalize. A united EU would not need an anchor for safety.

The very basis on which the EU is founded is cooperation, It's becoming and hopefully staying a trait that seems normal to europeans. I'd prefer cooperation over isolationist worldpowers any day.

Re: Europe’s central banks are starting to replace dollar reserves with the yuan

#53

Post by org3432 »

latch wrote: post #28
clacke2 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. China is gaining in relevance. 2. People don't understand that they should worry about this.

1. Like many countries, China has long been relevant. Like many countries, China has long been gaining relevance. 2. Because they shouldn't If instead of treating global economy as a zero-sum game, and if we backed off from the fear mongering and admitted that China's economic growth has largely (and unsurprisingly) been to most people's benefits, then we'd welcome the competition and innovation and productivity that…

Turns out economics, like rational thought on what's best, doesn't naturally prevail.

Re: Europe’s central banks are starting to replace dollar reserves with the yuan

#54

Post by learc83 »

AstralStorm wrote: post #24
sarchertech wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chinese is many times harder to learn than the other languages you mentioned for Native English speakers. It takes about 4 times as long as French and Spanish to become proficient. Given the amount of time kids spend on foreign languages in school, there's no way they're learning enough Mandarin to be useful. I took Mandarin as an undergrad, and I can understand more Spanish despite having never studied it.

Too late. Mandarin and Chinese in general requires a slightly different way of thinking that is better and way more easily absorbed when young. 10k ideograms is not that hard compared to say 7k words needed to have basic fluency in English. You would need about twice as much to be considered reasonably fluent. Grammar is relatively easy, proper pronunciation is much more critical than in English.

10k? If I'm remembering correctly even educated Chinese people don't know that many.

I'm also unaware of research showing that Chinese is comparatively better absorbed when young.

Re: Europe’s central banks are starting to replace dollar reserves with the yuan

#55

Post by [deleted] »

eksemplar wrote: post #43
sarchertech wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chinese is many times harder to learn than the other languages you mentioned for Native English speakers. It takes about 4 times as long as French and Spanish to become proficient. Given the amount of time kids spend on foreign languages in school, there's no way they're learning enough Mandarin to be useful. I took Mandarin as an undergrad, and I can understand more Spanish despite having never studied it.

We’re not native English speakers, English is our second/third language. Chinese is also already available in our schools. It’s just not a high priority. It’s on par with Spanish, Greek, Russian, Japanese and some such. This doesn’t correlate to the importance Chinese has on our society these days though. English used to be the most important language, these days it’s German and Chinese and I see nothing on the horiz…

[deleted]

Re: Europe’s central banks are starting to replace dollar reserves with the yuan

#56

Post by chvid »

ben_w wrote: post #40
latch wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Like many countries, China has long been relevant. Like many countries, China has long been gaining relevance. 2. Because they shouldn't If instead of treating global economy as a zero-sum game, and if we backed off from the fear mongering and admitted that China's economic growth has largely (and unsurprisingly) been to most people's benefits, then we'd welcome the competition and innovation and productivity that…

Religious persecution doesn’t disappear just because of economic growth. Neither does discrimination against sexual preferences (+). That’s the fear expressed above. (+) unless you limit your knowledge of sexual preferences to just gay/straight — human sexuality is much more complicated than that.

Actually it does - history is full of examples of just that. As the middle class grows in economic terms, it grows in political influence and the overall values of the society changes to accommodate that class. Introduction of democracy and women’s rights in Europe are good examples.

Re: Europe’s central banks are starting to replace dollar reserves with the yuan

#57

Post by vim_wannabe »

kuschku wrote: post #41
mtgx wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only a shame that it has to be a country like China that rises up at US' expense, rather than say Switzerland, Germany, Sweden, etc. What happens to global human rights when it's China that has an oversized influence on world politics and when countries start easily accepting extraditions to China (say for criticizing the Chinese leader, which could be a crime there), and many other outcomes like that? US' track…

We only have ourselves to blame for that. Had we actually created a federal Europe, we would have been the ones profiting off of this. Now, instead, it's China, and we're still not getting anywhere.

There is no end to Federalist greed for power, is there...

Re: Europe’s central banks are starting to replace dollar reserves with the yuan

#58

Post by dogma1138 »

sremani wrote: post #33

>>In June, the European Central Bank announced that it had exchanged €500 million ($611 million) worth of US dollar reserves into yuan securities. This was a small shift—the ECB has €44 billion in foreign exchange reserves Before declaring fall of USA, blaming Trump for apocalypse and anointing Xi as the new Emperor, lets take step and really see the numbers. $611 million is a marginal amount when we are talking abou…

Europe can buy all the yuan in the world and it won’t have any effect.

The exchange rate between the dollar and the yuan is set by the rate at which China is buying US debt not by the global markets.

China prints money to buy US debt it allows China to devalue its own currency without devaluing its assets and this deal allowed the US to pretty much generate as much currency as they want through cheap debt without devaluing it.

The only thing that would affect Walmart is a tariff war with China, Europe can huff and puff all it wants but it isn’t a relevant player in this specific scenario.

Re: Europe’s central banks are starting to replace dollar reserves with the yuan

#59

Post by kuschku »

foepys wrote: post #49
kuschku wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We only have ourselves to blame for that. Had we actually created a federal Europe, we would have been the ones profiting off of this. Now, instead, it's China, and we're still not getting anywhere.

You cannot just "create" a federal Europe. This naive view is why the Middle East is in a constant state of looming (civil) war. British and French colonists drew state lines without considering tribes and cultures and now those tribes are fighting over control in countries they don't even want to be a part of.

The alternative is China controlling everything, and us being delegated to the back benches.

I'd rather fight with the other european countries over such small details than live in a world ruled by an autocratic China.

Re: Europe’s central banks are starting to replace dollar reserves with the yuan

#60

Post by akhatri_aus »

kylell wrote: post #6

this is also an effect of US isolationism and America first rhetoric which also means abandoning other states, eg. Ukraine, when the US loses its influence/importance so does the dollar, meaning you can't print like crazy and export your inflation in the world.

> export your inflation in the world

Which country has the US exported its inflation to? Venezuela? Apologies for the tongue-in-cheek but even an economist would not be able to reconcile why there isn't really any inflation amongst the major economies.

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