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

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141–150 of 257 posts

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

#141
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but at least if you discount US' human rights violations in the Middle East Can we not just discount the issues with china then as well? I think the one big difference here is that nobody expects china to invade their country, violate human rights within their own country or put pressure on their local politics for various reasons (other than random trade agreements maybe). All things nearly everyone pretty much ex…

China has figured out that economic invasion is a lot cheaper and more effective than bombing. Sadly the US still seems to be a long way from learning this lesson. But if you think China doesn't exert pressure in other countries' politics you haven't spent much time in Asia, particularly SE Asia.

The favorite method of centrist leadership in the recent past has been exporting neoliberalization economic policies and the neoliberalizm of trade deals (think NAFTA).

That's one of the component that's given the US a lot of influence and power dealing with the world. This was aided by how inward the competing powers were.

There's been a backlash against those ideas as foreign policy both inside and outside the US. As evidenced by the current president.

It's my hunch that in the long run the US will miss the privilege and benefits that have come from that asymmetric relationship. 4 or 8 years can be a long time and a lot can happen when were standing still.

Just look at England, they've never fully come to grips that the sun has set on the English empire.

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

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You've not mentioned where you're from. You're on an American site, and you talked about Brexit, so I assumed British or American. >English used to be the most important language, these days it’s German and Chinese I'm having a very hard time thinking of a country where both German and Chinese are more important than English. Where is this?

I’m Danish. I did specify “native > English > ..,” though, so I figured that gave the non-English native thing away.

Our most utilized languages in business and tourism used to be English, German and French.

It’s now German, Chinese and English, in that order.

In everyday usage English is still important and will remain so for years to come. But if you’re looking for languages with professional application Chinese is at the top.

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

#143

I need HN’s help... What benefits do countries/governments/politicians get when their currency becomes internationally accepted?

Some points (probably not complete):

a) You can ask your trading partners to trade with you in your own currency, which eliminates currency risk for your companies. E.g. an American company can just sell their stuff for a fixed USD price, and their trading partners will have to take (or hedge) the risk of their currencies fluctuating against the USD.

b) You will have lower borrowing costs for your government debt. If your currency is a reserve currency, that means that many foreign central banks will hold your currency as currency reserves. And they won't stash cash in their cellars, they will buy your government debt (e.g. Treasuries). More people buying your debt means lower borrowing costs (and thus interest payments) for your government.

c) If you control a currency that is used for international transactions, this gives you extra-terrestial legal leverage over the parties of these transactions. The U.S., for example, uses its "ownership" of the USD to enforce their sanctions regime and other laws: many banks e.g. in Europe will not process your payments to Cuba (particularly not in USD!), even though there are no European sanctions against Cuba, just because they can't afford to lose access to USD clearing in the US and thus don't want to risk antagonizing the US.

d) You can borrow internationally in your own currency. This is not an important thing for China, which has huge reserves, but it will be for other countries. If people don't trust your currency, you will have to borrow in USD or another foreign currency. This means your country can go bankrupt: If you are running out of USD / EUR / etc. you can't service your debt anymore. If you borrow in your own currency, you cannot really go bankrupt: you can always just print more money to service your debt (this will have negative effects such as inflation, of course, but it might be less catastrophic than a default).

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

#144
post #69
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you propose this is done? A ballot across all countries would fail. No ballot would be undemocratic.

Start with informing the public, until a ballot would succeed? Most of the people being against the EU are against it because they only ever hear the bad sides? They never realize that most of the bad things "the EU" did were actually things the council did. Which actually just means that the heads of states of all EU nations agreed on it. If you end the EU, all power goes to these negotiations, and you'll only see t…

So you’d repeat the Irish and Dutch fiascos where you would have every nation vote until they vote yes? Seems undemocratic.

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

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a source or reference where i can get a deeper information/knowledge about the relationship between the dollar, yuan and bonds?

This isn't something that can be put into a single paragraph, the top 3 results from Google seem to provide decent sources of information https://www.thebalance.com/dollar-to-yuan-conversion-and-his... https://www.thebalance.com/how-does-china-influence-the-u-s-... https://www.cluteinstitute.com/ojs/index.php/IBER/article/do... However I haven't read them thoroughly, so I suggest you invest some time in doing some re…

Unfortunately, what you suggest is a circular set of actions.

Why would I read comment sections if I'd already had the time and been able to find high quality sources to learned about the topic?

If you don't feel like citing sources, or don't have any good ones handy, saying so is fine. But even providing the right terms to search can be helpful!

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

#146
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 dev…

> 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.

So China is printing money to buy up the debt generated by the US printing money? I'm not an economist, but that does not sound like a reasonable way for a world economy to run on.

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

#147
post #122
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* causes real bad things to happen Fixed that for you. Do I need to get the CIA and various wars lists from Wikipedia?

oh FFS, compare that to the cultural revolution, which ended in 1976. the whataboutism here is annoying; while we were debating and agonizing over the impact of the vietnam war, China was busy imprisoning, torturing, and relocating its own citizens over ideology. It created a culture of children informing on their own parents. I wish people would realize how much they have dodged a bullet by growing up in western nat…

The US has done this to plenty of its own citizens too, typically the non-white ones. And it didn't stop in the 70s when civil rights were supposedly won.

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

#148
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

oh FFS, compare that to the cultural revolution, which ended in 1976. the whataboutism here is annoying; while we were debating and agonizing over the impact of the vietnam war, China was busy imprisoning, torturing, and relocating its own citizens over ideology. It created a culture of children informing on their own parents. I wish people would realize how much they have dodged a bullet by growing up in western nat…

Not only do they torture them, they harvest their organs (sometimes while they are alive for "freshness"). China is on a whole different level.

Got any sources for that? Many of these claims remind me far too much about stories about babies being thrown out of incubators and whatnot.

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

#149
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially since throughout the 20th and 21st century, it wasn't China who was a constant global cop/aggressor, invading countries, spreading "democracy", meddling in Latin America, Asia, Middle East AND Europe, and so on...

> Especially since throughout the 20th and 21st century, it wasn't China who was a constant global cop/aggressor, invading countries, spreading "democracy", meddling in Latin America, Asia, Middle East AND Europe, and so on... Korea and Vietnam would beg to differ.

> Korea and Vietnam would beg to differ.

It takes two to tango. In that regard, it feels kinda dishonest to frame these conflicts solely as "Evil China/Communism doing its thing".

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

#150
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a reminder that slavery was abolished in 1865, 153 years ago. And recently, lots of laws have been passed restricting freedom. NSA has been watching your every move. The west only has freedom on paper. And countries change and adapt.

> The west only has freedom on paper. Let me know when they start black-bagging dissidents for speaking up a bit too much. There are festering problems regarding surveillance in the West, and the prison system is a bit much here in the US, but "freedom on paper" is a load of BS.

>"freedom on paper" is a load of BS

“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum....”

- Noam Chomsky

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