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China Has $3T of ‘Hidden’ Currency Reserves, Setser Says

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Re: China Has $3T of ‘Hidden’ Currency Reserves, Setser Says

#161

Post by vkou »

isykt wrote: post #142
scotty79 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very charitable interpretation. It's rather, which would you rather the developing world be exploited by, US or China? We have pretty extensive track record of developing countries being exploited by western economies. And it aint pretty. So the best case you can make for the US is thay familiar devil is better because it's familiar.

I would rather third world countries be exploited by the US, since it would mean my country projects its power to those regions. My stable, democratic country. The lack of realpolitik in this thread is astounding. We don’t live in a perfect world, where economies of real people in countries that need roads and telecom get to say “No thank you, your country’s history is gross.” Belt and Road is a massive soft power gr…

> The lack of realpolitik in this thread is astounding.

Realpolitik arguments have the other problem, where they rely on hope that whatever's good for the elites that call the shots will eventually trickle down to the rest of us.

There is certainly truth to it (A lot more truth than to trickle-down nonsense in domestic economics), but the track record for it is still... Mixed.

Also, if China collapsing over demographics is a real concern, what about democracy in the US collapsing? Is that not a real concern in this decade? Is it normal for democratic countries to have a loser who pulls every stop to try to prevent a peaceful transfer of power, or for an eleventh hour beer gut putsch to invade its capitol, causing its government to shelter in closets? Or for one of it's two ruling parties focus more on waging culture war on the other, than on governing? Or for the frankly insane effort going into winner-wins-more systems of gerrymandering, voter suppression at polling stations, etc..?

Re: China Has $3T of ‘Hidden’ Currency Reserves, Setser Says

#163

Post by crazygringo »

ethbr0 wrote: post #92
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Economically, they're an adversary; they undercut western manufacturing and all our manufacturing went there. Wow, you make it sound like it was some devious Chinese plan where they intentionally made their people work for American manufacturers and lured them in with bribes. The reality was that American corporations willingly went over to China because number must go up and paying their own people living factory…

> America did it to itself. Corporations outsourced manufacturing to China, because American corporations are independent from the US government and profit-motivated.

America is absolutely capable of setting tariffs on imports that would have made that unprofitable. In fact, that policy has been the norm at many times in countries precisely to protect domestic industry.

So it's really more accurate to say that America chose to allow it to be profitable for corporations to outsource. Government policy could easily have been the opposite. So ultimately, America did do it to itself.

(BTW I'm not arguing this would have necessarily been good policy. Just that it is very much an explicit governmental decision.)

Re: China Has $3T of ‘Hidden’ Currency Reserves, Setser Says

#164

Post by topato »

biosboiii wrote: post #100
superchroma wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean it's the gigantic elephant in the room. The reported narratives have aligned over the years as if they were our enemy. Here are some: Economically, they're an adversary; they undercut western manufacturing and all our manufacturing went there. They manipulate their currency. They interfere with foreign owned businesses. They steal IP. They're seeking to upset the global money standard. They entrap other nation…

> They're seeking to upset the global money standard. The disturb the global standard, which happens to benefit the US greatly while hurting the rest of the world (especially the global south). Terrible! > They use (basically) slave labor, While it is true that China has a lot of manual labor and less worker rights than most western states, China isnt the sweatshop it used to be anymore. Nearly every "simple" labor i…

[flagged]

Re: China Has $3T of ‘Hidden’ Currency Reserves, Setser Says

#165

Post by htss2013 »

Spooky23 wrote: post #42
superchroma wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean it's the gigantic elephant in the room. The reported narratives have aligned over the years as if they were our enemy. Here are some: Economically, they're an adversary; they undercut western manufacturing and all our manufacturing went there. They manipulate their currency. They interfere with foreign owned businesses. They steal IP. They're seeking to upset the global money standard. They entrap other nation…

The biggest adversary of the United States is the United States. Those factories migrated to the US South, then to Mexico, then to China. Not because of some conspiracy, but because we run our institutions based on quarterly financials. I worked a long time ago on an effort to sue a large manufacturer whose supply chain was shipping counterfeit parts to certain customers. The Chinese partners ran a third shift with n…

The problem with the quarterly profit motive is that it's not voluntary for the US electorate.

If Americans could vote on their preferred time intervals to manage towards, they wouldn't pick quarterly. Quarterly screws the overwhelming majority of people who care about the future.But it's not up for discussion, debate or the political process.

It's similar to US foreign military aid. Nothing anyone says or does will change it. Whoever or whatever controls it is beyond the reach of the political process, at least the part that 99% of people can participate in.

People treat quarterly myopia like an emergent phenomenon, like it's some kind of maximum that the country naturally converged upon. Except there's nothing natural about it, and it only benefits a small number of unaccountable people.

Re: China Has $3T of ‘Hidden’ Currency Reserves, Setser Says

#166

Post by kjkjadksj »

superchroma wrote: post #22
veqq wrote: post #13

These currency reserves largely represent loans China issued abroad, which have been paid off (or are in the process of being served). Similar to Eurodollars in the past yielding outsized interest rates, increasing demand and thus dollar outflows, this shows a (perhaps?) unrecognized accumulation in China, which may very well either allow them to essentially print their own dollars or mean that they already have been…

I mean it's the gigantic elephant in the room. The reported narratives have aligned over the years as if they were our enemy. Here are some: Economically, they're an adversary; they undercut western manufacturing and all our manufacturing went there. They manipulate their currency. They interfere with foreign owned businesses. They steal IP. They're seeking to upset the global money standard. They entrap other nation…

How is this any worse than what Saudi Arabia does, that we overtly consider a US ally?

Re: China Has $3T of ‘Hidden’ Currency Reserves, Setser Says

#167

Post by kjkjadksj »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #158
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Economically, they're an adversary; they undercut western manufacturing and all our manufacturing went there. Wow, you make it sound like it was some devious Chinese plan where they intentionally made their people work for American manufacturers and lured them in with bribes. The reality was that American corporations willingly went over to China because number must go up and paying their own people living factory…

We weren't smart enough to solve the tragedy of the commons situation because we believed a wealthy China would drop the true-believer Mao ideology.

They did drop maoism. China practices state run capitalism now.

Re: China Has $3T of ‘Hidden’ Currency Reserves, Setser Says

#168

Post by kjkjadksj »

glompers wrote: post #27
superchroma wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean it's the gigantic elephant in the room. The reported narratives have aligned over the years as if they were our enemy. Here are some: Economically, they're an adversary; they undercut western manufacturing and all our manufacturing went there. They manipulate their currency. They interfere with foreign owned businesses. They steal IP. They're seeking to upset the global money standard. They entrap other nation…

The problem is that a single-party propagandist republic is effectively a separate type of government than a representative republic and makes it harder to distinguish the will of the population. The policies could be hidden from the vast majority of informed public opinion in a way Western conspiracists or whataboutists alike can only dream is really correspondent or directly analogous to mainstream media manipulati…

Pretty similar to the US. We don’t really have true representism. We just have two parties instead of one, but I’d wager the wills and wants of the ruling elite are just as far removed from the true wills and wants of the populace as they are in china.

Re: China Has $3T of ‘Hidden’ Currency Reserves, Setser Says

#169

Post by ethbr0 »

xbmcuser wrote: post #130
saiya-jin wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that's a thing - west just exploited the hell out of many parts of Africa, while not improving most places by any meaningful means, just filling pockets of corrupt local dictators. In fact most places are much worse off than they were 60 years ago. So don't complain that they are fed up and seek help elsewhere, what west has to offer has been tried many times and results are down there. If they end up indebted…

The local dictators hide and bring their money to the west only so it is a lie that the money stays in those countries. Most of it is comes to the west and then these politically exposed people are used by the 3 letter agencies of the west to control the poor countries. For those countries the loans from the West or China don't matter only maybe they can better options if they can play the west and China against each…

It seems unlikely that omnipotent 3 letter agencies have been the cause of African strife for the last 30 years.

Economics does.

Nigeria, Egypt, and South Africa have decent economies, and they've followed the same path as many other developed countries.

Moving away from agriculture and raw resource extraction, building industry, and then identifying, incubating, scaling, and exporting services.

The fact that other countries in the region haven't done the same, specifically the largest Ethiopia and DRC, has more to do with internal civil wars.

Hopefully recent stability in Ethiopia and engaging additional generation capacity at the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam will kickstart the Ethiopian economy.

(And no, civil wars aren't all started by 3 letter agencies)

Re: China Has $3T of ‘Hidden’ Currency Reserves, Setser Says

#170

Post by FreshStart »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #116
tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is a bit of a difference whether the massacre happened in the 1860 or 1960, and whether the last larger massacre of protestors happened in 1970 and is generally, officially and publicly recognized as a bad thing with memorials etc. [1], or whether it happened in 1989, involved tanks and hundreds to thousands of deaths, and people are persecuted for even mentioning it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K…

Well, when Mao was doing his great leaps, American citizens had to literally had to march in the streets for basic civil rights. Again, not exactly a clean record. Glass houses and stones and all that. Point is, in the living memory of most people on the earth, i.e. people below 30, the only wars waged against non-neighbors have been Americans invading Iraq and Afghanistan. So from the place most non-Americans stand,…

Can you for one moment be not west centric? Ignoring tschetschenia , georgia, Ukraine, first Afghan invasion, the uighurs, the Tibetan, mount karabach, kashmir, Syrian proxy wars, Serbs vs Bosniaks, Yemen and all those funny little conflicts the lesser empires engaged in the last 30 years. They did not always go medieval, but did so only because the US would deter the worst.

The US is not the center of the universe and lots of influence sphere pushing goes down in lots of backyards.

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