After the government released the results of the Stress Tests, the writers of DeltaHedged had a brief e-mail exchange.

PBoC Governor Zhou Xiaochuan recently called for the creation of an international reserve currency other than the US dollar. The statement evidences a growing sense of confidence among the Chinese that their voice in matters of international finance and monetary policy deserve consideration.

Ben Bernanke and the FOMC have presided over a 200% increase in the size of the Fed’s balance sheet over the past 15 months. Indeed, the doomsday scenario of rising interest rates, inflation, dollar devaluation, and stagnant economic growth isn’t that implausible.

Gordon G. Chang openly questions China’s growth figures for the first three months of this year.
His main reasoning?
In reality, it will take months to determine what really happened during the first three months of this year, but the gross domestic product figure appears much too high when we look at other statistics for the same [...]

Unemployment at 4.3%…GDP growth at 6.3%…Market up 37% YTD…sounds nice.
Lets try again:
Government-supplied urban unemployment rate at 4.3%…GDP growth at 6.3% down from 10-11%…Index up 37% YTD mostly on speculation.
Sounds less nice.
It’s just China, where we just can’t seem to decide on whether their economic situation is spectacular or spectacularly awful.  I mean, it doesn’t get [...]

Apparently, the Chinese sovereign wealth fund (China Investment Corp - or CIC) didn’t lose enough money the last time around.

As mentioned on this blog two weeks ago, China’s super-currency revelation was part of its “let’s kick ‘em while they’re down” strategy vis-a-vis the U.S..
Seems WSJ finally caught on, as China came out of the G-20 with a pretty positive self-assessment.

Not exactly economics, but this video is part of my theory why the Chinese challenge is a myth.  
If they feel comfortable manipulating history, you can bet your life they feel fine manipulating all other kinds of stuff (currencies, military expenditure, poverty and health statistics, GDP growth numbers, etc…).
Speaking of betting one’s life, my favorite [...]

Not that it reported anything new, but an article in yesterday’s New York Times explained in very clear terms the evolving relationship between the Chinese and American financial sectors.  While I can not vouch for the accuracy of all of the figures, I can promise that the article could produce an entire semester’s worth of [...]