Wednesday, February 10, 2010

My Wild Speculation: Euro, USD and China

The chess game as I see it:

Ok, spent yesterday reading the news breaking out on Zerohedge regarding Europe. Most interesting to me were the allegations that US Banks were somehow doing things to increase the magnitude of problems there in order to facilitate more people running to the USD away from the Euro. That is what I gathered anyway. I am curious if others here see the same thing. It has me thinking that the Fed/Treas are at work through GS by proxy, and that this is their way of getting the USD support they needed. They are just taking advantage of the Europeans poor finances to their advantage. But, some aspects of this story look pretty manipulative to me: like we needed a victim to secure the USD's position, we found it. Also, if true, maybe they have found a way to engineer support for the USD without withdrawing liquidity from the US Markets.

So, into this news stumbles China with threats to dump various US Debt instruments/Bonds, etc with the complaint that we are selling arms to Taiwan. The nuclear threat of dumping our debt is sprung over Helicopters and Missiles to Taiwan? Doesn't add up. I think there is more to this story:

Zerohedge: http://www.zerohedge.com/article/china-d....
"It appears that this time China's posturing is for real. Following up on our earlier post that Chinese military officials want to "punish" America by selling Treasuries, Asia Times Online is reporting that an explicit directive by the Chinese government has notified reserve managers to sell all risky US assets, including asset backed and corporates, and just hold on to explicitly guaranteed Treasuries and Agency debt." Tyler Durden

My view is that an economic war has begun. The chinese seeing us seeming to help the demise of the Euro in order to prop up the USD, have decided that it is time for them to start dumping some of our debt in an attempt to mitigate some of the gains we are achieving in the USD. I am not sure of their motive exaclty, but if they see us getting ahead in a way that hurts Europe, they might perceive it against their interests. Maybe someone else can flesh out their motives better.

What emerges to me is that we are seeing economic war breaking out. With the goal being to be the last man standing, because whoever remains will be much better off than the others. So, the last man standing in this economic gunfight looks to be the US, Good! I speculate that the Chinese have been building up the potential to blackmail us with the threat of dumping our debt for a long time and waiting to use it at the right time. Now they see us getting away with tanking the Euro, and they begin to unload our debt in an effort to prevent us from winning the game. They may realize that their leverage over the US will disappear if once again the USD is confirmed King.

I know there are a lot of holes in my logic, but this is what my gut instinct is telling me.

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