Thursday, November 08, 2007

China starts dumping the dollar

Perhaps this is just a little jerk on the chain, to remind us who's on the collar end now.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Actually, this is not the first time the Chinese has been murmuring about not holding US dollars. Back in March this year, we’ve mentioned in one of our blog articles (China unwilling to hoard US dollars—what’s the implication?), that China had announced that they were not willing to accumulate anymore foreign reserves (i.e. US dollars).

Our guess is that the Chinese had been in the process of reducing their US dollar holdings a very long time ago. But they would not want to do it too fast, least the US dollar crash and render their trillion dollar reserve worthless.

So, assuming that the Chinese are smart (or cunning), they probably had been running down their US dollars in dribs and drabs for quite a long while. Maybe this time the urgency is much greater due to the falling US dollar. Again, if they go overboard, they may shoot their own foot and cause the US dollar to crash.

Sackerson said...

Welcome, CIJ:

Yes, and I think others have been careful to take up the slack to forestall public concern; in particular the UK, which has greatly increased its holdings of US Treasury securities.