Interesting Times

John Reilly manages to keep some perspective [I'm looking at you Scheske] on the recent quantitative easing announced by the Federal Reserve:

Far more interesting in recent weeks is the expedition of President Obama to Ind and the Isles of Serendip; accompanied, it is said, by a locust swarm of security personnel and an armada that darkens the horizon. All this is happening just as the Federal Reserve is tossing the dollar into the Mariana Trench. At the end of his journey, President Obama gets to tell President Hu Jintao that if the latter is really so keen to maintain the parity of the yuan to the dollar then he is welcome to jump in after it.

It would be an exaggeration to say that the United States is no longer going to tolerate Chinese mercantilism. It would be closer to the truth to say that, for domestic reasons, the US is undertaking policies that will make mercantilism impossible to maintain.

I am intensely curious to see how the Chinese economy fares in the next twenty years or so. Majority opinion at present is that the Chinese Century is upon us. A vocal minority insists that China has been cooking the books and is futhermore at the wrong stage of their civilization to function as a universal state.