Aldous Huxley said long time ago:

“The last thirty years have witnessed the promotion of innkeeping and shownmanship to the rank of major commercial enterprises. Major commercial enterprises spend money on advertising. Therefore, newspapers are always suggesting that a good time can be enjoyed only by those who take what is offered them by entertainment manufacturers. The Dickensian Christmas-at-Home recieves only perfunctory lip-service from a press which draws a steady income from the catering and amusement trades. Home-made fun is gratuitous, and gratuitousness is something which an industrialized world cannot afford to tolerate.”

I recommend you to visit eurotrib point com, where brave people comment MSM in an unconventional way, the news on economics, energy and ecology.

You’ll see that the author of this deconstruction is a french banker, not a communist.

As he says, quoting Keynes: In the long run, we’re all dead.

Let’s try so survive longer!

How come the recent oil profit hasn’t lead to increased credit on offer, in USD (assuming that’s the common currency being accumulated)?

I would have thought the oil exporters would be desperate to lend some of their profit dollars!

Yeah .. how about exploring the domestic chinese market for once.

imagine two coutries, call them ‘north and south korea’. this is an imaginary world, not the present world. ‘north korea’ begins to counterfeit dollars that prove indistinguishable from the real thing – especially to those who never encounter many actual dollars that are not pixels on a dealing screen . . .

‘south korea’ adopts peppermint sweets as the national currency, and pegs convincingly – (one peppermint sweet = one dollar.)

counterfeiting is “cheating” – in the words of DC, north korea exchanges “worthless bits of paper” for real manufactured goods and valuable commodities.

but the peppermit peg is only ‘mercantilism’ or something.

now suppose that ‘north korea’ stops counterfeiting dollars and turns out perfect peppermint sweets instead ? what the hell is the difference now ? ?

the great global scam run by london and new york is not defeated, but it is surely diluted. the fed’s monopolistic power has been shared out to bothcountries ? as the contributors to this blog keep repeating – you can buy oil with peppermint sweets, because the peg holds and is trusted. convert to dollars on the day.

thus – if the peppermint peg is trusted, the power of the fed is busted. you cannot flee the reserve currency ‘for safety.’ the reserve currency i s safety, or it’s not the reserve.

to change the image – when the lifeguard screams to the drowning men to save him – who are the lifeguards now ?

i say that reserve status will only survive by the dollar strengthening. volker would have the guts to do it. raise the interest rates until you have split the world into bankrupts and savers, and decimated the legions of parasitical speculation.

otherwise prepare for the peppermint standard – the logical result of multilateral pegging to the reserve unit. the dollar lives – the fed monopoly folds. the global fiat peppermint rules.
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Hong Kong’s Inflation Accelerates to Nine-Year High
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601089&sid=ajQNUP59FCI4&refer=china

“This is nowhere near the peak,” said Glenn Maguire, chief Asia economist at Societe Generale SA in Hong Kong. “The weak U.S. dollar and appreciating Chinese yuan have created this imported inflation dynamic in Hong Kong. With higher oil and food prices, inflation will accelerate.”

Chinese PBoC Central Bank “Not Worried” about US Economic Recession
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/11/22/ap4366579.html

BEIJING – China’s chief central banker says the world economy may slow next year but that is should have only a “mild effect” on Chinese growth, a state news agency reported Thursday.

Problems in the U.S. mortgage market may dampen American consumer spending, People’s Bank (nasdaq: PBCT – news – people ) of China Gov. Zhou Xiaochuan said during a visit to Johannesburg, according to the Xinhua News Agency.

Even if exports to the United States suffer, Zhou said “that can somewhat sort out the imbalances in bilateral trade, and is likely to have only mild effect on China’s economic growth,” according to the report.

Zhou recommended Chinese exporters explore other markets rather than focusing on the United States, Xinhua said.

I’m french and I think that a collapse of house price is not very far.
But the difference with USA, Ireland, UK, Australia, Spain is that the rate of private debt is twice lower, and rate of saving higher too.
Moreover there is few loans with variables rates, and there is a limit of rate hike for variables loans, there is no exotic loan like in USA.

Brad also gets a mention!

“Benchmarking to any rich-world interest rate is unlikely to suit the Gulf, since high crude prices depress income for oil importers but boost it for oil exporters. Brad Setser of the Council on Foreign Relations suggests one way around this problem is to have oil as one of the prices targeted in the basket.”