by
Brad Setser
December 24, 2007
Kansas isn't quite as icy as it was two weeks ago, but it did snow two days ago.
(photo credit: Carole Setser)
I plan to focus on eating and drinking over the next few days — I'll resume posting next week. I am already quite confident that Santa will disappoint me on December 31st (when the IMF publishes its COFER data).
Happy holidays to all and, if it fits, Merry Christmas.
My post on the G-20′s agenda can be found on the official Pittsburgh Summit blog.
This will be my last blog post, at least for the foreseeable future. I have accepted a new job, one…
A quick chart showing how my estimates (from work I have done with Arpana Pandey of the CFR) for official…
This post is by Mark Dow Very few things rouse the rabble as much as an ideological debate. And over…
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Merry Christmas as well! Thanks for the blog.
Thank you, Brad. Best wishes to you and yours. Enjoy yourself.
I’ve enjoyed following your posts.
- jd-
Brad: Merry Christmas and a happy New Year to you and your family. Truly appreciate your blog, and learn a lot from it. Keep it coming!
You are one of the very best commentators on the web, Brad.
Merry Christmas to you and yours.
hope you don’t get your present
cheers!
Compliments on the photo and a very happy holiday season to you. For my sake I hope Santa “fills you” tomorrow, but for your sake I hope he doesn’t…
No need to worry Macro man: only wimpy governments now add to their fx reserves. The big boys are all setting up sovereign wealth funds to buy US and European banks, adding to their non-reserve foreign assets or changing their effective currency profile with off-balance sheet hedges. I’ll have plenty to do even if the PBoC, SAMA and the central bank of the Emirates (to name three non-reporting central banks) suddenly tell the world exactly how many dollars they have …
Nice financial bells poem, by the way, if the whole finance thing doesn’t work out, methinks you might have a literary future …
Hi Brad,
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Your blog and your work are second to none. Have a great holiday season, and I look forward to your continued posts! Best, Andrew Rozanov
Merry Crimbo!
Thanks for the blog. Not many people who are as generously try to make sense of the world we live in. Hope you have a great new year.
Páll Jónsson
Finally got my DSL back after 2 weeks w/o here in Tulsa, and catching up on your great blog. Nouriel and your blogs have been big aids in my latter-day economic education.
It’s good to hear about Kansas outside the context of the Farm Bill! I have well and truly overdosed in 2007 on economics-related stuff and I am sure you have too.
Happy Holidays to all the contributors to the RGE Monitor. 2007 was productive and 2008 promises to be even more intriguing. This blog is a fine guide to our unfolding world.
S Novim Godom!
Best wishes.
Many thanks for the informative and educational blog. It has been a real boon to me.
All the best in the New Year to you, B. Setser, and the many clever commenters here.
Many thanks for the informative and educational blog. Very much a national treasure or interweb treasure, or something like that. A real boon.
All the best in the New Year, B. Setser, and to the many clever commenters here, as well.
Hoping 2008 will be a little less eventful than the year that was but not really expecting so…
Merry Christmas. Thanks for the fine blog.
Thanks for all we have learned during the year gone by.
best wishes for the new year.
i look forward to your take on the burning question of 2008 – will the new free lakota nation peg to the dollar ?
from gillies in county tipperary, ireland.
.
many thanks for all your kind comments
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
Merry Christmas Brad and everyone else who stops by
Merry Christmas Brad and to all the blog posters!
Wishing you a very Merry Christmas and a happy new year. Thanks for an excellent blog.
Happy Holiday!
Happy holidays to all, especially the Christmas Kansans of the crew! This has been a wonderful den for international economic discussions all year long.
In news further away from home, and yet no less relevant, the director of SAFE has suggested that “if the (U.S.) federal funds rate continues to fall, this will certainly have a harmful effect on the U.S. dollar exchange rate and the international currency system.”
http://money.cnn.com/2007/12/27/news/international/bc.apfn.as.fin.china.us.dollar.ap/index.htm
The last nail in the coffin of further rate cuts.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/22406067/for/cnbc
Chinese regulator says more US rate cuts will have `harmful effect’ on dollar
updated 6:11 a.m. ET Dec. 27, 2007
BEIJING – Further cuts in U.S. interest rates would have a “harmful effect” on the dollar and the international finance system, a Chinese finance official wrote in a commentary Thursday in an official newspaper.
The dollar’s fall against many currencies has prompted investors to sell dollar-denominated assets, Hu Xiaolian, director of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, wrote in the Financial News, a newspaper published by the central bank.
“If the (U.S.) federal funds rate continues to fall, this will certainly have a harmful effect on the U.S. dollar exchange rate and the international currency system,” Hu wrote.
Financial markets closely watch official Chinese comments on the dollar because Beijing keeps a large portion of its US$1.4 trillion in reserves in U.S. Treasury securities and any change in China’s investment strategy could affect exchange rates.
An informative article at the Prudent Bear Website:
http://www.prudentbear.com/index.php/BearsLairHome
The World Central Banks are exploding the global money supply by running the electronic printing presses on overdrive. That can only result in significantly higher inflation rates. I guess it is just too easy to press the “print” button when the bills need to get paid. In the upcoming New Year, adjust your personal financial investments accordingly into tangible assets (ie. natural resource stocks, energy stocks, food commodity stocks, gold mining stocks, gold and silver, etc.).
Quote of the 2007 Year:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071228/FOREIGN/110571739/1001&template=nextpage
Influential Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf recently wrote that the global credit crunch “is a huge blow to the credibility of the Anglo-Saxon model of transaction-oriented finance capitalism.”
“A mixture of crony capitalism and gross incompetence has been on display in the core financial markets of New York and London. … Not for a long time will people listen to U.S. officials lecture on the virtues of free financial markets with a straight face.”
An article on Bloomberg for you Brad on the IMF’s reporting of reserve currency holdings.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a2O1PM.i.kIY&refer=home
” Dec. 28 (Bloomberg) — The dollar’s share of global foreign-exchange reserves fell to a record low in the third quarter as demand for U.S. assets waned after the subprime- mortgage market collapsed.
The dollar accounted for 63.8 percent of reserves at the end of September, down from 65 percent three months earlier, the International Monetary Fund said today in Washington. The euro’s share rose to 26.4 percent from 25.5 percent. IMF quarterly figures go back to 1999, the year the euro was introduced.
The figures suggest central banks diversified out of the dollar as it fell to the lowest level in a decade. Investors sold a record amount of U.S. securities in August when defaults on subprime mortgages rippled through financial markets and the Federal Reserve signaled it would cut interest rates.
…”