{"id":47742,"date":"2019-08-11T11:26:19","date_gmt":"2019-08-11T16:26:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=47742"},"modified":"2019-08-11T11:26:24","modified_gmt":"2019-08-11T16:26:24","slug":"getting-to-a-special-state-of-ugly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=47742","title":{"rendered":"Getting to a Special State of Ugly"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/economicprism.com\/getting-to-a-special-state-of-ugly\/\">Getting to a Special State of Ugly<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/economicprism.com\/getting-to-a-special-state-of-ugly\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/economicprism.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/Inflation.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-887\"\/><\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There are certain phrases \u2013 like \u201ctrust me\u201d or \u201cI got this\u201d \u2013 that should immediately provoke one\u2019s suspicion.&nbsp; When your slippery contractor tells you, \u201ctrust me, your kitchen renovation will be done before Christmas,\u201d you should be wary.&nbsp; There\u2019s no way it\u2019ll be done until late spring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Or when your incompetent client says, \u201cI won\u2019t be needing your services at this time, I got this.\u201d&nbsp; You should expect a panicked phone call at 5pm on Friday. &nbsp;\u201cThis is way more than I can handle,\u201d your client will say, \u201ctake care of it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">On Monday, when the sky was falling, and there was much weeping and gnashing of teeth, the Chinese yuan weakened to above 7 per dollar for the first time in over a decade.&nbsp; This prompted U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to waft out a suspicious phrase of his own.&nbsp; He called China a \u201ccurrency manipulator.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Mnuchin\u2019s logic, as far as we can tell, is that China manipulated their currency because their central bank didn\u2019t adequately intervene in foreign exchange markets to prop up the yuan.&nbsp; Conversely, direct intervention into markets, to maintain a centrally planned price that\u2019s acceptable to Mnuchin, is not currency manipulation.&nbsp; Go figure!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">On Tuesday, to restore confidence in the yuan, and refute accusations of being a malevolent currency manipulator, the People\u2019s Bank of China (PBOC) announced&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2019-08-06\/yuan-fixing-in-focus-after-china-named-currency-manipulator?srnd=premium\">a plan to price fix the yuan<\/a>.&nbsp; Specifically, the PBOC will sell 30 billion yuan ($4.2 billion) of offshore bills in Hong Kong on August 14.&nbsp; This move is designed to drain liquidity offshore, thus strengthening the yuan against the dollar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Why bother?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Cooperative Currency Debasement<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The world, circa 2019, is a fabricated reality.&nbsp; Debt, piled upon debt, piled upon debt,&nbsp;<em>ad infinitum<\/em>, has erected a financial order that\u2019s at perilous odds with the underlying economy.&nbsp; Central bankers attempt to manipulate fake money and fake foreign exchange rates to keep the debt pile from cascading down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&nbsp;\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Getting to a Special State of Ugly There are certain phrases \u2013 like \u201ctrust me\u201d or \u201cI got this\u201d \u2013 that should immediately provoke one\u2019s suspicion.&nbsp; When your slippery contractor tells you, \u201ctrust me, your kitchen renovation will be done before Christmas,\u201d you should be wary.&nbsp; There\u2019s no way it\u2019ll be done until late spring. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[951,2913,12043,11763,2914,2615],"class_list":["post-47742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-currency","tag-currency-manipulation","tag-economic-prism","tag-mn-gordon","tag-pboc","tag-peoples-bank-of-china"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47742"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47742\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47743,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47742\/revisions\/47743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}