IMF Says End Dollar Dominance... Goldman Sachs & Buffett Plan Aid for Small Business

TheDailyBell - Issue 475 • Wednesday, November 18, 2009

"Whoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce." IMF Chief Says End Dollar Dominance


D. Strauss-Kahn/Getty Images

The imperative of greater global currency stability means the world can no longer rely, as it has done since the end of the gold standard, on a currency issued by a single country, the head of the IMF said on Tuesday. Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, restated his view that a new global currency might evolve out of the Special Drawing Right, the Fund's in-house unit of account. "That probably has to be a basket," Strauss-Kahn said of the eventual replacement for the dollar. "In a globalized world there is no domestic solution," he told a forum. Speaking later at a news conference, Strauss-Kahn reiterated the message that has been a constant refrain during his visit -- that China needs a stronger yuan as part of a package of policies to help rebalance its economy by promoting domestic demand. - Reuters

Dominant Social Theme: The logic of globalization calls for an international currency.

Free-Market Analysis: It really is astonishing. The Anglo-American monetary cartel, having come within a whisker of collapsing the entire international economy is no way dismayed by the economic crisis that is in our opinion still taking place. Having stabilized markets around the world by printing virtually trillions of dollars, they are now onto the next task which is using the IMF as a stalking horse for a global currency. Well of course, there is a global currency already. It is recognized in China, India and the West. It is called gold or honest money. We will include silver as well.

From our point of view, these constant efforts at creating a global currency are just one more monetary elite dominant social theme. For readers who don't enjoy the repetition of the world "meme" we will state plainly that an international currency is a promotion - just as global warming is a promotion, and overpopulation too, etc., etc. The crisis itself may or may not be real (and most are not) but the solution is as phony as a counterfeiter's coin. There is no earthly reason why an international fiat currency will work any better than a regional or localized one. It will be subject to the same pressures and eventually the same kind of collapses. Here's some more from the article:

China has kept the yuan, also known as the renminbi (RMB), pegged around 6.83 per dollar since July 2008, following a 21 percent rise over the previous three years, to help its exporters weather the global economic crisis.
"We do believe firmly in the IMF that the RMB is undervalued and that it is not only in the interests of the global economy but also in the interests of China to have a revaluation of the currency," he said.

An undervalued currency introduces economic distortions, which might confer certain advantages but at a cost to other parts of economy, Strauss-Kahn explained.

"So China has a trade advantage, but it also has the wrong prices, leading to wrong decisions about investment in the long run. It is now time for China, having accumulated a lot of advantages from an undervalued currency, to look more forward to investment and long-term stability, and this long-term stability goes with getting rid of this distortion," he said.

What a hoot this is. How does Strauss-Kahn understand what constitutes a distorted money price and what constitutes a normal one? He claims the yuan is undervalued compared to the dollar, but how does he know the dollar is fairly valued? The dollar's value is partially set by the Federal Reserve, which simply fixes the price of money and its quantity where it wants to based on various arcane data that its bankers wish you to believe, dear reader, are especially significant.

But it is impossible to figure out how much money to supply the markets because of the laws of supply and demand and marginal utility - in other words, basic natural economics. Inevitably, the market itself will come up with a new formulation based on the money that the central bank is printing. Central bankers always expect one result and get another. It cannot be otherwise. It is as immutable a law as any in physics. (That doesn't stop them from trying of course and introducing distortions into the market on a daily basis.)

So Strauss-Kahn may believe the yuan is undervalued, but in order to make this statement it would seem he has to maintain that the dollar is fairly valued - and on what basis does he make this statement? We would say the dollar is anything but fairly valued. We would venture to say that the dollar itself is ever-cheapening and that too many dollars have been printed (by trillions). We think the price of gold, which is a better indicator, tells us more about the state of the dollar than Strauss-Kahn.

Strauss-Kahn is apparently unabashed. There is no sense of modesty here. One reason, perhaps, is that people do not for the most part understand what money is (still) or what has happened to it. Another reason is that Strauss-Kahn is himself engaged in promoting a dominant social theme. The monetary elite desperately wants the world to move toward a single currency. Here's what the article reports Strauss-Kahn and others say about a global currency:

Strauss-Kahn expressed concern that political willingness to overhaul the international monetary system will falter if, in a year's time, the visible signs of the economic crisis have faded.

He said the momentum to cooperate had already eased somewhat, six months after the London summit of the Group of 20 agreed on a need for change to ensure a more stable global financial order.

A former IMF chief, Michel Camdessus, said time was of the essence to embark on reform of the global monetary system.

"This favorable window of opportunity is there. It will not stay open forever," he said.

Camdessus gave broad backing to a recent proposal by Chinese central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan that an expanded SDR could eventually replace the dollar as the global reserve currency.

"Our Chinese friends mean business," he said of Zhou's plan.

The IMF is an Anglo-American invention, as is the United Nations of which it is part. The entire post-war global order was virtually invented by the Anglo-American axis. If Strauss-Kahn and others want to, in some way, pretend that upcoming monetary decisions are somehow out of their hands, then they will. But pretending does not make it so. The monetary system, worldwide, is still an Anglo-American one and will be, in our opinion, even if IMF SDRs somehow morph into acceptable money.

From our point of view those pushing for a more global currency have gotten a bit more desperate in the past few years. The EU has rammed through its bureaucratic wish list regardless of the sentiments of its subjects. And the monetary elite may be seen as retreating from the idea of creating currency regions given the amount of pushback they are getting on the subject. The Mexican/Canadian/American currency union seems a non-starter for instance, no matter how many treaties are signed at the top (and former President George Bush signed a good number of them). Strauss-Kahn seems visibly worried that the momentum for a unified currency is fading and voices those sentiments in this article.

There is no advantage to a fiat-money global currency that we can see. It is nothing in our humble opinion but a monetary promotion. It persists despite logic, despite facts that would tend to show that it will not make the world's economy better (and may in fact make it worse) and is not supported by any substantial information that would prove its merit. These are all signifiers of a monetary promotion. The global warming meme is not supported by facts at this point, but it persists nonetheless because powerful forces wish it to persist.

Conclusion: Whenever logic fails, but the arguments and sociopolitical action continue nonetheless, the chances are that the monetary elite is involved. It is moving more quickly on numerous fronts, in our opinion, because the Internet is providing increasing opposition. Numerous sources of wealth and power are jeopardized, as is the planning process for more-such. One thing is certain in our opinion. If the international community were serious about erecting a money that would be both efficient and non-injurious they would allow the creation of a private-market gold and silver standard of the kind that, historically, served the world well.




Goldman Sachs, Buffett Said to Plan Aid for Small Businesses


Warren Buffett / Getty Images

Goldman Sachs Group Inc., under fire in Washington for setting aside billions of dollars for bonuses a year after getting a taxpayer bailout, is preparing to team up with Warren Buffett to provide assistance to small businesses, said people familiar with the matter. The charitable effort, which may be announced as soon as today, coincides with one of the Obama administration's top economic priorities: spurring hiring at small companies. The initiative would aim to provide assistance -- ranging from counseling to obtaining funding -- to 10,000 U.S. businesses, according to the people, who declined to be identified before the program is announced. Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. is the largest shareholder in New York-based Goldman Sachs. Goldman Sachs, the most profitable securities firm in Wall Street history, is trying to dispel criticism from lawmakers and pundits who portray the company as the greedy face of a financial industry whose excessive risk-taking fueled the credit crisis. Unlike competitors that make home loans and provide small business credit lines, more than 90 percent of Goldman Sachs's pretax earnings this year came from trading and principal investments. - Bloomberg

Dominant Social Theme: Goldman gives back?

Free-Market Analysis: We wrote recently that the big investment banks had started a PR campaign to turn around public opinion. We didn't have any direct evidence only a flurry of statements issued at the same time by several top banking honchos and former honchos. The most egregious statement was of course Goldman Sachs CEO and chairman Lloyd Blankfein's sentiment that Goldman Sachs was doing the Lord's work. How Goldman Sachs or Blankfein, could ever construe that such a statement would serve as positive PR is beyond us. Perhaps those involved were under the impression that Goldman could simply make the assertion and it would be so.

And now that this particular gambit has failed, the largest and most powerful banking firm in the world is trying again. It is going to give money to deserving small businesses, presumably to show that it wishes to support start-up companies that have good ideas but little capital. From our modest vantage-point, the idea of giving small companies cash is rife not with promise but with irony. If the system was working well, would these small companies need such handouts? And having received these cash injections will these small companies be any better off? What many companies need is a funding stream not a one-off gift.

Goldman Sachs, as we pointed out in a previous analysis on this issue, stands athwart the American funding gateway determining in many cases what companies receive access to America's increasingly controlled public markets and what companies do not. The firm has virtually pioneered modern American mercantilism, the extremely destructive commingling of public and private interests to create business ventures that have the force of law. And its support of ever-increasing regulatory complexity is in no one's interest but perhaps government itself and the very largest industrial entities (of which Goldman is one) that benefit from regulatory capture.

Conclusion: Here's an idea. If Goldman really wanted to do something for American business, it would set up a unit to delink American finance from Washington DC - to reinvigorate the free-market that Wall Street putatively supports. And while the firm was at it, it could campaign for a full audit of the Federal Reserve. That would be a real gift to American small business.