Thu 2010-09-23 09:33 EDT

Bob Rubin Just Wants to Be Cuddled

Iris Mack

[2010-04-29]...It's October 2007. I've just finished my morning jog on beautiful, sun-drenched Miami Beach and I'm getting a smoothie and a pastry at my usual place, Epicure Market. The subprime mortgage crisis is heading into full-swing mode; Jim Cramer had just done his crazy thing on TV, and you can feel the sky starting to fall all around you -- and that's a literal thing in Miami, where the cranes stopped on a lot of half-finished skyscrapers, the type where a few years back you'd hear about people flipping condos three times before the project even broke ground. (If there's ever a time that I don't regret leaving finance, it's now.) Anyway, I'm in line for the checkout, and a very familiar looking guy gets in line behind me. It's one of those situations where I'm not sure if I eyed him or he eyed me first, but I noticed him shortly when I turned to the left to swipe my debit card. He was standing right behind me in the checkout line - only a few feet away. He looked very familiar and famous, and while that's no rarity in Miami, it is when you realize it's because the guy looks like the former Treasury Secretary -- but maybe no, he's maybe not tall enough? -- and then somehow you finally just blurt out, "Hey, you look just like Bob Rubin!"...

Bob Rubin Just Wants; cuddling.

Tue 2010-08-24 20:09 EDT

EconomicPolicyJournal.com: Is China Executing a Cunning Sun Tzu Strategy to Destroy the Dollar and Cause an Upward Price Explosion in Gold?

Elizabeth Brinsden

Could China be coveting the role of the next economic superpower, thereby supplanting the USA? If so, is China planning to do this by design or is it simply awaiting this result by default as a result of the total collapse of the American economic system?...At a superficial level, it may appear to the onlooker that China has been sucked into a giant malinvestment by purchasing these bonds, but a closer look at Master Sun's stratagems may reveal a well conceived and even cunning plan...China may well be heading in the direction of pegging its currency in some form to something else and that that something else, is very likely to be gold. Then China could offload its US bonds by sale , once again raising the price of gold dramatically which in turn would compensate for the dollar losses...Not only would this give China the only trustworthy currency in the world, but it would simultaneously and conveniently constitute the knock-out blow to the USA as the economic superpower...

caused; China executive; com; Cunning Sun Tzu Strategy; destroyed; Dollar; EconomicPolicyJournal; gold; Upward Price Explosion.

Tue 2009-10-06 21:12 EDT

The demise of the dollar

Robert Fisk

In the most profound financial change in recent Middle East history, Gulf Arabs are planning -- along with China, Russia, Japan and France -- to end dollar dealings for oil, moving instead to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar...Sun Bigan, China's former special envoy to the Middle East, has warned there is a risk of deepening divisions between China and the US over influence and oil in the Middle East. "Bilateral quarrels and clashes are unavoidable," he told the Asia and Africa Review. "We cannot lower vigilance against hostility in the Middle East over energy interests and security."...

demise; Dollar.

Tue 2009-09-22 08:39 EDT

HSBC bids farewell to dollar supremacy - Telegraph

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

The sun is setting on the US dollar as the ultra-loose monetary policy of the US Federal Reserve forces China and the vibrant economies of the emerging world to forge a new global currency order, according to a new report by HSBC..."The dollar looks awfully like sterling after the First World War," said David Bloom, the bank's currency chief.

dollar supremacy; HSBC bids farewell; Telegraph.

Fri 2008-06-20 00:00 EDT

Walter Bagehot Was Wrong - June 19, 2008 - The New York Sun

Walter Bagehot Was Wrong, by James Grant - June 19, 2008 - The New York Sun; Jim Grant: structuring mortgages for central bank deposit in special liquidity facilities will result in a new cycle of currency debasement; Walter Bagehot versus Thomson Hankey on central banks, moral hazard, fairness, and ready money

2008; June 19; New York Sun; Walter Bagehot; wrong.

Sun 2008-05-04 00:00 EDT

A Special Report: The Right's America-Hating Preacher

by Robert Parry | The Smirking Chimp; Reverend Sun Myung Moon "has invested billions of dollars in financing the U.S. conservative movement and put fat wads of cash into the pockets of many prominent Republicans, including members of President George W. Bush's own family." Rev. Moon's lurid sex scandals, espionage, media empire, drug trafficking, gun-running

Right's America-Hating Preacher; special report.