People's currency

January 28, 2009 10:44 PM

The FT's Davos blogoffers a range of informed comment as our leaders gather in Switzerland to consider the economic mess we're in. But will the ongoing spat between the US and China over the renminbi exchange rate overshadow all else at the World Economic Forum?
posted by Abiezer (17 comments total)

The real story is Vladimir Putin laying the smack down on Micheal Dell.
posted by delmoi at 10:54 PM on January 28 [1 favorite has favorites]

Or will the leaders of the new world chuckle as they wash down gold dust marmalade with gulps of champagne, gossiping about new trade agreements, potential ventures, and how easy it was to steal the bread from the johnny workingman's table?

Crisis indeed.
posted by vantam at 10:55 PM on January 28

Davos is a laughingstock now. The emperor(s) have no clothes.
posted by Yakuman at 11:25 PM on January 28

Laughing stock? Check this out and weep
posted by infini at 11:48 PM on January 28 [3 favorites has favorites]

"It seems like China’s top leaders knew less about China’s portfolio that American reserve watchers; it is not inconceivable (gulp) that I was the source for those published report about China’s Agency holdings."
posted by kliuless at 12:12 AM on January 29

"Can we change the behaviour of the American consumer?"

Wrong question, pointy-headed Columbia dude.

"Will the devastation of the credit-card lending banks keep them from offering gimmick-laden credit card offers to people who can't afford to make their monthly payments?"

Answer: Yes.
posted by bardic at 1:38 AM on January 29

While we are talking about freely readable FT blogs Felix Salmon's account of a lunch with the FT's editor, Rob Grimshaw, makes interesting reading. He wanted to understand the paper's online business model.
posted by rongorongo at 1:52 AM on January 29

OK, so Dell knows more about Russian IT needs than Putin; American reserve watchers know more about China's holdings than the Chinese: and the American government knows better than China about how to manage the Chinese exchange rate?
posted by Phanx at 2:04 AM on January 29

I'm sorry, whenever I hear people talk abotu Davos, I end up reading it as Davros and then I end up thinking about this guy.
posted by champthom at 3:54 AM on January 29 [1 favorite has favorites]

Answer: Yes.

Right up to the point where the US Government buys up all the bad debt at list price, thus turning all of that bad debt into cash for the banks and bad debt for the US Taxpayer.
posted by eriko at 4:10 AM on January 29

champthon - damn, I was going to work a Davros joke into the post title but worried it might be too obscure. So I went for a literalist translation of the name of China's currency, which in retrospect was even more likely to mean nothing. D'oh.
To continue my pimping of the FT blogs (and thanks to rongorongo for the bit on the thinking behind their annoying pay-wall), here's their "Mavereconomist" on the exchange rate kerfuffle.
posted by Abiezer at 4:14 AM on January 29

Anyone who doesn't think the exchange rate is vital enough to overshadow the party doesn't understand the crisis!
posted by anotherpanacea at 4:41 AM on January 29

I went for a literalist translation of the name of China's currency, which in retrospect was even more likely to mean nothing. D'oh.

I got it (in that I know what renminbi means). But I didn't really "get it" as far as why it was the title of the post.
posted by delmoi at 4:55 AM on January 29

So it appears there are lots of parties - I just haven’t been invited. My former colleague rather grandly picked out some of the B-list invitations, he wouldn’t be using, and tossed them my way - a German bank, an Indian newspaper, that kind of thing. Then he spotted a functionary from the Clinton Global Initiative, called him over and suggested that he invite the FT’s foreign-affairs columnist (me) to the CGI party in the Davos museum. The functionary looked at me for a moment and then said - “I’m afraid it’s a very restricted space.” Oh well, I’m going to a South African jazz party instead - and I won’t even have to gatecrash.

Davos is full of these minor social humiliations. I bumped into the historian Niall Ferguson today, who was a star of the most sought-after dinner this year - on what happened to the investment banks last September. But despite his elevated status, Ferguson is facing the ultimate ignominy - the forum have put him in a hotel room in Klosters, a long drive away from Davos. “I’m a gloomy Scot”, he remarked cheerfully, “I thrive on these sorts of setbacks. I was unable to get into the Ferguson dinner, so instead I went to a bizarre sounding event on “leadership lessons to be learnt from Macbeth”

World Economic Forum bails out Swiss Cocaine Industry
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 8:06 AM on January 29

Girls Gone Wild in Davos: at the other end of the journalism spectrum, the wizards at News Corp. have merged The Wall Street Journal and Myspace into Myspace Journal for this conference.
posted by Andy's Gross Wart at 8:38 AM on January 29

I'm sorry, whenever I hear people talk abotu Davos, I end up reading it as Davros and then I end up thinking about this guy.

The goals of the two are pretty much the same.
posted by ryoshu at 12:14 PM on January 29

Turkey's prime minister has stormed off the stage at the World Economic Forum in Davos after a heated debate on Gaza with Israel's president.
posted by homunculus at 5:43 PM on January 29