the end of the dollar

[Scary]

A lot of China's recent "growth" comes from building massive high-rise financial/business district ghost towns.

[suityou01]

Interesting article on WSJ

SINGAPORE -- The U.S. dollar continued to tumble against most Asian currencies Thursday, prompting a wave of foreign-exchange intervention by central banks in South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines and Thailand seeking to limit damage to their export industries.

Traders said the dollar selloff is unlikely to fade soon, given the prospect for a long period of low U.S. interest rates to support a sluggish U.S. economy and increasing signs central banks in Asia will begin tightening monetary policies in the months ahead.

I read somewhere that it takes 6-9 months for the effects of QE to filter into the wider economy (OTC trade for example). Could it be that the QE that has been running in the US since December is finally starting to bite?

[suityou01]

SDR on customs form

A developer was asked to design a shipping label. He spotted that the value in $ was on the form, so was the SDR equivalent.

read here

Hi Infowars,

I am a software developer who sends training courses all over the world. As a result, I fill out a lot of U.S. Customs forms. Today, I created a shipping label online at USPS.com, and noticed something interesting.

When I printed out the label, I noticed that in the upper right hand corner, it had Insured Amount (US $) and SDR Value. The insured amount was US$10.00 and the equivalent SDR Value was $6.25. I took it into my local Post Office and asked the PostMaster about it. She said it was Special Drawing Rights, but that was all she knew about it. But, she pulled out her book and looked it up. It said the exchange rate was such:

$1.00 US = 0.67 SDR
Now, I also have paper customs forms, but the SDR Value has not been printed on them as of yet. It makes sense that the USPS would update their online system before the paper forms. That is probably the easier of the two to change.

Attached is my scan of the customs form. I have blocked out my address and the address of my customer, but left everything else.

Thought you might be interested.