Don’t Overlook These Important Headlines
His position was revealed in an advance copy of his speech to the Bretton Woods council in Washington acquired by Le Monde.
If our understanding is correct, Strauss-Kahn wants the IMF to be a systemic regulator, working to find the issues which could bring down the system, before they do so.
International Monetary Fund managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn notified the fund’s executive board on Wednesday of his intention to appoint the deputy Chinese central bank governor, Zhu Min, as his special advisor.
It is the highest-level staff position attained by a Chinese citizen and follows appeals by China and other emerging nations for a bigger say in the running of the IMF and World Bank, the twin Bretton Woods institutions.
Zhu, who joined the Chinese central bank in 2009 after more than a decade as a senior executive of the Bank of China, is expected to assume his position on May 3, the Washington-based IMF said in a statement.
China hailed the move, saying it would pave the way for better cooperation between the IMF and emerging economies, which have long fought for a bigger say at the multilateral table to better reflect their growing clout.
And in a copywrited story ABC News reported Friday, a story which basically said:
International Monetary Fund head from France, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, intimated the IMF one day could be called on to provide countries with a global reserve currency which would be an alternative to the U.S. dollar.
“That day has not yet come, but I think it is intellectually healthy to explore these kinds of ideas now,” he was quoted as saying, and said such an asset could be similar to but distinctly different from the IMF’s special drawing rights, or SDRs, the accounting unit that countries use to hold funds within the IMF. It is based on a basket of major currencies. He went on to say having alternatives to the US dollar “would limit the extent to which the international monetary system as a whole depends on the policies and conditions of a single, albeit dominant, country.” and during the worldwide financial crisis the US dollar “played its role as a safe haven” asset, and the current international monetary system demonstrated resilience. “The challenge ahead is to find ways to limit the tension arising from the high demand for precautionary reserves on the one hand and the narrow supply of reserves on the other,” he said.
Keep in mind that China, Russia, and other countries have called to replace the dollar as the reserve currency and have suggested using IMF internal accounting unit in it’s place.
At the same time, UK Daily Mail reported:
The man who broke the Bank of England in 1992 is said to be at the centre of a plot to cash in on the demise of the euro.
George Soros’s investment business Soros Fund Management is among a group of heavyweight Wall Street hedge funds which have launched a series of massive bets against the euro.
The bets came after an all-star ‘ideas dinner’ in New York where some of the world’s most powerful currency speculators argued that the euro will plunge to parity with the U.S. dollar.
The single currency has been under enormous pressure because of Greece’s debt crisis, plus financial worries in Portugal, Italy, Spain and Ireland.
The euro traded at $1.51 in December, but has since fallen to $1.34.
Traders are borrowing 20 times the size of their bet, boosting their potential gains and losses so that a euro move to parity with the U.S. dollar could represent a ‘career’ trade.
If investors put up $5million to make a $100million trade, a five per cent price move in the right direction doubles their initial investment.
Details of the secretive dinner emerged in the Wall Street Journal just days after Mr Soros warned in a newspaper article that the euro could ‘fall apart’ even if the European Union can agree a deal to shore up support for stricken Greece.
He said: ‘Makeshift assistance should be enough for Greece, but that leaves Spain, Italy, Portugal and Ireland. Together they constitute too large a portion of euroland to be helped in this way.’
Mr Soros, who made more than $1billion when the pound was ejected from the Exchange Rate Mechanism on Black Wednesday in 1992, believes the structure of the single currency is ‘patently flawed’.
Could he be using his influence to do the same here??????
That my friend is the million, no, multi-trillion dollar question.
Soldier For Liberty 
What currency should we invest in…for when the dollar goes bust?
Diane Cruz
March 5, 2010
Invest in jewelry grade gold in bar or coin form. Only safe investment in my opinion. Not that I am an expert, I am not. But that is the only one that makes sense to me.
Desiree Paquette
March 5, 2010