Word: dollarization
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...nonobvious answer is: the central banks of emerging economies. To keep their currencies from appreciating too much against the dollar, emerging nations continue to buy increasingly large amounts of U.S. debt. This provides the U.S. with an indirect funding source to prop up its banks and brokerages, but it's a compromised solution. After all, the willingness of central banks to lend almost without limit to America helped create this mess. Cheap money from abroad suppressed U.S. long-term interest rates, helping to set the stage for the housing bubble and its catastrophic collapse. Continuing such inappropriate monetary and exchange...
...SWFs, on the other hand, control more than $3 trillion, an amount that is growing rapidly. That money needs a home, and the weak U.S. dollar presents foreign investors with opportunities to put it to work by snapping up "bargains" like the Chrysler Building and Citigroup stock. But after turning to SWFs in their hour of need last winter, will U.S. and European officials be willing to do so again...
...this activism comes at a price. The Fed's rate cuts have fueled inflation and undermined the dollar, now trading at about $1.60 to the euro. The Treasury's willingness to backstop Fannie and Freddie, which together are on the hook for $5.2 trillion in mortgage debt--just slightly less than what the U.S. government owes investors--is already sparking a bit of worry about the soundness of T-bills and bonds. With more bailouts, that worry could snowball...
...truth is, no one needs government officials to put a dollar value on his or her life or on the lives of loved ones. We consider ourselves priceless. So should...
...contradiction lies at the heart of the quadrennial presidential-nominating conventions. These most grand celebrations of the democratic process are, in fact, private affairs, organized for club members of the political parties, not the general public. The best after-hours events are thrown for corporate sponsors and high-dollar donors, not voters, and the best hotel rooms are saved for official delegates from key swing states. The general public is not welcome too near the convention halls, let alone on the convention floors...