Tag Archives: war

Currency Wars Pushing Global Inflation

On October 2nd, the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned the world’s countries not to start a currency war. Such action could end any economic recovery. The problem is that it appears that the world is already in a currency war.

Today, October 6th,  an RT (I think it stands for Russia Today) program called Cross Talk, interviewed three currency analysts about the race, by most countries, to devalue their money.

Countries want their money to be low in value in order to attract foreign customers. International trade is key to growing a country’s economy. An economy that’s based on domestic trade only, leads to stagnation. But, if all the major traders in the world crash the value of their money the result could be worse than an economy based only on domestic trade.

The analysts interviewed on RT represent companies/organizations from Hong Kong, Russia and the U.S.

They said currency devaluation works only if a handful of countries do it. The problem is that “everyone” is doing it. The result will be global inflation.

The analysts agreed that the coming global inflation will not affect the ‘western’ countries as badly as the rest of the world. They didn’t give any example of how bad it would get.

An allegory was used to explain the effect of most countries trying to devalue their money at the same time: It’s like a marathon where you have so many runners that they knock each other out of the race. I other words, some countries are going to have their economies “knocked” out.

To solve the problem of currency wars, the analysts said world leaders might create a common global currency, or at least common rules on currency trading.

Increasing commodity prices, currency wars, actual wars, massive debts owed by governments, continuing job losses, etc. It seems to me that despite the positive spin our leaders, and main stream media puts on our economy, the evidence is clear that things are going to get worse. Buckle up.

Red Cross Hummers. Why?

Brand new Red Cross Hummer seen in the Fred Meyer parking lot in Pocatello, Idaho.

General Motors has been donating Hummers to the American Red Cross since 2004, along with a lot of cash ($100,000 in 2004). GM claims the vehicles help with disaster response. I can see the Hummer H1 as practical for this, but the H2 & H3 are among the most impractical  SUVs out there.

Why not deck out one of GMs big four door 4×4 pickups with all kinds of rescue gear, that would be more practical. Are the H2s & H3s meant for rescuing the upper class in style?

This is just another example of the lack of wisdom in our corporate leadership. Oh, but wait, I bet GM got a huge tax write off for doing this. A tax write off for an expensive vehicle that was seeing declining domestic sales (a little more than 9,000 in 2009 compared to almost 56,000 in 2007). Oh, isn’t General Motors the company that got bailed out by U.S. taxpayers (yes, they did pay it back, at least on paper).

Here’s better news; the Hummers aren’t even made anymore. The Chinese government rejected plans to buy Hummer, and GM officially ceased production this year (apparently the last Hummer H3 left the production plant in May 2010).

So the question now is; is GM going to continue to donate vehicles to the American Red Cross, or was it just a way to write off their unsold Hummers? If they do give the ARC more vehicles I hope they choose a more practical truck.