Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin lambasted “parasitic” US monetary policies today at a press conference in Beijing. “The US is not a parasite, but the US dollar’s monopoly is a parasite,” he said, backing Chinese calls for an alternative global reserve currency in light of the economic crisis crippling the developed world. Mr Putin said his comments were “constructive... 

United States, Washington: The US Treasury on August 5, 2011 after Standard & Poor's cut the US credit rating for the first time in history. The US has lost its top-level triple-A credit rating for the first time since 1917, after Standard & Poor’s downgraded it to an AA-plus, with an even lower AA rating on the horizon. ­The decision comes after the White House and lawmakers reached... 

China has dropped 97 percent of its holdings in U.S. Treasury bills, decreasing its ownership of the short-term U.S. government securities from a peak of $210.4 billion in May 2009 to $5.69 billion in March 2011, the most recent month reported by the U.S. Treasury. Treasury bills are securities that mature in one year or less that are sold by the U.S. Treasury Department to fund the nation’s debt. Mainland... 

The International Monetary Fund has just dropped a bombshell, and nobody noticed. For the first time, the international organization has set a date for the moment when the “Age of America” will end and the U.S. economy will be overtaken by that of China. The Obama deficit tour The Wall Street Journal editorial page’s Steve Moore critiques the president’s speeches attacking Republican budget... 

The following is one statement that you should get used to seeing: “The price of gold set another record today.” Today, spot gold reached a new all-time record of $1461.91 an ounce before settling back a little bit. Silver is also skyrocketing. At one point today silver hit $39.75 an ounce. It seems inevitable that at some point we are going to be talking about $50 silver. The price... 

Washington has come down with a case of fiscal fever as the Obama administration proposes everything from spending freezes on domestic programs to selling off unused government property to bring the budget back in line. Now, one study argues that the government can save billions of dollars simply by making a change to the currency itself. Earlier this month, the U.S. Government Accountability Office... 

The International Monetary Fund issued a report Thursday on a possible replacement for the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. The IMF said Special Drawing Rights, or SDRs, could help stabilize the global financial system. SDRs represent potential claims on the currencies of IMF members. They were created by the IMF in 1969 and can be converted into whatever currency a borrower requires... 

Virginia Creates Subcommittee To Study Monetary Alternatives In Case Of Terminal Fed “Breakdown”, Considers Gold As Option. In what may one day be heralded as the formal proposal that proverbially started it all, the Commonwealth of Virginia introduced House Resolution No. 557 to establish a joint subcommittee to “to study whether the Commonwealth should adopt a currency to serve... 

French president Nicolas Sarkozy Calls for the end of the US Dollar while US president Barack Obama calls France “biggest ally”. There’s little doubt that the world’s superpowers are now fighting a new war. It’s not a cold one, or a hot one. No tanks, bombs or poison gas. At least not yet. But open hostility between Europe, Brazil, China, India and the United States blanket the headlines... 

Normally when I cover subjects in the economy, I try to take a “macro” approach, giving an overall view of various financial elements around the world and how they are clearly connected to one another in a greater synchronous social force. That is to say, in Chinese domestic consumption, or European debt obligations, or Russian gold reserves, and in many other factors, is encoded the very future... 

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Friday U.S. dollars are “worthless paper” that the U.S. government injects into the world economy in exchange for goods and services. Continuing with his U.S. bashing at a press conference in Shanghai, he said the U.S. deficit is “theft of the wealth of other nations.” The Iranian president was attending the World Expo’s... 

Pure Magic (Alan Greenspan & Ben Bernanke) Barbara Cargill says the Federal Reserve presided over a 95 percent decline in the U.S. dollar The dollar ain’t what it used to be, and State Board of Education member Barbara Cargill wants Texas students to know it. The board hammered out more than 300 proposed changes to the state’s social studies curriculum in its January and March meetings,... 

 Read More »

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev illustrated his call for a supranational currency to replace the dollar by pulling from his pocket a sample coin of a “united future world currency.” “Here it is,” Medvedev told reporters today in L’Aquila, Italy, after a summit of the Group of Eight nations. “You can see it and touch it.” The coin, which bears the words “unity in diversity,” was...