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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: GROUND ZERO™ who wrote (662993)	11/29/2004 8:50:35 AM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

True... but 'tourism' won't make up for loss of manufacturing exports.

To: GROUND ZERO™ who wrote (662993)	11/29/2004 8:53:57 AM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

'Cable' is trader-slang for the dollar/sterling exchange rate. On Friday, sterling spiked to $1.9037, the highest it's been in 9 months and three ticks short of a new 13-year record against the dollar. Here's why: Last week, UBS, Merrill Lynch and JPMorgan all cut their predictions for the dollar. UBS marked the yen up to 103 by March, and the euro to $1.36. JPMorgan put the yen at 96 and the euro at $1.37 in the same time frame. Merrill Lynch matches the yen prediction, but puts the euro at $1.39. Together, the three firms account for 22 percent of the $1.9 trillion-a-day currency market. Then there are the Russian dollar-dumpers.... Oleg Mozhaiskov, former deputy chairman of the Russian Central Bank, has been pushing for gold as a an alternative to Russia's dollar reserve. Senior Deputy Finance Minister Alexey Ulyukayev on Monday discussed "the possibility to change the reserve structure." Then on Friday, Deputy Chairman Konstantin Korishchenko said the Russian Central Bank was moving away from the 'dirty' float of the ruble against the dollar. The Russians are not alone. On Thursday, Bank of England Chief Economist, Charles Bean, threw his hat into the ring. "At some stage action will have to be taken to close the U.S. fiscal deficit and, when that happens, the real value of the dollar will have to fall if a sharp slowdown is to be avoided," Bean told an audience of business leaders. And the Indonesians... on Friday the FT reported that they too might cut their dollar holdings if it keeps sliding. Indonesia holds $35 billion in dollar-denominated reserves. Finally, a respected professor of economics and a member of the central bank's monetary policy committee in China, was quoted on Friday as saying Beijing had cut the proportion of foreign exchange reserves held in dollars. The markets panicked and dumped both the dollar and bonds so suddenly that our flustered bureaucrat was forced to deny the statement. "I think the Chinese monetary authorities are very clever and they must already have taken action," Prof. Yu said. "But I have no information whatsoever about what they are doing." As anxious as a group of sprinters crouching in their blocks, these men, and the organizations they represent, are all getting ready to race for the door at the same time. In anticipation, bond yields moved higher for the fifth consecutive week. The 10-year Treasury climbed 4 basis points to yield 4.24%, the highest since August. Oil, the other thorn in the stock market's side, also moved higher, moving briefly above $50 a barrel. The goo closed at $49.44 up $1 on the week. Gold's holding its own. It breeched $450 for the first time in 16 years and now sells for $452 an ounce.