EconomicCrisis.US

Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia President Charles Plosser said Thursday that the dollar’s slide over the last few months isn’t surprising and reflects the stabilization of global financial markets.

“A lot of the decline of the dollar over the last year has just been reversal of the run-up after the panic,” Plosser told reporters. “Growth has returned and panic has subsided. There is no particular reason why you wouldn’t expect the dollar to go back to where it was before the panic set in.”

The U.S. government has historically let the dollar fluctuate, and a weaker dollar in recent years can be understood as a market response to imbalances in the U.S. current account, Plosser said.
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Recent evidence from the Detroit Three and the broader economy is making it difficult to deny that the U.S. economy — even including Michigan — is beginning to heal.

That’s despite the fact that many people remain out of work, housing prices are weak and foreclosures continue.

In the last two weeks: Ford Motor Co. reported a nearly $1-billion third-quarter profit. The Chrysler Group said it generated an undisclosed level of cash in September. And General Motors Co. said it has generated $3.3 billion in cash since its July 10 exit from bankruptcy.
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When US President Barack Obama visits China this weekend, he will encounter a rival that sees the financial crisis as more of an opportunity than a threat. America, on the other hand, has been fundamentally weakened by the global crunch — and is more dependent on the goodwill of the rising superpower than ever.

The scientists at the National University of Defense Technology in Changsha, China, had plenty to celebrate: They had developed a supercomputer that could perform more than a quadrillion calculations per second.

The announcement, released just in time for US President Barack Obama’s visit to China this weekend, had symbolic value: With their new computer, dubbed “Tianhe” (“Milky Way”), the Chinese claim they will be the first country to become a direct rival to the superpower.
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It’s what the G20 didn’t say.

Global traders pushed the U.S. dollar to new lows in a bet that leaders of the world’s major economies are unlikely to take steps to stem the currency’s long slide.

By omitting any discussion of the faltering U.S. dollar at a key gathering, global financial leaders effectively pulled the rug out from under the world’s reserve currency as it continues a months-long decline.

The U.S. dollar sank to new lows against a basket of currencies in the wake of a Group of 20 gathering in Scotland on the weekend, where finance ministers, central bankers and International Monetary Fund officials discussed policies aimed at nursing the global economy back to health.
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