On Nov 17, 2009, at 8:45 PM, SA wrote:
> Why is it imperialist for the US to set a dollar price for Chinese
> currency, but it's not imperialist when China sets a yuan price for
> U.S. currency?
Because it's unilateral grandstanding of a very risky sort. When Bush did this sort of thing with guns, liberals got very upset. But apparently it's ok to do it with currencies, even if it does threaten to upset a fundamental relationship in the world economy that could blow everything up if it happened traumatically. And it's a very odd way for a wobbly dominant power to treat a rising power that's also its creditor to the tune of $1 trillion or more. Obviously the whole China-US relationship isn't sustainable in its present form, but altering it in this macho way - as if we didn't have plenty of our own problems to deal with - is insane.
Doug