Global markets celebrated on Monday at the merest hint that China would let its currency appreciate, showing just how badly the Middle Kingdom is needed to drive a recovery in the sagging world economy…
Assets leveraged to global growth, from commodities to stocks and Asian currencies, all rose on hopes that China’s surprise pledge of yuan flexibility would lessen the risk of a trade war between the world’s biggest and third-largest economies…
Beijing has faced a barrage of complaints from abroad for keeping the yuan artificially cheap even as the country’s export juggernaut roared back to life.
Yet many economists suspect Beijing will nudge the exchange rate higher in increments, not leaps.
The People’s Bank of China had surprised everyone on Saturday by saying it would make the yuan more flexible, but by Sunday it already seemed to be playing down the chance of major change.
In a new statement on its website, the central bank explicitly ruled out a one-off revaluation, repeating that there was no basis for any big appreciation and that the currency’s value was not far off its fair level…
As well as a nod to trade tensions, a rising yuan would also give China more purchasing power to buy foreign goods, which would be positive for world trade, especially for commodity exporters such as Australia, Brazil, Canada and New Zealand…
Because China successfully instituted managed stimulus measures, their own response to the global crash – they’ve discovered they are ready a good bit earlier than expected to expand domestic consumption as a central driver to their whole economy.
New factories, new businesses are in place – often with foreign partners – ready to produce consumer goods for a domestic market.
Though infrastructure-building has decades of targets to go, they’ve proven to themselves they can handle projects comparable to Eisenhower’s buildout of our Interstate Highway system.
China knows they needn’t repeat many of the mistakes plaguing other nations, older economies. While here in the United States, we can count on folks still afraid of FDR and Keynes to guarantee us a lagging response, foot-dragging our way out of this recession.
Eideard 
The biggest chuckle is listening to opportunist slugs in Kongress and the official hacks trying to claim credit for something-or-other. Now that it’s clear world markets have a positive reaction, positive outlook, to the next stage of China’s managed economy.
Management obviously can mean “guidance” rather than the claptrap coming from Establishment weasels. Markets could care less.
U.S. stock markets, more than most, are driven and controlled by large investment firms and hedge funds which are wholly operated by blind and dumb software packages. Estimate is 80% of the market.
One critical feature that apparently is built-in is the chickenshit level – which varies from pantywaist to full-on cowardly.
The U.S. market was the only one in the world which couldn’t maintain a rally, today, on the China currency news.