Why Yuan Isn't Ready for Prime Time

There has been a lot of speculation concerning the goal and strategy of China concerning the place of the yuan or renminbi on the world economic stage.

I have no doubt the Chinese have a goal of becoming the leading reserve currency in the world, but if that ends up being a reality, it's going to be many years from now.

The idea that China is attempting to bypass the existing currency market and working to build an alternative to it is actually the exact opposite of what it really wants to do, which is to become a larger player in the current global economy.

For now, the yuan isn't close to being ready to be a currency leader, as China needs to take a number of steps before it's going to be considered a means of paying for major transactions on a global basis.

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Yuan to Continue Upward Move

In what can only be called a dramatic change of direction, the upward move of the Chinese yuan has caught a lot of investors off guard, as their attention, in the currency market has mostly been on the Japanese yen, once it implemented a policy to drive down its value.

Meanwhile, the yuan has moved strongly in the opposite direction, strengthening against the U.S. dollar in a meaningful way since the beginning of 2013.

More on strength of yuan

Currencies and Central Banking

A lot of clueless or dishonest economic writers in the West at times attempt to make a big deal out of how China is "manipulating" their currency by pegging it at a certain level against the U.S. dollar. But the truth is Western nations are doing the same, except they're doing in a stealth mode that the general population doesn't understand.

The best example of that is the United States, Great Britain and the Euro zone, all of whom, via the U.S. Federal Reserve, the Bank of England and the European Central Bank (ECB), employ strategies to manipulate their respective currencies against one another and other currencies to keep the competition from being overly volatile, to the detriment of one currency against another.

That is done simply through inflating the currency, or in other words, through the printing of paper money, or the creating of digital money out of thin air. If one country does it, such as the the United States when the Federal Reserve announced its most recent round of quantitative easing by buying up $40 billion in mortgage-backed securities indefinitely, other countries will do it as well to ensure their currency doesn't become too strong against the U.S. dollar, which would be detrimental to exports in the country or region.

So if one currency gets weaker, the strategic response is to weaken the competing currency in order to order to keep a predictable balance between the currencies.

This is what maddens these dishonest countries concerning China, which is actually much more honest in its currency policy, announcing it right out in the open and pegging it to the up and down movements of the U.S. dollar.

The Japanese, British and nations of the Euro zone do the same thing, only through the mechanism of printing more money, rather than pegging their currencies to the U.S. dollar; the results are the same, but just hidden behind the smokescreen of money creation.

As those in power continue to strive for a one-world government and economic zone, these are the tools used to hide their practical agenda, as few people understand what's really going on and why.

Moves like this continue to strike a dagger into the heart of free markets, as currencies should be allowed to float freely against one another without government and central banking interference. That's where the markets will determine the outcome and response to it, not central planners who believe they can control the economic world.

The point is we must be vigilant and aware of what is happening and why concerning currencies, as they play a major part in any investment decision across a wide spectrum of equities and commodities.

Because central planners always will fail, eventually this will change as one important country or another decides to go their own way in order to protect their own interests. When that happens some of this currency scenario could quickly change. But for now, it appears there are some deals being made behind closed doors to keep some of the volatility out of the currency market.

Marc Faber: China Won't Appreciate Currency Against U.S. Dollar

Marc Faber said at the Asian Investor Fifth Annual Asian Investment Summit in Hong Kong today that China is highly unlikely to remove the peg it has with the U.S. dollar, as the European sovereign debt crisis has knocked the euro down hard and fast.

Faber said, “If I had to take a bet, I’d say that the renminbi will not go up this year.”

The renminbi, or yuan, has appreciated against the euro by 16 percent so far in 2010, and exporters from China are starting to get nervous because of the rising costs of doing business as a result.

Faber also said he believes China should have eased up more than they did. Since July 2008, the renminbi has been pegged at an exchange rate of 6.83 percent against the US dollar.

BRICs Continue Local Currency Pursuit

A growing number of nations are losing confidence in the U.S. dollar, as the endless printing of paper money has increased the pace of the drop in value of the dollar, and its desirability as a currency to do business in, as it's becoming questionable as to its long-term viability on a number of fronts; including whether countries want to continue to acquire the increasingly risky Treasuries, which have propped up the U.S. economy for a long time.

Although it's not the first time BRIC countries have let it be known they are looking for ways to conduct business in their own currencies, the fact that they're continuing to talk and pursue it shows it's not an issue that is going away, and also points to the probable removal of the U.S. dollar in the future as the currency to be traded in, to be replaced by the renminbi or yuan.

China already allows some business to be conducted on a regional basis in its own currency, and that is an experiment to see the potential of expanding to do business in foreign currencies besides the U.S. dollar.

The other thing on the positive side, is it seems to show not only a desire to do business beyond the U.S. dollar, but also that the countries are increasingly confident in the currencies of each country.

JP Morgan (NYSE:JPM): China Imports Falling

China Trade Deficit

JP Morgan (NYSE:JPM) economist and chairman of China Equities and Commodities, Jing Ulrich, said in a research note that even though China just experienced its first monthly trade deficit in six years in March, fixed asset investment on the domestic will decline, and that will bring things back into balance.

Assuming developed economies start to rebound in 2010, that should result in growing exports for China as well, bringing back a trade surplus to them.

Concerning floating the renminbi, Ulrich said, "The pace of China's export recovery and dynamics of imported inflation will shape the country's approach towards currency valuation. A return to the policy of gradual RMB appreciation would allow China to mitigate imported inflation and promote domestic consumption by boosting household purchasing power in local currency terms."

The March Chinese trade deficit was a reported $7.24 billion.