Friday, July 6, 2007

CHINA: Trillion Dollar Investment Blues

As I was flipping through the bookmarks looking for H2O stories that weren't about nude car washes (why did we collect so many, it's not like I was going to make a career move) I found this story from April:

Reserves topped 1.2 trillion US dollars by the end of last month, confirming China's status as the world's biggest holder of foreign exchange reserves. What is more, they continue to climb by more than 20 billion dollars a month on the back of China's ever growing trade surplus.

In March, the government announced its decision to entrust some 200 to 300 billion dollars of reserves in the hands of a new, yet unnamed investment agency. Analysts suggest that if given enough authority the new investment body could deploy hundreds of billions of dollars to acquire financial or strategic assets around the world, particularly in the developing countries of Africa and Latin America.
From InterPress

And how does that relate to the price of tortillas in Mexico? Everything China does affects everything, don't short molybdenum.

Here's Friends of the Earth and BankTrack with the best open-source overview of the Chinese banking sector I've seen: Environmental Responsibility in the Chinese Banking Sector
It's a 110 page PDF with a lot of information.
Hat Tip to James Finch and Julie Ickes of StockInterview.com for the Moly tip.