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Central bank purchases of traditional reserve assets still dwarf sovereign wealth fund purchases of riskier assets -- as well as central bank purchases of equities. But over time, it is reasonable to expect that many over-reserved sovereigns will diversify their portfolios. The recent decision to increase the share of the CIC's initial $205-210 billion in capital that it can invest abroad and SAFE's increased willingness to purchase equities as well as bonds are examples.

A far more challenging issue is how the huge increase in financial assets managed by potentially non-economic agents will affect the efficiency of the global capital market and the allocation of risk and resources. ….

And then there is China. China enormous foreign asset growth in the first quarter implies that it might be able to add more to its reserves and sovereign fund in 2008 than all the oil-exporters combined even if oil stays at its current levels.

Suppose that the value of the asset the Fed holds falls to zero after the trade. The trade was permanent, so there's no margin call or anything like that - the Fed owns the asset and it is worth nothing. Then, in the end, it is no different than the Fed simply printing that same amount of money and giving it to the banks as new reserves, it is an increase in the money supply.

If the central bank, or some other government agency, were to act as Market Maker of Last Resort and buy the impaired asset at a price no greater than its fair value but higher than what it would fetch in the free but unfair illiquid market, such a purchase would not be a bail-out. It would also be welfare-increasing...

My feeling is that it's not going to happen, mainly for political reasons. In this particular crisis, the distressed assets the Fed would end up buying would almost certainly be mortgage-backed bonds. But buying up mortgage-backed bonds looks very much like giving money to big banks and investors instead of giving it straight to struggling homeowners: the optics are simply terrible. If the collapse of Bear Stearns is seen as a bailout, this would be much worse. It might be a good idea, but its time

One of the distinctive traits about Iceland’s disaster, and Wall Street’s, is how little women had to do with it. Women worked in the banks, but not in the risktaking jobs. As far as I can tell, during Iceland’s boom, there was just one woman in a senior position inside an Icelandic bank. Her name is Kristin Petursdottir, and by 2005 she had risen to become deputy C.E.O. for Kaupthing in London. “The financial culture is very male-dominated,” she says. “The culture is quite extreme. It is a pool of sharks. Women just despise the culture.” Petursdottir still enjoyed finance. She just didn’t like the way Icelandic men did it, and so, in 2006, she quit her job. “People said I was crazy,” she says, but she wanted to create a financial-services business run entirely by women. To bring, as she puts it, “more feminine values to the world of finance.” Today her firm is, among other things, one of the very few profitable financial businesses left in Iceland. After the stock exchange collapsed, the money flooded in. A few days before we met, for instance, she heard banging on the front door early one morning and opened it to discover a little old man. “I’m so fed up with this whole system,” he said. “I just want some women to take care of my money.”

包括美联储(Fed)和欧洲央行(ECB)在内的全球六大央行昨日宣布，同时紧急减息半个百分点，这项举措史无前例。

美联储将利率从2%降至1.5%，最近才提高了利率的欧洲央行，则将基准利率从4.25%下调至3.75%。欧洲央行还公布，调整向银行提供资金的方式，保证在官方利率下，银行贷款数额不受限制。 英国央行(BoE)将基准利率从5%下调至4.5%，瑞士央行(Swiss National Bank)将利率从3%减至2.5%。瑞典央行(Riksbank)则从4.75%调至4.25%。

同时，除本次共同减息外，中国将一年期存贷款利率各下调了27个基点。日本央行对本次举措“表示欢迎”，但没有采取任何行动。

I would suggest that China's January reserves data provides an equally compelling case for a reconsideration of the world's global monetary architecture. An international monetary system that requires this kind of official intervention - and likely will lead to more inflation in the emerging world than the emerging world wants and more government ownership of financial assets in the US and Europe than the US and European public wants -- strikes me as hard to sustain for much longer.

China added $55b to its reserves. Saudi Arabia added $18b to its foreign assets in January. Those two countries combined to add around $73b to their central banks portfolios. That means that those two countries alone could have supplied the $62.5b a month the US needs to sustain a $750b current account deficit and still had a bit left over to buy euros. Or they could have provided enough money to finance capital outflows from the US along with a current account deficit.It kind of makes you wonder why the US goes through the motions of selling Treasury and Agency bonds on the open market rather than doing direct placements with a few big central banks.

credit card companies and banks gave the same kind of cooperation to the government that phone companies did

in 2006 that the NSA obtained access to financial records in the international SWIFT database

the agency may have obtained bulk data on domestic credit card transactions as well from U.S. financial institutions -- all without a warrant

Then, the story goes, a giant, star-shaped fungus grew overnight on the east side of the tomb. An auspicious cloud bank formed and a regent saw a vision of letters floating in a mystical lake, one of which — Ah — he took to refer to the northeast province of Amdo.

The most interesting thesis is the idea that China could use international law as a weapon, or “lawfare” for short. The authors argue that citizens of democracies increasingly demand that their countries uphold international rules, particularly ones that govern human rights and the conduct of war. Governments are, therefore, constrained by regional or worldwide organizations, such as the European Union, ASEAN, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the WTO and the United Nations. The authors argue that China should copy the European model of using international law to pin down the USA: “there are far-sighted big powers which have clearly already begun to borrow the power of supra-national, multinational, and non-state players to redouble and expand their own influence.” They think that China could turn the United Nations and regional organizations into an amplifier of the Chinese worldview – discouraging the USA from using its might in campaigns like the Iraq War.

Beijing has been willing to allow the Organization of Islamic States to take the lead in weakening the new Human Rights Council. This subtle diplomacy has been devastatingly effective – contributing to a massive fall in US influence: in 1995 the USA won 50.6 percent of the votes in the United Nations general assembly; by 2006, the figure had fallen to just 23.6 percent. On human rights, the results are even more dramatic: China’s win-rate has rocketed from 43 percent to 82 percent, while the USA’s has tumbled from 57 per cent to 22 percent. The New York Times’ UN correspondent James Traub has detected a paradigm shift in the United Nations’ operations: “it’s a truism that the Security Council can function only insofar as the United States lets it. The adage may soon be applied to China as well.” Traub may be right. China’s capacity to influence the United Nations is increasing, and soon we may be complaining about Chinese behavior on big policy issues

记 住这个日子：2008年3月14日星期五──这是全球自由市场资本主义梦想破灭的一天。30年来，我们一直在努力缔造市场主导的金融体系。美联储(Fed)——美国货币政策负责机构和自由市场资本主义的首席倡导者——决定拯救贝尔斯登(Bear Stearns)，宣告了这一时代的终结。它用行动表明，自己赞同德意志银行(Deutsche Bank)首席执行官约瑟夫•阿克曼(Josef Ackermann)的说法：“我不再相信市场的自我修复能力”；政府解除管制已达极限。