Miscellaneous News
- Thread starter bd popeye
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Depending on who you ask, the Egyptians probably owe more to the Chinese than the IMF at this point.
If the political will can be found in both Cairo and Beijing, China should be able to consolidate a significant amount of Egypt's debt to the IMF and some other foreign lenders, with repayment in RMB. This would accelerate Egyptian, if not regional RMB adoption, as well as help China reduce its USD holdings.
However, the Egyptians will inevitably want to hedge their bets, if they can, and stay friendly or friendly enough with Washington to retain access to IMF financing facilities and other sources of Western capital.
Besides senior roles with the Egyptian state, their current Minister for Planning, Economic Development & International Cooperation, Rania al-Mashat, who plays a leading role in managing Egypt's foreign debt, spent the majority, if not almost the entirety of her professional career at the IMF, after earning a PhD from the University of Maryland in the US.
I wouldn't go so far as to call her an American plant or accuse her of being a CIA asset, but she would obviously have reasons and incentives to string the IMF along, if for no other reason, for the sake of lucrative post-government opportunities.
If this is true, will HK make her like "persona non grata"?
Julie must be a masochist if she wants to be consul general in HK, though she certainly wouldn't be the first female American diplomat with such proclivities.
From the perspective of the MSS, officers of the US Foreign Service, especially political officers like Julie, are no different from their sister agency counterparts operating under diplomatic cover. They're two sides of the same coin, and as such, subject to constant surveillance.
A lot of that surveillance is digital these days. Not too hard given the amount of CCTV coverage that diplomatic compounds and areas receive.
However, someone as esteemed as Julie may be honored with fairly overt 24/7 physical surveillance, if for no other reason to make sure she isn't targeted by any overly nationalistic lunatics.
I don't get it. It was so obvious this would happen. Don't need to be Nostradamus to forsee it. And yet they still did it anyway.
And in the process creating a massive wealth inequality and a gigantic domestic asset bubble. Which when it pops will probably rival the Japanese implosion of the 1990s where their economy has never recovered since then.
You've got to be joking.
You cannot have both rapid currency appreciation and mass adoption in trade settlement/commercial transactions
Just think through this - if you have some yuan, why would you spend it when you know in a few days/weeks/months, it'll go up significantly in value? It will just lead to currency speculation and people hoarding it/not spending it resulting in the slowing of economic activity.
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