The coming week finds the bulls chastened by last week’s dip and facing a slew of data that could swing sentiment further into despair — or back toward euphoria. Which way the market’s mood swings could come down to the state of the all-important consumer, to be revealed in both confidence numbers and earnings reports from several retailers. On the top-down front, Tuesday brings the February consumer confidence report, from which economists expect a dip to 109.5 from January’s...
Paulson wants action from China
April 30, 2007 on 3:22 pm | In Currency |
NEW YORK (AP) - Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said Friday that China was not moving quickly enough on currency reform, and said he hoped high-level talks next month would produce results.
“They’re not moving in my judgment quickly enough,” Paulson said in a speech in New York. “I feel quite strongly there’s a need to move more quickly in the short term, but we need to get to a point in the intermediate term where China has a market-determined currency.
“There are many countries in world that don’t have a market-determined currency, but China is by far the largest.”
He said, “That, in and of itself, is a bit of an unnatural act.”
Paulson has been pushing China to move more rapidly to allow its currency to rise in value against the U.S. dollar as the Bush administration seeks to ward off a protectionist backlash in Congress over record U.S. trade deficits. Last year, the United States reported a record $232.5 billion trade deficit with China.
The two countries hold their next high-level talks in Washington May 23-24, the second round of what is known as the “Strategic Economic Dialogue.” Paulson began those talks in China in December.
Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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