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China Yuan Inches Closer To Global Currency
HUAIBEI, CHINA - APRIL 18: A staff member co...
A staff member counts money at a branch of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Limited (ICBC) in Huaibei, Anhui Province of China. The yuan will be closer to an international trade currency by 2014, Central Bank officials said this week. (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)
China’s yuan is just two years away from becoming a global trade currency.
A system to settle cross-border yuan transactions and boost the convertibility of the currency is being set up in Beijing and will be rolled out by 2014, Central Bank officials noted yesterday. Once set up, it would allow countries to settle payments in Chinese goods in yuans instead of dollars. Over the long term, the use of the yuan, particularly in Asian trade, would take some demand away from the dollar which currently enjoys the status of both the world’s reserve and trade currency.
Currently cross-border yuan clearance is conducted through the Hong Kong and Macao branches of the Bank of China, or agency banks of overseas participants. Actual demand for cross-border yuan settlement is increasing in Asia, but transaction costs in the current payment system are higher than the dollar.
“The new system will link domestic and overseas participants directly, and support different languages including Chinese and English. What’s more, the working hours will be extended to 17 or 18 from the current eight to nine hours to cover yuan settlement demand from different time zones,” said Li Yue, director of the payment and settlement department at the People’s Bank of China in a China Daily report on Thursday.
Li said that the system will adopt global standards, and probably use the international messaging service, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, commonly known as SWIFT.
After House talks break down, all eyes on Senate to end shutdown
Another day, another meeting and there's still no resolution to the government shutdown. Â NBC's Kristen Welker reports.
By Luke Russert, Kasie Hunt and Carrie Dann, NBC News
With the government shutdown dragging on and a deadline to raise the nation's debt ceiling just five days away, hope for a compromise to break political gridlock in Washington shifted to the Senate Saturday after talks between the White House and House Republicans collapsed.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell say they are working to broker a deal, although both sides warn that those conversations are only in the preliminary stages.
Senate Democratic leaders met with President Barack Obama at the White House Saturday afternoon to discuss a way forward. The Senate will be in session on Sunday.
The action isn't in the House. It's in the Senate. Senators hope their negotiations can end the government shutdown. NBC's Kelly O'Donnell reports.
Reid said during a press conference that he and Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., opened formal talks with an "extremely cordial" but "preliminary" meeting with McConnell and Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., Saturday morning.
"I hope that our talking is some solace to the American people and the world," Reid said. "This hasn't happened until now."
But the Nevada senator reiterated that Democrats will not view ending the shutdown or raising the debt ceiling as concessions in the negotiations.
"They're not doing us a favor by reopening the government," Reid said of Republicans. "They're not doing us a favor by extending the debt ceiling. That's part of our jobs."
Thursday cannot come soon enough to see if this the end of The US as we know it, and there is a NWO plan... if no Default then I will say NWO is a pipe dream! , but if the Default is put off once again, say till march.... then we are in for a treat, for one day the US will be asked to pay up in full and thus will be the birth day for the NWO. and I will sing told you so to the tune of
White House postpones meeting with Hill leaders as talks continue
By Michael O'Brien, Political Reporter, NBC News
As Senate leaders appeared near an agreement to reopen the federal government and avert a default on the national debt, the White House indefinitely postponed a meeting between President Barack Obama and congressional leaders from both parties.
President Barack Obama talks about whether any progress has been made in Congress toward reopening the federal government and avoiding default. Obama made the comments at Martha's Table, a food pantry in Washington, D.C., on Monday.
The White House postponed the planned meeting indefinitely to give Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., more time to hammer out the details of a deal.
The abrupt cancellation followed public statements of optimism from both Reid and McConnell that they were nearing an agreement to end a two-week-old government shutdown and stave off a default on the national debt come Thursday.
"Constructive, good-faith negotiations continue between the Republican leader and me," Reid said at the outset of Monday's Senate session. "I'm very optimistic that we will reach an agreement that's reasonable in nature this week, to reopen the government, pay the nation's bills and begin negotiations long-term to put our nation on strong fiscal footing."
The sentiment was echoed by McConnell, who said that talks had been "constructive."
"I share his optimism that we're going to get a result that'll be acceptable to both sides," the Republican leader added.
Earlier in the afternoon, Obama expressed his hope that the meeting with the two Senate leaders plus House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., would offer a chance for the leaders to gauge whether their progress was genuine.
"I think that there's been some progress on the Senate side with Republicans recognizing it's not tenable, it's not smart ... to let America default," the president said at a local Washington food bank. "We'll see this afternoon whether this progress is real."
House GOP in flux as Senate hammers out fiscal deal
By Michael O'Brien, Political Reporter, NBC News
House Republicans were caught in a state of flux on Tuesday as a group of senators worked to craft a bipartisan proposal to end the federal government shutdown and avert a default on the national debt.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., reacted sharply to a newly circulated House GOP measure, saying, "we felt blindsided by the news from the House." Reid called it a "blatant attack on bipartisanship," which he vowed "can't pass the Senate and won't pass the Senate."
Republican House Speaker John Boehner speaks on Capitol Hill Tuesday after a GOP conference meeting.
Senate leaders continued working to hammer out the final details of a deal to raise the debt ceiling and re-open a closed federal government, while Republicans discussed their counterproposal, which was more narrowly tailored to please conservatives. But it wasn't clear the Senate measure was ready, either.
"We're encouraged by the progress that we've seen in the Senate, but we're far from a deal at this point," White House press secretary Jay Carney said Tuesday.
so whom is to blame for this last deal to fall apart? got read on in the next post
Senate 'very close' to deal after House nixes last-ditch debt vote
By Carrie Dann and Kasie Hunt, NBC News
After the House abandoned a last-ditch effort to pass its own legislation, Senate leaders say they're closing in on a deal to reopen the government and lift the debt ceiling before a key Thursday deadline.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell re-started their negotiations to cut a deal in the upper chamber.
"We are making good progress," said Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., after he emerged from Reid's office Tuesday evening.
"It's basically done," a Democratic leadership aide said of the discussions.
As the possibility of a debt default looms on the horizon, Tea Party conservatives refuse to back down unless there are changes to Obamacare. NBC's Kelly O'Donnell reports.
"The nerds have to work," McConnell spokesman Don Stewart said, referring to legislative staffers that are now writing the details.
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The reported progress comes after House Republicans cancelled a Tuesday evening vote on a GOP proposal that failed to garner support from conservatives.
Without Democratic support, House Speaker John Boehner would have needed all but a handful of Republicans on board or else face an embarrassing defeat.
Earlier Tuesday, aides said the House would vote on a plan, but hope for passage waned after both Democrats and conservatives balked at backing it.
the above is from this link nbcpolitics.nbcnews.com...
Heritage Action for America, a prominent conservative group, announced that it would “key vote” legislative action on the House proposal, holding “yes” votes against politically-vulnerable Republicans.
“Unfortunately, the proposed deal will do nothing to stop Obamacare’s massive new entitlements from taking root — radically changing the nature of American health care,” the group said in a statement.
The proposal would have funded the government until Dec. 15, raise the debt ceiling until Feb. 7. It would also strip lawmakers, their staff and members of the Obama administration of subsidies to buy insurance through the Affordable Care Act’s exchanges.
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney comments on progress being made in the Senate on a budget deal that would reopen the government and avoid default, but adds that a resolution may be far away still.
Democrats were not on board with the GOP plan either. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi announced after a meeting at the White House that Boehner should be prepared to pass the bill "with 100 percent Republican votes.”
GOP leaders pulled an earlier plan from consideration Monday morning after it became clear that it would not get enough votes for passage. But a spokesman for Boehner had pledged that a revised proposal would be put up for a vote by the end of the day.
The stakes are high for authorizing a new borrowing limit to avoid U.S. default on its debts before a Thursday deadline.
On Tuesday, Fitch Ratings put the U.S. government’s AAA credit rating on “rating watch negative,” citing uncertainty over the debt ceiling. And markets tumbled as lawmakers announced that separate Senate negotiations had been put on hold amid the House back-and-forth.
President Barack Obama said that he’s optimistic that lawmakers will reach an eleventh hour agreement to avert default but again warned that congressional leaders need to find a solution fast.
“My expectation is it does get solved but we don't have a lot of time,” he said in an interview with WABC. “What I'm suggesting to the congressional leaders is let's not do any posturing, let's not try to save face, let's not worry about politics. Do what's right.”
Republican House Speaker John Boehner speaks on Capitol Hill Tuesday after a GOP conference meeting.
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As the House pushed its version of a fix earlier Tuesday, Senate Democrats fumed at the lower chamber for what Reid called a “blatant attack on bipartisanship.”
“I know I speak for many of us who were working in good faith when I say we felt blindsided by news from the House,” Reid said.
A separate bipartisan group of senators has also quietly restarted efforts to forge a compromise path.
Led by Maine Republican Susan Collins, the 14 senators from both parties say they're resuming talks after earlier discussions took a backseat to wrangling by McConnell and Reid.
"We've just had a very good discussion picking up where we left off, trying to find a way out of this gridlock and the impasse," Collins told NBC News after the meeting. "It was a great discussion, we're continuing to work, and that's all we have to report."
NBC News' Frank Thorp contributed reporting.
This story was originally published on Tue Oct 15, 2013 10:04 AM EDT