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President Barack Obama reached across the political divide and named Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, a potential Republican presidential contender in 2012, to the sensitive diplomatic post of U.S. ambassador to China.
Huntsman, a two-term governor, is fluent in Mandarin Chinese from his days as a Mormon missionary in Taiwan. One of his seven children, Gracie Mei, was adopted from China in 1999 after she was abandoned in a vegetable market.
He made headlines recently for encouraging the Republican Party to swing in a more moderate direction if it wanted to bounce back from the 2008 elections, angering some conservatives.
Obama's 2008 campaign manager, David Plouffe, said Huntsman is a Republican who ''seems to understand the party has to adjust -- not stubbornly believe that everything is OK and it is the country that has to change.''
Huntsman's positions on the environment and other issues have led some to consider him a potential contender for president in 2012.
He signed an initiative that would set a regional cap-and-trade effort to reduce global warming. In a 2006 speech at Shanghai Normal University, Huntsman spoke of the need for China and the U.S. to work together on environmental issues.
''The United States and China must be good examples and stewards of the Earth. We must match economic progress with environmental stewardship. The effects of industrialization are felt worldwide,'' Huntsman said then.
Throughout his tenure as governor, Huntsman's background as a diplomat has been evident. He preferred to win over opponents in private meetings rather than using his bully pulpit to give rousing speeches.
One of his most significant achievements was loosening the state's restrictive liquor laws over the objections of many in heavily Mormon Utah in an effort to make the state more appealing for visitors. It was a feat many here didn't think would be possible in Huntsman's lifetime.
However, Huntsman has drawn the most attention for stating he favors civil unions for gay couples even though he backed a state constitutional amendment passed in 2004 that prohibited same-sex marriage.
Huntsman's comments on civil unions drew the ire of conservatives in his own state and elsewhere.
Officials in Michigan last month canceled a GOP county fundraiser where Huntsman was to speak; they said he had abandoned important party principles.
Huntsman's career began as a staff assistant in the Ronald Reagan administration and he also served as ambassador to Singapore under President George H.W. Bush and as a deputy U.S. trade representative and U.S. trade ambassador under President George W. Bush.
Utah's only Democratic member of Congress, U.S. Rep. Jim Matheson, said he was pleased with the appointment. ''It's a great bipartisan appointment by the president,'' he said.
Before becoming governor in 2005, Huntsman made millions serving as chairman and CEO of his family chemical company.
If confirmed by the Senate, Huntsman will succeed Clark Randt as U.S. ambassador to China.
Randt, a classmate of former President George W. Bush at Yale University, served as Washington's top envoy to Beijing from July 2001 until January, making him the longest-serving U.S. ambassador to China since the two nations established diplomatic ties.
Utah Lt. Gov. Gary Herbert would become governor until a special election in 2010.
Rep. Michele Bachmann has been attacked recently in the media for her "conspiracy theory" about a proposed global currency. Last week, she proposed a bill in the U.S. House to protect the American dollar.
She also destroyed tax cheat Tim Geithner last week while he testified on The Hill.
Today, we learned that Russia and China are dead serious about creating such a global currency to replace the U.S. dollar as a reserve currency.
Russia and China are coordinating proposals on a new global currency that could replace the US dollar as a reserve currency to prevent a repeat of the global economic crisis, the Kremlin said on Monday.
"We have received proposals from our colleagues in China, detailed proposals," President Dmitry Medvedev's top economic adviser Arkady Dvorkovich said. "Our positions are very similar.
"We have similar positions on the development of the international financial architecture," he told reporters.
Ahead of the Group of 20 summit in London later this week, the Kremlin has published a raft of proposals to overhaul the global economic order, including plans for a supra-national currency that could replace the US dollar.
China has come forward with similar ideas.
She discussed the reality of the global currency nightmare with Glenn Beck today.
Geithner, at the Council on Foreign Relations, said the U.S. is "open" to a headline-grabbing proposal by the governor of the China's central bank, which was widely reported as being a call for a new global currency to replace the dollar, but which Geithner described as more modest and "evolutionary."
"I haven’t read the governor’s proposal. He’s a very thoughtful, very careful distinguished central banker. I generally find him sensible on every issue," Geithner said, saying that however his interpretation of the proposal was to increase the use of International Monetary Fund's special drawing rights -- shares in the body held by its members -- not creating a new currency in the literal sense.
"We’re actually quite open to that suggestion – you should see it as rather evolutionary rather building on the current architecture rather than moving us to global monetary union," he said.
"The only thing concrete I saw was expanding the use of the [special drawing rights]," Geithner said. "Anything he’s thinking about deserves some consideration."
The continued use of the dollar as a reserve currency, he added, "depends..on how effective we are in the United States...at getting our fiscal system back to the point where people judge it as sustainable over time."
President Obama flatly rejected the notion of a new global currency at last night's press conference.
UPDATE: Evidently sensing a gaffe, moderator Roger Altman told Geithner that it would be "useful" to return to the question, and asked if he foresaw a change in the dollar's centrality.
"I do not," Geithner said, adding several forceful promises, including, "We will do what's necessary to say we're sustaining confidence in our financial markets."
But Geithner wasn't the only top Obama adviser who refused to rule out a transition to a global currency. White House economic adviser Austan Goolsbee said much the same thing yesterday afternoon in an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer. Although he characterized such a change as "unlikely," Goolsbee twice declined to rule out such a global currency despite being pressed by Blitzer. "I haven't seen the details of the proposal," Goolsbee said. The entire exchange follows:
BLITZER: The Chinese suggesting today, this dollar, U.S. dollar, should be replaced as international currency, because they are beginning to have concerns that you are printing, the U.S. government is simply printing too many of these dollars and will lose its value as an international currency. What's your reaction?
GOOLSBEE: It strikes me as probably unlikely.
Different people have in the past argued for world currencies or new -- new currencies before. I believe the U.S. at this point is the safest place to invest in the world. And it's likely to remain that the dollar is a critical currency in the years ahead.
BLITZER: So, you -- you don't like some new international currency that some Chinese are proposing?
GOOLSBEE: Well, look...
BLITZER: I assume that's right, right?
GOOLSBEE: I haven't seen the details of what they are proposing.
I mean, the dollar is the dollar. If people don't want to buy it, they don't buy it. But I think you have seen sort of a flight to the dollar in -- in times of trouble.
This is pretty disturbing news considering President Obama has mortgaged our country's future with unprecedented out-of-control Federal spending.
China, America's largest creditor, says it is it "worried" about the safety and security of U.S. Treasury bonds and is asking “the U.S. to maintain its good credit, to honor its promises and to guarantee the safety of China’s assets,”
BEIJING -- Premier Wen Jiabao voiced confidence in China's economy, saying his government's finances give it room to spend even more to support growth if needed, but expressed concern about the outlook for the U.S. and the safety of its Treasury bonds.
The forceful comments from Mr. Wen's annual press conference -- a rare opportunity for domestic and foreign reporters to ask a top Chinese official questions directly -- helped depress the U.S. dollar and prices of U.S. Treasurys in Asian trading Friday.
The public airing of his concerns reflect how the relationship between China and the U.S. has been evolving under the pressure of the financial crisis. For years the U.S. has pressed China to change the way it runs its economy, such as by opening up its financial system. But in the last year China's government has been increasingly vocal about what it sees as U.S. economic mismanagement. And as the U.S. government's largest creditor, it has become more assertive in trying to ensure its interests receive a hearing.
"We have lent a huge amount of money to the U.S., so of course we are concerned about the safety of our assets. Frankly speaking, I do have some worries," Mr. Wen said in response to a question. He did not offer specific suggestions on economic policy to the U.S. government, but called on it to "maintain its credibility, honor its commitments and guarantee the security of Chinese assets."
This is worse than I thought! The future of our economy and the hopes and dreams of our children are in the hands of Communists!?!
How about our government practice what it preaches and learns how to demonstrate some fiscal restraint.
Yeah, right. That won't work! If they do that, how are Liberals going to spend their way into a Socialist-driven entitlement culture of a permanent voting majority?
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Sunday urged China to keep buying US debt as she wrapped up her first overseas trip, during which she agreed to work closely with Beijing on the financial crisis.
Clinton made the plea shortly before leaving China, the final stop on a four-nation Asian tour that also took her to Japan, Indonesia and South Korea, where she worked the crowds to try to restore America's standing abroad.
In Beijing, she called on authorities in Beijing to continue buying US Treasuries, saying it would help jumpstart the flagging US economy and stimulate imports of Chinese goods.
"By continuing to support American Treasury instruments the Chinese are recognising our interconnection. We are truly going to rise or fall together," Clinton said at the US embassy here.
China has bought more than $1 trillion in American debt, but as the global downturn has intensified, Beijing is starting to keep more of its money at home - a shift that could pose some challenges to the U.S. government in the near future but eventually may even produce salutary effects on the world economy.
At first glance, the declining Chinese appetite for U.S. debt - apparent in a series of hints from Chinese policy makers over the past two weeks, with official statistics due for release in the next few days - comes at an inopportune time. On Tuesday, the U.S. president-elect, Barack Obama, said Americans should get used to the prospect of "trillion-dollar deficits for years to come" as he seeks to finance an $800 billion economic stimulus package.
Normally, China would be the most avid taker of the debt required to pay for those deficits, mainly short-term Treasury securities. In the past five years, China has spent as much as one-seventh of its entire economic output on the purchase of foreign debt - largely U.S. Treasury bonds and American mortgage-backed securities.
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