Xinhuanet (Extracted from "China takes another step towards flexible yuan", 5 January 2006)

"China took another step towards currency flexibility on Wednesday by letting banks set its daily opening foreign-exchange rate, a change that might allow the yuan to move much faster than previously possible, the Reuters reported."

[Ed: I have just been reading Illicit by Moises Naim, the editor of the distinguished Foreign Affairs journal. It is a moderately thick book in which he describes international criminal activity in great detail -- of small arms and hard drug smuggling, illegal migration, slavery, money laundering, intellectual plagiarism, the growing trade in human spare parts and the huge problem of counterfeit luxury and consumer goods. But there's not a word about counterfeit currency! Yet it is well known that North Korea has been making millions of perfect American banknotes for years as government policy. Large quantities of counterfeit dollars enter America from Columbia, the Middle East is saturated with Syrian-made dollars and it is rumoured that criminal gangs in northern Italy have been making nigh-perfect American dollars which are then smuggled into Russia to keep their domestic economy alive. Why did Mr Naim exclude all discussion of counterfeit American dollars, an industry which must be quite as sizeable as any of the illegal sectors he spends chapters describing? One can only assume that he was leaned on by the American government. Perhaps the Chinese will look after their putative world trading currency a little better than Washington is doing now for the dollar.]