Seriously, though, here in England where everyone loves to blame American mortgage bankers, a little magazine called the Economist published a fantastic survey of the financial meltdown a few weeks ago. Far from being just about mortgages and rich world debt, it highlighted the impact of emerging economies, especially China and their currency peg and large reserves of US dollars. Anything that the fed would do with rates would influence the US market and China differently, and so there was an uncontrollable and vicious circle going on where China’s growing economic strength was harming the American economy, but the US is powerless to either tell the Chinese to drop their currency peg or stop buying so many dollar reserves. It was fascinating stuff, I do say.