Posted by
Corthell on Sunday, December 20, 2009 3:17:24 PM
''China's weak social safety nets contribute to the high savings rate, which some studies say averages up to 50 percent of personal income. Ordinary Chinese must save to pay for unforeseen health costs and high education expenses.'' The U.S. should focus on getting its own fiscal house in order and give up pressuring China to revalue its currency, the yuan, former President Jimmy Carter said during a Dec. 3 panel discussion at the Carter Center in Atlanta.
"It's a sovereign country, and I think we have just about as much chance of forcing the Chinese to change the value of their currency as the Chinese have a right or authority to tell the U.S. Congress about some issue that concerns them," Mr. Carter told an audience of several hundred during the event, which focused on his decision to establish diplomatic ties with the People's Republic in 1978.
President Obama and his economic team have consistently asked China to allow markets to determine the value of the yuan, which many economists see as significantly undervalued against the dollar. http://www.globalatlanta.com/article/23608/