Here's my top 10 links at 10 am. I welcome your suggestions in the comments below. 1. China is trying hard to break the US dollar's status as the global reserve currency. Creditwritedowns points to moves by the Bank of China to set up Yuan swap lines with various countries and an instruction to some exporters to use Yuan rather than dollars to settle trade. 2. China's banks are lending like crazy on infrastructure, residential construction and industrial capacity, CalculatedRisk points out, adding China has no shortage of capacity. It has a shortage of domestic consumption, which this lending won't fix. Everyone seems to think they can cure today's problems by administering more of the drugs that caused the addiction in the first place. 3. Barack Obama sees 'glimmers of hope' in the economic outlook, MarketWatch reports. 4. Squatters are moving into the abandoned foreclosure homes in the United States, the New York Times reports.
5. US Commercial Real Estate is grinding to a halt, CalculatedRisk points out. 6. Here's the anti-dote to Obama's 'glimmers of hope' from John Mauldin at The Big Picture, which shows plenty of signs that things are getting worse in America. 7. The drums are beating in Britain for Gordon Brown to back down on his strategy of borrowing and spending Britain's way out of recession. The numbers are just too big to ignore now. Forecasts reported here by breakingviews at telegraph.co.nz show the UK budget deficit is likely to hit 11% of GDP this year and the government will have to borrow 200 billion pounds this year and next year. It's only other choice is to print money. Britain will go bankrupt. It had to be bailed out by the IMF in 1976 when its deficit was 7% of GDP. 8. Global reserve currency 101. Here's the Economist's take on the Special Drawing Rights that China has suggested could replace the US dollar as the Reserve Currency. 9. Goldman Sachs is set to announce a multi-billion dollar share issue to help repay its TARP loan, the FT.com reports 10. ING wants to raise US$10.5 billion from sales of assets, including non-European insurance businesses and non-European banking businesses, the FT reports. There's no mention of what it plans to do with its half share of ING NZ.
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