NAME CHANGE?

Well, as predicted, The Suit went off to Kimchee Land and got pickled. First he comes up with this idea that no country in the world should have a current account surplus of more than 4%. That is greated with cries of, "wonderful idea, "highly creative," "something to be studied" all of which is diplomatic speek for,"Oh bugger off" or something akin to that if not so harsh. Inasmuch as the Chinese still have about 600,000,000 under-employed mouths to feed and the Germans are doing very nicely thank you veery much, there is absolutely no traction.

Next up, was a call not to play bugger thy neighbor with exchange rate policies. Now, he might have had a shot with this had he backed it up with something real like, "The Federal Reserve is not going to buy every Treasury obligation that pops up over the horizon," but of course he didn't. The dollar got crushed at the opening today in Asia and continued the march over here this morning. The whole world seems to believe that the real policy is to depreciate the dollar and let the certain inflation that will come solve the fiscal problem. The whole world is probably right.

The next ball to drop was to promote the IMF as the watchdog of the fiscal and monetary world which of course gives a warm feeling to the IMF as they have had no real role for about 20 years but are still staffed to the gills with otherwise unemployable economists. A reason to exist is always a welcome gift. Now just how they are going to do this was left somewhat up in the air for, as occured in another context at another time one might ask, "How many divisions does the IMF have?" Apologies, but Stalin was never much good at grammer.

The Suit also, in conformity with The Leader's idea of the world, pushed for--and actually got--a greater role for emerging nations on the IMF board, the Euros agreeing to give up two seats which to me at least was a bit of a surprise. Then again maybe not as the Euros adopt an even more cynical view as to the role of the IMF than does your scribe and that is a very cynical view indeed.

In short, it was a nice little chin-wag in a fun town out of which came sweet fanny adam as far as the U.S. is concerned. What gets me, however, is that in the Group of 20 the Secretary of the Treasury of the United States is just another guy. As a matter of fact if one checks the reports in the Times, the FT and the WSJ the IMF head gets more press that the Secretary. Never in my memory has their even been a hint that while lined up in the same photo shoot, the Secretary was clearly Primus Inter Pares with all with whom he appeared. Not today sports fans; he's just another Joe.

Ok, I've beat this thing to death and tomorrow we're going to look at the leak from The Leader's hand-picked commission on the state of our finances concerning the discussion of the repeal of the mortgage deduction. But one final thought: should we change the designation of the Secretary from The Suit to Tiny Tim as some have suggested? Frankly, I think that's a bit cruel as he is still The Secretary. I am, however, willing to admit that it is a very small suit.

See you tomorrow