7 ms·

Yuan falls to 11-year low

118 points by ccarpenterg 7y ago

pbalau 7y ago
GBP: "hold my pint"
throwawaymoney 7y ago
Off topic but relevent do people know what money really is?? https://www.youandyourcash.com/ https://www.youandyourcash.com/ https://yayc.mykajabi.com/blog/the-finance-curse-professor-confirms-the-promissory-note-in-loans https://yayc.mykajabi.com/blog/the-finance-curse-professor-c...
samfisher83 7y ago
The US is running up a huge deficit and lowering rates yet the dollar is getting stronger. It is kind of strange.
- joeyrideout 7y ago
  The ECB is negative and preparing to cut lower. BoJ is buying 90%+ of their own bond market. Emerging markets are blowing up routinely, most recently Argentina. Australia and Canada have their own issues. The U.S. isn't perfect but it's comparatively safe with a large military and reserve currency status with positive interest rates giving them room to react short term. (Edit: To be crystal clear, this relative safety on the world stage means the USD is in demand as a "flight to safety". Same can be said about Treasuries, which is why domestic economic analysis doesn't necessarily align with the recession indicator of an inverted yield curve. The world could be going into recession. It's also worth noting that Gold has been rallying in USD terms, which tells us it's even safer.)
  - nostromo 7y ago
    The crazy thing is that the US is pricing its treasuries between Greece and Italy. In other words, the US could pay much less for debt if it wanted to. https://tradingeconomics.com/bonds https://tradingeconomics.com/bonds No other developed country is paying anything near that amount. That is drawing a large inflow of capital into long-term treasuries, which in my view, is the true cause for the recent inversion.
    - adventured 7y ago
      There's no question it's a bizarre choice given the epic funding requirements of the US Government now and for the foreseeable future ($12t in new debt minimum over the next ten years). The Fed should be attempting to smash the cost of US Government debt to the floor so the treasury can issue 50 year paper at 1.x% while there may be a window to do so. It would be very unpopular with the wealthy and the private US financial system. I believe it's the sole reason they're not working aggressively to minimize what the US is paying for its debt vs other more risky nations. The Fed views the private financial system as a critical partner. To an extent by intentionally leaving borrowing costs higher than they have to be, they're performing a middle ground compromise with those partners vs the government's fiscal condition.
      - amluto 7y ago
        The Fed explicitly does not involve itself in fiscal policy like this. This is a good part of the reason that people trust US currency.
      - dragonwriter 7y ago
        > The Fed should be attempting to smash the cost of US Government debt to the floor We have an “indepedent” central bank with a limited set of policy concerns which do not include this type of thing specifically so that “fiscal” concerns [0] like this are not factors in setting monetary policy. [0] MMT correctly points out that the category is based on a fiction, but even MMT advocates (while they want Congress to consider monetary impacts of what has historically been considered fiscal policy instead of the fiscal myth) don't generally want the central bank doing the kinds of things that have been considered “fiscal”.
    - ccccppppp 7y ago
      Maybe they are afraid lower rates will inflate assets even more or cause another subprime bubble?
    - Gustomaximus 7y ago
      We need to consider this 'the US could pay much less for debt' line that is recently being pushed. This is appealing to simple thinkers as it's true on the surface. America pays less ..great. It suits Trump's short term planning agenda naturally. But it fails to recognise a key point. Central banks interest rates aren't priced to coumtries 'the best rates', of borrowing. They are about controlling monetary policy. Sure every country could drop interest rates to rock bottom. But what happens if inflation drops. Or a recession is looming? At a national level you need to look at higher interest rates as 'growth in the bank' for the future. And in the same way you should keep savings on hand, a govt should keep interest rate movement available for when times are worse. Further, central bank rates effect consumer rates. Not everyone is eyeballs deep in debt looking for cheaper lending. We have to acknowledge savers too. There was a time not so long ago where people put money into banks expecting to make a reasonable profit. It feels like savers are a forgotten group. It's not suitable for everyone to load their savings into the market and hope timing suits their withdrawal needs. This post-2008 era is going to be really interesting to study in another 20 years or so when it's played out.
  - TMWNN 7y ago
    >To be crystal clear, this relative safety on the world stage means the USD is in demand as a "flight to safety". Same can be said about Treasuries, which is why domestic economic analysis doesn't necessarily align with the recession indicator of an inverted yield curve. The world could be going into recession. It's also worth noting that Gold has been rallying in USD terms, which tells us it's even safer. In other words, this is 1997 as opposed to 2007-2008.
- mdorazio 7y ago
  Cynically, this means the rest of the world is doing that much worse that the US, for all its issues, is seen as a safe haven for parking your money. Alternatively, there's more capital floating around than there are reasonably safe investment vehicles with better ROI than US treasuries.
  - Taniwha 7y ago
    I think the US continues to be buoyed by it's reserve currency status, if say oil started to be priced in euros the US might find itself with a currency like everyone else's and giant debts, the dollar would crash (which would be good for US exports)
    - mdorazio 7y ago
      The US gets a lot of flak for its high debt dollar amount, but realistically the more important metric is debt to GDP ratio, which is a decent indicator of a country's ability to sustain its debt. The US is somewhere around 105% currently, right around the same level as Belgium. For comparison, Japan is almost 250% - basically leveraged to its gills - but tends not to get the same level of bad press. The US should certainly be trying to lower that ratio, but we're still pretty far from Greece-level of crisis. In actuality, if the US's reserve currency status went away it might be a good thing for our debt since the dollar value on forex would drop and exports would increase. It would also be easier for the US to inflate its way out of crisis in comparison to today.
      - Taniwha 7y ago
        While it's not Japan its debt to GDP is still really really high compared with the rest of the world https://www.theinvestorspodcast.com/blog/visualizing-the-snowball-of-government-debt/ https://www.theinvestorspodcast.com/blog/visualizing-the-sno... (as I pointed out abive I agree that it would be good for exports)
- AnimalMuppet 7y ago
  The dollar is, essentially, losing in an ugly contest. It has problems; everyone else seems to have worse ones.
- vkou 7y ago
  The US government as a whole, if you combine Local, State, and Federal spending, is not running a huge deficit. It is, in fact, paying its debts down. You can quip about how sustainable this state of affairs is, but of the three, only federal debt is growing... And, if you look at inflation-adjusted metrics, that growth is very minor.
  - PKop 7y ago
    With near record low interest rates, after a decade long economic growth cycle, we are back to running $ trillion and growing deficits each year, at the peak of the cycle. In a few years, assuming current rates and no recession, interest on the debt will exceed military spending [0]. Imagine what happens when we do have a recession and much bigger deficits. Mandatory spending items will at some point soon crowd out all other spending. This comes at a time when, over the last 4 or 5 years, foreign creditors have stopped financing our deficit by buying ever growing quantities of US treasuries. So, for the first time in decades, US domestic private sector will be tasked with financing their own spending. It is about to matter very soon, as baby boomers retire en masse. The endless talk of government spending leading to inflation didn't manifest (except in asset prices) because foreigners recycled their surpluses into treasuries. That this has mostly stopped will change the dynamic. The Fed will need to monetize the debt (resume QE) because there is simply too much treasury issuance, and growing, to be funded by US domestic sector alone, either in taxes or buying bonds. If you look up last couple years US debt issuance has been bought up mostly by private sector, while central banks are buying gold. Recipe for it being the bond bull market peak and that debt being paid back in nominal but lower real terms = inflation. The only way to retire the massive and growing federal debt. Call it MMT or whatever you want, but it's coming. The loser will be the $. [0] https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/2025-us-interest-payments-national-debt-will-pass-defense-budget-60987 https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/2025-us-interest-paym...
    - ianai 7y ago
      MMT disagrees with the entire premise of your comment. The “why is this happening” podcast has an excellent explanation.
- dthakur 7y ago
  Good read https://www.cassandracapital.net/post/why-did-china-just-devalue-the-yuan https://www.cassandracapital.net/post/why-did-china-just-dev...
hourislate 7y ago
The Chinese are doing everything they can to make sure US tariffs don't affect US consumers. And discourage factory work to leave for other countries (Vietnam, Mexico, Taiwan, Thailand, etc).
- b_tterc_p 7y ago
  Is it easy for blue collar Chinese to leave and work in other countries?
  - freehunter 7y ago
    I didn't read their comment as "preventing Chinese citizens from leaving to work in other countries" but rather "preventing factories in China from closing and moving to other countries". The workers wouldn't be going with the factories, the workers would just be unemployed.
  - codehalo 7y ago
    I think the person meant the work, not the workers.
- chrisjc 7y ago
  Doesn't the increase in cost of supplying the money that Americans need to buy Chinese goods (buying TBonds) just offsetting making goods cheaper?
  - jussij 7y ago
    For many years the value of the Chinese exports to the USA have been much greater than it's USA imports. This large trade surplus basically means China earns a lot of USD and it uses those US dollars to buy US T-Bonds. So for T-Bonds the USD/Yaun exchange rate does not come into the picture. But that low USD/Yaun exchange rate does help to keep Chinese exports cheap and that then helps to protect their trade surplus.
    - Fjolsvith 7y ago
joeyrideout 7y ago
Real Vision has some great commentary on the Yuan and its implications. Most recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ssFICVFH40 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ssFICVFH40 The big risk from my point of view is that currency weakness tends to spook international investment capital who is exposed to the local currency, triggering selloffs as capital flees, exacerbating the problem.
- mlyle 7y ago
  It's worth noting that China's capital controls provide some insulation against this problem-- though they obviously cannot work to compel ongoing outside investment.
  - calimac 7y ago
    Their access to the IMF was huge and they have favorable nation status for finance to support access to capital
  - rory096 7y ago
    c.f.: the Impossible Trinity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impossible_trinity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impossible_trinity
  - gamblor956 7y ago
    China's currency controls actually made the problem worse--a lot of non-Chinese companies immediately backed off on Chinese investments (i.e., factories, etc.) as soon as the controls were introduced.
    - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
      What do you mean? China has had currency controls for a very very long time. It doesn’t affect foreigners or foreign companies so much, they give us an easy out (we can exchange whatever we earn automatically).
      - 7y ago
tuxpenguine 7y ago
My uneducated guess is that Yuan is still over valued. Based on the personal anecdotes around me, I can see that the government is trying everything to tighten the capital outflow. That's not the case for the reverse direction though. Everyone in Beijing or Shanghai owning a small condo with 70 lease is literally sitting on a property of nominal value of millions of US dollars. How can that value be justified? People are willing to take even 15% discount to get that assets out of the country.
- sremani 7y ago
  The magic of Chinese two step. There is a glut of Yuan in China while there is a scarcity outside. All you have to do is take a look at their M3. PBOC is printing like no tomorrow, but cleverly puts a wall with they CNY-CNH shit. Deep Throat says it should be 20 to 1 not 7 to 1.
  - vkou 7y ago
    The purpose of this isn't to fuck with foreign economies, or to kill jobs in America, or any of that other nonesense. The purpose of this is to serve as a tax on Chinese exporting companies. They get paid in USD, but they have to pay their suppliers and workers in Yuan. They are being robbed by their own government, because they are exchanging USD for Yuan at a disadvantageous rate. I don't understand why people who don't live in China give two cares about their currency manipulation.
    - sremani 7y ago
      You are seeing the effects of this "manipulated" exchange rate in American real-estate in every metro-area. One thing you have to understand is, the exchange controls are for plebs, but the connected including the members of Politburo and State Owned firms (directly or indirectly), can happily get dollar in exchange of the funny money and buy REAL assets across the world. It can viewed benignly or nefariously based on what you think their end game. But its effecting every one especially if you are in real-estate but also other things.
jonathankoren 7y ago
I don't understand this link. It's a trading quote, with no text and an irrelevant embedded video. A much better link would be something that talks about this close. For instance https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/chinese-yuan-falls-to-11-year-low-amid-trade-tensions-1.5236518 https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/chinese-yuan-falls-to-11-ye... I'm still confused by the coverage, since it's trading at 7 CNY to 1 USD. That's still higher than the 52 week low. Also it's higher on the chart on the right which shows the 5 year closes. I'm very confused, since coverage doesn't jive with either chart.
- ccarpenterg 7y ago
  It's low in terms of the Yuan's purchase power vis a vis the US dollar. So the Chinese need more Yuan to buy the same products/services from the US. And in contrast, Americans need less US dollars to buy the same products/services from China.
  - jonathankoren 7y ago
    I understand how exchange rates work. What I’m confused about is claim that this is an eleven year low. The article claims an exchange rate of 7.0391 CNY to 1 USD is an eleven year low, yet the 52 week range is 6.6704, and the five year low is below 6.2976. Typically, these charts show closes rather than intraday ranges, which further ads confusion about the claim.
    - locust101 7y ago
      Calling it lowest ever means that you can get more yuans than ever in 11 years for 1 dollar. If you look at the chart, it clearly shows that this is the maximum yuan amount you can get for 1 USD in at least 5 years.
      - sokoloff 7y ago
        Right. In other words, "the value of 1 yuan is the lowest in 11 years in terms of how many dollars it can buy..."

118 points by ccarpenterg 7y ago

GBP: "hold my pint"

Off topic but relevent do people know what money really is?? https://www.youandyourcash.com/ https://www.youandyourcash.com/ https://yayc.mykajabi.com/blog/the-finance-curse-professor-confirms-the-promissory-note-in-loans https://yayc.mykajabi.com/blog/the-finance-curse-professor-c...

samfisher83 7y ago

The US is running up a huge deficit and lowering rates yet the dollar is getting stronger. It is kind of strange.

joeyrideout 7y ago
The ECB is negative and preparing to cut lower. BoJ is buying 90%+ of their own bond market. Emerging markets are blowing up routinely, most recently Argentina. Australia and Canada have their own issues. The U.S. isn't perfect but it's comparatively safe with a large military and reserve currency status with positive interest rates giving them room to react short term. (Edit: To be crystal clear, this relative safety on the world stage means the USD is in demand as a "flight to safety". Same can be said about Treasuries, which is why domestic economic analysis doesn't necessarily align with the recession indicator of an inverted yield curve. The world could be going into recession. It's also worth noting that Gold has been rallying in USD terms, which tells us it's even safer.)
- nostromo 7y ago
  The crazy thing is that the US is pricing its treasuries between Greece and Italy. In other words, the US could pay much less for debt if it wanted to. https://tradingeconomics.com/bonds https://tradingeconomics.com/bonds No other developed country is paying anything near that amount. That is drawing a large inflow of capital into long-term treasuries, which in my view, is the true cause for the recent inversion.
  - adventured 7y ago
    There's no question it's a bizarre choice given the epic funding requirements of the US Government now and for the foreseeable future ($12t in new debt minimum over the next ten years). The Fed should be attempting to smash the cost of US Government debt to the floor so the treasury can issue 50 year paper at 1.x% while there may be a window to do so. It would be very unpopular with the wealthy and the private US financial system. I believe it's the sole reason they're not working aggressively to minimize what the US is paying for its debt vs other more risky nations. The Fed views the private financial system as a critical partner. To an extent by intentionally leaving borrowing costs higher than they have to be, they're performing a middle ground compromise with those partners vs the government's fiscal condition.
    - amluto 7y ago
      The Fed explicitly does not involve itself in fiscal policy like this. This is a good part of the reason that people trust US currency.
    - dragonwriter 7y ago
      > The Fed should be attempting to smash the cost of US Government debt to the floor We have an “indepedent” central bank with a limited set of policy concerns which do not include this type of thing specifically so that “fiscal” concerns [0] like this are not factors in setting monetary policy. [0] MMT correctly points out that the category is based on a fiction, but even MMT advocates (while they want Congress to consider monetary impacts of what has historically been considered fiscal policy instead of the fiscal myth) don't generally want the central bank doing the kinds of things that have been considered “fiscal”.
  - ccccppppp 7y ago
    Maybe they are afraid lower rates will inflate assets even more or cause another subprime bubble?
  - Gustomaximus 7y ago
    We need to consider this 'the US could pay much less for debt' line that is recently being pushed. This is appealing to simple thinkers as it's true on the surface. America pays less ..great. It suits Trump's short term planning agenda naturally. But it fails to recognise a key point. Central banks interest rates aren't priced to coumtries 'the best rates', of borrowing. They are about controlling monetary policy. Sure every country could drop interest rates to rock bottom. But what happens if inflation drops. Or a recession is looming? At a national level you need to look at higher interest rates as 'growth in the bank' for the future. And in the same way you should keep savings on hand, a govt should keep interest rate movement available for when times are worse. Further, central bank rates effect consumer rates. Not everyone is eyeballs deep in debt looking for cheaper lending. We have to acknowledge savers too. There was a time not so long ago where people put money into banks expecting to make a reasonable profit. It feels like savers are a forgotten group. It's not suitable for everyone to load their savings into the market and hope timing suits their withdrawal needs. This post-2008 era is going to be really interesting to study in another 20 years or so when it's played out.
- TMWNN 7y ago
  >To be crystal clear, this relative safety on the world stage means the USD is in demand as a "flight to safety". Same can be said about Treasuries, which is why domestic economic analysis doesn't necessarily align with the recession indicator of an inverted yield curve. The world could be going into recession. It's also worth noting that Gold has been rallying in USD terms, which tells us it's even safer. In other words, this is 1997 as opposed to 2007-2008.
mdorazio 7y ago
Cynically, this means the rest of the world is doing that much worse that the US, for all its issues, is seen as a safe haven for parking your money. Alternatively, there's more capital floating around than there are reasonably safe investment vehicles with better ROI than US treasuries.
- Taniwha 7y ago
  I think the US continues to be buoyed by it's reserve currency status, if say oil started to be priced in euros the US might find itself with a currency like everyone else's and giant debts, the dollar would crash (which would be good for US exports)
  - mdorazio 7y ago
    The US gets a lot of flak for its high debt dollar amount, but realistically the more important metric is debt to GDP ratio, which is a decent indicator of a country's ability to sustain its debt. The US is somewhere around 105% currently, right around the same level as Belgium. For comparison, Japan is almost 250% - basically leveraged to its gills - but tends not to get the same level of bad press. The US should certainly be trying to lower that ratio, but we're still pretty far from Greece-level of crisis. In actuality, if the US's reserve currency status went away it might be a good thing for our debt since the dollar value on forex would drop and exports would increase. It would also be easier for the US to inflate its way out of crisis in comparison to today.
    - Taniwha 7y ago
      While it's not Japan its debt to GDP is still really really high compared with the rest of the world https://www.theinvestorspodcast.com/blog/visualizing-the-snowball-of-government-debt/ https://www.theinvestorspodcast.com/blog/visualizing-the-sno... (as I pointed out abive I agree that it would be good for exports)
AnimalMuppet 7y ago
The dollar is, essentially, losing in an ugly contest. It has problems; everyone else seems to have worse ones.
vkou 7y ago
The US government as a whole, if you combine Local, State, and Federal spending, is not running a huge deficit. It is, in fact, paying its debts down. You can quip about how sustainable this state of affairs is, but of the three, only federal debt is growing... And, if you look at inflation-adjusted metrics, that growth is very minor.
- PKop 7y ago
  With near record low interest rates, after a decade long economic growth cycle, we are back to running $ trillion and growing deficits each year, at the peak of the cycle. In a few years, assuming current rates and no recession, interest on the debt will exceed military spending [0]. Imagine what happens when we do have a recession and much bigger deficits. Mandatory spending items will at some point soon crowd out all other spending. This comes at a time when, over the last 4 or 5 years, foreign creditors have stopped financing our deficit by buying ever growing quantities of US treasuries. So, for the first time in decades, US domestic private sector will be tasked with financing their own spending. It is about to matter very soon, as baby boomers retire en masse. The endless talk of government spending leading to inflation didn't manifest (except in asset prices) because foreigners recycled their surpluses into treasuries. That this has mostly stopped will change the dynamic. The Fed will need to monetize the debt (resume QE) because there is simply too much treasury issuance, and growing, to be funded by US domestic sector alone, either in taxes or buying bonds. If you look up last couple years US debt issuance has been bought up mostly by private sector, while central banks are buying gold. Recipe for it being the bond bull market peak and that debt being paid back in nominal but lower real terms = inflation. The only way to retire the massive and growing federal debt. Call it MMT or whatever you want, but it's coming. The loser will be the $. [0] https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/2025-us-interest-payments-national-debt-will-pass-defense-budget-60987 https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/2025-us-interest-paym...
  - ianai 7y ago
    MMT disagrees with the entire premise of your comment. The “why is this happening” podcast has an excellent explanation.
dthakur 7y ago
Good read https://www.cassandracapital.net/post/why-did-china-just-devalue-the-yuan https://www.cassandracapital.net/post/why-did-china-just-dev...

hourislate 7y ago

The Chinese are doing everything they can to make sure US tariffs don't affect US consumers. And discourage factory work to leave for other countries (Vietnam, Mexico, Taiwan, Thailand, etc).

b_tterc_p 7y ago
Is it easy for blue collar Chinese to leave and work in other countries?
- freehunter 7y ago
  I didn't read their comment as "preventing Chinese citizens from leaving to work in other countries" but rather "preventing factories in China from closing and moving to other countries". The workers wouldn't be going with the factories, the workers would just be unemployed.
- codehalo 7y ago
  I think the person meant the work, not the workers.
chrisjc 7y ago
Doesn't the increase in cost of supplying the money that Americans need to buy Chinese goods (buying TBonds) just offsetting making goods cheaper?
- jussij 7y ago
  For many years the value of the Chinese exports to the USA have been much greater than it's USA imports. This large trade surplus basically means China earns a lot of USD and it uses those US dollars to buy US T-Bonds. So for T-Bonds the USD/Yaun exchange rate does not come into the picture. But that low USD/Yaun exchange rate does help to keep Chinese exports cheap and that then helps to protect their trade surplus.
  - Fjolsvith 7y ago

joeyrideout 7y ago

Real Vision has some great commentary on the Yuan and its implications. Most recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ssFICVFH40 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ssFICVFH40 The big risk from my point of view is that currency weakness tends to spook international investment capital who is exposed to the local currency, triggering selloffs as capital flees, exacerbating the problem.

mlyle 7y ago
It's worth noting that China's capital controls provide some insulation against this problem-- though they obviously cannot work to compel ongoing outside investment.
- calimac 7y ago
  Their access to the IMF was huge and they have favorable nation status for finance to support access to capital
- rory096 7y ago
  c.f.: the Impossible Trinity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impossible_trinity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impossible_trinity
- gamblor956 7y ago
  China's currency controls actually made the problem worse--a lot of non-Chinese companies immediately backed off on Chinese investments (i.e., factories, etc.) as soon as the controls were introduced.
  - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
    What do you mean? China has had currency controls for a very very long time. It doesn’t affect foreigners or foreign companies so much, they give us an easy out (we can exchange whatever we earn automatically).
    - 7y ago

tuxpenguine 7y ago

My uneducated guess is that Yuan is still over valued. Based on the personal anecdotes around me, I can see that the government is trying everything to tighten the capital outflow. That's not the case for the reverse direction though. Everyone in Beijing or Shanghai owning a small condo with 70 lease is literally sitting on a property of nominal value of millions of US dollars. How can that value be justified? People are willing to take even 15% discount to get that assets out of the country.

sremani 7y ago
The magic of Chinese two step. There is a glut of Yuan in China while there is a scarcity outside. All you have to do is take a look at their M3. PBOC is printing like no tomorrow, but cleverly puts a wall with they CNY-CNH shit. Deep Throat says it should be 20 to 1 not 7 to 1.
- vkou 7y ago
  The purpose of this isn't to fuck with foreign economies, or to kill jobs in America, or any of that other nonesense. The purpose of this is to serve as a tax on Chinese exporting companies. They get paid in USD, but they have to pay their suppliers and workers in Yuan. They are being robbed by their own government, because they are exchanging USD for Yuan at a disadvantageous rate. I don't understand why people who don't live in China give two cares about their currency manipulation.
  - sremani 7y ago
    You are seeing the effects of this "manipulated" exchange rate in American real-estate in every metro-area. One thing you have to understand is, the exchange controls are for plebs, but the connected including the members of Politburo and State Owned firms (directly or indirectly), can happily get dollar in exchange of the funny money and buy REAL assets across the world. It can viewed benignly or nefariously based on what you think their end game. But its effecting every one especially if you are in real-estate but also other things.

jonathankoren 7y ago

I don't understand this link. It's a trading quote, with no text and an irrelevant embedded video. A much better link would be something that talks about this close. For instance https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/chinese-yuan-falls-to-11-year-low-amid-trade-tensions-1.5236518 https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/chinese-yuan-falls-to-11-ye... I'm still confused by the coverage, since it's trading at 7 CNY to 1 USD. That's still higher than the 52 week low. Also it's higher on the chart on the right which shows the 5 year closes. I'm very confused, since coverage doesn't jive with either chart.

ccarpenterg 7y ago
It's low in terms of the Yuan's purchase power vis a vis the US dollar. So the Chinese need more Yuan to buy the same products/services from the US. And in contrast, Americans need less US dollars to buy the same products/services from China.
- jonathankoren 7y ago
  I understand how exchange rates work. What I’m confused about is claim that this is an eleven year low. The article claims an exchange rate of 7.0391 CNY to 1 USD is an eleven year low, yet the 52 week range is 6.6704, and the five year low is below 6.2976. Typically, these charts show closes rather than intraday ranges, which further ads confusion about the claim.
  - locust101 7y ago
    Calling it lowest ever means that you can get more yuans than ever in 11 years for 1 dollar. If you look at the chart, it clearly shows that this is the maximum yuan amount you can get for 1 USD in at least 5 years.
    - sokoloff 7y ago
      Right. In other words, "the value of 1 yuan is the lowest in 11 years in terms of how many dollars it can buy..."