The Chimero: Right Wingers Hyperventilating Over China's Proposed "Global Currency"

[Bolo Boffin]

Many had already been screaming about the "amero", an alleged proposal for a common currency among Mexico, Canada, and the U.S.

So when China proposed a global reserve currency to replace the dollar, the rightwingers went batshit. Think Progess tracks it out:

Earlier this week, China’s Central bank Governor Zhou Xiaochuan suggested the need for a “super-sovereign reserve currency,” a move most passed off as China trying to “flex some muscle.” And yet, within days, Fox News’ Major Garrett was demanding whether President Obama supported a “global currency.”

So how did a story that has effectively no basis in reality — and has nothing to do with a global currency — end up as one of the few questions posed to President Obama last night? It started with a blaring banner on the instigator of conservative and media memes, the Drudge Report.

...Within hours, right-wing fanatic Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) was demanding that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke pledge to never adopt a “global currency.” Soon, Fox News’ resident conspiracy theorist Glenn Beck was ranting that a U.N.-imposed global currency was the first step toward world government.

I just heard another Congresscritter yelling about this on C-Span, especially since Geithner said he was "open" to the idea (although with many caveats).

So be on the lookout. The "chimero" is on its way to a rightwing argument near you!

[DCKit]

1. I'd pay money to hear Michelle Bachman lecture on this subject. But not much. n/t

[Bolo Boffin]

6. Stick with C-Span.

She's on there all the time.

And she's one of the weird ones that finds the camera and speaks to it instead of the chair. The camera is all the way across the House chamber, so her gaze doesn't look quite right. That far away, your eyes look close to correct, but you can't look through the camera accurately to make your gaze look right. Of course, it adds to the batshit crazy charm that Bachmann has cultivated.

[Fresh_Start]

2. I don't blame the world....

the US exported this problem.
I don't expect them to trust us much in the future.
This might be another nail in the coffin of the US leadership.

[rcrush]

3. This is like the 5 time this week I've read something on this.

I'm glad we can all joke about it and not care. But I wouldnt be surprised one day if we woke up and our money was just paper now instead of almost just paper. I see all those ads of people wanting to take all the gold you got and give you shit for it. I bet someone will be laughing their ass off.

[Bolo Boffin]

7. Dude, to be honest

money is bubble all the way down. Even gold is overrated. It's a pretty, malleable metal, and that's its major recommendation to the human race. Not to say you shouldn't be concerned, but don't let paper money get you so far down.

[librechik]

4. after years of dissing the dollar and demanding negative interest rates

they don't have any standing for a complaint.

Bastards!

[Mojorabbit]

5. Ironically

right under this post was this one
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3800218

[Bolo Boffin]

8. Yes, I wasn't saying that the "chimero" would never happen

But it's what the currency would be used for that the rightwingers are being nuts about. We won't be using chimeros in this country for everyday purchases (if at all) for decades. That's not what's being proposed.

[ljm2002]

9. Of course they're whining about it...

...they just can't wrap their xenophobic little pea-sized brains around the fact that it was their policies -- namely: free trade with China and India and others, that exported our jobs and flooded our markets with cheap junk, undercut our manufacturing base and pulled the rug out from our middle class; and also deregulation of the financial industry whose wheelers and dealers turned around and repaid us all by engaging in massive fraud on the world stage -- it was those very policies, embraced and pushed by so-called "conservatives" (and not a few "Democrats" along the way) that finally put our own and the world's economic system over the edge and made it possible for people all over the world to look around and say, hey, wait a minute, what's so "almighty" about the "almighty dollar" anyway?