Enjoyment of schadenfreude is not one of my pleasures, readers will recall. It gives me no joy therefore to recall in these days of a plunging stockmarket and a still-manipulated currency the posters who not that long ago were clamouring for information about how they could convert their life savings from the despised USD to the Chinese yuan - "currency of the future"
I'm not sure what on earth kommentariat is talking about unless it's some more chain yanking! The Chinese devalued their currency by around 5% last week. A look at the effect of that over the long term is illustrated here -
The Yuan has clearly been rising against the US dollar very significantly over the longer term. If he is concerned about currency fluctuations, perhaps he should aim his arrows at the Thai baht which has dropped far more than the Yuan against the US dollar in recent months. What about the British pound? From mid 2014 it fell some 14% against the dollar in little more than 9 months! Or the Ozzie dollar? That's now down some 25% against its American counterpart in a little over two years. The Yuan as a currency seems to be doing pretty well!
The Chinese exchanges in Shanghai and Shenzhen are two of the most volatile around. Anyone who puts money into them does so at very considerable risk, as we have seen. But then the Dow Jones has not done so well either in little more than the last couple of days - down from 1,750 to 1,645!
Perhaps if you put your brain into gear before you read my post? Having just finished reading Lefevre's Straight to Hell I'm reminded of the term that applies to many ex-pats who work in Asia - FILTH. Lefevre is the wit behind the Twitter handle @gselevator; an article based on an excerpt from that book can be found on Business InsiderOriginally Posted by fountainhall
Ah yes! Mr Lefevre of whose book one amazon reviewer commented -
As for FILTH - goodness! It's been ages since I heard that acronym! Indeed it went out of use decades ago. And when it was used latterly, it was in a self-mocking tone rather as an expat in Thailand calls himself a faring. It also has no relevance to the massive number of those who had succeeded in London, Birmingham, Glasgow or wherever and then did vastly better for themselves in Hong Kong.After learning that LeFevre's first publisher, Touchstone, refused to print "Straight to Hell" after it was revealed he was dishonest about his blog & how he never worked at Goldman Sachs at all, you have to wonder - what else is he not being honest about? Did these stories in the book really happen to him? Are they heavily embellished?
And the relevance of the original post still escapes me!
Why am I not surprised
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