Eideard

Uh-oh… Swiss mega-bank UBS completed a survey of 80 central bank reserve managers that control about $8 trillion this week and more than half predicted the US dollar would be replaced as the world’s reserve by a “portfolio of currencies” sometime in the next 25 years.

That UBS even conducted a survey on the dollar’s validity represents a sea change in attitude…

“The results [of the survey],” according to The Financial Times, “are the latest sign of dissatisfaction with the dollar as a reserve currency, amid concerns over the U.S. government’s inability to rein in spending and the Federal Reserve’s huge expansion of its balance sheet…”

Russia and China are doing their part to accelerate the dollar’s demise. The two nations’ central banks have signed an agreement to conduct trade in rubles and yuan.

“This agreement,” says Russian Central Bank Deputy Chairman Viktor Melnikov, “allows for settlements through Russian and Chinese banks not only in the freely convertible currencies but also in the yuan and the ruble.” It builds on a handshake deal between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao…

“Dollar’s Reserve Currency Status at Risk Following Russia-China Deal,” reads a breathless headline on this story at oilprice.com.

“The headline is a bit overblown,” says our acquaintance, the veteran U.S. diplomat Chas Freeman, “but it – and the underlying story – is a step in the direction it posits.”

No one is surprised at the move. Well, maybe a few Republicans and a couple of Texans in the Oil Patch. Not any likelihood this time of Uncle Sugar invading China or Russia – or even Mexico – because trades are leaving the dollar the way Saddam Hussein was doing before Bush and Cheney found it convenient to invade Iraq.

Global differences between evaporation and precipitation

Salt is essential to human life. Most people don’t know, however, that salt — in a form nearly the same as the simple table variety — is just as essential to Earth’s ocean, serving as a critical driver of key ocean processes. While ancient Greek soothsayers believed they could foretell the future by reading the patterns in sprinkled salt, today’s scientists have learned that they can indeed harness this invaluable mineral to foresee the future — of Earth’s climate.

The oracles of modern climate science are the computer models used to forecast climate change. These models, which rely on a myriad of data from many sources, are effective in predicting many climate variables, such as global temperatures. Yet data for some pieces of the climate puzzle have been scarce, including the concentration of dissolved sea salt at the surface of the world’s ocean, commonly called ocean surface salinity, subjecting the models to varying margins of error. This salinity is a key indicator of how Earth’s freshwater moves between the ocean, land and atmosphere.

Enter Aquarius, a new NASA salinity-measurement instrument slated for launch in June 2011 aboard the SAC-D spacecraft built by Argentina’s CONAE. Aquarius’ high-tech, salt-seeking sensors will make comprehensive measurements of ocean surface salinity with the precision needed to help researchers better determine how Earth’s ocean interacts with the atmosphere to influence climate. It’s a mission that promises to be, to quote the old saying, “worth its salt…”

Density-driven ocean circulation, according to Gary Lagerloef, is controlled as much by salinity as by ocean temperature. Sea salt makes up only 3.5 percent of the world’s ocean, but its relatively small presence reaps huge consequences.

Salinity influences the very motion of the ocean and the temperature of seawater, because the concentration of sea salt in the ocean’s surface mixed layer — the portion of the ocean that is actively exchanging water and heat with Earth’s atmosphere — is a critical driver of these ocean processes. It’s the missing variable in understanding the link between the water cycle and ocean circulation. Specifically, it’s an essential metric to modeling precipitation and evaporation…

Until now, researchers had taken ocean salinity measurements from aboard ships, buoys and aircraft – but they’d done so using a wide range of methods across assorted sampling areas and over inconsistent times from one season to another. Because of the sparse and intermittent nature of these salinity observations, researchers have not been able to fine-tune models to obtain a true global picture of how ocean surface salinity is influencing the ocean. Aquarius promises to resolve these deficiencies, seeing changes in ocean surface salinity consistently across space and time and mapping the entire ice-free ocean every seven days for at least three years.

RTFA. The advance work has been accomplished, sensors and data collection have been tuned. Now the task of collecting data will begin with the launch of Aquarius, this month.

The Chinese president has resisted US arguments about why China should let its currency strengthen, saying the dollar-based international currency system is a “product of the past”.

However, Hu Jintao admitted that it would take a long time to make China’s yuan (RMB) a world currency.

“China has made important contribution to the world economy in terms of total economic output and trade, and the RMB has played a role in the world economic development,” he told two US newspapers in a written interview ahead of his visit to the US next week. “But making the RMB an international currency will be a fairly long process…”

Hu said arguments that allowing the yuan to appreciate would curb inflation are too simplistic, adding that China is fighting inflation with a range of policies including interest-rate increases.

While inflation in China hit a 28-month high in November, Hu told the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post that prices were “on the whole moderate and controllable…We have the confidence, conditions and ability to stabilise the overall price level,” he said…

On other issues, Hu struck an upbeat tone about ties with the US. “We should abandon the zero-sum Cold War mentality,” he said and “respect each other’s choice of development path.”

The president suggested co-operation with the US in areas like new energy sources, clean energy, infrastructure development, aviation and space…

The Chinese leader, who is expected to step down as president and general secretary of China’s Communist Party in 2012, arrives on Wednesday in Washington for his first and last state visit.

I chose this article from Al Jazeera deliberately to offer folks a middle-of-the-road view from outside the United States and most Western yes-men. Certainly, the content of the interview isn’t altered; but, presentation is still linked to American domestic politics – and that includes foreign policy.

The Washington Post article is somewhat neutral. The NY Times reflects their policy of being as hawkish as any Cold Warrior when it comes to economic and commercial challenges to the United States.

Undoubtedly, the Thread and Bobbin Sewing Kit that Aunt Mildred sent from Amazon.com for Christmas will never see a stitch. The Stallion Stable Music Box might have looked pretty on the computer screen, but under the tree’s flickering lights, it is frightful. The polka-dot nightgown has never been a good idea, even with free shipping.

These gifts sent via some warehouse many miles away are not only unwanted, but also a multimillion-dollar headache: They have to be repacked, labeled, dropped off and shipped back to Amazon’s Island of Misfit Toys. Then a new present has to be packed, labeled and shipped again. Efficient, the process is not.

Amazon is working on a solution that could revolutionize digital gift buying. The online retailer has quietly patented a way for people to return gifts before they receive them, and the patent documents even mention poor Aunt Mildred. Amazon’s innovation, not ready for this Christmas season, includes an option to “Convert all gifts from Aunt Mildred,” the patent says. “For example, the user may specify such a rule because the user believes that this potential sender has different tastes than the user.” In other words, the consumer could keep an online list of lousy gift-givers whose choices would be vetted before anything ships.

Amazon’s proposal has raised the ire of the Miss Manners crowd, which thinks the scheme rather uncouth. After all, receiving an e-mail notification of a forthcoming gift – and thereby being able to check its price – is hardly the same as unwrapping the item at home.

Anna Post, great-great-granddaughter of the late etiquette author Emily Post and spokeswoman for the Emily Post Institute, said she hopes the company realizes it is risking major backlash and abandons the idea. Because of Amazon’s dominance online, she and others say they fear the idea could spread throughout the e-retailing industry, which this holiday season racked up $28 billion in gift purchases.

“This idea totally misses the spirit of gift giving,” Post said. “The point of gift giving is to allow someone else to go through that action of buying something for us. Otherwise, giving a gift just becomes another one of the world’s transactions…”

Amazon appears to be quite serious: Its patent was awarded not just to Amazon, but to its founder, Jeff Bezos…Amazon’s patent is 12 pages long, with numerous diagrams, including a “Gift Conversion Rules Wizard” that shows how a user could select rules such as, “No clothes with wool.” The document makes for curious reading, reducing the art of gift giving to the dry language of patentry…

RTFA. The patent description is about as dry – and humorous – as you might expect.

Learn a bit more about business and traffic management – once a topic near and dear to my heart – or at least my wallet.