What The World’s Biggest Banks Have In Store For The U.S. Dollar

Central bankers from Beijing to Brasilia have been acquiring a lot more dollars of late, but the overweight of the greenback has reached its limits. There is only one way left to go. It is time to sell the dollar once again.

Or so says Jerome Booth.

Booth has been in the currency and fixed income markets since 1999. That’s when he helped launch the Ashmore Group, one of the largest pure-play emerging market fund managers in the world with around $70 billion under management. Before he retired to write books and launch his new private equity firm New Sparta Limited, Booth was a regular source of mine here at FORBES. He’d talk about the wonders of emerging market debt; their relative strength compared to the Western world and how they’ve improved  from their “Third World” days of yesteryear; and the day of reckoning that would come when the Chinese yuan becomes a reserve currency.

Russian, Indian Central Banks Could Use National Currencies in Payments

MOSCOW, July 30 (RIA Novosti) – The Bank of Russia and the Reserve Bank of India have agreed to set up a working group to devise tools to use national currencies in bilateral payments, the Russian regulator said Wednesday.

Banks approving loans on condition borrowers don’t buy gold

NEW DELHI: With a view to curb appetite for gold, banks are sanctioning advances, including personal loans, only if borrowers agree not to use the proceeds to buy the metal beyond permitted levels.

Banks have placed the condition that borrowers should not use even personal loans to buy gold, a senior official of a private sector bank said.

The measures follow directions from the Reserve Bank of India to banks and NBFCs that are aimed at reining in demand for the yellow metal. The RBI and the government have taken steps to curb demand for gold after imports of the metal widened the current account deficit.

India mulls using rupee to pay for Iran oil imports

As one expert has put it, a Pearl Harbor moment has happened. The United States is being economically attacked and yet the citizenry remains asleep at the switch.

NEW DELHI: India said Monday it may use its own currency, the rupee, to pay for oil imports from Iran in the face of a US-led sanctions campaign aimed at forcing Tehran to abandon its nuclear programme.

India has said it will continue to import oil from Iran, joining China in refusing to bow to intensifying US pressure not to do business with Iran.

India currently routes its dollar payments for Iranian crude through a Turkish bank — an avenue that might be closed off as Washington ratchets up pressure on the Persian Gulf state.

“There are different (payment) options which are being evaluated and discussed. We are also considering the rupee as an option,” Reserve Bank of India Deputy Governor H.R. Khan told reporters.

Continue reading article: India mulls using rupee to pay for Iran oil imports (The Daily Star)