Freak Beijing Storm Turns Day Into Night

“It was pitch black outside and you could see people looking out from the office towers across the road from us,” McDonell said.

“In a couple of the photos you can see a clock in the distance showing it was around 11:30 am local time.”

The storms were expected to affect western and northern Xinjiang, most part of Inner Mongolia, north-east China and north China.

Today’s extreme weather follows yesterday’s hail storms across eastern China’s Anhui province, which killed 14 people and injured more than 180, AFP reports.

Anhui’s Civil Affairs Bureau said that more than 10,000 people were evacuated and nearly 9,700 houses collapsed in yesterday’s severe storm.

via Freak Beijing storm turns day into night – Yahoo!7 News.

China Proposes One Global Currency

China’s central bank on Monday proposed replacing the US dollar as the international reserve currency with a new global system controlled by the International Monetary Fund.

In an essay posted on the People’s Bank of China’s website, Zhou Xiaochuan, the central bank’s governor, said the goal would be to create a reserve currency “that is disconnected from individual nations and is able to remain stable in the long run, thus removing the inherent deficiencies caused by using credit-based national currencies”.

Analysts said the proposal was an indication of Beijing’s fears that actions being taken to save the domestic US economy would have a negative impact on China.

“This is a clear sign that China, as the largest holder of US dollar financial assets, is concerned about the potential inflationary risk of the US Federal Reserve printing money,” said Qu Hongbin, chief China economist for HSBC.

Although Mr Zhou did not mention the US dollar, the essay gave a pointed critique of the current dollar-dominated monetary system.

“The outbreak of the [current] crisis and its spillover to the entire world reflected the inherent vulnerabilities and systemic risks in the existing international monetary system,” Mr Zhou wrote.

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