UPDATE PPS releases official Mac version.

PPS recently released the first official Mac OS X version of PPStream. Mac OS X “.pkg” or “.dmg” installer packages are available. It’s probably easiest to just grab the installer here pps.dmg. Or you can directly visit the new PPS for Mac download page to view all available options.

Note that PPS is also available for iPad, iPhone, Android and Linux!!!

Way to go PPS team.

For reference, I’ve included the origional PPS vmware instructions below, but they are now obsolete.

Our last Mac OS X problem is the “U盾” for online banking “网上银行”. Even QQ works quite well on Mac OS X these days.

One of the most popular applications in China is the domestically developed “PP stream”. It’s closest analog in the west might be Joost or the iTunes Music Store. The key difference is that everything is free.

You’ve heard the legends of the China DVD market – where everything every published is available for $1 USD. With PP stream, the Chinese DVD market has come to you and all the DVDs are now free.

Currently PPsteam is only available for the Chinese version of Windows, but you can use PPStream with VMware Fusion. Ideally you should install the Chinese version of Windows. If you only have the Int’l-English version of Windows, you’ll need to first install the Chinese Language pack. Additionally, you’ll need to under the Int’l-English version of Windows, the codepage will be incorrect and many parts of the interface will be rendered/decoded incorrectly (乱码). The codepage should be 936. Using the Control Panel / Regional and Language Options / Advanced tab set the Language for non-Unicode programs to: Chinese (PRC).

The format of the media files played by PPStream is readable by VLC, so there should be some way to access the files directly without the PPStream client, but current versions have hidden the URLs holding the media files.

The new version of PPstream actually continuously splits the signal across several connections. Watching my Network Filter while playing video you can see the network connection is constantly jumping between servers. Accessing the media files via some reverse engineering may be very difficult. On the bright side, the client works perfectly under VMware fusion.

If you can’t get to a website, or if your company has a website or other system that you would like to know whether or not are “online”, the following tools may be of use:

• TraceRoute.org: Run the “TraceRoute” command from servers in a variety of locations to see if there is a routing problem. See TraceRoute in Shanghai.
• InternetSupervision: Check how a given URL is responding to traffic from nine locations across the planet. Including Beijing, LA, DC, Sydney, UK, etc.
• IsThisDown.com: Check if the website is working properly for others – or if it’s only offline for you.
• mon.itor.us: Free online monitoring tool to check any port on any site. SMS notification, high frequency polling, and a monitoring client that can be installed on your systems are all available as paid services.

pThis is a very interesting article – not necessarily 100% correct, but does point out that there’s more to money than just a “store of value”. The key to the dollar is it’s utility as a “medium of exchange”./p blockquote cite=”http://seekingalpha.com/article/144102-the-dollar-ain-t-picture-perfect-but-what-s-better?source=email” [From a href="http://seekingalpha.com/article/144102-the-dollar-ain-t-picture-perfect-but-what-s-better?source=email"citeThe Dollar Ain't Picture Perfect, But What's Better?/cite/a] at Seeking Alpha /blockquote pMore interesting than the article itself though are some of the comments, and this one is probably the most correct of all:/p blockquote I think one way to look at this is that the reserve currency will turn out to be whatever the Saudi Arabians are willing to accept as a payment for oil. /blockquote

You should read this… Export Credits are back.

[From Exporters get sops to fight crisis]

Interesting. Perhaps the real cause of the trade barriers in 1929 were more Political than Economic. On the eve of the Great Depression, the USA had large trade surpluses and was attempting to maintain those surpluses going into the depression, effectively driving up unemployment across the rest of the world. Trade Barriers around the world were erected to level the playing field – and prevent America from exporting it’s unemployment problem.

In 2009, we could be seeing the same thing, but this time China may be the one exporting the unemployment problem. All I can say is: I hope we don’t see the return of protectionism!

See James Fallows of the Atlantic’s take on this: This does not bode well

Money is a Medium of Exchange (交易媒介), a Unit of Account (赊账标准), and a Store of Value (价值储存). The USD has been doing an excellent job as a medium of exchange (dollars are without a doubt the most widely accepted currency on the planet). The liquidity (流动性) of the dollar is absolutely unmatched by ANYTHING else on earth today. Not by gold. Not by silver.

Liquidity of the USD is guaranteed because of OPEC agreement in 1971 that all oil sold must be sold in USD. Every economy requires oil to survive. Even if you wanted to store all of your assets in Euros, Yen or CYN, you’d have to trade them for dollars every time you another oil tanker shows up at the port. During some periods, currencies have been pegged to gold or silver. Since 1971, the USD has been backed in oil. Prior to American occupation, Iraq started selling oil in Euros. In Dec 2007, Iran stopped selling oil in USD. The only strong ally of the US in Iraq was the UK, who is not a member of the Euro.

Unfortunately, the USD as a Store of Value (保值) is becoming more of a problem. More nations aren’t terribly concerned because their dollar holdings are just held in the treasury and not actively managed to maximize return.

The People’s Bank of China (中国人民银行 AKA 中行 AKA PBC) is more active in asett management and is the single largest holder of USD. When the Financial Crisis hit last year, the PBC increased it’s speed in using some of those dollars to acquire mineral reserves and other basic commodities around the world. Most notable deals have been in Australia, Africa and South America.

Short term, nothing will change. China has raised Export Rebates 7 times in 2007 attempting to re-ignite export growth with the US.

The Euro had a shot to become the global reserve currency, but the American showdown against Euro oil trading in Iraq helped prevent it, and now the Euro is showing signs of weakness. The needs of the member countries are diverging and it won’t get the boost anticipated boost belonging to the world reserve currency. The Yen doesn’t have a shot because Japan’s already got it’s own problems. However, the CYN is positioned to become the next global reserve currency.

Eventually, central banks will choose between using an oil backed currency backed a deeply indebted economy, or a commodity backed currency backed by a economy with large currency reserves.

If you owe the bank $1MM the bank owns you, but if you owe the bank $100T, you own the bank. This is also true of the US/China relationship. Short term movement away from the status quo would destroy both China and the US’s economies.

Short term, China will continue to be the land of tax avoidance, fake bookkeeping, and financial lies that may even make the USA look good by the time that they come to the surface. Short term, you’d have to be crazy to invest your central banks assets into the Black Box of China – which can only favorably compare with places like Russia – because we have no idea how good or bad the real numbers are. At the same time, you’ve have to be crazy to invest your central banks assets in dollars, because we do know how bad the numbers are.

Medium term, since China is working to re-ignite export led growth, and the US is printing dollars like they are going out of style, so nothing will change.

But one morning a few years from now Central Bankers are going to wake up in the morning and say, do I really want to store my money in rapidly devaluing oil backed paper, or in relatively stable commodity backed paper?

The Yen carry trade is over for now, but there’s a new carry trade in town. For those (like me) not terribly familiar with a carry trade, it’s:

Strategy in which an investor sells a certain currency with a relatively low interest rate and uses the funds to purchase a different currency yielding a higher interest rate.

Basically, it’s a type of arbitrage where you borrow one asset, and use it to buy another asset assuming that exchange rates WILL NOT CHANGE. When the Bank of Japan set interest rates near 0%, speculators would borrow Yen, trade them for dollars, and then buy dollar denominated assets. The new carry trade is: USD -> RMB -> Commodities.

2009 US federal budget deficit will be $1.75 TRILLION or more.
Not even Bank of China can lend this money, it has to be borrowed.

US dollar bear leads to commodities bull.
People and nations will hoard physical goods to preserve wealth, hence generate demands higher than immediate needs and higher than available supplies.
China is on a big natural resources shopping spree around the world lately, in order to divest its huge foreign currency reserves.

Both events are occurring as people have noticed: Capital is escaping American soil; and China is on a global shopping spree of raw materials.
But people who notice these two things explain it as simply market behavior driven by speculative forces.
They fail to see a more direct, conscious and deliberate reason behind what’s going on, because no one noticed one quiet fact…

That is because for the past one year, trading between USD and CNY is equivalent to exchange one dollar into four quarters, nothing is gained or lost.

[From China, Shipping and the Great Commodity Carry Trade -- Seeking Alpha]

But the interesting part is that: As the flood of US dollars flows in, China merely cranks up its own money printing press to print more RMB Yuan to exchange for the US dollars. It then uses some of the dollars to buy US Treasury bonds and prop up the value of the dollar, maintaining a constant USD/Yuan exchange rate. But China’s real goal is not to support the dollar in long term, but to buy time to allow it to divest the huge dollar assets it is holding, in exchange of physical assets: natural resources, raw commodities, foreign mining companies and other physical assets. It costs China nothing to print more Yuans to buy more US dollars and then use the dollars to buy up the whole world.

There are a few conditions that are important to point out and make changing the current status quo (exchange rate) very difficult in the next 12-36 months.

• Speculators are dumping USD because of financial policy that is not helping to preserve wealth, but those dollars could be used to buy assets anywhere – so why in China?
• Speculators are dumping dollars and buying CYN due to the long term positive fundamentals in the Chinese economy (large inexpensive labor force, good infrastructure, large trade surpluses)
• 4 years ago, exchange rates were 8.3:1, for the last 12 months it’s been 6.84:1 (that’s a 17% rise)
• This 17% rise is partially responsible for the closure of many export oriented businesses here in China — many were already struggling to survive before softening demand in western markets destroyed them.
• The population in China Mainland is not nearly as productive or as well educated as the populations in Taiwan or Hong Kong, where wages are approximately 2x higher but trade barriers (import tariffs) are lower/non existent.
• China Mainland Gov’t has raised Export Rebates (to manufacturers) 7 times in 2009 — making the official policy clear – the current export oriented growth is to be salvaged and preserved for the foreseeable future (rather than moving to fill domestic demand)

There are also very practical considerations though. If you own raw materials all over the planet, you must have a way to maintain peaceful seas to ensure delivery of those materials.

Basically, the US economy and the CYN economy are locked together for the foreseeable future – a pair of codependents, but the relationship has the impact of long term strengthening the CYN at the expense of the USD, migrating intellectual property, skilled labor, entrepreneurs, and assets from the US to China. The breakup will be rough, but when the dysfunctional couple is finally ready for a divorce, China is walking away with much more than 50%.