If you’ve got a PowerPoint to put together, finding interesting pictures can be one of the biggest challenges. iStockPhoto.com has a great set of pictures to choose from: China, Foreign Exchange, anything you need it seems they’ve got.

And over here there is a very useful set of 成语 grouped by type

To ease global liquidity, the International Monetary Fund’s executive board hasbacked the allocation of US$ 250 billion worth of special drawing rights (SDRs) to member countries, the IMF said in a statement on July 20.

China, with its current IMF share quota, will receive US$ 9.4 billion worth of SDRs, pending the approval of the Fund’s Board of Governors.

The allocation is part of a US$ 1.1 trillion relief measure to fight the global economic crisis, as agreed to by G20 member states at a London summit in April. From wires.

Source: http://english.caijing.com.cn/2009-07-22/110201717.html

This is a brilliant move move by the PRC! By opening the door to getting foreign US dollar debt converted into SDR debt (converting those dollars to a basket of euros, pounds, yen and dollars) the PRC can begin pressuring the USA to stop devaluing the dollar. Eventually the USA could be forced to issue debt denominated in SDRs, which would immediately end (or bankrupt?) the USA.

If the chess game of international relations, the guys in Zhongnanhai are saying “Check!” right about now.

Useful thoughts on foreign language learning. Important consideration is to start before age 7. This is also a good argument in favor of my theory that all children should be taught with a “Universal Language” – a superset of all sounds of all major language families around the globe. (English, French, Spanish, Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Portuguese, Farsi, Hindi) As long as every child learns how to pronounce every component sound from each of these languages during early childhood, then the accent if the child chooses to study the language as an adult will be greatly improved.

[From The Associated Press: Unraveling how children become bilingual so easily]

This is excellent news! A good friend of mine was working hard to make this happen, but it eventually took Sec of State Hilary Clinton get the deal done.

Photos from signing ceremony.

Groundbreaking for the US pavilion will be on July 17 at 10:30 AM. Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke will be present.

Wikipedia: Nixon Visit to China
Book: Nixon and Mao: The Week that changed the world

Interesting thoughts on politics from Eric Schmidt in this Q&A.

“From a governance perspective, if you take the prospective that every bureaucracy should publish what it is doing and try to justify and listen to it’s customers and be forced at least to account for what they did in a way that is public and reproducible and measurable, that will go a long way.” -Eric Schmidt

[From Atlantic interview with Eric Schmidt ]

Interesting diagram separating the “financial economy” from the “real economy”. The impact of international capital flows doesn’t show up clearly in this model, but seems evident that Finance, Production and Consumption all need to grow in approximate proportion.

Asset bubbles would be growth in the FIRE sector without corresponding growth in production and employment to convert the FIRE sectors credit into interest paid.

[From No One Saw This Economic Crisis Coming? -- Seeking Alpha]