Who says politicians cannot move markets? Yesterday's town hall meeting by President Obama contained some tough language for the Chinese. The President said that the Chinese leaders were not doing enough to let their currency, the RMB, appreciate. In response the value of the RMB surged to its highest level since 1993.

The spot price of the dollar/RMB cross reached a high of 6.6987 while the price for one-year non-deliverable forwards for the RMB reached 6.5818 to the dollar. This was an increase of 50 basis points on the day and suggests that the currency will appreciate by nearly two percent over the next year.

There's a political debate heating up about companies' hesitancy to invest the cash they're sitting on.

Essentially, the Democrats--or at least those in favor of further government stimulus measures such as a jobs program or at least extended unemployment benefits--argue that companies are wary of spending because of the lack of aggregate consumer demand.

At long last, one writer has seriously addressed the potential problems with more stimulus spending. (I sent Paul Krugman a question about this more than a week ago, via a comment on his blog, but from what I can see he has yet to address it. And Dean Baker too easily dismisses the issue, in my opinion.)

The problem is not the federal budget deficit, not at least in the short term, but the potential political fallout from bad decision making. That way, says Steve Randy Waldman, indeed lay a possible US currency crisis. And this is ultimately where Friedrich Hayek and his associates were coming from in blaming Weimar for the disasters that followed.

I see Bloomberg can't resist interviewing Alan Greenspan about the perils of federal budget deficits, because the former Maestro's crystal ball is just so marvelously clear that he accurately predicted the housing crisis, which he did nothing to create, and took majorly serious steps to forestall it.

Oh, none of that last clause is true? And the ex-Fedster went so far as offer the markets the "Greenspan put," which is the ultimate "too big to fail" deal when you think about it?

James Galbraith provides much-needed clarification of a point that has been obscured in the debate, if that's the right term, over the federal budget deficit at a time of recession.

And that is that when it comes to the economy, the government is more like a bank than a family household, in contrast to those who argue that the budget should be balanced at all times, and especially when times get tough. Even President Obama echoed that view in his State of the Union address when he said the government should "live within its means."

A piece today by derivatives expert Satyajit Das helps put to rest some if not all of the doubts expressed about the Volcker Rule's potential efficacy.

Much of the criticism by those who say it doesn't go far enough focuses argues  that forcing banks that get deposit insurance to shed their proprietary trading operations would not necessarily eliminate systemic risk, since taxpayers could not afford to see huge trading operations bring down the markets even if their deposits were still protected. Mister Market is just too important for that.

A lot has been written about the pros and cons of the SEC's new rules regarding short-selling. However, perhaps even more significant--but widely overlooked--is the fact that on Wednesday, the SEC approved the changes with a 3-2 vote. 

This is a big deal, folks. Christopher Cox, SEC chairman during President Bush's second term, was widely criticized for his policy that the regulator only passes new rules unanimously. His goal was to avoid partisan votes, since commissioners are typically chosen based on party affiliation. However, keep in mind that there cannot be more than three commissioners from the president's party.

So maybe we're not such a purple nation, after all. Red is red and blue is blue and they're not mixing, especially if you're using bipartisanship in Washington as a gauge. Regulatory reform of banks is a good example. The party in power would if it could resurrect Glass-Steagall, but that's not going to happen unless they rewrite the rules of the Senate and grant simple majority rule.

I find this op-ed today on exports more than confusing. Essentially, the author, a business professor and former chief economist at the Dallas Fed named W. Michael Cox, says that President Obama's call for the U.S. to compete more effectively on that basis should not focus on boosting manufactured goods.

But it seems to me that our so-called comparative advantage in services that Cox says is a sufficient source of GDP growth has in fact put us at a disadvantage to countries such as China and Germany.

In the you've-gotta-be-kidding-me category of recent news comes word that WellPoint, the big California health-insurance company, wants to increase rates by 39 percent.