[This post also contending as an entry into the Minitrue meme files.]
On Thursday last week, Reuters filed this story. It’s actually based on an FT story from Wednesday – an interview with Luo Ping, a director-general at the China Banking Regulatory Commission.
Reuters:
”Except for U.S. Treasuries, what can you hold?” Luo was cited by the paper as saying. “Gold? You don’t hold Japanese government bonds or UK bonds. U.S. Treasuries are the safe haven. For everyone, including China, it is the only option.”
All very interesting. The thing is, oddly though, Reuters completely omits the absolutely killer par from the FT’s story. Here it is, in the FT original:
Mr Luo, whose English tends toward the colloquial, added: “We hate you guys. Once you start issuing $1 trillion-$2 trillion [$1,000bn-$2,000bn] . . .we know the dollar is going to depreciate, so we hate you guys but there is nothing much we can do.”
The rest of Mr Luo’s quotes appear verbatim.
In fact, some aren’t so sure Reuters missed the best bit afterall, so much as published it at first and then redacted it entirely later. Without acknowledging the edit. Notes ML-explode:
The bolded paragraph, particularly, was removed. Completely. I know because a copy was originally emailed to me. Note: Reuters did not disclose that this was an updated version of the release, nor did they change the timestamp on it from Thu Feb 12, 2009 8:22am EST, yet I can confirm the story has changed since 6:56pm on the 13th.
Related links:
All the treasuries in China – FT Alphaville
Economic nationalism and the USD – FT Alphaville