The evil chinese are devaluing their currency to ruin the world! Right…that’s the headline I’ve been reading the past few days, and this is the only chart that I care about at the moment.

And these quotes from El Erian

China is now following a path that many other advanced and emerging economies have been attempting to take for some time (including the euro zone via the European Central Bank’s quantitative easing program). Indeed, China’s decision leaves the U.S.  as the only systemically important country willing to accept the strengthening of its currency. But what may work for individual countries cannot work for the system as a whole; and that has implications for financial markets.

China’s currency move will be viewed as an important step in the country’s multiyear journey toward a more efficient and responsive market-determined system

Granted the conspiracy theorist inside me asks these questions:

• Isn’t it convenient that this occurs the month before the head of China goes to the US and the month where the Fed is supposedly going to finally raise interest rates?
• Why all the rhetoric against China? The USD during ’08-’13 was weakening massively and yet nothing in the media was said
• Japan has devalued its own currency vs the RMB and the USD by some 30% in the past 12 months, perhaps that’s where it all started?
• Isn’t this all just a race to the beginning? Every country tries to devalue their currency, exports deflation and in the end currencies return to where they started?

Source: Business Insider, Bloomberg