The offshore yuan has just cracked all-time lows against the dollar in active trading since its introduction in Hong Kong early in the post-crisis period; as it pushes 6.80 to the greenback - Beijing's earlier post-Brexit, informally suggested floor to defend for 2016 - it's worth wondering how much of this is related to fears of a prospective Donald Trump presidency, however unlikely that appears to be with recent polls.
Granted, the euro, pound, and yen are all exhibiting softness of late, but given that the yuan is now part of the IMF's elite SDR reserve currency basket, as well, it's becoming more plausible that the RMB is now influencing these other alternatives to the dollar as opposed to merely shadowing them as it has done so in the wake of the shock Brexit vote four months ago.
Clearly, in the unlikely event that Trump wins, a protectionist backlash against China will loom large over Sino-US relations. In these last 15 days of the campaign, therefore, the yuan could be a key barometer of the global economy's true judgment of the chances that Trump could yet pull off such a historic upset.
Already, the yuan seems to be signaling an unease that Hillary Clinton still hasn't put this contest squarely away. There's a nagging feeling somewhere in this steady slide to 6.80/USD or even beyond that the polls which show 7-12 point leads for Hillary have been deliberately skewed in favor of registered Democrats - how else to explain the virtual tie shown by some conservative-leaning surveys even at this juncture?
So if the mainstream Western media is indeed trying to discourage potential Trump sympathizers from even thinking he can still win, things could already be more precarious than first meets the eye. This is just what Trump needs to squeeze out every last drop of the anti-establishment, anti-elite populist vote: and just the kind of shenanigan that feeds the cynicism of the large independent segment of the electorate whose apathy towards Hillary could in the end do far more harm than their aversion to Trump.
But worst of all, if this unabashed and blatant media cheerleading for Hillary ironically turns her own lukewarm supporters away - i.e. if they're so unenthusiastic about her essentially status-quo platform, given her own deep flaws, that they possibly won't go out to vote at all except if they genuinely think the fiasco of a Trump presidency were still possible - the Western elite and establishment could actually be digging their own grave. If they were really that smart, they'd wise up to the dangers of such an approach - unless perhaps they're unwittingly being manipulated by an even smaller clique among themselves who are even more exclusively "in the know" about things.
We got sort of a warning four months ago with Brexit as to how our society in the developed rich world has apparently moved on from the entire basis of working assumptions that our leaders cling to. Even then, it should have become obvious to the elites that their very tendency to dismiss or downplay the populist threat to their ever shakier consensus may actually have contributed significantly to their own stunning loss of legitimacy. At the last minute, it seems, enough apathetic British voters became so convinced that Brexit would be handily defeated that they didn't even bother showing up at the polling booths to actually play their part defeating it - thereby sealing the doom of the "remain" cause.
It would be quite a spectacle if the elites now make the same blunder - only monumentally bigger and more far reaching.
If you're China, you have little excuse or rationale left to not take any chances.
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