Obama presses Hu on yuan exchange rate

RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif. — President Barack Obama used an unusually lengthy and informal desert summit to present Chinese President Xi Jinping with detailed evidence of intellectual property theft emanating from his country, as a top U.S. official declared Saturday that cybersecurity is now at the “center of the relationship” between the world’s largest economies.

AHEAD of a looming Sino-American summit, it's once again time for newspapers to allocate ink to coverage of the spat over the value of China's currency. Happily, we seem to be seeing an improved understanding that movement in the nominal dollar-yuan exchange rate is not the most important factor shaping imbalances. Tim Geithner (who, bless him, once got in trouble for saying that the dollar needed to decline) declared today that the yuan is "substantially undervalued" and needs to strengthen.

China on Friday hit back at US President Barack Obama over his comments on the value of the yuan, saying the issue was not a political one and was not the solution to global trade imbalances.Obama on Thursday called on China to adopt a "market-oriented" exchange rate policy, increasing the pressure on Beijing to allow the yuan -- effectively pegged to the dollar since mid-2008 -- to appreciate.

AFP - US President Barack Obama welcomed China's decision Saturday to make its yuan exchang

The timing of China's exchange rate move is hardly accidental. The Chinese have said they will "increase the flexibility" of the exchange rate "to benefit the domestic economy". But in the very short term, it is in Toronto where the benefits will most clearly be felt.

President Barack Obama has declared his commitment to long-term ties with both India and Pakistan, walking a fine line as New Delhi sought his help to rein in extremists from its neighbor.On the eve of a 47-nation summit on nuclear security, Obama met separately on Sunday with Prime Ministers Manmohan Singh of India and Yousuf Raza Gilani of Pakistan who lead two of the newest members of the club of nuclear weapons states.