Isn't this also a hot button issue for the NWO/World Government crowd - combining the most bonkers people from both left and right.

Amazingly bad questions from most of the press (I guess there were a few that were OK). The president would have gotten better questions had he taken them from the general public.

Chuck Todd insinuates regular Americans aren't sacrificing.

The WaTimes guy tries to shame Obama on stem cell research.

Whatshername brings up race.

The currency thing was weird (what do you expect from Faux News).

I don't remember what Ed Henry asked, but he's being laughed at at another blog I read.

The president schooled them all. He knows what's going on because he goes outside the bubble and meets with the rest of us.

Post re Ed Henry:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/3/25/712734/-Poor,-poor-Ed-HenryHe-got-TOLD!

Ah yes, I remember it now (most of those guys in suits start to look alike). Obama shoots, he scores!

Chuck Todd was on Rachel Maddow's show the day before, and Rachel, who is much too polite to her colleagues, was talking to him about the kinds of questions he might ask, and how he'd solicited questions from the public. Todd said he planned to throw out all the questions "from the left", and all the questions "from the right" (I guess meaning "from anyone who disagrees with me"). He did say he was interested in the questions from people who were suffering, which made it strange for him to ask about sacrifice, after poring through so many questions from people who are hurting.

I wish Obama would answer questions like that by throwing back in the questioner's face how much richer national TV news people are than the average American.

What may be going on is that establishing a single world currency is an item on the End Times checklist, and the people raising the issue are exactly that delusional.

I had heard the comment from China earlier in the day, and thought it was only of minor concern. When I heard these currency questions later in the day, I questioned my own memory on China's statement.

Sometimes I can't believe how WRONG these right-wing people are, to the point where I doubt my own understanding sometimes.

The original commentor hit upon it; it's not just NWO conspiracists, googling "one world currency" points out that it's also end-times whackaloons dirtying their britches over the subject.

He [Chuck Todd] did say he was interested in the questions from people who were suffering, which made it strange for him to ask about sacrifice, after poring through so many questions from people who are hurting. - Joe Buck

Just thought that was worth repeating. Thanks. And you can be sure that Chuck and his ilk will be whining ad infinitum that Obama is asking people to people to sacrifice their regularly scheduled programs, as if they haven't sacrificed enough already. No wonder he goes to Jay Leno and town hall meetings.

There were also other stupid dog trick questions: Did you agonize over stem cell funding? Have you spent much time in the last two months having meetings about race?

And I think it was Chris Matthews who commented that not as many people watched Obama's last press conference as watched Bush after 9/11. And that he wanted to tell people that there were signs of improvement - that's why he came up with the window factory in Ohio (paraphrase).

Those damn Commies again...

As noted elsewhere, our press corps failed to ask any question about Geithner's public-private plan for toxic assets - the one policy anyone who pays taxes wants to hear explained this week. These people are bizarre.

The new world currency should be the banana. Yummy and nutritious, even when it's value declines.

When can we drown the Conservative/Republican movement in the bathtub?

What's so pitiful about Rep. Bachman is that she probably thought she was really sticking it to the Treasury Secretary and the Head of the Federal Reserve getting them to deny on the record any intent by the US to adopt a "global currency."

She will probably show the video clip in her upcoming capaigns to convince people stupider than her that she's really on top of things back in DC.

What's the difference between Michelle Bachman and a Mexican peso? The peso, currently worth about 6 cents, is three times more valuable than Bachman's two cents' worth.

The right was trying to score points, sure. But that doesn't mean that the story about global currency issues and China isn't of interest:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/24/world/asia/24china.html?scp=3&sq=global%20currency&st=cse

three times more valuable than Bachman's two cents' worth.

If you bid two cents for Bachman's thoughts, you win the auction.

Michele Bachmann and the people at Fox news are the later day saints of the John Birch Society.

The new world currency should be the banana. Yummy and nutritious, even when it's value declines.

And it fits perfectly in the hand, as though designed for it! Just ask Kirk Cameron!

Isn't currency speculation about the easiest way to steal the value of a person or country's work?
Is the value of currency fluctuations as an indicator/adjuster of merit and strength similar that of the stock market? And like the stock market isn't it very susceptible to gaming? How many barometers with inherent vulnerabilities to abuse do we have to have before the invisible hand works correctly and expeditiously? Aren't hedge funds touted as a corrective measure?

Is modern capitalism nothing more than a Russian nesting doll of scams?

If you bid two cents for Bachman's thoughts, you win the auction.

If you pay two cents for Bachman's thoughts you're getting ripped off.

"You can almost hear them thinking: currency, reserve currency: what's the difference? Sigh."

Funny, I never hear them thinking. At least not frontal cortex level thinking.

The currency thing is just another loony RW sovereignty construct -- like the NAFTA superhighway, the idea that the US is controlled by the UN, Mexico's going to reclaim the Southwest, etc etc.

The right was trying to score points, sure. But that doesn't mean that the story about global currency issues and China isn't of interest.

Well, yeah, but the interest is that China is trying to figure out ways to dump the dollar as their main currency holding, not that China is trying to form a one-world government that will lead to the End Times with Barack Obama as the Antichrist.

Given that one of the reasons we invaded Iraq was that Saddam Hussein was getting ready to change to the Euro instead of the USD, currency changes like the one China is proposing are a Big Deal and potentially disastrous for the US. Still doesn't mean that Tim LaHaye is right and Christians are going to be raptured any day now.

Well, I agree that FOFX is probably trying to use the "new currency" thing as a boogie man along the lines of a global government or North american super highway. But I disagree with your seeming dismissal of the significance of the idea being floated by China. The US dollar being the default reserve currency gives us a major economic advantage. If China is openly stating this idea, even if it isn't realistic in the short or medium term, it clearly reflects their displeasure with the current state of affairs. This may also signal a decision to stop or decrease purchases of US debt or to replace dollar reserves in Euros or maybe (I don't know if this is really feasible) in gold. So, the new global reserve currency talk matter, even if not in the way bachman or fox mean.

Doh! Mnemosyne preempted me.

kahner, can you imagine the price of gold if the Chinese start buying big time. I'll be able to retire on my class ring.

Breezeblock, drowning the conservative/republican movement in a cesspool would be more appropriate symbolically.

It's not just China. Reuters by Jeremy Gaunt, "A U.N. panel says world should ditch dollar" dated 3182009. "Currency specialist Avinash Persaud, a member of the panel of experts, told a Reuters Funds Summit in Luxembourg that the proposal was to create something like the old Ecu, or european currency unit, that was a hard traded, weighted basket....Persaud has londg argued that the dollar would give way to the Chinese yuan as a global reserve currency within decades."

In today's WSJ, Joanna Slater says "Unseating the U.S. dollar as the world's dominant medium of exchange would be no small feat."

This morning's AP article by Joe McDonald certainly would give even a reasonably well-informed reader the notion that China is proposing creating a new international currency that would replace national currencies. It begins, "China is calling for a new global currency to replace the dominant dollar..." and doesn't use the word "reserve" until about two-thirds of the way through the piece. Only the comment in the third graf that China wants to create "a currency made up of a basket of global currencies and controlled by the [IMF]" would give an informed reader the realization that this would make no sense if the national currencies were to be abolished.