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CHINA’S ECONOMY….The Chinese leadership is worried:

Chinese President Hu Jintao warned at a weekend meeting of the Communist Party’s elite Politburo that China is losing its competitive edge as international demand for its products is reduced, according to official state media reports Sunday.

China’s growth rate has been forecast to be about 9 percent in 2008, down from 11.9 percent the year before and close to the 8 percent that economists say China must maintain in order to keep the labor market stable.

For more, see Brad Setser’s gloss on a recent World Bank report, which suggests that China’s actual problems have been domestic up until now (falling wages and tanking real estate investment) but will indeed start to become export based next year. Regardless, the end result is that China will be buying up even more Treasury debt than ever over the next few years. That’s probably a good thing in the short term, but not so good in the long term.

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We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

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