China's yuan joins world's elite currencies

``The IMF's executive board decided to include the yuan, also known as the renminbi, in its Special Drawing Rights basket. The SDR -- which currently includes the dollar, euro, British pound and Japanese yen -- is an asset that can be exchanged for other currencies and is used by the fund to provide liquidity or emergency lending to troubled nations... The yuan will have a weighting of 10.92% in the SDR basket, behind the U.S.'s 41.73% and the euro's 30.93%. The yen is at 8.33% and the British pound, 8.09%.'' -- The US weighting was dropped only from about 41.9% (the Yuan's gain was taken entirely from the Yen and Euro), which means this new setup is an obvious political sop to the U.S. to fend off any troublesome "portfolio selling" of the dollar (for now)... Anyways, for another story on the event, see IMF's yuan inclusion signals less risk taking in China.