The Financial Times reports in the midst of a long assessment of U.S.-Chinese relations:

One of the most popular books in China at the moment is Currency Wars 2 by Song Hongbing, which predicts that an obscure international elite of bankers and politicians will impose a global currency by 2024 and usher in an era of world government. The US Federal Reserve supports the plan, he writes, because it recognises that the dollar will be savaged by a bout of hyperinflation.

Meanwhile, a friend traveling with President Obama reports that giveaway copies of the New York Times available at the Waldorf Astoria in New York and at President Obama's hotel at the Pittsburgh G-20 meeting carried stickers explaining that they were being distributed with "compliments" of the state-owned China Daily.

In a column in today's New York Times, Floyd Norris writes about what he sees as a problem with a new Securities and Exchange Commission rule that would allow all ratings agencies, not just ones hired by a company, to get access to non-public information. Writes Mr. Norris:

The rule adopted last week says that whatever information is given to the agency hired by the issuer to rate the structured finance security must be given to other rating agencies, including those that provide analyses only to investors who pay for them.

The result will be that analysts for the other rating agencies, like Egan-Jones Ratings, will have access to information not available to the general public, and their analyses will go only to clients. Those clients will have the benefit of nonpublic information, or at least of their agent's analysis of what it means.

The answer is obvious: Cut off the inside information. The rating agencies now have an exemption from the S.E.C.'s Regulation FD, for fair disclosure. If that exemption were removed, the level playing field would be restored.

The New York Times editorializes in favor of competitive bidding in government contracts awarded to for-profit companies. If competitive bidding is a good idea for for-profits that want money from the government, why not extend the principle to apply to non-profits, too? There may be some good reason why, but the Times doesn't explain, leaving one to wonder if there's a general suspicion or bias against those motivated by a desire for profit.

One angle left unexplored by the Wall Street Journal in its article on the $529 million federal loan to Al Gore's Fisker Automotive is the company's lobbying expenditures. According to Senate lobbying records reviewed by FutureOfCapitalism.com, Fisker spent $120,000 between December 2008 and June 2009 on the services of the firm Fabiani & Company. The filings indicate that the Fabiani lobbyists who worked on Fisker's behalf included Laura Lovelace, a Goldman Sachs veteran whose bio says that she worked in the Bush administration's Treasury Department in the Office of Economic Policy, where she "worked with the White House, the Department of Energy, and the Department of Commerce on the National Energy Policy Interagency Task Force." The filings indicate that the Fabiani lobbyists lobbied the Department of Energy to get the loan. A July filing indicated that Ms. Lovelace is still representing Fisker, but has left Fabiani to join a firm called "Wellford Energy Advisors," named for Harrison Wellford, who in 2008, "advised then Senator Obama on White House organization and strategic planning for the Presidential transition during the pre-election period and served as transition advisor to Michelle Obama and Senator Biden." In other words, how do you get a $529 million loan from the government? You hire the former Bush administration official who helped set up the program, and President Obama's transition adviser. What a wonderful example of bipartisan cooperation.

A car company whose investors include Al Gore, the Silicon Valley venture capitalists Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers, and the government of Qatar has received a $529 million loan from the U.S. government, the Wall Street Journal reports, in an example of what one might call the "reverse Robin-Hood" -- take from middle-class taxpayers, give to the rich --- that is becoming a hallmark of the Obama administration's alternative energy policies (not to mention the bank bailouts). Here's another example, and another.

Slate, New York magazine, and The Business Insider all link to the FutureOfCapitalism.com review of Michael Moore's "Capitalism: A Love Story," focusing on the anti-capitalst movie's capitalist backing, and Cohocton Wind Watch links to our coverage of the $115 million "stimulus" grant to a windmill company backed by D.E. Shaw and Madison Dearborn that also hired two well-connected lobbyists. The word about FutureOfCapitalism.com is starting to spread. Please help us by telling your friends about the site.

Senator Schumer, who has a relationship with the press corps that is so ardent that it's said the most dangerous spot in Washington is between Mr. Schumer and a television camera, has crafted an amendment to a proposed shield law that crafts a federal definition of journalists in a way that excludes non-salaried journalists and bloggers, reports the Wall Street Journal. With all due respect to the intrepid Judith Miller, it's a debatable proposition in the first place whether America needs additional federal protection for journalists beyond the ironclad language of the First Amendment. But it would be a classic example of unintended consequences if the effort to protect journalists from having to disclose anonymous sources resulted in, in essence, government licensing of journalists in such a way that the politicians like Senator Schumer get to decide who qualifies for special protected federally shielded journalist status and who doesn't. Just like any other business group that goes to Washington looking for special privileges, the journalists end up granting more power to the politicians who bestow the privileges.

The London bureau chief for Bloomberg News, Mark Gilbert, has a column peering into the future and predicting the end of fiat currency: "When China took control of all global financial activities, the world decided to go back to something called the gold standard, which meant paper money, like the dollar bill in that hologram, became a true store of value, rather than a confidence trick." He sounds like Ron Paul.

Michael Moore's new movie, "Capitalism: A Love Story" opened today.

The first thing that must be said is that it isn't really a love story. Capitalism, Mr. Moore tells us, is "evil," and if his word isn't enough, he quotes two Catholic priests who say that capitalism is sinful and immoral, as well as Bishop Gumbleton of Detroit, who says that capitalism runs counter to the teaching of Jesus.

Netflix has attracted a bunch of positive attention with the contest it ran offering a $1 million prize to any team that could measurably improve its movie-recommendation algorithm. Now the Obama administration is getting into the prize business by launching a contest to come up with the best way to save the federal government money. But only federal employees can participate. That's as if Netflix ran its contest only allowing Netflix employees to participate. If someone who isn't a federal employee has a good idea on saving the government money, does the Office of Managment and Budget not want to hear about it? Sometimes, businesses are just smarter about things than the government is. Oh -- there's one other way the federal contest is different from the Netflix one. In the Netflix contest, the prize was $1 million. In the federal government contest, the prize is a meeting with President Obama. Oh -- one other thing -- Donald Marron links to this slideshow on Netflix corporate culture, which, if you run a business or work in one, makes for some fascinating reading.

The former governor of Alaska and Republican vice presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, told fund managers in Hong Kong that giving the Federal Reserve more power to regulate systemic risk is a bad idea. "The words 'fox' and 'henhouse' come to mind," she said, according to a report by Bloomberg. She also criticized the bailout that her running mate, Senator McCain, suspended his campaign to go get passed. The bigger that you are, the more problems that you get yourself into, the more likely the government is to bail you out," Palin reportedly said. "We're left holding the bag, all the moms and pops all over America." She was also critical of Communist China for aiming missiles at Taiwan and for supporting "some of the most questionable regimes from Sudan to Burma to Zimbabwe." Hong Kong may make some sense as a venue from which to criticize China, but if Ms. Palin wants to speak out about American economic policy, it might make more sense to do it before an American audience. The message might even resonate, no matter how polarizing some may find Ms. Palin to be as a messenger.

An editorial in today's New York Times about health care complains that "Too many people are being hit with relentlessly rising premiums." It cites a Kaiser study that found "the average premium for a family policy offered at work rose above $13,300 in 2009 — up from $5,800 in 1999." The Times insisted "ways must be found to slow the rise in health care costs."

FutureOfCapitalism.com on the new Gallup Poll on whether Americans think there's too much regulation and government is too big: September 22, 12:19 p.m.

Wall Street Journal op-ed by Stephen Moore on same: September 23.

It would be a shame to let OneWebDay pass without a musing or two about the Internets.

A nice article about FutureOfCapitalism.com and its editor has appeared in a newspaper called The Jewish State, which circulates in New Jersey.