perhaps we should call them "dengs"

France and Germany didn’t get stricter finance regulation, the US and Britain didn’t get all the money it wanted pumped into the global economy. But it looks like China got quite a bit of what it wanted from the G20.

But in an even more radical step, the G20 leaders appear to have agreed to increase another type of IMF funds, the quotas owned by individual countries, by an additional $250bn. This would be done by creating more of its own currency, the SDR or special drawing right, which is a basket of currencies including the US dollar, the yen and the euro.

This would give countries essentially free money, which they could use as they wish without having to negotiate deals with the IMF, and would do much to boost confidence among poorer countries.

I presume it also allows national counterparties to denominate trade between themselves in SDRs, which goes some way to meeting the Chinese proposition that SDRs gradually replace the dollar as a reserve currency. China’s also using bilateral currency swaps to promote international use of the yuan. Both seem to be a strategy to further capture smaller international export markets following decline in exports to the USA and Europe, as recommended by Hu Jintao here. China really does seem to be using finance as its lever into a more assertive foreign policy role.