Joe Lieberman: “if you should find yourself hankering for a hamburger, may I respectfully suggest that you go to Beijing? That's where…”

“if you should find yourself hankering for a hamburger, may I respectfully suggest that you go to Beijing? That's where you'll find the world's cheapest hamburgers. I have this useful information courtesy of the good people at The Economist magazine, who for over 15 years have periodically compiled their ``Big Mac'' index to chart the relative values of national currencies. The index is based on what it costs to buy one of the world's most ubiquitous commodities. Now the recipe for a Big Mac is pretty much the same everywhere, and in a perfect world it would presumably cost about the same everywhere. The Economist uses this observation to gain an insight into currency valuations. But we find that instead of costing about the same, as one would expect, in Chinese yuan a Big Mac costs about 56 percent less than it would in the average American city. This differential is greater than that for any other country in the most recent Big Mac index in April. Such a bargain. Why does this massive price differential exist? It exists because the yuan has been systematically kept at low value--an artificially low value--pursuant to intervention by the Chinese government in currency markets. The yuan been systematically undervalued by a lot. Fifty-six percent--the differential in the April index--is probably a bit high. Many experts put the figure at closer to 40 percent. That's plenty. That's why China has the world's cheapest hamburgers.…”