Devaluation

BEIJING -- China has devalued its non-convertible currency by almost 10 percent as of today, the second such move within the past year and one likely aimed at reducing burdensome subsidies to the nation's export industries.In a terse announcement carried by China's news agency after the close of banks here last night, the State Administration of Exchange Control said that the government- set exchange rate of the Chinese currency would be cut 9.57 percent.Much anticipated, the devaluation changes the official rate for purchasing Chinese yuan from about 4.7 yuan to about 5.2 yuan per U.S. dollar.

LAKE PLACID, N.Y. - With one year to go before the caldron is lighted, it's gut-check time for those whose lives are intertwined with the five Olympic rings. The host city of Vancouver and the athletes and their coaches have covered a lot of ground to get ready for the XXI Winter Games, but hurdles remain before the opening ceremony next Feb. 12. Not surprisingly, many challenges are tied to the economy: * Sponsorships are down. * The Vancouver organizing committee has shaved millions from its budget and dipped into its contingency fund.

Confirming warnings it gave a month ago, McCormick & Co. Inc. said yesterday that although its spice and flavorings sales grew strongly this spring, economic turmoil in Mexico eroded its profits.The Sparks-based company said its sales for the second quarter, which ended May 31, rose 12 percent to $445 million. But net income fell 16 percent to $16 million.About half the decline was due to the recent devaluation of the peso in Mexico, where McCormick not only sells spices but is the biggest seller of mayonnaise, said Chief Financial Officer Robert G. Davey.

Provident Bankshares Corp. reported yesterday a $5.4 million loss in the third quarter, primarily because of further declines in the value of its investment portfolio. Additionally, Maryland's largest independent bank said it was invited last week by the government to participate in the Treasury Department's program to invest in bank securities. Provident could receive up to $150 million under the program, although it hasn't decided whether to participate, said Gary N. Geisel, the corporation's chairman and chief executive.

A STABLE RUBLE and contained inflation were long among the chief achievements of Boris N. Yeltsin's six years as post-Communist Russia's first president.Just a month ago, he used those conditions as his most potent arguments for foreign loans and credits -- and received a $22.6 billion package that was to assure economic stability. Now, the bubble has burst.Despite its vast oil reserves and other natural riches, Russia remains an insignificant player in the world's economy. Thus, the most serious impact of Monday's 34 percent devaluation of the ruble (and the effective default on billions in debt)

The world's financial markets were sent into a tailspin yesterday when Brazil's top financial official resigned unexpectedly and his successor devalued the country's currency by 7.6 percent.Economists feared that the latest troubles of Latin America's largest economy could spread to other countries in the region -- and to the United States, which has substantial export and financial interests in Brazil.The Dow Jones industrial average fell more than 260 points in the first half-hour of trading after the announcement that Brazilian Central Bank chief Gustavo Franco had stepped down, and his replacement, Francisco Lopes, would allow the Brazilian currency, the real, to trade in a wider band against the dollar.

THE ASIAN disease did not hit the healthy United States when it reached Brazil, which devalued its currency Wednesday. But spread of the ailment to the world's eighth-largest economy means the sickness has infected the Western Hemisphere.U.S. trade with Brazil is small but growing, while U.S. private investment in Brazil is huge. So the threat of inflation and devaluation in Brazil is more to U.S. portfolios than to U.S. exporters.The $41.5 billion credit pledged to Brazil by the International Monetary Fund and Group of Seven nations in November, in return for deficit reduction, was in the U.S. national interest.

MEXICO CITY -- Two months ago, just as Mexican leaders began proclaiming that the nation's economy was on the mend, Juan Dominguez finally gave up on his small business and joined the growing ranks of street vendors."

MEXICO CITY -- Mexico's economic crisis deepened, sending the peso plummeting 20 percent further yesterday, after the government adopted an emergency plan late Wednesday night to allow the currency to trade freely against the U.S. dollar.The decision to float the peso was a desperate attempt by the government of President Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Leon, who took office only three weeks ago, to calm the financial markets after several days of intense speculation and plunging indexes.The peso was previously controlled by a trading band that let it fall not much lower than 3.46 pesos to the dollar before the government intervened.

The following is a glossary of commonly used terms in foreign exchange and currency transactions:* European Community, or EC -- An economic and political alliance of West European countries designed to foster trade and cooperation.The 12 members are Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Italy, Denmark, Great Britain, Ireland, Spain, Portugal and Greece.* European currency unit, or ECU -- An artificial currency made up of a market basket of EC currencies.* European rate mechanism, or ERM -- The system that fixes the rates of 10 EC currencies to one another and to the Ecu. Each currency is allowed to fluctuate within a specified range of 2.25 percent to 6 percent against each of the others.

You know, I've been ever so hopeful that the economic slump we're suffering through will turn itself around. That's the teeny, tiny optimist in me talking. But this week, I got news that just really depressed me. What in the world could ever sway my ever-so-sunny disposition, you ask? Swiss Lotto Netherlands e-mailed me to say: "CONGRATULATIONS!!!.....YOU HAVE WON 750,000 Euros "You have been awarded 750,000 Euros in the SWISS-LOTTO Satellite Software email lottery in which e-mail addresses are picked randomly by Software powered by the internet through the worldwide website.

MINNEAPOLIS -- Big-city newspapers, once held in high regard on Wall Street for their dependable earnings and advertising influence, have never looked so cheap. On Tuesday, The McClatchy Co. agreed to unload the Minneapolis Star Tribune for $530 million - less than half the $1.2 billion it paid for the newspaper eight years ago - to a private investment group. A tax break of $160 million resulting from the sale makes the deal worth $690 million to McClatchy. But as a multiple of cash flow - a common financial benchmark - the bid was substantially less than the amounts paid for other newspapers this year, according to investment analysts.

In the most recent of his six books, Bishop Harry R. Jackson Jr. wrote that "black pastors see politics as the means of making faith real by introducing faith principles into every fiber of life." Jackson, an evangelical preacher and lead pastor at Hope Christian Church in Lanham - a largely African-American congregation of 3,000 - has been crusading to do just that. A self-described "Biblical conservative and social reformer," Jackson, 52, a consecrated bishop in the Fellowship of International Churches, is author of The Black Contract With America On Moral Values, a six-point manifesto that lays out a biblically based social agenda he says would help blacks address their most urgent needs and uplift the public at large.

He is, in the words of an expert, one of only 10 marketable players in the NBA. He was the cover boy for Sports Illustrated's year-in-review issue in 2003, his smiling face peering over the words "So Young, So Good..." He has signed big-dollar deals with Nike and EA Sports and Hallmark and Radio Shack and Got Milk, with the promise of more to come. But considering incidents that have cast him in a negative light since last summer, including his appearance on a homemade DVD in which alleged drug dealers speak of doing harm to people who cooperate with police, has Baltimore's Carmelo Anthony sullied his image?

You'd think with Pimlico Race Course's meet closing today and racing's transfer to Laurel Park on Wednesday that everything would be hunky-dory, that everyone would be looking ahead to the Maryland Million instead of cranking their necks around to look back at Pimlico. On Saturday, the Maryland Million will take place at Laurel. It is the best and most fun day of racing anywhere. I'd like to be looking ahead, too. Why, then, did I find myself attending the Maryland Thoroughbred Horsemen's Association board of directors meeting Thursday evening in Laurel?

In a tale of turtles, zoning designations and millions of dollars, officials at Carroll County General Hospital have a potential conflict with the town of Hampstead over a 267-acre parcel within town limits. Lawyers for the hospital, which owns the property, say it could be worth between $2 million and $3 million if developed. The land, however, includes a 72-acre patch inhabited by endangered bog turtles. Developing an industrial site around the turtles would be difficult, and given this and other problems, the town wants to change the parcel's zoning designation from industrial to environmentally protected.

There is a distinct sense of deja vu in the arguments that are emerging on Capitol Hill regarding congressional approval of the $40 billion loan guarantee package to Mexico following its recent peso devaluation and associated financial crisis. The same battle lines were drawn and arguments rehearsed only 18 months ago during the NAFTA debate.Then, as now, the WIFA (What's In It For America) is: substantial net job gains; a decline in immigration from Mexico; hemispherical strengthening for trade and political relations; the strategic importance of Mexican political stability for the United States; and so on. The current crisis has given some of those who opposed NAFTA to call for U.S. withdrawal from the agreement, and others to say "We told you so."

Mexico's ruling party has held power for 66 years by following unwritten rules, including: Never criticize the president in public, even if you're a former president. Never put a former president's relatives in prison, even if you're the current president.Those rules were broken last week. Former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari said publicly that, in effect, President Ernesto Zedillo had made a mess of devaluing the Mexican peso in December, touching off a financial panic.And President Zedillo threw Mr. Salinas' brother, Raul, into a maximum-security prison as having masterminded the assassination last September of the ruling party's No. 2 official.

John Thompson spoke plainly yesterday of what he would do if he were an 18-year-old with the chance to get rich playing professional basketball, just like first-round draft picks Kwame Brown, Tyson Chandler and Eddy Curry. "Probably, if I'd been in that situation, I would have done the same thing," the former Georgetown men's basketball coach said, referring to three of the top four picks in Wednesday night's NBA draft. But Thompson, the keynote speaker at the Associated Press Sports Editors convention at the Wyndham hotel downtown, didn't mute his earlier calls for an age requirement for entrance to basketball's highest league.

It was nearly the end of the meeting before the question was asked: What about the stock price? Shares of Ciena Corp. tumbled 18 percent, or $11.81, yesterday to close at $53.31. During morning trading, the stock price hit $51.44 - a 21 percent drop from Friday's closing price. "There are big market factors occurring," Patrick H. Nettles, Ciena's chairman and chief executive officer, said yesterday at the company's annual shareholders meeting in Linthicum. "I think we are seeing the result of investor emotions as much as investor logic."