A roundup of economic news from around the Web.

—China and Dollar Martin Wolf looks at China’s relationship to the dollar. “The big point, however, is that China cannot pursue its mercantilist strategy and also avoid accumulating dollar liabilities of doubtful long-term value. This is the “Triffin dilemma”, named after the Belgian economist, Robert Triffin, who pointed out, in the 1960s, that in a fixed-rate system the supplier of reserves will end up running deficits in its basic balance of payments (before monetary financing). These must threaten the system’s stability, as Mr Hu argues. The solution for China is to stop buying dollars on the current scale and allow the renminbi to rise faster. That would surely create adjustment problems. But those adjustments are in China’s own interests. Otherwise, it will end up accumulating vastly more reserves, continue distorting its own financial system and even risk losing monetary control. Now, with inflation a concern, the case for allowing the currency to adjust much more rapidly upwards is surely overwhelmingly strong.”

—Taxes: Howard Gleckman breaks down what the president said and didn’t say on taxes in the State of the Union. “What he said: We need a competitive corporate tax system with low rates and fewer tax preferences that raises the same amount of money as the current corporate tax system. What he didn’t say: How we’d get there and–except for a passing reference to ending oil subsidies–which business tax breaks he’d repeal. What role business must play in helping reduce the deficit. What he said: We should simplify the individual tax code. What he didn’t say: That’d he’d take the lead in such an initiative. Instead he said merely that he would be “prepared to join” a congressional effort to restructure the individual code. This moves the nation about six inches in the direction of a serious rewrite of the tax law. What he said: Rich people should pay higher taxes What he didn’t say: Everybody needs to pay higher taxes”

—Law School: Catherine Rampell notes that law school applications have dropped. “The number of people taking the Law School Admission Test is also down. For the December 2010 test, the number of test-takers fell 16.5 percent from the previous year, to 42,096. Year-to-date (June through December of 2010), testing volume was 129,414. That’s a decline of 10 percent compared with the same period a year ago. Presumably this has something to do with the economic upturn — fewer people are trying to ride out a bad economy by going back to school — as well as a concern that law school in particular isn’t the guaranteed money-maker many once thought it was.”