The death of the dollar?
POSTED BY: SIGNYM
UPDATED: Sunday, August 23, 2026 15:35
VIEWED: 15891
PAGE 4 of 15
Thanks for keeping up with this. I finally sat down and read it. Interesting stuff that isn't normally covered in the general M$M.
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I don't take very seriously the Saudi threat to dump Treasuries if the NOPEC bill is passed. After all, the Saudi Kingdom has most of its wealth in dollars and Treasuries (well, that and its heavy investment in Silicon Valley unicorn farts) and any attempt to dump either one would simply torpedo the Saudi Soveriegn Wealth Fund, but this article has a number of interesting charts
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04-04/petrodollar-panic-saudis-thr
eaten-dump-usd-oil-trades-over-opec-anti-trust-bill
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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND
America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876 .
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I hadn't realized that Russia and China had already agreed to dump the dollar on mutual trade, I thought that would be a G20 announcment.
I take everything that Pepe Escobar writes seriously.
Quote:How about addressing those fluorocarbons being massively emitted in your northeastern manufacturing area, then, Mr Xi?
ESCOBAR: Putin, Xi to Cut US Dollar Out of Eurasian Trade; US Elites Panic
Something extraordinary began with a short walk in St. Petersburg last Friday.
After a stroll, they took a boat on the Neva River, visited the legendary Aurora cruiser, and dropped in to examine the Renaissance masterpieces at the Hermitage. Cool, calm, collected, all the while it felt like they were mapping the ins and outs of a new, emerging, multipolar world.
Chinese President Xi Jinping was the guest of honor of Russian President Vladimir Putin. It was Xi’s eighth trip to Russia since 2013, when he announced the New Silk Roads, or Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
First they met in Moscow, signing multiple deals. The most important is a bombshell: a commitment to develop bilateral trade and cross-border payments using the ruble and the yuan, bypassing the U.S. dollar.
Then Xi visited the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), Russia’s premier business gathering, absolutely essential for anyone to understand the hyper-complex mechanisms inherent in the construction of Eurasian integration. I addressed some of SPIEF’s foremost discussions and round tables here.
In Moscow, Putin and Xi signed two joint statements – whose key concepts, crucially, are “comprehensive partnership”, “strategic interaction” and “global strategic stability.”
In his St. Petersburg speech, Xi outlined the “comprehensive strategic partnership”. He stressed that China and Russia were both committed to green, low carbon sustainable development.
Quote:
He linked the expansion of BRI as “consistent with the UN agenda of sustainable development” and praised the interconnection of BRI projects with the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU). He emphasized how all that was consistent with Putin’s idea of a Great Eurasian Partnership. He praised the “synergetic effect” of BRI linked to South-South cooperation.
And crucially, Xi stressed that China “won’t seek development to the expense of environment”; China “will implement the Paris climate agreement”; and China is “ready to share 5G technology with all partners” on the way towards a pivotal change in the model of economic growth.
So what about Cold War 2.0?
It was obvious this was slowly brewing for the past five to six years. Now the deal is in the open. The Russia-China comprehensive strategic partnership is thriving; not as an allied treaty, but as a consistent road map towards Eurasia integration and the consolidation of the multipolar world.
Unipolarism – via its demonization matrix – had first accelerated Russia’s pivot to Asia. Now, the U.S.-driven trade war has facilitated the consolidation of Russia as China’s top strategic partner.
Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs better get ready to dismiss virtually everyday statements coming, for instance, from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Joseph Dunford, when he alleges that Moscow aims to use non-strategic nuclear weapons in the European theater. It’s part of a non-stop process – now in high gear – of manufacturing hysteria by frightening NATO allies with the Russian “threat.”
Moscow better get ready to dodge and counteract reams of reports such as the latest from the RAND corporation, which outlines – what else? – Cold War 2.0 against Russia.
In 2014, Russia did not react to sanctions imposed by Washington. Then, it would have sufficed to merely brandish the threat of default on $700 billion in external debt. That would have killed the sanctions.
Now, there’s ample debate inside Russian intelligence circles on what to do in case Moscow faces the prospect of being cut off the CHIPS-SWIFT financial clearing system.
A 1936 map of Eurasia.
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It's far more nuanced than my thinking, but I'm happy to see I got the essentials right:
Quote:The fact that they're bypassing the dollar though - unprecedented. I think what took them so long was the idea they were holding on to that they should hedge their bets, given anticipated retaliation. But they now seem prepared and willing to put up with the US's retaliation (and, as per the article, you can bet there will be retaliation).
http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=63080
Originally posted by 1kiki:
Thinking about your post Signy - I think two things are going on.
1) Russia and China have been thrown into each other's arms for many years, and ... they're, finally, holding on tightly to each other. China has concluded there's no upside to dealing with the US on anything vital. ...
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Pepe Escobar sounds like a cartoon frog drug cartel leader.
Proving the theory that there's nothing new under the sun, the internet already thought of that too.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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This is just a notion that I haven't thought thru but here it is:
People have been talking for years about how unstable the dollar is. And many countries are bypassing the petrodollar for things like oil and other energy contracts, and bypassing the dollar and SWIFT for general trade. At least one major country has already significantly de-dollarized, and supposedly others are starting to follow along.
But what if the dollar is still too big to fail? What if too many countries have too many dollars and dollar-denominated assets to let it go belly-up (at least, in the nearby future)?
Anyway, I need to think about it, but figured I'd put it out there.
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Russia and China have been waffling around about what to do about the dollar for a few years now. For a while it looked like Putin would be willing to settle on trading in the Euro, but with Brexit and Italy and the other nationalist movements rattling the EU, plus the fact that the EU keeps caving in to whatever sanctions the USA imposes I think he dumped the idea.
China put in a bid to be included in the SDR (the IMF's Special Drawing Rights, which is a basket of currencies that the IMF would be willing to lend a central bank in case of emergency, and CNY (Chinese yuan) does indeed make up 19% of the SDR (just below the 20% required to have a vote in IMF policy!) but I think the Chinese have also abandoned that plan. China also created an oil futures market and the Shanghai gold exchange which would theoretically take over the oil trade (basically gold-for-oil) which seems to be doing good business, but has not taken over the world oil market.
There is a non-USA SWIFT in operation. Gold-backed national crypto is (or was) under consideration. Venezuela is experimenting with an oil-backed crypto.
What I think is that the Eurasian world is coalescing around something called the "gold trade note". Gold would be a way of valuing trade goods ... 100,000 tons of wheat is worth a half-ton of gold, a million barrels of oil for 1.5 tons of gold ... using gold as a ledger, nations trade for goods at negotiated prices and at the end of the year outstanding balances are settled in gold. This doesn't mean that the various nations would get rid of their currencies, only that international trade would be valued and settled in gold and not clunky currency swaps or the USD. I think this would work in parallel with the non-USA SWIFT bank exchange, which would be settling non-gold debts and payments (loans, credit card use in non-"home" countries) etc but where one ends and the other begins ... not sure.
The rest of the world would still be using the USD, so there will be a dual-universe system, it's just that the dollar universe would be getting smaller and smaller. Also, what has been speculated is that within the USD universe, the value of the dollar would just keep going up and up ... until it disappears.
Those are some thoughts, anyway.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND
America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876 .
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That's a good point Kiki.
Dollar or no dollar, the US has the biggest war machine on the planet. It's not as if the dollar would just disappear into nothing overnight.
I don't imagine the US goes out in a whimper.
I think the death of the dollar is probably the beginning if WWIII.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:This whole arena is new to me, so I'm just trying to puzzle out the basics.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Russia and China have been waffling around about what to do about the dollar for a few years now. For a while it looked like Putin would be willing to settle on trading in the Euro, but with Brexit and Italy and the other nationalist movements rattling the EU, plus the fact that the EU keeps caving in to whatever sanctions the USA imposes I think he dumped the idea.
China put in a bid to be included in the SDR (the IMF's Special Drawing Rights, which is a basket of currencies that the IMF would be willing to lend a central bank in case of emergency, and CNY (Chinese yuan) does indeed make up 19% of the SDR (just below the 20% required to have a vote in IMF policy!) but I think the Chinese have also abandoned that plan. China also created an oil futures market and the Shanghai gold exchange which would theoretically take over the oil trade (basically gold-for-oil) which seems to be doing good business, but has not taken over the world oil market.
There is a non-USA SWIFT in operation. Gold-backed national crypto is (or was) under consideration. Venezuela is experimenting with an oil-backed crypto.
What I think is that the Eurasian world is coalescing around something called the "gold trade note". Gold would be a way of valuing trade goods ... 100,000 tons of wheat is worth a half-ton of gold, a million barrels of oil for 1.5 tons of gold ... using gold as a ledger, nations trade for goods at negotiated prices and at the end of the year outstanding balances are settled in gold. This doesn't mean that the various nations would get rid of their currencies, only that international trade would be valued and settled in gold and not clunky currency swaps or the USD. I think this would work in parallel with the non-USA SWIFT bank exchange, which would be settling non-gold debts and payments (loans, credit card use in non-"home" countries) etc but where one ends and the other begins ... not sure.
The rest of the world would still be using the USD, so there will be a dual-universe system, it's just that the dollar universe would be getting smaller and smaller. Also, what has been speculated is that within the USD universe, the value of the dollar would just keep going up and up ... until it disappears.
Those are some thoughts, anyway.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND
America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876 .
I think the difference is, I was looking at it from the US view looking out, rather than a foreign country looking into the US.
So, foreign countries (foreign country looking into the US) have been confronted with the problem of the dollar, especially since the US has decided to 'weaponize' it. "If you don't do what we say, we'll just take our dollars and go home, so poopies on you!" Well, it's obviously far more complicated than that. But anyway, I think the other countries, looking at it from their POV, are simply making defensive maneuvers. Unless I underestimate them, it's not some evil plot to take over the world, or torpedo the dollar. They're just trying to secure their financial interactions in the world, should the US take its dollar gun and aim it at them.
Looking at it from the US POV (the US view looking out), there are a things making the dollar unstable that have nothing to do with whatever the Russians, Chinese, etc might be doing re the dollar and trade: it's the petrodollar and that depends on the Saudis keeping market dominance and enforcing the petrodollar (otherwise people will start paying for oil in non-USD, and there goes the global demand for the dollar); aside from the petrodollar the US has n
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China "Discreetly" De-Dollarizing Amid Ongoing Trade Tensions
?
https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/china-discreetly-de-dollarizing-am
id-ongoing-trade-tensions
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