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Photograph Source: Phil Dolby – CC BY 2.0

Empires often follow the course of a Greek tragedy, bringing about precisely the fate that they sought to avoid. That certainly is the case with the American Empire as it dismantles itself in not-so-slow motion.

The basic assumption of economic and diplomatic forecasting is that every country will act in its own self-interest. Such reasoning is of no help in today’s world. Observers across the political spectrum are using phrases like “shooting themselves in their own foot” to describe U.S. diplomatic confrontation with Russia and allies alike. But nobody thought that The American Empire would self-destruct this fast.

For more than a generation the most prominent U.S. diplomats have warned about what they thought would represent the ultimate external threat: an alliance of Russia and China dominating Eurasia. America’s economic sanctions and military confrontation have driven these two countries together, and are driving other countries into their emerging Eurasian orbit.

American economic and financial power was expected to avert this fate. During the half-century since the United States went off gold in 1971, the world’s central banks have operated on the Dollar Standard, holding their international monetary reserves in the form of U.S. Treasury securities, U.S. bank deposits and U.S. stocks and bonds. The resulting Treasury-bill Standard has enabled America to finance its foreign military spending and investment takeover of other countries simply by creating dollar IOUs. U.S. balance-of-payments deficits end up in the central banks of payments-surplus countries as their reserves, while Global South debtors need dollars to pay their bondholders and conduct their foreign trade.

This monetary privilege – dollar seignorage – has enabled U.S. diplomacy to impose neoliberal policies on the rest of the world, without having to use much military force of its own except to grab Near Eastern oil.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Zoltan Pozsar Warns Russian Sanctions Threaten Dollar’s Reserve Status

March 2, 2022

Zoltan Pozsar Warns Russian Sanctions Threaten Dollar’s Reserve Status

Over the weekend, the world gasped in shock when Western powers announced that the nuclear option would be used against Russia in retaliation for its invasion of Ukraine – sanctions against the country’s central bank and targeted expulsions of key banks from SWIFT, a move which has effectively locked Russia out of the western financial system and left its vast oil export industry – a key lifeline for the Putin regime – in limbo. But the real reason for the shock is that this was the first time the global reserve currency was weaponized against a G20 economy, setting a clear precedent for how the west would and could respond to any other nation that followed in Russia’s footsteps (something which China is clearly contemplating vis-a-vis Taiwan, and is carefully studying just how the west responds to Moscow),

As a result, and following this week’s dramatic freeze of the Russian central bank overseas assets, has prompted some to question just why countries build foreign currency reserves at all and, more broadly, whether the unprecedented western response to Russia hasn’t jeopardized the dollar’s reserve status.

In what one Washington lawyer described to Reuters as the “biggest hammer in the toolshed”, the G7 and European Union governments blocked certain Russian banks’ access to the SWIFT international payment system and also went a step further than many expected by paralyzing about half the Russian central bank’s $630 billion worth of foreign currency and gold reserves. In doing so, the west has undermined Moscow’s ability to defend the ruble – which has lost up to a quarter of its value since Friday alone – and recapitalize sanctioned banks as they face nascent bank runs. In fact, as some admitted, it was the explicit intention of the west to spark bank runs and to crash the Russian financial system from within.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

US Dollar’s Status as Dominant “Global Reserve Currency” at 25-Year Low. And USD Exchange Rates?

January 2, 2022

US Dollar’s Status as Dominant “Global Reserve Currency” at 25-Year Low. And USD Exchange Rates?

Euro’s 20th birthday after dreams of “Dollar Parity” put on ice during Euro Debt Crisis. Central banks still leery of Chinese renminbi.

The global share of US-dollar-denominated exchange reserves declined to 59.15% in the third quarter, from 59.23% in the second quarter, hobbling along a 26-year low for the past four quarters, according to the IMF’s COFER data released today. Dollar-denominated foreign exchange reserves are Treasury securities, US corporate bonds, US mortgage-backed securities, and other USD-denominated assets that are held by foreign central banks.

In 2001 – the moment just before the euro officially arrived as bank notes and coins – the dollar’s share was 71.5%. Since then, it has dropped by 12.3 percentage points.

In 1977, when inflation was raging in the US, the dollar’s share was 85%. And when it looked like the Fed wasn’t doing anything about inflation that was threatening to spiral out of control, foreign central banks began dumping USD-denominated assets, and the dollar’s share collapsed.

The plunge of the dollar’s share bottomed out in 1991, after the inflation crackdown in the early 1980s caused inflation to abate. As confidence grew that the Fed would keep inflation more or less under control, the dollar’s share then surged by 25 percentage points until 2000 when the euro arrived.

Since then, over those 20 years, other central banks have been gradually diversifying away from US dollar holdings (year-end data, except for 2021 = Q3):

Not included in global foreign exchange reserves are the assets held by a central bank in its own currency, such as the Fed’s holdings of dollar-denominated assets, the ECB’s holdings of euro-denominated assets, or the Bank of Japan’s holdings of yen-denominated assets.

Impact of exchange rates on exchange reserves.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

When The Global Monetary Reset Happens, Don’t You Dare Forget Who To Blame

November 17, 2021

When The Global Monetary Reset Happens, Don’t You Dare Forget Who To Blame

Submitted by QTR’s Fringe Finance

“What you know you can’t explain, but you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life, that there’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought you to me. Do you know what I’m talking about?”

-Morpheus, The Matrix

Many of these people, myself included, know deep down that something went horribly askew when we were taken off the gold standard in 1971.

And today, many people witnessing soaring inflation are starting to feel their spider senses tingle even more: something is definitely wrong with “the system”.

But not everybody can put their finger on exactly what is wrong. This is what makes our system so nefarious to begin with: its complexity. It’s also why I try to explain these feelings for people in podcasts like my most recent one discussing why now must be the time we start to discuss inflation seriously.

Left unchecked by gold, it took us less than half a century to destroy our currency, run production out of the U.S., become reliant on importing almost everything we use on a daily basis, turn the country into a third world country and run up a nearly $30 trillion national tab, all while the Fed has stacked almost $10 trillion in subprime crap onto its balance sheet.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How long will the US dollar’s dominance last?

August 29, 2021

How long will the US dollar’s dominance last?

301 AD was a big year for the Roman Empire.

That was the year that, amid spiraling inflation, Emperor Diocletian issued his Edict on Maximum Prices, essentially fixing prices of just about everything across the Roman Empire.

The price of wheat, a day labor’s wages, a quart of olive oil, transportation rates– everything was established by the Emperor’s edict, and enforced under penalty of death.

Diocletian’s edict infamously didn’t work, and the empire plunged into even more severe inflation.

The other big event of 301 AD was the introduction of the solidus gold coin, roughly 4.5 grams of nearly pure gold.

And while the Romans had a history of debasing their other coins, like the silver denarius and sesterce, the government actually did a pretty good job maintaining the value and purity of the gold solidus.

Even hundreds of years later, after the western empire in Rome had fallen to the barbarians, and imperial power was concentrated in Byzantium, the gold solidus was still approximately as pure as it was in the early 300s.

That’s an extraordinary track record for currency stability. Confidence in the gold solidus was so high, in fact, that various tribes and kingdoms around the world used the coin for trade and savings.

This became a source of pride for the Byzantine Empire; Justinian I, who ruled in the mid 500s, stated that the solidus was “accepted everywhere from end to end of the Earth,” and that it was “admired by all men in all kingdoms, because no kingdom has a currency that can be compared to it.”

It wasn’t until the mid 11th century, more than seven centuries after the introduction of the solidus, that an Emperor began to debase the currency.

Just like Hemingway described going bankrupt, the debasement of the solidus was gradual… then sudden.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Real Russian Threat

June 24, 2021

The Real Russian Threat

I’ve written for years about different nations’ persistent efforts to dethrone the U.S. dollar as the leading global reserve currency and the main medium of exchange.

At the same time, I’ve said that such processes don’t happen overnight; instead, they happen slowly and incrementally over decades.

The dollar displaced sterling as the leading reserve currency in the twentieth century, but it took thirty years, from 1914 to 1944, to happen. The decline started with the outbreak of World War I and the UK’s liquidation of assets and money printing to finance the war.

It ended with the Bretton Woods agreement in 1944 that cemented the dollar’s link to gold as the new global standard.

Even after the gold link was broken in 1971, the dollar standard remained because there was no good alternative. Then the 1974 deal with Saudi Arabia (along with other OPEC cartel members) to price oil in dollars created increased global demand for the dollar.

Because of the deal, dollars would be deposited with U.S. banks, so they could be loaned to developing economies, who could then buy U.S. manufactured goods and agricultural products.

This would help the global economy and allow the U.S. to maintain price stability. The Saudis would get more customers and a stable dollar, and the U.S. would force the world to accept dollars because everyone would need dollars to buy oil.

By the way, behind this “deal” was a not so subtle threat to invade Saudi Arabia and take the oil by force.

I personally discussed these invasion plans in the White House with Henry Kissinger’s deputy, Helmut Sonnenfeldt, at the time. But the Petro-Dollar plan worked brilliantly, and the invasion never happened.

Despite all this, nearly 50 years later, the erosion of the dollar’s role has begun and is visible in many metrics.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

US Dollar’s Status as Dominant “Global Reserve Currency” Drops to 25-Year Low

April 1, 2021

US Dollar’s Status as Dominant “Global Reserve Currency” Drops to 25-Year Low

Central banks getting nervous about the Fed’s drunken Money Printing and the US Government’s gigantic debt? But still leery of the Chinese renminbi.

The global share of US-dollar-denominated exchange reserves dropped to 59.0% in the fourth quarter, according to the IMF’s COFER data released today. This matched the 25-year low of 1995. These foreign exchange reserves are Treasury securities, US corporate bonds, US mortgage-backed securities, US Commercial Mortgage Backed Securities, etc. held by foreign central banks.

Since 2014, the dollar’s share has dropped by 7 full percentage points, from 66% to 59%, on average 1 percentage point per year. At this rate, the dollar’s share would fall below 50% over the next decade:

Not included in global foreign exchange reserves are the Fed’s own holdings of dollar-denominated assets, its $4.9 trillion in Treasury securities and $2.2 trillion in mortgage-backed securities, that it amassed as part of its QE.

The US dollar’s status as the dominant global reserve currency is a crucial enabler for the US government to keep ballooning its public debt, and for Corporate America’s relentless efforts to create the vast trade deficits by offshoring production to cheap countries, most prominently China and Mexico. They’re all counting on the willingness of other central banks to hold large amounts of dollar-denominated debt.

But it seems, central banks have been getting just a tad nervous and want to diversify their holdings – but ever so slowly, and not all of a sudden, given the magnitude of this thing, which, if mishandled, could blow over everyone’s house of cards.

20 years of decline.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

wolfstreet, wolf richter, us dollar, world reserve currency, central banks, money printing, fed, us federal reserve, money, us debt, debt, united states

The U.S. Dollar Could Be Nearing Its “End Game”

February 6, 2021

The U.S. Dollar Could Be Nearing Its “End Game”

From foreign countries trying to dethrone the dollar’s hegemony as global reserve currency, all the way to rising inflation weakening it… the U.S. dollar is in trouble.

Pundits like Jim Rickards said (back in 2016): “The dollar won’t lose its reserve currency status overnight” — and he was right. But a new and disturbing signal could finally be revealing the end game.

You can see the dollar’s loss of about 10% value against other currencies and its persistent downward trend since March 2020 reflected in the dollar index chart below:

dollar index chart from March 2020-February 2021

To get an even better idea of that persistent downward trend, we need to look all the way back to 2002, when the dollar index (DXY) peaked around 117. Not only is today’s dollar worth 10% less than last year’s – it’s 25% weaker than in 2002.

In fact, one forecast reported on Bloomberg in June 2020 called for a 35% decline in value by the end of 2021, which would leave the dollar index at 65. If that plays out, the index would be reporting its lowest value in at least 35 years.

In addition, a new Bloomberg report gave three reasons why the “dollar is now trading at the lowest level against its peers since 2018”:

1) Sharp widening in the U.S. current-account [trade] deficit.
2) Rise of the euro.
3) A Federal Reserve that would do little in response to any weakness in the greenback.

There is no doubt the trade deficit is a problem. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the gap between imports and exports is at its widest since 2006. That won’t help the dollar recover.

The Fed’s inflation policy isn’t likely to help the dollar much because it “printed” itself into a corner with its loose monetary policy. The same Bloomberg piece further clarifies the Fed’s inflation strategy:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The U.S. Dollar Collapse Is Greatly Exaggerated

September 1, 2020

The U.S. Dollar Collapse Is Greatly Exaggerated

The US Dollar Index has lost 10% from its March highs and many press comments have started to speculate about the likely collapse of the US Dollar as world reserve currency due to this weakness.

These wild speculations need to be debunked.

The US Dollar year-to-date (August 2020) has strengthened relative to 96 out of 146 currencies in the Bloomberg universe. In fact, the U.S. Fed Trade-Weighted Broad Dollar Index has strengthened by 2.3% in the same period, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

The speculation about countries abandoning the U.S. Dollar as reserve currency is easily denied. The Bank Of International Settlements reports in its June 2020 report that global US-dollar denominated debt is at a decade-high. In fact, US-dollar denominated debt issuances year-to-date from emerging markets have reached a new record.

China’s dollar-denominated debt has risen as well in 2020. Since 2015, it has increased 35% while foreign exchange reserves fell 10%.

The US Dollar Index (DXY) shows that the United States currency has only really weakened relative to the yen and the euro, and this is based on optimistic expectations of European and Japanese economic recovery. The Federal Reserve’s dovish announcements may be seen as a cause of the dollar decline, but the evidence shows that the European Central Bank (BOJ) and the Bank Of Japan (BOJ) conduct much more aggressive policies than the U.S. while economic recovery stalls. Recent purchasing manager index (PMI) declines have shown that hopes of a rapid recovery in Europe and Japan are widely exaggerated, and the Daily Activity Index published by Bloomberg confirms it. Furthermore, the balance sheet of the ECB is at the end of August more than 54% of the eurozone GDP and the BOJ´s is 123% versus the Federal Reserve’s 33%.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Goldman Warns “Real Concerns Are Emerging” About The Dollar As Reserve Currency; Goes “All In” Gold

July 28, 2020

Goldman Warns “Real Concerns Are Emerging” About The Dollar As Reserve Currency; Goes “All In” Gold

In his morning critique of goldbugs’ resurgent optimism about the future of gold, which has exploded alongside the price of precious metals, which in turn have been tracking the real 10Y rate tick for tick…

… Rabobank’s Michael Every argued from the familiar position of one who views the modern monetary system as immutable, and bounded by the “Venn Diagram” confines of the dollar as a reserve currency and financial assets as a bedrock of modern household wealth, of which as Paul Tudor Jones recently calculated, there is just over $300 trillion worth, compared to just $10 trillion in total gold value.

Indeed, according to Every, the surge in gold is meaningless because “if you buy gold, technically that is going to make you money. And yet that money is still going to be priced in US DOLLARS – and that gives the whole game away.”

Like fans of the England football team, gold fans can dream of the distant past when gold was the centre of the global monetary system; but they can keep dreaming if they think those days are ever going to return. Gold may be an appreciating asset, but all the evidence suggests that it won’t be one that is of any direct relevance to day-to-day life, finance, and business. Your currency won’t be tied to it. You won’t get paid in it. You won’t spend in it or save in it (other than to the switch back to US Dollars). You won’t be doing deals in it or importing in it.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Gold Is Security in a Dollar Crisis

June 18, 2020

Gold Is Security in a Dollar Crisis

Last week, we reported Yale economist Stephen Roach’s warning that “the era of the US dollar’s ‘exorbitant privilege’ as the world’s primary reserve currency is coming to an end.”

Roach isn’t the only person in the mainstream sounding the alarm about the dollar’s demise. In a note published last week, Guggenheim Investments Chief Investment Officer Scott Minerd said that while “there are no signs the world is questioning the value of the US dollar” right now, it’s clear that the greenback is “slowly losing market share as the world’s reserve currency.”

And he said buying gold is the key to offsetting the dollar’s decline.

With the Fed going all-in on financing the government deficit, the US dollar could be at risk to negative speculation of its status as the dominant global reserve currency. Investing in gold may help offset this trend.”

Even before the coronavirus pandemic, Peter Shiff was warning about a looming dollar crisis. During an interview on RT last September, he warned that America’s “fiscal profligacy” was going to sink the dollar.

What has enabled this over the years has been the world’s willingness to hold US dollars as the primary reserve currency and to continue to loan money to Americans and to the US government so we can continue to live beyond our means. We can have enormous government programs that we don’t pay for and we can consume all kinds of goods that we don’t manufacture, and we can live in an economy based on consumption and debt without having to save or produce. The world has done that for us. And I think this is what’s going to come to an end. I think we’re going to see a collapse in the value of the dollar, and when the dollar does collapse, America’s power is going to dissipate.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

As Economies Reopen, the USD Faces this Triple Threat

June 8, 2020

As Economies Reopen, the USD Faces this Triple Threat

The U.S. dollar’s status as the global reserve currency has been under attack for many years. But today, these attacks seem to be expanding and intensifying. Let’s look at three recent developments.

Big Bank Bets Against the Dollar

Now that most state economies have at least started to reopen, Goldman Sachs is betting against the dollar, according to a recent CNBC article:

In a note over the weekend, Goldman strategists said that while they had maintained that it was too early to look for “outright and sustained Dollar downside given the balance of cyclical risks,” shorts on the dollar now looked attractive in certain currency crosses.

The article continued by explaining precisely what “short selling” the dollar means:

Short selling a currency involves borrowing that currency, selling it at the current market price and then waiting for the price to fall in order to buy the currency back at a lower price and return the loan.

Specifically, Goldman is betting on the Norwegian krone to outperform the dollar, and thinks the krone is well positioned to do just that.

Recent performance of the dollar (DXY) could be revealing that Goldman Sachs is off to a good start with their bet:

U.S. Dollar Index and 50-Day Moving Average

As you can see at the far right of the chart, the dollar’s value is dropping close to levels not seen since early 2018. It’s also severely under the moving average.

Meanwhile, the krone is still above the moving average, and doesn’t appear nearly as “flat” as the dollar.

But the krone is not the only challenge to the dollar’s hegemony; changes to China’s currency represents another one.

4-Letter Potential “Nightmare” for the U.S. Dollar

Right now, the main currency in China is the yuan.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Vladimir Putin Sums Up The New World Order In 5 Words

November 16, 2019

Vladimir Putin Sums Up The New World Order In 5 Words

Russian President Vladimir Putin succinctly summarized the shifting tectonic plates of geopolitics.

Vladimir Putin: “The Dollar Enjoyed Great Trust Around The World. But For Some Reason It Is Being Used As A Political Weapon, Imposing Restrictions. Many Countries Are Now Turning Away From The Dollar As A Reserve Currency. US Dollar Will Collapse Soon.”

First he explained the status quo…

“The Dollar enjoyed great trust around the world. But, for some reason, it is now being used as a political weapon to impose restrictions.”

Then Putin explained the consequences…

“Many countries are now turning away from the Dollar as a Reserve Currency.”

And ultimately what happens…

“US Dollar will collapse soon.”

And just like that, it was gone. Remember “nothing lasts forever”…

As Bloomberg reports, Russia’s central bank has been the largest buyer of gold in the past few years.

Of course, Putin is not the first (and won’t be the last) to suggest the end is nigh for the dollar…

The World Bank’s former chief economist wants to replace the US dollar with a single global super-currency, saying it will create a more stable global financial system.

“The dominance of the greenback is the root cause of global financial and economic crises,” Justin Yifu Lin told Bruegel, a Brussels-based policy-research think tank. “The solution to this is to replace the national currency with a global currency.”

Warren Buffett once explained that “for 240 years it’s been a terrible mistake to bet against America, and now is no time to start.”

We don’t mean to rain on his parade too much, but the following charts suggest time is ticking, as the world transitions from dollars to non-fiat reserves…

Is the Global Dollar in Jeopardy?

November 6, 2019

Is the Global Dollar in Jeopardy?

The US Federal Reserve is right to be concerned, if not worried, about the greenback’s dominance of international trade and finance. Fortunately for consumers, growing potential competitive pressure – call it the Libra effect – creates an incentive to make the existing system work better.

WASHINGTON, DC – Since the end of World War II, the United States dollar has been at the heart of international finance and trade. Over the decades, and despite the many ups and downs of the global economy, the dollar retained its role as the world’s favorite reserve asset. When times are tough or uncertainty reigns, investors flock to dollar-denominated assets, particularly US Treasury debt – ironically, even when there is a financial crisis in the US. As a result, the Federal Reserve – which sets US dollar interest rates – has enormous sway over economic conditions around the world.

For all the associated innovation evident since the launch of the decentralized blockchain-based currency Bitcoin in 2009, the arrival of modern cryptocurrencies has had essentially zero impact on the global taste for dollars. Promoters of these new forms of money still have their hopes, of course, that they can challenge the existing financial system, but the impact on global portfolios has proved minimal. The most powerful central banks (the Fed, the European Central Bank, and a few others) are still running the global money show.

Suddenly, however, there is a new, potentially serious player in town: Facebook’s Libra initiative. Facebook and a currently shifting coalition of firms are planning to launch their own private form of money that would, in some sense, be secured by holdings of major currencies.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Our Currency, Your Problem

November 4, 2019

Our Currency, Your Problem

“Major movers” such as China, Russia and the European Union have a strong “motivation to de-dollarize,” said Korin, co-director at the energy and security think tank, on Wednesday.

“We don’t know what’s going to come next, but what we do know is that the current situation is unsustainable.”

– Anne Korin, Institute for the Analysis of Global Security.

Irrespective of where you reside in the world, chances are you feel some sense of unease, a nagging concern for the future and a deep instinctual understanding that an era you knew and navigated your entire life is slipping away and won’t be coming back.

We’ve been witnessing widespread protest and unrest across countries with distinct political and economic systems, such as Hong Kong, France, Chile, Spain, Ecuador, Lebanon and Venezuela just to name a few. Those with vested interests and an ideological solution to sell insist it’s all because of socialism, capitalism or some other ism, but the truth is this goes far deeper than that. What’s actually happening is the geopolitical and economic paradigm that’s dominated the planet for decades is failing, and rather than address the failure in any real sense, elites globally are have decided to loot everything they possibly can until the house of cards comes crashing down.

This chart is almost as disturbing as the charts of negative yielding debt.
The entire financial system is a farce and a fraud. It’s all smoke and mirrors, a coverup machine for elitist looting.

Despite people with vested interests reassuring you this is normal, it is not. https://twitter.com/zerohedge/status/1189919094331588608 …

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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