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The US dollar survived the collapse of Bretton Woods in the ‘70s because its use in crude oil transactions made it the king of reserve currencies, but can it survive a collapse of petro dollars? Can the world survive the catastrophic geopolitical consquences that would follow?

There is an overriding belief that the U.S. dollar can hold onto its status as the world’s king reserve currency simply because of petro dollars. But in recent years, a serious threat to this system has developed—and the risk of the dollar being dethroned is very real.

The U.S. dollar has reigned supreme since the end of WWII, when the Bretton Woods system gave it is initial power. With Bretton Woods’collapse in 1971, oil became its new saviour and kingmaker as the U.S. dollar became the prime currency for crude oil transactions.

In 1973, the U.S. made a pact with the Saudi King to conduct all crude oil trades in U.S. dollars—in return for U.S. protection of its oil fields. Because of world hunger for crude, the demand for U.S. dollars experienced a similar, sustained hunger.

The major producers of crude oil had an abundance of dollars, which was recycled back into the system to purchase dollar-denominated assets. The consumers pay for crude oil in dollars; hence, they always have to keep a steady reserve of dollars, thereby maintaining a high demand for the the currency.

This is now under threat, and history risks being repeated.

The Bretton Woods system failed due to the over valuation of the dollar as spending increased over the war in Vietnam war and America’s Great Society programs.

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

USA Losing Sovereignty to World Fiscal Mismanagement

November 21, 2015

USA Losing Sovereignty to World Fiscal Mismanagement

The IMF and many economists (domestic and foreign) are now warning that a rate hike by the U.S. Federal Reserve, no matter when, will spark a major economic crisis in the emerging markets. They see this crisis being ripe for countries with high budget deficits, such as Turkey, as well as commodity-based economies. This includes the oil exporters such as Russia and even Saudi Arabia who has now begun to issue debt.

This is holding the Federal Reserve’s feet to the fire to the point that they are losing control of their own domestic policy objectives as a consequence of the dollar becoming the WORLD’S ONLY RESERVE CURRENCY no matter what the IMF inserts into the SDR. The emerging economies have issued debt worth nearly half that of the USA without the economic strength to back up that debt. True, there is going to be a debt explosion by 2017 and this is not going to look very nice at the end of the day. Clearly, the Fed is being pressured externally to give up its domestic policy objectives to help the debt burden of everyone else. And people keep saying the dollar will go into hyperinflation? Obviously, they do not understand the world economy or that what is taking place is OUTSIDE of the United States. Sorry, the dollar is not quite ready to burn to ashes.

The Federal Reserve has called a meeting on Monday. This issue of sovereignty will come to a head. The Fed has called this emergency meeting to perhaps change interest rates. The question becomes for who? The lobbying against the Fed to raise rates has been intense. My recommendation is to eliminate the 0.25% paid to banks on excess reserves and raise rates.

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

The Federal Reserve, Interest Rates and Triffin’s Paradox

November 19, 2015

The Federal Reserve, Interest Rates and Triffin’s Paradox

There is no way Fed policy can be win-win-win for all participants.

One result of the global dependence on central bank interventions is a unhealthy fixation on the slightest changes in those interventions, oops I meant policies.

Since the slightest pull-back in central bank inflation of asset bubbles could spell doom for the global economy and everyone holding those assets, the world now hangs on every pronouncement of the Federal Reserve in a state of extreme anxiety.

Why the extreme anxiety? Because any change in Fed intervention creates both winners and losers. There is no way Fed policy can be win-win-win for all participants, and to understand why we turn to Triffin’s Paradox, a.k.a. Triffin’s Dilemma.

The core of Triffin’s Paradox is that the issuer of a reserve currency must serve two quite different sets of users: the domestic economy, and the international economy.

Triffin’s Paradox has two basic parts:

1. Any nation that issues the reserve currency must run a trade deficit to supply the world with surplus currency to hold in reserve and as a result,

2. The issuing nation faces the paradox that the needs of global trading community are generally different from the needs of domestic policy makers.

The global trading community requires that the issuer of the reserve currency run trade deficits large enough to satisfy the demand for reserves, while domestic audiences want a strong export sector, i.e. a trade surplus.

You can’t have it both ways: if you want to issue a reserve currency, you have to run a trade deficit that is commensurate in size with the global demand for your currency.

Since supply and demand set price, this push-pull affects the value of the U.S. dollar: U.S. exporters want a weak dollar to spur foreign demand for their products, while foreign holders of the USD want a strong dollar that holds its value/purchasing power.

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

Will the Chinese Yuan Now Demolish the “Dollar Hegemony?”

November 14, 2015

Will the Chinese Yuan Now Demolish the “Dollar Hegemony?”

IMF boss Christine Lagarde is gung-ho about it. IMF staff is too. The Executive Board will consider it on November 30 and in all likelihood approve it. It will take effect in October 2016. Then it’s a done deal: the Chinese yuan will be added to the IMF’s currency basket, the Special Drawing Rights (SDR). A step toward becoming a major global reserve currency.

She said IMF staff had determined that the yuan meets the requirements of being a “freely usable” currency, “which is defined as being ‘widely used’ for international transactions and ‘widely traded’ in the principal foreign exchange markets.”

China also overcame other hurdles the IMF had put before it, after numerous reforms to liberalize its currency and credit markets and offer more transparency. The IMF’s Executive Board has the final say, but Lagarde will chair the meeting. And the rubber stamps are lined up on the conference room table.

Some countries, including France and Britain, have already expressed support for the change. Reuters reported that a Treasury spokesperson said that the US government has always backed the yuan’s inclusion if it met the IMF’s criteria, and would “review the IMF’s paper in that light.”

The yuan has arrived – at the elite club of big sinners and currency warriors: the dollar, the yen, the euro, and the pound.

China has long sought to give its currency more global weight, both as payments currency and ultimately as reserve currency, given the enormous size of its economy. By being included in the SDR, the yuan moves a big step closer, becoming more palatable for central banks to add to their foreign exchange reserves.

Currency analysts peg central-bank demand for the yuan at over $500 billion, according to Reuters. But global foreign exchange reserves have been shrinking since last year, as this chart by NBF Economics and Strategy shows:

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

Something Happened

October 26, 2015

Something Happened

Ben Bernanke’s memoir is out and the chatter about it inevitably turns to the sickening moments in September 2008 when “the world economy came very close to collapse.” Easy to say, but how many people know what that means? It’s every bit as opaque as the operations of the Federal Reserve itself.

There were many ugly facets to the problem but they all boiled down to global insolvency — too many promises to pay that could not be met. The promises, of course, were quite hollow. They accumulated over the decades-long process, largely self-organized and emergent, of the so-called global economy arranging itself. All the financial arrangements depended on trust and good faith, especially of the authorities who managed the world’s “reserve currency,” the US dollar.

By the fall of 2008, it was clear that these authorities, in particular the US Federal Reserve, had failed spectacularly in regulating the operations of capital markets. With events such as the collapse of Lehman and the rescue of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, it also became clear that much of the collateral ostensibly backing up the US banking system was worthless, especially instruments based on mortgages. Hence, the trust and good faith vested in the issuer of the world’s reserve currency was revealed as worthless.

The great triumph of Ben Bernanke was to engineer a fix that rendered trust and good faith irrelevant. That was largely accomplished, in concert with the executive branch of the government, by failing to prosecute banking crime, in particular the issuance of fraudulent securities built out of worthless mortgages. In effect, Mr. Bernanke (and Barack Obama’s Department of Justice), decided that the rule of law was no longer needed for the system to operate. In fact, the rule of law only hampered it.

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

The Economist Rings Out Cognitive Dollar Dissonance

October 11, 2015

**The Economist Rings Out Cognitive Dollar Dissonance**

Two years ago, prior to travelling to Sydney to present at the Annual Precious Metals Symposium, I prepared an article for the Gold Standard Institute Journal titled Cognitive Dollar Dissonance: Why a Global De-Leveraging Requires the De-Rating of the Dollar and the Remonetisation of Gold (see here). This article highlighted the growing inconsistency between those arguing on the one hand that the dollar’s role in international trade and finance was clearly diminishing; yet denying that it was in any danger of losing the near-exclusive monetary reserve status it has enjoyed since the 1940s.

This apparently contradictory yet mainstream thinking about the future of the international monetary system continues to the present day. Indeed, earlier this month the Economist magazine ran a special feature on fading US economic power replete with dollar dissonance. The experts cited note the accelerating trend towards bilateral trade settlement, say between Russia and China, who plan to finance their multiple ‘Silk Road’ infrastructure projects using their own currencies and their own development bank (The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank or AIIB: See http://www.aiib.org/). They also observe that Russia, China and the other BRICS are no longer accumulating dollar reserves (although curiously overlook that they continue to accumulate gold). They acknowledge that not only the BRICS but many other countries have repeatedly expressed their desire that the current set of global monetary arrangements should be restructured in some way, although they are not always clear as to their specific preferences.

Note the sharp contrast in these two paragraphs, both on the very same page of the Economist feature:

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

World Holds Breath, Waits for “Death of the Dollar”

September 16, 2015

World Holds Breath, Waits for “Death of the Dollar”

Dismantling the dollar hegemony one yuan at a time.

I’ve been asked many times about the impending “death of the dollar.” I know some folks who expect the dang thing to die. They’re already envisioning the spectacle. An entire industry has sprung up to prepare and equip people for the moment when the dollar dies. It’s like insurance, the theme goes: hopefully you’ll never need it.

But the dollar is a human creation, a fiat currency. It doesn’t have a life of its own. It’s managed, rigged, and manipulated. It’s an accounting entity, a (lousy) store of value, and a means of handling transactions so you don’t have to barter your first-born for a Lexus.

As longs as it’s useful, the powers that be are going to keep it around. But over the long term, the dollar will do what it has done since the Fed was put in charge of it 100 years ago: it will lose value.

And the “strong dollar” these days? Ah, the irony!

It’s causing mayhem in the emerging markets where governments, corporations, and even consumers borrowed in dollars to save on interest. Now that their currencies are collapsing against the dollar, it’s getting very expensive to service these dollar debts, and they’re going to explode, and the holders of these debts are going to eat some big losses, unless they get bailed out again.

This “strong dollar” dents US exports and boosts imports. US corporations use it liberally as an excuse for their sorry revenues and earnings.

This is the value of the dollar in relationship to other currencies. These relationships are rigged to the nth degree. They go up and down and react to a million things, including central bank jawboning and monetary policies.

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

S&P Downgrades Japan From AA- To A+ On Doubts Abenomics Will Work – Full Text

September 16, 2015

S&P Downgrades Japan From AA- To A+ On Doubts Abenomics Will Work – Full Text

Who would have thought that decades of ZIRP, an aborted attempt to hike rates over a decade ago, and the annual monetization of well over 10% of sovereign debt would lead to a toxic debt spiral, regardless of how many “Abenomics” arrows one throws at it? Apparently Standard and Poors just had its a-ha subprime flashbulb moment and moments ago, a little over 4 years after it downgraded the US from its legendary AAA-rating which led to angry phone calls from Tim Geithner and a painful US government lawsuit, downgraded Japan from AA- to A+. The reason: rising doubt Abenomics is working.

Apparently S&P has never heard of the Magic Money Tree theory concocted by economists who have never traded an asset in their lives, in which “countries that print their own currency” have nothing to fear about a 250% debt/GDP ratio. In fact, the only fear is that it is not big enough.

Expect the market’s reaction to be that since Abenomics has not worked yet, some nearly three years after it was launched then Japan will be forced to do even more of it, simply because it has no choice – it is now all in, the problem of course being that the BOJ is simply running out of stuff to monetize as even the IMF warned two weeks ago…

Here is the S&P’s full downgrade.

Japan Ratings Lowered To ‘A+/A-1’; Outlook Is Stable

OVERVIEW

Economic support for Japan’s sovereign creditworthiness has continued to weaken in the past three to four years. Despite showing initial promise, the government’s strategy to revive economic growth and end deflation appears unlikely to reverse this deterioration in the next two to three years.
We are lowering our sovereign credit ratings on Japan to ‘A+/A-1’ from ‘AA-/A-1+’.
The outlook on the long-term rating is stable.

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

Russia Is Going To Pass A Law Formally Dumping The U.S. Dollar

September 3, 2015

Russia Is Going To Pass A Law Formally Dumping The U.S. Dollar

Russian President Vladimir Putin has introduced legislation that would deal a tremendous blow to the U.S. dollar. If Putin gets his way, and he almost certainly will, the U.S. dollar will be eliminated from trade between nations that belong to the Commonwealth of Independent States. In addition to Russia, that list of countries includes Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Obviously this would not mean “the death of the dollar”, but it would be a very significant step toward the end of the era of the absolute dominance of the U.S. dollar. Most people don’t realize this, but more U.S. dollars are actually used outside of the United States than are used inside this country. If the rest of the planet decides to stop accumulating dollars, using them to trade with one another, and loaning them back to us at ultra-low interest rates, we are going to be in for a world of hurt. Unfortunately for us, it is only a matter of time until that happens.

When I first read the following excerpt from a recent RT article, I was absolutely stunned…

Russian President Vladimir Putin has drafted a bill that aims to eliminate the US dollar and the euro from trade between CIS countries.

This means the creation of a single financial market between Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and other countries of the former Soviet Union.

“This would help expand the use of national currencies in foreign trade payments and financial services and thus create preconditions for greater liquidity of domestic currency markets”, said a statement from Kremlin.

For a long time, tensions have been building between the United States and Russia over Syria, Ukraine, the price of oil and a whole host of other issues. But I didn’t anticipate that things would get to this level quite yet. It is expected that Putin’s new bill will become law, and this is only one element of a much larger trend that is now developing.

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

Why It Really All Comes Down To The Death Of The Petrodollar

August 23, 2015

Why It Really All Comes Down To The Death Of The Petrodollar

Last week, in the global currency war’s latest escalation, Kazakhstan instituted a free float for the tenge. The currency immediately plunged by some 25%.

The rationale behind the move was clear enough. The plunge in crude prices along with the relative weakness of the Russian ruble had severely strained Kazakhstan, which is central Asia’s largest crude exporter. As a quick look at a chart of the tenge’s effective exchange rate makes clear, the pressure had been mounting for quite a while and when China devalued the yuan earlier this month, the outlook for trade competitiveness worsened.

What might not be as clear (on the surface anyway) is how recent events in developing economy FX markets following the devaluation of the yuan stem from a seismic shift we began discussing late last year – namely, the death of the petrodollar system which has served to underwrite decades of dollar dominance and was, until recently, a fixture of the post-war global economic order.

In short, the world seems to have underestimated how structurally important collapsing crude prices are to global finance. For years, producers funnelled their dollar proceeds into USD assets providing a perpetual source of liquidity, boosting the financial strength of the reserve currency, leading to even higher asset prices and even more USD-denominated purchases, and so forth, in a virtuous (especially if one held US-denominated assets and printed US currency) loop. That all came to an abrupt, if quiet end last year when a confluence of economic (e.g. shale production) and geopolitical (e.g. squeeze the Russians) factors led the Saudis to, as we put it, Plaxico’d themselves and the US.

The ensuing plunge in crude meant that suddenly, the flow of petrodollars was set to dry up and FX reserves across commodity producing countries were poised to come under increased pressure. For the first time in decades, exported petrodollar capital turned negative.

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

China Provides Another Threat to Oil Prices

August 12, 2015

China Provides Another Threat to Oil Prices

First it was a stock market meltdown, now it’s a weakening currency.

China continues to present significant risks to the oil market. On August 11, China decided to devalue its currency in an effort to keep its export-driven economy competitive. The yuan fell 1.9 percent on Tuesday, the second largest single-day decline in over 20 years. The yuan dropped by another 1 percent on Wednesday.

The currency move followed shocking data that revealed that China’s exportsplummeted by 8 percent in July. A depreciation of the currency of 3 percent will provide a jolt to Chinese exporters, but will slam companies and countries that export to China.

China insisted that the devaluation was a “one-off” event. “Looking at the international and domestic economic situation, currently there is no basis for a sustained depreciation trend for the yuan,” the People’s Bank of China said in a statement.

But it also appears to be a move to allow the currency to float more freely according to market principles, something that the IMF has welcomed. “Greater exchange rate flexibility is important for China as it strives to give market-forces a decisive role in the economy and is rapidly integrating into global financial markets,” the IMF said. Although there is still quite a ways to go, the move is also seen as a prerequisite for the yuan to achieve reserve-currency status.

For oil, the move has raised concerns that oil demand will take a hit. China is the world’s largest importer of crude, and a devalued currency will make oil more expensive. On August 11, oil prices dropped to fresh six-year lows, surpassing oil’s low point from earlier this year. But with China’s economy – once the engine of global growth – suddenly looking fragile, it would be difficult to argue with any certainty that oil has hit a bottom.

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

The Rise Of The Yuan Continues: LME To Accept Renminbi As Collateral

July 28, 2015

The Rise Of The Yuan Continues: LME To Accept Renminbi As Collateral

As far-fetched as the notion may be to those who are wedded – by choice, by misguided beliefs, or by virtue of being completely beholden to the perpetuation of the status quo – to idea that the dollar will forever retain its status as the world’s reserve currency, the yuan is set to play a critical role in global finance, investment, and trade going forward.

We’ve long argued that the BRICS bank, the AIIB, and to an even greater extent, the Silk Road Fund, will help to usher in a new era of yuan hegemony in international investment and trade. A number of recent developments support this, including Beijing’s push for the renminbi to play an outsized role in loans doled out through the AIIB, the denomination of loans from the BRICS bank in yuan, and China’s aggressive investment in Pakistan and Brazil via the Silk Road initiative (here and here).

As for financial markets, China recently confirmed the impending launch of a yuan denominated gold fix which conveniently dovetailed with the LBMA’s acceptance of the first Chinese banks to participate in the twice-daily auction that determines London gold prices.

Now, in the latest sign of yuan proliferation and penetration, the renminbi will be accepted as collateral by the LME along with the dollar, the euro, the pound, and the yen.

Here’s WSJ with more:

China’s domestic stock market may be in turmoil but the country’s currency, known as the yuan or renminbi, is making a seemingly relentless push deeper into the global financial system.

The latest step: the London Metal Exchange, the world’s largest venue for trading metals where $15 trillion of metals was traded last year, is set to accept yuan as collateral for banks and brokers that trade on its platform.

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

The PetroYuan Is Born: Gazprom Now Settling All Crude Sales To China In Renminbi

June 10, 2015

The PetroYuan Is Born: Gazprom Now Settling All Crude Sales To China In Renminbi

Two topics we’ve deemed critically important to a thorough understanding of both global finance and the shifting geopolitical landscape are the death of the petrodollar and the idea of yuan hegemony.

Last November, in “How The Petrodollar Quietly Died And No One Noticed,” we said the following about the slow motion demise of the system that has served to perpetuate decades of dollar dominance:

Two years ago, in hushed tones at first, then ever louder, the financial world began discussing that which shall never be discussed in polite company – the end of the system that according to many has framed and facilitated the US Dollar’s reserve currency status: the Petrodollar, or the world in which oil export countries would recycle the dollars they received in exchange for their oil exports, by purchasing more USD-denominated assets, boosting the financial strength of the reserve currency, leading to even higher asset prices and even more USD-denominated purchases, and so forth, in a virtuous (especially if one held US-denominated assets and printed US currency) loop.

The main thrust for this shift away from the USD, if primarily in the non-mainstream media, was that with Russia and China, as well as the rest of the BRIC nations, increasingly seeking to distance themselves from the US-led, “developed world” status quo spearheaded by the IMF, global trade would increasingly take place through bilateral arrangements which bypass the (Petro)dollar entirely. And sure enough, this has certainly been taking place, as first Russia and China, together with Iran, and ever more developing nations, have transacted among each other, bypassing the USD entirely, instead engaging in bilateral trade arrangements.

Falling crude prices served to accelerate the petrodollar’s demise and in 2014, OPEC nationsdrained liquidity from financial markets for the first time in nearly two decades:

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

China Nears Global Reserve Status: “There Will Be a Reset of the Financial Industry”

May 30, 2015

China Nears Global Reserve Status: “There Will Be a Reset of the Financial Industry”

CHINA-ECONOMY-RATE-BANK-FOREX

The world is anticipating a new global reality with huge implications: China’s yuan is poised to get recognized as a global reserve currency.

In a sign of the times, the IMF has essentially rebuffed U.S. claims of currency manipulation, to instead affirm that China’s currency is “no longer undervalued” – essentially giving its approval for the inner circle what many have described as an incubating world currency.

China’s yuan currency, which Washington has long alleged was manipulated, is “no longer undervalued”, the International Monetary Fund said Tuesday.

The value of the yuan, also known as the renminbi, has been a source of tension for years, with China’s major trade partners — led by the United States — accusing Beijing of keeping it artificially low to give Chinese exporters an unfair competitive advantage, which Beijing denied.

“Our assessment now is that the substantial real effective appreciation over the past year has brought the exchange rate to a level that is no longer undervalued,” the IMF said in a statement after a consultation mission to China. (source)

#China‘s #yuan may become world currency after #IMF ‘approval’ http://t.co/OyAfKUI1XM pic.twitter.com/bArePaPpJe

— Sputnik (@SputnikInt) May 27, 2015

With longstanding U.S. opposition to China’s currency status, the IMF decision has been seen as the biggest hurdle to world reserve status. This news brings China one giant step closer to entry onto the global stage of currencies and new financial norms for Americans, as SHTF has long reported.

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

George Soros Warns “No Exaggeration” That China-US On “Threshold Of World War 3”

May 22, 2015

George Soros Warns “No Exaggeration” That China-US On “Threshold Of World War 3”

While admitting that reaching agreement between the two countries will be difficult to achieve, George Soros –speaking at The World Bank’s Bretton Woods conference this week – warned that unless the U.S. makes ‘major concessions’ and allows China’s currency to join the IMF’s basket of currencies, “there is a real danger China will align itself with Russia politically and militarily, and then the threat of world war becomes real.”

Much in global geopolitics depends on the health and trajectory of the Chinese economy, was the undertone of George Soros’ comments as he spoke this week, but as MarketWatch reports,

Billionaire investor George Soros said flatly that he’s concerned about the possibility of another world war.

…

If China’s efforts to transition to a domestic-demand led economy from an export engine falter,there is a “likelihood” that China’s rulers would foster an external conflict to keep the country together and hold on to power.

…

To avoid this scenario, Soros called on the U.S. to make a “major concession” and allow China’s currency to join the International Monetary Fund’s basket of currencies. This would make the yuan a potential rival to the dollar as a global reserve currency.

In return, China would have to make similar major concessions to reform its economy, such as accepting the rule of law, Soros said.

Allowing China’s yuan to be a market currency would create “a binding connection” between the two systems.

An agreement along these lines will be difficult to achieve, Soros said, but the alternative is so unpleasant.

“Without it, there is a real danger that China will align itself with Russia politically and militarily, and then the threat of third world war becomes real, so it is worth trying.”

And while on the topic, Soros also spoke recently, as ValueWalk notes, on the situation in Europe…

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

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