[skinster]

Tainari, you are correct. The dollar is on its way down now that loads of other countries are using their own currency.

Here is a report based on a Wall Street Journal report from a year ago. The U.S./NATO war on Russia via Ukraine is what precipitated all of this. And it's been fun to observe the changes in real time towards multipolarity. This is a fun report and amusing too for anyone who is not a fan of the declining Empire.

Some of the stuff we learn in the above report since last year:

India and Pakistan bought millions in (discount) oil and wheat from Russia in rupees.

Saudi Arabia is selling oil to China in yuan.


Other stuff that happened in this very welcome saga:


Israel, of all fake-states, has lowered the U.S. dollar reserves and embraced the yuan.

Lula in Brazil is moving towards a Latin American currency.

Russia replaced Saudi Arabia to become India's second biggest oil supplier.

Things are not looking good at all for the dollar's (near) future. But the usual suspects, as usual, want to pretend it's not happening because of course they don't put this kind of news on CNN...

Which nations is the US sanctioning, what is their GDP, how integrated are they with the global economy, do these same nations rely on the US's protection of global trade?

Can things change? Yes... Are we at the verge of a change? Yes. Is the dollar going to be dethroned soon? no... not all.

As of Feb 2023, the top 7 most sanctioned countries are:

14,081 sanctions on Russia
4191 sanctions on Iran
2643 sanctions on Syria
2133 sanctions on the DPRK
1155 sanctions on Belarus
806 sanctions on Myanmar
651 sanctions on Venezuela

[Rich]

Israel, of all fake-states,

What's fake about the Israeli state? its one of the most effective states in world history. This so called fake state has utterly owned the Muslim Arab states on the battlefield in terms of agriculture, in terms of industry, in terms of technology and in the case of the ones that don't have vast quantities of oil to sell in terms of the standards of living it has given its citizens.

And for a small state in alliance with the United States it has done something totally incredible, far from being a vassal or a subjugate of the United States, if anything Israel has made the United States into a vassal of Israel. It is American politicians who must seek the approval of Israel. not Israeli politicians that must seek the approval of the United States.

[skinster]

Israel is a temporary ethnosupremacist colony propped up by the current empire and will be gone as the empire will, sooner or later. For a state that has spent a very short history attacking all the countries it borders, including stealing their lands and resources and killing many of their people, the idea it will get away with that forever is a delusion held by Zionists.

The rise of China is notable here too. The Chinese have spoken about bringing an end to the so-called conflict and that'll no doubt include equal rights for the people living in Palestine, which will of course make a lot of Zionists leave since many would be horrified by losing their privileges, so they'll probably go back to wherever it was they came from. Just last week, Israeli media reported 28% of the settlers in the country are considering leaving.

Saudi-Iranian-Syrian peace that was brokered by the Chinese recently is also something significant here and something that has pissed off Zionists. They tried to get the Saudis onside but that lasted a few months only...

Also, the tail doesn't wag the dog. Yes, U.S. politicians pay fealty to the state because of the Israeli lobbies power today, but that will wane. And increasingly, the people are less supportive of the apartheid state as time has gone on.

So, enjoy it while it lasts.

[Rancid]

@Godstud, I heard you are shifting all of your money into Elon Musk's private currency?

[Godstud]

@Rancid that's not entirely true. I am going to beat everyone to it, and convert all my Thai/CDN currency to the Imperial Credit. These are also known as Space Bucks and even Musk's currency is a bit old-fashioned in comparison.

[skinster]

[Steve_American]

We depend on the dollar's foreign exchange rate.

It is doing fine.

IMO, talk of the dollar dying or ending is BS.

[ingliz]

@Steve_American

It might be flopping around on the floor, seemingly in its death throes. But as long as America issues dollars and dollars remain legal tender regardless of when they were issued and the world keeps spinning... It will never die. Even if the worst happens, I'd expect it to stagger on zombie-like much as Sterling does now in certain parts of the world.

[late]

"One measure of confidence in a currency as a store of value is its usage in official foreign exchange reserves. As shown in Figure 2, the dollar comprised 60 percent of globally disclosed official foreign reserves in 2021. This share has declined from 71 percent of reserves in 2000, but still far surpassed all other currencies including the euro (21 percent), Japanese yen (6 percent), British pound (5 percent), and the Chinese renminbi (2 percent). Moreover, the decline in the U.S. dollar share has been taken up by a wide range of other currencies, rather than by a single other currency. Thus, while countries have diversified their reserve holdings somewhat over the past two decades, the dollar remains by far the dominant reserve currency.





If you want to beat that dead horse into a greasy stain, there is more at the link:

https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/the-international-role-of-the-u-s-dollar-20211006.html

[skinster]

[late]

Gold

If you stopped using gold as jewelry, and somehow replaced it in practical applications, like computers...

If you gathered up all the gold...

You still wouldn't have enough to go back to a gold standard.

I did a post immediately above yours using people that know what they are talking about.

Pay attention.

[Steve_American]

https://twit[==]ter.com/apocalypseos/status/1692672265136332942?s=20
You want to buy gold, and you give me paper money for it.

This post brings up a few things.
1] If gold is so valuable and paper money is so worthless, why is the seller willing to take paper money for it?
2] AFAIK, gold as the only money was fine for keeping inflation from happening.
BUT, it had other problems. In the US the economy was growing very fast and so was the population. The supply of gold could never expand fast enough to provide the money the economy needed to keep up with the growing size of the economy. The velocity of money was always limited, that is it could not be increased fast enough to keep up with the demand. The result was paper money "bills" being issued by banks, which were not backed by anything. In and after a Bank Panic these bills usually had zero value.
3] So, many nations also issued paper money to expand the money supply because the economy needed its "gears greased". The nation then needed to protect its gold supply. They did this in 2 ways; a] they limited the amount of paper bills issued, and b] they sold bonds to convert some bills into a form that could not be presented to demand gold.

So, IMHO, only conmen and fools want the world to go back onto the gold standard.

The fiat money system has proven that it can work just fine. After the initial growing pains of the 70s and 80s, there was little inflation until covid caused shortages of most things, which then gave the huge corps the ability to hide their inflation causing price gouging from the public for a time. And, Japan showed the world the right way to use each nations fiat currency and the power of the Gov. that results from it, to smooth out the problems and not have as much inflation. And the poor were given "stimulus checks" so their incomes kept up with the inflation. Japan had less inflation than other nations, so this didn't cause more inflation in Japan. See the thread on this to go to the link that explains what Japan did.
.

[JohnRawls]

[skinster]

[Steve_American]

I never took an economics course. So, I never learned the BS. I'm over 75 now. I've spent my life learning.

What they teach in economics class about international trade is wrong or at least incomplete.

I'm a US Expat. We go to the ATM each month to take the money out of our US bank. Somehow, automatically, the dollars are converted into bhat. It takes less than a minute.

If this is true for us, it is true for everyone. There now must be a subsystem of the banking system, that changes the money you offer to pay for something in international trade into the money the other party wants. I suppose that there is a fee to do this. So, large players may want to change the money before they pay, if they can do this for less cost.

My point is that the price of stuff you want to import is often set in dollars, but you can still pay with any currency.

AFAIK, the IMF has its own currency. I'm no expert, and so may be wrong, but it seems like nobody uses or holds it. This is because it is not a national currency. Nobody needs it to pay taxes. Inside a nation, it is the need for the fiat currency to pay taxes that makes everyone accept it. It is not any legal tender laws that do this. It is taxes. IMHO, this is why cryptocurrencies are AFAIK a ponzi scheme. [They also waste a lot of electric energy for nothing of real value.]

Currently the dollar is the highest it has been in the last 10 years compared to the bhat.

I see no evidence that the dollar is going down. But, I'm no expert.

Peter Zeiham has explained why the US is an economic power. Because it is an economic power the dollar has value. The reasons he says that are => the mid-west is by far the largest area of prime farm land in the world, it is drained by the by far longest connected set of navigable rivers in the world, which is also connected to the intercostal waterway that adds another 1.5 K more miles, the US had/has the largest reserves of oil and natural gas in the world, and the US has other minerals to mine, etc. I'd add that the US can't be invaded, because to do that a nation would need to build a navy to defeat the US navy and also build 3 thousand more ships to carry the troops to invade. Look at what the US built in WWII to be able to invade tiny Japan and increase that.

The US dollar is not losing its value. If the US cracks down on foreigners buying land, buildings, or corp stock; then the dollar may decline.

Also, remember, an economist won the "Nobel" Prize in economics for his report that even a 7 deg. C increase in temps would cause reduce the growth of the entire world's GDP by just 1.7% compared to no temp increase. This is insanity. A 5 deg. C increase would kill at least 7.5 billion people and that would reduce the current GDP by 90%. Not that the GDP would be being calculated by the remaining 507M people.

.

[Rancid]

Die dollar, die die die

[B0ycey]

I'm not going to say the Dollar is dying soon, but it doesn't look good for the future. BRICS has China and India, who together account for half the world population and as such are very large markets. BRICS also have all the emerging markets and new nations wanting to sign up. Along with this, nations weening themselves off the Dollar and trading with their own and the US is also a consumer based economy. When the BRICS set up their own system and currency, I would be very concerned if I was holding Dollars actually.

Just because the Dollar has weathered a few storms, doesn't mean its success is everlasting.

[Steve_American]

I'm not going to say the Dollar is dying soon, but it doesn't look good for the future. BRICS has China and India, who together account for half the world population and as such are very large markets. BRICS also have all the emerging markets and new nations wanting to sign up. Along with this, nations weening themselves off the Dollar and trading with their own and the US is also a consumer based economy. When the BRICS set up their own system and currency, I would be very concerned if I was holding Dollars actually.

Just because the Dollar has weathered a few storms, doesn't mean its success is everlasting.

That is your opinion.
IMHO, you are using old, out of date "facts", that are no longer facts, as the basis of your opinion.

[B0ycey]

That is your opinion.
IMHO, you are using old, out of date "facts", that are no longer facts, as the basis of your opinion.

What do you mean "Out of date facts"? The Global South are actively trying to change the world order because it is Western centric. They also have the largest consumer base. If the Global South doesn't use Dollars, given they have most of the commodities and industry, whatever currency they use will defecto become the reserve currency.

Don't get me wrong, we are not there yet. That is why Russia wants to sell their agriculture via SWIFT or the Western banking sector. There isn't the financial system in place to challenge the US Dollar. But nations are using their own currencies to trade now and BRICS are talking about setting up their own bank. Given the ease the US can sanction "unfriendly nations", don't you think they will sign up to a new reserve currency?

[Steve_American]

What do you mean "Out of date facts"? The Global South are actively trying to change the world order because it is Western centric. They also have the largest consumer base. If the Global South doesn't use Dollars, given they have most of the commodities and industry, whatever currency they use will defecto become the reserve currency.

Don't get me wrong, we are not there yet. That is why Russia wants to sell their agriculture via SWIFT or the Western banking sector. There isn't the financial system in place to challenge the US Dollar. But nations are using their own currencies to trade now and BRICS are talking about setting up their own bank. Given the ease the US can sanction "unfriendly nations", don't you think they will sign up to a new reserve currency?

To be the reserve currency the currency needs to have certain characteristics.
1] There needs to be a lot of it.
2] It really helps if it keeps selling new bonds. [Germany sells few new bonds.]
3] It needs to have other assets that can be bought with it.
4] It ought to be used by some nation that demands it to pay taxes, so someone will always have a need for it.
5] It really helps if it doesn't impose sanctions all the time. [The US is sanctioning Russia and others.]
6] It really helps if it doesn't just take your money. [The EZ did this many years ago in the Cypress banking crisis. Peter Zieham says China took millions of yuan from Russia recently.]

What other nation's currency meets more of these than the dollar?