We’ve got a really “smart” post, this time.
Some economics lessons for you.
Economics and international finance.
Among other things, covering the “Russia/China/BRICS will kill the dollar” nonsense…..
…..which readers have brought up, or asked that I comment on.
Prepare to be edumakated!
But first, a quick admin note…..
…..and, I DECLARE WAR on the “GOP.”
And, a GUESS (not a prediction) about the Ukraine war.
A Quick Note
Folks, when I said I was “wrong“…..
…..in the headline of my last piece…..
It was a JOKE.
Most of you, got the joke…..
Because you read the piece, and your IQ is above average.
But from now on…..
I’ll try to accomodate the ‘tards…..
…..with more straightforward headlines.
(Another quick note. Please look at the comments to my recent posts. If you can write like that, you know, coherent and level-headed and stuff… then, please go ahead and leave a comment. Don’t be intimidated by my “new and improved” Comments Policy.)
Don’t Be A Gimp
Mitch “The Manchurian Turtle” McConnell is at it again…..
Having said, on Fox News…..
…..yesterday, live TV, as follows:
“Defeating the Russians in Ukraine is the single most important event going on in the world right now.”
Yes, I know, a goal is not an event.
Don’t worry about the semantics.
What’s more important…..
I think we can ALL agree with Mitch.
I mean, with a small correction.
Something like…..
“Defeating GLOBOHOMO is the single most important thing in the world right now.”
Before I move on…..
Speaking in a Ukraine context…..
…..McConnell was later quoted as:
“Don’t look at Twitter, look at people in power.”
Translated:
Don’t worry what the “MAGA” majority of the base thinks. The establishment’s in charge, and we please our donors and do what we want!
Aside from that…..
Folks, it’s 2023.
Trump came…..
…..and sank like the Titanic…..
…..over two years ago.
Hell… Marjorie Taylor Greene voted for McCarthy as “Speaker.“
Don’t forget…..
She voted for him IN THE FIRST ROUND.
If you STILL think this party can be salvaged…..
Respectfully…..
You’re an IDIOT.
No, it would NOT be worse…..
…..just handing the country over to the Dems.
They are ALL Dems.
Sure, the “great white hype” DeSantis…..
…..does well in Florida, talks a good game…..
…..makes Trump look like an ESL (English as a second language) kid.
But, look who’s gotten behind him…..
…..and where the money’s coming from.
And once you’ve considered that…..
Do you think he’d EVER be allowed…..
…..to do his “tough act” from a national stage?
Yeah.
As for Trump, if he comes back, so what?
He STILL won’t have a party behind him.
He’s still an interloper.
As I said, they’re all Dems.
Anyway, I live in a Dem area…..
…..and it’s just PEACHY.
A balanced ethnic make-up…..
…..and a balanced professional mix…..
…..help A LOT.
Not EVERY Dem area is a shithole.
Moreover, if Republicans disappeared tomorrow…..
The Dems would bifurcate…..
…..at least, de facto…..
…..and we MIGHT get something better…..
…..than today’s Republicans.
In short…..
If you’re one of those “but it would be even worse” people…..
…..you are a BATTERED WIFE.
I tell you, there will be NO improvement in our politics…..
…..until the so-called “GOP”…..
…..is DESTROYED.
Now, I’ve still got hundreds of Republican officials and activists…..
…..reading this blog.
My message to all of them:
Unless they’re PAYING you…..
…..or you have some other, direct financial interest in it…..
QUIT.
NOW.
Don’t be a gimp.
Don’t be a chump.
Don’t legitimize them.
Don’t help their careers.
Don’t be A PART OF THE PROBLEM.
Just quit.
They’re NOT worth your time.
They’re NOT WORTHY of you.
Pick up your ball, GO HOME.
Check your mind OUT of partisan politics.
Find ANOTHER “club”, another hobby.
Yeah, the RNC and state officers…..
…..(if still reading me, bless them)…..
…..will laugh at this.
But, a few precinct captains, might listen.
Hey, anything I can do, right?
That’s my mission, from here on out.
ALSO…. many readers don’t pass my stuff around much, because everyone they know is a “square”, and/or some of my posts are too crude. Well, this post is fine to share. Please share it with any Republican / conservative friends and family that you may have.
If You Still Don’t Understand…..
…..What Happened (Economically) In 2020-2021…..
Let Me Help You
A reader commented as follows:
Dreizin, thanks for your blog. I like your perspectives, but one thing I’ve noticed is you complain about inflation (not making money on rentals) on prior posts but then say the federal government’s spending doesn’t cause inflation. As they say “inflation is taxation without representation”. Just wanted to point out this dissonance.
Please read my response, and learn something:
Hello! Thanks for being a longtime reader. I did not say Fed spending never causes inflation. It doesn’t cause DISRUPTIVE inflation until/unless it causes disruptive inflation. The USA can “export” its inflation (soaking the world in dollars, using all of humanity as a dampener) until the “money printing” becomes ludicrous, AT THE SAME TIME AS domestic and global production falls off a cliff, as in 2020-2021. At that point, the soaking is complete, that is, not just domestic but GLOBAL dollar demand, falls below supply, and thus the equilibrium dollar “price” (the money’s value relative to real things), i.e. where supply meets demand, falls sharply… and we call that high inflation. We’ve lived through this and seen it, I don’t need to prove anything. Millions of us wondered, what would it take for the profligate USA to finally, FIIIIIINALLY experience sharp inflation? And it finally happened… and we know the PRECISE conditions under which it happened. A live, real-life economics lesson. AND, we can assume, that while prices may keep rising, there won’t be another huge, sudden “leg up” to inflation, without a repeat of the financial and economic circumstances of 2020-2021.
PS: As a landlord, I most certainly do not complain about RENT inflation!
There, I hope that helps!
Killing The “Kill The Dollar” BS
A bunch of commenters have written…..
…..at various times…..
…..that “if China, Russia, India, Brazil, etc. start trading in their own currencies“…..
…..then the dollar comes down.
LOL.
This is what you get…..
…..when you “learn” international finance…..
…..from ‘tard bloggers carried by ZeroHedge.
(Funny thing is, the boss at ZeroHedge “knows better”, but he prints a bunch of crap for the “volume.” You know, it’s all about “clicks.”)
It doesn’t matter so much…..
…..what you accept for your oil, coal…..
…..nuclear fuel, arms, whatever.
Yes, it’s great to avoid key economic sectors being impacted…..
…..by U.S. or other sanctions.
But, structurally, it hardly impacts anything.
What matters is…..
In which currency do central and private banks, maintain their RESERVES?
For Russia to stash away a lot of yuan…..
…..(MUCH more than it holds now)…..
…..China would have to issue a TON of debt…..
…..because, at present…..
…..there isn’t enough “quality” (central state-issued), yuan-denominated debt…..
…..to be had, in the entire world.
(Yes, if you read Bloomberg etc., you’ll hear about China’s horrible debt growth. It’s almost all regional, crap debt.)
Well, the Chinese central state can only issue such debt…..
…..if it will deficit-spend the proceeds.
But, guess what…..
China’s central state, barely runs a budget deficit.
(It’s gotten bigger in the last two years, but it’s still just a laughable fraction of what the U.S. runs.)
What this means…..
There is only a NOMINAL volume of Chinese state debt, available.
And even less, available OUTSIDE of China.
If China DID run a large budget deficit…..
…..(I can’t imagine it needs to, or what it would spend on, so this is just hypothetical)….
…..that would be HUGELY inflationary…..
……as all that extra money spent inside China…..
…..would stay almost exclusively INSIDE the country…..
…..rather than “leaking out” all over the world, as does the dollar.
(Because unlike the USA, China is a massive net exporter, not a massive net importer, and also doesn’t host tens of millions of immigrants/migrants who send money “home.”)
And what THAT would do…..
…..is raise demand for U.S. Treasury bonds by Chinese financial institutions…..
…..and dollar account demand on the part of rich Chinese and their brats…..
…..(looking to park something out of the country)…..
….and, what would that do?
IT WOULD HUGELY STRENGTHEN DOLLAR DEMAND WITHIN CHINA, AND ON THE PART OF CHINESE.
THEREBY, FURTHER STRENGTHENING THE DOLLAR’S GLOBAL STATUS.
As you can see…..
The whole thing is a STRAIGHT JACKET.
There won’t be ANY serious “moving away from the dollar“…..
….until the present global financial structure…..
…..is DESTROYED TOTALLY.
And that won’t be pretty for ANYONE.
It WON’T be only an American problem.
It will be YOUR problem.
So…..
Don’t listen to the ‘tards.
Wild Guess
“Bad Vlad” Putin is scheduled to give a big speech on February 21st.
This coming Tuesday.
It could be a let-down…..
…..just more yapping…..
…..about how the USA should treat other countries with respect…..
…..and other LOL’s that won’t ever happen.
But…..
If it’s not just nonsense…..
I’m guessing…..
Again… just GUESSING…..
That it will involve some upgraded union with Belarus…..
So as to fit Belarus under Russia’s nuclear weapons doctrine…..
Thus, keeping Poland at bay…..
…..while Belarus assists with a re-incursion into north Ukraine.
I am NOT talking nuclear war…..
Rather, the potential use of tactical nukes…..
…..(yield of as low as point-three kilotons, which still has at least a 50-meter annihilation radius, for any persons or not-heavily-armored gear out in the open)…..
…..on Belarussian territory…..
…..against any Polish incursion.
Even if it’s just a 200-meter, cross-border “provocation.”
With that kind of a threat, they won’t dare.
(Again, just a guess!)
(I’m ALSO guessing, that if you haven’t yet given me a financial “pat on the back”, NOW is the time, to do so, here. Don’t be a mooch. Again, VIP’s (political staff, journos, party officials, etc.) who can’t be associated with me, are exempt. Also, pensioners are exempt… unless your name is Tex Ketchum, or Rex Tetchum, and you’re sitting on an oil geyser in Oklahoma, royalties coming out of your sleeves. In that case, yes, share with me. Don’t leave it all to your brats, or to your 25-year old, blonde bimbo wife.)
(If you have no excuse, other than, you’re just broke or a fucking stingy mooch, OK, but please follow me on Twitter, and like all my carried-over blog posts there, i.e. ALL of them, not just one or two and then you forget. Also, if you haven’t already, sign up to my damn MAILING LIST! All this means, is that you’ll get my blog posts, in your email. I DO NOT mass-send anything but that. Please enter your email address, in the box below.)
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Comments and any associated weblinks or other references must be directly relevant and tangential to my published material (not just to other comments), specifically the material above the given comments section that you are adding to. THIS IS NOT A DEBATE PLATFORM TO DISCUSS IRRELEVANT HISTORICAL QUESTIONS, OR YOUR OWN PET SUBJECTS OR INTERESTS THAT DON’T BEAR ON WHAT I WROTE. Please, no disjointed / overcaffeinated rambling, which implies, among other things, no mentioning eight different topics in one comment, like a schizoid aiming to connect all the dots (if your mind is racing, take your Ritalin and calm the fuck down before you comment on this site); no “pet issues” or inquiries that have no direct bearing on what I wrote; no unclear/unexplained, irrelevant, or barely-relevant weblinks; no trying to write your own mini-blog news update digest in my comments; no batteries of questions like what about Donetsk and what about Kiev and what about the Big Offensive and how does this all end and where does blah blah blah (I will NOT respond to you, I will BLOCK you); no asking me what I think of some commentator whom I’ve never heard of; no Nazis; no Nazis pretending to be Jewish like “I’m a bar mitzvah boy, but I’m so ashamed of my people who are not the real Jews of Jesus’ time“; no “crypto” Jew-hating (when I have to read it three times before I’m sure it’s about Jews, then I permanently block your wise ass); no dogmatic Marxists; no using anti-Ukraine jargon or other “Nadsat” bullshit-speak that you picked up from The Saker, which no one outside of you and your freaky virtual friends can understand (e.g., Ukrops, 404, the vimiratis); no calling for the destruction or dissolution of the USA or its government; no calling for the destruction of Washington, DC; no calling for violence against current or former elected or appointed officials of the U.S. Government; no nonconstructive or hateful ranting about Jews (or Swej, Joos, Jooz, Jooze, Juice, Juize, Jewz, Jewze, J-Dogs, J-Dogz, J-Dawgz, J’s, Chews, Choos, Chooz, Chooze, Zionists, Zio-Nazis, Anglo-American Zionists, Amerizionists, Zionist Occupation Government, ZOG, IsraHell, Bibi SatanYahoo, “those of whom we cannot speak”, “your friends whom we can’t talk about”, “a certain small ethnic group”, the chosen, the tribe, the chosen tribe, the thirteenth tribe, tribe of Judah, the Khazarians, Khazarian mafia, Rothschilds, Khazarian Rothschilds, JewTube, JooTube, JewMerica, JooMerica, etc., etc.); no being nasty to other commenters; no trolling the “sysop”; no passive-aggressive needling of the “sysop” (I don’t acknowledge, I just BLOCK and you’re gone, “one strike” and your ass is out, GO GET SOME THERAPY); no dissing or ragging on the Insane Clown Posse, no Chupacabras, no karens or avocado toast, and no claiming “the korona doesn’t exist because vyruses don’t exist.” Please share your ***CONCISE*** (2 smartphone screens of text is NOT concise), relevant, coherent, organized thoughts, and come back for my next post. Also, by commenting, you expressly accept and agree to my “one bullet, one Nazi” policy, and please be advised, this includes Nazis everywhere, even in the Ukraine. Furthermore, if you are a LibJew/DemJew, you are BANNED from commenting on this site UNLESS you acknowledge the extensive presence and influence of Nazis and other fascists in the Ukraine, who don’t give a fuck that they have an allegedly “Jewish president”, because they’re still (in many cases) getting paid by the state, and they’ll “take their country back from the Jews” once they take care of the Russians (can’t slit all throats at once.) If you can’t acknowledge it, then get the fuck out with your “Never Again” bullshit. Also, no scrubs. If you don’t know what a “scrub” is, please consult the TLC video on YouTube. Although scrubs exist in ALL ethnic groups and populations, a very good example of scrubs, is all the poor young black men who get shot dead, and then the moms are like, “He had such aspirations, he was going to be a rapper.” Yeah, they were all going to be famous rappers, all the thousands of them! Sure!
Re The Gimp: I saw a version of Pulp Fiction where The Gimp was entirely eliminated. All scenes cut, all references expunged. It may have been a network broadcast, but I don’t remember any commercials. It was probably in the later 200?s. I didn’t realize it until I got the DVD and saw The Gimp again. It’s scary how censorship can sneak up and bite your balls without you even knowing.
Dreizen, thank you for your ardent efforts to keep us from the path of ignorance. You urge us to give up on the GOP until it is no more. However, I submit to you that the idea of the US as a republic of the people and for the people is no more and that perhaps the idea of America anything remotely resembling a just nation disappeared somewhere between 1865 and 1913. Perhaps it never was the nation that was foretold by the forefathers in 1776. At least we tried. Maybe it is time that the American experiment wind down to accept its fate much like that of Rome, Egypt, and all empires before them. What a tragedy. Say it ain’t so Dreizen.
The world now has immovable objects in the west meeting unstoppable forces from everywhere else, led by Russia. Something will break. I am guessing it will be in the west, and Europe is looking like the first cab off the rank. Everywhere is going to suffer, but the US is trying to buffer itself using Europe. The rhetoric in the US about China is toxic and unrealistic. One can only hope that reality will modulate the naturally aggressive nature of the US.
The last change of reserve currency followed a world war. I get the impression that the unstoppable forces are trying to achieve a break without a world war. Lets hope they succeed.
With our (US), governments recent announcement that the CIA was going to be either directly or through Ukraine “awakening” sleeper cells in Russia to do shit like blow up local politicians and the like……..see any connection to recent train derailments, electrical sub station “attacks” or any such actions? I would think Russia would find such awfully tempting after the west stole a goodly amount of their foreign reserves, blown the Nordstream lines. blown up a few low level politicians and a daughter of some Russian blowhard. One would think that Russian intelligence members haven’t all gone full hibernation and that at least some direct action type events have at least been planned.
Don’t want to go too tin foil hat but hell payback has to be awfully tempting to Russia.
Am I supposed to tell you how to change your marketing strategy now or something? Or bloviate something about blockading China with surface vessels……for uhh…..some reason?
I just want to let ya know once again that I appreciate the effort you put into providing others with your content. I hope everyone realizes you have a “regular” job and a family so providing this content and your points of view come at a hard price worthy of supporting by your readers.
Daring a bit to dabble in shit thats none of my business really but where are you currently at regarding a locals presence? Also I believe I recall in the past you mentioning “merch” potentially coming in the future. Any news regarding that?
Mainly though, thanks again Mr. Dreizin. Enjoyed this latest post quite a bit.
OH YEAH……you ever listen to anything a guy named Ryan Dawson might happen to be allowed to publish/stream? The guy finally got released from Twitter hell on direct demand by Musk himself. Bright guy Dawson. Its easy to tell simply by looking at how many shit sites have banned the man.
I appreciate your take on the meaning of USD reserve status. It’s a real faustian bargain. We get to have a credit card with no spending limit and low rate. But on the flip side, we have to provide a way for all the outsiders to get dollars.
The only way we can do that is by running huge trade deficits. We buy stuff and pay the producers in dollars – they use those dollars to buy other commodities or recycle into US Treasuries.
USD reserve status makes it inevitable that US industry goes overseas and we make less and less of what we consume. Americas main product becomes USD…pieces of paper and our real industrial potential goes offshore – it has to and is inevitable. Thats the price of our privilege.
China and Russia do not want that fate for themselves. So they are not so much trying to destroy USD as the reserve they just want to engineer a different order or modify the existing order so that the worlds commodities are not priced and paid for solely in USD.
Is it right then to think, that the danger for the US is that inevitably the price of our privilege must increase ? We still have our credit card, but maybe the credit limit declines and the interest rate goes up as we exclude ourselves from access to some percentage of the worlds production potential. And all at a time, when it will be very difficult, perhaps structurally impossible, to bring much of that production potential back onshore.
Jacob, just an aside- the “digital yuan” would allow for a ledger of external “money” that the CCB could add and remove liquidity as desired, without affecting internal yuan, just like the old ruble system. It’s not a crypto. Just a digital currency. I think that only requires faith in the issuing authority to not basically give it to cronies/princelings for adventures outside the border. Because it is digital, it could be easily disallowed on domestic payment processors. And for the “old 100 names” stuck in the mainland, they would be isolated from it- good and bad.
I’m not an american, but I think there are some causes worth fighting for, like stopping the trans agenda on kids. Yes, the GOP sucks even at that, but it is a cause which needs a rapid solution, and no one else seems capable for doing that. But again, I’m not an american, so I have no say in that, and I don’t know the situation especially well, besides what I hear from The Daily Wire and another couple of channels.
Too many people think the ruin of a currency is a cause and not a symptom. Hyperinflation is always a political phenomena , not a central bank phenomena. Take the ruble for example. The break away SSRs with dissolving ties to Russia were still able to create credit on the ruble. Ukraine made its own script and bought up stuff not nailed down in Russia with rubles(A case of Ukraine screwing Russia btw) and even that did not destroy the ruble , but it sure devalued it. The key is a money creating monopoly or the currency becomes a bit of a commons problem. Anyone wondering what will happen when the US defaults missed in when Nixon was on TV stiffing the French.
However if globalism does kind of stagnate, regional transactions will be less dependent on the dollar. So the US will not be able to export its inflation quite as much. But what does it matter? You don’t want to have a liquidity problem so I’d keep some $USD around, but you don’t want too much because those pre 33 twenty dollar gold coins should tell you something. How much gold does $20 buy now? What if the $USD only has 1% of its buying power( or 4% in the case of a 1964 coinage)? Not what if , it already happened and the $USD is still here. But I am still not stuffing my mattress with it. The $USD is going to inflate and they are going to keep understating how much.
With regard to the GOP, the asshole that stabs you in the back is a thousand times worse than the asshole that punches you in the face (Dems). But allegiance to the GOP will not wane until normie becomes genuinely desperate and has no choice but to get up off the couch. Nothing changes until the environment changes, and in the case of the USA, that means either economic collapse or world war. The latter risks a nuclear exchange, so not optimum.
It is nearly impossible to divine what will be valuable in the future. My parents thought that Stamp Collecting and Fine China were the keys to retirement success and boy were they ever wrong. China is so cheap now that I’ll go to a thrift store and buy an entire set for $25 so I have some targets to take to my range. As far as stamps go, I found a book that my father paid thousands for back in the 1970’s and found it for $20.
Had my father taken the cash he invested in stamps and, instead, bought Gibson and Fender guitars, he’d be worth millions. Funny how that works.
Hi Jacob, thanks for your great blog and insight, as a 78 year old I can still afford and have bought you a couple of cups of coffee, just to show my appreciation. I admit I am a bit of global geo-polical news junky, blame my decades as a merchant mariner sailing the globe and bouncing off many different countries, people, cultures and languages. Travel is the best education one can have, for free, even getting paid for it in my case. Expat Signing off.
Speaking of China’s (central govt) debt, how much of the recent few years’ deficit came from dumping some dollar-based bonds and purchasing “real economy” items, be it land and mines abroad (of China), technology, food, coal, ores, building the Belt-and-road infrastructure as well as pipelines to Russia?
Jacob, thanks for your work and your hilarious takedowns of stupid comments, I always get a laugh. Do you think there are plans being made for a rebuild of Oocrane that will benefit corporate USA similar to EyeRack or will Russian firms be eyeing up that ‘opportunity’? When will the USA be happy to put on the safety catch and switch the money making machine to post war reconstruction mode?
Please, don’t accommodate the ‘tards. The joke was a good intro to what you had to say and didn’t require killing many brain cells to figure it out.
Accommodating the ‘tards means you’ll have to start adding pictures drawn with crayons to your posts also.
As I and a couple others commented when we bought you coffee, just keep doing what you’re doing. It’s great.
Hi,
One thing that always intrigued me is why China don´t leverage the fact that they supply so many materials (rare earths for example)? Are they so affraid of the trade war with the West?
Anyway, thanks for your posts. They are quite insightful and make me think about other stuff, then the things “in front” of us.
Cheers form Portugal!
Dreizin, I wouldn’t agree wrt the world reserve currency. Yes, in case of China claiming the WRC, they would need a lot of deficit spending to provide liquidity to the system. But, BRICS is not interested in precisely that, but implementing some kind of international settlement currency that belongs to no particular nation (I think they may call it R, since all of their currencies start with letter R, e.g. the ruble, the renminbi, the rupi, the real, the riyal). And there is a precedent for this, Europeans used something like this, before the introduction of euros (read https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/european-currency-unit.asp), I don’t know how exactly it worked, but it is relevant.
Your example of the ECU is a nice one. It allowed for exchange rate fluctuations within a certain bandwidth, avoiding the current Euro problem that differences in efficiencies of local economies can only be resolved via migration or by transferring shit loads of money towards the lesser economies. However, unlike these benefits, the ECU was not a reserve currency. It didn’t threaten $. Nor will a potential BRIC currency. Not by itself that is.
There were several reserve currencies in the last couple of centuries. Only God is eternal. Although, he died a couple of years ago according to Nietzsche. So, stating that $ will eventually be replaced as the reserve currency is not exactly a prediction. Because the example of the ECU shows that a BRIC currency is not a game-changer all by itself, the only remaining question is how long it will take for $ to die.
I think that the international arrogance of the US and its chihuahua “war dogs” —the EU plus other Anglo-Saxon countries— leading to the weaponization of SWIFT could play a large role in the inevitable downfall of the dollar. This unwinding could take decades. $ being the reserve currency, that is, used worldwide will ensure that this is the last currency standing.
I don’t know how you managed to throw in the nature of God in this, but fine. The fact that Russia is dedollarizing (and cutting out any dollar-derivative, such as euro or pound sterling), brings a whole new light to this issue. Once other countries acknowledge this, they will follow. It’s not some kind of hostile act towards the US, i.e. wanting the demise of the country, but merely an act in self-interest. Probably Japan and South Korea will follow. South Korea, for example, suffers heavily in foreign trade when dollar is strong. Every time the dollar gets stronger, i.e. now, the SK trade surplus crumbles, even goes negative. They have every insentive, much like Japan (which was net selling US bonds to around $300B last year), to operate outside of the dollar system, every time dollar gets this strong (that is why we will be watching clash on Taiwan which the US is going to use to put Japan and Korea under control, much like what they are doing in Europe ATM). Global geopolitics right now revolves around this question, it is not some abstraction or religious confesion.
I like the merch idea, I would definitely buy a t-shirt or something, but PLEASE design it well more “european like” not the usual ugly, oversized US shit. Think of shipping options, I live in 🇧🇬.
As we all know the USD as reserve replaced a previously ‘tired’ system only after a global conflagration. The world went along with the shift from gold-denominated USD to petrodollar USD because there was really no rival. The USD will/could only be replaced when someone has the military might to take on the empire and that will also require a global conflagration which that someone will have to win. Only when all the players are ready to burn the whole game down, with the massive scale of suffering that would entail, would we see “the end of the USD as global reserve”. Currency swaps between BRICS nations to facilitate limited trade in not going to do it.
the USD is ‘healthy’ because the alternative currencies (euro, yen, pound) are sicker. the real problem for creating alternatives is SWIFT (only created in 1973) and BIS. sanctioning countries via SWIFT is the quickest way to undo USD reliance. countries are being dared to create SWIFT alternatives – they are but it takes time. blockchain has no national constituency (countries that have tried it get dunked on e.g. el salvador) and to remind normies you have the FTX charade. the IMF draws from the G10 which oversees SWIFT. belt & road is an alternative but huge risks for some countries (see sri lanka). as dylan wrote “gotta serve somebody”
I’ve often wondered how the world would react if a nuclear power used nukes on its own territory to stop an invasion. That’s the reason I never took seriously the neocons saying China will invade Siberia. Lots of empty land to use low yield nukes.
There has to be a breaking point for the dollar in the medium term. I think we are paying 500 billion to service the debt. I remember a YouTube video where you said the Fed won’t raise rates. Well they haven’t pivoted yet. I guess you can use short term notes to keep the payments down but for how long?
Big tech laying off thousands, cities and infrastructure falling apart boomers retiring with no skill wokesters supposedly covering all the unfunded liabilities. Maybe that’s why we’ve got the border open. Someone has to work.
The only message worth sending the establishment is to come out big for voting in state and local elections but don’t vote for Congress or president.
Thanks for being here for the long haul. Have no doubt, they will pivot! Already, their last hike was .25, not .50. (I NEVER said they won’t raise, I said they will give up and turn around, before they break everything.)
High inflation and low unemployment drives wages growth, mass immigration can counteract this force, which is probably why the borders are open. As far as big tech layoffs, Zuckerberg made bad decisions and needs to cut costs, Twitter was seemingly bloated with useless employees and overall Tik Tok is attracting more and more ad money away from the other platforms.
Radiation is not a problem with low yield nukies?
Almost always when I hear the “Chinasgonnatakesiberia”-BS I just say “Heihe-Tengchong-Line”. More than 90% of Chinas population is east of that line. Due to their one-kid-policy China has put a certain stress on its society, modern China has as much a demographic problem as Russia and other industrialized societies have. And they would need to take Mongolia before “they take Siberia”, a huge country that has less people than Croatia. But that still hasn’t happened up to now, the country is a perfect buffer between Russia and China. But OK, “China the invader” is a beautiful BS-story westerners love to tell their children before bed. Ah yeah, and there is still the biggest nuclear weapons arsenal on the planet, in Russias hands.
Very glad to hear the economics perspective. Yes the “USD is going into hyperinflation as the World (BRICS) divests of dollars and they all come home” narrative is nonsense. Of course you prob tire of ppl suggesting other material you should read/watch, but “Uneducated Economist” on Youtube is the one who opened my eyes to this. It’s a great channel to understand all this from a self-educated Blue Collar straight-shooter. I gotta do a little plug for his channel…. I guess if it’s inappropriate to suggest other material here, can just delete my message. Thanks for your great work Jacob. ~ JB from Aus
Thanks for taking my thinking outside the box on the down with the GOP thing.
I’m not a GOPer, but I’ve liked having them around–thinking that they were at least a check on the Dems.
The Dems do have an assortment of groups in their tent that really don’t mix well together, so in the absence of a unifying GOP foe, the Dems might indeed split in half as you suggest. Or maybe even more parts. And all that squabbling might leave room for the rest of us to get on with our lives in more peace than we have now.
Hi Jacob
Hope you are fine. I have been hearing that the dollar it his final leg since 2008. However, houses and cars are priced tagged in dollars in my country, savings accounts are in usd, even credit card statements are split between local currency and usd. I have never seen any other currency circulating ever.
USD is healthy
Thanks for what you do Jacob.
Ahklan Akhi(trying to say wassup in Hebrew). I was curious, have you heard about Gal Luft and he theory on De-Dollarization? He makes a good case for the world moving away from dependency on USD.
The job of the GOP is to depoliticize those who don’t completely buy into the globohomo gayplex. Thank you, Jacob, for pointing out the insanity of supporting Republicans.
I’ve never – into very recently- believed in this “Union state” between Russia and Belarus. For one thing, Lukashenko isn’t going to be eager to subordinate himself under another government. Secondly, what is this Union state? Complete merger? A confederation? Just an economic and political, as well as military, alliance? I never found the parameters spelt out. Then, also, what happens to Belarus’ economy? Does it remain 80% state owned or is it oligarchised like Russia’s? If there is a joint government or if Russia absorbs Belarus, is Lukashenko eligible to run for president? What happens if he wins?
These are questions I never found an answer for, and this is why I consistently dismissed this Union state as a fantasy for public consumption. However, I believe now it will become something real, at least on the confederation level, and in self defence against NATO. Lukashenko already tried to cosy up to NATO some years ago and was rewarded by a colour revolution attempt. He probably realises now that the only safety is with Russia, and not as a separate country either (like the LDNR were until 22 February 2022).
Bingo. Your every word, truth.
Just an interesting aside about Belarus. I was in Minsk a few years ago, and in the airport they considered flights to Russia to be “Domestic” flights. They were not part of the “International” flights. There is some strangeness to the relationship already.
Yes and No. As far as I know Lukashenka has sent his son Mykola to get his education in Moscow (or a part of the education). Knowing how much he cares for his youngest son this strongly indicates that the youngest Lukashenka generation is going to be integrated within the Russian elite and I could bet that there are some deals/arrangements in this regard. That is my guess.
Otherwise, just as the eurofied Serbian elite the Belarusians are learning the hard way not to trust a single word coming from an Eurocrats mouth. We are talking about maximalist and idelogized people who in most case have neither national nor personal honour or integrity and totally lost the sense for diplomacy or political compromise. And I am not talking about good or bad, I am talking about realpolitik behind the curtain shit.
I’m Indian. In India Modi is being targeted for colour revolution in exactly the same way as elsewhere and it will fail the same way as it did in Belarus: because the liberal quisling kreakl gang doesn’t represent India any more than it did Belarus.
Holding US Dollars in your central reserve is good so long as those US Dollars can be used to get something that you need. Right now, you are guaranteed to be able to purchase energy with those US Dollars. You are also guaranteed to be able to able to purchase American military equipment in USD. Things are slowly changing though. It isn’t going to happen over night, but eventually, you are going to be able to buy less and less with the USD and more and more with other currencies. There will come a tipping point though, and that will come when major holders of the USD in their reserves (China and Japan) start to divest more and more. Things don’t change at the pace YouTuber’s say they will. They have been predicting the imminent collapse of China for a couple years now. China keeps going. China will keep going. One day, a major change in China will happen, and the YouTuber that said China would collapse in two days will claim to be write even though his 100 other predictions about the collapse of China were wrong. That will one day happen with the USD.
Thanks, well said, but FYI, China is believed to have already sold off about half of its U.S. Treasuries (that is, of how much it held at the peak, when essentially all its reserves were in dollars), replacing that half with other leading currencies.
Of course, they did not do it in one day.
Ok. Well said about the US$ China siphon effect.
The whole scheme is a pyramid scheme at the global level. Smart move by Nixon.
Except, just like any other pyramid scheme it reaches its saturation and then collapses abruptly. Almost certainly “soon” (10 years?)
The present is not great and the future looks less than rosy, thanks for reaffirming that for me as if I wasn’t gloomy enough.
Keep up the good work.
P.S. Whining about others who heave developed a steady following and business model does not help you. Begging for donations is probably a better (albeit temporary) way. But you need to come up with a real business model and develop your own little fan base. (With merch store and all) (or swallow your pride and join with some of them)
I’d been blogging for all of ten months when I put out the hat, and hundreds of people gave me thousands of dollars in just a few weeks. I think I’m doing OK for now. Thanks for the unneeded advice, and for your generous donation. And, “merch” is for shameless pogues and hucksters. I’d rather shut down this blog, than sell that silly crap. I’ll stand or fall on substance, not some brand logo and groupie-hood.
I’m disappointed I won’t be able to buy the shirts, hats, hoodies, magic mugs and all the other wonderful things you could be selling. At 10% off.
(Seriously though, I actually do enjoy listening to those two guys go on.)
I used to be an idiot, call it youth. Still an idiot, but ready to be edumecated.
15 years ago I bought into the “$ will collapse soon” narrative, and bought PM. Nothing really happened. After some redumecation, I understood that the process of replacing a reserve currency will, and MUST take at least a lifetime; sitting on ones ass and waiting, or even rooting for the US hegemony to end soon is stupid —know what one is asking for— and a waste of time. Not that I was that stupid. btw. Still buying PM now and then, and moved some of my savings into $…
Every time I see Stoltenberg, Rutte, Scholtz, or any other cuck, I mean European leaders in my case, I have to take the Dreizin antidote; the Jezus video and the preceding merch comment. Makes me laugh every time. This beats any possible Dreizin merch big time imo,
we should think about the mathematical discipline of catastrophy theory. the future cannot be predicted, but after a long period of small steps systems can reach the tipping point and within a few days we might get a whole new system or, at least, the breakdown of the old system and the starting of a new system.
The problem as I see it with him joining the others, is then he would have to shill to folks by telling them what they want to hear, rather than the way he sees it, which usually has a whole lot of truth packed in it.
Kind of like how many Christians join a Church that “meets their needs” instead of listening to preacher that tells them they are screwing up and to wake up to that fact. “Preacher hurt my feelings because he said what I was doing was a sin. I’ll go somewhere else that won’t do that.”
Human nature.
I agree. You can see that with the blowhard armchair generals (no need to take names, you know who they are) who write what their audience wants to hear, not what the facts are.
Either support the GOP or become an ACCELERATIONISTA. TINA.
I don’t know what that means, and I don’t care to find out. It sounds dumb.
I think this is what the poster is talking about. Copy/paste from Wiki
Accelerationism is a range of Marxist and reactionary ideas in critical and social theory that call for the drastic intensification of capitalist growth, technological change, infrastructure sabotage, and other social processes in order to destabilize existing systems and create radical social transformation, otherwise known as “acceleration”.
Could be wrong but this is how I’ve heard it
It was a joke. I thought it was kinda funny. lol 😆
With the US laying the groundwork for what seems like an inevitable conflict with China over Taiwan, how would the economic war play out and why would all the rich Chinese keep their money in US treasury bonds and float the economy of a hostile country? is there really no viable alternatives for parking their excess cash? Is the global financial system akin to a Chinese finger trap?
Here is my take on China. Their economy is so dependent on the US and exports to other places a war would ruin them. The US tried it with Russia. Sanction the crap out of them, but they don’t have the same dependencies as China does. Imagine sanctions on China of the same level as Russia, with a Naval blockade of China. Besides any non-Chinees ship not able to get insurance and would stay away, anything Chinees or bold enough to try and ship stuff out, runs the risk of being seized or sunk by the US Navy. China would internally implode. Civil war would break out. Taiwan if that is what they invaded to start it all, would be a ruin. Chip factories a hole in the ground, from either Taiwanese military or the US, if they chickened out.
Thanks, but where do you live… and how old are you? Have you been to Home Depot recently? Have you shopped on Amazon? In many categories, literally all the products are from China. 70 or 80 percent of U.S. pharmaceutical “precursor” chemicals are from China. Without those, millions of Americans would die within perhaps a year. And… Almost all the smartphones are mostly from China. Please, don’t post dumb shit on my blog. Take some time to grow up, first. All the best to you.
Sounds like you have been lapping up the establishment cool-aid for way too long dude. Have you no idea what the BRI is about? Think western naval blockade avoidance. Even with that still in it’s infancy the Chinese ship building industry is going gang busters, and with it their naval military strength is fast outgrowing possible US domination, not to mention their missile defence systems being extensive and extremely advanced. You need to stop imagining they are only North Korea level advancement.
Also look into the actual levels of global support the US has when it talks about ‘the international community’, and just how many nations and proportion of the global population that are excluded from that ‘community’. I would recommend you consider how much of the Asian, African and South American communities actually trust the US more than China and Russia combined. The emerging world has moved on from the western benign hegemony narrative and so should we have by now.
Well said. But, he’s obviously just a dumb kid, excitable and ignorant. The military aspect aside, only someone with no experience in spending money, would say the USA could or should blockade China.
> China would internally implode. Civil war would break out.
Where have I heard this nonsense before? Oh right, the globalists were saying the same thing about Russia a year ago. Tatters!
How’s that going? Stop the 🧢
I sense some Zeihan in these words. LOL
I considered him entertaining somewhat until he mentioned in one of his Youtube runts that Russians steal thousands of Ukr babies to fix their desperate demographics. Thus his sources got apparent to me – Kiev agit-prop + as our host mentioned – The Economist.
This is the reason BRICS countries have been encouraging their people to buy gold instead of US bonds. It’s also part of the reason behind China’s and potential BRICS+ countries purchases of large quantities of gold over the past year or so. It’s obvious that the uncommon new frequency of announcements on Chinese gold purchases is their global signal that gold will again be part of the reserve currency basket to weaken US bond hegemony. The dollar will never disappear, but its hegemonic strength is on the decline eg its gone from 70’s to 60’s percent of global reserve swaps in the past decade, and will continue to decline as the strength of emerging economy currency swaps grows.
As more exporting countries figure out that the modern dollar is a ponzi scheme, they will likely hold a greater portion of their reserves in gold rather than necessarily any currency.
” Gold is money and nothing else”
I thought gold was element 79?
Ever notice how Gold rockets up when people expect disaster. The problem is when disaster occurs it’s worth almost nothing. Just look at families who sold gold and jewelry for pennies on dollar (Deutschmark) to buy passage away. That pattern happened every actual crisis.
The only crisis store of value is food and bullets to protect the food
I don’t disagree, but we’re starting to lose the plot. The survivalist blog is down the street 🙂