Monday, March 30, 2009

End of Dollar Imperialism?

Currently the entire world is an American colony. Some like Europe Britain and Japan have Commonwealth status but have the same head of state as the US. Sounds like the British Empire and its relation to Australia , Canada, NewZealand (commonwealth) and India(outright colony). Well thats because it is. The British empire was based on the British pound being the legal tender for trade in the commonwelath. The British would buy goods and raw materials from their colonies and in return pay with Pounds. As the colonies were taxed so much they could not buy anything British so the Pounds were held in Colonial office accounts in London and lent out to British businesses. Well after the 2 World Wars the British were bankrupt, the Euopeans and Chinese were devastated, the Japanese were radiated and the Russians had lost most of their young male population. The USA had come out unscathed from WW2 so it got to dictate the new world order. So they decided to not have the headache of administering direct colonies and just have indirect colonies via the Dollar. Hence the Breton Woods system under which the Dollar became the instrument of foreign trade. Imagine their outrage when the damn Russkies decided to use the Rouble for their trade with Eat European Countries. Hence the world was divided into 2- those who trade in dollars and those who trade in rubles and the Cold War was on. The Cold War was not strictly based on Communism vs Capitalism proof of which is the Communist Chinese and Yugoslavs were in the American dollar trading block while the Capitalist Indians were in the Ruble trading block. Well after the fall of the Russians(a job well done by the CIA. They were not always as incompetent as they were in Iraq) the dollar was king. USA and its citizens had a sweet deal. Consume as much as you want, borrow to consume and all you have to do is pay for it in dollars. Dont have any dollars because you didnt produce anything ? Just print more. What ? If you print more dollars the exchange rate of dollars will go down making imports expensive or the interest rate will go up making Credit cards expensive! NO!! The exchange rate will not go down as other countries need dollars to buy oil and to settle their trade so no matter how many dollars USA prints its exchange rate stays strong. And China needs to drive their economic growth through exports so they need to keep the Yuan weak against the dollar. So they will keep buying dollar treasuries keeping the interest rates low. Before the Chinese it was the Koreans and the Japanese who did the same and after the Chinese it will be the Vietnamese and the Indians. So a pretty sweet deal. But now the deal is coming to an end. The Chinese have raised the Bogey of replacing the Dollar with the SDR. Make no mistake the SDR is a red herring, afterall the IMF is controlled by the US so China has no real hope of getting the Yuan into the SDR which would give them too the right to print money. But the SDR issue helps to divert attention from the real fun part where China is busy signing currency swaps with countries from South Korea to Belarus to Argentina to settle international trade in Yuan. Yes you heard that right international trade without the dollar!! Once this becomes widespread enough the Yuan will become an international reserve currency and other nations will start holding yuan. As this would ensure a Soros cannot do a run on the Yuan China would no longer have to hold dollars. Once that happens thats the end of the free run and the dollar empire