Deluded Currency Cultists Believe The Dollar Is Invincible
Brandon Smith
Alt-Market.com
Wednesday, 12 March 2014
At the onset of the derivatives collapse in 2007/2008 it would have been easy to assume that most of America was receiving a valuable education in normalcy bias.
In 2006, the amount of ego on display surrounding mortgage investment was so disturbingly grotesque anyone with any true understanding of the situation felt like projectile vomiting. To watch the smug righteousness of MSNBC and FOX economic pundits as they predicted the infinite rise of American property markets despite all evidence to the contrary was truly mind blowing. When the whole system imploded, it was difficult to know whether one should laugh, or cry.
The saddest aspect of the credit crisis of 2008 was not the massive chain reaction of bankruptcies or the threat of institutional insolvency. Rather, it was the delusional assumptions of the public that the grand mortgage casino was going to go on forever. There is nothing worse than witnessing the victim of a Ponzi scheme defend the lie which has ultimately destroyed him. As much as I am for people waking up to the nature of the crisis, there comes a point when those who are going to figure it out will figure it out, and the rest are essentially hopeless.
The cultism surrounding the U.S. economy and the U.S. dollar is truly mind boggling, and by “cultism” I mean a blind faith in the fiat currency mechanism that goes beyond all logic, reason and evidence.
In recent weeks it has become more visible as global financiers play both sides of the Ukrainian conflict, luring Americans into a frenzy of false patriotism and an anti-Russo-sports-team-mentality. My personal distaste for Vladimir Putin revolves around my understanding that he is just as much a puppet of the International Monetary Fund and international banks as Barack Obama, but many Americans hate him simply because the mainstream media has designated him the next villain in the fantasy tale of U.S. foreign policy.
Open threats from Russia that they will dump U.S. treasury bond holdings and the dollar’s world reserve status if NATO interferes in the Ukraine have been met with wildly naive chest beating from dollar cultists. I am beginning to see the talking points everywhere.
“Let them dump the dollar, Russia’s holdings are minimal!” Or, “Let them throw out Treasuries, they’ll just be shooting themselves in the foot!” are the battle cries heard across the web. I wish I could convey how insane this viewpoint is, especially in light of the fact that many alternative economic analysts, including myself, have been predicting just such a scenario for years.
Despite the childish boastings of the dollar devout, there is an extraordinarily good possibility that the life of the greenback will be snuffed out in the near term. Here are the facts…
1) Russia will not be alone in its decouple from the dollar system. China, our largest foreign creditor, and India (a supposed ally) have clearly sided with Russia on the Ukranian issue. China has stated that it will back Russia’s play in the event that sanctions are brought to bear by NATO, or if a shooting conflict erupts.
2) China has already been slowly dumping the dollar as a world reserve currency using bilateral trade agreements with numerous countries, including Russia, India, Australia, Brazil, Germany, Japan, etc. These agreements allow FOREX currency swaps and export/import purchases to be made with China without the use of the dollar. China has been preparing itself for a divorce from U.S. economic dependence for at least a decade. The idea that they would actually follow through over political tensions should NOT surprise anyone if they have been paying attention.
3) A total drop of the dollar or U.S. treasury bonds by Russia and China would send shock waves through global markets. Russia is a major energy supplier for most of Europe. China is the largest export/import nation in the world. If they refuse to accept dollars as a trade mechanism, numerous countries will fall in line to abandon the greenback as well. The fact that so many Americans refuse to acknowledge this reality is a recipe for disaster.
The only advantage the U.S. has traditionally offered in terms of international trade has been the American consumer, whose unchecked debt spending partly fueled the rise of the industrialized East, not to mention the biggest credit bubble in history. The role of America as a consumer market is collapsing today, however. The mainstream media and the Federal Reserve can blame the steady decline in retail sales on the “weather” all they want, but negative indicators in global manufacturing often take many months to register in the statistics, meaning, this destabilization began long before the days turned cold.
4) China has been shifting away from export dependency since at least 2008, calling for a larger consumer based market at home. This process of enriching the Chinese consumer has almost been completed. The lie that China “needs the U.S.” in order to survive economically needs to be thrown out like the utter propaganda it is.
The Rest…HERE
