What is the World’s Reserve Currency?  It is the U S dollar.  It is used by most nations to buy goods and services from other countries. If Germany wants to buy oil from Saudi Arabia, it must first buy U S dollars, the reserve currency.  Then and only then can they purchase oil.  Sixty per cent of the world’s reserves are in U S dollars.

In the 1950’s, the British pound was the reserve currency. They lost the reserve currency title when the British economy collapsed due to over printing the British pound, growing inflation, rising prices, unemployment, and the heavy debt burden. The U S dollar became the reserve currency when President Nixon abandoned the gold standard.

The U S economy has recovered from the recession by allowing the Treasury to buy U S bonds (quantitative easing) with newly printed dollar bills.  This has flooded the world market with dollars and created a drastic drop in value of the dollar, the reserve currency.  Between 2002 and 2012 the dollar has decreased in value against the Euro a whopping 54%.  Gold and silver have increased in value 12 years straight.

According to the Seattle times, Mexico has limited expats, or U S citizens living in Mexico, to exchanging no more than $1500/month.  Cuba does not accept dollars anymore. The International Monetary Fund (lends money to member countries), is calling for a new reserve currency replacing the dollar with SDR’s (special drawing rights).

China owns $1.26 trillion of U S treasury bonds and is not happy with our quantitative easing or printing dollars.  The Chinese already have agreements with many countries to use each other’s currency for cross border trade.  They have signed agreements with Germany, Brazil, India, France, Chili, Saudi Arabia, and South Africa.  All are calling for a new reserve currency. China has stated, “Such alarming days when the destinies of others are in the hands of a hypocritical nation should be terminated.”  Japan has a similar debt level with the U S. Either nation could cause the collapse of the dollar by selling their dollars on the secondary market and flooding the world market with unwanted dollars.  But, in doing so, would destroy the best market in the world for their manufactured goods, so it is unlikely to happen until a new reserve currency is established, possibly the Yuan, backed by gold.

We, as a nation have what is called, a normalcy bias.  Like our congress, we don’t face facts, and it hasn’t happen before, so it won’t.

According to the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal, our standard of living has fallen 8.9% since 1999.  We have the highest corporate tax rates in the world.  We are less competitive.  Our government needs those taxes to pay our $126 trillion of unfunded debt. The loss of world confidence in the dollar will collapse our economy here and throughout the Anglo Saxon world. Interest rates will rise, business will fail, increasing unemployment, rising prices, ramped inflation, recession and finally depression, lawlessness, and disease. This happened in Germany after World War I, Zimbabwe in the last couple of decades, and if we continue to print money to pay for additional debt, here in the United States of America.

Published every Wednesday, at least.

 

Share This