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Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Throwing a BRIC Through America's Window

I wrote an essay in November called "Throwing a BRIC Through America's Windshield?" in which I predicted:

Will the BRIC countries and Japan demand a shift away from the dollar at the G-20 summit later this month?

My prediction is that at the G-20 this month, Japan, Brazil and India will drag their feet, and that China and Russia won't turn their bark into a bite.

However, I predict that America's economic meltdown will occur so quickly that the BRIC countries and Japan will force a change in the world reserve currency within the next year.

Well, yesterday, the BRIC countries said they might be each others' bonds (and not just U.S. Treasury bonds). As Bloomberg writes:

Brazil, Russia, India and China are considering buying each other’s bonds and swapping currencies to lessen dependence on the U.S. dollar as their leaders meet for a summit in Russia’s Ural Mountains.

The leaders of the so-called BRIC countries will discuss measures to promote regional currencies, including “possibly placing part of reserves in the financial instruments of partner countries” ...

The BRIC countries have combined reserves of $2.8 trillion and are among the biggest holders of U.S. Treasuries. The first BRIC summit comes after Brazil, China and Russia announced plans to shift some foreign reserves into International Monetary Fund bonds, driving Treasuries and the dollar lower.

The BRIC countries accounted for about 22 percent of the world economy in 2008, up from 16 percent a decade earlier, based on purchasing power parity.

And today, Russia and China announced that they will greatly increase their use of yuan and rubles in trade between the two countries. Given that Russia is currently the world's largest producer of crude oil and that China holds more monetary reserves than anyone else (more than a quarter of the world’s reserves), this could be substantial.

Indeed, as AFP writes:
The dollar fell against the euro and yen on Wednesday after major emerging economies cast doubt on its long-term future as the world's main reserve currency, dealers said.
My prediction might not have been so crazy after all.

For background, see this, this, this and this.

6 comments:

  1. I still see no way to dump the dollar's reserve currency status.

    Brazil, Russia, India and China are becoming increasingly important cogs in a growing world economy. This new world economy is an economy that is however, best held up to an analogy with the European attempts to create fusion energy.

    In theory it's possible, both fusion power and a free-trade world economy.

    In practice it's simply not going to play out, is my bet. In the end isolationism is going to rule the roost again. Trends in these sort of tough times always come back to protecting one's own economic interests.

    Which currency could possibly supplant the dollar? -is the big question.

    Whichever currency it might be, even some possible hybrid, the intended hand-off, the coup, the toppling, represents a huge high-stakes gamble that could leave the dollar only more permanently entrenched -and those intending any coup -permanently destitute.

    Conventional wisdom is that if an economy manufactures, -produces value-added commodities-, it will dominate.

    This is merely a historic fallacy however.

    China is right now reeling from a 26% drop in exports. It is facing revolution. I'll say it again. China is right now -facing revolution.

    Russia -a natural resource exporter, -is experiencing a better economy than it has had in more than a thousand years!

    There are great numbers of young men wandering China's streets right now, hungry, with an appetite piqued by the smell of capitalist fortune. But they are only growing more destitute every day.

    The Russian oligarchs are gaining in power and ruling an increasingly conservative Russia. The Russian economists are saying, -Forget about dumping the dollar. There is only risk involved in such a change. Things are good for us now! Go slow. Let the status quo congeal.

    I'm not telling anyone here anything. But that's the point. No one is telling anyone anything -until someone can invent another viable hole in the bottom of the economic bathtub.

    It does no good to collapse the dollar. If the dollar collapses, the whole bathtub is drained.

    If you punch a hole at the other end of the economic bathtub -with a competing reserve currency, you're going to find that the whole economic bathtub gets drained (the bi-metal phenomenon will chase the good currency out of circulation due to hording), AND, the last little bit of a devastated economy will go down the dollar hole, leaving the usurpers high and dry -permanently.

    I know there is trouble. I know these are uncertain times.

    I just don't think these uncertain times are the right time to say, -water is necessarily going to have to start running up hill to a new hole being cut into the bottom of the economic bathtub.

    I think it's far more likely, the water will continue to flow out the dollar hole in the economic bathtub.

    Something is going to give. It has been giving for going on several years now.

    My guess is, it will be China -imploding- due to the strains of all the appetite being created inside China.

    There is a want inside China that will not be denied tranquilly. That spells revolution.

    ReplyDelete
  2. sounds like a whole lot of you are looking at this with precisely the kind of thinking that in an airplane cockpit, you'd cost me and the rest of the crew and the passengers, their very lives because of your inability to grasp reality and assess the magnitude of the problem we face.

    that 'denial' now is more than a river in Egypt. it's ingrained in your thought processes to the point you're neither thinking clearly and objectively, but you're ignoring critical evidence that you need to accept to be able to navigate thru this turmoil.

    you'd all make very sorry, very deficient aircrew, and I wouldn't fly with ANY OF YOU!

    the dollar is going to collapse. get this thru your thick goddamned skulls. deal with it.

    ReplyDelete
  3. China isnt going to have a revolution. It didnt have one during the cultural revolution where more people are destitute and hungrier. People saying China is going to have a political revolt is dreaming because they fear China may replace the US. People who are from China can tell you frankly, the government's power is very very safe, people are very nationalistic and the economic turn around in the last 20 years have even made people more loyal to the government than ever.
    People outside of China dont know why the Communist were well loved by the majority until now and including the hard times-- this is because they were the ones who kicked Japan and the West out of carving the Chinese Melon. Prior to the PLA becoming the government, China was the sick man in Asia, the Communist kicked the British, the French, Americans, Russians and the Japanese from carved out lands. The west are much more cruel, under Western oppression, 60 Million Chinese were killed during the Opium Wars down the Boxer revolution alone. The Communist party didnt even come close to any number the British has ever killed in China, not even close to the Japanese number either.

    ReplyDelete
  4. You called it on this one, imo. Another nanosecond, another dollar will be the future saying.

    ReplyDelete
  5. DAn R.,

    The banksters are working on a new global currency. In order to institute their global economy - they either need to destroy the dollar or extend American imperialism. The goal will be a global currency. If we think the central world bankers (and their politicians) have a goal to preserve the dollar - rather than to destroy it to replace the dollar as the world's reserve currency to bring in a new global govt - well we're thinking as if the bankers, etc. have an "Americanized" worldview and paradigm. They don't. They have a specific agenda and nationalism means nothing to them. They have zero "patriotism" to the USA, our Constitution, our wealth, our sovereignty, our way of life. In fact, that's what they want to destroy.

    Not every guy who asks me out really cares about me as a person. Now, unless you guys would all advise your daughters to trust every guy she dates to really be looking out for her best interests --- why would anyone assume Obama, Geithner, and Bernanke are looking out for... "Americans"??

    If you know how some guys are - you then know how some banksters and politicians are. They may talk pretty. They may try to tell you they love ya... but, really, you may end up taken advantage of if you operate on the assumption that their motives are pure and their intentions are honorable. You better find out their characters proven by their actions... and not believe their pretty words or their images or their assurances.

    There are good men - but there are players too.

    These guys are PLAYERS, ppl. Hello. They've proven it by their actions. We should not believe their words. We should expect them to be playin' us, imo... and we should dump them. :)

    ReplyDelete
  6. China holds the key to how quickly the dollar will fall - and since China does not want to hurt its own dollar holdings, it will not orchestrate a dollar that takes a sudden nose dive.

    Also in China's interest is in acquiring assets that do benefit the Chinese economy. Same with Russia really.

    I have blogged on this here and include updates:

    http://fiddleferme.blogspot.com/2009/06/when-china-awakes-it-will-shake-world.html

    From the BRIC and SCO summits recently, there will be a SLOW decline of the dollar as the dollar is used less and less for major international transactions.

    This is only the beginning of the end for the dollar - it may take a couple years.

    Remember that above all else, equilibrium is a central concept in the Chinese psyche.

    ReplyDelete

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