Jim Rickards posted....
For years, currency analysts have looked for signs of
an international monetary “reset” that would diminish
the dollar’s role as the leading reserve currency and
replace it with a substitute agreed upon at some Bretton
Woods-style monetary conference. That push has been
accelerated by Washington’s use of the dollar as a
weapon of financial warfare, including the application
of sanctions. The U.S. uses the dollar strategically
to reward friends and punish enemies. The use of the
dollar as a weapon is not limited to trade wars and
currency wars, although the dollar is used tactically
in those disputes. The dollar is much more powerful
than that.
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The dollar can be used for regime change by creating
hyperinflation, bank runs and domestic dissent in
countries targeted by the U.S. The U.S. can depose
the governments of its adversaries, or at least blunt
their policies without firing a shot. But for every
action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. As
the U.S. wields the dollar weapon more frequently,
the rest of the world works harder to shun the dollar
completely. I’ve been warning for years about efforts
of nations like Russia and China to escape what they
call “dollar hegemony” and create a new financial
system that does not depend on the dollar and helps
them get out from under dollar-based economic sanctions.
These efforts are only increasing.
Russia has sold off almost all of its dollar-denominated
U.S. Treasury securities and has reduced its dollar
asset position to almost zero. It has been amassing
massive quantities of gold, and has increased the gold
portion of its official reserves to over 20%. Russia
has about 2,000 tonnes of gold, having more than tripled
its gold reserves in the past 10 years. It has actually
acquired enough gold to surpass China on the list of
major holders of gold as official reserves. This
combination of fewer Treasuries and more gold puts
Russia on a path to full insulation from U.S. financial
sanctions. Russia can settle its balance of payments
obligations with gold shipments or gold sales and avoid
U.S. asset freezes by not holding assets the U.S. can
reach. And Russia is providing other nations a model to
achieve similar distance from U.S. efforts to use the
dollar to enforce its foreign policy priorities.
Certainly any talk of a monetary reset must involve China.
Despite its present weakness, China is still the second-
largest economy in the world and the fastest-growing major
emerging market. Like Russia, China is amassing gold, and
likely has far more gold than it officially lists. It has
also been helping to suppress gold prices so that it can
buy gold cheaply without driving up the price.
Europe has also shown signs that it wants to escape dollar
hegemony. For example, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas
has called for a new EU-based payments system independent
of the U.S. and SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank
Financial Telecommunication) that would not involve dollar
payments.
As I said earlier, SWIFT in the nerve center of the global
financial network. All major banks transfer all major
currencies using the SWIFT message system. Cutting a nation
off from SWIFT is like taking away its oxygen. In the longer
run, these are just more developments pushing the world at
large away from dollars and toward alternatives of all kinds,
including new payment systems and cryptocurrencies. The signs
of a reset are everywhere, but at least for now the dollar
is still king of the hill. The dollar still represents about
60% of global reserve assets, 80% of global payments and
almost 100% of global oil sales. With such a dominant position,
the dollar will not be easy to replace. Still, the trends
are not good for the dollar. The international reserve
position may be 60%, but as recently as 2000 it was over 70%
and just a few years ago it was still at 63%. That trend is
not your friend.
Meanwhile, Europe has remained a faithful partner to the U.S.
and has gone along with sanctions against Iran, for example.
That’s because European companies and countries that violate
U.S. sanctions can be punished with denied access to U.S.
dollar payment channels. But now, Europe is also showing
signs it wants to escape dollar hegemony. German Foreign
Minister Heiko Maas has called for a new EU-based payments
system independent of the U.S. and SWIFT that would not involve
dollar payments. In the short run, Europewill probably go along
with the U.S. because it doesn’t want to lose business in the
U.S. itself or be banned from the U.S. dollar payments system.
But in the longer run, this is just one more development pushing
the world at large away from dollars and toward alternatives of
all kinds, including new payment systems and cryptocurrencies.
It’s also one more sign that dollar dominance in global finance
may end sooner than most expect. Another challenger to the dollar
is the IMF’s special drawing rights or SDRs. The SDR is a form of
world money printed by the IMF. It was created in 1969 as the
realization of an earlier idea for world money called the “bancor,”
proposed by John Maynard Keynes at the Bretton Woods conference
in 1944. The bancor was never adopted, but the SDR has been going
strong for 50 years. The IMF could function more like a central
bank through more frequent issuance of SDRs and by encouraging
the use of “private SDRs” by banks and borrowers. At the current
rate of progress, it may take decades for the SDR to pose a
serious challenge to the dollar. But that process could be rapidly
accelerated in a financial crisis where the world needed liquidity
and the central banks were unable to provide it because they still
have not normalized their balance sheets from the last crisis.
In that case, the replacement of the dollar could happen almost
overnight. Individuals will not be allowed to own SDRs, but you
can still protect you wealth by buying gold. That’s what Russia
and China are doing. Both countries have more than tripled their
gold reserves since 2009. But attacks on the dollar are not
limited to gold or SDRs themselves. The most imminent threat
to the dollar actually comes from a combination of gold and digital
currency. The fact that Russia and China have been acquiring gold
is old news. Still, there are practical problems with using gold
as a form of currency, including storage and transportation costs.
But Russia is solving these transactional hurdles by combining its gold
position with distributed ledger, or blockchain technology.
Russia and China could develop a new cryptocurrency that would be
transferred on a proprietary encrypted ledger with message traffic
moving through an internet-type system not connected to the existing
Internet. Other countries could be allowed into this new system with
permission from Russia or China. The new cryptocurrency would be a
so-called “stable coin,” where the value was fixed with reference
either to a weight of gold or another standard unit such as the SDR.
Goods and services would be priced in this new unit of account.
Periodically, surpluses and deficits would be settled up in physical
gold. Such net settlements would require far less gold than gross
settlements (where every transaction had to be paid for in real-time).
This type of system (also called a “permissioned blockchain”) is
not pie-in-the-sky, but is already under development and will be
deployed soon. But you can count on the U.S. government being the
last to know. The development of a gold-backed digital currency is
just one more sign that dollar dominance in global finance may end
sooner than most expect. And we may be getting dangerously close to
that point right now.
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