Category Archives: Trade

Oil for Gold (and Bitcoin)… the End of the Petrodollar and What It Means for You, by Nick Giambruno

Posted on April 10, 2022 | Leave a comment

Nobody talks about monetary privilege, which is the ability to exchange a piece of paper for real goods and services from other lands simply because that piece of paper is considered the world’s reserve currency. From Nick Giambruno at internationalman.com:

Petrodollar

The US government reaps an unfathomable amount of power from its racket of printing fake money out of thin air and forcing it on the world.

The petrodollar system is a big reason it has gotten away with this scam for so long.

In short, here’s how it works…

Oil is by far the largest and most strategic commodity market. For the last 50 years, virtually anyone who wanted to import oil needed US dollars to pay for it.

Every country needs oil. And if foreign countries need US dollars to buy oil, they have a compelling reason to hold large dollar reserves.

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Posted in Business, Economics, Economy, Energy, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, Trade, War

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Food Crisis—The Greatest Threat to Social Stability, by Jeff Thomas

Posted on April 5, 2022 | Leave a comment

Starving people are desperate, violent people. From Jeff Thomas at internationalman.com:

Recently, I was in a pharmacy and overheard the pharmacist say to someone, “There’s so much unpleasantness on the news these days, I’ve stopped watching.” The pharmacist has my sympathy. I’d love to be able to ignore the deterioration of the First World. It is, at turns, tedious, depressing, disturbing, and infuriating.

Unfortunately, we’re now passing through what, before it’s over, will be the most life-altering period in our lifetimes. As much as we’d like to behave like ostriches right now, we’d better keep our heads out of the sand and be as honest with ourselves as we can if we’re going to lessen the impact that these events will have on us.

I cannot emphasize too strongly the importance of a possible shortage of food. History is filled with examples of cultures that would endure most anything and still behave responsibly… but nothing causes greater, more unpredictable, or more violent behaviour in a people than a lack of food.

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Posted in Business, Collapse, Economy, Governments, Society, Trade, Tyranny, War

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Petrodollar System Flirts With Collapse… What It Means for Gold, Oil, and the Dollar, by Nick Giambruno

Posted on April 3, 2022 | 2 comments

If the petrodollar standard falls, so goes the American empire. From Nick Giambruno at internationalman.com:

Petrodollar

It’s been rightly said that “he who holds the gold makes the rules.”

After World War 2, the US had the largest gold reserves in the world, by far. Along with winning the war, this let the US reconstruct the global monetary system around the dollar.

The new system, created at the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944, tied the currencies of virtually every country in the world to the US dollar through a fixed exchange rate. It also tied the US dollar to gold at a fixed rate of $35 per ounce.

The dollar was said to be “as good as gold.”

The Bretton Woods system made the US dollar the world’s premier reserve currency. It forced other countries to store dollars for international trade or to exchange with the US government for gold.

However, it was doomed to fail.

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Posted in Banking, Business, Currencies, Debt, Economics, Economy, Energy, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, Trade

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Not One Bloc or the Other: Ukraine War Shows Emerging Post-American World, by Murtaza Hussain

Posted on April 3, 2022 | Leave a comment

The multipolar world has arrived. From Murtaza Hussain at theintercept.com:

Despite being browbeaten by the U.S., a growing number of Asian, African, and Latin American countries are charting a neutral path.

Not One Bloc or the Other: Ukraine War Shows Emerging Post-American World

Despite being browbeaten by the U.S., a growing number of Asian, African, and Latin American countries are charting a neutral path.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - MARCH 23: Linda Thomas-Greenfield, United States Ambassador to the United Nations, addresses the United Nations General Assembly during a special session at the United Nations headquarters on March 23, 2022 in New York City. The U.N. General Assembly resumed today after 22 member states, which includes France, the United Kingdom and United States, wrote to the President of the United Nations General Assembly, Abdulla Shahid, to resume the special session. The General Assembly will be considering two rival resolutions, one that is supported by Ukraine and other Western member states that will place blame on Russia for the growing humanitarian crisis and one sponsored by South Africa that does not mention Russia. The Security Council will also take up a vote on a third resolution that is sponsored by Russia that does not refer to the invasion of Ukraine. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, addresses the U.N. General Assembly on March 23, 2022, in New York.

Photo: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

In the late 1990s, at a time when U.S. global dominance still looked invincible, Singaporean diplomat and academic Kishore Mahbubani raised questions about whether a rising Asia might thwart American hegemony in the near future.

The crux of Mahbubani’s argument — laid out in his provocatively titled 1998 book, “Can Asians Think?” — was that Western elites, then flush with their victory in the Cold War, had become overly comfortable with dictating the bounds of legitimate debate and sound policy to the rest of the world. That imperious relationship, which had existed since the colonial period, was about to come to an end, said Mahbubani. Asians and other non-Westerners had their own ideas about how the world should be run and would soon have the strength to implement them.

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Posted in Eurasian Axis, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, History, Military, Trade

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Gazprom Halts Gas Shipments To Europe Via Critical Pipeline, by Tyler Durden

Posted on April 3, 2022 | Leave a comment

We’ll see how long Europe can endure being cut off from natural gas by its number one supplier. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

After European nations imported the most gas from Russian sources yesterday in months, scrambling to stock up on supplies as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s deadline to either pay for gas in rubles (or be cut off) came and went, Russian gas giant Gazprom has officially halted all deliveries to Europe via the Yamal-Europe pipeline, a critical artery for European energy supplies.

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Posted in Banking, Business, Economics, Economy, Energy, Eurasian Axis, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, Politics, Propaganda, Trade, War

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The Ugly Truth About Prepping, by James Walton

Posted on April 2, 2022 | 1 comment

Prepping is better than not prepping, but it’s not fail safe or perfect. From James Walton at askaprepper.com:

The fruits of prepping have gone mainstream. After the pandemic, the US toilet paper epidemic and the summer riots of 2020, it became clear the crazy preppers were not so crazy after all.

I talked to Business Insider and the New York Times who all wanted me to rub it in the face of the unprepared. Of course, I laughed at the idea.

As the world is navigating what could be the pretext for WWIII I find myself much less worried about the accolades of all that we preppers have achieved both for ourselves and for the nation at large. Instead, I am thinking about the ugly truths of prepping and what to expect next.

Let’s take a closer look at some of those ugly truths.

It Might All Be For Nothing

There are two ways to look at this ugly truth. The first way is through rose-colored lenses. Perhaps the brilliance of human innovation and the minority of great men and women find a way out of all this mess we have gotten ourselves into.

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Posted in Collapse, Morality, Society, Technology, Trade

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Update on US Dollar as Global Reserve Currency and the Impact of USD Exchange Rates & Inflation, by Wolf Richter

Posted on April 2, 2022 | Leave a comment

The dollar has been losing market share of international trade for years and that may continue. However, keep telling the world that dollar reserves  are no longer safe and the decline may be dramatic and sudden. From Wolf Richter at wolfstreet.com:

Dollar drops to lowest share in 26 years. Slowly but surely?

With inflation raging in the US following the Fed’s $5-trillion money-printing orgy and interest-rate repression, the question constantly arises: When will the rest of the world throw in the towel on the dollar as the dominant global reserve currency? If this were to happen all of a sudden, it would spell chaos. But it is happening little by little.

The global share of US-dollar-denominated foreign exchange reserves fell by 40 basis points from Q3 to 58.8% in Q4, setting a new 26-year low, edging out the low in Q4 2020, according to the IMF’s COFER data released at the end of March. Dollar-denominated foreign exchange reserves consist of Treasury securities, US corporate bonds, US mortgage-backed securities, and other USD-denominated assets that are held by foreign central banks and other foreign official institutions.

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Posted in Banking, Business, Currencies, Debt, Governments, Trade

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Ukraine: Transfer of Power Balance from West to East, by Cameron Leckie

Posted on April 1, 2022 | Leave a comment

The American Empire and dollar hegemony are over. From Cameron Leckie at consortiumnews.com:

Own goal: Cameron Leckie says the Western response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is rapidly accelerating what had been a more drawn-out process.  

Economic connections between U.S., EU, China, Russia and India. (Thereisnous, CC0, Wikimedia Commons)

Most of the debate and coverage of the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war in Australia and the Western world is decidedly banal. It is characterized by the simplification of an extremely complex situation to generate a narrative that can be summarized as Putin and Russia are evil and Ukraine is good.

This gross simplification is not helpful in either understanding the causes of the war, the nature of the war, its broader implications and most importantly of all, how it can be ended with the least number of additional deaths and injuries and damage to Ukraine’s infrastructure.

The preponderance of human-interest reporting of the conflict in lieu of coverage of the war itself is illustrative. The heartbreaking examples of families torn asunder along with the brave exploits of Ukrainian soldiers or allegations of war crimes by Russia, whilst important, tends to trigger an emotional response rather than provide an accurate depiction of the course of events.

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Posted in Collapse, Currencies, Debt, Economy, Eurasian Axis, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, History, Imperialism, Military, Politics, Propaganda, Trade, War

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The US Empire’s Ultimate Target Is Not Russia But China, by Caitlin Johnstone

Posted on March 31, 2022 | Leave a comment

Russia and China standing together is a pretty formidable opponent, so the U.S. plan is to first take down Russia and then China. From Caitlin Johnstone at caitlinjohnstone.com:

The Pentagon has produced its latest National Defense Strategy (NDS), a report made every four years to provide the public and the government with a broad overview of the US war machine’s planning, posturing, developments and areas of focus.

You might assume with all the aggressive brinkmanship between Moscow and the US power alliance this year that Russia would feature as Enemy Number One in the 2022 NDS, but you would be assuming incorrectly. The US “Defense” Department reserves that slot for the same nation that’s occupied it for many years now: China.

Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp writes the following:

The full NDS is still classified, but the Pentagon released a fact sheet on the document that says it “will act urgently to sustain and strengthen deterrence, with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as our most consequential strategic competitor and the pacing challenge for the Department.”

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Posted in Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, History, Military, Politics, Propaganda, Trade, War

Cancel the Funeral for the US Dollar: The “Patient” Just Leaped Out of the Coffin, by Charles Hugh Smith

Posted on March 30, 2022 | Leave a comment

Before the dollar is laid to rest, a new global reserve currency will have to found, and that’s not that easy. From Charles Hugh Smith at oftwominds.com:

Sealing the USD’s coffin requires conjuring up a replacement reserve currency, and that turns out to be a lot more challenging than many understand.

You know the scene in movies where the body-bag is being zipped up or the coffin lid slid into place when the recently deceased startles everyone by suddenly sitting upright? That’s an analogy for the funeral currently being planned for the US dollar–a funeral that has been cancelled.

OK, I get it: there are plenty of reasons why so many expect the dollar to die: it’s a fiat currency, for goodness sakes, and those always die sooner than expected; US debt is soaring like an Elon Musk rocket; its purchasing power is in freefall; America’s unipolar moment is history in a multi-polar world, and let’s face it, it’s simply not as pretty as other currencies.

Die, dollar, die!

But sealing the USD’s coffin requires conjuring up a replacement reserve currency, and that turns out to be a lot more challenging than many understand.

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Posted in Banking, Business, Currencies, Debt, Economics, Economy, Financial markets, Trade

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