For the world’s reserve currency, gold is definitely a four-letter word. From Nick Giaumbruno at internationalman.com:
The escalation ladder is a concept to describe how the severity of a military conflict can increase.
At the very top of the escalation ladder is all-out nuclear war.
While there are numerous countries with nuclear weapons, Russia and China are the only ones with sophisticated enough arsenals to go toe-to-toe with the US up to the top of the escalation ladder.
In other words, the US can’t obtain escalation dominance against Russia or China because they can match each escalation up to all-out nuclear war—the very top of the ladder.
For this reason, these countries are deterred from getting into a kinetic conflict with one another.
It’s also why the US military doesn’t hesitate to bomb countries like Libya, Iraq, Syria, or Afghanistan. It has little to fear because it knows these countries can’t climb very high in the escalation ladder.
This concept is well-understood in military conflicts.
However, the same dynamic exists in an economic war, and it’s far less understood by governments (and investors).
That’s why neither the US nor Russia are not deterred and are climbing up the economic escalation ladder and hurdling towards an increasingly imminent catastrophe.
STRAIGHT LINE LOGIC 