. . .
X “Some of the folks at the G20 Summit may kick around the possible composition of the ‘Special Drawing Rights’ that is emerging as the new world’s reserve currency. The International Monetary Fund formally sets the composition of the SDRs, yet the major players gathered in China yesterday to discuss such matters. A thing is now being described as a right.”
Z “Sounds like they are creating a right to reach first for your gun.”
X “Or they are sketching a new picture of the economic future based on rights rather than on power and circumstance.”
Z “Or someone special who has been allowed to have the only gun in the great currency gunfight now must play well with others who are suitably armed.”
X “Or the one with the big gun is now being disarmed.”
. . .
X “Felicitous publication really.”
Z “Timely, even. The times they are changin’ the way we will make change in the near future.”
X “In The Mandibles, Lionel Shriver adopts Keynes’ term ‘Bancor’ rather than the new age term ‘SDR’ to describe supplementary foreign exchange reserve assets. As the U.S. Petrodollar slips as the world’s reserve currency and then as the dominant component of the SDR/Bancor, the United States people will slip to second-world status in the world.”
Z “The way I describe it, when the Petrodollar is no longer the big dog, the United States is no longer the leader of the pack.”
X “Prices will increase and perhaps double in short order before more structural disorder devolves. Our McMansions still will sport baroque brushed nickel bathroom fixtures in the multiple bathrooms, yet in due course the water coursing through the corroding pipes will be increasingly intermittent and decreasingly safe.”
Z “Many of us have those problems now while everything appears to be dory hunky.”
. . .
X “Her description of the human consequences is very plausible, yet her explanation for the underlying causes is only partially complete. Contemporary economic doctrine is exposed as voodoo and a specious secular religion that rationalizes those in power acquiring and retaining wealth. The entitlement Ponzi scheme receives appropriate blame. The pernicious involvement of the Federal Reserve is alluded to obliquely, yet the entrenched corruption and incompetence in every quarter are not addressed.”
Z “She does not describe the institutions that are failing systematically and simultaneously. Congress, courts, executives and executive agencies, bureaucrats, universities, news outlets, parents, preachers, prophets, you name it. At some time, a fragile, fractured, fissured and fundamentally weak system of manipulation and intervention will fail with consequence.”
X “She does observe that the traditional news fashioners are defunct.”
. . .
X “‘The Chip’ is first described in an e-commentary titled ‘Monitoring The Masses: The Card And The Chip’ published on January 12, 2015. She further develops the human impact of implanting ‘The Chip’ to control and corral the masses. ‘The Chip’ is so much more efficient and effective than the corn chip and football at sating the populace.”
Z “‘The Chip’ is an electronic lobotomy that is more powerful, pervasive and perverse than fear or drugs. Technology saves us. I think that is what one would conclude. Surely.”
. . .
X “An empire cannot continue to mimeograph a fiat currency and force it on the rest of the world at great cost and consequence to the rest of the world without the rest of the world demurring at some point.”
Z “And the rest of the world is becoming restive.”
X “They are selling SDR-denominated bonds.”
Z “And they are selling oil without even acknowledging the Petrodollar.”
. . .
X “In her novel, the people of the United State of Nevada agree that it is ‘dumb,’ but they base their currency on the gold standard.”
. . .
[See the e-commentary at “Monitoring The Masses: The Card And The Chip (January 12, 2015)”, “Brave 1984 Farm: The Best Of All Possible Worlds (March 19, 2012)” and the e-commentary on the institutional distractions in our society at “Foot Longs and Football (September 2, 2013).”]
Bumper stickers of the week:
G20 > G7; SDR > FRN; World > USA
In the intermediate run, a Kleptocracy is unsustainable.
