Archive for the Petrodollar Category

USA + FRN/PD – – > IMF + SDR – – > NDB + UMU? The “Universal Monetary Unit” . . . Coming To a Planet Near You (January 2, 2017)

Posted in AIIB, Banks and Banking System, Book Reference, BRICS, CFETS, CIPS, Dollar - World's Reserve Currency, Gold, Gold Standard, Hyperdive Economic Collapse, International Finance, International Monetary Fund, Money, Petrodollar, SDR - Special Drawing Rights, Special Drawing Rights (SDR), Trade, Universal Monetary Unit, World's Reserve Currency on January 2, 2017 by e-commentary.org

. . .

K          “Remember way back on October 1 when the International Monetary Fund (IMF) implemented the modified composition of the Special Drawing Rights (SDR) that includes for the first time the Chinese Renminbi (RMB) along with the United States Dollar (FRN/PD), the Euro (€), the British Pound Sterling (£) and the Japanese Yen (¥) in the Great Valuation Basket?”

J          “Couldn’t forget.  To celebrate the transition, we got the entire day off.”

K          “The Federal Reserve Note/PetroDollar maintained its percentage share of the portfolio with the Euro, Pound and Yen yielding room for the new kid on the block.  The way I see it, the evolution of the SDR may be too slow for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (the BRICS countries) and other countries (the BRICS+ countries) and still leaves the FRN/PD as the world’s reserve currency.”

J          “They say more countries are getting cranky that the FRN/PD remains the mandatory currency peg for trade on the global market.  Last Thursday, the China Foreign Exchange Trade System (CFETS), the foreign exchange trading platform operator, announced that it is adjusting the way it calculates the CFETS Yuan Index which is a critical measure of the Yuan against a basket of currencies, starting yesterday.”

K          “And you got the entire day off.” 

J          “And today, for good measure.  They say that the USA will not allow the IMF to revisit the composition of the SDRs again for years.  The problem for the BRICS+ countries is that the United States has veto power over the composition of the SDR and will block any attempt to accelerate the transition to incorporate other currencies.”

K          “Think about this possible scenario.  The BRICS+ countries may make an end run and expand the mandate and activities of what is now known as the New Development Bank (NDB) and create a Universal Monetary Unit (UMU) constituted of the Chinese RMB, Russian Ruble, Indian Rupee, South African Rand, Brazilian Real, good old gold (Alpha uniform) and a smorgasbord of other currencies.”     

J          “While they are at it, the South African Kruggerand could supplant the Rand and serve as the gold component or part of the gold component.”

K          “Who knows, when they do that, you may get the week off of work.”

J          “Count me in and count me off.  And to provide for a smoother transition, include in the new generation UMU the current currencies in the SDR in diluted amounts.  A measured and gradual approach is prudent.  Interdependent economies and unintended consequences, you know.”

K          “While they are at it, they could go full in.  The Cross-Border Inter-Bank Payment System sometimes known as the China Interbank Payment System (CIPS) could develop into a comparable transnational multilateral payment system as a complement to and to compete with the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT).”

J          “That’s exactly what I was going to suggest.  An economy needs a ‘thing’ to serve as money/currency/chits/script/wampum and a means to reconcile payments.  The BRICS+ countries have no reason to wait another half decade when they can do it themselves.”

. . .

J          “Or the BRICS+ countries may force the issue at the IMF meeting in Rome, District of Columbia on April 21 – 23.”

K          “And you will get at least two days off of work.”

J          “Can’t forget.  Stay tuned.”

. . .

K          “Someone surely has thought and wondered about these possible developments.”

J          “You think?  I wonder if anyone cares.  What’s on tv?”

. . .

[See the e-commentary at “The Mandibles, FRNs, SDRs, IMF, G20, WTD! (September 5, 2016)” and “Dollar – World’s Reserve Currency”.]

Bumper stickers of the week:

The “Universal Monetary Unit” . . . Coming To a Planet Near You

Paper [Money] Is Patriotic

Fight the War on Cash

 

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The Mandibles, FRNs, SDRs, IMF, G20, WTD! (September 5, 2016)

Posted in Book Reference, Collapse, Courts, Debt/Deficits, Dollar - World's Reserve Currency, Federal Reserve, Gold, Gold Standard, Guns, INFORM Act, International Finance, International Monetary Fund, Journalism, Money, Newspapers, Petrodollar, Press/Media, SDR - Special Drawing Rights, Silver, Silver Standard, Special Drawing Rights (SDR), World's Reserve Currency on September 5, 2016 by e-commentary.org

. . .

X          “Some of the folks at the G20 Summit may kick around the future 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 issuing SDR-denominated bonds.”

Z          “And they are selling oil without even acknowledging the Petrodollar.”

. . .

X          “In her novel, the U.S. government confiscates gold and disregards even basic civil liberties while confiscating the yellow stuff.”

Z          “Survey the universe of commentary on the subject and you discover that no one has ever even questioned that the government will confiscate gold when the stuff competes with the fake stuff.”

X          “The people of the United State of Nevada who seceded from the dysfunctional disunion agree that it is ‘dumb’ and ‘arbitrary,’ but they base their currency the ‘Continental’ on the gold standard.”

Z          “She does not see that the government would have eliminated cash of any kind years or decades earlier.”

X          “That is one of the harbingers of great danger.  When the government outlaws or confiscates Au, Ag, Fe, Pb, or even worthless fiat cash, the end of civil rights and civil liberties is near.”

Z          “Or here.”

 . .

[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.

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The Gold Standard Revisited  (August 15, 2016)

Posted in Book Reference, Dollar - World's Reserve Currency, Gold, Gold Standard, Money, Nobel Prize, Noble Prize, Petrodollar, SDR - Special Drawing Rights, Silver, Silver Standard on August 15, 2016 by e-commentary.org

. . .

M          “You may be right.”

G          “I don’t want to be right.  But you just cannot trust the government.”

M          “It will never seem reasonable, but it is rational.  We must do something to restrain human nature and government excess.”

. . .

G          “Gold is an element.  Gold is a commodity.  Gold is a currency if folks act as if it is a currency.  Gold is what you make it.  The vote is coming in.  The Swiss not so much but who knows what to make about the election.  Those who vote in favor of the dollar or the pound and against gold as a currency may soon be . . . pounding sand.”

. . .

G          “As I recall, Keynes proclaimed that the gold standard, not gold per se, is a ‘barbarous relic.’  ‘Barbarian’ means ‘foreign.’  For example, ‘Barbara’ is a ‘foreign woman.’  So that might suggest that the gold standard, or at least gold, is popular in foreign countries.  And it is.  One point four billion Chinese and one point three billion Indians relish the element.  The Russians embrace it with both paws.”

M          “Seems that Au is A1 in the world today.”

. . .

M          “Tying human activity to an element such as Au seems so . . . confining.  And elemental.  Yet without something tethering human greed, ‘printing money’ is a temptation too great.  If he had known about it, Bill Shakespeare would have written about it.”

G          “You cannot trust the government.  And yet the great irony is that the government is not printing money.  The government has ceded power to the Federal Reserve which sounds like the government and yet is a private business that owes its allegiance to the banks and advances the welfare of the those in the stock market racket.” 

. . . 

M          “Keynes criticized the gold standard because it was a direct threat to his ego and his identity and his desire to make unbridled decisions.  That is the hallmark of what passed for the elite.”

G          “No one in power wants to be restrained by a standard.  Some standard is better than no standard.”

. . .

G          “The rule of law is a civilizing relic yet not one in currency today.  Even with more rules and laws on the books than ever in the history of humankind, the rule of law simply does not apply to those in power.  The law is no restraint.”

. . .

G          “The Nobel gang rewards those who shill for the fiat system and the central banks.  If the Nobel gang gave awards for those who ask probing questions about the viability and consequences of fiat currency and unrestrained debt, there would be more folks asking probing questions about the viability and consequences of fiat currency and unrestrained debt.”

M          “Perhaps the new Noble Prize in Eco-nomics can be awarded to those few individuals who ask probing questions and provide trenchant answers.”

. . .

[See the previous great gold standard debate in the e-commentary at “Is The Gold Standard Really The Gold Standard? (January 18, 2010)”, a discussion of the silver standard at “The Silver Standard:  The Value Of (Sort Of) Real Money (July 15, 2013)” and the observation in “The U.S. And Saudi Arabia:  Not Playing Well With Others (Each Other) (July 11, 2016)” that President Nixon decided unilaterally to cancel the direct international convertibility of the United States dollar to gold today.]

Bumper stickers of the week:

“In truth, the gold standard is already a barbarous relic.”  John M. Keynes, A Tract on Monetary Reform (1924).

“Real gold is not afraid of the fire of a red furnace.”  Chinese proverb

“There are three hundred economists in the world who are against gold, and they think that gold is a barbarous relic – and they might be right.  Unfortunately, there are three billion inhabitants of the world who believe in gold.”  Attributed to János Fekete

In every country, culture and civilization through space and across time, gold is the one thing and the only thing that has been cherished by everyone everywhere at all times.

Eco-nomic SAT Question:  Which statement does not fit:  1) resources are finite, 2) water is finite, 3) gold is finite or 4) money printing is infinite?

The Gold Standard may just be the Gold Standard or at least a standard.

The G20 Leaders Summit is in Hangzhou, China this September 4 and 5.

Convention between the United States and Great Britain (for Canada) for the Protection of Migratory Birds, also called the Migratory Bird Treaty, was signed on August 16, 1916.

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The U.S. And Saudi Arabia:  Not Playing Well With Others (Each Other) (July 11, 2016)

Posted in Gold, Gold Standard, Middle East, Petrodollar, Special Drawing Rights (SDR) on July 11, 2016 by e-commentary.org

. . .

K          “On August 15, 1971, President Nixon unilaterally cancelled the direct international convertibility of the United States dollar to gold.  The U.S. abandoned the ‘gold standard’ and embraced the ‘oil standard.’  As part of the grand deal, the Saudi Arabians agreed to price oil in dollars and thereby created a new and extremely valuable thing dubbed the ‘Petrodollar.’”

J          “I note to others that the Petrodollar is right up there with the steam engine and the Internet as the driver of innovation and progress in the United States.”

K          “The Petrodollar is an almost cost-free export that has undergirded American expansion and power for the last almost 45 years.  Now the two countries are in a spat that is not likely to turn out well for the U.S.”

J          “I noticed.  Life is like high school writ large.  The Saudis did not receive O’Bama when he visited Saudi Arabia; O’Bama did not receive Saudi officials when they visited Washington.  They do not play well with others.  Or with themselves.”

K          “Sounds more like elementary school antics writ small.  Sales here and sales there of oil around the world today are being denominated in something other than the Petrodollar.  If the use of the Petrodollar declines, the U.S. declines with it.”

J          “The Petrodollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency may not be able to sustain it.”

K          “The Petrodollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency is also being challenged and undermined by other countries advancing the creation of Special Drawing Rights (SDR).”

. . .

[See the e-commentary at “The Percolating Middle East (February 22, 2016)” and “Venturing A Few Unfounded And Unwarranted Predictions (July 13, 2015).”] 

Bumper stickers of the week:

The Petrodollar fuels the American economy: no Petrodollar, no economy.

Dallas

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