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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Gold was the old NFTs.

Still is. Always will be.


Seriously. When and if the Republic ever fails and fiat currency is worthless, somebody is going to take your gold you paid so much for for free.

I don't even bother "Doomsday Prepping" beyond the bulk purchases I've already made. Unless you're living in a locked tight bunker, I'll be taking whatever I need to live from other people if it comes to that, unless they're armed too.

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Originally posted by second:

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Gold was the old NFTs.

Still is. Always will be.


Seriously. When and if the Republic ever fails and fiat currency is worthless, somebody is going to take your gold you paid so much for for free.

I don't even bother "Doomsday Prepping" beyond the bulk purchases I've already made. Unless you're living in a locked tight bunker, I'll be taking whatever I need to live from other people if it comes to that, unless they're armed too.

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You are unfamiliar with the book of Revelations, 6ix. You shall be dead meat chopped up by an angel with a sharp, double-edged sword. Your fate was sealed with your first dozen repetitions of "Fuck Ukraine." Your weapons are useless against angels, 6ix.

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation%202&versio
n=NIV

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Originally posted by second:

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Gold was the old NFTs.

Still is. Always will be.


Seriously. When and if the Republic ever fails and fiat currency is worthless, somebody is going to take your gold you paid so much for for free.

I don't even bother "Doomsday Prepping" beyond the bulk purchases I've already made. Unless you're living in a locked tight bunker, I'll be taking whatever I need to live from other people if it comes to that, unless they're armed too.

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You are unfamiliar with the book of Revelations, 6ix. You shall be dead meat chopped up by an angel with a sharp, double-edged sword. Your fate was sealed with your first dozen repetitions of "Fuck Ukraine." Your weapons are useless against angels, 6ix.

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation%202&versio
n=NIV

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Hate to tell you this SECOND, but God and his angels don't like evil little pricks. I'll bet they aren't too fond of nonbelievers using them to threaten others, either. I mean, that's really double plus ungood.

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How did you go bankrupt?

Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.-Ernest Hemingway

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Saturday, Apr 08, 2023 - 01:30 PM

Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

Some empire managers are so brash about wanting to rule the world that they’ll occasionally voice their position so directly it sounds like an anti-imperialist said it...

We saw just such an instance last Wednesday during a conversation between empire propagandist Sean Hannity and warmongering senator Marco Rubio on Fox News. So frenzied was Rubio in his vitriol about the rise of China on the world stage that he accidentally wound up providing a very good argument against the hegemony of the US dollar.

Rubio began with a rant about how the US is in a “conflict” with China in response to a question from Hannity about whether Xi Jinping is preparing for war with America.

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“The bottom line is we’re in a conflict, and I think we have to start talking about it that way,” Rubio said. “I was very young, obviously, at the end of the Cold War, but it’s been about 30 years since there was another superpower on the earth that was in conflict with the United States. We are back in that place. We need to stop pretending like that’s not the case now.”

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Hannity repeated the soundbite he’s been pushing for the last few weeks saying that China, Russia and Iran are a “new Axis of Evil,” then Rubio made a very revealing comment about a recent deal that was struck between China and Brazil.

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“Just today, Brazil, the largest country in the Western Hemisphere, cut a trade deal with China,” said Rubio.

“They’re going to, from now on, do trade in their own currencies, get right around the dollar. < font color = magenta] They’re creating a secondary economy in the world totally independent of the United States. We won’t have to talk about sanctions in five years, because there’ll be so many countries transacting in currencies other than the dollar that we won’t have the ability to sanction them.”

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Well, DUH, Cap'n Obvious! Maybe that's why they're trying to get out from under!

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Rubio is not the first US imperialist we’ve seen expressing concern about the US dollar losing its position as the dominant currency of the world, not just with regard to China and Brazil but between China and Russia, between China and Saudi Arabia, between China and India, and between India and Russia.

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“The dollar is America’s superpower,” Fareed Zakaria writes for The Washington Post.

“It gives Washington unrivaled economic and political muscle. The United States can slap sanctions on countries unilaterally, freezing them out of large parts of the world economy. And when Washington spends freely, it can be certain that its debt, usually in the form of T-bills, will be bought up by the rest of the world.”

“Now an increasing number of nations are eager to find alternative financial systems to insulate themselves from Washington’s willingness to use sanctions as political leverage,” writes Jamie Seidel for the Murdoch-owned News.com.au, quoting an Australian Strategic Policy Institute think tanker as saying,

“Chinese authorities were shocked by the seizure of the Russian central bank’s foreign exchange reserves following the invasion of Ukraine. In the event of a Sino-American conflict, Chinese assets would similarly be vulnerable.”

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The other day Pentagon insider and DC swamp monster Elbridge Colby spotlighted a concern on Twitter that the US might not be able to finance a war with China if the US dollar loses its status as the world’s reserve currency.

https://t.co/HETAVilL2V
— Elbridge Colby (@ElbridgeColby) March 27, 2023

The US has engaged in a tremendous amount of manipulation to secure the dollar’s position as the global reserve currency and all the power that comes with it, and has used it to fund a war machine of unprecedented might and to inflict starvation sanctions on disobedient nations around the world. It is a weapon, and US imperialists are bemoaning the looming loss of that weapon because they want to use it on many more people for the advancement of the interests of the empire.

Economic sanctions are somehow the only form of warfare where it’s considered acceptable to deliberately target civilian populations with deadly force, and the US empire makes liberal use of them. Starvation sanctions always hurt the weakest and most vulnerable members of a population by depriving them of access to medicine and adequate nutrition, and future generations (if there are future generations) will judge harshly those who used them.

It seems unlikely to me that the emergence of a multipolar world will in and of itself produce any kind of wonderful utopia, and as Professor Richard Wolff explains the dollar’s decline could potentially give rise to a lot of economic chaos and suffering. But at the very least the fall of US dollar hegemony would deprive one group of psychopaths a powerful weapon they should never have had, and could even end up impeding the empire’s ability to ramp up for a global conflict between major powers — a conflict which must never occur.

In any case humanity cannot continue along the trajectory it has been on, and any divergence from that trajectory opens up the possibility of real healthy change. Here’s hoping Marco Rubio is given a lot more to be upset about in the coming years.

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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal - Henry Kissinger

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Is there a worldwide run on the Bank of the United States of America?

In talking this week with a friend about the United States seemingly imploding from within across multiple sectors, my friend stressed: “It’s not just from within. There is a run on the United States from certain nations and business interests around the world. Just like there was a run on banks after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, many nations are either thinking about — or actually proceeding with — transferring at least a portion of their allegiance, assets and commitments from the ‘Bank of the U.S.’ to the ‘Bank of China’ or elsewhere.”

This was not just some person sitting on a porch casually talking about current events while whittling a stick waiting for his Social Security or pension check to hit the mailbox. This was a former high-level U.S. government official, now a CEO, someone who sits on the boards of directors for multiple companies. He has massive real-world and business experience and believes the United State may be on the verge of collapse.

He is far from the only one to think that.

Some fear the Biden administration is losing control of our southern border; losing control of our decaying, crime-infested big cities; creating a recession; vilifying and needlessly destroying the fossil fuel industry while pushing suspect and subsidized “green” energy alternatives; leaving tens of billions of dollars in military equipment in Afghanistan while withdrawing our troops and abandoning an ally; stepping closer to a trip-wire in the Ukraine war, which could trigger a nuclear strike; turning on Israel over ideological issues as Turkey and others call on Arab and Muslim nations to unite and crush the Jewish State; weakening our military with one “woke” edict after another; focusing on “trans” issues at the expense of failing transportation infrastructure; cheerleading the social justice warrior takeover of our colleges and universities; and weakening the dollar (the currency much of the world depends upon).

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Is it any wonder, then, that nations such as France, India, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Mexico, Brazil and others are suddenly hedging their bets by looking beyond the United States of America for partnerships and stability?

France.... Mexico... Saudi Arabia... Brazil...

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The US Dollar share of total global reserves in real terms has collapsed from about 66% in 2003, to 55% in 2021, to 47% in 2022. In particular, the 8% US dollar reserves decline over the last year is very concerning as it is roughly 10x the average annual decline over the past two decades.

the US implemented currency-based sanctions in response to the Russia-Ukraine war. In response some foreign central banks have been emptying their coffers of US Dollar based assets.
As you can see below, however, the main reserve replacement hasn't been another major currency (Euro, Yen and Yuan reserves are up <4%).

Rather, the main replacement for the US Dollar's decline in central bank reserves over the last year has been gold. 1,136 tonnes were added in 2022, the largest central bank increase in gold reserves on record. With emerging economies such as Russia and China leading the way.

International Transactions:

The US Dollar is still by far the dominant global reserve currency from a transaction point of view. In fact, between 2009 - 2019 it accounted for a whopping 96% of all international transactions. This in turn creates significant and lasting network effects. Basically, people throughout the world accept the dollar because they know others will and have been doing so for their entire lifetime. For now, people throughout the world continue to believe the US Dollar a useful tool for exchange. However, that percentage of global transactions while still high, has also been falling. The latest data available shows it declined from the 96% average previously stated to 88% by April of last year.

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"THERE are few truisms about the world economy, but for decades, one has been the role of the United States dollar as the world’s reserve currency. It’s a core principle of American economic policy. After all, who wouldn’t want their currency to be the one that foreign banks and governments want to hold in reserve?

But new research reveals that what was once a privilege is now a burden, undermining job growth, pumping up budget and trade deficits and inflating financial bubbles. To get the American economy on track, the government needs to drop its commitment to maintaining the dollar’s reserve-currency status.

....

The privilege of having the world’s reserve currency is one America can no longer afford."

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Moody's Cuts USA's Aaa Rating Outlook To 'Negative'; Treasury Dept "Disagrees"

Friday, Nov 10, 2023 - 01:48 PM

Who could have seen that coming?

After a disastrous 30Y bond auction this week, a collapse in Treasury market liquidity, and an accelerating rise in the market's perception of the United States' credit risk, Moody's has just cut its outlook on US credit ratings to negative from stable.

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Petrodollar Endgame Moves Even Closer

The UAE just stopped transacting oil in U.S. dollars. BRICS now controls most of the world's nuclear arsenals, oil and precious metals & rare earth minerals. It's time to wake up.

*****

I'll be the first to admit that two of the main themes on this blog – the United States' sovereign debt crisis and the deterioration of the petrodollar – have been extraordinarily slow-moving theses.

In both cases, there have been developments that stand at odds with my contentions. For example, US stock indices continue to move higher, despite our economy grinding to a halt, and the BRIC nations have not developed and put forth their own reserve currency to combat the dollar, as I have suggested may happen. They also haven't backed any of their sovereign currencies with gold, as I have also suggested. While the timing hasn't proven me right as quickly as I would like, it doesn’t mean that things aren't ticking forward for both of these forthcoming realities.

And, in the case of the death of the petrodollar, there was a huge development in late November that was under-reported and unnoticed by the market.

The death of the petrodollar is one of the key waypoints in the US dollar losing reserve currency status, as I have written about at length in the past. And while the US dollar used to be the only currency that foreign nations would trade oil in, that has now come to a screeching halt.

Not only is Saudi Arabia trading oil in other currencies than the dollar (notably the Yuan), it now appears the UAE is also strategically shifting away from the US dollar in its oil transactions, marking a significant change in the global financial landscape.

This move, involving potential deals with up to 15 countries including China, Russia, and Egypt, is part of the de-dollarization trend I have predicted, led by the oil sector. Led by the BRICS alliance, the move is redefining global economics and challenging the US dollar's dominance in international trade.

When you take this into account alongside the fact that Russia is strengthening its ties with China and Saudi Arabia, it is tough to think anything but that we are still solidly on the path to global de-dollarization. Just yesterday it was reported that Russia was working closely with Saudi Arabia and OPEC — who has many member nations in the BRICS consortium — on oil cuts.

Shortly after Russian President Vladimir Putin's unexpected visit to Riyadh to meet with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, a joint statement from Russia and Saudi Arabia was released. OPEC along with Russia and other allies, agreed to voluntary cuts totaling about 2.2 million barrels per day, predominantly led by Saudi Arabia and Russia maintaining their 1.3 million bpd cuts.

I asked my friend Andy Schectman of Miles Franklin Precious Metals for his exclusive take on the situation for my Fringe Finance readers. He’s one of the smartest people I know when it comes to understanding the dollar globally — and he’s all but predicted the exact scenario that’s taking place.

“The OPEC members decided in 1973/4 to price all oil sales in US dollars and invest any excess in US Treasury bonds in exchange for US military protection. This is how the petrodollar system got its start, and for the last 50 years, due to this arrangement has created a ‘synthetic’ demand for the dollar, and established the US dollar as the benchmark for oil trade globally,” he explained to me.

He continued: “The US Government has done more to destroy this country in the previous few years than any external enemy could have ever done. By using sanctions and other forms of coercion, we have turned the US currency and the SWIFT system into weapons that has forced out a large portion of the global population creating a global backlash that is accelerating.”

“Without a doubt, the deliberate emergence of new cooperating powers is causing a significant global power shift that the world is currently experiencing. The emergence of the BRICS in my mind is the most notable example. Six more strategically important nations were added to the group in August: Argentina, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Ethiopia, United Arab Emirates, and Iran,” Andy said.

When I asked Andy why it’s important that people take the BRICS nations seriously, he told me: “With over 40 more countries showing interest in joining the BRICS group of countries and reports of many more expressing interest growing daily, it appears that this growing union is gaining legitimacy and serious traction.”
“Together with their new members, the BRICS countries currently control two of the three largest nuclear weapons arsenals on the planet, most of the world's strategic commodities, oil production capacity, enormously expanding reserves of precious metals, and, surprise, the majority of rare earth metals required for the production of batteries and other green and renewable energy applications.”

He also talked about the importance of Saudi Arabia’s role when asked about Putin’s recent trip to visit MBS: “In recent years, Saudi Arabia, the cornerstone of the dollar hegemony, has joined the exponentially expanding Belt Road Initiative alongside all the other OPEC members. The Saudi’s have also joined the BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization which is the largest regional financial and military organization in the world, and the BRICS New Development Bank.”

“The west is receiving a very clear message from this progression,” Andy told me. “But if that wasn't clear enough, Saudi Arabia's finance minister made it quite apparent at the 2023 World Economic Forum in January that the Kingdom is open to dealing in currencies other than the US dollar for the first time in 48 years.”

When I asked him about the UAE no longer taking dollars for oil, he told me: “While it may not be as quite as dramatic as Saudi Arabia and the rest of OPEC doing the same thing, don’t kid yourself, this is a hugely significant event. The ramifications become far more concerning when viewed in the light of the growing progression of global de-dollarization and large number of unilateral trade deals usurping the dollar and the SWIFT system.”

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Assuming the Oligarchs haven't already planned all of this in advance, that's fine.

We'll just destroy everyone in our path with our military might if they try something stupid.

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Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

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