Guest Post by Ron Paul
Donald Trump’s legal troubles, the possibility that Joe Biden will face an impeachment inquiry, and other stories related to the upcoming presidential election, caused the American media to miss a story of potentially greater significance. This was the decision of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), who formed their alliance to challenge US political and economic dominance, to induct six new countries into their group: Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.
One way the BRICS hope to achieve its goals is to undermine the foundation of US power: the dollar’s global reserve currency status. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula de Silva called for BRICS nations to create their own currency, while India is pushing to have its trading partners, including Russia, trade in Indian rupees rather than US dollars. China and other BRICS countries have also reportedly taken steps to explore using gold instead of dollars for international trade.
After then-President Richard Nixon severed the link between the dollar and gold in 1971, Henry Kissinger negotiated a deal with Saudi Arabia where, in exchange for US diplomatic and military support, Saudi Arabia would use dollars for its dealings in the international oil market. The “petrodollar” is the backbone of the dollar’s reserve currency status. Early this year, Saudi Arabia signed a deal with Brazil to accept Brazil’s currency instead of dollars for oil purchases. If Saudi Arabia signs similar deals with other BRICS nations it will hasten the end of the dollar’s reign as reserve currency.
The rejection of the dollar is also being driven in large part by resentment over the “weaponization” of the dollar’s reserve currency status. The US government uses the dollar’s reserve currency position in order to force other countries to comply with US sanctions against the latest “designated Hitler.” Sanctions are an act of war, so by forcing other countries to follow US sanctions the US Government is dragging them into conflicts that are not in their national interests. It was inevitable that the arrogance of our foreign policy elite would eventually cause a backlash. The backlash started last year when the US demanded other countries join in sanctioning Russia, regardless of the effects of those sanctions on their own economies.
The movement to replace, or at least create alternatives to, the dollar is also driven by concern over the long-term effects of the massive US national debt. Despite the claims of both parties that the recent debt ceiling deals showed that Congress and the President were getting serious about being fiscal responsibility, the US $33 trillion debt is still poised to grow by as much as $115 trillion over the next 30 years. Congress and the President refuse to cut spending in any area. They can’t even manage to stop shoveling billions into the no-win war in Ukraine even though this spending is opposed by a clear majority of Americans.
Sadly it will take a shock like the rejection of the dollar’s reserve currency status and the resulting dollar crisis to force the US government and the people to take steps to kick their addiction to welfare-warfare spending and fiat currency. This will mean some tough times ahead. However, the economic downturn may not last as long as people expect. The good news is the crisis could lead to a return to limited constitutional government, a true free-market economy free of corporations and cronyism, a foreign policy based on peace and free trade, and a free-market monetary system.
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Whatever happens you can be sure that those in power will be just fine. It’s the rest of us that’ll feel the impact and suffer.
Unz has a good write-up of this issue today.
https://www.unz.com/runz/the-rise-of-the-brics-and-the-fall-of-the-ussa/
U$D will die by 1,000 cuts.
Yep!
Vox Day….
Nigeria May Be Next
Nigeria is the USA’s Great Black Hope in Africa. It provides the greater part of the ECOWAS troops that are supposed to be invading Niger in response to the anti-Western coup there, and it is the most formidable true African military force, being rated ahead of both Sweden and Iraq in the 2023 global military rankings.
(I don’t count either Egypt or South Africa as a proper African military, for reasons that should be obvious.)
However, it’s pretty obvious that something is going on inside Nigeria, and I suspect that at least an attempted military coup there is in the offing.
It’s pretty clear that Russia and China are working quietly to establish a number of new tertiary fronts that methodically drain Western military resources. But whereas removing Niger from the colonial collection primarily weakened France, the removal of Nigeria would essentially secure the elimination of Western influence from the entire continent.
The West can’t afford to lose Nigeria, which it is relying upon to keep the other African states in line. Which is why I expect Nigeria to be the central point of conflict of WWIII’s African front.
Why, because they don’t use spears?
Uh, no, BRICS will not smash the US dollar. Please see Peter Zeihan. Or keep your head in the ground and don’t. Doesn’t really matter to me.
BRICS doesn’t need to smash the dollar our “leaders” are handling that job all by themselves. If what is meant is whether a bunch of economically incompetent third world countries led by two of the most corrupt countries in the world will somehow all join together and become economic stars, that is a joke.
I’m no economisticyst, but it seems the BRICs need only follow the sage advice of the great Chinese military strategist, General Tso: never get in the way of your retarded and greedy adversary, when she is driving her war machine while drunk on hubris.
The transitioning of the dollar into a nonbinary otherkin of the death cult is less about the BRICs and more about the long tail of the big lie of unmitigated fiat whipping the buggy toward the cliff.
Of note is that nobody is whipping the money changers.
The suicide of the west is being ushered in on many dark vectors. The currency broke from its service to its people a long time ago. Just as the entirety of muh economy, the representative government, institutions, military, etc.
The global currency scrum is not some binary event of totality.
Its useful to remember how often these would-be replacement currencies have had to move the decimal point a few places overnight to accommodate their own little problems.
They do, however, have the advantage when it comes to experience in plowing under a lotta eaters to lube up such ‘transitory’ policies, whereas the FUSA still has to rely upon goyslop, stale bread and circuses, and apparently, vexxinations.
While globo-currency plays hide the salami, the People of the USDollar are being replaced by the people of dusky BRICs’-Lite economies. So the real collateral of “the Dollar” is what is at stake. But that kind of raycisms will get you uninvited to the money manager cocktail parties.
Petrodollar be warned: Three Persian Gulf energy powers just joined BRICS
Unravelling of the petrodollar
But what truly stands out in the BRICS expansion is the preponderance of member states from the Persian Gulf region — Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Iran.
So, what has been the game plan in bringing on board three of the world’s most important energy superpowers? Putin has voiced more than once the Russian assessment that for a long time to come, the world economy, including the western economies, cannot do without hydrocarbons as a major source of energy to run efficient, cost-effective means of production.
Russia and Saudi Arabia alone account for a quarter of the world’s oil production. Russia and Iran hold the world’s first and second-largest gas reserves in the world.
If the Ukraine war has shown anything, it is that countries rich in commodities cannot be browbeaten…
The salience here is that these three oil-producing countries are also open to trading oil in non-dollar currencies. What the US did to Russia last year by seizing its hundreds of billions of dollar reserves sent shock waves all across the so-called petrodollar states of the Persian Gulf and beyond…
All indications are that the possible creation of a single BRICS currency figured in the discussions in Johannesburg. Putin made a reference to it in his media statement, saying: “I believe that a single settlement currency definitely deserves our attention. This is a complex issue, but we have to move towards resolving it in one way or another.” …
In sum, with the induction of the three major oil-producing nations of the Persian Gulf, BRICS 2023 will mark the beginning of the petrodollar’s unraveling. This is a huge step toward a multipolar world. The new settlement mechanisms, common currency, et al, will steadily dethrone the dollar, liberating the world economy from the clutches of the US Federal Reserve…
Finally, most importantly, the de-dollarization process, which would have moved at a snail’s pace, will now accelerate. What Putin had warned when the Biden administration imposed the “sanctions from hell” against Russia — especially its ouster from the SWIFT payment system —namely, that there would be a very heavy price to pay by the United States, is coming true. The blowback is only beginning in the international financial and trading system.
The west simply cannot win in the looming confrontation with the Global Majority. And the transition can be addressed by Washington only through reconciliation with Moscow and Beijing, not an easy poison for the Americans to swallow.
https://new.thecradle.co/articles/petrodollar-be-warned-three-persian-gulf-energy-powers-just-joined-brics
I would suggest that you are trapped in a “current thinking” paradigm. Maybe you should look into some of what Kissenger has written.
The U.S. has massive oil reserves in the Gulf, off shore of Cali, the Dakotas, and in Alaska. It is not talked about much, but it is there, and is available if needed.
The U.S. also has a habit of putting our most important and profitable natural resources under National Monument declarations. Rare Earth Metals under Death Valley, Low Sulfur Coal under the Grand Escalante in Utah, and other examples.
Whatever you may think of the powers that be, they have preserved our resources while purchasing foreign resources on the cheap.
We still have a lot of mineral and natural wealth, as well as an almost complete natural river transport infrastructure in the Eastern U. S. and quite a good bit in California.
The United States has a whole lot going for it, and will for a very long time.
The only question is who will control, direct, and benefit from it.
That is what the fight in the next few years will be about, as the time of buying other country’s resources “on the cheap” comes to an end.
Every nation who’s leader attempted to sell their nations natural resources (oil & natural gas) examples Libya & Iraq (Qudaffi & Sad-am) for anything other than US dollars the nation was blown to smithereens and the dear leader was of course KILLED
CIA coups to make nations toe the American line are now far to well known and there is now a group of nations not just challenging the way the American Government likes to keep control the BRICS is a great big FUCK YOU AMERICA 🖕
Funny all these nations now sharing common interest for mutual benefit are leaving The United States in the losers seat !
Precisely what Donald Trump was attempting to prevent !
The STUPID PARTY (Republicans) & The EVIL PARTY (Democrat’s) Have United to be the EVIL STUPID PATHETIC PARASITES DESTROYING THE AMERICANS AND THE COUNTRY !
They are truly so evil so stupid the US is now close to a WW3 possibility with no hope of surviving it let alone win !
Even if the unthinkable nuclear exchange is avoided conventional warfare we will have our heads handed to us probably in our own backyard
Not right away but the dollar is in decline. It will be Pound Sterling quality in 10 years.
BRICS will eventually hold 80percent of the world’s oil reserves. The dollar’s backbone is the future’s of oil so you can see where this is going.
Also at this stage BRICS has 3 times the productivity of the US, EU, Canada and Australia combined.
It also just brought the Sunni and Shia together.
“Joe Biden will face an impeachment inquiry”
Hmmm. What the H is there to inquire about?
I’m not sure that this BRICS crap will go anywhere.
Vox Day seems to think it is powerful, but I have some questions…
The Chinese economy appears to be hollowed out, and their demographic projections are shit.
Saudi Arabia is sentencing to death people who tweet.
Brasil worked with the U.S. to get rid of Bolsonaro, re-elected Da Silva, and is making criticizing faggotry a crime.
South Africa can’t keep the light on nor the water flowing, and seems to be wasting away.
Russia appears strong, but it has a past history of compromise, and is definitely under pressure at the moment.
India still seems to be a bunch of backwards pagan street shitters, who are bleeding their best and brightest into western countries. Not sure how they will “advance” against their dual enemies; China and Pakistan.
Argentina is a beautiful country, but is a cluster fuck of various entitlement groups that all fight to direct the government to siphon cash from their opposition and fill their coffers.
The rest appear to be a bunch of “loser countries” (hat tip Moe from the Simpsons) that may have population, but no GDP.
I’d agree that the West is in decline – Heck, I’d even say we deserve it, but I’m not sure that BRICS will be our downfall. Even the EU was supposed to be world-changing, but it has been over two decades and all they do is snipe at each other.
As a final point, this Belt and Road initiative, which is supposed to replace ocean trade, is all based upon infrastructure – very expensive infrastructure, which is expensive to build, very vulnerable to disruption, and has all of the uncertainty that ocean trade has, if not more. Ocean trade is vulnerable to weather and to pot shots at individual ships. It is also vulnerable at choke points. But the “road” cannot be destroyed. Even rivers and canals take a lot to damage. Not so rail lines and roadways.
Drop a bomb on a river or canal (let alone the damn ocean) and you will make a splash. Do the same to a roadway or rail line, and it will need a significant amount of repair. Plus, your road or rail has to pass through sovereign territories, with their taxes, fees, and regulations. Ocean travel…not so much.
It is anyone’s guess where this will end up.
Your leaving out how stupid the American DC idiots truly are