The net net is $6.5 trillion in global dollar reserves, in a $101 trillion global economy. I don't understand what you think will happen. Were talking about settlement bro! What is settlement? It is a holding period. It's like T+3 in the stock market. There is no actual impact to Walmart if China demands a different sort of collateral to back the settlement process. This all happens on the balance sheets of banks. We can debate bona fides but when the desk pushes the buy button on their trading terminal, money changes hands. I don't understand what this quote is supposed to imply. You will get no disagreement from me about the US Treasury market having serious problems. I've been reading the treasury quarterly refunding reports for years and the situation scares the crap out of me. The United States has a real problem with the budget, but this reserves thing is a smoke and mirrors distraction from the the real issue. You should direct your complaints to Congress for its profligate spending on entitlement programs.
Then the empire may have to go back to the old way, like in the old days: Plundering the places you conquered, instead of doing what the US did after WWII: Helped Japan and Germany reconstruct, helped China modernized....
I’d call Japan and Germany independent but not sovereign, a “foreign army” sits there even today. Reconstruction is given after any wars, perhaps more money would help the recovery faster but not a guarantee, look at Iraq and Afghanistan. China modernization is definitely a yes but with a big question of who drives it? Are the Americans or the Chinese in the driver seat? We are at a moment in time so we witness what is happening today. But sure the historians in the future may have other stories to tell, the story has yet to be written.
Incorrect, it is a mean to an end, to exchange consumption, issued by the governments and/or authorities. You don't consumer less food even if you live in a poor country. https://www.elitetrader.com/et/threads/fading-the-us-dollar.376047/page-3#post-5859956
There is an alternative way to look at this. I think the alternative way makes the most sense. We should look at the entitlement funding of Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid as separate issues. In neither Social Security nor in Medicare/Medicaid is the problem due to profligate spending. The problem is S.S. stems from an expressed desire to kill S.S. by handing it over to Wall Street; in Medicare/Medicaid, the problem is one of profligate charging. I see these as at least the root problems, vide infra. Congress routinely ignores the S.S. Trustees' recommendations. As there is no good reason to do this, one has to assume it's being done intentionally in the hope of ruining the system to the point that something drastic must be done, like turn Wall Street loose on Social Security! The projected S.S. shortfall is self inflicted by those in Congress who apparently want to kill government provided Social Security. In truth, the S.S. problem is a trivial problem so long as it is not put off. Nevertheless, Congress is putting off corrective action. Congress is squarely at fault. In the case of medicare/medicaid the problem is also caused by Congress. Congress has not recognized that a Capitalist approach to providing medical care for a large diverse nation can never work well because the requirements for medical care conflict with a fundamental requirement for capitalism. For capitalism to succeed without degenerating into monopolies and cartels the buyer and seller must both be equally free to walk away from a deal they don't like. The nature of medical care precludes this requirement being met. Capitalism is by far the best economic system whenever it's fundamental requirements can be met, at least approximately. Unfortunately, the needs of medical care are incompatible with capitalism. The impossibility of a successful capitalist approach to medical care for a large, diverse, democratic population is why virtually all other major countries have adopted non-capitalist, single payer medical care. The failure and disastrous condition of U.S. medical care is due to our never ending attempts to force a square peg into a round hole. U.S. medical costs are at best 100% too high and at worst several 100% too high, and with worse outcomes too! The U.S. Congress has insisted on turning over the young and healthy to the for-profit insurance industry, all while they also pay medicare premiums that don't benefit them until they turn 65; even then payment into medicare Part B does not cease. After insurance companies have harvested a windfall from the young and healthy we insist on giving them a piece of profitable supplemental insurance action in the geriatric wards. The tax payer is called upon to cover deficits in the medicare/medicaid budget. Cost overruns can be significant in a system were there is no meaningful constraint on charges, other than what medicare forces on providers. The insurance industry's approach to limiting their costs consists largely of denying coverage or imposing a host of tricky rules: call your insurer ahead if you plan much beyond a flu shot, or they might significantly reduce your coverage. The old and infirm have of course paid into medicare all their working lives and continue to pay their Part B premiums until death! They or their employer have also paid for private insurance on top of medicare premiums. In the U.S. we have always let employers attach employment to medical coverage, and that can trap employees. Apparently no one has yet thought to consider whether it is possible for the unemployed to get sick. The solution to our medical care predicament is right in front of our eyes, nevertheless we insist on being blind to it. In the mean time 28 million have no access to routine medical care. And those that do have access are a part of the most inefficient enterprise ever imagined by mankind, and at absurd costs. This is such an easy problem to fix! Really! But first, of course, we would have to find gainful, alternative employment for millions sitting behind computers filling out insurance forms or otherwise employed by hospital and clinic billing, e.g., the hoards of attorneys on retainer or working in the collection departments. Finding useful alternative things for these people to do would not be at all difficult however. We've created a monster and flatly refused to do anything transformative about it. The minute some bright Congressman or Senator tries to do something constructive their plan is immediately sabotaged by lobbyists for the AMA, or the AHA, or the Insurance Industry, or all three. A useful, magic word these blood thirsty robbers rollout every time they face a challenge is, "Safety" They learned this can't fail word from the Defense Industry. No politician has ever voted against "SAFETY." None ever will. Like all other U.S. crises we won't actually fix the problem completely until we are forced to. We are not there yet. Be patient. We will get there, but not until we apply a myriad of stop gap measures first, e.g. the Affordable Care Act.