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This would be my guess. I’m very concerned that the Petrodollar is going away, and hyperinflation will result as we can no longer maintain our standard of living and certainly not our generous welfare and social programs. This probably means that civil unrest will happen. The people who suddenly don’t get their welfare benefits for months are not going to give up peacefully, especially if prices are also inflating by double digits.
After learning about the flagrant fraud with the hospital/learing center grift and the somalians I'm thinking a lot of the budget can be recovered if the "social programs" were cleaned up of graft. You could also stop sending nonillions to various countries for military 'aid'. (IE pork barrel graft so they turn around and buy your military hardware at ridiculous pricing)
Problem is you can't clean the graft out of the social programs because the people elect governments who are openly in favor of this graft.
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As far as our dominant status as the world reserve, there are still good reasons to think that won’t be going away for a while.
This exact same narrative could’ve been told in 2003, 2009, 2015 and it’ll be written again in the future. Everyone wants to displace the dollar. Russia is economically irrelevant; it’s smaller than both Canada and (almost) Brazil. The problem with China is they can't fully float the RMB and allow unfettered international capital flows. There’s a ‘ton’ of debate as to whether or not the Chinese banking system can even survive without direct government support. If the RMB were to become the global reserve currency, the Chinese would need to first widely open their economy and secondly, export their financial sector out into the world. That’s not happening in the next 30 years (if it ever happens). The Japanese wanted to 'yenify' the world in the 1980s and 1990s, how'd that work out?
The Euro was created in large part to compete with the USD, but the ECB has spent the last 25 years tripping over its own feet. The Eurozone itself has massive internal structural issues it needs to address before they are close to being able to look outwards. And no, don't even start on crypto.
The USD is the primary currency due to massive global structural reasons that aren't changing in the next several decades. China is the only likely candidate in the near future, but it can't open itself up without 'Japan-ing' itself.
It seems more likely that the Dollar's reserve status would be displaced by a commodity rather than any specific country's currency.
In unrelated news, "Gold has overtaken U.S. Treasuries as the World's Top Reserve Asset"
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I don't think the petrodollar going away is worth worrying about, insofar as there is simply no competitor to replace it to our detriment.
And the U.S. is energy independent for all pursuits and purposes, and thus can weather most economic storms in a way few other countries can.
The social chaos that might result if social programs can't be sustained would not be fun, though.
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