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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 1, 2026

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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"