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The American Empire had a nice run. Continuously rising inequality at home and anti-hegemonic strategies (like this one) abroad signal that the end is nigh. What remains to be seen is how ugly things get during the transition.
What empire? Who is the Viceroy of Okinawa or Stuttgart? When did we start collecting taxes from Djibouti or Kuwait?
"China's move will allow exporters such as Russia and Iran to circumvent U.S. sanctions by trading in yuan. To further entice trade, China says the yuan will be fully convertible into gold on exchanges in Shanghai and Hong Kong." It is not clear if the gold conversion can be into physical gold and shipped out of China. I would tend to doubt it, but would be a big deal if true.
Nationally they have > 1,800 tonnes[0] of the stuff as of 2017 – fifth in the world behind the US, Germany, Italy, France. Is that enough? Probably it would be simpler to do the transaction electronically in yuan but I would understand if people wanted something a bit more tangible. So the question is then, are there precedents to this flavo(u)r of trading setup/arrangement? [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/26…
While this scheme may facilitate trading in Shanghai as domestic speculators no longer need to deal with forex risk, the countries with large petrol surpluses still need to decide what currencies to ultimately hold.
The American Empire had a nice run. Continuously rising inequality at home and anti-hegemonic strategies (like this one) abroad signal that the end is nigh. What remains to be seen is how ugly things get during the transition.
What empire? Who is the Viceroy of Okinawa or Stuttgart? When did we start collecting taxes from Djibouti or Kuwait?
Kuwait paid about $16B after the first Gulf War and continues to pay for US troops based there. It's unclear how much that is, but Japan (for example) pays $2B a year to keep US troops in Japan.
That's independent of things like international trade being executed in US dollars, which is why the US can control World trade: at some point everything needs US dollars. That's why US sanctions are so effective and why people who are very rich and powerful still hate being sanctioned.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As soon as I posted the above comment I started getting down votes so let me go into detail to hopefully stave off any negativity in what I think is a very important topic. Sorry, I know its not the done thing to talk about down-voting here :) (1) Note that this article is _explicitly_ about changing the dollar-backed oil trading arrangements we have had up until now and even has the phrase “new world order” in the t…
What kind of imperialists do what we did for Japan, Europe, Vietnam etc. without, oh, I don't know, getting territory or reimbursements out of the deal? Please, igravious, feel free to conquer me and play those same devious imperial tricks on me!
For example, several European states house US nuclear weapons. [1] Japan serves as an outpost against China and North Korea. [2] "Currently South Korean forces would fall under United States control should the war resume. This war time control is planned to revert to South Korea in 2020." [3]
And Vietnam? The south was lead by a series of military governments during the war, which the US was apparently willing to accept. Sure, they pressured for elections, but in the meantime, fighting Communism was more important. [4]
I wouldn't call the US an empire, but they're not exactly a selfless force of protection either.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_sharing
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan%E2%80%93United_States_re...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Korea%E2%80%93United_Sta...
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Vietnam#1963.E2.80.9373
What pressure or leverage can the USA put on China? My view is: more pressure is wanted , than is available...
I think this is the reason China and Russia have been hoarding gold and backing cryptocurrencies. They are waging an economic war against US hegemony by attacking their currency. It is strategically timed too considering the US just spent the last 10 years printing money and expanding the balance sheet by 350%.
A non-fiat currency is a single point of failure and since it is locked to a physical resource, it will cause many economic downturns with no lever to adjust. If a gold backed petro currency or oil is backed by gold, crypto currencies will explode exponentially.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_gold_prod...
Five banks of the BRICS Interbank Cooperation Mechanism (ICM) have agreed to establish local currency credit lines and develop cooperation on credit ratings in the run-up to the forthcoming BRICS summit in China. So the entire East part of the world will trade with China
We in the US have to get better at remembering how we helped re-build countries after WWII, we need to understand that economics wins all wars again. We need to get the authoritarians out of power that don't believe that. China gets it all too well. Extremism is rooted out when people have comfort from a good economy.
[1] http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2017/05/16/528611924/f...
I think this is the reason China and Russia have been hoarding gold and backing cryptocurrencies. They are waging an economic war against US hegemony by attacking their currency. It is strategically timed too considering the US just spent the last 10 years printing money and expanding the balance sheet by 350%.