Ghana plans to buy oil with gold instead of dollars

Overconfidence and a need for an external enemy? Satanism? https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/nato-nazi...

> proxy war against Russia in Ukraine

To a certain extent this is true, but the Ukranians have been very keen on it as they've benefited from not being a puppet state run by a corrupt president who built himself a huge palace. And Russia has no right to be "in" Ukraine in the first place.

I wonder if they can use it? As a noob I see that crypto value is very volatile and don't have intrinsic value, unlike gold that somehow is accepted universally as valuable.

Its definitely not a lack of confidence in USD or the feds. Relative to pretty much every noteworthy alternative, the feds have handled things a lot better.

- EU royally f'd with their stimulus & rates. Mind you, they were in a very precarious position to start with. - China has proven themselves to be a house of cards with zero covid, massive public/corporate debt bubbles and Ji becoming god emperor. - Russia is a glorified gas station with an economy the size of florida.

The reason for Ghana's action, Saudi looking to end petro dollar, China+Russia looking to form a block etc: US deep state ducking up big time.

The weaponised the dollar.. They've been ramping this up big time during the past few decades but the Ukraine War was a UUUUGE reveal the cards moment.

During the last 2 years, Russia was filling up their coffers with high oil prices. The US turned these foreign reserves into worthless numbers on a screen overnight with the press of a few buttons.

Now pretty much every country is looking at each other like "oh shit".

I think this take is somewhat over-reacting. I'm pretty sure you'll find that the price they agreed is really in USD, and only the medium of exchange is gold (even if the paperwork or agreement doesn't even reference USD). So really they are paying X USD's worth of gold - with both oil and gold price being fixed in USD somewhere abroad. USD is so incredibly ubiquitous, it won't easily go away.

Reserves are a little different, but even then, whenever something bad happens, the dollar strengthens as investors flock to it. When the 2008 crisis happened (and it was US-centric!) US and the dollar were still the safe haven everyone escaped to. Not the Rouble, not the Yuan, not so much EUR or CHF or, from memory, gold.

So we'll see people avoid the USD as a medium of exchange, maybe, even if the prices are fixed on USD-denominated prices. But also remember, gold is not a great medium of exchange. Will Ghana ship physical gold around the world (risky and expensive)? Or will they sign a piece of paper saying "gold held by in a safe by someone else and owned by me is now owned by someone else" - in which case there is similar counterparty risk, except perhaps not against the US government. But if you think the US is an evil octopus with long tentacles, surely they could get their hands on this gold. Where will this haven safe from US interference be?

If anything, I can more easily believe an alternative economy based on crypto. It's actually happening and working well, for all sorts of shady or illicit activity.

As for what happens next: de-globalisation

I predict we'll see blocks forming up again, something like: - West (US+EU) - East (China+Russia) - India (India, Sri Lanka, Himalayan States, South China states) - Middle (Middle East+North Africa) - Latam (Central + South American States)

One wild card IMO would be the rise of the Indian sphere of influence. I'll leave some room for India's remarkable ability to snatch defeat form the jaws of victory. If they don't f this up, they have UUUGE tailwinds going for them.

Middle east is overrated IMO, its like an oasis with oil instead of water. When the oil money runs out, not gonna be fun any more.

Latam is probs the biggest wildcard, even bigger than India. They don't need a lot of things to be right to wildly outperform as a block. Just like the US, they are protected by two oceans so they can choose to not involve themselves in stuff.

Africa is highly overrated IMO, the entire continent is cursed in multiple ways. If u compare africa to another post colonial continent like Latam, africa is in a place where they need to get so many things right to just survive, let alone to catch up.