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Ghana plans to buy oil with gold instead of dollars

aljazeera.com

391–400 of 407 posts

Re: Ghana plans to buy oil with gold instead of dollars

#391
post #377
post #364

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> The reason it is down is because it's a Ponzi scheme Is the rest of the stonks also a ponzi scheme? Because if you didn't notice, those are also very down.

If by "stonks" you mean meme stocks and SPACs, then practically yes. They both rely on the people coming afterwards being a bigger idiot onto whom poor value instruments can be offloaded.

Common ETFs usually trade at 20x+ their actual output. When people ask me for investment advice, I tell them that I am good at predicting this fiction and no I won't subject anyone else to it because the whole thing is 50% a complete insider trading scam. My point is to call one thing a scam and pretend the other thing is legit is a joke.

To me "stonks" is a name to belittle stocks. Disclosure: I am heavily invested in both space cash and stonks.

Re: Ghana plans to buy oil with gold instead of dollars

#392
post #381
post #367

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Nonsense. SWIFT is a Belgian corp. that provides inter-bank payments. It has nothing to do with the US or the US dollar. There is no US-issued license required to use dollars internationally. This is stupid.

bell-cot is simplifying but is basically describing correspondent banking. Banks in other countries need correspondent banking relationships with US banks in order to work with dollars. Banks in countries on the OFAC list can't get these relationships. Even banks in "high risk" areas like the Caribbean are getting their correspondent relationships cut off because US banks are worried about getting fined if the banks…

I don't think banks need a correspondent bank in the US to work with US dollars. There are clearing houses, such as USD-CHATS in Hong Kong, that will settle transactions in US dollars.

Re: Ghana plans to buy oil with gold instead of dollars

#393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Decoupling from the western financial system and having a higher level of resilience from sanctions. You never know if the US will decide tomorrow you're not behaving as expected under the internal rules-based order.

Why would the US be able to stop them buying oil using their dollars?

Because any international bank that has business in the US or does business with other banks who have business in the US would avoid dealing with a sanctioned entity as they could become "impure" too, in sort of a Leviticusian sense of the world.

Re: Ghana plans to buy oil with gold instead of dollars

#394
post #231

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So the US policy on Latin America is just fine? Embargoes and CIA financed take-over of many states are all fine?

There are two fundamental differences. One is that Russian invasion and genocide is happening now, not couple of decades ago. Second is that the fact we can’t punish US doesn’t mean we shouldn’t punish other offenders.

I was answering the

> > Nice euphemism for genocidal, imperialist war.

>You’re referring to the U.S. right?

I mean, it's not like this list is censored https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_war_crimes

Re: Ghana plans to buy oil with gold instead of dollars

#395

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> in the past 2 years alone the US has printed nearly 80% of USD in existence Often cited and incorrect metric. The fed changed how the count M2 I believe because they started paying interest on reserves during their response to the COVID crisis. Either way the chart often cited showing an increase in M2 is not telling the whole story, namely that not nearly enough USD has been “printed” to satisfy world hunger and n…

> Read about trade deficits as they relate to a country who’s currency is a global reserve currency. US has around 1 trillion USD trade deficit every year, that money needs to come from somewhere and GDP seems to go up every year. US also has budget deficit of around 1-1.4 trillion USD per year. So US is also printing 1.4 trillion to finance the budget. So we are at around -2 trillion USD every year with debt of arou…

I am no money master but I’ll take a shallow stab at it.

Triffin explains the trade deficit perfectly. I’ll quote from Wikipedia:

“…that the country whose currency, being the global reserve currency, foreign nations wish to hold, must be willing to supply the world with an extra supply of its currency to fulfil world demand for these foreign exchange reserves, leading to a trade deficit.”

We basically have to keep feeding the world with dollars. Or at least collateral that can be trusted to be turned into dollars so that banks around the world can create those dollars. How? Create more government debt.

The part about debt to GDP growth is I think exactly that problem of balancing your domestic short term needs vs the long term needs of the currency on a global scale.

When the world is starved for dollars and the dollar becomes stronger this isn’t a measure of US economic strength it’s a measure of how much the system is choked. Less dollars to go around less global trade is able to function less goods and services produced all around.

In a globalized system if one country isn’t able to produce as much (think China), the effects ripple to all countries like dominos. Causing secondary and tertiary effects further down the chain.

Re: Ghana plans to buy oil with gold instead of dollars

#396
post #350

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> Nothing external will ever pressure USD Not completely true. The current crisis is driven by foreign buyers not being enthusiastic about buying more US debt. The current inflation crisis is directly related to the large amount of price support for US debt provided by the US Fed in 2020-21. US govt is essentially holding foreign creditors hostage. If you try to move away from US debt, they will just print more dolla…

"The current crisis is driven by foreign buyers not being enthusiastic about buying more US debt." That is largely irrelevant. As the world's reserve currency, the Federal Reserve could buy up Treasuries as needed. The domestic inflation problem is another matter.

Suppose the Fed buys 100% of outstanding US debt via QE, etc.

Then USD is no longer the global reserve currency.

Re: Ghana plans to buy oil with gold instead of dollars

#397
post #367
post #359

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The permission to use SWIFT, which has been recently revoked for Russia. And contagious sanctions designed to make it difficult to trade with non-sanctioned companies and countries.

Nonsense. SWIFT is a Belgian corp. that provides inter-bank payments. It has nothing to do with the US or the US dollar. There is no US-issued license required to use dollars internationally. This is stupid.

There is of course no US-issued license to handle dollars as such, but the US has several levers that they can use to make it as difficult as possible. SWIFT is a Belgian company, but it can and has been successfully pressured by the US and its allies to disconnect users from the network. SWIFT is of course just a messaging system, but those users now have to use other means to transfer money, which is likely slower and more expensive for everyone involved.

Re: Ghana plans to buy oil with gold instead of dollars

#398
post #247

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>They may be seeing a three letter agency from the USA very soon Yeah this shows how little your credibility is. Idiotic meme that was never true

You think that the USA has never employed it's three letter agencies to protect its interests?

Not what I said. Petrodollar conspiracies are not that, plenty of nations move away from the dollar without “3 letter agencies” and only the uninformed are unaware of this.

Re: Ghana plans to buy oil with gold instead of dollars

#399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm kind of confused by his comment. Isn't it common knowledge (and even admitted) that American three letter agencies protect their interests at almost full cost? The fbi had plans to assassinate MLK, and the cia led how many revolutions.

Some people still live in denial. I can surely see CIA paying a visit to Ghana's officials.

You can see that because you’re knee deep in conspiracy theories. I’m not in denial I’m just informed on foreign policy and know that these agencies don’t just overthrow governments because they make financial decisions like this. That’s an ignorant meme that lacks any real analysis of foreign policy.

Re: Ghana plans to buy oil with gold instead of dollars

#400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They may be seeing a three letter agency from the USA very soon Yeah this shows how little your credibility is. Idiotic meme that was never true

2 points. 1) Please keep this site as a place for discussion and throw information rather than insults. 2) A three letter agency seems believable to me. Do you remember what happened in Libya 2011? It is believed this was in a large part due to their planned move to an afro dollar. https://theecologist.org/2016/mar/14/why-qaddafi-had-go-afri...

You want me to keep it safe for discussion, while downvoting me for calling out easily disproved conspiracies?

I think your priorities are out of whack here. There’s lots of complaints about Us policy: that they overthrow nations to uphold the petrodollar is not one of them.

How about reading an actual analysis instead of continuing a meme that was never true

https://www.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/m9sll7/why_nati...

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