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USD share as global reserve currency drops to lowest since 1994

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Re: USD share as global reserve currency drops to lowest since 1994

#71
post #18
post #4

I'm not an economist so someone please correct me / expand on this; I'm guessing this is kind of a "It's not a problem until it's a crisis" situation? So far other central banks haven't begun selling treasuries, they've just stopped buying them. But once one starts selling it could become self reinforcing? What could replace it? There doesn't seem to be any new hegemonic power on the same level. Could we enter a worl…

The British pound was displaced by the US dollar. Currently, the US dollar just doesn't have a proper rival. The euro, yuan and rupee are considered politically suspect (each for its own unique reasons); the pound and yen have too small a base. Without further transformation of the global financial system, the only alternative is for banks to hold a basket of currencies, and in such a basket the dollar would likely s…

Ok, let's see - yuan isn't a freely traded currency, it's heavily regulated by China. From that alone it can not be used a reserve currency by anyone - unless they want to hand over all control over their assets to CCP.

The rupee is better, but there's not a lot of trust in Indian institutions globally, so black swan events are more likely. I can see it becoming a better proposition as India further matures and taps into its population more.

No, euro - that's a solid contender. Not only it's already used in a lot of countries, and therefore backed by more than one economy, the EU institutions are legit to a fault - they continuously refuse to seize Russian assets, because there's no solid legal grounds for it, despite all political will towards doing so.

That alone makes it far removed from being politically suspect in my book, unless there's some blatant case against the euro that I'm missing.

Re: USD share as global reserve currency drops to lowest since 1994

#72
post #21

Whenever I see headlines like this, I ask: what happened in 1994? It was post-Cold War and central banks were trimming USD reserves to test alternatives. Then, crises hit (tequila, Asian, Russian, dot com) and the world reconsolidated around USD, thanks to the immense strength of the Federal Reserve and IMF. Similarly now, reserve share is falling as countries hedge sanctions and geopolitics, yet dollar usage in trad…

Early 90’s during the Clinton administration (and the dot com boom) appeared to be the best run US budgeting process I have ever seen.

Re: USD share as global reserve currency drops to lowest since 1994

#73

Highly unpopular opinion here and I'm going to get downvoted into the ground (who cares), but ... this has been a very long time coming and has very much been a self-inflicted change. My bet is that it will end up being a very good thing for the world at large. China has recently started to buy Arabian oil and paying with yuan. Major countries (India, China) are starting to buy Russian raw materials and paying direct…

Just so you know India buys USD equivalent middle eastern currency to pay for Russian oil.

Re: USD share as global reserve currency drops to lowest since 1994

#74
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Panics about how oil is being traded in non-USD terms are as old as the internet and, in all likelihood, even older than that. You can find usenet slop from 20-30 years ago about the petro-euro and the "tehran oil bourse". Here's an old site that is/was daily panics about the fall of the dollar, from 15-25 years ago. http://www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net/

Nobody is panicking. BRICS has gotten steadily larger and is gaining as an alternative banking system. This is competition. This just requires more thoughtful strategies.

> This just requires more thoughtful strategies.

US not in a good place then?

Re: USD share as global reserve currency drops to lowest since 1994

#75
USD position as global reserve is very much based on trust.

Between the weaponizing that for sanctions via SWIFT, US becoming unreliable as a partner (militarily, politically and economically) and Trump rambling about replacing pieces of the financial system with crypto [0] that trust was bound to waiver

Think we'll have a parallel system in record time. Question is who/how. Russia wants it but they're well Russia. China's yuan isn't open enough. Euro is a bit to regional and dependent on the US lead system anyway. So there isn't an obvious candidate.

Something is going to have to give though given US shenanigans.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/economy/comments/1otdio8/trump_says...

Re: USD share as global reserve currency drops to lowest since 1994

#76
post #55
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Fed most commonly uses Open Market Operations to modify the money supply, with "money printing" or Quantitative Easing used in more emergency situations. But more broadly your comment doesn't really represent reality, whatever happens in the markets and economy the Fed manages inflation (or deflation) and it's much more complicated than a single relationship like you describe. More interesting is trade, where the…

Sure; and I'm referring directly to those "emergency situations", which aren't much of an "emergency" as most people would understand the word given that they've engaged in QE for ~7 of the past twenty years.

4 of the last 10 were quantitative tightening.

Re: USD share as global reserve currency drops to lowest since 1994

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody is panicking. BRICS has gotten steadily larger and is gaining as an alternative banking system. This is competition. This just requires more thoughtful strategies.

The steady building up of alternatives will happen until one day the reserve currency status will change hands all of a sudden. I think the Fed could stem the whole thing by just issuing a stable coin itself pegged to the dollar and re-assert itself as the dominant currency/arbiter... but who knows. Maybe then it'd have insight into every transaction and be able to stem things with even more power than it can now. No…

I think the Fed is under powered without consistent planning from our executive office. Erratic behavior does not instill confidence for people trying to rationally plan.

I also think the US used the banking system to punish enough nations that an alternative became viable.

Re: USD share as global reserve currency drops to lowest since 1994

#78
post #7

Insane this administration wants pimp the US out to the highest bidder and let the crypto weirdos run the world. If we ever lost the reserve currency peg treasury bills will spike and it’ll be impossible to fund the government. We spend 7T every year and take in 5T in taxes. This admin is gutting the IRS and banking on tarrifs which are just taxes. So … without the ability to keep interest rates very low because ever…

Are you trying to project this unto Trump when the Fed is doing everything it can to oppose his measures? I'm only the crypto weirdo guy asking.

> Are you trying to project this unto Trump when the Fed is doing everything it can to oppose his measures?

The Fed isn't opposing Trump's measures, on the contrary, the Fed is doing everything to accommodate as much of his policies as possible without wider damage to the economy.

It's Trump who doesn't understand the risks of unhinged tariffs and low interest rates which he demands because of his personal conflicts of interest.

Re: USD share as global reserve currency drops to lowest since 1994

#79
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine if there was a gold which could be transferred across borders easily and completely securely within seconds, proof of holdings and ownership could be easily proven, and there was no future risk of gold supply shocks (eg gold asteroid hitting earth or alchemy becomes viable).

This sounds amazing! Is it also protected from being lost forever by trivial mistakes that are very common?

Yes, when managed by someone competent, just like Gold.

Re: USD share as global reserve currency drops to lowest since 1994

#80
post #21

Whenever I see headlines like this, I ask: what happened in 1994? It was post-Cold War and central banks were trimming USD reserves to test alternatives. Then, crises hit (tequila, Asian, Russian, dot com) and the world reconsolidated around USD, thanks to the immense strength of the Federal Reserve and IMF. Similarly now, reserve share is falling as countries hedge sanctions and geopolitics, yet dollar usage in trad…

No, each pushed alternative is just worser. The euro could take over, but europe just revealed itself as a "lawful" player with no plan and no pants (security-wise) - so the euro is just defacto tied to the dollar value wise. For without the us guarding europe, the euro is just loaded with invisible gigantic security and pension debts. BRICs is dealing in store credits and raw-materials. Every other empire and kingdo…

> For without the us [sic] guarding europe

Those words hit harder when you've an executive that isn't beholden to Russia or threatening to fucking annex part of an ally, and a Europe that isn't investing heavily into rearmament.

But please, continue in your delusion.

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