America’s aggressive use of sanctions endangers the dollar’s reign • Hacker News Board

Re: America’s aggressive use of sanctions endangers the dollar’s reign

#321

Post by dTal » Mon, Jan 20, 2020, 12:21 PM UTC

hkt wrote: post #314

dTal wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Awful purchasing decisions from the US , uniformly. The deeper into this rabbit hole one goes, the stronger the smell of rats. One truly wonders who was persuaded to give away the entire fleet of carrier-borne aircraft to the US Marines - and how...

I read it as political stupidity rather than malice. Maybe not though. The requirement to have VTOL craft for our new carriers was an unforced error though, that necessitated the much more expensive model of the F35 that even the US doesn't generally use. We could've just opted for a better carrier design, or retrofitted.

Or just... kept the perfectly serviceable (indeed, newly refitted) fleet of Harrier VTOL carrier aircraft? Instead of practically giving them to the US? Who were mysteriously happy to have them, despite the ostensible F35 replacement being an American product?

The entire thing reminds of this[1] Futurama bit. "You won't be needing Harriers anymore, will you? I take Harriers now, F35 come next decade".

[1]https://youtu.be/kNyETSyc4qo?t=98

Re: America’s aggressive use of sanctions endangers the dollar’s reign

#322

Post by tehjoker » Mon, Jan 20, 2020, 3:47 PM UTC

zaroth wrote: post #138

tehjoker wrote: post #91

This is an interesting article, but exposes the Economist's bias and lack of an honest historical accounting. While the it is new, interesting, and important that the world is becoming more skeptical of the dollar, it is kind of laughable that the only reference to Iraq and sanctions is the ones that were in the news recently. Iraq and many other countries have been subject to crippling US sanctions many times in the…

> The Iraqi government voted to remove US troops in response to an unprovoked assasination on an Iranian top general on their soil while performing what is claimed to be a diplomatic peace mission (another war crime). I’m not sure if this is satire. The Iranian General was coordinating attacks against American forces with the Iranian-backed militia forces in Iraq. It’s true that lame-duck Iranian-backed Shiite politi…

Regardless of whether you believe the US position on this (I don't), we shouldn't be there and have no moral or legal reason to do so.

Re: America’s aggressive use of sanctions endangers the dollar’s reign

#323

Post by hkt » Tue, Jan 21, 2020, 7:26 AM UTC

dTal wrote: post #321

hkt wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read it as political stupidity rather than malice. Maybe not though. The requirement to have VTOL craft for our new carriers was an unforced error though, that necessitated the much more expensive model of the F35 that even the US doesn't generally use. We could've just opted for a better carrier design, or retrofitted.

Or just... kept the perfectly serviceable (indeed, newly refitted) fleet of Harrier VTOL carrier aircraft? Instead of practically giving them to the US? Who were mysteriously happy to have them, despite the ostensible F35 replacement being an American product? The entire thing reminds of this[1] Futurama bit. "You won't be needing Harriers anymore, will you? I take Harriers now, F35 come next decade". [1] https://you…

No disagreement here. I somewhat assumed there was a reason for the F35 at all..

Re: America’s aggressive use of sanctions endangers the dollar’s reign

#324

Post by igravious » Tue, Jan 21, 2020, 3:40 PM UTC

hopia wrote: post #219

igravious wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Russia may attempt to assert itself to a greater extent in the next few decades, possibly going so far as to annex a Baltic country or two. This is in the book that forecasts that Japan will attack the US in 2050 except that it'll be all space-borne battlestars and lasers and hypersonic weapons. Among other preposterous scenarios. Riiiight. > It is advantageous to them to have Western Europe dependent on its oil an…

It's really not so far-fetched to think Russia would annex a Baltic state sometime in the future. They've shown they have the capability and political will to annex similarly prepared countries' territories. It all boils down to what they believe NATO's response would be.

For a start Russia already has a Baltic state: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaliningrad_Oblast and, not only that, has access to the Baltic itself. So there's zero geopolitical strategic advantage.

Anywhere that Russia has "annexed" has had a majority ethnic Russian population and historical ties to Russia. Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are not majority ethnic Russian, do not speak Russian, and are part of the EU (and NATO) so they're clearly not aligned geopolitically with Russia and it would cause major regional ramifications, undoubtedly triggering a war with NATO, and/or the EU (both nuclear entities). It would be wholly unprecedented in modern times.

Re: America’s aggressive use of sanctions endangers the dollar’s reign

#325

Post by flyGuyOnTheSly » Tue, Jan 21, 2020, 4:15 PM UTC

distant_hat wrote: post #316

flyGuyOnTheSly wrote: post #121

If you were getting a paywall like me, just delete all your economist.com cookies and block all javascript.

Oftentimes, just pressing the 'reader' button in Firefox works.

Interesting, I will try that the next time, thank you!

Re: America’s aggressive use of sanctions endangers the dollar’s reign

#326

Post by cdiddy2 » Sun, Jan 26, 2020, 5:08 PM UTC

roenxi wrote: post #234

Animats wrote: post #150

Whether China's yuan should be freely convertible to other currencies is something the PRC has struggled with for years. A freely convertible yuan would increase China's influence on the world financial system, but it would also increase the influence of the world financial system on China. And it would require much easing, if not elimination, of China's exchange controls. A decade ago, a freely convertible yuan was…

Given the extreme questionability of all currencies for anyone who wants to, y'know, hold on to currencies; why not just do without? There isn't any theoretical reason a world currency is needed. Instead of pricing Yuan and Euros in terms of some third currency people could price them in terms of each other and cut out the middle man. Speaking as an Australian; about 3-4% of our trading by value is with the United St…

7 days late here, but its not an accident that things are priced in USD in the middle of transactions, and its not purely because the US wanted it that way.

Imagine if you as an Australian wanted to trade with venezuela. You go and make a deal selling something for some bolivars. But by the time you get the money the bolivars are not the worth the same in AUD as when you started the deal. Now you might say that the Venezualans should just hold some AUD in order to trade with australia. but they want to trade with the rest of the world as well so they would have to hold some of everyones currencies based on how much they plan to trade with them. This is infeasible so instead they use USD as the middle man to trade with everyone else, and everyone else agrees that they will accept USD for their trades. this removes the currency risk between countries assuming the USD is liquid and remains somewhat steady, which it has for the purpose of world trade.