The US century is already over. It's just that a lot of US citizens don't see that. De-dollarization will happen when one is a traitor to it's allies
Something to think about.... Mankind has never seen the collapse of a nuclear powered empire. Sadly, it may not be possible for a nuclear powered empire to fall without the death of billions... Mankind is in uncharted territory. Even Russia never fully fell after the USSR collapsed. Whoever kept the nuclear weapons continued to be a first tier power. Nothing in human history compares to the present question of how th…
> Mankind has never seen the collapse of a nuclear powered empire.
Open your history book and read about what happened in 1991.
The latest US GDP print is the Q3 2025 Initial Estimate, showing real GDP grew at a 4.3% annual rate https://www.nbcnews.com/business/economy/us-economy-grew-thi...
That is an annualised figure, which means they took the Q3 figure by itself and multiplied it by 4. US annualised growth in Q1 would've been -2%. Between Q1/2/3, US growth has been about 1.6%. Wait until the whole year figures come out.
And you have to wonder: if they do come out, are they truthful or are they fabricated.
covid money printing was some of the worst fed decision making in US history. they essentially ruined the housing market, priced out a generation of younger buyers, which is now crushing fertility rates, savings, and more
everyone complains, nobody has alternatives. what would have been the correct actions in that situation? really the government should tax in good times. and spend in bad times. and be a counter weight to private sector
It’s not just that This is a gradual decline. From 70% in the 90s to 60% today. Today there are more options like the Euro that didn’t exist in the 90s. People can argue over EU economic stability, but it’s there as reasonable option.
when do we reach a tipping point for rapid decline? seems like once it starts falling, it would accelerate.
There is a pretty good chance you're right on top of it.
The international value of the dollar as a reserve and trade currency is inherently tied to the behavior of the US Government and the Federal Reserve. The behavior of the US Government has been very unusual lately, and the independence of the Federal Reserve is actively being challenged. So draw from that whatever conclusions you wish.
did you forget about all the money the fed printed during covid? fed independence is important, but literally irrelevant in the face of rampant money printing
That is an excellent point! My intuition is that the yuan could be viewed as more reliable than the dollar, when the dollar is propped up precisely on the good will that gets destroyed by threatening invasion of allies. China does threaten plenty of invasions, but not in Europe or most of the rest of the world yet.
Reliable how? How would you obtain the currency, and what would you do with it? > when the dollar is propped up precisely on the good will The dollar isn't valuable because of good will. Central banks in Europe, or Japan, or elsewhere don't hold dollars because they want to be nice to the United States. They hold them because the United States is incredibly wealthy, has incredibly deep capital markets, high liquidity…
Unless China wants it to happen, it won't have the reserve currency. It would require big changes in China's part to make it happen. I fully agree with you that they wouldn't open up things like equities markets in a way that could be trusted by outsiders. But I do think they could open up access to the currency.
The US century is already over. It's just that a lot of US citizens don't see that. De-dollarization will happen when one is a traitor to it's allies
> US century is already over Maybe, maybe not. We're currently the Soviet Union in the 1970s. Gerontocratic. Sclerotic. Hyped up on a new mythology. And economically uncompetitive on several levels, with the future (then computers, now elecrification) sweeping past us to our applause. Unlike the Soviets, however, we can see it happening and debate it. If '26 and '28 change course, the damage will still be done. But t…
My outsider's POV: the fact that there's a Gestapo-analogue in place already tells me that an electoral solution alone is almost certainly no longer sufficient (or at least, unlikely to be effective) at this point.
The Democrats have also had very weak messaging ahead of the midterms. Like, pathetically weak in the current context.
This is to say nothing of the hypothetical where the US makes moves against allies' territories before the midterms.
Currencies fundamentally relate to some trust. I believe that the near-term de-dollarization isn't as much trust erosion as it is a tool to provide monetary penalty for behaving in unpredictable ways. However it will provide incentive to move away from the dollar in the long-term, ie as Fareed Zakaria says "recent actions are accelerating the world to the multipolar future".
Multipolar? So kind of like Europe before the beginning of World War 1, with major powers all competing with each other?
Yes, though I expect there to be a European block, the US, and a Chinese block. Russia there as a wildcard. I doubt we see Germany in competition with Britain.
Russia firmly in that second tier along with better behaved peers that have brighter demographic futures and an actual economy, like India, Indonesia and Brazil.
There are also many Americans who have always desired de-dollarization, since the dollar has been the foundation of our imperial system and abuses of state power. Say what you will about how dated a gold standard is, but it forces immediate fiscal responsibility upon governments; fiat currencies defer responsibility, turning it into a Sword of Damocles that catastrophically falls upon future generations. You trade ge…
> Say what you will about how dated a gold standard is, but it forces immediate fiscal responsibility upon governments We were on metal standards for millenia. Governments routinely spent beyond their means, including for imperial aims. This is like four centuries of Roman history.
What @cheeseomlit said, plus: During the Age of Exploration/Colonization, competing European powers each minted metal currencies and couldn't reasonably debase their metals without immediately being out-competed (which is why the trusted purity of Spanish gold and silver coinage slowly dominated). The primary mode of failure for those empires was bankruptcy via war. The impossibly high cost of fielding armies around the globe was laid bare during that era. Paper money lets us (funnily enough) paper those costs over and live with the illusion that it's all a free lunch. But what we're actually doing today is debasement, and eating, vociferously, all of the deflationary efficiency gains won by 20th century technological progress.