Quote (ofthevoid @ Mar 10 2023 05:10pm)
The key difference between today and lets say 30 years ago post Cold war is no one would dared to step out of line because they would immediately get bonked down into place. Things have changed though. 30 years ago if we told Saudi Arabia, hey you gotta pump dawg, they would pump without questions asked. Today we begged them to pump and they basically told us to fuck off. And this is an ally. China, Russia, Iran are not getting more assertive because we're in a stronger position today than prior, but because they see exhaustion and that's what I'm talking about when I say thinly spread. Most people here don't want wars, we have so many internal issues that need addressing like inflation and printing more money to spend on war just makes the issue of inflation and debt even worse. We need to be real careful in how far we push because the harder we push the higher the probability that a critical mass of the world may say we don't want the petro-dollar supremacy, which could bring a world a us in the US that we've never seen before. I think this is already happening but obviously i don't want it to. I live in the US, all my wealth is basically US denominated and tied. I want my assets to appreciate not go the way of Weimar or Venezuela because of geopolitical ambitions that have 0 impact on my life or 98% of normal Americans.
That's unlikely to happen as a result of geopolitical ambition. If that happens here, it's going to be domestic issues that finish the job.
There's an overconcern with the dollar's reserve currency status. US "core" allies (i.e. excluding anyone outside of Western Europe, Poland, Japan, and Korea) represents more than 50% of global GDP. The United States alone represents a quarter. That's too much business for the rest of the world to ignore, and people generally like doing business in dollar dominated institutions because they're safe and secure. As a few Western money-managers found out recently, it can be awfully hard to cash out investments in semi-closed economies. Chinese capital controls have limited the ability of some US investors to head for the exits. We are seeing certain non-Western states embrace alternative solutions, mostly as a means of circumventing Western sanctions. But the flow through those institutions is a fraction of what goes through the dollar-system, and it won't be a threat until those economies can build up the regulatory trust that has existed for a century in the West.