Putin doesn’t hate the dollar and actually wants Russia to once again be able to use it with its partners for reasons of convenience, but it was the US that forced his country to de-dollarize and pioneer alternative financial instruments out of necessity.
"...challenging the dollar’s dominance, and a lot of what’s already been achieved can realistically be reversed or decelerated."
Hypothetically yes, in practice it will not be reversed. When the British empire was in decline, I'm sure many argued that the decline of GBP dominance can realistically be reversed or decelerated. History proved them wrong.
Trump's threat against BRICS shows the world that the US will lie, cheat, and steal to retain its failing supremacy at the expense of any nation that opposes it. Trump and the US are the global bullies well suited to each other. Trump is all ego, having been bankrupted 6 times at the expense of others. He is the king of spending and deficits, with no plan to reduce the country's massive debt. Being a friend of the US is more deadly than being its enemy. The USD continues to be propped up by gunboat diplomacy, and countries that subjugate themselves to it have and will pay a dear price. The hegemon is falling, kicking and screaming like big-mouth Trump, causing strife globally as its economic, social, political, infrastructure and health systems crumble by "design." Look at the disintegration of US cities, the decaying infrastructure, tent cities, the drug epidemic, AIPAC's infiltration of the nation, the brainwashed population, broken healthcare, the border crisis, and the medical vax tyranny Trump promoted at the end of his term. (on and on) The only good thing remaining there is that it mostly comprises good, hard-working citizens being torn apart by the division between two corrupt, inept political parties more alike than not. What sane nation would want to emulate America? Pardon my digression. lol
Trump is threatening Canada with 25% tariffs as a distraction from its real fiasco at the Mexican border, not ours. Canada, being rich in resources like Russia, should have open trade with Russia, but being positioned beside the hegemon negates that thought for obvious reasons. Well, that's another topic. Up yours too, Trumpster. lol
Here, Trump says he loves Diddy, a good friend of his.
There is absolutely no way anyone in the Global Majority can trust the US ever again. The mask is finally off. Let’s say Trump lifts all sanctions against Russia. Who’s to say that a future president wouldn’t reimpose sanctions. The trust is gone forever. There is no going back to the status quo.
Using their own currencies isn't JUST a work-around, it benefits the countries who can do that. The world is changing and so is its trade and financial instruments. The US can no longer demand that everybody in the world use its money for trade. It does not have the influence or power for that. I just think change is coming, it isn't going to sink the dollar but the dollar cannot continue to be the one and only, the US kept afloat by selling the paper money it prints, even as it sinks in debt. Trump has four years fighting a very dirty opposition to turn it all around and while I think he can make some very needed changes in that period, he isn't going to undo the harm that 35 years of warmaking have brought us to. The US dollar reflected US strength in multiple areas, not just warmaking. And even there, we have grown fat and lazy fighting third-rate armies.
Saying that Putin doesn't hate the dollar, only its coercive employment, seems to be a bit of a distinction without a difference. The dollar is, and obviously will be, used coercively from here on out. I don't see a meaningful retreat from that development. The US is putting everything on the table. And Trump's statement certainly doesn't walk back anything.
Obviously, the US is concerned about BRICS even though the Kazan meeting was conspicuous mostly for its lack of major initiatives.
So why do other countries want to join BRICS? What do they see as its benefits for them? Strategically, BRICS amounts to very little because of the India-China impasse. Is the attraction the potential for getting in on a mechanism that can bypass US sanctions on a limited basis for whatever transactions might require it? And is that what has Trump all hot and bothered? I tend to think his message is not to the core BRICS members, it's to all the countries that are sidling up to BRICS. Is Trump including all non-dollar transactions in his threat? I'm not quite clear on that point.
If he is, that is a very aggressive move. If he is just talking about a hypothetical BRICS currency that doesn't seem to be going anywhere right now anyway, then maybe it is mostly fireworks designed to make BRICS too scary for the timid to approach, preempting some longer-term problem the US political class has identified.
It is completely impossible to reverse the process of de-dollarization. The US has proven to be an economically unreliable nation, to the extent that its interests override its guarantees! In Capitalism, once trust in commercial relations is lost, alternative means inexorably emerge to replace the old means. The US is getting a taste of the market laws that it so treats as sacred.
Well, yes, but the timeline is the real question. The fact that de-dollarization is very likely to occur some day doesn't help Iran (for example) today.
But isn't he (Trump), as the leader, supposed to be most fully and accurately informed, and thus able to make decisions on behalf of those whom he represents?
"It’s therefore better for the US to rein in this trend, which it can do by lifting the main sanctions on Russia."
Sounds better for the US than it does for Russia. There may not be any credible likelihood of a military coup in Russia, but even Putin's popularity is not infinite. I think he'd have trouble selling this as a balanced compromise, or even as anything like the Russian people having won on the battlefield. Without an admission of responsibility from the Americans, and some undertaking to make reparations to compensate for the terrorist act — blowing up the pipelines — and some means of determining what ecological damage they've thus caused and how they may likewise make reparations for that... I can't see how it might fly. As you describe it here, it would be an ask too big; ain't gonna fly.
This kind of answer means only one thing for the BRICS ; to stay for ever their master's slaves and to continue to fund the US. The US can ONLY finance his 800 military bases around the world set up " color revolutions " because " the rest " continue to stock and use the $.
To some point if " the rest " want the above to stop they will have to grow some SPINE.
Wrong, I'm not "peeing in my pants", be respectful if you want to continue commenting here.
It's an objectively existing and easily verifiable fact that BRICS has only led to a larger use of national currencies, but no new currency nor other instruments.
Moreover, everything that I cited about Putin is from the official Kremlin website. He really did say what I wrote.
Another point, as I explained in the hyperlinked piece about the BRICS Summit, is that China is already complying with many Western sanctions against Russia.
I'm all in on the ruble, which I'm sure is something that you can't say. I bought an apartment in Moscow, I get paid in rubles, and my savings are entirely in rubles.
Why in the world would you misportray me as being against de-dollarization when I have a direct stake in it succeeding?
At the same time, I'm not going to lie by hyping up the largely non-existent progress that BRICS made in order to earn approval from random trolls like others do.
Putin is a politician. When a politician says things publicly, you shouldn't take it at face value.
Russia has been trying to de-dollarize at least since 2014. It's a fact of history. When Putin says he supposedly had no plans to de-dollarize whatsoever before 2022, he's not telling you the whole story.
What I've learned about Putin after watching him closely from 2014 onward, including reading many of his speeches and interviews (a lot of which never received media attention), is that he usually says what he means.
Although he's a politician, he's an old-school one who believes in traditional diplomacy. He's surprisingly candid with what he wants and rarely says anything that he later contradicts through his actions.
In this case, he's not play "5D chess" as part of some "master plan", he truly never wanted to de-dollarize and only felt coerced to do so by the circumstances in which he was placed against his will.
Gradually diversifying from disproportionate dependence on the dollar is pragmatic, but that's different than waging a war against the dollar like many of his friends and foes alike falsely claimed that he's been doing this entire time.
There's a reason that Putin and everyone below him demand that the sanctions be lifted in full as part of a final resolution to the NATO-Russian proxy war in Ukraine, and that's because he truly wants to get back to using the dollar.
This is because of how convenient it is for his partners. At the same time, he'd still want to continue diversifying as explained, but he's not trying to topple the dollar either, which would send shockwaves through his partners' economies.
The hypothetical collapse of the dollar would hit export-dependent China and India hard, and that in turn could negatively affect their trade with Russia, which Putin wants to avoid happening.
There are actually two Putins: the one that objectively exists but is rarely talked about by friends and foes, each for their own ideological reasons, and the one that those two created in their minds and which is largely the same image, albeit friends think what he's accused of doing is good while foes think that it's bad.
The real Putin needs to get the attention that he deserves while all efforts must be undertaken to dispel every illusion surrounding the fake Putin. He's not anti-Western, he doesn't want to destroy the dollar, he's just a patriot who's pragmatically adapting to changing circumstances after he was forced into them for refusing to become the West's junior partner.
Another point: the West hasn't trusted Putin since 2014 so he knows that he's not "psyching them out" by supposedly lying for a full decade about him not wanting to de-dollarize.
He was telling the truth, very candidly so, yet most of his friends believed him and neither did any of his foes. Putin is very consistent and almost hyper-legalistic, lying isn't his forte at all.
Putin was not addressing his message to the West. There is nobody in the West that would listen to his message anyway and he knows it. The message was for BRICS partners and other Global South countries. Sure he felt coerced, but it didn't start in 2022 as he seems to imply. It started after 2014 sanctions. I'm 100% sure now he would prefer to avoid the dollar if possible, he's not an idiot not to prefer that, given the circumstances.
I read somewhere that someone said that the West made up their collective mind after Putin's 2007 speech at the Munich Security Conference. Considering the 2008 Georgian War, I think we can safely push the assumed date to 2008.
Personally, I perceive it as more to do with not letting Khodorkovsky and Yukos be used as the thin edge of the wedge and the Trojan horse to eventually get Russian oil under American control, so I put it at about ten years earlier than you have here.
Over on Doctorow substack, that author was commenting on last week's 7% plunge of ruble against US$. Basically, the US is going to restart/enhance oil/shale/gas extraction under Trump. So these resource costs are going down, and thus, Russia's main export earners will go down. Foreign Exchange just anticipates it.
Nevertheless, this will not completely affect the switch to gold. One reason for the switch is of course primary and secondary sanctions. The second is: the government debt levels in the West - USA, France, Italy, UK and top of the world - Japan, are astronomic and exponentially growing. So it is no longer prudent to invest in US treasuries, as their value will collapse. It's not just East Asia: Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania or Serbia are also buying gold.
The fracking industry can't survive low oil prices due to the much higher costs to extract. Russia could wipe out the fracking industry by pushing oil prices below the fracted oil's output cost. The ruble's fall is temporary and beneficial to Russia. I'm looking for a way to diversify in the Ruble once it bottoms out because I know its long-term trajectory will be higher to the US or CDN dollar. The USD's strength is an illusion. One day, she goes Boom slowly then suddenly. lol
It's simple - take out Iran's oil industry and fracking in the US will have a better differential, lol. On the serious side - a lot of costs imposed on the fracking US industry are regulatory. Take them away and production costs will go down. In fact, Biden government was actively discouraging investment in fracking by threatening the banks. So their credit costs went up... They did/do this all the time. Andreesen in a recent interview on Zerohedge said this was happening in crypto-banking too. Employees of crypto-banking companies had their house mortgages cancelled or were even debanked.
I mean, if you debank Russia because, why not debank fracking or crypto-banking?
You are correct. Let me add that we must also keep in mind the depletion of
cheaper fracking reserves; then, they proceed to higher costs. Fracking extraction has peaked, and extraction costs rise as the asset depletes its payload and the rate of depletion is quick. These wells tend to have a short time life.
But then, you start exploring more, and find some additional fields. Anyway the extraction costs for competing oil fields in Russia, Arabia and wherever will be rising too - over time. IIRC, the value ratio of 1 barrel oil/1 oz gold has been more or less steady over decades, if one accepts 2-fold swings up or down.
"...challenging the dollar’s dominance, and a lot of what’s already been achieved can realistically be reversed or decelerated."
Hypothetically yes, in practice it will not be reversed. When the British empire was in decline, I'm sure many argued that the decline of GBP dominance can realistically be reversed or decelerated. History proved them wrong.
It's not going to happen.
Trump's threat against BRICS shows the world that the US will lie, cheat, and steal to retain its failing supremacy at the expense of any nation that opposes it. Trump and the US are the global bullies well suited to each other. Trump is all ego, having been bankrupted 6 times at the expense of others. He is the king of spending and deficits, with no plan to reduce the country's massive debt. Being a friend of the US is more deadly than being its enemy. The USD continues to be propped up by gunboat diplomacy, and countries that subjugate themselves to it have and will pay a dear price. The hegemon is falling, kicking and screaming like big-mouth Trump, causing strife globally as its economic, social, political, infrastructure and health systems crumble by "design." Look at the disintegration of US cities, the decaying infrastructure, tent cities, the drug epidemic, AIPAC's infiltration of the nation, the brainwashed population, broken healthcare, the border crisis, and the medical vax tyranny Trump promoted at the end of his term. (on and on) The only good thing remaining there is that it mostly comprises good, hard-working citizens being torn apart by the division between two corrupt, inept political parties more alike than not. What sane nation would want to emulate America? Pardon my digression. lol
Trump is threatening Canada with 25% tariffs as a distraction from its real fiasco at the Mexican border, not ours. Canada, being rich in resources like Russia, should have open trade with Russia, but being positioned beside the hegemon negates that thought for obvious reasons. Well, that's another topic. Up yours too, Trumpster. lol
Here, Trump says he loves Diddy, a good friend of his.
https://youtu.be/GJV9kWdOiW8?t=108
There is absolutely no way anyone in the Global Majority can trust the US ever again. The mask is finally off. Let’s say Trump lifts all sanctions against Russia. Who’s to say that a future president wouldn’t reimpose sanctions. The trust is gone forever. There is no going back to the status quo.
I doubt Trump thinks that far. He's more like the loudmouth at the corner bar.
Using their own currencies isn't JUST a work-around, it benefits the countries who can do that. The world is changing and so is its trade and financial instruments. The US can no longer demand that everybody in the world use its money for trade. It does not have the influence or power for that. I just think change is coming, it isn't going to sink the dollar but the dollar cannot continue to be the one and only, the US kept afloat by selling the paper money it prints, even as it sinks in debt. Trump has four years fighting a very dirty opposition to turn it all around and while I think he can make some very needed changes in that period, he isn't going to undo the harm that 35 years of warmaking have brought us to. The US dollar reflected US strength in multiple areas, not just warmaking. And even there, we have grown fat and lazy fighting third-rate armies.
Problem is Trump's supremacist, childish mentality unable to grasp the fact the US are not longer the Hegemon...
Several nations now openly defy them, do not kowtow to them: China, Iran, Russia, South Africa, Nicaragua, Mali ...
And Russia, most importantly, is defying them in all fronts, especially militarily, and WINNING !!!
Seting up the EXAMPLE: With total dignity, defiantly not to be scared, not to be pushed.
Saying that Putin doesn't hate the dollar, only its coercive employment, seems to be a bit of a distinction without a difference. The dollar is, and obviously will be, used coercively from here on out. I don't see a meaningful retreat from that development. The US is putting everything on the table. And Trump's statement certainly doesn't walk back anything.
Obviously, the US is concerned about BRICS even though the Kazan meeting was conspicuous mostly for its lack of major initiatives.
So why do other countries want to join BRICS? What do they see as its benefits for them? Strategically, BRICS amounts to very little because of the India-China impasse. Is the attraction the potential for getting in on a mechanism that can bypass US sanctions on a limited basis for whatever transactions might require it? And is that what has Trump all hot and bothered? I tend to think his message is not to the core BRICS members, it's to all the countries that are sidling up to BRICS. Is Trump including all non-dollar transactions in his threat? I'm not quite clear on that point.
If he is, that is a very aggressive move. If he is just talking about a hypothetical BRICS currency that doesn't seem to be going anywhere right now anyway, then maybe it is mostly fireworks designed to make BRICS too scary for the timid to approach, preempting some longer-term problem the US political class has identified.
It is completely impossible to reverse the process of de-dollarization. The US has proven to be an economically unreliable nation, to the extent that its interests override its guarantees! In Capitalism, once trust in commercial relations is lost, alternative means inexorably emerge to replace the old means. The US is getting a taste of the market laws that it so treats as sacred.
Well, yes, but the timeline is the real question. The fact that de-dollarization is very likely to occur some day doesn't help Iran (for example) today.
"...he fell for their claims."
But isn't he (Trump), as the leader, supposed to be most fully and accurately informed, and thus able to make decisions on behalf of those whom he represents?
"It’s therefore better for the US to rein in this trend, which it can do by lifting the main sanctions on Russia."
Sounds better for the US than it does for Russia. There may not be any credible likelihood of a military coup in Russia, but even Putin's popularity is not infinite. I think he'd have trouble selling this as a balanced compromise, or even as anything like the Russian people having won on the battlefield. Without an admission of responsibility from the Americans, and some undertaking to make reparations to compensate for the terrorist act — blowing up the pipelines — and some means of determining what ecological damage they've thus caused and how they may likewise make reparations for that... I can't see how it might fly. As you describe it here, it would be an ask too big; ain't gonna fly.
Andrew starts to pee in his pants...like Putin.
This kind of answer means only one thing for the BRICS ; to stay for ever their master's slaves and to continue to fund the US. The US can ONLY finance his 800 military bases around the world set up " color revolutions " because " the rest " continue to stock and use the $.
To some point if " the rest " want the above to stop they will have to grow some SPINE.
As simple as that.
Wrong, I'm not "peeing in my pants", be respectful if you want to continue commenting here.
It's an objectively existing and easily verifiable fact that BRICS has only led to a larger use of national currencies, but no new currency nor other instruments.
Moreover, everything that I cited about Putin is from the official Kremlin website. He really did say what I wrote.
Another point, as I explained in the hyperlinked piece about the BRICS Summit, is that China is already complying with many Western sanctions against Russia.
I'm all in on the ruble, which I'm sure is something that you can't say. I bought an apartment in Moscow, I get paid in rubles, and my savings are entirely in rubles.
Why in the world would you misportray me as being against de-dollarization when I have a direct stake in it succeeding?
At the same time, I'm not going to lie by hyping up the largely non-existent progress that BRICS made in order to earn approval from random trolls like others do.
Putin is a politician. When a politician says things publicly, you shouldn't take it at face value.
Russia has been trying to de-dollarize at least since 2014. It's a fact of history. When Putin says he supposedly had no plans to de-dollarize whatsoever before 2022, he's not telling you the whole story.
What I've learned about Putin after watching him closely from 2014 onward, including reading many of his speeches and interviews (a lot of which never received media attention), is that he usually says what he means.
Although he's a politician, he's an old-school one who believes in traditional diplomacy. He's surprisingly candid with what he wants and rarely says anything that he later contradicts through his actions.
In this case, he's not play "5D chess" as part of some "master plan", he truly never wanted to de-dollarize and only felt coerced to do so by the circumstances in which he was placed against his will.
Gradually diversifying from disproportionate dependence on the dollar is pragmatic, but that's different than waging a war against the dollar like many of his friends and foes alike falsely claimed that he's been doing this entire time.
There's a reason that Putin and everyone below him demand that the sanctions be lifted in full as part of a final resolution to the NATO-Russian proxy war in Ukraine, and that's because he truly wants to get back to using the dollar.
This is because of how convenient it is for his partners. At the same time, he'd still want to continue diversifying as explained, but he's not trying to topple the dollar either, which would send shockwaves through his partners' economies.
The hypothetical collapse of the dollar would hit export-dependent China and India hard, and that in turn could negatively affect their trade with Russia, which Putin wants to avoid happening.
There are actually two Putins: the one that objectively exists but is rarely talked about by friends and foes, each for their own ideological reasons, and the one that those two created in their minds and which is largely the same image, albeit friends think what he's accused of doing is good while foes think that it's bad.
The real Putin needs to get the attention that he deserves while all efforts must be undertaken to dispel every illusion surrounding the fake Putin. He's not anti-Western, he doesn't want to destroy the dollar, he's just a patriot who's pragmatically adapting to changing circumstances after he was forced into them for refusing to become the West's junior partner.
Another point: the West hasn't trusted Putin since 2014 so he knows that he's not "psyching them out" by supposedly lying for a full decade about him not wanting to de-dollarize.
He was telling the truth, very candidly so, yet most of his friends believed him and neither did any of his foes. Putin is very consistent and almost hyper-legalistic, lying isn't his forte at all.
Putin was not addressing his message to the West. There is nobody in the West that would listen to his message anyway and he knows it. The message was for BRICS partners and other Global South countries. Sure he felt coerced, but it didn't start in 2022 as he seems to imply. It started after 2014 sanctions. I'm 100% sure now he would prefer to avoid the dollar if possible, he's not an idiot not to prefer that, given the circumstances.
I read somewhere that someone said that the West made up their collective mind after Putin's 2007 speech at the Munich Security Conference. Considering the 2008 Georgian War, I think we can safely push the assumed date to 2008.
"...the West hasn't trusted Putin since 2014..."
Personally, I perceive it as more to do with not letting Khodorkovsky and Yukos be used as the thin edge of the wedge and the Trojan horse to eventually get Russian oil under American control, so I put it at about ten years earlier than you have here.
Why you need to be a dick, bro? 🤣
He's over-emotional. lol
Over on Doctorow substack, that author was commenting on last week's 7% plunge of ruble against US$. Basically, the US is going to restart/enhance oil/shale/gas extraction under Trump. So these resource costs are going down, and thus, Russia's main export earners will go down. Foreign Exchange just anticipates it.
Nevertheless, this will not completely affect the switch to gold. One reason for the switch is of course primary and secondary sanctions. The second is: the government debt levels in the West - USA, France, Italy, UK and top of the world - Japan, are astronomic and exponentially growing. So it is no longer prudent to invest in US treasuries, as their value will collapse. It's not just East Asia: Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania or Serbia are also buying gold.
The fracking industry can't survive low oil prices due to the much higher costs to extract. Russia could wipe out the fracking industry by pushing oil prices below the fracted oil's output cost. The ruble's fall is temporary and beneficial to Russia. I'm looking for a way to diversify in the Ruble once it bottoms out because I know its long-term trajectory will be higher to the US or CDN dollar. The USD's strength is an illusion. One day, she goes Boom slowly then suddenly. lol
It's simple - take out Iran's oil industry and fracking in the US will have a better differential, lol. On the serious side - a lot of costs imposed on the fracking US industry are regulatory. Take them away and production costs will go down. In fact, Biden government was actively discouraging investment in fracking by threatening the banks. So their credit costs went up... They did/do this all the time. Andreesen in a recent interview on Zerohedge said this was happening in crypto-banking too. Employees of crypto-banking companies had their house mortgages cancelled or were even debanked.
I mean, if you debank Russia because, why not debank fracking or crypto-banking?
You are correct. Let me add that we must also keep in mind the depletion of
cheaper fracking reserves; then, they proceed to higher costs. Fracking extraction has peaked, and extraction costs rise as the asset depletes its payload and the rate of depletion is quick. These wells tend to have a short time life.
Sure - you first pick the low-hanging fruit :)
But then, you start exploring more, and find some additional fields. Anyway the extraction costs for competing oil fields in Russia, Arabia and wherever will be rising too - over time. IIRC, the value ratio of 1 barrel oil/1 oz gold has been more or less steady over decades, if one accepts 2-fold swings up or down.
Great analysis.