U.S. Reality Check: China, Russia Drop the Dollar

Bubles... Dollars... Yuan

A look at how the use of bilateral trade settlement is growing

By Tony Richardson11/27/2010

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and Russian President Vladamir Putin announced in St. Petersburg, Russia, on November 23, 2010, that they will stop using the U.S. dollar to settle bilateral trade and instead use the ruble or the yuan, according to a report in the state-run China Daily. Bilateral trade between the two countries stands at roughly $60 billion. Put in perspective, assuming two-thirds of international trade is transacted in U.S dollars, this accounts for 0.3% of dollar usage in a global economy valued at roughly $30 trillion. This agreement, then, is not particularly meaningful in terms of U.S.-dollar utilization, but when we consider the exponential implications, the effects are huge.

Consider the fact that China not only has this trade-settlement arrangement with Russia, but also has a growing list of settlement partners that so far includes Argentina, Brazil, Belarus, Iceland, Indonesia, Japan, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand and Vietnam. And then, if each of these countries develops bilateral trade-settlement partnerships in their own currencies absent the dollar, how would this affect our currency, Fed policy and the U.S. economy?

To understand how this might play out, we need to take an imaginary trip to a border region of China and Russia:   READ MORE 

Franklin D. Roosevelt:

“The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism — ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.

If one uses   Benito Mussolini  Fascism, you have something coming close to the Chinese:

The Fascist conception of the State is all-embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value. Thus understood, Fascism is totalitarian, and the Fascist State—a synthesis and a unit inclusive of all values—interprets, develops, and potentiates the whole life of a people.
---

 

Obama vs. the Concern Trolls on Nonsense "Religious Liberty" Issue

Lindsay Beyerstein speaks the sad truth:

Already Catholic special interests are objecting to funding contraception out of overall premiums because that means they're funding contraception indirectly. This kind of intransigence illustrates how foolish it was to try to compromise with this constituency in the first place. They are professionally unreasonable.

Compromise is illusory because these guys are practicing spiritual accounting, not generally accepted accounting principles. They will make up the rules to get the result they want, namely, "We're being oppressed by your birth control!"

The U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops hates the fact that any woman might get free birth control under health reform. No matter how this program is administered, the sophists at the USCCB will come up with a sob story about how they are being oppressed by our contraception cooties. We live in a highly interdependent society with complex organizations and multiple streams of money. If you're creative enough, you can always figure out why a dollar somebody else spends on birth control is tainting you.  READ MORE

States seek currencies made of silver and gold

February 3, 2012, CNN

A growing number of states are seeking shiny new currencies made of silver and gold. Worried that the Federal Reserve and the U.S. dollar are on the brink of collapse, lawmakers from 13 states, including Minnesota, Tennessee, Iowa, South Carolina and Georgia, are seeking approval from their state governments to either issue their own alternative currency or explore it as an option.

Just three years ago, only three states had similar proposals in place.  

Unlike individual communities, which are allowed to create their own currency -- as long as it is easily distinguishable from U.S. dollars -- the Constitution bans states from printing their own paper money or issuing their own currency. 

But it allows the states to make "gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts." And since gold has grown exponentially more valuable, while the U.S. dollar continues to lose ground, the notion has become increasingly appealing to state lawmakers, he said.

The states' proposals have been gaining steam among Tea Partyers and Republicans, many of whom also endorse a nationwide return to the gold standard, which would require the U.S. dollar to be backed by gold reserves.READ MORE