Domestic and Global News

Just Pinned to Domestic and Global News: China’s Rise America’s Fall Via Golem XIV’s blog Will the rise of China mean the fall of America? In a word yes. Although decline might be more accurate. Why do I think this? Because China is about to launch the PetroYuan and when it does the demand for dollars and for dollar denominated debt will shrink. When it does I question whether the world will be so sanguine about the levelof debt that America carries. If that happens then the value of the dollar is in question. At the moment no matter what level of debt America carries other countries need dollars. Dollars to pay for oil since oil is traded in dollars. Dollars for their financial system so their banks can settle contracts for goods and services traded in dollars. But over the last few years China has been systematically putting in place everything it needs to launch the Yuan as not only a rival to the dollar in trading and settling oil contracts but as a rival to the dollar as the worlds reserve currency. At the moment the only rival to the dollar is the Euro. I think it fair to say the relationship between the two currencies and their issuing powers has been delicate. The news that Sadam Hussein was going to start trading his oil in Euros came just a few months before America and its lap dog GB decided Sadam was a threat to world peace and went to war with him. Something similarhappened to Colonel Qaddafi. Under Qaddafi Libyas currency was backed by the countrys large holdings of gold and silver. This had allowed Qaddafi to finance for example the entire construction of the Great Man Made River without going to Western banks for a single loan. Libya was debt free and owned its own resources and infrastructure. Obviously a very unsatisfactory state of affairs for any third world country to get ideas so far above their station. Worse he had a very public plan which he had laid before the Pan African Congress to create a pan African currency backed by gold and silver to be launched by 2023. It was not too long before Hilary Clinton arrived in a freshly bombed Libya and crowed to CBS We came we saw he died. Charming woman. I was only surprised she didnt say Mission accomplished. Libya and Iraqwere small enough that their pretensions to threaten the hegemony of the dollar and have the jumped up arrogance to think they could trade their own resources in their own currency or a currency of their choice could be dealt with by shock awe and death. I think China might not be so easily dealt with. Chinas plans for the replacement of the dollar and the positioning of their own currency are very like Libyas. China too has had the idea to back its new settlement and perhaps one day its reserve currency with gold. And China is not alone. Russia has been a part of the BRIC group with an interest in the plan. Russia like China has been a very large buyer of gold. As reported just a few weeks agoby the Irish Independent the Bank of Russia has more than doubled the pace of gold purchases bringing the share of bullion in its international reserves to the highest of Mr Putins 17 years in power according to World Gold Council data. In the second quarter alone it accounted for 38pc of all gold purchased by central banks. The article goes on to explain how purchasing gold has meant that Russia has not had to buy foreign currencies. For foreign currencies think Dollars. The gold rush is allowing the Bank of Russia to continue growing its reserves while abstaining from purchases of foreign currency for more than two years. China and Russia have very large holdings of gold between them. China actually produces 12% of the worlds gold and keeps much if not most of what it produces. The new Petro Yuan will be backed by Gold Something the IMF decades ago said no paper currency should have. A clear break with the Bretton Woods Dollar-world agreement. Who will use this new currency? Over the past few years a network of bilateral agreements has been created around China and Russia. Back in 2012 in an article called A new Reserve currency to challenge the dollar Whats really going on in The Straits of Hormuz I pointed out that not only had China and Russia agreed to bypass the dollar and trade direct in their own currencies butthat the India Times reported that India was talking to Iran about moving out of dollar settlements so as to be able to buy Iranian oil despite a US embargo. India said it was discussing settling in Gold. Remember India has just signed a settlement agreement with China to use the Yuan. Remember also Russia recently eclipsed Saudi as the number one supplier of Chinas oil. And if I remember correctly Angola was number two. Promoting perhaps the recent state visit this year of Saudis King Salman to see Mr Putin. As The Guardian put it Saudi kings visit to Russia heralds shift in global power structures King Salman agrees new areas of cooperation with Vladimir Putin on first official trip by Saudi monarch to Moscow In addition Japan and China have agreed to trade in Yuan by-passing the dollar as has Iran. They are now trading their oil in Yuan or euros but not the dollar. Ever wondered why Iran is the axis of evil? Its because they dont use the dollar. Then came the newsin 2015 that Qatar had opened the first and so far only financial centre in the Middle East for trading and clearing oil gas and anything else in Yuan. Chinas ICBC isthe central banking concern in the hub allowing any Middle Eastern country to trade oil and gas and settle in Yuan. In the previous few years Chinas trade with Qatar had tripled. And now guess what? Qatar has been declared by the US to be a sponsor of terrorism and US allies in the gulf led by Saudi have begun to blockade Qatars trade. Hmm. Any pattern emerging? The problem for the US is how much debt is too much for any country or business? Clearly it is not any magic figure or particular debt to GDP ratio. America and China carry huge debts and no one has balkedyet. How much debt you can carry is a function of debt to the estimated future productive capacity of the country in question. That createsthe demand for its currency and the demand for the currency creates a market and demand for debt denominated in that currency. At the moment the US can carry a huge debt load because everyone needs dollars to trade oil. And China can carry a huge debt because everyone needs yuan to buy the goods whose production was off-shored to China by our globalist leadership. But what happens to demand for Dollars and dollar debt when not if oil starts to be traded less and less in dollars? I suggest the worlds appetite will diminish quite quickly. As it does so the world will start to see US debt in a different light. While the opposite will happen to China. And this is what interests me and makes me think China has a plan. At the moment China also has a very large debt load. I have argued that the Central Chinese authorities have not got the control they would like to have over the growth of that debt. Of course I have no inside information. But the on again/ off again attempts of the Chinese central authorities to deflate its housing-debt bubble and its quite out-of-control shadow banking lending suggests to me at least that the central authorities have not and can not control the level of debt being accumulated by provincial governments their off-book arms length financial vehicles regional banks property developers and the vast largely unregulatedtrade in wealth management vehicles. Chinese debt already overflowed once back in the 90s. Four companies were created to take the debt off the banks books and trade it away. Decades later these companies still exist and still have the bad debts from the 90s hanging around. You will see headlines telling you how those companies have been doing well making money. Suggesting their trade in bad chinese debt has been going well. The reality if you dig a little deeper is that those companies lobbied for and weregiven permission to engage in proper banking activities. Which meantthey began to make their own loans to property developers. As the property bubble continued to inflate over the last decade and a half they have ridden it and that not trading the old bad-debt is why they have made a profit. But now those bad banks have themselves started to find some of their own loans going bad. In any hard-landing or financial paroxysm the bad-banks will need to be rescued bya newbad banks. Bad banks for bad banks is not really a solution. I think the Chinese authorities can see this. It doesnt take a genius after all. What can they do? Well if you already have a huge debt problem and know many of them are going to go bad and will do so overnight in the event of another global banking crisis and know you are not able to reign it all in then a very tempting alternative would be to get the world to agree that you can carry more debt a lot more. And what could help convince the world? Well if your currency could become far more sought after that would be peachy. And so I think the long standing Chinese goal of making the yuan an important international currency which China and Hong Kong in particular have been working towardsfor years has now taken on a far greater import and urgency. I think the Chinese central governments best way of avoiding a politically disastrous domestic debt implosion is to get the Yuan to be used as a settlement currency for oil and not long after that to become a de facto rival to the dollar as the worlds reserve currency. Recently I argued at length with a military analyst who disagreed that China would risk such a break with America. Too dangerous he felt. China he pointed out has such huge holdings of American debt. He argued that the Chinese would prefer to work alongside the dollar. I feel that even if the Chinese would prefer to work alongside the dollar this will prove very difficult if not impossible. Once a flow of countries and trade moves away from the dollar there will be a momentum the Chinese will not be in control of. Cooperation between dollar and Yuan as clearing and reserve currency especially for oil will be like trying to dock two super-tankers in a high sea. In theory possible. In practice not going to work. As for Chinese holdings of US debt I think the advantages of avoiding a domestic debt implosion and projecting the Yuan to world centre stage will outweigh the losses. I also think If I were the Chinese I would imagine a scenario where the dollar does begin to look vulnerable. Its value begins to be questioned nations holding dollars and dollar debt will feel Americas profligate indebtedness is a global danger. They will blame America. How wonderful then for China to arrive and say to a worried world on the edge of a huge crisis Fear not we have thought ahead and can offer you the use of a new currency one backed by GOLD not paper debts. We are here to save you. To offer a ride on a sound ship as an alternative to the rotten and leaking ship you have been riding on. China will be able to position their rise not as an aggressive act not as trying to destabilise the world but as trying to save it from the collapse of an internally divided corrupt aggressive and indebted America. Americas decline will be both financial and political. Financial due to the recalibration of what the worldthinks of Americas debt load and therefore their confidence in and need for the dollar. Political because America has got used to being able to enforce its foreign policy through sanctions and embargoes. But once oil and other goods and the nations trading in them no longer need the dollar for their trade and do not have to use US clearing or custodial banks then this power evaporates. Try to imagine the shift in power when Wall Streets banks are no longer guaranteed top position as the worlds custodial banks and Manhattans Southern District Court (Wall Streets court) is no longer in a position to dictate to whole nations via decisions upon Wall Street Custodial banks what debts those nations and their custodial banks must pay and to whom. The whole edifice of Bilateral Investment Treaties and the trade agreements they sit inside depends for enforcement upon the US banks being the custodial banks and the Southern District courts rulings being able to tell those banks what they must do. Take that power away whichwill happen if the dollar is no longer pre-emininent and America will no longer be able to enforce its foreign policy or world view via economic sanction. I think the main US banks will be positioning themselves to try to bridge this decline by having a major presence in Hong Kong. They are all already there but will be working to be part of the new Yuan-world of trade and clearing. Of coursethis is speculation. But it seems to me the underlying evidence of the previous decade makes it worth thinking about. If I am in any way correct then I think other things follow. I think the House of Saud knows its future is in question. I have written a lot about how I see Qatar rising to rival Saudi. Qatar not Saudi has the Yuan clearing house. Saudi is late to the party. Can Saudi risk being seen to move away from its traditional ally America? If it does too quickly and signs yuan trade deals it risks falling as soon as Americal turns its back. If it doesnt move quickly enough it risks being completely eclipsed by Qatar having to go to Qatar cap in hand to trade its oil with Russia and China. I see the political changes within the House of Saud as signs of the internal struggles to decide which way to go. I personally think the House of Saud will fall. I also think the position of Israel under its present leadership is also very fragile. Israel needs Saudi. While they may seem to be on opposite sides in many ways they are on the same side. If the House of Saud falls or changes allegiances from America to Russia/China then Israel will become even more isolated than it is. And of course if America is eclipsed and does enter a period of decline then Israel will go with it. If any of the above is near the mark will it mean the end of America? Of course not. Americans will still work and sleep and raise their children like everyone else. But the pre-eminence of the dollar and American finance will decline as the stock of dollar denominated bonds and debt agreements expires and with it the power and wealth of many of Americas elite. How that decline will sit alongside Americas still overwhelming military power I dont know. Of course what I have suggested above is merely speculation but personally I think another debt crisis will happen because never ending QE and Central Bank debt buying cannot go one for ever and what China does in the next few months could very well destabilise the whole unstable system. Many people will suffer and lives will be blighted. But I wonder if when we all look back from a decade or a generation after if we wont think it lucky the crisis did finally come and the system we have been slaving under since 2007 as well as those who have forced it upon us for their own enrichment were called to account. It is difficult to accept that such historic changes could occur. But history has not ended despite what some have claimed. Rumours of Historys endhave been in my opinion greatly exaggerated. History is very much alive and happening to us now. We are as the Chinese saying goes living in interesting times. http://ift.tt/2y5yHOG