Ben Norton is excellent, as always, and gives a great summary without being too hyperbolic or technically overwhelming.
Something he didn’t mention, as another reason for the US dollar remaining strong in the interim, is that they are really the only traditional default currency left ( default currency = where you flee to in troubled financial times).
Once upon a time, there were three, the US dollar, the Japanese Yen, and the Swiss Franc. Two of the three are clearly gone now, as viable safe options, and consequently, any flight out of other currencies only has one option now if they remain fixated on looking only at these traditional options. This situation is rapidly eroding as the new multipolar reality materialises and other Zone B currencies begin proving themselves as safe havens.
Also, the blatantly opportunistic weaponisation of the US dollar has been unmasked now and it is proven beyond any shadow of doubt that reserves denominated in US dollars can easily be frozen or pilfered. Shocking examples of this blatant theft abound. At the 27-minute mark Ben mentions some absolute shockers where $300 billion in Russian foreign reserves were stolen earlier this year (more than NZ’s entire GDP).
Also the blatant theft by the US of Venezuelan reserves and $1 billion in gold by the Bank of England. The US also stole $9 billion of Afghan Central Bank reserves meaning that that country endured a massive inflation and devaluation crisis which created a humanitarian disaster and them not even being able to afford to buy basic food and medical items. Neither could they access these US dollars to use to sell in order to sell to buy their own currency in order to protect its value. Traditionally even when the contagion clearly originated within the US (think Lehmans 2008), the capital fight was mainly into the US dollar. The pattern of the last 70 years will change now, especially aided by the sudden emergence of the Petroyuan and the Petroruble. So much for Biden’s idiotic comment claiming he would see the “Russian ruble reduced to rubble”… talk about his own goal of epic proportions. Instead, his idiotic regime has greatly accelerated a new multipolar financial reality and the beginning of the end for a once all-powerful unipolar US financial and military hegemony.
This is a situation where the imbeciles in Warshington think that they are causing grief for their self-contrived enemies such as Russia and China. On the contrary, they have massively strengthened both these countries’ hands in this game of global poker. The losers and victims are, as always, the third-world countries like Afghanistan, and Venezuela, as Uncle $am goes on another global rampage of hegemonic pilfering and racketeering.
