King Dollar: Empire, 20 Years On

[ish mailian]

The short answer to the question about why, the most likely scenario
btw, a gradual shift to renewable energy from fossil fuels will not
end king dollar hegemony is evident in what is transpiring right now;
the dollar's strength is owed primarily to the strength of the united
states economy, its dynamic  domestic strength, especially relative to
other economies, like the European economy, and, specifically, to the
strength of the usa ability to, through the **independent** central
bank, the Fed, support the credit system. The Fed and the dollar are
still considered the most reliable combination in the world. Other
central banks lack either the liquidity and size or the confidence (as
is the case in Europe) of the world to be held in reserve at the level
of dollars.

The dollar, as trade and transaction currency,  simply has no real
competition and a crisis like this one makes this evident.

One of the reasons, though a diminishing reason for this, is that
dollar is used for oil transactions--Petro-dollar.
But oil is not all that important anymore and, as the Shale Saudi
Russia war/deal makes clear, the dollar's strength and dominance is
not influenced all that much, as it was decades ago, by oil.

That said, oil is still one key to dollar dependence and  if the world
unplugged from oil and plugged into renewable energies quickly, very
quickly, it could seriously damage the dollar's dominance.

The power of the Fed is contrasted with the weakness of  Washington
and the States nicely in this essay.
The current crisis expedited reforms that many on the progressive side
have had to fight for tooth and nail, but the weakness of the systems
in washngton ans at the state level to get money out is frustrating
reform.



Our Political System Is Hostile to Real Reform

The stimulus bill doesn’t come anywhere near to meeting the challenge
that we face.

https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/our-political-system-is-hostile-to-real-reform

On Tue, Apr 7, 2020 at 9:48 AM ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> BTW,
>
> the greatest threat to the dollar is green technology.
>
> but a slow shift to green tech won't do it.
> The US will continue to have the dollar, sometimes its greatest
> weapon, even when Petro-dollars are no longer flowing like oil.
>
> On Tue, Apr 7, 2020 at 9:44 AM ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > The Dollar is King!
> >
> >
> > Like so many others who have describing the decline of the United
> > States for decades, though it still produces 25% of world GDP,  and of
> > the dollar, here are Hardt and Negri, so wrong on the greenback:
> >
> > Second, the monarchy of the dollar, the financial and monetary
> > hegemony of the us, which appeared solid twenty years ago, has been
> > progressively weakened
> >
> > https://newleftreview.org/issues/II120/articles/empire-twenty-years-on