End of the USD as the world reserve currency
This is something that has been discussed for years, if not decades, especially by libertarian leaning commentators, upset by the Fed's endless printing.
In a very interesting recent development however, we are actually moving towards that direction, notably the fact that India and China may start buying Russian and Saudi oil using the yuan.
To put things into context, I think Western leaders have heavily miscalculated how the actual rest of the world perceives them.
Let's go in order:
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the Western bloc has frozen, de-facto seized, the reserves of the Russian central bank held in the Western bloc, allegedly almost half of the entire sum
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fiat currencies are state money; their value is entirely reputational, people believing they can pay in a given country; the stabler the currency is, the better; if you are a country with no international ambitions, telling to another country you won't do business with them won't particularly hurt your currency;
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the above argument isn't fully valid if your aim is to be the international reserve currency; here you need the belief of universal validity;
-the USD is supposed to be one, the Euro aims to be one;
-both have forfeited their role; now if you are India or China or anytone else for that matter, you know that your ability to transact in USD or Euros depends on your compliance with Western liberals; that's a massive implied limit on countries sovereignty... unless you decide to reject the role of such currencies and pick another one
- all of this is highly emphasized by companies leaving Russia. Now two systems are in play: China, which requires you to accept their role as hegemon and nothing else, the Western bloc, which requires you to accept their role as hegemon but also accept their worldview as morally right;
-US threats to sanction countries that trade with Russia, like China or India, are a further evidence for this argument;
In conclusion, both the USD and the euro can no longer claim or aspire to universal acceptance, because of the highly volatile, social media driven, mood of its liberal elite. Second, Western companies, while retaining dominance in many sectors, carry an implicit political burden that for instance Chinese ones do not.
Oh and the US received plenty of fingers from UAE, Saudis, Israelis, Chinese, Indians and Venezuelans on the oil topic in the past two weeks..
I’m not sure if this would help the global reserve situation but we should make voting democrat and especially liberal a war crime.
I do think we are starting to see the beginning of this, yes.
Not to mention that China + India + Russia already have the GDP of the U.S. so they are able to achieve their alternate economy very easily. I personally think that the biggest miscalculation was western white liberals (who historically have been the most racist and oppressive people in the world) thinking that if they suddenly pretended being 'woke' and 'anti-racist', the rest of the world will follow them and just accept the western white world order. If you are a white liberal, the Chinese Han hate you. The Indian Brahmins (highest racial caste) hate you. The eastern whites also hate you. Everyone hates you.
Suddenly having #blacklivesmatter in your twitter wasn't going to make other races stop hating you. Everyone hates you. And you went soft. Well... we all know how this ends.
So you think BLM is the reason the U.S. is losing some economic might? Just trying to be clear here because this take sounds stupid as fuck and I am wondering why people propped it.
I did not say anything of the sort. I'm saying that white liberals suddenly being all for racial equality and causes like BLM will not stop everyone else from hating them. In a sense white liberals should be a bit proud that they managed to integrate western africans (as in africans living in 'western countries') into their elitist systems because the moment real super powers start spawning in Africa they are all going to be aligned with China and other eastern powers. Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe all suffered from Western oppression for over 1,000 years. I find it laughable that now those same westerners are the biggest proponents of racial equality. In China they mock white liberals. The same happens in India and Eastern Europe. Everyone finds these western liberals annoying annoying and even machiavellian. We all know you are doing it just because there are now non-western super powers and you need to save face before it is your turn to get steam-rolled.
I don't buy it for one second.
I think what they're trying get at is that unfortunately African Americans and other minorities don't have access to the same resources more privileged people do. That is historically undeniable, and I think what they're also trying to get at is that the American left has not done a successful job in raising quality of life in the way that they market themselves as having done (underfunded housing projects, bad urban public schools, food deserts, etc.). I don't think the American right is necessarily better, the 2 party system inherently radicalizes both sides and leaves people out in the middle who don't have their voices heard and needs addressed. I think it's safe to say that most people do not give a shit about multi-gendered bathrooms or the right to own combat-quality assault rifles, but care much more about having good jobs to provide for their families and knowing that their tax dollars are going to making a more robust society. Neither BLM nor the Tea Party has been successful in bringing real attention to that (instead politicians rely on their support and become very aggressive towards the other side), but when something like Occupy Wall Street pops up, it's no surprise that it's squashed fairly quick and goes out of the public eye.
What if they are doing this on purpose?
I think you're giving "western white liberals" too much credit here. The most dominant and subjugative forces in Aryan/Anglo history (Britannia, First/Second French Empire, First/Second/Third Reich, Spanish Monarchy, Dutch Empire) weren't liberal. A lot of massively "oppressive" and "racist" civilisations weren't white either. The Han Chinese literally assimilated 1/3 of the world into their culture, forcing everybody from Mongolia to Manchuria to Indonesia to Tibet to bow to their jade and steel like the known Western world bowed to Rome's gold and iron, except 1/3 of the world are still assimilated into Han culture.
And China by itself is going to have a larger GDP than the US in not a distant future.
Very practical example. Let's say you are Israel and you know you are very unpopular on twitter. One day or another, you have to deal with the Palestinian issue and blue checks decide it's time to cancel you like they cancelled Russia.
Why wouldn't you prepare for that? It's entirely realistic. So, limit exposure to usd, eur and Western companies overall. The potential damage is simply too high not to mitigate the risk. Use the yuan instead.
Israel is far more important to the US strategically and economically than Russia was... It's the same reason we care a lot more about Taiwan than Hong Kong, one makes all of our computer chips, the other doesn't.
Well, HK is literally part of China on paper, and that's what matters, so there is not much to do anyways.
And the US cares about Taiwan but doesn't even recognize them as a Country, that just shows how their position with Taiwan is all about interests.
Hard disagree. The civilized western world, U.S. and E.U., still account for the vast majority of the world's GDP and wealth, and thus power. Western values, political institutions, economic systems, and social structures will always prevail over fly-by-night, flavor of the day up and comers like Japan in the 70s-80s, China of the 10s-20s, et al. Freedom and democracy will always prevail and carry the smallest economic risk-premium, so there is no scenario in which a Chinese currency will ever be the reserve currency.
P.S. it's pretty commonly accepted that China has fudged its economic data, including GDP numbers and GDP growth, for at least 10 years. You can't trust a single fake economic datapoint coming out of China. Shocker.
https://www.heritage.org/international-economies/commentary/the-problem…
Agree. Even in China's fake economic data, their GDP per capita is still barely $10K, which is 1/6 of the US's.
And don't forget, China is already the richest non-democratic country. You can't really name one Western country that has been blessed with freedom and democracy that has a lower GDP per capita than China.
First, you think the largest country in the world by population can "fake" a 17 trillion dollar/annum economy in an age where spy satellites and black boxes like RenTech and Aladdin exists?
Second, GDP/GDP per capita is not equal and uniform when you're talking about a capitalist/free market country vs a central command/mixed economy. A lot of economic activity in a command economy is not captured through GDP metrics, which is why West-centric data always uses GDP/GDP per capita to show their supposed "economic dominance" over their Oriental/Near East peers, when it's industrial output that should be the true metric.
Always? I know we like our corporate dystopia here but that's a pretty strong statement. Even the strongest societies eventually fall.
I think this is largely correct. The real thing I fear is less so complete dominance by China/Russia, but rather a return to more old school multipolarity, maybe something along the lines of during colonial times when certain nations were powerful but their opponents were strong too. If there is another world war, I think rhetorically it'll be something like WW1 again instead of WW2, as in nation states will want to project power and influence rather than revenge seeking, but I'm not a military strategist by any means and obviously now in the nuclear age conflict is much more different than what it was 100 years ago.
Most of Wealth and Power in the western world? What is this? China ALONE has more billionaires than all of Europe including the UK and Switzerland. Imagine if you add Korea, Japan, Indonesia, India and the UAE...
And Europe is still struggling to grow their GDP, and they have been slightly loosing global Influence over the years. I'm telling you this as a European.
Leave it to this fucking clown to turn sanctions against Russia for invading and bombing Ukraine into a liberal vs conservative thing. I could see some of your argument being reasonable but, as usual, you've lost all credibility because of your ongoing mental illness that you display on this forum on a daily basis.
Good to see we agree then
Agreed; it's an insane (and highly strained) comparison.
The notable thing about the Russian sanctions is just how rare something like that is, but it was precipitated by a pretty clear breach of global protocol (invading a sovereign country to topple its government).
India isn't going to get locked out of SWIFT because blue check liberals think that the small group of Brahmins that actually run the country are racist.
This is a very valid concern. You have to figure Putin is smart enough to know the consequences and our responses to the incursion into Ukraine. It was a big mistake for us to order economic sanctions on Russia precisely because it sets a precedent with how we would react/act with China. This is why it matters who is the President.
The economic concern is real but that does not mean the USA overnight becomes a weak nation just cause China economically may start to take it over like Ray Dalio's video.
It seems though on these threads some of you people think life in the "East" is better this makes me doubt anyone has spent life in the east ever. Eastern culture is literally instilled for years to make governments more powerful than corporations and ultimately the "collective people". If you sanctions are bad...
Oh definitely won't happen overnight. It's a long process. However these are big events
Well if we stick directly to economics. For now let's assume over the next 25 years the two most important goods that world needs is Oil and Data.
The US is better stated than anyone else to grow that Oil production by 10mm barrels the world probably needs. Likewise the US has a leap and stranglehold on data for now. So till EVs etc or something else takes over, an industry China can led it will be hard to speed up that process.
Now if you tell me Russia/Iran/Kuwait are selling off a bunch of oil fields to China tomorrow that could change but for now China is still a nation focused on its own development. Last years move to sanction Australia was probably the strongest move we have seen from China to hurt itself to hurt others.
Neocons like yourself need to seriously stop speaking out against sanctions and trying to drum up military intervention. Admit it, you have investments in Russian companies and are only talking like this because those investments are going sideways. The hippies of the 60s who were seen as crazy for advocating for peace and love instead of war (protesting against Vietnam) is the mainstream today. The internet and social media has allowed common people across countries to connect and realize they are just people too and it’s the state and the establishment that lead to most of the injustices and perceived differences between countries. The sanctions on Russia overall have strong support. The Russian invasion has no justifiable reason and has led to thousands of deaths and countless war crimes. The Russian bureaucrats should suffer the consequences for their actions. Murder is murder. It has nothing to do with being conservative or liberal.
I'm not a neocon, nor I have investments in Russia. Bad take
Looking at this through a lens of commercial real estate - you have a lot of talk recently of seizing the luxury condos of Russian oligarchs in NYC. A lot of these units are true "ghost" condos where the owners never actually set foot in them (ie. look at 220 CPS at night). Many of these units are purchased by foreign buyers as a way of moving money out of their home country and storing it in a "safe" place where it will retain its value (and until recently, it could be done behind an intricate web of LLC's). If it becomes standard practice to seize the personal property of foreign individuals for political purposes, then we lose much of that perceived investment safety of our stable market. Note - this is not a comment about right or wrong, just a commentary about cause and effect. If foreign money stops viewing the US as a secure market to invest significant money in, then there will undoubtedly be a void which will be filled by some other entity. Return of capital is a big deal to people who are not used to losing. I do think this trend has already begun and will likely continue as big money prefers stability above all else.
Correct. The point of investing in the West was that regardless of who you were, rules were the same for everyone. Now it's no longer the case. Also noteworthy, Switzerland abandoned its neutrality. This is a gigantic shift. These are the guys who hid Nazi gold during WW2. If you were a rich foreigner, then Switzerland is no longer safe.
Which is why even when sanctions have gotten incredibly personal, they still haven't gone as far as seizing assets (in the US at least, I'm not so up to date about the yacht situation).
Guess where Russian oligarchs are going. UAE and Bahrain. For years Bahrain basically offering free citizenship to foreign investors. But thats how desperate situation is…Bahrain is not NYC/Miami or even close to it.
Also your making it seem like every dude with money in Russia is getting his condo seized. These are direct links to people who helped create and establish the Russian war machine. Remember the US supported lawsuit against people who held assets directly in contact with 9/11? This stuff has happened before.
“Western leaders have heavily miscalculated”
What if this is exactly what Western leaders intended?
Yeah, but it hasn't. It's forced them into closer relations with China, who by the way should've been their natural enemy. In effect, the U.S. has turned the unipolar world into a bipolar one over Ukraine. The U.S. will lose a lot of geo-political capital because they've inadvertently spurred two great powers into creating an alternative to the west.
The US has way overstepped their boundaries here. They've seized billions of dollar of foreign reserves from the Russian people who earned the money fair and square through selling oil. This is theft plain and simple and is essentially a declaration of war.
Seizing assets is shady as hell and sets a scary precedent, but Russians hardly earned that money “fair and square”.. unless you think putting bullets in peoples skull is fair and square
Anyways - I still don’t understand who/what is supposed to take over the USD. The Yuan? Hell no
Of course they earned it fairly, the made the money selling oil and gas on the open market. Sure you can say the oil industry is run by oligarchs, but it's hardly different than how the Saudis are controlled by the Saudi royal family.
Also never said anything about yuan at all, you brought it up.
Are you retarded? Freezing a countries assets isn't the same as seizing them. If Putin ever ends the war they would get unfrozen, that's not the same as theft.
Saudi Arabia is in active talks with Beijing to price some of its oil sales to China in yuan, people familiar with the matter said, a move that would dent the U.S. dollar’s dominance of the global petroleum market and mark another shift by the world’s top crude exporter toward Asia.
The talks with China over yuan-priced oil contracts have been off and on for six years but have accelerated this year as the Saudis have grown increasingly unhappy with decades-old U.S. security commitments to defend the kingdom, the people said.
The Saudis are angry over the U.S.’s lack of support for their intervention in the Yemen civil war, and over the Biden administration’s attempt to strike a deal with Iran over its nuclear program. Saudi officials have said they were shocked by the precipitous U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan last year.
China buys more than 25% of the oil that Saudi Arabia exports. If priced in yuan, those sales would boost the standing of China’s currency. The Saudis are also considering including yuan-denominated futures contracts, known as the petroyuan, in the pricing model of Saudi Arabian Oil Co. , known as Aramco.It would be a profound shift for Saudi Arabia to price even some of its roughly 6.2 million barrels of day of crude exports in anything other than dollars. The majority of global oil sales—around 80%—are done in dollars, and the Saudis have traded oil exclusively in dollars since 1974, in a deal with the Nixon administration that included security guarantees for the kingdom.
China introduced yuan-priced oil contracts in 2018 as part of its efforts to make its currency tradable across the world, but they haven’t made a dent in the dollar’s dominance of the oil market. For China, using dollars has become a hazard highlighted by U.S. sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program and on Russia in response to the Ukraine invasion.
China has stepped up its courtship of the Saudi kingdom. In recent years, China has helped Saudi Arabia build its own ballistic missiles, consulted on a nuclear program and begun investing in Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s pet projects, such as Neom, a futuristic new city. Saudi Arabia has invited Chinese President Xi Jinping to visit later this year.
Meanwhile the Saudi relationship with the U.S. has deteriorated under President Biden, who said in the 2020 campaign that the kingdom should be a “pariah” for the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. Prince Mohammed, who U.S. intelligence authorities say ordered Mr. Khashoggi’s killing, refused to sit in on a call between Mr. Biden and the Saudi ruler, King Salman, last month.
It also comes as the U.S. economic relationship with the Saudis is diminishing. The U.S. is now among the top oil producers in the world. It once imported 2 million barrels of Saudi crude a day in the early 1990s but those numbers have fallen to less than 500,000 barrels a day in December 2021, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
By contrast, China’s oil imports have swelled over the last three decades, in line with its expanding economy. Saudi Arabia was China’s top crude supplier in 2021, selling at 1.76 million barrels a day, followed by Russia at 1.6 million barrels a day, according to data from China’s General Administration of Customs.
“The dynamics have dramatically changed. The U.S. relationship with the Saudis has changed, China is the world’s biggest crude importer and they are offering many lucrative incentives to the kingdom,” said a Saudi official familiar with the talks.
A senior U.S. official called the idea of the Saudis selling oil to China in yuan “highly volatile and aggressive” and “not very likely.” The official said the Saudis had floated the idea in the past when there was tension between Washington and Riyadh.
It is possible the Saudis could back off. Switching millions of barrels of oil trades from dollars to yuan every day could rattle the Saudi economy, which has a currency, the riyal, pegged to the dollar. Prince Mohammed’s aides have been warning him of unpredictable economic damage if he moves ahead with the plan hastily.
Doing more sales in yuan would more closely connect Saudi Arabia to China’s currency, which hasn’t caught on with international investors because of the tight controls Beijing keeps on it. Contracting oil sales in a less stable currency could also undermine the Saudi government’s fiscal outlook.
Some officials have cautioned Prince Mohammed that accepting payments for oil in yuan would pose risks to Saudi revenues tied in U.S. Treasury bonds abroad and the limited availability of the yuan outside China.
The impact on the Saudi economy would likely depend on the quantity of oil sales involved and the price of oil. Some economists said moving away from dollar-denominated oil sales would diversify the kingdom’s revenue base and could eventually lead it to repeg the riyal to a basket of currencies, similar to Kuwait’s dinar.
“If it is (done) now at a time of strong oil prices, it would not be seen negatively. It would be more seen as deepening ties with China,” said Monica Malik, chief economist at Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank.
The Saudis still plan to do most oil transactions in dollars, the people familiar with their talks say. But the move could tempt other producers to price their Chinese exports in yuan as well. China’s other big sources of oil are Russia, Angola and Iraq.
The Saudi move could chip away at the supremacy of the U.S. dollar in the international financial system, which Washington has relied on for decades to print Treasury bills it uses to finance its budget deficit.
“The oil market, and by extension the entire global commodities market, is the insurance policy of the status of the dollar as reserve currency,” said economist Gal Luft, co-director of the Washington-based Institute for the Analysis of Global Security who co-wrote a book about de-dollarization. “If that block is taken out of the wall, the wall will begin to collapse.”
Talks with China over pricing oil in yuan started before Prince Mohammed, the de facto leader of the kingdom, made his first official visit to China in 2016, people familiar with the matter said. The crown prince asked the kingdom’s then-energy minister Khalid al-Falih to study the proposal, the people said.
Mr. Falih instructed Aramco to prepare a memo that heavily focuses on the economic challenges of switching to the yuan pricing.
“He really did not think that was a good idea but he could not stop the talks as the ship had already sailed,” said another person familiar with the meetings.
Saudi officials in favor of the shift have argued the kingdom could use part of yuan revenues to pay Chinese contractors involved in mega projects domestically, which would help mitigate some of the risks associated with the capital controls over the currency. China could also offer incentives such as multibillion-dollar investments in the kingdom.
Another official familiar with the talks said yuan pricing could give the Saudis more influence with the Chinese and help convince Beijing to reduce support for Iran.
Ali Shihabi, who sits on the board of Neom and formerly ran a pro-Saudi think tank in Washington, said the kingdom can’t ignore China’s desire to pay for oil imports in its own currency, particularly after the U.S. and EU blocked the Russian central bank from selling foreign currencies in its reserves stockpile.
“Any doubts countries had about the need to diversify into Yuan and other currencies/geographies would have ended with that huge step,” Mr. Shihabi tweeted in response to this article.
WALLSTREET JOURNAL
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""Rules for investing during WWIII and the Second American Civil War"
He spends 60% of the video repeating the same stuff and the other 40% boosting his social credits
WSJ got duped. But FT got duped other day by UAE. Truly sad days of journalism.
So Saudi Arabia expects us to help them purposely starve an entire population in Yemen, let Iran get nukes, and continue to be stuck in the mud in Afghanistan or else they'll be friends with China? What great allies they are.
Fuck those parasites. Build tons of nuclear, solar, wind plants so we don't have to rely on them.
We still have an interest in making sure the ruling family stays in power and that the oil keeps flowing but mostly agreed.
Saudis getting angry at us for not "supporting" them in Yemen is especially absurd because we already do and have been providing support in terms of weapons/maintenance and (Google Bruce Riedel on this topic) after we gave the green light to them to go after Yemen during the Obama administration. There's also a lot of evidence to suggest that the Saudis made the conflict worse by encouraging Iran to be more involved in Yemen than they otherwise would be.
You realize that your main premise, that the trust in the impartiality of the USD/EUR is eroding, is the exact same fucking problem with switching to the yuan? Sure, China isn't going to ensure compliance with Western liberal ideology, but if you think the CCP is going to be agnostic about their capital controls and central bank decisions you're out of your mind. China, if anyone, is more likely to abuse its economic status for furthering political ends, the West only started doing this because there was the first invasion of a European country since WW2, China would do it on a whim.
The West (more specifically the British Empire and United States) have been doing this since at least the 1880s. This didn't just start with Russia. Also, nobody is making the argument that China is better, just that the West's claim to being better is largely full of shit. The decline of the West and the rise of China is good insoasfar as it makes a multipolar world where no single group of neurotic oligarchs has the ability to dominate the entire planet. It makes it easier for dissidents around the world to exploit weaknesses and force real change. A multipolar world is more equitable to poorer and smaller countries, as they both have more relative power and leverage from being able to play off two equally-matched competitors.
Why do you think African nations overwhelmingly prefer Chinese influence?
Most of these countries have limited resources to appease groups. They have to appease their own tribes. China only requires them to stay out of Chinese politics. Westerners require to appease coastal elite bizarre preferences... otherwise they steal your shit. Yeeaah...
African nations are taking Chinese money because they're the only people giving it to them... There is nothing about modern Western financing that would require African countries to appease "coastal elite bizarre preferences", no international aid or bond financing has strings attached that aren't basic, "don't be a murderous dictator" clauses. How is your analysis always so off?
Agree with some parts, disagree with others. Laying everything at the feet of "muh liberals" is a bit much. If the global reserve currency (whatever it is) feels threatened and imposes sanctions on a country, yes it risks losing that country's participation in the economy that it "governs". But, if China has the new global reserve currency, if it felt someone entered into military action that might threaten its hegemony, it would act the same way.
I'd say that yes, USD risks losing itself as the base currency, but any currency that felt threatened would take similar actions and invoke similar responses. I don't see where the liberals get involved.
https://gjia.georgetown.edu/2022/02/11/what-is-holding-the-yuan-back-xi…
You claim that China "requires you to accept their role as hegemon and nothing else" but this is very far from true. They are very very slow to allow foreigners to participate, fact institutional investors needed to get CCP approval to participate in its bond markets as late as 2019. China has blocked investor outflows in 2015, and Xi Jinping has been doing a series of erratic crackdowns this past year on everything from video games to tutoring. So naturally the Yuan is not very popular as a reserve currency because investors fear they may be labeled as "destabilizing" and punished (2.5% compared to the USD's 60% despite the size of China's economy)
I think for the world to move to China as a reserve currency, Xi would have to be less controlling over the economy which I don't see him doing.
No such dichotomy exists; to believe it does is to fall for Western propaganda. The West's (or more precisely the USA's) "morality" is just a smokescreen for what some would call its "imperialist" ambitions and others would call its desire for security guarantees, food & energy stability, etc etc. You only need to look at the fact that relations have been maintained with Israel and the Saudis despite those states' conduct to be convinced of that.
This is largely accurate.
I don't see it as anything different than religions trying to spread themselves really.
It is a worrying development to say the least. Only hope right now is midterms and even then I can't imagine establishment Republicans by and large will handle this much better. What a time to have a corpse and a hyena at the wheel.
Fox keeps drumming up this idea of the "midterms' but what people fail to realize is that almost if not every senator and house rep is an establishment career politician. Sure, when Trump came they changed their tune to "lets take down the managerial elite", but look at what's happened after he's left office. Nothing. Absolutely nothing has been done by the neocons (who are the managerial elite) under the guise of "inflation". The idea that they need to retake Congress to do anything meaningful is an absolute joke - the senate is 50/50 and with moderates like Manchin and Sinema they can absolutely get bills passed, but they won't because they are playing the career politician game rather than bothering to help the people. The margins in the House are fairly narrow as well. Honestly the only way I will be happy is if some of these career reps and senators get jail time for all the bribes and swindling they do (let's start with insider trading), and enforced term limits that will kick these career politicians out (anyone want to guess without Googling who the first president Mitch MCconnell served for was?).
I thought for sure “drain the swamp” would include this group of people you’re referring to. Big fat NOPE. But it’ll be different this time in 2022, 2024.
source : trust me bro
He's right that Trump was willing to override a veto to sell the Saudis weapons, so perhaps a Republican victory in the midterms would improve our relations with the Saudis. But given the cruelty of their war in Yemen I think we should be moving away from them.
Short- to medium-term pain for Americans, long-term benefit for humanity. The American-led liberal order needs to die.
America has its faults but a world order run by a guy sterilizing an entire ethnic group or a guy trying to start WW3 are objectively worse. Not to mention the US and the EU have at least some amount of democracy while the others put you in prison for a long ass time for even acknowledging the above issues.
Except for Americans, Multipolar World >>>>> US Hegemony.
Is this hard for you to understand or you don't agree.
Russia + China + India + Middle East + Africa + Latin America (aka 80% of the world's population) vs USA + EU + Australia (aka the civilized world).
Let's go!
China + one of Russia/India could wipe the US/EU + Australia in a socioeconomic/all out war. Besides, parts of the US and entire EU countries are still uncivilised compared to the grandeur of core (Han) China, the remnants of the various Indian dynasties and empires as well as the remnants of the Russian Empire/Soviet Union. For example, you're really going to try and tell me that modern-day Spain or Italy is civilised? Or some backwater state like California, Utah, Arizona or Tennesse?
The only (mostly) civilised countries in the 21st century are Britannia (only England, not Wales, Scotland or North Ireland), France, Switzerland, Germany, China (only Han regions), Japan, USA (only eastern seaboard AKA New England).
Just a matter of time. Probably won't completely happen in my lifetime but a lot of countries are going to try to internalize their reserves. The rest of the world outside of the US client states are all incredibly clear-eyed about democracy. They see that it doesn't even work that well in the US and that it is inherently expansionist.
Democracy hasn't worked well in the U.S.? Please expand on this sentiment. And detail other modern economies that aren't democracies that are in better standing (per capita) than the U.S.
About time tbh
Great read on the subject:
(First comment, "this chimp needs potassium" )
I didn't realize disapproving of unprovoked invasion and murder was just a mood of the social media driven liberal elite. Is this literally a shitpost? This forum is generally pretty tone deaf but this is in exceptionally bad taste
WSO is now nothing but:
33% rank these banks
33% how do I talk to a girl
33% blaming liberals for everything wrong with their lives because they can’t get laid (see #2) and Daddy couldn’t get them into a BB (see #1)
Yawn.
Libs are 33% of the population though. So which group do they belong to? Blaming liberals? Not really. I'm guessing the ''how to talk to a girl one''.
The Ukraine / Russia has been a godsend for an otherwise ineffectual Biden Administration. As an American, I have not felt patriotic for quite sometime but this conflict has presented something that I can cheer for: Democracy (West) vs. Autocracy (East). The conflict has strengthened NATO and has painted Russia and China with the same, evil brush. I think the conflict expedites clean energy targets for the West. The sanctions have proven highly effective against Russia. China is not helping Russia as much as Putin would have liked. India hasn't signed anything exclusive and has significant ties with the USA. Saudi Arabia is taking advantage of the crisis but they don't have ton of use for surplus Yuan. China is fucked dealing with zero-covid and the manufactured collapse of their technology and real estate economies. Some theories say that they'll leave Russia to hang out to dry and then scoop up Russia defense IP and other assets at steep discounts.
In America, sure, we have dumb fucking culture wars and some serious inflation. The American people need to shut the fuck up, eat the inflation and let JPowell do his thing and navigate us out of this shit with the project 6 - 7 rate hikes in 2022 and beyond. China and Russia are the villains of the world right now. Let's take advantage, scoop up some more NATO countries (looking at you Switzerland, Finland), isolate these countries harder and continue to let this proxy war run Russia dry.
I feel terrible for the Ukrainian people. I support giving them all of the resources possible to continue the resistance. When I have a few drinks, I'm hawkish on full on intervention and absolutely fucking the Kremlin.
Holy shit, this is the most based take. Finally, a fucking adult. I agree with literally every single point.
Not based, just correct. +1
LOL dude I bet you are the person who will get a tattoo to avoid a draft, or you will be like those mercenaries who went to Ukraine thinking it would be like Iraq or Afghanistan where they'd have immerse air support but ended up running home for mama when Russian missiles bombed their base. Oh yeah you feel terrible for the Ukrainian people, and that's why we continue to send weapons to Ukraine so their men between the ages of 18 and 60 who have absolutely no military experience can be forced to fight the Russians and then get killed. The Ukrainian people are nothing but collateral damages in your proxy war against Russia.
You think this conflict will expedite your clean energy push? All I hear is oil is the new thing again now. That's why Biden has been begging Texas and the Middle East to produce more. The sanctions have proven highly effective against Russia, but it will also expedite the de-dollarization. The US has been taking advantage of the status of dollar as the world's reserve currency, otherwise inflation will be more fucked than today. BTW sanctioning Russian oil is not helping the inflation a bit. China is not helping Russia as much as Putin would have liked? Putin never expected China to fully support the war. If you know the geopolitics in the far East region you'd know that China being "neutral" is already the best Putin hoped for. India signaled they want to buy discounted Russian oil, and guess what they got from the US for that? Being threatened sanctions. The Indian people are so not happy that they even made "I Stand with Putin" trending on Twitter lol. Must be a surprise to you that India is an independent sovereign nation that looks for its own interest rather than exist to solely counter China. Pushing India, China, and Russia to form a non-dollar-dependent alliance which accounts for 45% of the world's population is a dangerous move. Saudi Arabia LOL, didn't you see your liberal friends keep shitting on their human rights records? You think they are so happy about it? The Saudis have been wanting to sign deals with China for a while now, and that's not because of nothing? Not to mention your dumb take on COVID in China, especially comparing their 4 digit case numbers to that of the US.
China and Russia are the villains of the world right now? Yes they are the villains against the West, but your ignorant definition of the "world" is embarrassing.
With all that said, the West, led by the US, is undoubtedly collectively the only superpower in the world right now, and it will remain so for decades to come. Hundreds of years of capitalist imperial expansion have accumulated so much wealth and resources for the West that it's not easy to squander within merely a century. But to deny the fact that the world is marching towards multi-polar is ignorant at best.
Pretty easy to squander physical capital when a Russia on its deathbed nukes the fuck out of you before it implodes, as China's economic machine keeps marching on.
Genuinely curious why you think non-democracies/non-EU/non-NATO countries won't take over EU/NATO in socioeconomic terms within the next couple of decades. In my eyes, China is already more dominant than the US on every continent except North America and some parts of Western Europe. The EU combined is far less influential than China and Russia/Middle East punches way above their weight due to their military innovation/spendings and their natural resources.
The "West" has lost its short-lived socioeconomic dominance that it enjoyed ever since the 1980s.
Guessing your from mainland China, "Monkey King".
I've already iterated I could be hawkish on a full-intervention from NATO. For now, supplying them with all arms necessary to defend themselves is the best move to push back "WWIII" and hope for a truce. When the time is right, I support implementing a no-fly zone because unfortunately, I do think Putin dies on this sword. Ukrainians have mandatory military service and conscription. They're not as helpless as you describe them and as evident by the resistance and mettle that have displayed thus far.
Yes. The silver-lining of this entire conflict is that it may expedite clean energy targets in the West. The EU (specifically Germany) is very brave for aggressively cutting their reliance on Russian oil. They need to find supply to fill the glut otherwise their people are fucked for the winter. The USA is working hard to help the EU by kissing Saudi Arabia's ass (fuck them), cozying up with Venezuela (wtf haha) and doing anything he can before tapping domestic resources because it goes against the agenda. But I think these are temporary, necessary evils to get through this fossil fuels era and to lead the sustainable energy revolution.
"...it will expedite de-dollarization" - show me the evidence. Saudi Arabia has been teasing petroyuan for a decade now. There is no deal from India. From a trade perspective, I haven't seen any material changes in trade agreements in favor of the East since the sanctioning of Russia. Go ahead and link me.
"China is not helping Russia as much as Putin would have liked? Putin never expected China to fully support the war. If you know the geopolitics in the far East region you'd know that China being "neutral" is already the best Putin hoped for." - Xi and Putin signed a 5,000 word doctrine before the Beijing Olympics that described the Sino-Russian relation as "no limits" and "no place we won't go". Autocrats sticking together but I don't think Xi knew Putin was this serious and I think Putin thought he would have more support than what he's getting. Not what Xi needs heading into the 20th Party Congress and not what Putin wanted when going all in.
You write all of that and then in your final paragraph, you cede to Western Imperialism. Before this conflict and you can read some of previous posts, I've been worried about the decline of the West and China's rise for a while now. I was really concerned when Xi and Putin released the doctrine as it laid the foundation for what West vs East could have looked like. But Putin's war has been a gift from god in strengthening unity in the West. Xi fucked this one up and is now left hang-wringing at the situation while the world watches in horror.
To quantify "the world": U.N. General Assembly denounces Russian invasion of Ukraine (141 support, 5 against, 35 abstain).
Tell me you bought TQQQ this week without telling me you did. All jokes aside think this is a pretty good take that shows a lot of people support the current reaction to the situation. I am totally on board that this speeds up the energy transition and while I do not think this is runaway time to go buy tech stocks yet for the sure the US government is going to spend (build back better, america great whatever name it is). I think the USA is really going to stick it to china in the semis/chips war coming up here.
Pretty sure if Trump had won the semis war would be here a lot faster not sure how Putin reacts but Xi/Trump would have collided a lot faster.
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