The Demise of the Dollar: Don't Hold Your Breath

So let's look at currency flows, reserves and debt.

The demise of the U.S. dollar has been a staple of the financial media for decades. The latest buzzword making the rounds is de-dollarization, which describes the move away from USD in global payments.

De-dollarization is often equated with the demise of the dollar, but this reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the currency markets.

Look, I get it: the U.S. dollar arouses emotions because it's widely seen as one of the more potent tools of U.S. hegemony. Lots of people are hoping for the demise of the dollar, for all sorts of reasons that have nothing to do with the actual flow of currencies or the role of currencies in the global economy and foreign exchange (FX) markets.

So there is a large built-in audience for any claim that the dollar is on its deathbed.

I understand the emotional appeal of this, but investors and traders can't afford to make decisions on the emotional appeal of superficial claims--not just in the FX markets, but in any markets.

So let's ground the discussion of the demise of the USD in some basic fundamentals. Now would be a good time to refill your beverage/drip-bag because we're going to cover some dynamics that require both emotional detachment and focus.

First, forget what currency we're talking about. If the USD raises your hackles, then substitute quatloos for USD.

There are three basic uses for currency:

1. International payments. This can be thought of as flow: if I buy a load of bat guano and the seller demands payment in quatloos, I convert my USD to quatloos--a process that is essentially real-time--render payment, and I'm done with the FX part of the transaction.

It doesn't matter what currency I start with or what currency I convert my payment into to satisfy the seller--I only hold that currency long enough to complete the transaction: a matter of seconds.

If sellers demand I use quatloos, pesos, rubles or RMB for those few moments, the only thing that matters is the availability of the currency and the exchange rate in those few moments.

2. Foreign reserves. Nation-states keep reserves for a variety of reasons, one being to support their own currency if imbalances occur that push their currency in unwanted directions.

The only nations that don't need to hold much in the way of currency reserves are those that issue a reserve currency--a so-called "hard currency" that is stable enough and issued in sufficient size to be worth holding in reserve.

3. Debt. Everybody loves to borrow money. We know this because global debt keeps rising at a phenomenal rate, in every sector: government (public), corporate and household (private sectors).(see chart below)

Every form of credit/debt is denominated in a currency. A Japanese bond is denominated in yen, for example. The bond is purchased with yen, the interest is paid in yen, and the coupon paid at maturity is in yen.

What gets tricky is debt denominated in some other currency. Let's say I take out a loan denominated in quatloos. The current exchange rates between USD and quatloos is 1 to 1: parity. So far so good. I convert 100 USD to 100 quatloos every month to make the principal and interest payment of 100 quatloos.

Then some sort of kerfuffle occurs in the FX markets, and suddenly it takes 2 USD to buy 1 quatloo. Oops: my loan payments just doubled. Where it once only cost 100 USD to service my loan denominated in quatloos, now it takes $200 to make my payment in quatloos. Ouch.

Notice the difference between payments, reserves and debt: payments/flows are transitory, reserves and debt are not. What happens in flows is transitory: supply and demand for currencies in this moment fluctuate, but flows are so enormous--trillions of units of currency every day--that flows don't affect the value or any currency much.

FX markets typically move in increments of 1/100 of a percentage point. So flows don't matter much. De-dollarization of flows is pretty much a non-issue.

What matters is demand for currencies that is enduring: reserves and debt.The same 100 quatloos can be used hundreds of times daily in payment flows; buyers and sellers only need the quatloos for a few seconds to complete the conversion and payment.

But those needing quatloos for reserves or to pay long-term debts need quatloos to hold. The 100 quatloos held in reserve essentially disappear from the available supply of quatloos.

Another source of confusion is trade flows. If the U.S. buys more stuff from China than China buys from the U.S., goods flow from China to the U.S. and U.S. dollars flow to China.

As China's trade surplus continues, the USD just keep piling up. What to do with all these billions of USD? One option is to buy U.S. Treasury bonds (debt denominated in dollars), as that is a vast, liquid market with plenty of demand and supply. Another is to buy some other USD-denominated assets, such as apartment buildings in Seattle.

This is the source of the petro-dollar trade. All the oil/gas that's imported into the U.S. is matched by a flow of USD to the oil-exporting nations, who then have to do something with the steadily increasing pile of USD.

Note what happens to countries using gold as their currency when they run large, sustained trade deficits. All their gold is soon transferred overseas to pay for their imports. So any nation using gold as a currency can't run trade deficits, lest their gold drain away.

Nations aspiring to issue a reserve currency have the opposite problem. They need enough fresh currency to inject into the global FX markets to supply those wanting to hold their currency in reserve.

This means any nation running structural trade surpluses will have difficulty issuing a reserve currency. Nations shipping goods and services overseas in surplus end up with a bunch of foreign currencies--whatever currencies their trading partners issue. This is opposite of the global markets need, i.e. a surplus (supply) of the reserve currency.

Any nation that wants to issue a reserve currency has to emit enough currency into the global economy to supply the demand for reserves. One way to get that currency into the global system is run trade deficits, as the world effectively trades its goods and services in exchange for the currency.

A reserve currency cannot be pegged; it must float freely on the global FX exchange. China's currency, the RMB, is informally pegged to the USD; it doesn't float freely according to supply and demand on global FX markets.

Nobody wants to hold a currency that can be devalued overnight by some central authority. The only security in the realm of currencies is the transparent FX market, which is large enough that it's difficult to manipulate for long.

(Global FX markets trade trillions of dollars, yen, RMB and euros daily.)

This is why China isn't keen on allowing its currency to float. Once you let your currency float, you lose control of its exchange rate/value. The value of every floating currency is set by supply and demand, period. No pegs, no "official" rate, just supply and demand.

If traders lose faith in your economy, your ability to service debt, etc., your currency crashes.

So let's look at currency flows, reserves and debt. In terms of currencies used for payments, the euro and USD are in rough parity. Note the tiny slice of payments made in RMB/yuan. This suggests 1) low demand for RMB and/or 2) limited supply of RMB in FX markets.

The USD is still the dominant reserve currency, despite decades of diversification. Global reserves (allocated and unallocated) are over $12 trillion. Note that China's RMB doesn't even show up in allocated reserves--it's a non-player because it's pegged to the USD. Why hold RMB when the peg can be changed at will? It's lower risk to just hold USD.

While total global debt denominated in USD is about $50 trillion, the majority of this is domestic, i.e. within the U.S. economy. $11 trillion has been issued to non-banks outside the U.S., including developed and emerging market debt:

According to the BIS, if we include off-balance sheet debt instruments, this external debt is more like $22 trillion. FX swaps and forwards: missing global debt?

Every day, trillions of dollars are borrowed and lent in various currencies. Many deals take place in the cash market, through loans and securities. But foreign exchange (FX) derivatives, mainly FX swaps, currency swaps and the closely related forwards, also create debt-like obligations. For the US dollar alone, contracts worth tens of trillions of dollars stand open and trillions change hands daily. And yet one cannot find these amounts on balance sheets. This debt is, in effect, missing.

The debt remains obscured from view. Accounting conventions leave it mostly off-balance sheet, as a derivative, even though it is in effect a secured loan with principal to be repaid in full at maturity. Only footnotes to the accounts report it.

Focusing on the dominant dollar segment, we estimate that non-bank borrowers outside the United States have very large off-balance sheet dollar obligations in FX forwards and currency swaps. They are of a size similar to, and probably exceeding, the $10.7 trillion of on-balance sheet debt.

So let's wrap this up. To understand any of this, we have to start with Triffin's Paradox, a topic I've addressed numerous times here. The idea is straightforward: every currency serves two different audiences, the domestic economy and the FX/global economy. The needs and priorities of each are worlds apart, so no currency can meet the conflicting demands of domestic and global users.

Understanding the "Exorbitant Privilege" of the U.S. Dollar (November 19, 2012)

So if a nation refuses to float its currency for domestic reasons, it can't issue a reserve currency. Period.

If a nation runs trade surpluses, it has few means to emit enough currency into the FX market to fulfill all three needs: payment, reserves and debt.

As for replacing the USD with a currency convertible to gold: first, the issuer would need to emit trillions for the use of its domestic economy and global trade (let's say $7 trillion as an estimate). Then it would need to issue roughly $6 trillion for reserves held by other nations, and then another $11 trillion (or maybe $22 trillion) for those who wish to replace their USD-denominated debt with debt denominated in the new gold-backed currency.

source

So that's at least $24 trillion required to replace the USD in global markets, roughly three times the current value of all the gold in existence. Given the difficulty in acquiring more than a small percentage of available gold to back the new currency, this seems like a bridge too far, even if gold went to $10,000 per ounce.

Personally, I would like to see a free-floating completely convertible-to-gold currency. Such a currency need not be issued by a nation-state; a private gold fund could issue such a currency. Such a currency would fill a strong demand for a truly "hard" currency. The point here is that such a currency would have difficulty becoming a reserve currency and replacing the USD in the global credit market.

Issuing a reserve currency makes heavy demands on the issuing nation. Many observers feel the benefits are outweighed by the costs. Be that as it may, the problem of replacing the USD in all its roles is that no other issuer has a large enough economy and is willing to shoulder the risks and burdens of issuing a free-floating currency in sufficient size to meet global demands.

Of related interest:

How Dangerous Is Emerging Markets Dollar Debt?

$10.5 trillion in dollar-denominated debt

The Fed's Global Dollar Problem Borrowers around the world have gone on a dollar binge. This makes them vulnerable when interest rates rise. 


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Loving Our Debt-Serfdom: Our Neofeudal Status Quo

Democracy (i.e. political influence) and ownership of productive assets are the exclusive domains of the New Aristocracy.

I have often used the words neoliberal, neocolonial and neofeudal to describe our socio-economic-political status quo. Here are my shorthand descriptions of each term:

1. Neoliberal: the commoditization / financialization of every asset, input (such as labor) and output of the economy; the privatization of the public commons, and the maximizing of private profits while costs and losses are socialized, i.e. transferred to the taxpayers.

2. Neocolonial: the exploitation of the domestic populace using the same debt-servitude model used to subjugate, control and extract profits from overseas populations.

3. Neofeudal: the indenturing of the workforce via debt and financial repression to a new Aristocracy; the disempowerment of the workforce into powerless debt-serfs.

Neofeudalism is a subtle control structure that is invisible to those who buy into the Mainstream Media portrayal of our society and economy. This portrayal includes an apparent contradiction: America is a meritocracy--the best and brightest rise to the top, if they have pluck and work hard-- and America is all about identity politics: whomever doesn't make it is a victim of bias.

Both narratives neatly ignore the neofeudal structure which disempowers the workforce in the public sphere and limits the opportunities to build capital outside the control of the state-corporate duopoly.

The book The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages 400-1000 shed some light on the transition to a feudal society and economy. While the author is a fine writer, the subject matter doesn't lend itself to light reading. The transition from the Roman legacy of centralized governance (empire, monarchy, theocracy, etc.) to feudalism (governance by local lords / aristocracy) was complex and uneven, and the author takes pains to describe the process and many variations that arose in a highly fragmented post-Roman Europe.

(Note that the Eastern Roman Empire, a.k.a. Byzantine Empire, endured until 1453 AD. I've written often on both the western and eastern Roman empires: The "Secret Sauce" of the Byzantine Empire: Stable Currency, Social Mobility (September 1, 2016)

Don't Diss the Dark Ages (October 26, 2016)

In the Footsteps of Rome: Is Renewal Possible? (July 24, 2017)

Neofeudalism is not a re-run of feudalism. It's a new and improved, state-corporate version of indentured servitude. The process of devolving from central political power to feudalism required the erosion of peasants' rights to own productive assets, which in an agrarian economy meant ownership of land.

Ownership of land was replaced with various obligations to the local feudal lord or monastery--free labor for time periods ranging from a few days to months; a share of one's grain harvest, and so on.

The other key dynamic of feudalism was the removal of the peasantry from the public sphere. In the pre-feudal era (for example, the reign of Charlemagne), peasants could still attend public councils and make their voices heard, and there was a rough system of justice in which peasants could petition authorities for redress.

Of course peasants usually lost to the aristocracy and monasteries, but at least the avenue of redress was at least partially open. This presence in the public sphere was slammed shut in feudalism.

From the capitalist perspective, feudalism restricted serfs' access to cash markets where they could sell their labor or harvests. The key feature of capitalism isn't just markets-- it's unrestricted ownership of productive assets--land, tools, workshops, and the social capital of skills, networks, trading associations, guilds, etc.

Our system is Neofeudal because the non-elites have no real voice in the public sphere, and ownership of productive capital is indirectly suppressed by the state-corporate duopoly. Various studies have found that politicians ignore the bottom 99.5% who don't contribute to their campaigns or crony-capitalist wealth (five quick speeches for $200,000 each is $1 million. Rinse and repeat.)

The vast majority of incumbents are re-elected, as they leverage their power to vacuum up enormous sums of campaign contributions that then buy the compliance of a cowed public.

As for ownership of assets-- small business startups have been crushed by soaring costs, heavy regulations and the dominance of cartels and quasi-monopolies enforced by the state.

Income growth is now the exclusive domain of the Financial Aristocracy:

The so-called middle class owns little to no productive capital; what it "owns" is a house, which is ultimately a form of consumption. I say "owns" for two reasons: one, most households have a mortgage, so their ownership is still contingent on making monthly payments to a lender, and two, the government collects property taxes on the home regardless of the owner's income or ability to pay.

Compare this to taxes levied on business income: if the business has no net income, it owes no taxes. Not so with property taxes--they are the modern equivalent of "rent" paid to the feudal lord.

Note that the aristocracy owns productive assets while the serfs own housing and debt. This is not a flaw in the system, it's a feature of the system.

Democracy (i.e. political influence) and ownership of productive assets are the exclusive domains of the New Aristocracy. This is Neofeudalism in a nutshell.

"Under a scientific dictator education will really work -- with the result that most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution."

"The nature of psychological compulsion is such that those who act under constraint remain under the impression that they are acting on their own initiative. The victim of mind-manipulation does not know that he is a victim. To him, the walls of his prison are invisible, and he believes himself to be free. That he is not free is apparent only to other people. His servitude is strictly objective."

Aldous Huxley

video interview of Aldous Huxley

source of quotes (read the entire thread)


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Financialization and The Destruction of the Real Economy

Strip an economy of capital, productive incentives, talent and yes, ethics, and what are we left with? An economy spiraling toward an inevitable collapse.

Financialization is destroying the real economy, but few in power seem to notice or care. The reason why is painfully obvious: those in power are reaping vast fortunes from the engines of financialization--for example, former President Obama:Obama Goes From White House to Wall Street in Less Than One Year.

This is not to single out President Obama as a special case; politicos across the spectrum depend on the engines of financialization to fund their campaigns and make them multi-millionaires, and corporate managers and financiers have skimmed billions of dollars in gains not from producing new, better and more affordable goods and services but by playing financialization games such as borrowing billions to buy back stocks, leveraged buyouts, and so on--all of which have reaped the insiders gargantuan fortunes while hollowing out the real economy.

Financialization necessarily hollows out the real economy, as Gordon Long and I detail in this new video program: The Results of Financialization - Part I (34 minutes)

The key dynamic is that financialization creates irresistible incentives to ramp up debt and leverage at the expense of the real economy. Those who fail to exploit financialization will underperform the market and be fired.

As Gordon explains, if a CEO refuses to load a company up with debt, a private-equity financier with access to cheap Federal Reserve credit will scoop up the company in a private buyout, fire the management, extract immense profits by loading the company with debt, then take the hollowed-out shell public again, reaping another windfall of financialized gains.

Note that the private-equity financiers have every incentive to lay off employees, especially experienced workers who earn higher salaries, to reduce costs before they take the hollowed-out shell public.

How can corporations pay out more to shareholders than they actually earned? Easy--financialization.

Another key dynamic in financialization is limitless liquidity and super low interest rates set by central banks--rates that are so low and liquidity so abundant that corporations can roll over their debt and actually add more debt and keep their interest payments unchanged.

This dynamic inevitably leads to zombie corporations--corporations with low rates of growth and profitability and high debt loads that in an unfinancialized economy would be recognized as insolvent and liquidated.

As we explain, financialization skews the risk-reward in favor of financial games, so real-world investments no longer make sense. Why risk building a factory in the U.S. or training workers when the pay-off is uncertain, when there are so many ways to reap immense fortunes via financial games that are ultimately backstopped by the Federal Reserve or federal agencies (i.e. the taxpayers)?

As many observers have noted, these perverse incentives have siphoned human talent away from productive employment and into enormously well-compensated but parasitic, exploitive financialization-related jobs.

Strip an economy of capital, productive incentives, talent and yes, ethics, and what are we left with? An economy spiraling toward an inevitable collapse. The metaphor I've used to explain this in the past is the Yellowstone forest fire. The deadwood of bad debt, extreme leverage, zombie companies and all the other fallen branches of financialization pile up, but the central banks no longer allow any creative destruction of unpayable debt and mis-allocated capital; every brush fire is instantly suppressed with more stimulus, more liquidity and lower interest rates.

As a result, the deadwood sapping the real economy of productivity and innovation is allowed to pile higher.

The only possible output of this suppression is an economy piled high with explosive risk. Eventually Nature supplies a lightning strike, and the resulting conflagration consumes the entire economy.

The Yellowstone Analogy and The Crisis of Neoliberal Capitalism (May 18, 2009)

The Financial Markets Now Control Everything (April 29, 2015)

I explain all this in greater detail in my short book Why Our Status Quo Failed and Is Beyond Reform.


If you found value in this content, please join me in seeking solutions by becoming a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

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What Is Real Wealth?

As for acquiring capital--the most important types of capital don't require much money.

What is real wealth? Money, right? Currency, gold, quatloos, you name it. Money is real wealth because you can use it to buy whatever you want.

I would argue money in any form is only the means to acquire real wealth, which is the agency, opportunity and time to pursue your life's work.

The conventional view of wealth is money and leisure has it all wrong. Let's imagine the owner of a vault of conventional treasure: jewels, gold coins, etc.

If the "wealth" stays in the vault, what's the point of owning this "wealth"? The secret satisfaction of being "wealthy"?

If "wealth" is only an internal state, then let's measure friendship and being needed/wanted as the metrics of "wealth." You see the point; if "wealth" is merely an internal state of satisfaction, then a vault full of "money" is a poor metric.

What money buys that is real wealth is freedom and control of one's life. This control over one's life is called agency. Agency is defined as "the capacity of an actor to act in a given environment." This may not seem like a profound concept, but another way to describe agency is that agency is the opposite of powerlessness.

People with agency define themselves and their identity; they shape the world they inhabit rather than passively await whatever circumstances deliver up.

In the real world, people with agency move on when things no longer work for them in a particular situation. Agency is not just the opposite of feeling powerless; it's also the opposite of victimhood, i.e. the state of being in which others are held responsible for all of one's travails and difficulties.

Agency and responsibility are two sides of the same coin: each manifests the other.

Opportunity is a form of wealth--and so is the wherewithal to take opportunities that arise. Though there is a random element to opportunity--i.e. getting lucky--the wherewithal to take the opportunity is not a matter of luck. It requires a specific appetite for risk, perseverance, the ability to discern how best to use the opportunity, and access to the capital required to exploit the opportunity.

Capital is a type of wealth that isn't limited to "money": Character traits are capital, social networks are capital, experience is capital, knowledge is capital. All of these forms of capital are often more important than "money" capital.

As for "money" buying leisure--leisure in abundance is a disaster for the vast majority of people. Humans are designed to be needed by others, to be part of something greater than themselves, and to gain dignity and pride by doing useful work--whether they are paid "money" for this work or not.

This is why so many of those with the "money" to have endless leisure are miserable. Their lives are an endless treadmill of frivolous consumerism, neurotic pettiness, hypochondria, expressing their infinity of heartaches to counselors, and saddest of all, medications in abundance to relieve the ennui and the dead weight of their purposeless existence.

"Money" is only useful if it is a means to acquire real wealth, which is the agency, opportunity and time to pursue your life's work. There are many people who can spend $600,000 a year on various things (i.e. their "lifestyle") who don't feel "wealthy"--and if they don't have agency and time for work that's meaningful to them, they aren't wealthy: they're as impoverished as the person earning a fraction of their income.

Real wealth doesn't actually require a vast horde of "money." It requires some money, but how much depends on the cost of agency, opportunity and time. For those with few needs and the right priorities, the cost of agency, opportunity and time needn't be all that high.

As for acquiring capital--the most important types of capital don't require much money; determination, self-discipline, organization, a voracious appetite for knowledge and work, an insatiable curiosity, a generous heart, a knack for friendship, the purposeful pursuit of goals-- these are the tools to acquiring real wealth: agency, opportunity and time to fulfill one's life work.

I explain how to amass the most empowering forms of capital in my book Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy.


If you found value in this content, please join me in seeking solutions by becoming a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

Check out both of my new books, Inequality and the Collapse of Privilege($3.95 Kindle, $8.95 print) and Why Our Status Quo Failed and Is Beyond Reform($3.95 Kindle, $8.95 print, $5.95 audiobook) For more, please visit the OTM essentials website.

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