Wall Street is bracing for a potential shake-up as China is set to launch its first-ever crude oil futures contract late March at the Shanghai Futures Exchange. The move, which had been laid out in 2012 but faced delays over possible market turbulence, could represent a bold step forward in China’s rise as an economic…
You know that the jig is up for the petrodollar when the best argument its apologists can come up with is that “the petrodollar system is bad, but a petroyuan system will be worse.” Of course, the petrodollar won’t be dethroned tomorrow, but the writing is definitely on the wall. China is expected to launch its…
Petrodollars have dominated the global energy markets for more than 40 years. But now, China is looking to change that by replacing the word dollars for yuan. Nations, of course, have tried this before since the system was set up by former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in tandem with the House of Saud back…
In theory, the global financial system is supposed to help every country gain. Mainstream teaching of international finance, trade and “foreign aid” (defined simply as any government credit) depicts an almost utopian system uplifting all countries, not stripping their assets and imposing austerity. The reality since World War I is that the United States has…
In the early 1970s President Richard Nixon instigated two changes that had profound effects. The first of these was taking United States off the gold standard; i.e. henceforth US dollars would no longer be convertible to Gold. Ordinarily this might have been expected to have significant ramifications for the value of the US dollar. Deleterious…
As Doug Casey has correctly noted, the prime directive of any organism—whether it’s an amoeba or a person or a corporation or a government—is to survive. That’s why the US government protects the petrodollar so zealously. It needs the system to survive. World leaders who have challenged the petrodollar recently have ended up dead… Why…
