In Currency the U.S. is Dominant, Europe is Fading, China Is Irrelevant For Now | Hacker News Reader

In Currency the U.S. is Dominant, Europe is Fading, China Is Irrelevant For Now

npr.org

32 pointssethbannon19 comments

I can't read that article without hearing "Brahm's Lullaby" in my head ...

"Back to sleep / Little sheep / The USD will be / Just fine..."

Not mentioned in the article: China is signing reciprocal agreements with many countries, which has the effect of completely removing the USD as the intermediate currency.

For instance, if dealing with Brazil, the central bank of each country allows for direct Chinese RMB / Brazil real conversion, completely cutting out the USD's role.

See for example: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-04-13/china-takes-another...

Seems a funny thing to write an article about and totally devoid of any meaningful context. A similar article could have been written about smart phone market share in 2009 when RIM/Blackberry had 42% market share. Look how well that has turned out for them.

http://www.comscore.com/Insights/Press_Releases/2010/2/comSc...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericsavitz/2012/09/25/rim-bankru...

Makes perfect sense to me. As none of these currencies are actually backed by an asset, the US dollar is probably the most stable and most likely to be accepted as a means for payment by more people around the world.

Are you implying that the USD is backed by an asset? Because AFAIK, it's not (at least not anymore).

I am pretty sure he is saying no currency is backed by an asset so if you had to choose a currency not backed by anything you would choose USD.

please correct me, but I thought $ receives it's backing through the oil market.

If one purchases oil, one needs to pay in $.

If one purchases almost anything one needs to pay in $.

I was speaking in terms of fiat money which is not backed by precious metals anymore.

China will never put their currency in the present trade. They have absolutely controlling for their own currency, which means nobody can solute their money except themselves. As all we know, currency inflation is a "hidden" way to exploit normal people's wealthy and the exploitation can happen between countries. The independent role of China currency definitely protect the China from the harvest of financial oligarchy.

When the rest of the world finally gets fed up with the US meddling in their affairs, snooping on them and enforcing their laws on the opposite side of the earth, I really hope a bunch of countries get together and agree to stop using the USD for everything.

Interesting times ahead, for sure.

Or use Bitcoin.

What? Nothing could be further from the truth.

While it may not be fading, the Euro has pretty much leveled[1] off after some decline compared to the dollar over the past year due to the troubles in some of the weaker European Economies. How it will look in the future is uncertain as of now, but depends on how Greece and others stabilize and pay off their debts.

[1] https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=euro+to+dollar

Take a second read. It's talking about the currencies themselves not the underlying economic power of the country. An ambiguous title to be sure but it's not exactly a dense article.

I have a feeling that you did not read the article at all.

As it clearly states, nearly 44% of global currency trades are USD. Showing a 1.1% rise over the past three years, whereas the Euro is at nearly 17%, showing a 2.8% drop over the past three years, and the RMB shows a 0.5% rise to 1.1% over the past 3 years.

Which of those facts do you dispute, and what data set backs up your claim that this data is not true?

Just a nitpick, but it's really a 1.1% and 0.5% delta. Saying that something is "showing a X% rise over N years" makes it sound like the quantity being measured rose by X%, which is not the case here. It's made more confusing because the quantity we're talking about is already a percentage, but still... The global RMB fraction has grown by 175% (despite remaining significantly lower than the USD fraction), while the USD fraction has grown by ~2.6%

Sure, printing a trillion bucks a year makes your currency strong, right?

Bubble? I can't hear no bubble popping yet.

Funny timing. I just finished watching a video on the decline on the US dollar in global trade. Here is a link: http://hiddensecretsofmoney.com/

That looks like a completely reputable and completely unbiased source with no monetary motivation or agenda.

lol

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