Trump and Dollar Supremacy
US President-elect Donald Trump warned the so-called BRICS nations that he would require commitments that they would not move to create a new currency as an alternative to using the US dollar and repeated threats to levy a 100% tariff.
Trump and his economic advisers have been discussing ways to punish allies and adversaries alike who seek to engage in bilateral trade in currencies other than the dollar. The measures include considering options such as export controls, currency manipulation charges and levies on trade, Bloomberg News reported in April.
- Trump Demands ‘Commitment’ From BRICS Nations on Using the Dollar – Bloomberg
Presently, however, under the American regime, one nation under oligarchy, exorbitant privilege, the debt ceiling, the national debt, and the failed two-party system… are all being used to do hell’s amount of evil to the American people and to the world. It also explains why the Federal Reserve is both the most powerful and least understood U.S. government branch.
Exorbitant privilege reminds us that democracy doesn’t die in the darkness… no, democracy dies in broad daylight, under azure skies of the deepest blue, like semi-automatic weapons fire inside an American school.
- Exorbitant Privilege – J.M. Hamilton Publishing
By Gregg Wall (12-7-2024)
Many will recall that Trump is generally silent or far less verbal when things are going well, like after his debate with Biden. Conversely, Trump is more verbal, fires off more Xs or Tweets, when he appears rattled or upset, like much of his first term. Less verbal, more verbal being relative terms, such as Trump’s inner demons allow. A week ago, last Saturday Trump unleashed an X where he basically threatened the BRICS nations, and presumably the Global South, with punishment and punitive measures, if these nations banned together and dumped the precious American dollar.
Trump very well may have been threatening the BRICS with a good time, as Russia and other nations, already suffering banking, economic, and trade sanctions from the U.S. Treasury, have begun to move away from the dollar. In fact, America’s actions against Russia, as a result of War in the Ukraine, have driven China and Russia closer together and with increased partnership, greater use of China’s yuan to conduct trade (hence, defeating and overturning President Nixon’s epic achievement of driving a wedge between the two nations). Ironically, for a nation that wants to maintain exorbitant privilege, America sure has a unique way of demonstrating it… the dollar has been weaponized to a considerable degree, going back to the Bush (W) administration and the War on Terror (with the U.S. Treasury, in partnership with Wall St banks and other allies, using dollar & financial warfare against rogue actors, states, and terrorist groups to diminish economies, eliminate the ability to raise money, & cut off trade). The dollar is such a formidable economic & foreign policy tool that it's little wonder that BRICS and the Global South have been in search of an alternative. Biden’s latest and hopefully last round of Ukraine welfare & war funding will come from and be secured by frozen Russian assets.
Sadly, key issues like dollar preeminence, what exorbitant privilege means to the American people, the nation, and the world rarely come up in America’s superficial, content-free campaign cycles. Instead, citizens are treated to the spectacle of poorly vetted candidates appearing on talk shows, rolling out the celebs, and burning through $1.5 billion in cash in a matter of weeks (on a single candidate & race), only for campaigns to go down in flames. And subsequently, requesting further bailouts and contributions from a public already impoverished by currency abuse, a debased dollar, the Federal Reserve’s monetary policies, and the failed two-party system in Washington. Truly pathetic.
Since our ultra-corrupt government, the President & Congress, refuse to talk about these things, now is as good a time as any to very briefly go over what a complete disaster exorbitant privilege has been for the United States & the world, much of this covered a year and a half ago in my piece, Exorbitant Privilege. The Exorbitant Privilege piece provides additional background as to what dollar hegemony specifically means.
Domestically, possessing the world’s fiat currency has led to $40 trillion in national debt, ultra-accommodative monetary policies that have seen the asset classes of the rich skyrocket (along with the creation of hundreds of billionaires), the financialization of the economy, financial engineering on a catastrophic scale, soaring supply-side – greed driven – inflation, M&A and cartel & monopoly formation on an unprecedented scale, and the crushing of families, labor, organized labor, and a demolished middle class. Only a nation possessing this powerful of a tool could get away with printing tens of trillions in debt over the span of four and half decades. Debt the American public is indentured to at birth. And it’s no coincidence that the runup in the national debt has also coincided with the preeminence of libertarian, neoliberal, supply-side, and trickle-down economic fairy tales and lies… and the greatest fiction of all, meritocracy. In the land of financial dynasties, legacy university admissions, nepo babies, and a rigged economy & financial markets, the elites’ fondness for citing merit is truly the greatest class delusion of all. The dollar’s power has facilitated and translated into greed rule, a kleptocratic rule that, presently, appears unassailable. Dollar power and its ability to dictate perverse public policy means sky-high drug costs (because Big Pharma can & Bill Gates feels that’s best?), unaffordable for-profit health care, a national obesity epidemic, medical bankruptcy is the number one cause of bankruptcy, and declining U.S. life expectancy. It’s no stretch to say exorbitant privilege -- and the resulting financial engineering -- explain why Boeing aircraft fall from the skies; it’s why Intel is struggling and in a state of malaise. Financial engineering means less money for CAPEX, R&D, and is why employee real wages stagnate for decades. Exorbitant privilege and easy money policies in the service of all that debt are tied at the hip, have funded the most nefarious business practices and industry known to humanity, once again, financial engineering and private equity. Private Equity … that great destroyer of businesses, the economy, families, innovation, jobs, morality, all virtue, and an industry that along with free trade has carried out the middle class in a body bag. Exorbitant privilege, dollar preeminence means congress never has to make a tough decision… instant for-profit wars, instant financed tax cuts, all manner of corporate welfare… dial up the Federal Reserve and Treasury and have them print it up. To say that exorbitant privilege is directly and indirectly tied to all of the above -- and so much more -- is an understatement.
The catastrophic transfer of wealth, via the nation’s credit line, the rise of the billionaire class, kleptocracy, monopoly, and endless Wall St bailouts and welfare: Yup, exorbitant privilege. Every evil known to humanity and to befall a nation and its people: Follow the U.S. Dollar. As I’ve said before, it’s not a blessing, it’s a curse.
And to the world? To the world, exorbitant privilege means America’s ability to wage, seemingly, limitless war: it means 400,000 tons of napalm dropped on families and freedom fighters in Vietnam, it means tens of thousands of dead women and children in Gaza, American troops spending nearly two decades in Afghanistan, it means America’s ally – megalo, psycho Bibi - bombing several nations and Gaza, relentlessly (so Bibi can indulge every degenerate & depraved impulse that comes to mind). The almighty dollar means a trillion-plus dollar security state, 700 to 800 military bases around the globe, U.S. soldiers stationed around the world and used as trip wires for the next casus belli. Dollar power means using nation-states, on the receiving end of America’s wrath, as proving grounds for America’s ravenous military contractors. Exorbitant privilege means babies murdered, economies wrecked, lives destroyed, and lifeless bodies. (As pointed out last year, war spending, deficits, and debt – supported by the dollar's ability to print itself – have become a crutch America is increasingly dependent upon to backstop GDP and grow the economy.) The power of the dollar means all this global warfare makes its way back home to be waged upon Americans in the forms of cop cities, mass incarceration, the police and surveillance state. Is it not grand: dollar’s extraordinary power partners with economic sanctions, dollar denominated debt, the importance of earning U.S. dollars to pay dollar denominated debt, economies preyed upon and set up for demolition… America’s gift to the world, the dollar, means the IMF and World Bank, in some instances, kicking in a nation’s front door to insist upon endless austerity & neoliberal reforms, as a foreign government’s economy spins out of control. It means American banks, billionaires, and multinationals descending upon your country like locusts… after it’s been bombed to a crisp… to buy and steal everything at fire sale prices. Dollar dominance in settling global commerce and trade gives the Federal Reserve outsized influenced over nation-states, financial and monetary world affairs. Sanctions can be crippling.
As they say, for some hell comes in the next life… no, thanks to dollar hegemony, American elites, AIPAC, the deep state, the Federal Reserve, the MSM, the necroeconomy & necropolitics, and Wall St., I’d say, we are already there.
This is hell, and exorbitant privilege is the Devil’s favorite toy: enriching the least deserving beyond all measure, destroying the planet (by financing subsides for the fossil fuels industry and wars), while a weaponized dollar – in the hands of bankers and the powerful - keeps the American public and citizens of the world deeply impoverished, often on the edge of existence, and commodified. This is the part, where I’m supposed to tell you great things could be done with the U.S. dollar if we had the right people in charge. No doubt. But no, America means never having the right people in charge, it means hell is in charge: the Dems, the GOP, the criminal kleptocracy, banks, monopolies, fossil fuels, defense contractors, SV, greed… yes, in charge & dictating policy decisions.
And clearly, they can’t handle dollar supremacy. If banks are more powerful than standing armies, than exorbitant privilege is a nation armed to the teeth with MIRVed, nuclear armed ICBMs.
Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2024
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