What a time to be alive. The world is currently witnessing the global markets reprice trust in real time. Trust is a key ingredient in stable and peaceful economic activity. When trust is loss it leads to increased friction in economic activity. When the United States decides to freeze and seize money held in reserve accounts by countries they do not like it makes it so those countries cannot trust the United States to custody their money. Even worse, it allows doubt to begin to creep into the minds of other countries who are looking on from the sidelines. “If they can do that to them, they can do it to us. What’s stopping them from doing it to us?”
This is a line of questioning that is leading to the death of the US Dollar as the reserve currency of the world. There is no turning back from this. Trust has been lost and it won’t be coming back. Especially when one takes a critical look at how the dollar system has been managed since the Great Financial Crisis. “They’re going to print trillions dollars out of thin air on a whim and then have the gall to tell us we cannot even access them? I’d be crazy to hitch my financial wagon to this horse.”
Opening this Pandora’s box of questioning has many speculating that Russia, China and other BRIC nations will begin to increase the amount of trade that is settled in their native currencies and over rails that do not originate from the West. Visa, Mastercard and PayPal have locked out tens of millions of Russians from accessing their payment rails. Rumor is that there will be a tectonic shift toward China’s Unionpay, which was already facilitating almost half of all payments in Russia before last week. There is another rumor that Russia and China will roll out gold-back currencies or begin demanding that their commodities like oil, natural gas, and wheat be purchased with gold.
