Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Sunday acknowledged that US economic sanctions risk the hegemony of the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency as they push targeted countries to seek alternatives.
“There is a risk when we use financial sanctions that are linked to the role of the dollar that over time it could undermine the hegemony of the dollar,” Yellen told CNN.
Countries targeted by US and other Western sanctions have naturally increased trade and cooperation, sometimes using alternatives to the dollar. For example, Iran and Venezuela began trading gas for gold under the Trump administration.
“Of course, it does create a desire on the part of China, of Russia, of Iran to find an alternative,” Yellen said. “But the dollar is used as a global currency for reasons that are not easy for other countries to find an alternative with the same properties.”
While recognizing how sanctions can hurt the US dollar, Yellen said she still supported them using them against other countries, calling sanctions an “extremely important tool.”
History has shown that sanctions harm the civilian population of the targeted country while doing nothing to change the targeted government. Last month, Yellen recognized that US sanctions on Iran have caused a “real economic crisis” in the country but haven’t changed the government’s behavior. Despite this, she said the Biden administration plans to impose more sanctions on the Islamic Republic.
“Stupid is as stupid does”?
… better said defective humanity or sub-humanity. She and her predecessor Mme. Madelaine Albright seem to relish starving their helpless brothers and sisters, especially Iranian, by the 100’s of thousands.
I see Yellen as a “yes” woman. I’m not sure the comparison with Albright is fair.
Yes, you’re right, the pious acolyte of the devil, not Fagin but Bill Sykes. Anyway, she is an obscenity. Children ought to be forbid the sight of her.
Well duh, if you can render the USD in someones possession worthless on some political whim then for sure folks are going to become cautious about holding the USD. Money in some sense is a measure of trust.
Trust is the only thing that gives money its value.
Trust and real product. US economy lacks both. Hopefully to lead to the destruction of Washington governance, and return to Madisonian state’s rights, a sort of Balkanization of the US.
F*ck Yellen. Miss “keep the wage earners insecure” Yellen. Last I heard from her, sanctions were not being applied vigorously enough.
“Behavior”…that’s rich.
Sanctions are one side of the problem and the other is , the uncontrolled printing of the dollar. The rest of the World is tired of Western colonization of their economies and BRICS is the first step in achieving economic independence.
Now when it’s too late, she comes up with that.
The sanctions are “extremely important tool” for undermining dollar as a global currency.
Here is the reason why her statement is full of holes. The role of the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency was started by the agreement of Bretton Woods of 1944 (1) and became firm when President Nixon in essence left the gold standard in 1971. These were times when our economy was the world’s hegemony which is no longer true.
(1) one of the ideas from that conference was to have an entirely new currency as the standard. Hoarding of that currency by our and foreign governments would then be useless.
De-dollarization, an idea whose time has come!
The process has already started years ago and it is irreversible…!
Typically not getting it. There will be no replacement.
There will be something akin to Euro BEFORE it became physical currency. It was a means of currency exchange based on a range of factors determining Euro standard.
I expect BRIKS+ to be the vehicle. BRIKS+ is set to expand. Already, before expansion BRIKS+ GDP is higher than G-7 GDP. Following US decision to transform global. currency reserve system and financial institutions from facilitators of global commerce into a politically partial institutions — global reaction was swift. It is hapoening along four pillars: energy (production, reprocesding and transportation), transportation (non-West centric rail, road and sea corridors), currency and international payment systems (trade based on bilatersl and multilateral currency agreements), food security (new models of production snd distribution) and infrastructure (rail, roads, bridges, ports, e.commerce and netwoks).
Examples are many. The most recent models in oil distribution from many sources by Saudi Arabia is sn example. Distributing Russian oil and soon Iranian. India another model. Becoming a refining center. Refining Rusdian oil, and , meeting growing domestic demands and selling globally including Europe.
Essentially to replace the USD as reserve currency you need an exchange media that is accepted by the majority of the trade partners each country is likely to want to trade with. The media has to retain its value on a level not much different from the USD (to replace the USD).
The issue being that to replace the USD which can be used if not universally then exchanged easily for any local currency which may be needed, e.g. using the ECU only worked in a limited network. BRICS account for only about 10% of world trade transactions – they can move the trade between themselves into any currency of their choice, but it is unlikely to work for much the same reasons as the Euro is facing trouble – i.e. the imbalance of trade between the partners i.e. one or more of the partners would end up holding large amounts of the currency without having the desire/need to buy products from the other partners in the system – but you may have a solution?
Your suggestion of something like the ECU (the precursor to the Euro) is interesting – though the system to make such a reserve currency work is not currently in place for any non physical unit of exchange as far as I know. The idea that something like a Bitcoin arrangement (a block chain) could work for a near global reserve currency is unlikely to work – the amount of transactions for such a currency being several orders of magnitude larger than what is currently supported for digital currencies.
BTW it’s BRICS Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa – if you are Danish K for Kina (China) would be OK though 🙂
In the new testament Jesus gets angry only two times:
“And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the money changers, and the seats of them that sold doves, And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.”
Yellen belongs to the cult of thieves, and speaks with a forked tongue.
And I think the other time that Jesus got angry was when he said, “It would be better that a mill stone be tied around your neck and you be dropped into the deepest sea than for you to ruin the innocence of one of my little ones.”
Today the innocence of our little ones is being ruined every day.
He also got angry at a fig tree that had no fruit because it wasn’t in season and caused it to wither.
And I think he showed anger when he started with the words “Yea hypocrites” to the Pharisees.
The point is, Christians can’t follow God occasionally or seasonally. They should be always ready to give the good fruit when God requires it.
Americans abandoned God, indulged in lies and allowed Satanists to take care of their children.
They never abandoned Marduk because they never worshiped that one in the first place.
America was populated by different people. Many of them were good Christians and they played a substantial role in making America great before it was hijacked by Satanists.
“The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependence; from dependence back into bondage.”
–Lord Tytler
It is extremely sad that clever educated people are believing so fanatically in Scaliger’s chronology. Even Royal Society of London and the British Academy of Sciences preferred to believe in some mysterious extra-gravitational forces in the Earth-Moon system rather than allow themselves to doubt Scaliger’s theory. It is unbelievable how unacceptable the plain facts can be for the people of science.
The truth is that our civilization started in Egypt not so long time ago as Scaliger calculated. Egypt started the colonization of Africa, Asia and Europe about one thousand years ago. Before that, Europe, Asia and Africa were populated by the primitive tribes which knew nothing about agriculture or civilization.
God was insulted by lgbt community in Sodom and Gomorrah, got angry, condemned them and burned them down.
If the world is destroyed by some warmongers launching a nuclear war, will the survivors (if any) claim that God did that.
When people allow liars , perversers and warmongers to rule them, they also should be punished.
I’m not terribly sure that I like your G-d.
Maybe it is all just fairy tales but they were created to illustrate Christian morality and they were accepted by Church. US de facto already denounced Christianity and made sacred cows of sick sinful people which were condemned by Christian Church.
There are thousands of “Christian Churches,” with conflicting definitions of what does and does not constitute “Christian morality.”
Most of those “Christian Churches” aren’t run by KGB agents for the benefit of a single secular regime.
It started after neocons established their power in Washington and “American century” was proclaimed. The demoralized churches in The West started to give in about that time. In 2003 Congregation for Doctrine of the Faith published “Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons”. In 2014 the church allowed ministers to enter into same-sex marriages. In 2021 Methodist Church’s conference overwhelmingly voted to allow the marriage of same-sex couples in Methodist churches and by Methodist ministers. All that is happening before our eyes in the first quarter of 21-st century. No Christian Church ever allowed such things before. Now NATO is helping to destroy Orthodox Christianity in Ukraine and you call it “the support of Ukrainian democracy against Russian aggression”.
“No Christian Church ever allowed such things before.”
Incorrect. Metropolitan Community Church has been around since 1968.
Not according to the Bible:
“This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.” — Ezekiel 16:49
Modern interpretation: “Whether it was homosexuality or another transgression, such as the act of inhospitable behavior toward visitors, the act of sexual assault, murder, theft, adultery, idolatry, power abuses, or prideful and mocking behavior, that was the principal reason for God’s destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.”
30 years ago people knew exactly the meaning of the word sodomist. Now this word is forbidden.
Yes, 30 years ago, “people knew” what they wanted to “know,” despite the lack of scriptural evidence for the claim.
And then people who actually cared what was true instead of what was convenient to their prejudices actually bothered to look.
Bible, Leviticus 18:22 “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.”
Bible, Leviticus 20:13 “If a man lie with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them.”
Bible, Timothy 1:10 “They are people who are sexually unfaithful, and people who have intercourse with the same sex. They are kidnappers, liars, individuals who give false testimonies in court, and those who do anything else that oppose to sound teaching.”
Bible, Paul’s letter to Romans 1:26-27 “Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.”
None of which has anything to do with Sodom and Gomorrah (and two of which are from pre-Christian Judaism, the other two being from post-Christian Paulinism).
The term sodomy was introduced by Catholic saint Peter Damian, according to “traditional history”, Peter Damian lived about thousand years ago. Anyway he lived before Council of Trent when Bible was composed. In 16th century they decided what texts should be included in canonized Bible and what texts should be proclaimed as heresy. By the time of Council of Trent, the term sodomy was already established. Sodomy and Gomorrah is a legend but the condemnation of sexual perverse is expressed in several different biblical texts and it was confirmed by every institution until recent times.
So 500 years ago, a bunch of guys decided to codify something a guy said a thousand years ago about something that happened 5,000 years ago? Wow, that really settles things.
Council of Trent happened about 4 and a half century ago, that is certain. Peter Damian lived earlier, that is also certain. Sodomy was always condemned by Christian Church, that is also an undeniable fact. The rest is legends.
Yes, “sodomy” was always condemned by some of the many versions of Christian churches.
So much so that in the second century, what later became the Catholic Church supposedly suppressed several pages of the Gospel of Luke pertaining to the time Lazarus spent in bed with Jesus after being raised from the dead.
I think you are aware that you are repeating lgbt anti-Christian slander.
No, I’m just aware that “Christianity” isn’t universally defined as “whatever Mikhailovich might happen to want to be true at any given moment.”
“Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Sunday acknowledged that US economic sanctions risk the hegemony of the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency as they push targeted countries to seek alternatives.”
DUHHH!
Intelligent moron.
I think Janet said the quiet part out loud. I’ve never before heard a highly-placed US official talk about “the hegemony of the dollar” in a context acknowledging that status. Most US economists assert that ‘dollar hegemony’ is a left-wing invention and that it’s only incidental that US dollars are the world’s reserve currency. And that it wouldn’t matter if they weren’t. Now Janet Yellen concedes the opposite.
One angle I haven’t noticed is anyone talking about how the supposedly impending “Central Bank Digital Currency” would increase the pace of “de-dollarization.” Since any given unit of a CBDC can be “turned off” by the central bank in question, why would any foreign business be willing to use it? If they or their government got sanctioned, all their dollars would just magically disappear. Even a less stable currency or whatever would be better than that risk.
Yes, I agree. I doubt that any foreign business or national government would be willing to use a digital currency that would only exist in the owner’s computer or mobile phone (if ‘owner’ is even applicable here).
I am as skeptical about CBDC as I am about Bitcoin, which is: if I saw it on the sidewalk, I would step over it.
So, any agreed-upon unit of value must be free from control by any particular nation. Again, while the dollar is not manipulable like a CBDC, still the Fed can push the dollar one way or another by , e.g., altering the base interest rates.
We are seeing that now, perhaps in anticipation of a recession, at which point the interest rates may be lowered to reduce credit friction.
“I am as skeptical about CBDC as I am about Bitcoin, which is: if I saw it on the sidewalk, I would step over it.”
Bitcoin doesn’t exist “only in the owner’s computer or phone,” and it can’t be canceled by a central authority. It exists on an immutable distributed public ledger. If you had a Bitcoin, and lightning struck your computer and I stole your phone, as long as you had your wallet seed phrase written down somewhere, you could recover it instantly.
There certainly various problems with various cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, but not the same problems as with CBDCs.
I agree that Bitcoin does not share with CBDCs the problem of state interference or cancellation. How well it is protected against theft, I cannot say.
The problem with Bitcoin is that it simply has no value beyond the invested faith of its buyers. Which puts it on the same level of value as Beanie Babies or Cabbage Patch Kids. Bitcoin is valuable as long as people want it. Once they don’t, it will be forgotten, and a hard drive full of expensive numbers will be worth no more than its hardware.
There is no ceiling on the price of Bitcoin, and likewise no floor. Count me out.
“The problem with Bitcoin is that it simply has no value beyond the invested faith of its buyers. Which puts it on the same level of value as Beanie Babies or Cabbage Patch Kids.”
True. And also true of almost everything, especially including government-issued fiat currencies. Their exchange value is entirely a function of whether people believe those governments will last, whether they believe those governments’ claims as to money supply/production, etc. On the US dollar in particular it says so right on the bill. What backs the dollar? “The full faith and credit of the United States (government).”
As for use value, Bitcoin has strong use cases as a unit of account, store of value, and medium of exchange (the functions of money). It’s currently weakest on “store of value” grounds, because its price versus e.g. fiat currencies has been less stable than the most stable of such currencies (although far more stable than the basket case regimes’ currencies — I’d rather have Bitcoin than Zimbabwean dollars or Venezuelan bolivars, for example).
“Count me out.”
Well, you’re counting yourself out, which you have every right to do and which you should do if you don’t find the case for Bitcoin (or other cryptocurrencies) convincing.
The lady with the bad haircut may have stumbled onto something.
The BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) countries are reportedly exploring the creation of a common currency for trade amongst themselves. A new financial arrangement, seen with a potential to translate into a common BRICS currency, could be announced as soon as in August 2023 at the forthcoming BRICS summit in South Africa.
While speaking at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum event in New Delhi, India, last week, Alexander Babakov, the deputy chairman of Russian parliament the State Duma, said that the plan is to initially transition to using domestic currencies in transactions. Following this, the introduction and circulation of a digital or an alternative form of currency could be explored. The potential introduction of a common BRICS currency is significant given the bilateral differences between India and China due to ongoing military standoff along the Line of Actual Control between the two Asian giants.
https://www.wionews.com/business-economy/brics-common-currency-soon-india-china-step-up-to-counter-us-dollars-dominance-578660
Note that there are many other countries are interested in membership.
South African Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor said worldwide interest in the BRICS group was “huge.” In early March, she told television interviewers that she had 12 letters from interested countries on her desk.
“Saudi Arabia is one,” she said. “United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Algeria, and Argentina,” as well as Mexico and Nigeria. “Once we’ve shaped the criteria [for lending], we will then make the decision,” she said, noting that the topic would be placed on the agenda for the upcoming August summit in South Africa. https://frontline.thehindu.com/news/brics-nations-offer-a-new-world-order-as-alternative-to-the-west/article66667657.ece#:~:text=But%20now%20the%20BRICS%20nations,international%20financial%20and%20political%20forums.
The Dollar is about to have a new competitor.
Probably a bad wig.
I’m surprised to hear her, of all people, say this. Biden’s neo-libs aren’t going to be happy with Yellen.
Jackass believes in sanctions against countries when what they always do is hurt innocents. She’s just another grunt for the capitalism of the well to do trickle downers.
If a Spanish company buys oil from Saudi Arabia, the dollar payment goes through a bank in New York. The same applies to most other commodities. If Japan buys Australian wheat, New York banks process the dollar-denominated payment.
The dollar became the world’s de facto reserve currency in 1944. The Bretton Woods Agreement made the gold-backed dollar the anchor for the global monetary system. Fixed at $35 an ounce, dollars could be exchanged for gold on demand.
The Bretton Woods System gave the US virtual control over the “plumbing” of the global financial system. The dollar became the measure of all goods and services traded across borders and it fueled the postwar recovery. https://asiatimes.com/2022/10/the-world-at-a-turning-point/