And so it BEGINS.... China and Russia may be teaming up.... guess WHY.

US = fucked.

- 28 trillion in debt, fed cannot raise interest rates else the short term debt will roll over at the higher rates making the debt impossible to service.

- medicare/medicaid are set to go bankrupt in 2 years and probably sooner.

- more and more oil contracts are settling in euros and the chinese yuan. it won't be long till the petrodollar goes extinct.

- global appetite for us treasuries stopped in 2014. meanwhile foreign appetite for chinese bonds is growing.

- oh, and the us hollowed out its manufacturing core to such a degree that the department of defense has to buy supplies from china to wage war.

Sadly, the US had a chance to be friends with Russia after the Cold War and failed by letting guys like Yeltsin in. Russia is stupid to do anything with China.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend.....

In a rare joint statement in late March, China and Russia doubled down on earlier pledges to upend the global reliance on the U.S. dollar, and the long-standing global financial system that enables the U.S. to strong-arm them.

Will the Sino-Russian strategy succeed? My research suggests “dollar hegemony” is stable for many reasons, primarily due to the United States’ financial centrality and ability to secure investments. The measures announced so far, such as de-dollarization, renminbi digitalization, and alternative financial settlement and messaging systems, are unlikely to kick the dollar to the curb. But the reaction from America’s rivals underscores the limits of the dollar as a tool of deterrence.

If China and Russia devise successful alternatives to the dollar-centered financial system, and if these alternatives gain significant international traction, we would be witnessing a cataclysmic moment in great power rivalry. Currency unipolarity has been a defining feature of the entire postwar era — no currency, not even the euro, has ever come close to rivaling the scale of U.S. dollar use around the world.

An end to America’s dollar primacy and status as a financial hub could mean an end to U.S. macroeconomic perks. And a declining role for the dollar could also undermine the practice of dollar deterrence — the U.S. government’s ability to threaten or deny foreigners access to dollar clearing and, therefore, dollar settlement.

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This is not the first time countries have railed against dollar primacy. In the 1960s, French Finance Minister Giscard d’Estaing denounced the United States’ “exorbitant privilege” while economist Jacques Rueff decried the “monetary sin of the West.”

However, frustration with the system’s inequity pales in comparison with their ire over the discretion it gives the U.S. to exercise dollar deterrence. Should the U.S. lose this unique form of financial leverage, its ability to benefit from the current international order, and influence countries within it, will be sharply curtailed.

What is dollar deterrence?

U.S. dollar transactions are either cleared through the Federal Reserve or through U.S. financial institutions, which means foreigners depend on the U.S. financial infrastructure when settling dollar transactions. The United States’ ability to turn off the tap on foreign banks’ dollar funding can inflict significant costs on those who evade compliance with U.S. sanctions, given this extraterritorial reach.

Global dollar dependence provides the U.S. government with a powerful lever to police geopolitical behavior without intervening militarily. The U.S. has, for instance, sought to thwart Iran’s bid for regional hegemony, particularly its development of nuclear weapons and missile programs, not only by sanctioning Iran but by imposing secondary financial sanctions on countries dealing with Iran.

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